第42章 THE JUDGMENT OF BOLINAS PLAIN(5)

It was her husband's voice, out of a darkness that they only then realized.The man threw her aside with a roughness that momentarily shocked her above any sense of surprise or shame: SHEwould have confronted her husband in his arms,--glorified and translated,--had he but kept her there.Yet she answered, with a quiet, level voice that astonished her lover, "Here! I'm just coming down!" and walked coolly to the ladder.Looking over, and seeing her husband with the deputy standing in the barnyard, she quickly returned, put her finger to her lips, made a gesture for her companion to conceal himself in the hay again, and was turning away, when, perhaps shamed by her superior calmness, he grasped her hand tightly and whispered, "Come again tonight, dear; do!" She hesitated, raised her hand suddenly to her lips, and then quickly disengaging it, slipped down the ladder.

"Ye haven't done much work yet as I kin see," said Ira wearily.

"Whitey and Red Tip [the cows] are hangin' over the corral, just waitin'.""The yellow hen we reckoned was lost is sittin' in the hayloft, and mustn't be disturbed," said Mrs.Beasley, with decision; "and ye'll have to take the hay from the stack to-night.And," with an arch glance at the deputy, "as I don't see that you two have done much either, you're just in time to help fodder down."Setting the three men to work with the same bright audacity, the task was soon completed--particularly as the deputy found no opportunity for exclusive dalliance with Mrs.Beasley.She shut the barn door herself, and led the way to the house, learning incidentally that the deputy had abandoned the chase, was to occupy a "shake-down" on the kitchen-floor that night with the constable, and depart at daybreak.The gloom of her husband's face had settled into a look of heavy resignation and alternate glances of watchfulness, which only seemed to inspire her with renewed vivacity.But the cooking of supper withdrew her disturbing presence for a time from the room, and gave him some relief.When the meal was ready he sought further surcease from trouble in copious draughts of whiskey, which she produced from a new bottle, and even pressed upon the deputy in mischievous contrition for her previous inhospitality.

"Now I know that it wasn't whiskey only ye came for, I'll show you that Sue Beasley is no slouch of a barkeeper either," she said.

Then, rolling her sleeves above her pretty arms, she mixed a cocktail in such delightful imitation of the fashionable barkeeper's dexterity that her guests were convulsed with admiration.Even Ira was struck with this revelation of a youthfulness that five years of household care had checked, but never yet subdued.He had forgotten that he had married a child.

Only once, when she glanced at the cheap clock on the mantel, had he noticed another change, more remarkable still from its very inconsistency with her burst of youthful spirits.It was another face that he saw,--older and matured with an intensity of abstraction that struck a chill to his heart.It was not HIS Sue that was standing there, but another Sue, wrought, as it seemed to his morbid extravagance, by some one else's hand.

Yet there was another interval of relief when his wife, declaring she was tired, and even jocosely confessing to some effect of the liquor she had pretended to taste, went early to bed.The deputy, not finding the gloomy company of the husband to his taste, presently ensconced himself on the floor, before the kitchen fire, in the blankets that she had provided.The constable followed his example.In a few moments the house was silent and sleeping, save for Ira sitting alone, with his head sunk on his chest and his hands gripping the arms of his chair before the dying embers of his hearth.

He was trying, with the alternate quickness and inaction of an inexperienced intellect and an imagination morbidly awakened, to grasp the situation before him.The common sense that had hitherto governed his life told him that the deputy would go to-morrow, and that there was nothing in his wife's conduct to show that her coquetry and aberration would not pass as easily.But it recurred to him that she had never shown this coquetry or aberration to HIMduring their own brief courtship,--that she had never looked or acted like this before.If this was love, she had never known it;if it was only "women's ways," as he had heard men say, and so dangerously attractive, why had she not shown it to him? He remembered that matter-of-fact wedding, the bride without timidity, without blushes, without expectation beyond the transference of her home to his.Would it have been different with another man?--with the deputy, who had called this color and animation to her face?

What did it all mean? Were all married people like this? There were the Westons, their neighbors,--was Mrs.Weston like Sue? But he remembered that Mrs.Weston had run away with Mr.Weston from her father's house.It was what they called "a love match." Would Sue have run away with him? Would she now run away with--?

The candle was guttering as he rose with a fierce start--his first impulse of anger--from the table.He took another gulp of whiskey.

It tasted like water; its fire was quenched in the greater heat of his blood.He would go to bed.Here a new and indefinable timidity took possession of him; he remembered the strange look in his wife's face.It seemed suddenly as if the influence of the sleeping stranger in the next room had not only isolated her from him, but would make his presence in her bedroom an intrusion on their hidden secrets.He had to pass the open door of the kitchen.

The head of the unconscious deputy was close to Ira's heavy boot.