WHEN Tom went in Clare was standing by the stove in her absurd skirt, busily frying potatoes. The table was set, after a fashion, for two. She glanced over her shoulder, smiling but wary.
"Hello!" she said. "I thought maybe a little food wouldn't go so bad."
He was speechless with disappointment and anger. He came inside and closed the door before he could trust his voice to speak to her.
"What brought you here?"
"You eat something and you'll feel better. Anyhow, you needn't worry. I'm going back tonight."
"I'll tell the world you are," he said grimly. He hung his hat on its nail, glanced into the bedroom and saw Clare's hat and coat there, and limping inside brought them out and closed the door.
"What's the big idea?" he asked disagreeably. "Trying to make trouble for me?"
"That's all the thanks I get for cooking you a decent meal, is it?"
He still held her hat and coat. She had a terrified moment when she thought he was going to force her to go at once, but now he put them down slowly.
"You're liable to get talked about, doing things like this," he said, less unpleasantly. "And the sooner you've eaten and run the better. It looks like rain outside."
She put the supper on the table while he watched her. He was still suspicious and angry, but after all his own conscience was not too clear concerning her. If this made her happy
"I'm not joking. It's going to rain."
She was dishing up the supper, practical, competent. She moved back and forward, talking and laughing. She disarmed him by her matter-of-fact manner. And then suddenly, passing him, she stopped in front of him and held up her face.
"Just once, for luck," she said. "It won't hurt you!"
What could he do? He stooped and lightly kissed her, and the next moment her arms were around his neck. He was thoroughly uncomfortable, her small body brought nothrill to him, he even felt slightly ridiculous. But when he released himself it was gently.
"I'm all through with that, Clare."
She made no protest, sat down with him and ate her supper, talked, even laughed. She had no plan. She had simply followed a desperate urge to see him again. She was ready to stay an hour or a week, depending on his reception of her. If it was to be only an hour
"Things taste all right?"
"Mighty fine. You sure can cook. How'd you know I was coming back?"
"A little bird told me."
She chattered on, playing for time. There was a new clerk at the National Drug Store. Some good-looker. He wanted her for steady company, but she didn't care about him. Sarah Cain was crazy about him. She made her lunch of ice-cream soda now, so she could look at him. And Ed at the Martin House had been caught bootlegging and was in for trouble.
Then suddenly the rain came down; it came without warning, like a cloudburst. It fell in sheets on the roof, on the ground, on the road. It rolled in yellow torrents down the trails and paths; it slid off the bare dry hillsides, carrying earth and gravel before it. The note of the creek rose higher, and in front of the porch when Tom was at last able to open the door there was a small lake, shining yellow in the lamplight. The first burst over, it continued to rain. The shingles of the roof, dried from the long drought, began to admit it. They ran around with pails and pans.
"It's dropping here, Tom! Quick!"
When that was over they sat down and looked at each other. There was anger and despair in Tom's face, and amusement in Clare's.
"You look as if I'd made it rain."
"You've got me into the hell of a fix, and you know it."
She moved over to him.
"Who's to know?" she said. "You can go out and sleep in the barn if you want, but who'd believe it?"
"That's where I'm sleeping, just the same."
"I'll bet it's wet out there," she said, and laughed again.
Her laughter angered him. He felt absurd enough as it was. But he was grimly determined to let her alone. He did not want her. He knew her psychology, the result of her careless rearing, her narrow life with its emphasis on sex. She had no passions; she and her kind preyed on passion, that was all.
By eleven o'clock the worst of the storm was over, but it was still raining. No car would have moved a hundred feet along the road. Even if it cleared now it would be a day, two days, before Clare could get back. She sat, relaxed and slightly sulky, in Kay's chair by the lamp, while Tom raged about the room. He hated her; the very sight of her in that chair made him murderous. At something after eleven he took his hat and a slicker and went out, and shortly after she heard the splosh of horses' feet in the water outside.
She got up, angry herself now, and confronted him when he came in.
"What are you going to do?"
"Put a slicker on you and take you to Sally Seabright, at Judson."
"If you think I'm going to ride all those miles tonight in this rain you can think again."
"You're going to do just that."
She fought savagely against Kay's slicker when he put it on her, but he was relentless. He even stuck her hat on her, and then opening the door when she refused to go through it, dragged her out forcibly. She tried to bite him in her helpless fury, but he only laughed, and lifting her up in his arms carried her to her horse. She did not speak to him during the long ride through the darkness and rain. At the store she slid out of the saddle herself, and stood waiting in savage silence while he hammered at the door.
Nobody answered. After a time he saw a card against the glass and lighted a match. "Away until Monday," it said.
Clare read it too, and shook with silent laughter.
He stood uncertain on the bit of pavement. Only one passenger train stopped at Judson, and that at noon. And even that did not run on Sundays. To take her to the hotel over the other store at this hour meant gossip, ugly talk. After a long bitter silence he said: "Well, we'd better go back."
They rode back. It was still raining with a threat of snow. Clare's teeth were chattering when he got her back; he built up the fire and then, taking a blanket as he had once long before, he went out to the barn and rolled up in the hay. He did not sleep at all. The mischief was done now. Whether she went back the next day or in a month would not matter.
The next day when the rain persisted, he hardly fought her dogged refusal to take that ride again. He carried out more bedding to the barn and nailed up newspapers to keep out the wind. When she called him he went in to eat, surly, unhappy and hopeless. Only once he brightened. She told him her family believed she had gone to Easton, and on that frail hope he built.
When on Tuesday she took her departure he felt conscience stricken. Her face rather alarmed him; it was set and unhappy. She let him put the blanket over her knees, which her absurd skirt left uncovered, without comment; she even recoiled a little from his touch. He was ashamed of his relief at her going. He tucked in the blanket and stood back.
"Well, so long, Clare."
"Good-bye," she said drearily. And started off.
Could he have gone at once to Kay things might have been different; but the storm had left him with work to do about the place; fence posts had washed out and let down the wire, a shelter shed roof had to be repaired. The threshing did not bother him; the rain would have stopped that for a while. But he worked in a frenzy of haste. Argue as he would, he knew that Clare's absence would have excited comment, even alarm, and that if the story reached Kay she would know.
He was not so much startled as appalled, then, when on the next day he entered Kay's room, to find Mrs. Mallory in tears and Kay resolutely packing her bag. On the bureau lay a small stack of bills, but he did not see the money at first. He was stricken by the disaster, at the preparations, at Kay's white face and set mouth. He stopped in the doorway; he was trembling, but he controlled his voice.
"Looks like somebody's going somewhere."
"I am, Tom. I'm sorry, but My mother's very ill."
"That's it, is it?"
"That's enough, isn't it?"
"Not if you were going without letting me know."
"I was going to write."
"So I'd get it after you'd gone! I'm much obliged to you."
"I didn't see any use in worrying you about it. I'm going. I have to go."
Mrs. Mallory slipped away then, closing the door behind her. Tom stopped to bolt it and then advanced into the room and took her by the shoulders. His face was very white.
"Now we'll get to the bottom of this," he said. "That about your mother, that's a lie, isn't it?"
"Let go of me, please. You can read the letter if you like. It's on the bureau."
He released her, puzzled.
"And that's all? You haven't any queer ideas in that head of yours?"
"I know you've had Clare Hamel with you for three days, if that's what you want to know."
"Had her with me! Good God!" He laughed bitterly. "She got storm-stayed, the damned little fool! And I treated her like a yellow dog."
"That seems to be a specialty of yours," she said cruelly. "Treating her like a yellow dog. But she appears to like it."
"I never touched her, Kay."
"I suppose you were shut up there together for three days, and you never even kissed her."
He hesitated, then came out with the truth.
"Once. She asked for it."
But he saw that the admission was fatal. She could not believe that he would do that and not go further. She resumed her packing, folding something carefully on the bed, smoothing and straightening it. He saw that her hands were shaking.
"I'll bring her here, Kay. She'll tell you."
"She would lie. Anyhow I never want to see her again."
"Or me either, I reckon."
"I didn't say that."
"But you don't believe me."
"I can't, Tom. I want to, but I just can't."
"You're going then?"
"I must," she said desperately. "I've told you the truth. Anyhow, I'll have to have time, Tom. I have to think, and somehow I can't think here."
"You know what it means, don't you? You'll never come back. Oh, I know; you think maybe you will, but you won't. They'll get their hooks into you somehow. They'll talk you over. They'll bribe you."
And as he thought of them his old anger rose. He saw them, fat and sleek and rich, grinning over their triumph, putting their heads together behind closed doors, whispering, conspiring. Conspiring against him.
He saw her back again on the country club porch, idle, surrounded by idlers, luxurious, filling time with play, with lovers; with Herbert. His gorge rose, his voice tightened.
"Oh, no," he said. "You'll never come back. You won't want to come back. They'll get you. And if you ask me, it isn't them you're going back to. It's that fellow. And who's he? They wouldn't pay a bounty on a dozen of his kind out here."
"I should think they would," she said evenly. "He's a gentleman. And they seem to be scarce."
She had not meant to bicker. When love dies it should die silently and decently, and be laid away with secret tears. But Tom recognized none of the amenities. He could not even let her go with dignity.
"Oh, please don't quarrel," she said wearily. "I haven't minded the hardships, but—maybe it was all wrong. I don't blame you only; I blame myself too. If I'd been right you would never have turned to her." He made an angry movement. "I'll have to get away and think things over."
"And if you decide in my favor you'll come back! Not on your life! If you go you go, Kay, and I'm telling you. I'll never ask you to come back, so help me God."
Mrs. Mallory tapped at the door; the taxi from the station was waiting, and Kay had only just time for her train. She closed her bag, pulled on her hat. All the time Tom stood staring at her, helpless, defeated. Only once did he speak at all, and that when she picked up the money from the bureau and thrust it into her purse.
"Where did you get that?"
"Aunt Bessie sent me a check for a thousand dollars, I've left the balance in your name, in the bank."
"Oh, you have, have you!" he exploded. "I'd burn in hell fire before I used it."
And that was their farewell. He did not even go down the stairs with her. He stood inside the door, his hands clenched, a cold sweat on his face, and heard the taxicab drive away. But he made no move to follow it. His mind—such of it as was functioning at all—was busy with this new aspect of the situation. She had sent East for money to go home with. Then she had planned ahead to leave him. It was not because of Clare. That had only been an excuse ready to her hand.