In the corn-cutter plant something had happened that excited the men. Ed Hall the superintendent had played a trick on his fellow townsmen. He had put on overalls and gone to work at a bench in a long room with some fifty other men. “I’m going to show you up,” he said, laughing. “You watch me. We’re behind on the work and I’m going to show you up.”
The pride of the workmen had been touched, and for two weeks they had worked like demons to outdo the boss. At night when the amount of work done was calculated, they laughed at Ed. Then they heard that the piece-work plan was to be installed in the factory, and were afraid they would be paid by a scale calculated on the amount of work done during the two weeks of furious effort.
The workman who stumbled along the tracks cursed Ed Hall and the men for whom he worked. “I lost six hundred dollars in the plant-setting machine failure and this is all I get, to be played a trick on by a young suck like Ed Hall,” a voice grumbled. Another voice took up the refrain. In the dim light Hugh could see the speaker, a man with a bent back, a product of the cabbage fields, who had come to town to find employment. Although he did not recognize it, he had heard the voice before. It came from a son of the cabbage farmer, Ezra French and was the same voice he had once heard complaining at night as the French boys crawled across a cabbage field in the moonlight. The man now said something that startled Hugh. “Well,” he declared, “it’s a joke on me. I quit Dad and made him sore; now he won’t take me back again. He says I’m a quitter and no good. I thought I’d come to town to a factory and find it easier here. Now I’ve got married and have to stick to my job no matter what they do. In the country I worked like a dog a few weeks a year, but here I’ll probably have to work like that all the time. It’s the way things go. I thought it was mighty funny, all this talk about the factory work being so easy. I wish the old days were back. I don’t see how that inventor or his inventions ever helped us workers. Dad was right about him. He said an inventor wouldn’t do nothing for workers. He said it would be better to tar and feather that telegraph operator. I guess Dad was right.”
The swagger went out of Hugh’s walk and he stopped to let the men pass out of sight and hearing along the track. When they had gone a little away a quarrel broke out. Each man felt the others must be in some way responsible for his betrayal in the matter of the contest with Ed Hall and accusations flew back and forth. One of the men threw a heavy stone that ran down along the tracks and jumped into a ditch filled with dry weeds. It made a heavy crashing sound. Hugh heard heavy footsteps running. He was afraid the men were going to attack him, and climbed over a fence, crossed a barnyard, and got into an empty street. As he went along trying to understand what had happened and why the men were angry, he met Clara Butterworth, standing and apparently waiting for him under a street lamp.
..................
Hugh walked beside Clara, too perplexed to attempt to understand the new impulses crowding in upon his mind. She explained her presence in the street by saying she had been to town to mail a letter and intended walking home by a side road. “You may come with me if you’re just out for a walk,” she said. The two walked in silence. Hugh’s mind, unaccustomed to traveling in wide circles, centered on his companion. Life seemed suddenly to be crowding him along strange roads. In two days he had felt more new emotions and had felt them more deeply than he would have thought possible to a human being. The hour through which he had just passed had been extraordinary. He had started out from his boarding-house sad and depressed. Then he had come by the factories and pride in what he thought he had accomplished swept in on him. Now it was apparent the workers in the factories were not happy, that there was something the matter. He wondered if Clara would know what was wrong and would tell him if he asked. He wanted to ask many questions. “That’s what I want a woman for. I want some one close to me who understands things and will tell me about them,” he thought. Clara remained silent and Hugh decided that she, like the complaining workman stumbling along the tracks, did not like him. The man had said he wished Hugh had never come to town. Perhaps every one in Bidwell secretly felt that way.
Hugh was no longer proud of himself and his achievements. Perplexity had captured him. When he and Clara got out of town into a country road, he began thinking of Sarah Shepard, who had been friendly and kind to him when he was a lad, and wished she were with him, or better yet that Clara would take the attitude toward him she had taken. Had Clara taken it into her head to scold as Sarah Shepard had done he would have been relieved.
Instead Clara walked in silence, thinking of her own affairs and planning to use Hugh for her own ends. It had been a perplexing day for her. Late that afternoon there had been a scene between her and her father and she had left home and come to town because she could no longer bear being in his presence. When she had seen Hugh coming toward her she had stopped under a street lamp to wait for him. “I could set everything straight by getting him to ask me to marry him,” she thought.
The new difficulty that had arisen between Clara and her father was something with which she had nothing to do. Tom, who thought himself so shrewd and crafty, had been taken in by the city man, Alfred Buckley. A federal officer had come to town during the afternoon to arrest Buckley. The man had turned out to be a notorious swindler wanted in several cities. In New York he had been one of a gang who distributed counterfeit money, and in other states he was wanted for swindling women, two of whom he married unlawfully.
The arrest had been like a shot fired at Tom by a member of his own household. He had almost come to think of Alfred Buckley as one of his family, and as he drove rapidly along the road toward home, he had been profoundly sorry for his daughter and had intended to ask her to forgive him for his part in betraying her into a false position. That he had not openly committed himself to any of Buckley’s schemes, had signed no papers and written no letters that would betray the conspiracy he had entered into against Steve, filled him with joy. He had intended to be generous, and even, if necessary, confess to Clara his indiscretion in talking of a possible marriage, but when he got to the farm house and had taken Clara into the parlor and had closed the door, he changed his mind. He told her of Buckley’s arrest, and then started tramping excitedly up and down in the room. Her coolness infuriated him. “Don’t set there like a clam!” he shouted. “Don’t you know what’s happened? Don’t you know you’re disgraced, have brought disgrace on my name?”
The angry father explained that half the town knew of her engagement to marry Alfred Buckley, and when Clara declared they were not engaged and that she had never intended marrying the man, his anger did not abate. He had himself whispered the suggestion about town, had told Steve Hunter, Gordon Hart, and two or three others, that Alfred Buckley and his daughter would no doubt do what he spoke of as “hitting it off,” and they had of course told their wives. The fact that he had betrayed his daughter into an ugly position gnawed at his consciousness. “I suppose the rascal told it himself,” he said, in reply to her statement, and again gave way to anger. He glared at his daughter and wished she were a son so he could strike with his fists. His voice arose to a shout and could be heard in the barnyard where Jim Priest and a young farm hand were at work. They stopped work and listened. “She’s been up to something. Do you suppose some man has got her in trouble?” the young farm hand asked.
In the house Tom expressed his old dissatisfaction with his daughter. “Why haven’t you married and settled down like a decent woman?” he shouted. “Tell me that. Why haven’t you married and settled down? Why are you always getting in trouble? Why haven’t you married and settled down?”
..................
Clara walked in the road beside Hugh and thought that all her troubles would come to an end if he would ask her to be his wife. Then she became ashamed of her thoughts. As they passed the last street lamp and prepared to set out by a roundabout way along a dark road, she turned to look at Hugh’s long, serious face. The tradition that had made him appear differe
nt from other men in the eyes of the people of Bidwell began to affect her. Ever since she had come home she had been hearing people speak of him with something like awe in their voices. For her to marry the town’s hero would, she knew, set her on a high place in the eyes of her people. It would be a triumph for her and would re-establish her, not only in her father’s eyes but in the eyes of every one. Every one seemed to think she should marry; even Jim Priest had said so. He had said she was the marrying kind. Here was her chance. She wondered why she did not want to take it.
Clara had written her friend Kate Chanceller a letter in which she had declared her intention of leaving home and going to work, and had come to town afoot to mail it. On Main Street as she went through the crowds of men who had come to loaf the evening away before the stores, the force of what her father had said concerning the connection of her name with that of Buckley the swindler had struck her for the first time. The men were gathered together in groups, talking excitedly. No doubt they were discussing Buckley’s arrest. Her own name was, no doubt, being bandied about. Her cheeks burned and a keen hatred of mankind had possession of her. Now her hatred of others awoke in her an almost worshipful attitude toward Hugh. By the time they had walked together for five minutes all thought of using him to her own ends had gone. “He’s not like Father or Henderson Woodburn or Alfred Buckley,” she told herself. “He doesn’t scheme and twist things about trying to get the best of some one else. He works, and because of his efforts things are accomplished.” The figure of the farm hand Jim Priest working in a field of corn came to her mind. “The farm hand works,” she thought, “and the corn grows. This man sticks to his task in his shop and makes a town grow.”
In her father’s presence during the afternoon Clara had remained calm and apparently indifferent to his tirade. In town in the presence of the men she was sure were attacking her character, she had been angry, ready to fight. Now she wanted to put her head on Hugh’s shoulder and cry.
They came to the bridge near where the road turned and led to her father’s house. It was the same bridge to which she had come with the school teacher and to which John May had followed, looking for a fight. Clara stopped. She did not want any one at the house to know that Hugh had walked home with her. “Father is so set on my getting married, he would go to see him to-morrow,” she thought. She put her arms upon the rail of the bridge and bending over buried her face between them. Hugh stood behind her, turning his head from side to side and rubbing his hands on his trouser legs, beside himself with embarrassment. There was a flat, swampy field beside the road and not far from the bridge, and after a moment of silence the voices of a multitude of frogs broke the stillness. Hugh became overwhelmingly sad. The notion that he was a big man and deserved to have a woman to live with and understand him went entirely away. For the moment he wanted to be a boy and put his head on the shoulder of the woman. He did not look at Clara but at himself. In the dim light his hands, nervously fumbling about, his long, loosely-put-together body, everything connected with his person, seemed ugly and altogether unattractive. He could see the woman’s small firm hands that lay on the railing of the bridge. They were, he thought, like everything connected with her person, shapely and beautiful, just as everything connected with his own person was unshapely and ugly.
Clara aroused herself from the meditative mood that had taken possession of her, and after shaking Hugh’s hand and explaining that she did not want him to go further went away. When he thought she had quite gone she came back. “You’ll hear I was engaged to that Alfred Buckley who has got into trouble and has been arrested,” she said. Hugh did not reply and her voice became sharp and a little challenging. “You’ll hear we were going to be married. I don’t know what you’ll hear. It’s a lie,” she said and turning, hurried away.
..................
CHAPTER XV
HUGH AND CLARA WERE MARRIED in less than a week after their first walk together. A chain of circumstances touching their two lives hurled them into marriage, and the opportunity for the intimacy with a woman for which Hugh so longed came to him with a swiftness that made him fairly dizzy.
It was a Wednesday evening and cloudy. After dining in silence with his landlady, Hugh started along Turner’s Pike toward Bidwell, but when he had got almost into town, turned back. He had left the house intending to go through town to the Medina Road and to the woman who now occupied so large a place in his thoughts, but hadn’t the courage. Every evening for almost a week he had taken the walk, and every evening and at almost the same spot he turned back. He was disgusted and angry with himself and went to his shop, walking in the middle of the road and kicking up clouds of dust. People passed along the path under the trees at the side of the road and turned to stare at him. A workingman with a fat wife, who puffed as she walked at his side, turned to look and then began to scold. “I tell you what, old woman, I shouldn’t have married and had kids,” he grumbled. “Look at me, then look at that fellow. He goes along there thinking big thoughts that will make him richer and richer. I have to work for two dollars a day, and pretty soon I’ll be old and thrown on the scrap-heap. I might have been a rich inventor like him had I given myself a chance.”
The workman went on his way, grumbling at his wife who paid no attention to his words. Her breath was needed for the labor of walking, and as for the matter of marriage, that had been attended to. She saw no reason for wasting words over the matter. Hugh went to the shop and stood leaning against the door frame. Two or three workmen were busy near the back door and had lighted gas lamps that hung over the work benches. They did not see Hugh, and their voices ran through the empty building. One of them, an old man with a bald head, entertained his fellows by giving an imitation of Steve Hunter. He lighted a cigar and putting on his hat tipped it a little to one side. Puffing out his chest he marched up and down talking of money. “Here’s a ten-dollar cigar,” he said, handing a long stogie to one of the other workmen. “I buy them by the thousands to give away. I’m interested in uplifting the lives of workmen in my home town. That’s what takes all my attention.”
The other workmen laughed and the little man continued to prance up and down and talk, but Hugh did not hear him. He stared moodily at the people going along the road toward town. Darkness was coming but he could still see dim figures striding along. Over at the foundry back of the corn-cutting machine plant the night shift was pouring off, and a sudden glare of light played across the heavy smoke cloud that lay over the town. The bells of the churches began to call people to the Wednesday evening prayer-meetings. Some enterprising citizen had begun to build workmen’s houses in a field beyond Hugh’s shop and these were occupied by Italian laborers. A crowd of them came past. What would some day be a tenement district was growing in a field beside a cabbage patch belonging to Ezra French who had said God would not permit men to change the field of their labors.
An Italian passed under a lamp near the Wheeling station. He wore a bright red handkerchief about his neck and was clad in a brightly colored shirt. Like the other people of Bidwell, Hugh did not like to see foreigners about. He did not understand them and when he saw them going about the streets in groups, was a little afraid. It was a man’s duty, he thought, to look as much as possible like all his fellow men, to lose himself in the crowds, and these fellows did not look like other men. They loved color, and as they talked they made rapid gestures with their hands. The Italian in the road was with a woman of his own race, and in the growing darkness put his arm about her shoulder. Hugh’s heart began to beat rapidly and he forgot his American prejudices. He wished he were a workman and that Clara were a workman’s daughter. Then, he thought, he might find courage to go to her. His imagination, quickened by the flame of desire and running in new channels, made it possible for him, at the moment to see himself in the young Italian’s place, walking in the road with Clara. She was clad in a calico dress and her soft brown eyes looked at him full of love and understanding.
The three workingm
en had completed the job for which they had come back to work after the evening meal, and now turned out the lights and came toward the front of the shop. Hugh drew back from the door and concealed himself by standing in the heavy shadows by the wall. So realistic were his thoughts of Clara that he did not want them intruded upon.
The workmen went out of the shop door and stood talking. The bald-headed man was telling a tale to which the others listened eagerly. “It’s all over town,” he said. “From what I hear every one say it isn’t the first time she’s been in such a mess. Old Tom Butterworth claimed he sent her away to school three years ago, but now they say that isn’t the truth. What they say is that she was in the family way to one of her father’s farm hands and had to get out of town.” The man laughed. “Lord, if Clara Butterworth was my daughter she’d be in a nice fix, wouldn’t she, eh?” he said, laughing. “As it is, she’s all right. She’s gone now and got herself mixed up with this swindler Buckley, but her father’s money will make it all right. If she’s going to have a kid, no one’ll know. Maybe she’s already had the kid. They say she’s a regular one for the men.”
As the man talked Hugh came to the door and stood in the darkness listening. For a time the words would not penetrate his consciousness, and then he remembered what Clara had said. She had said something about Alfred Buckley and that there would be a story connecting her name with his. She had been hot and angry and had declared the story a lie. Hugh did not know what the story was about, but it was evident there was a story abroad, a scandalous story concerning her and Alfred Buckley. A hot, impersonal anger took possession of him. “She’s in trouble—here’s my chance,” he thought. His tall figure straightened and as he stepped through the shop door his head struck sharply against the door frame, but he did not feel the blow that at another time might have knocked him down. During his whole life he had never struck any one with his fists, and had never felt a desire to do so, but now hunger to strike and even to kill took complete possession of him. With a cry of rage his fist shot out and the old man who had done the talking was knocked senseless into a clump of weeds that grew near the door. Hugh whirled and struck a second man who fell through the open doorway into the shop. The third man ran away into the darkness along Turner’s Pike.
Poor White Page 22