She had rented a room By the Bridge from Miss Bentley, who was much surprised when Emma paid the rent; and through her new and improved business situation in the town she was able to command a “high-class custom.”
Since the evening that Quarry had suggested the depot as a place of residence Emma had been free of his presence. She had heard of him from the men, however, and knew that he was speaking to them from the Bridge every evening. Revolt was in the air of Soot City; there were meetings, quite covertly, conducted by socialistic workmen in the cause of workfellows’ profits. Monopoly and co-operative profit were talked of constantly, and Grigg sold many drinks. It is a pity that the workingmen who invent Utopias should attempt to sanctify them with an alcoholic immersion. It antagonizes even the fair-minded. The preachers took to finding comparisons, more or less apposite, between Dives and Lazarus, pronouncing the socialism of him who has not, grabbing from him who has, to be merely a modern variation of a scriptural scheme of all things in common. As some men go to church to find biblical sanction for their shortcomings; the ringleaders of what was fast becoming an agitation, took to the sanctuaries, whither the rest of the town felt it safe to follow them.
Emma regarded Quarry’s effrontery as monumental, but she never conceived a possibility of his coming to her new house in the Stonepastures. She felt that, as she had gone down in the world, he thought he had risen, and that the Stonepastures were very far away from him now. Her eyes would scan the road, in her swift evening walks searching for his slightly crooked form. The thought of him distressed her, as horror comes upon a child in the dark, and after nightfall she remembered him as such a power for evil. Returning from the town she always wore for warmth her leathern apron with a shawl, her jacket was too good to be worn out in the dark. This scruple was pure conscience, for she no longer had Jarlsen’s eye for which to save her dresses.
He could tell the difference in footfalls now, and distinguish voices. Emma longed for the moment when he should be able to hear her speak his name. This hoped-for moment occupied many of her hours, and she thought of it on the still, cold night when she saw Quarry walking toward the Pastures about ten yards ahead of her. She slackened her pace instantly, and he was soon lost in the starless dark.
She dreaded him. As she walked she feared she might stumble on him lying drunk in her path, with his mouth full of the hideous words he used at such times; or, this fear forgotten, her breath would come in loud pantings at the thought of his hands laid on her from behind. When she came to her own door there was still no sight of him; she looked both up and down the road to make sure. She could not see far, for most of the houses were dark; lights are too expensive for the rent-free Pastures. Raising the latch, she pushed the door quietly open and looked into her own home.
Quarry was at the kitchen table facing her, glaring in Jarlsen’s serenely blind countenance. Sleep had double-locked the Swede’s seared vision, and in complete unconsciousness he breathed freely, within a glance of Quarry’s eyes alive with malice.
Emma was frightened, so much so that she could not call. It seemed that Quarry must have something to kill with, in his coarse, cramped hands. It flashed across her that if she received him roughly he would strike or stab, and that an appearance of politeness would surely gain her time. Calmness came to her when she had determined how to act.
She rattled the latch, her heart jumping so that she felt as if it had thrown her into the room. Quarry let fall something that gave out the sound of thin metal as it struck the brick flooring round the stove. A flight of chills froze her blood, while her cheeks burned with a steady, excited glow.
Quarry could not avoid her eyes and she saw that were he to have the first word he would announce himself at bay and make trouble. She almost ran to him with her hand stretched out. “Quarry,” said she in a little voice that she strained to make audible, “Quarry, you’ll have a bite, won’t you? It’s a cold bite, but a ready one.”
Emma thought later that it was at the sound of Quarry’s name in her voice that Jarlsen wakened. He knew at once that Quarry was there, for a look that had been absent from his face since they moved from By the Tracks swept its strong patience and sweetness away. He stood on his feet and reached out for the Englishman. The bandages on his right hand seemed too tight, and the veins in it bursting.