Peneluna tossed her head and sneezed.
“I ain’t ever understood,” she broke in, “why a woman should fuss and break herself on account of a man doing what he oughtn’t ter do. Let him do the fussing and breaking.”
“She might try and save him.” Twombley, like all the male Forest, was stirred at what he could not understand.
“Women have got their hands full of other things”––Peneluna sneezed again as if the dust of ages was stifling her––“and I do say that after a woman does save a man, she’s often too worn out to enjoy her savings.”
And Larry, carefully dressed, living alone and to all appearances brave and steady, simply, according to Maclin’s ordering, “let out more sheet rope” in order that Mary-Clare might sail on to the rocks and smash herself to atoms before the eyes of her fellow creatures.
Surely the Forest had much to cogitate upon.
“There is just one ledge of rocks for her kind,” said Maclin. “You keep yourself clear and safe, Rivers, and watch the wreck.”
Maclin could be most impressive at times and his conversation had a nautical twist that was quite effective.
Northrup at this time would have been shocked beyond measure had any one suggested that his own attitude of mind 139 resembled in the slightest degree that of Maclin, Twombley, and Rivers. He was too sane and decent a man to consider for a moment that Mary-Clare’s actions were based in the slightest degree upon his presence in the Forest. He knew that he had had nothing to do with the matter, but that was no reason for thinking that he might not have. Suggestion was enmeshing him in the disturbance.
He felt that Larry was a brute. That he had the outer covering of respectability counted against him. Larry always kept his best manners for public exhibition; his inheritance of refinement could be tapped at any convenient hour. Northrup knew his type. He had not recalled his father in years as he did now! A man legally sustained by his interpretation of marriage could make a hell or a heaven of any woman’s life. This truism took on new significance in the primitive Forest.