There was no sign of life anywhere as she reached the knoll. She moved slowly upward toward the fir trees, her skirts dragging in the dust because of the incline; she was too tired to hold them up. After sitting for a time, the Widow took note of the tree above her. It was in a stand of pines singularly battered and wild-looking, even for this region.
There was not a bough among the five that was not torn almost sideways or lopped and distorted by severe weather. Some were blasted and split as if by lightning strike, while others were blackened as coal mines or fire pits; the ground at her feet was strewn with dead fir needles and heaps of cones. The firs kept up a perpetual moan with their movement in the wind.
She shuddered as she recalled the name given by the Indians to this spot: Devil’s Bellows. It was thought that women forced to live nearby would eventually go mad—”cabin fever,” it was called. To find Nicholas living in such a neighborhood!
The exhausted woman sat for another twenty minutes, summoning the courage to go down to her son's house. She was a proud woman, and it seemed humiliating to be obliged to make the first move. But she had considered all that and was determined to appear not only the wiser but also the humbler of the two women in her son's life.
From her elevated position, Widow Brighton could see the garden behind Nick's cabin, and she happened to be looking in that direction when two figures appeared there. She readily recognized Cassandra's masses of curly, flaming hair. The man's identity she could not make out at first, until he turned his face, and then she recognized the dark hair and mustache of Curly Drake. Of course the situation was perfectly innocent, a visit among in-laws, and yet she viewed the couple in the distance with a grimace of distaste.
“Ouch!”
A strong sensation of pain in her right calf had prompted her to jump up quickly, but she did not stop to investigate the cause.
Before her courage deserted her, she must get on with her mission. Her face set in a resolute expression, she marched briskly down the knoll and up to the front door of the cabin.
The Widow knocked smartly several times, meanwhile looking through the small window pane and noting her son lying beside the fireplace. Was he was asleep in the middle of the day? His face was turned away from the door.
Several more times she pounded at the door. Still no answer, though she knew for a fact three fully grown human beings were close by, and her son was a light sleeper. Her blood began to boil.
To regain her composure, the Widow moved away from the door and walked around the corner of the house, thinking she would call out to the back garden.
At that same moment, Cassandra put her head out the open window of her sitting room.
The jutted window casing and Cassandra’s head were in full view of the corner where Widow Brighton stood near the front of the house. Cassandra was unable to see her visitor, because the corner was shaded and the Widow's grey form merged into the shadows.
The Widow had spotted Cassandra, however, and so she quickly turned around and briskly moved back to the front door. The last thing she wanted was to appear to be spying.
As the Widow moved from the shadows into the sun, Cassandra realized who had been knocking. She stepped back and exclaimed: “Bloody hell! It's my mother-in-law!”
Drake regarded his beloved with boggled eyes. Of course she was furious with him for being there at such a time, but what could he do? Certainly none of this was his fault. How could he have expected Clare's aunt to pick such a time to pay a call on the couple? Hadn't Cassandra just been complaining about the widow's uncharitable refusal to do so?
“Did she see you?” he asked Cassandra.
“No. Her back was turned. What should I do now?”
“Wait until she knocks again. Maybe she will change her mind and go away.”
Cassandra paced the room, undecided as to what to do. She was all too aware of how, only minutes before the Widow's arrival, she had been engaged in passionate, illicit lovemaking with Drake. Might the Widow, who was already suspicious, recognize the telltale flush upon her neck and recognize it for what it was?
“Leave it to fate. If she knocks again, she will rouse your husband. And then you will be off the hook, Cassie.”
“Yes, that will have to do. Go out the back way, and be quick about it!”
Drake did not need to be told twice. Hurriedly pulling on his dandyish bowler hat and throwing Cassandra a hasty kiss, he disappeared into the garden, where he emerged as a blur bolting up the hill to the place where he had left his gig. Cassandra watched his exit through her sitting room window, composed herself, then moved slowly into the front room, where Nicholas still lay before the fire.
The third series of knocks came, loud and clear. BANG, BANG, BANG. Cassandra jumped with each one, fully expecting to see Nicholas rise. They seemed much louder than before, but this was only because she was much nearer. She had hidden herself behind a chair, so she was not visible from the window pane of the door.
BANG, bang, bang. The knocks were growing weaker. Cassandra closely watched her husband's face, willing him to open his eyes. Without his eyes to gaze into, her powers were useless. His eyes remained shut, even when she beamed the full force of her siren powers upon him twice over.
Cassandra was as intent on not facing her mother-in-law post-coitus as she was on opening Nick's eyes. Her plan was to scuttle away as soon as her husband woke up, go to her room, and repair her face and hair, before she had to endure the Widow's scrutiny.
Bang, bang, bang, weaker still. Again Cassandra willed Nicholas to open his eyes. “Wake up, wake up, damn you.” But still Nicholas slept on.
Finally there was a dead silence, almost like a third presence in the room. Cassandra waited in her crouch for one, two, three minutes. Then she crept to the door and slowly opened it. No one was there.
Stepping quickly outside, she looked around, spotting the open gate. So, the feared mother-in-law was gone without much ado. Thankfully, she had been spared a direct encounter with that disapproving face. She could still feel the imprint of Curly's passionate kisses on her lips and breasts. A bit ashamed of herself but vastly relieved, Cassandra softly closed the door behind her.
Quietly she sat down in the dilapidated armchair that was the one piece of furniture in the room and picked up her book. Her husband was still wearing the leather leggings, thick boots, and rough sleeve-waistcoat in which he worked. Lightly snoring, he slept on.
As my pulse slowly returned to normal, I reflected upon the ease with which my former lover and I had fallen into our old pattern. Being with him had seemed as natural and enjoyable as playing my zither. Our instinctive, passionate grappling had spent itself in a flurry of hot kisses. Then, recollecting myself, I had drawn back. After a pause, we talked like two friends and as though nothing was happening between us.
“I hope you reached home safely after the rendezvous,” Curly said.
“Oh, yes,” I replied, though I was fairly sure Caleb Scattergood had spotted us together, and I wasn't sure how safe that was.
“Were you tired the next day? I was afraid you would be.”
“I was, rather. But I liked the dancing all the same.”
“Do you often dance with your husband?”
“Never,” I said. “He is tired all the time. You can't imagine how differently he behaves now compared to when I first met him.”
I was thinking of how differently he appeared in his work clothes compared to Curly, who was elegantly dressed in a new summer suit and light hat. Nick dressed in the latest fashion when we first met, and when we were married, his hands were as white and soft as mine. His complexion was still fair, of course, but now he had a rusty look. The dust and sun had not only burned his clothes but also imprinted a permanent brown stain on his skin. I blush to say it, I was thinking he looked like one of the Indians whose distress he was brooding over while mine went unheeded.
“Why is he cutting hay, for God’s sake?”
“He says that when peop
le are living on their capital they must turn a penny any way they can.”
“Ha! Spoken like a true native. But he has a great gift.”
“What is that?”
“His wife.” He looked at me so meaningfully that I blushed.
“I thought you meant his natural gifts of intelligence. He is an enthusiast and an idealist, and he doesn’t care at all about outward things. I think of him as a modern-day Saint Paul.”
“Glad to hear your husband is so grand a character as all that.”
“Oh yes, he is a saint. But though Paul was excellent as a man in the Bible, he would not have done well in real life.”
“Well, if that means your marriage is bad, you have only one person to blame.” He looked me in the eye, and I flushed angrily.
“The marriage is not bad,” I said vehemently. “We have simply had bad luck because of the accident to his eyes. But who knows what time will bring?”
“Indeed. Sometimes, Cassie, I think your marriage is a judgment upon you. You rightly belonged to me, lass. I had no idea of losing you. My heart was torn out by the roots when you sent me that note.”
“I belong to no one except myself,” I said firmly. “Anyway, the end of our relationship was your fault. You turned to another woman only to improve your prospects. I would never have thought of doing so. You made a fool of me, Curly.”
“I meant nothing by it,” said Drake. “All men are subject to having a wandering eye. You told me your father was a Ulysses type, did you not?”
“A kind way to put it, but I don’t want to think about you or Gio Zanelli right now.”
“Brighton should be grateful. He may have problems, but he don’t know what it is to lose the woman he loves and be married to another. That is a torture like hell, and it has happened to me.”
He looked as though he were about to say more, but I put out my hand to stop him.
“My husband is grateful for me,” I said, “and he is a rare man. Therefore I am the lucky woman. Our only problem is that I desire too much what is called life—music, poetry, passion, dancing, and all the beating and pulsing going on in the great arteries of the world. That was the shape of my dream, and I thought to get it alongside him. As it turns out, he desires none of those things.”
“So you married him on that account!”
“I married Mr. Brighton because I loved him. But I also saw the promise of a new and more intense life with him. I was wrong.”
“And you are resigned to your fate now? That does not sound like you, Cassie.”
“I turned a new leaf, believe it or not, by dancing at the fair. And I mean to stick to it. Why shouldn’t I be gay? I refuse to be brought down into the doom and gloom of these hobgoblins any longer.”
I was surprised when Drake suddenly grabbed me by the hands and danced me around.
“Stop, please,” I commanded him. The trouble is, I didn't really wish him to stop.
We gazed into each other's eyes, once again overwhelmed by that old feeling, the electric current between us. The strong grip of his hands around my waist was my undoing. It was only a single, simple sensation that vanquished my remaining resistance.
Impulsively, we tumbled in a heap onto the floor, tearing off our clothes. When his cock entered me, I convulsed with an orgasm that paralyzed me from my eyelids to my toes. It was my first orgasm in the arms of a man since Curly and I had last made love.
I now gazed at my husband, still asleep.
I sighed and deliberately pushed the tantalizing memories of my transgression from my mind. I then silently offered a hundred humble apologies to my sleeping husband. I had vowed in a church to be faithful to this human male, and I would rectify my mistake.
My penance would be the cessation of thinking about running away. I settled into my chair with my book in hand.
I was reading George Meredith's The Ordeal of Richard Feverel, with a plot hinging on a runaway wife. Meredith's own wife was a bounder, and therefore his novels are funnier and more revealing than he perhaps intended.
Surely I must run away! But no, I had decided against it. I would not willingly put Nicholas through the ordeal of losing me on top of losing his eyesight.
I wondered where Widow Brighton might be at this moment, whether she was making her way to the Grange seething with resentment or whether she was secretly relieved, as I was, by her not finding us at home.
I opened the book to where I had left off reading. But I was exhausted from the stress of preceding events and quickly dozed off.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Aftermath of the Devil's Bellows
October 2, 1901
Bulette, Wyoming
As Cassandra had surmised, Widow Brighton's hasty exit through the garden gate was that of a woman who is more anxious to escape from a place than she ever was to enter it.
But alas, as fate would have it, in her desire to leave the odious shut door behind her, the Widow had uncharacteristically gotten herself lost.
Her eyes were fixed on the ground, and her lips trembled. Now she was looking about to regain the trail she had arrived on. She had got turned around. Unknowingly, she was following Drake’s path, which lay hidden from the cottage by a shoulder of the hill.
“It is too much evil to bear,” she muttered. “How can they do it? At home with the vixen, yet he lets her bar the door against me, his own mother!”
At that moment she spotted a youth gathering blackberries in a hollow. He had a face that looked familiar to her, and indeed the boy was a fellow villager. Mark Horatio Nelson was picking berries for his mother and was on his way home from the Brightons' cottage. As soon as the old woman approached, Horatio started to trot along with her.
After awhile she spoke to him in a strange voice, as one in a state of hypnosis. “It is a long way home, Nick, and we will not get there until evening.”
She seemed to be talking to someone else. He looked around; no one was there. Horatio said, “We have supper at six o’clock, when father comes home. I have a long walk home, unless a carriage comes by.”
“No one comes home to me,” said the Widow bitterly.
“Is that what makes you so sad?” asked Horatio. “Or have you seen a devil? They say devils are common hereabouts.”
“I have seen what is worse, a woman’s face looking at me through a window.”
“Is that so evil, ma’am?” His voice had a wondering tone.
“It is if the woman looking out won’t let me in.”
“Once I was at Mill’s Creek Pond, and I saw my own face in the water, and—”
“If they had only met me halfway. Shut out! As if I was a stray cur instead of his mother. Can there be people with no beating hearts inside? Fie on them. I would not have treated a neighbor’s cat so brutally on a hot day like this.”
“What is it you say, ma’am?” Her words were slurred, and he found it difficult to follow her.
“Never again—never! Not even if they send for me!” Her voice rose and fell in volume and sounded wild. It frightened the young man.
“You must be in a very bad way, ma'am.”
“Aren’t you done in with the heat, boy?”
“Not like you are. Your face is pale and wet, and your head is wobbling.”
“Ah, I am exhausted from the inside out.”
“Your walk is funny too.” He made the motion of a jerk with one leg and a limp with the other.
“Don’t be impertinent, boy. Stay with me a minute longer. I must sit down here to rest.”
When she was seated on the ground, he looked long in her face and said, “How funny you draw your breath, like a horse who is nearly done for. Ma’am, do you always breathe like that?”
“Oh, I don’t know.” Her voice was very faint now, almost a whisper.
“I guess you should just stay here and rest,” said Horatio. “Is there anything I can do for you?”
“I am thirsty. Can you tell me if Ashtabula Pond is dry this year?”
&nb
sp; Ashtabula, an Indian name for “river of many fish,” had been applied somewhat facetiously to a watering hole in Bulette that was characteristically dry as a bone by August.
“There is a little water in it. I drunk some when I first come over here.”
“Is the water clear?”
“Middling.”
Widow Brighton fumbled in her straw basket and came out with an old-fashioned china teacup without a handle. It was one of a half dozen she had preserved ever since her childhood, a family heirloom passed down from her mother. She had brought the set with her today in a basket, as a present for Nicholas and Cassandra.
“Here, take this cup and go as fast as you can. Dip me up the clearest water you can find from the pond. I am very parched. I will die in this heat if I don't get water.”
The youth sped on his errand and soon was back with the cup of water, which she attempted to drink, but it was so warm it made her nauseated, and she threw it out.
The old woman remained seated on the ground with her eyes tightly closed. The boy played at catching butterflies near her, not liking to leave her, but increasingly anxious. It was time for him to be headed home with the berries. It was a long walk and might take him all the time remaining until his curfew at six, if he did not manage to hitch a ride with someone on horseback. His mother would thrash him if he was late.
“Will you soon be able to start again?” he asked her, with an eye to the sun's position in the sky.
“I have a horse in old man Like's livery. I am going there now.”
“Then you’ll be all right. He is only over the hill.” Horatio was hoping she might offer to carry him home. But as she continued to stare about her as if she were lost, he gave up on the idea. “Do you want me for anything more, please? I need to go home.”
“No, you go along home to your mother, boy. I’ll be better in a minute. But there is something you can do for me.”
“What is it?” queried the youth politely.
“Tell everyone that you have seen a broken-hearted woman rejected by her son. Go along with you now and tell them so. Tell everyone.”
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