CHAPTER VIII

AGNES TAKES A HAND

If Jack Routt had meant to force Hetty into Wint’s thoughts, he had succeeded. Wint was not conscious of this when he left Jack at his gate; he was thinking of other things. But during supper, an hour later, when Hetty came into the dining room, Wint remembered what Jack had said; and he looked at the girl with a keen scrutiny. He studied her, without seeming to do so.

He was surprised to discover in how many ways Hetty had changed, since she came to work for his mother. The changes were slight, they had been gradual. But they were appallingly obvious, under Wint’s cool appraisal now. He tallied them in his thoughts. Her laughter had been gayly and merrily defiant; it was sullen, now, and mirthless. Her eyes had twinkled with a pleasant impudence; they were overcast, these days, with a troubling shadow. There was a shadow, too, upon the clear, milky skin of her cheeks; it was a blemish that could neither be analyzed nor defined. Yet it was there.

Hetty had slackened, too. Her hair was no longer so smoothly brushed, so crisply drawn back above her ears. It was, at times, untidy. Her waists were no longer so immaculate; her aprons needed pressing, needed soap and water, too, at times. She had been fresh and clean and good to look upon; she was, in these days, indefinably soiled.

After supper that night, Wint went out into the kitchen where Hetty was washing dishes. He went on the pretext of getting a drink of water. There had been a time, a few months ago, when Hetty would have turned to greet him laughingly, and she would have drawn a glass of water and given it to him. But she did neither of those things now. Instead, she moved aside without looking at him, while he held the glass under the faucet; and when he stepped back to drink, she went on with her work, shoulders bent, eyes down.

Wint finished the glass of water, and put the glass back in its place. Then he hesitated, started to go, came back. At last he asked pleasantly: “Well, Hetty, how are things going?”

She looked at him sideways, with a swift, furtive glance. And she laughed in the mirthless way that was becoming habitual. “Oh, great,” she said, and her tone was ironical.

“What’s the matter?” Wint asked. “Anything wrong?”

“Of course not. Don’t be a kid. Can’t I have a grouch if I want to?”

“Sure,” he agreed amiably. “I have ’em, myself. Anything I can do to bring you out of your grouch?”

“No.”

“If there is,” he said, so seriously she knew he meant his offer. “If there is, let me know. Maybe I can help.”

“I’m not asking help,” she told him sullenly.

“Is there anything definite? Anything wrong?”

She said, with a hot flash of her dark eyes in his direction: “I told you no, didn’t I? What do you have to butt in for?”

Wint considered that, and he filled his pipe and lighted it; and at last he turned to the door. From the doorway he called to her: “If anything turns up, Hetty, count on me.”

She nodded, without speaking; and he left her. He was more troubled than he would have cared to admit; and he was convinced, in spite of what Hetty had said, that there was something wrong.

The third or fourth day after, Hardiston meanwhile moving along the even tenor of its way, Wint decided, after supper at home, that he wanted to see Amos. He telephoned the Congressman’s home, and Agnes answered. He asked if Amos was at home.

“He went uptown for the mail,” Agnes told him. “But he said he’d be right back. He’ll be here in a few minutes.”

“Tell him I’m coming down, will you?” Wint suggested, and Agnes promised to do so. Wint took his hat and started for Amos’s home. He thought of going through town on the chance of picking Amos up at the Post Office; but the mail had been in for an hour, and he decided Amos would have reached his home before he got there, so he went on. Wint and Amos lived on the same street, but at different ends of the town. The better part of a mile lay between the two houses. The stores and business houses were the third point of a triangle of which the Chase home and Amos’s formed the other angles.

The night was warm and moonlit; a night in June. The street along which Wint’s route lay was shaded on either side by spreading trees, and lined with the attractive, comfortable homes of Hardiston folks who knew what homes should be. Wint met a few people: A young fellow with a flower in his buttonhole, in a great deal of a hurry; a boy and a girl with linked arms; a man, a woman here and there. At one corner, in the circle of radiance from a sputtering electric light, a dozen boys were playing “Throw the Stick.” Wint heard their cries while he was still a block or two away; he saw their shadowy figures scurrying in the dust, or crouching behind bushes and houses in the adjoining yards. As he passed the light, a woman came to the door of one of the houses and called shrilly:

“Oh-h-h, Willie-e-e-e-e!”

One of the boys answered, in reluctant and protesting tones; and the woman called:

“Bedti-i-ime.” Wint heard the boy’s querulous complaint; heard his fellows jeer at him under their breath, so that his mother might not hear. The youngsters trained laggingly homeward; and the woman at the door, as Wint passed, said implacably to her son:

“You go around to the pump and wash your feet before you come in the house, Willie.”

The boy went, still complaining. And Wint grinned as he passed by. His own days of playing, barefoot, under the corner lights were still so short a time behind him that he could sympathize with Willie. Is there any sharper humiliation than to be forced to come home to bed while the other boys are still abroad? Is there any keener discomfort than to take your two dusty feet, with the bruises and the cuts and the scratches all crudely cauterized with grime, and stick them under a stream of cold water, and scrub them till they are raw, and wipe the damp dirt off on a towel?... Wint was half minded to turn back and join that game of “Throw the Stick.” The bewildering moonlight, the warm air of the night had somewhat turned his head. It required an effort of will to keep on his way.

Agnes opened the door for him when he came to Caretall’s home. “Dad’ll be here in a minute or two,” she said. “Come right in.”

Wint hesitated. “Oh, isn’t he home yet?”

“No, but he will be.” She laughed at him, in a pretty, inviting way she had. “I won’t bite, you know.”

“I guess not,” he agreed good-naturedly. “But it’s a shame to go in the house, a night like this.”

She said: “Wait till I get a scarf. Sit down. The hammock, or the chairs. I’ll be right out.”

So Wint sat down, where the moonlight struck through the vines about the porch and mottled the floor with silver. Agnes came out with something indescribably flimsy about her fair head; and Wint laughed and said: “I never could make out why girls think a thing like that keeps them warm.”

“Oh, but it does,” she insisted. “You’ve no idea how much warmth there is in it.”

He shook his head, laughing at her. “That wouldn’t keep a butterfly warm on the Sahara Desert.”

She protested: “Now you just see....” And she moved lightly around behind him and wrapped the film of silken stuff about his head. “There,” she said, and looked at him, and laughed gayly. “You’re the funniest-looking thing.”

Wint unwound the scarf gingerly. “It feels like cobwebs,” he said. “I don’t see how you can wear it. Sticky stuff.”

“Men are always afraid of things like cobwebs. Always afraid of little things.”

Wint chuckled. “What’s this? New philosophy of life?”

“Can’t I say anything serious?”

“Why, sure. I don’t know but what you’re right, too.”

He had taken one of the chairs. She sat down in the hammock. “Come sit here with me,” she invited. “That chair’s not comfortable.”

“Oh, it’s all right.”

She stamped her foot. “I should think you’d do what I say when you come to see me.”

“Matter of fact, you know, I came to see your father.”

“Well, you’re staying to see me. If you don’t sit in the hammock, I’m going in the house and leave you.”

Wint held up his hands in mock consternation. “Heaven forbid.” He sat down beside her, as uncomfortable as a man must always be in a hammock; and she leaned away from him, half reclining, enjoying his discomfort. He could see her laughing at him in the moonlight. She pointed one forefinger at him, stroked it with the other as one strops a razor.

“‘Fraid to sit in the hammock with a girl,” she taunted.

She was very pretty and provoking in the silver light; and Wint understood that he could kiss her if he chose. He had kissed Agnes before this. “Wink” and “Post Office” and kindred games were popular when he and Agnes were in high school together. But--he had no notion of kissing Agnes, moonlight or no moonlight. He had come to see Amos. Amos’s daughter was another matter.

“When is Amos coming home?” he asked. “Has he called up? Maybe I’d better walk uptown.”

“He called and said he was starting,” she assured him. “You stay right here. He’ll be here, unless he gets to talking some of your old politics. I suppose that’s what you came to see him for.”

“Oh, I just happened down this way....”

She sat up straight. “Good gracious. You act as though it were a secret. Tell me, this minute.”

“Why, as a matter of fact,” said Wint good-naturedly, “I want to talk to him about a sewer the city’s going to put in through some land he owns. I guess you’re not interested in sewers.”

She grimaced, and said she should say not. “I thought maybe it was something about the bootleggers,” she said. “Everybody’s talking about them. What are you going to do to them?”

Wint laughed. “That’s like the instructions for destroying potato bugs,” he said. “First, catch your potato bug.”

“You mean you haven’t caught any?”

“Not yet.”

“Are you trying to?”

“Why, we’ve got our eyes open.”

“I love to hear about criminals and everything,” she said. “What will you do to them when you get them? Send them to jail?”

“Well, I’ll do that, if I can’t do anything worse.”

She asked: “You’re really going to--you really mean to get after them?” He nodded, and she laughed. He asked:

“What’s the joke?”

“Oh, it seems funny for you to be so moral about whisky and things.”

He grinned. “It is funny, isn’t it?”

“I should think they’d just laugh at you.”

“Well, maybe they do.”

“I suppose you’re just going to give them a lesson, and then--sort of let things go, aren’t you?”

Wint shook his head. “No, I sha’n’t let things go. Not as long as I’m--in charge.”

“But lots of people will be awfully mad at you. Why, even your father buys whisky and things, doesn’t he?”

“Yes, I suppose so. But he doesn’t sell them.”

“Well, some one’s got to sell them to him.”

“They’ll not sell in Hardiston,” said Wint. He was a little tired of this. “Looks to me as though Amos has stopped to talk politics, after all. Did you tell him I was coming?”

“Oh, yes,” she assured him. “He’ll be right home.” She got up abruptly. “There’s some lemonade in the dining room,” she said. “Would you like some?”

“Every time,” he said. “It’s warm enough to make it taste pretty fine, to-night.”

She came out with a tall pitcher and two glasses, and filled his glass and her own. They lifted the glasses together, and Wint touched his to his lips. Then he took it down, and looked at it, and said:

“Hello!”

“What’s the matter?” she asked.

“There’s a stick in this, isn’t there?”

“Yes. I always put a little in. Peach brandy. I love it.”

“Peach brandy, eh?”

“Yes. Don’t you like it?”

“Well, I’ve been letting it alone lately I guess I’ll not.”

“Oh, don’t be silly, Wint,” she protested, and stamped her foot at him. “I guess a little brandy won’t hurt you!”

“No, probably not,” Wint agreed. “But I’m on the wagon, you see.”

“You make me feel as though I’d done something wrong to offer it to you.”

“Why, no. Only, I....”

They were so interested that neither of them had heard Amos, and neither of them had seen him stop by the gate for a moment, listening to what they said. But when the gate opened, Agnes saw him, and the sight silenced her. Amos came heavily toward the house, and Agnes called to him:

“Wint’s here, dad.”

Amos said: “Oh! Hello, Wint!”

Wint said “Good evening.” Amos was up on the porch by this time, and seemed to discover the lemonade.

“Hello, there,” he exclaimed. “That looks pretty good. I’m hot. Pour me a glass, Agnes.”

She hesitated; and Wint said: “Take mine.”

“What’s the matter with it?” Amos asked good-naturedly. “Poisoned?” He lifted the glass to his nose. “Oh, brandy, eh? Well, got anything against that?”

“Oh, I’m on the wagon, myself, that’s all.”

Amos nodded. “Well, I never touch it. Not lately. Take it away, Agnes.”

His voice was gentle enough; but Wint thought the girl seemed very white and frightened as she faced her father. She took pitcher and glasses and went swiftly into the house. Amos turned to Wint, and sat down, and asked cheerfully:

“Well, young fellow, what’s on your mind?”

* * * * *

When their business was done, and Wint had gone, Amos sat quietly upon the porch for a while. Then, without moving from his chair, he turned his head and called toward the open door:

“Agnes!”

She answered, from inside. He said: “Come here.” And she appeared in the doorway. He bade her come out and sit down. She chose the hammock, lay back indolently.

Amos filled his pipe with slow care and lighted it. His head was on one side, his eyes squinted thoughtfully. If there had been more light, Agnes could have seen that he was sorely troubled. But she could not see. So she thought him merely angry; and grew angry herself at the thought.

He asked at last: “You offered Wint booze?”

“Just some lemonade,” she said stiffly.

“Booze in it,” he reminded her. “Don’t you do that any more, Agnes.”

“I guess a little brandy won’t hurt Wint Chase,” she told him.

“Don’t you do it any more,” he repeated, finality in his tones. She said nothing; and after a little he asked, looking toward her wistfully in the shadows of the porch: “What did you do it for, Agnes? What did you do it for, anyway?”

She shrugged impatiently. “Oh, I don’t know.”

“What did you do it for?” he insisted. There was an implacable strength in Amos; she knew she could not escape answering. Nevertheless, she evaded again.

“Oh, no reason.”

“What did you do it for?” he asked, mildly, for the third time; and Agnes stamped to her feet. When she answered, her voice was harsh and hard and indescribably bitter.

“Because I wanted to get him drunk,” she said. “He’s so funny when he’s that way. That’s why.”

She stared down at him defiantly; and Amos saw hard lines form about her mouth. Before he could speak, she was gone indoors.

Amos sat there for a long while, after that, thinking.... His thoughts ran back; he remembered Agnes as a baby, as a schoolgirl. She was a young woman, now.

He thought to himself, a curiously helpless feeling oppressing him: “I wish her mother hadn’t’ve died.”