Lory nodded.
“Then we’ll have biscuits and honey for supper,” she arranged it, and the principal thing settled: “How is Jem?” she said, and then took account of her niece’s presence with “How you have grown!”
In a little while they went out to the kitchen. And there the plump complacence of the little house gave way, and they stood facing its tragedy. As they entered, a chain rattled and drew across the zinc under the cooking-stove. An old man got to his feet, and one of his legs was chained to the leg of the wooden settle. He must have been eighty. His gray beard half covered his face. He stood with his head forward, and watched them immovably.
“It’s Hiram’s father,” said Aunt ’Cretia parenthetically. “We’ve kep’ him chained in the kitchen ’most a year now. His head ain’t right.”
The Inger went over to him, seized by a horror and a pity which shook him, and he stood with this leaping pity in his face. On a sudden impulse he put out his hand to the old man, with a groping sense that here was a language which the maddest could comprehend.
To his amazement, the old man jumped backward, his chain dragging and rattling on the floor. From his throat there came a sound, three times repeated, like a guttural giving forth of breath. Then slowly his lips drew back until they showed his toothless gums, where might have been fangs. He crouched and watched.
They stood so for a moment, looking at each other. Then the Inger wheeled and strode to the door, and went out in the little kitchen garden. Late sunlight slanted here, swallows were wheeling and twittering, and a comfortable cat was delicately walking a fence.
The man stood, feeling a sudden physical nausea. Something not in human happenings had happened. He felt as if he could never go into that room again. He sat down on the clothes reel. He had felt friendliness, and the old man had wanted to spring at him. It was monstrous, incredible. He found himself trying to make in his throat the sound that the old man had made.
He sat there until Lory came to the door to tell him that supper was ready. She was in a clean print gown, from her pack. She stood beside him, smiling, and telling him that the biscuits were hot and that her uncle had come. The gown, her smile, what she was saying, all brought him back, grateful, to the commonplace hour. He followed her, and spoke fearfully.
“Do we eat in the kitchen, do you know?” he asked.