CHAPTER IX.
MRS. POTIPHAR.
It must have been some person aged, say, twenty, who expressed to Noah the opinion that there wasn't going to be much of a shower. At twenty tomorrow is ever a clear day, and notes are easy things to meet, and friends and women are faithful, and Welsh rarebit is digestible, and sleep is rest, and air is ever good to breathe. Grant Harlson was not particularly troubled by the condition of his finances. That the money available had lasted till his schooling ended, was, at least, a good thing, and, as for the future, was it not his business to attend to that presently? Meanwhile he would dawdle for a week or two.
So the young man stretched his big limbs and lounged in hammocks and advised or domineered over his sisters, as the case might be, and read in a desultory way, and fished and shot, and ate with an appetite which threatened to bring famine to the family. Your lakeside small town is a fair place in July. He would loaf, he said, for a week or two. The loafing was destined to have character, perhaps to change a character.
There had come to Harlson in college, as to most young men, occasional packages from home, and in one of these he had found a pretty thing, a man's silk tie, worked wonderfully in green and gold, and evidently the product of great needlecraft. It was to his fancy, and he had thought to thank whichever of his sisters had wasted such time upon him, but had forgotten it when next he wrote, and so the incident had passed.
One day, wearing this same tie, he bethought him of his negligence lying supine on the grass, while his sister Bess was meanwhile reading in the immediate vicinity. He would be grateful, as a brother should.
"I say, Bess," he called, "I forgot to write about this tie and thank you. Which of you did it?"
Bess looked up, interested.
"I thought I wrote you when I sent the other things. None of us did it. It was Mrs. Rolfston."
"Mrs. Rolfston?"
"Certainly. She was here one day, when we were making up a lot of things for you, and said that she'd make something herself to go with the next lot. A week or two later she brought me that tie, and I inclosed it. Pretty, isn't it?"
"Very pretty."
The young man on the grass was thinking.
He knew Mrs. Rolfston slightly; knew her as the wife of a well-to-do man who saw but little of her husband.
Daughter of a poor man of none too good character in the little town, she had grown up shrewd, self-possessed, and with much animal beauty. At twenty she had married a man of fifty, a builder of steamboats, a red-faced, riotous brute, who had bought her as he would buy a horse, and to whom she went easily because she wanted the position money gives. Within a week he had disgusted her to such an extent that she almost repented of the bargain. Within a year, he had tired of her and was openly unfaithful in every port upon the lakes, a vigorous, lawless debauchee. His ship-building was done in a distant port, and he rarely visited his wife. He rather feared her, mastiff as he was, for here was the keener intelligence, and her moods, at times, were desperate as his. So he furnished her abundant income and was content to let it go at that. It pleased her, also, to have it that way.
Harlson thought of the woman, and wondered somewhat. Black-haired, black-eyed, white-skinned, deep of bust and with a graceful and powerful swing of movement, she was a woman, physically considered, not of the common herd. She was a lioness, yet not quite the grand lioness of the desert. She lacked somewhat of dignity and grandeur of countenance, and had more of alertness and of craft. She was, though dark, more like the tawny beast of the Rocky Mountains, the California lion, as that great cougar is called, supple, full of moods and passion, and largely cat-like. She had filled his eye casually. Why had she sent him the tie, the silken thing in green and gold?
He thought and pulled his long limbs together and rose till he was sitting, and decided that it was but courteous, but his duty as a gentleman, to wander over to her house and thank her for her remembrance of him. It was but an expression of good will toward the family generally, this little act of hers; he knew that, but it was a personal matter, after all, and he should thank her. It was well to be thoughtful, to attend to the small amenities, and it took him more than the usual time to dress. His apparently careless summer garb required the adjustment of an expert here and there. He was an hour in the doing of it. When he emerged he was not, taken in a comprehensive way, bad-looking. He was clear-faced, strong-featured and of stalwart build.
The ordinary man he would not have feared in any meeting; of the woman he was about to meet he had some apprehension. He knew her quality, but—she had worked for him a tie! He went up the broad path to the doorway, between flowers and trees and shrubbery. It was three o'clock in the afternoon, and he would find her alone, he thought, for chances of calls are not so great in the smaller towns as in the cities; there is an average to be maintained, and Mrs. Jones or Mrs. Smith does not receive on days particularized. He was compelled to wait in the parlor but a moment. She came in, and he saw her for the first time in two years.
What a gift women have in producing physical effects upon the creature male, no matter what the woman's status. Mrs. Rolfston came in with a look of half inquiry on her face and with a presentation of herself which was perfect in its way. She wore some soft and fluffy dress—a man cannot describe a garb in detail—with that lace-surrounded triangular bareness upon the bosom just below the chin which is as irreproachable as it is telling. There was a relation between the swing of her drapery and, the movements of her body. She was rich of figure, and flexile. And she was glad to see Mr. Harlson, and said so. He was not really embarrassed. The time had passed when that could be his way. But he was puzzled as to what to say. Some comment he made upon the quality of the season and upon Mrs. Rolfston's appearance of good health. Then he entered upon his subject with no link of connection with preceding sentences. "I but learned to-day," he said, "that the tie I wear was made by you. All fellows have little fancies, I suppose. I have, anyhow. I liked this, though I did not know who made it. My sister told me, and I have come to thank you. Why did you do it for me?"
That was putting the case plainly enough, certainly, and promptly enough, but it was not of a nature to trouble Mrs. Rolfston. This was a clever woman, married ten years, and of experiences which varied. She even glanced over the visitor from head to heel before she answered, and her color deepened and her eyes brightened, though he did not note it.
"You have changed," she commented. "I should hardly have known you but for your lips and eyes. You are broader and taller, and a big man, are you not? How long do you stay in town? Will you spend the summer here?"
"I wish I could," he answered. "It is pleasant here, but I must work, you know. I may idle for a little time. You haven't said anything about the tie."
"Oh, the tie? Don't speak of that. I had the whim to make something for somebody—I have an embroidering mania on me sometimes—and there was a chance to dispose of it, you see."
The young man's face fell a little as he looked upon the great, handsome woman and heard her seemingly careless words. He did not want to go away, yet what excuse was there for staying? He rose, hat in hand.
Here, now, was the woman in a quandary. She had not anticipated such abruptness.
"Don't go yet," she said, impetuously. "I want to talk with you. Tell me all about the college, and yourself, and your plans. And—-about the tie—I wouldn't have made one for any one else. I remembered your face. You know I was go often at your home, and I wondered how it would suit you. You should take that interest as a compliment. And I am lonesome here, and you are idling, you say, and why should we not be good friends for the summer? The men in town annoy me, and the girls here are not bright enough for you. Let us be cronies, will you not? Take me fishing to-morrow. I want you to teach me how to catch bass in the river. I heard some one say once you knew better than any one else how that is done. Is not this a good idea of mine? It will help both of us kill time."
She sat there on the sofa, half stretched out, yet not carelessly nor ungracefully, but in an assumed laziness of real felinishness, a woman just ten years older than the man she was addressing, yet in all the lushness of magnificent womanhood, and emanating all magnetism.
Harlson said he would call for her and that they would go fishing. And they went.
The light is tawny upon the lily-pods in shady places on the river. And rods, such as are used for bass, are light upon the wrist, and, in the lazy hours of mid-afternoon, when bass bite rarely, demand but slight attention. And two people idling in a boat get very close in thought together and come soon to know each other well. And a ruthless young man of twenty and a tempestuous woman of thirty are as the conventional tow and tinder.
And there were books she had never read in Mrs. Rolfston's library—for she was not a woman of books—which interested Harlson, and it was easier to read them there than take them home. And Mrs. Rolfston waited upon him—how gifted is a woman of thirty—and he felt bands upon him, and liked it, and would not reason to himself concerning it.
And one night, late, came a panting servant—Mrs. Rolfston had no men, only two women domestics, with her in her home—to say that her mistress had heard some one evidently attempting to open a window on the piazza, and that they were all in fear of their lives, and that she had fled out of the back way to ask Mr. Harlson the elder, or his son, to come over at once and look around.
The father laughed, and said that, had there been a burglar, he must have fled already, and the young man, laughing too, said that some one must go anyhow, in all courtesy to defenseless women, and that if Mrs. Rolfston feared for her front porch, he would lie upon a blanket in the lawn beside it to set her mind at rest. He had not slept beneath the stars alone, he said, since the family had left the farm. And there was much laughing, and Harlson took home the servant girl, and she, growing bold as they approached the house, ran up the path ahead of him. The lawn between the better house and street in the lake country town is often a little forest, so dense the trees and their foliage. And added to the fragrance of the leaves in later midsummer are the mingled odors of petunias and pinks and rosemary and bergamot and musk, for all these flourish late. And the moon comes through the tree-tops in splashes, and there is a softness and a shade, and it is all like a scented garden in some old Arabian story, and the senses are affected and, maybe, the reason. Harlson went up the path, half dreaming, yet alive in every vein. There was no burglar visible, but a wonderful woman, in fleecy dishabille, was sure she had heard a sound most sinister, and endangered women must be guarded of the strong.
And Grant Harlson returned not home that night; yet the moon, shining through the trees, revealed no form upon a blanket in the garden.
And the summer days drifted by; and the young man fresh from college, full of ambitions and dreams, found himself a creature he had never known, a something conscience-stricken, yet half-abandoned, and with a leaden weight upon his feet to keep them from carrying him away from the temptation.
He would force himself to a solitary day at times, and go out into the country with dog and gun, and tramp for miles, and wonder at himself. He had all sorts of fancies. He thought of his wickedness and his wasted time, and compared himself with the great men in the books who had been in similar evil straits,—with Marc Antony, with King Arthur in Gwendolen's enchanted castle, and with Geraint the strong but slothful,—rather far-fetched this last comparison,—and of all the rest. It was a grotesque variety, but amid it all he really suffered. And he would make good resolves and, for the moment, firm ones, and return to town when the dew was falling and the moonlight coming, and the tale was but retold. And the woman was wise, as women are, and conscienceless, yet suffering a little, too.
She had found more than a summer's toy, and she had grown to fear the great boy in his moods, and to want to keep him, and to doubt the measure of her art. This must be a hard thing, too, for such splendid pirates to bear. They may not even scuttle all the craft they capture.
And the root of all evil is sometimes the root of all good. The dollar pulls all ways. Harlson must earn his way. One day his father dropped a chance word regarding some one, miles in the country, who wanted a fence built inclosing a tract out of the wood. It was isolated work, a task of a month or two for a strong man, a mere laborer. Young Harlson became interested.
"Why shouldn't I try it?" he asked.
His father laughed.
"It's work for a toughened man, my boy. You have softened with six years of only study."
The boy laughed as well.
"You needn't fear," he said. "All strength is not attained upon a farm, and I want to swing an ax and maul again."
And that day he set out afoot for the home of the man who needed a fence. He told Mrs. Rolfston briefly. She paled a trifle, but made no objection. He said he would make visits to the town.