第15章 THE NOONING TREE.(5)

I pulled Dixie off, but I was too late. He give a groan I shall remember to my dyin' day, 'n' then he plunged out o' the crowd 'n' through the gate like a streak o' lightnin'. We follered, but land! we couldn't find him, an' true as I set here, I never expected to see him alive agin. But I did;

I forgot all about one thing, you see, 'n' that was the baby.

If it wa'n't no attraction to its mother, I guess he cal'lated it needed a father all the more. Anyhow, he turned up in the field yesterday mornin', ready for work, but lookin' as if he 'd hed his heart cut out 'n' a piece o' lead put in the place of it."

"I don't seem as if she 'd 'a' ben brazen enough to come back so near him," said Steve.

"Wall, I don't s'pose she hed any idea o' Dixie's bein' at a circus over Wareham jest then; an' ten to one she didn't care if the whole town seen her. She wanted to get rid of him, 'n' she didn't mind how she did it.

Dixie ain't one of the shootin' kinds, an' anyhow, Fiddy Maddox wa'n't one to look ahead; whatever she wanted to do, that she done, from the time she was knee high to a grasshopper.

I've seen her set down by a peck basket of apples, 'n' take a couple o' bites out o' one, 'n' then heave it fur 's she could heave it 'n' start in on another, 'n' then another;

'n' 't wa'n't a good apple year, neither. She'd everlastin'ly spile 'bout a dozen of 'em 'n' smaller 'bout two mouthfuls.

Doxy Morton, now, would eat an apple clean down to the core, 'n' then count the seeds 'n' put 'em on the window-sill to dry, 'n' get up 'n' put the core in the stove, 'n' wipe her hands on the roller towel, 'n' take up her sewin' agin; 'n' if you 've got to be cuttin' 'nitials in tree bark an' writin' of 'em in the grass with a stick like you 've ben doin' for the last half-hour, you 're blamed lucky to be doin'_D_'s not _F_'s, like Dixie there!"

It was three o'clock in the afternoon. The men had dropped work and gone to the circus. The hay was pronounced to be in a condition where it could be left without much danger; but, for that matter, no man would have stayed in the field to attend to another man's hay when there was a circus in the neighborhood.

Dixie was mowing on alone, listening as in a dream to that subtle something in the swish of the scythe that makes one seek to know the song it is singing to the grasses.

"Hush, ah, hush, the scythes are saying, Hush, and heed not, and fall asleep;

Hush, they say to the grasses swaying, Hush, they sing to the clover deep;

Hush,--'t is the lullaby Time is singing,--Hush, and heed not, for all things pass.

Hush, ah, hush! and the scythes are swinging Over the clover, over the grass."

And now, spent with fatigue and watching and care and grief,-- heart sick, mind sick, body sick, sick with past suspense and present certainty and future dread,--he sat under the cool shade of the nooning tree, and buried his face in his hands.

He was glad to be left alone with his miseries,-- glad that the other men, friendly as he felt them to be, had gone to the circus, where he would not see or hear them for hours to come.

How clearly he could conjure up the scene that they were enjoying with such keen relish!

Only two days before, he had walked among the same tents, staring at horses and gay trappings and painted Amazons as one who noted nothing; yet the agony of the thing he now saw at last lit up all the rest as with a lightning flash, and burned the scene forever on his brain and heart.

It was at Wareham, too,--Wareham, where she had promised to be his wife, where she had married him only a year before.

How well he remembered the night! They left the parsonage; they had ten miles to drive in the moonlight before reaching their stopping-place,--ten miles of such joy as only a man could know, he thought, who had had the warm fruit of life hanging within full vision, but just out of reach,--just above his longing lips; and then, in an unlooked-for, gracious moment, his!

He could swear she had loved him that night, if never again.

But this picture passed away, and he saw that maddening circle with the caracoling steeds. He head the discordant music, the monotonous creak of the machinery, the strident laughter of the excited riders.

As first the thing was a blur, a kaleidoscope of whirling colors, into which there presently crept form and order.

. . . A boy who had cried to get on, and was now crying to get off.

. . . Old Rube Hobson and his young wife; Rube looking white and scared, partly by the whizzing motion, and partly by the prospect of paying out ten cents for the doubtful pleasure.

. . . Pretty Hetty Dunnell with that young fellow from Portland; she too timid to mount one of the mettle-some chargers, and snuggling close to him in one of the circling seats. The, good Got!--Dell! sitting on a prancing white horse, with the man he knew, the man he feared, riding beside her; a man who kept holding on her hat with fingers that trembled,--the very hat she "'peared bride in" a man who brushed a grasshopper from her shoulder with an air of ownership, and, when she slapped his hand coquettishly, even dared to pinch her pink cheek,--his wife's cheek,-- before that crowd of on-lookers! Merry-go-round, indeed!

The horrible thing was well named; and life was just like it,-- a whirl of happiness and misery, in which the music cannot play loud enough to drown the creak of the machinery, in which one soul cries out in pain, another in terror, and the rest laugh; but the prancing steeds gallop on, gallop on, and once mounted, there is no getting off, unless . . .

There were some things it was not possible for a mean to bear!

The river! The river! He could hear it rippling over the sunny sands, swirling among the logs, dashing and roaring under the bridge, rushing to the sea's embrace. Could it tell whither it was hurrying? NO; but it was escaping from its present bonds; it would never have to pass over these same jagged rocks again.