The ascent to the crown of the ridge was rough, but beyond, winding down to the Greenstream valley, it was worse. The buggy, badly hitched, bumped against the flank of the horse, twisted over exposed boulders, brought up suddenly in the gutters cut diagonally by the spring torrents. Gordon Makimmon forgot everything else in the sole desire to get Lettice safely to their house. He endeavored, by shifting her position, to reduce the jarring of the uneven progress. He realized that she was in a continual agony, and, in that new ability to share it through the dawning consciousness of its brute actuality in Lettice, it roused in him an impotent fury of rebellion. It took the form of an increasing passion of anger at the inanimate stones of the road, against Mrs. Caley’s meager profile on the dusty hood of the buggy. He whispered enraged oaths, worked himself into an insanity of temper. Lettice grew rigid in his arms. For a while she iterated dully, like the beating of a sluggish heart “bad ... bad ... bad.” Then dread wiped all other expression from her face; then, again, pain pinched her features.
The buggy creaked down the decline to their dwelling. Gordon supported Lettice to their room; then he stood on the porch without, waiting. The rugged horse, still hitched, snatched with coarse, yellow teeth at the grass. Suddenly Mrs. Caley appeared at a door: she spoke, breaking the irascible silence of months, dispelling the accumulating ill-will of her pent resentment, with hasty, disjointed words:
“... quick as you can ... the doctor.”
XIX
A hoarse, thin cry sounded from within the Makimmon dwelling. It fluctuated with intolerable pain and died abruptly away, instantly absorbed in the brooding calm of the valley, lost in the vast, indifferent serenity of noon. But its echo persisted in Gordon’s thoughts and emotions. He was sitting by the stream, before his house; and, as the cry had risen, he had moved suddenly, as though an invisible hand had touched him upon the shoulder. He sat reflected on the sliding water against the reflection of the far, blue sky. One idea ran in a circle through his brain, his lips formed it soundlessly, he even spoke it aloud:
“It ain’t as though I had gone,” he said.
The possible consequence to Lettice of what had been a mere indecision seemed to him out of any proportion. No, he thought, I wouldn’t have gone when the time came; when the minute came I’d have held back. Then again, it ain’t as though I had gone. A species of surprise alternated with resentment at the gravity of the situation which had resulted from his indiscreet conduct; the agony of that cry from within the house was too deep to have proceeded from ... it wasn’t as though he had gone ... he wouldn’t have gone, anyway.
He heard footsteps on the porch, and turned, recognizing Doctor Pelliter. He half rose to go to the other with an inquiry; but he dropped quickly back on the bank, looked away.—Some time before the doctor had tied a towel about his waist ... it had been a white towel.