“I’ll bet a dollar, Maun, you’re in love!” she would venture.
And he would wonder if it was possible that any love was ever quite as wonderful as his for Freda. Never since human life began had any woman been as dear as she was to him. She was so real. There was not an atom of dissimulation about her. Freda—who had flashed upon him like a blinding light, who had believed in him—had become constant in his thoughts. Freda was the great reality. Nothing could daunt him, nothing could make him one little bit unhappy, so long as he knew that ultimately he would possess her.
But he purposely refrained from seeing her much. The few calls that he made at her home were in response to her invitations, and he fancied that she understood well enough the reasons for his restraint.
The hot harvest season passed very tardily. The August sun grew more intense as the long, sultry days drew out. There was never even a cloudy day to remove the accumulating tension of the heat. The grey, baked earth cracked into deep fissures. The wells dried up, and even the waters of the marsh sank, day by day, until at the end of the month they were entirely gone. There was no greenness anywhere; the rushes and sedges were burnt into amber shades, with yellow fuzz that blended dully with the parched meadows. And the creatures of the swamp were either silent or departed. Mauney missed them.
The farmers began to talk ruin. William Henry McBratney, passing the lane on a visit from Beulah, pulled up his horse to discuss the weather with Mauney. His evil face, the more evil because of its senile wasting, was painfully worried, and his mad, dim eyes sparkled in accord with his feelings.
“Well, sir, Maun,” he said, striking his knee with his sprawling, bony palm, “I’ve seed a good many dry spells, but nothing like this. It’s nigh onto fifty years since me and my first missus settled here. But, sir, I tell you what! This here harvest has been the driest ever.”
“But I think we’ll get rain, don’t you?” asked Mauney.
“No, sir, I don’t,” affirmed the old man, with an expression of settled gloom. “Every mornin’ I’ve been a-looking for a cloud or two, but that sky, sir, I tell yuh, couldn’t hold a cloud. It’s too damned hot fer to hold a single cloud! An’, if we don’t get rain the cattle’s goin’ to die.”
“But, my dear sir,” persisted Mauney, “rain is bound to come. Did you ever see it fail?”
“All I’m sayin’ is, that since I come here—me an’ the missus—that there marsh hain’t never onct dried up that way. Yer father, Seth, never seed it like that, I tell yuh. No, sir. An’ if it’s me ye’r askin’ I’d deny that there’ll be any rain. Leastways, I’d hev to see it to believe it!”