Men of Their Race

“Who’s that in the kitchen?”

Jessie bent over the bed, folding down the sheet under the sharp chin. The question buzzed against her ear. She moved along the bed, smoothing the blanket over the quiet feet.

“Someone’s down there,” insisted the old woman. “I can hear a different voice.”

“Walsh, they said his name was.” Jessie drew the small table near the bed. “Dick Walsh. An oldish man.”

“Dick Walsh!” A quiver moved over the dry, wrinkled face, and the eyes under heavy folds of eyelids sharpened with interest. “So he’s back!”

“Does he—” Jessie pushed back the muslin curtains at the window; a flush crept under the moist pallor of her face. “Does he belong to the Walshes up on the hill?”

“He’s Robert’s brother. He belongs to ’em all right.”

“Robert’s brother! But he’s an old man——”

“Old, is he? I guess he would be, with the life he’s led. What’s he come back for? Robert better send him away. He’s got a start on his farm now. If Sarah Walsh sees what sort of men folks she’s married into——”

“What’s the matter with him?” Jessie felt the cool night breeze push into the room, bending aside the thick, sweetish odor of liniment and oils.

“Matter with him? He’s a Walsh. A drinking, selfish wastrel. They can’t be decent to women or themselves. Men of their race—it’s in their blood, handsome fools!”

Jessie stood for a moment at the side of the bed, afraid of the bright little eyes that peered up at her.

“He looks worn out,” she said. “He looks old enough to be Mr. Walsh’s father.”

“I saw you walking down the road with Robert!” The eyelids folded over the malicious gleam. “Dick was a handsome boy, too.”

Jessie’s heart moved in a wave of fear. Did the old woman mean—anything? She stared at the head on the pillow, a wrinkled mask. An old woman, dying; life retreating within her, as though blood no longer ran through her veins, but was hoarded, a few last drops, in some secret depth. All summer, and the slow days of early autumn, she had lain there, and Jessie had tended her. How could she have any suspicion?

The girl leaned quickly above the lamp on the table and blew it out. As the flame leaped up before it died, she saw the heavy lids lifting.

“Go along and get your walk.” The old voice crackled.

“Are you comfortable now, Mrs. Cummins?”

“I’ll do, I guess.”

At the door Jessie looked back. The small night lamp in the hall blurred the outlines in the room. She did not know whether the old eyes followed her.

But on the stairs she glanced over her shoulder, as if afraid she might see in the shadow malicious gleaming points of light. How foolish she was! That was only a bedridden old woman, querulous or childish or cheerful as the pain determined. What could she know of meetings in the orchard, in the lane which led to the lake? Had a new sense grown in her with the dulling of old senses, so that she sniffed what happened outside her chamber?

“Is that you, Jessie?” That was Ral Cummins, the son.

She stepped to the doorway of the sitting room, pulling on her sweater. Ral and his wife, and this Walsh man; the thick odor of farm boots and pipes and the bright oil lamp.

“Don’t you want to come in and set a while?”

Dick Walsh looked like Robert, with the bright, firm life of Robert’s face mottled and sagged.

“I’m just going out for a breath of air—” Jessie moved away from the door.

“Night air’s bad for pretty faces—” The men chuckled. Jessie heard Ral’s wife explaining:

“Jessie Dealey. She’s from farther up state. Her father died, and she’d always lived home with him, and so the doctor got her to take care of mother. I couldn’t see to her and the house, too.”

Then she was out of the house, running down the path to the road, in the cool, impenetrable night. Her feet made little sounds along the gravelled road. Slowly the night took shape around her, a great willow tree rustling above her, the contour of the land shouldering against the sky, dropping from the hills near her to a distant pale horizon. Then the orchard, the trees near the wall thrusting their grotesque masses between her and the stars, moving slowly past her; the soft dripping of water overflowing the drinking barrel under the wall. She left the road and climbed up through the orchard, her feet slipping in the grassy ruts of the lane, her heart lifting into swift rhythm. She had said she would not come! That morning, when she had gone out to the postbox for the mail and Robert, driving past, had leaned from his seat to say, “I’ll wait for you at the upper wall of the orchard, tonight,” she had laughed and said, “You’ll have to wait a long time!” And through the day, when flashes of his face—fair, lean, his blue eyes demanding, cajoling—had blurred her work, she had set her small full mouth and said, “I won’t go!” Now, “I won’t stay,” she thought, desperately. “It can’t do any harm to see him—once more—to tell him I won’t stay.”

A movement in the bushes along the lane startled her; just a bird, with a flutter of protest at her intrusion. She found the gap in the wall and clambered over into the orchard. The cool sweet scent of ripened apples hung about her.

She listened. No sound but the swish and plop of an apple falling. She moved slowly over the irregular ground, her feet brushing through the coarse grass, until she stood on a little rise of land which dropped gently, clear of trees for some distance. The night was less dark there; she could distinguish clearly the pile of boulders. Robert had not come.

She sat down on one of the smooth rocks, her arms huddled about her knees, her eyes straining into the obscure shadows. Perhaps he wouldn’t come. His brother might start home, and meet him on the road. She wished she hadn’t seen Dick Walsh. Selfish, drunken wastrel—he had stared at her with eyes like Robert’s, except for the grayish folds about them. They would have to be careful—of a man like that. But she would have nothing to be careful of! This was to be the last time she would creep up the lane at night.

And then, tomorrow, if Robert drove past and whispered, “Tonight, in the orchard——”

She had tried to think; she would go away, somewhere. But where? If she went, what would become of her? She felt herself in that vague future, torn apart by the teeth of this desire. Why should she go? No one cared what happened to her. She was wicked, wicked! But that was only a word, and tomorrow was a word, cold and impotent against tonight, and her tense, quivering body, where her senses hung, winged, waiting his coming. “Time enough to be good when we’re old,” Robert had kissed her protest away. “What’s wrong in loving?” Old—like Mrs. Cummins. Suppose she went away and grew old—when Robert loved her!

She crouched against the stones at a sound beyond the wall, an apple crunching under a heel. She saw a shadow moving among the shadows of the trees, heard a soft, staccato whistle. She might crawl away and hide! But the shadow grew tangible above her, and with a low, triumphant, “Jessie!” laid strong, warm hands on her shoulders, and drew her up against a heart as mad as her own.

Nothing else in the night but his intense, seeking kiss, the enclosing pressure of his arms. He released her suddenly.

“Sorry you came?” His face was so near Jessie caught the gleam of his strong, even teeth. “Let’s sit down. I can’t stay but a minute tonight.” He pulled her down on the rocks, his arm over her shoulders. “Dick—that’s my brother—is around. He—well, I don’t want him getting wise to this.” His fingers pushed under the sweater cuff, moved gently over her soft arm. But Jessie shivered, the sweet languor gone. Was it Dick who held her there in the dark? The same stocky shoulders, firm chin, broad forehead. “Happy, Jessie?” Robert rubbed his cheek against hers, in a swift, rough caress.

“Happy!” Something snapped in Jessie, letting her down, down. She huddled away from Robert, and suddenly she was crying in little rasping sobs. “Oh, I wisht I was dead! I wisht I was dead!”

“Why, Jessie!” The man made a startled movement of withdrawal. “What’s the matter? What—” He seized her hands. “Has somebody found out about us?” He was hostile, threatening, leaning toward her.

“No, no. I wish they had. Then they’d do something. I can’t stand it.”

“Well, what’s the trouble, then?” His voice had relief in its tone. “Don’t cry——”

“What’s to become of me?” Jessie strangled on a sob. “I can’t sleep, nights, any more—trying to think what to do.”

“Now, see here!” Robert pulled her back into his arms and lifted her face, the rough tips of his fingers firm under her chin. “You said you wouldn’t fuss any more, didn’t you? What good does it do, eh? Here you are, spoiling the little time we had tonight. Don’t you want me loving you any more?”

Jessie’s body resisted his arms.

“That’s why—” she whispered. “I ought to go away, and I can’t.” She went limp into his close grasp. “Robert, help me! You got me to loving you——”

“Well, that’s all right, isn’t it? Nothing’s any different. You women folks are all alike. Can’t have any fun without starting to spoil things. What you want to go away for? Making me feel bad! I guess you’re kinda tired. Old lady Cummins been working you hard? Making you pull a long face about me? You’re too soft and sweet. Let the old folks worry. Time enough for that some day. There’s a girl! Kiss me, little Jessie.”

But for once the whirl of passion under his lips failed to catch Jessie. It was a careless wind on the surface, and she lay beneath in the deep water of misery.

“There!” Jessie felt his laugh, as it lifted his breast and loosened his arms, like a blow on her quiescent body. “Damn Dick anyhow! He’ll be back at the house. I’ve got to go along.” He stood beside her, his shadow strong, sure of outline. “Tomorrow, Jessie? I’ll get away early. You’ll be my sweet girl again?”

When Jessie could no longer hear his quiet, steady steps down the lane she flung herself on the grass, one arm doubled under her head. She could see Robert climbing the long hill to his farm, turning in under the great walnut tree, pushing open the door off the side porch. His wife would be sitting there; Jessie had seen her once, a small, dark woman. Perhaps Dick would be there, at the other side of the table, looking up at Robert’s entrance with a leer at the back of his eyes.

Swiftly, under her burning eyelids, moved the summer; not so much in images as in the texture of her whole consciousness—flesh, nerves, speeding blood. The day in early summer; she had climbed through the stagnant heat of the valley up to a hill pasture, into the little breeze from the distant river which wavered from hill-top to hill-top, above the heat. She had closed her eyes and flung her arms back of her head, against the tree, to feel the breeze touch her moist throat. She had opened them straight into Robert’s gay blue eyes. He had come up from the lake in the woods, his hair still damp from his swim. He knew her name, had seen her down the hill; he had talked—what had he said? She remembered only the new, unbidden thrill under that bold, bright glance of his.

She dreamed of him that night. She had not known his name.

Then she waited to see him again. The memory of those days of waiting—hot, still breathless days; like the trees, held in every leaf in rich quiet, until a sudden summer wind rushed into the valley from the river, whipping branches and leaves into riot.

She had been sent on an errand for Mrs. Cummins, to the Walsh farm. She had knocked, and then in the room darkened by vines over the window, had seen a woman sitting by the table. She was shelling peas, and in the dim light her hands, the small oval of her face, seemed to have borrowed pale green light, like water. “You’ll have to ask Mr. Walsh,” she had said. “He’s somewhere back of the house.”

Jessie had gone slowly, being tired, past the barns and poultry yard; she saw the horses first, square heavy bodies and patient necks. Then—ah, the wind rushing at the leaves!—the man, tugging the great leather collar over the head of the gray horse. He had seen her, had dropped the collar and come toward her, with his arrogant, quick stride, his eyes very blue in his sun-burned face. “Hello!” he had called. “Come to see me?” She could feel in her nostrils again, instead of the faint smell of the grass she pressed against, the odor of soil and sun-warmed leather on his hands. She had withdrawn in frightened hostility from his laughing, demanding stare, had given him her message and fled.

The days that followed ached within her; the old woman fretting at her in the heat; sharpened grief for the safe uneventful days with her father before his death; sudden waking in the night, to twist and turn, her hands pressed against her body to stop the dull, frightening throbbing.

She had put Robert out of her thoughts, ashamed of those days of waiting. If, in the unquested dreams of day or night, she found herself tormented by bright, dominant eyes, what could she do!

Then one day, as she walked from the village along the dusty road, he had overtaken her, had stopped his car, and offered her, in ordinary neighbor fashion, a ride.

If she had gone away that night!

She sat up, breathing heavily; her hand pushed at the rough stones. She was being torn apart in separate quivering memories. The weeks since that day she had walked in a warm, dark dream, all thought and volition gone from her. That was wickedness. “What’s the harm?” Robert had said. “You’re lonesome, I’m lonesome. Why not be happy?”

But thought had come again, gnawing at the edges of her dream. Robert wouldn’t listen. Then—when was it—two days ago? Old Mrs. Cummins had said, “How’s Sarah Walsh? Why don’t she come to see me?” Mary, her daughter-in-law, had answered sharply, “You know, mother! She can’t get out.”

“Why not?” the old woman had insisted.

“Have you forgotten? She’s—expecting. She’s had a bad summer.”

That was all. But it had corroded the dream, eating out all the ecstasy, all the sweetness, leaving only tortured fear.

Robert—she heard the old woman’s thin voice. “Wastrels. Can’t be decent to women or themselves. The Walsh blood.”

That first time he had kissed her, and she had struggled to escape her great need for submission to his love. He had answered her protest, “Sarah?” and sneered. “You needn’t worry about her. She hates me. She’s done with me. She doesn’t even see me any more.”

She couldn’t talk to Robert. He laughed at her. If she insisted—she knew how anger sucked the light out of his face, leaving it hard, like a great eagle, with its arched, prominent nose and straight mouth. But a child! His! Revulsion swept through her in waves of nausea. She hated him!

Suddenly she was afraid of the night with its soft sounds in trees and grass. She stumbled to her feet and ran, sobbing as her sweater caught on the brambles near the wall, through the dark lane between crouching shadows of the bushes, out to the gray road.

Not until she had crept into bed, in her cot in the corner of old Mrs. Cummins’ room, did the frantic beating of her heart stop. The room was full of the harsh, irregular breathing of the old woman. She held her own breath, listening. Some night, that room would be still, free of that difficult slow sound. Ah, if she could die, as easily as that old woman! If she held her breath long enough—she gasped, turning against her pillow to stifle the sound. She didn’t want to die! Going away, alone; worse than death. If Robert loved her, hadn’t she a right to stay? Right? No, it was wrong, everything. No one, anywhere, to help her.

The next morning came. Jessie moved about at her tasks, listless, dull. The emotions of the night clung, batlike, far above her, waiting for the dark again. She had, finally, carried down the breakfast tray, righted the room, adjusted an extra pillow under Mrs. Cummins’ head, and drawn the curtain so that she could look out across the valleys, which lay in purple haze. Ral came to the door, hearty, good-natured.

“Well, ma, feeling pretty smart? Want to help me pick apples?”

“’F you hold the ladder!” she chuckled. “Picking apples? I want some apples to send up to Sarah Walsh. You leave ’em on the steps, and Jessie’ll run up with them.”

He had clumped down the stairs, and Jessie flinched under the old woman’s blinking gaze.

“’Twon’t take you long to run up there. Mis’ Walsh’ll be glad to see you. She don’t get out much.”

“I was going to rinse out that blanket for you.” Jessie opened the door of the closet; she wanted a shield between her and the woman.

“’Tisn’t a good drying day. Too misting. And it won’t take you long. Just up the hill.”

She couldn’t go to that house. Her flesh crawled at the fuzzy texture of the wrapper with which her hands fumbled. She couldn’t say, “I won’t go!” Mrs. Cummins waited. Waited to hear her protest, perhaps. What had the old eyes seen!

“You’re looking kind of peaked,” the thin voice went on. Jessie stood in the doorway. “Walk’ll do you good. You like lots of air—sometimes.”

Jessie whirled, but her anger drooped, powerless against that puckering smile on the wrinkled face. She went down through the empty house. Ral’s wife was helping gather the apples. On the rear porch Ral had left them, a tin pail full. Jessie stooped, and the red of the apples vanished in racing blackness. She lifted the pail, and in an instant the blackness had gone, leaving a world strangely green. She thought: if Mrs. Cummins knew about me, she would just send me away. She doesn’t know. It’s just her way.

But she crawled up the hill, fear at her heels, fear lying in wait at the end of her journey. Robert wouldn’t be there; surely he would be at work. She could leave the apples on the step, and say no one was home. But Mrs. Cummins knew Sarah was home. Always home, now.

She turned in at the drive. Fine chips under her feet, white, fresh splinters. Robert had cut his kindling there. A pile of dry brown vines near the step; winter beans, not yet picked over. Homely things, part of his days, in which she had no share. She knocked, and the sound thundered at her. Then she heard, from the pasture above the house, Robert’s shout: “Dick! Oh, Dick!” and an answer, “Right-o. Coming!”

The door opened. Jessie saw, first, the quick contraction of the white forearm, as though it braced the whole body; her eyes darted to the face of the woman, Sarah, Robert’s wife—dark eyes staring, lips parted in a sudden breath.

“Mrs. Cummins sent these to you.” Jessie set down the pail and stepped back.

“Will you come in?” Sarah asked, slowly.

“I have to get back to work.” Jessie felt that dark intent gaze hold her. Within her began a desperate fluttering, a beating against nets spread to capture her.

“No. Come in. I want you to come in.”

Jessie stepped over the threshold, her eyes bright with panic. The kitchen was full of light; the fall wind had torn the leaves from the vines over the window, and through the haze the pale sun made splotches on the white oilcloth of the table, on the yellow worn floor, on Sarah’s blue apron.

“Won’t you sit down? I’ll get another chair.” Sarah crossed the room, her small head lifted.

Jessie hated her. Robert’s wife, heavy with child—his child—moving with that slow pride. She glanced about her furtively; she could escape, even now. On a nail behind the door hung a rough gray coat, Robert’s. The girl’s soft mouth trembled, and her hands twisted together. Sarah came back, dragging her chair; about her movements an ominous deliberateness. Jessie felt fear crawling in her muscles. She thought: I must be getting crazy, suspecting everybody.

Sarah leaned forward, resting her arms on the table; thin, white arms, purple veined in the hollows of the elbows.

“It’s queer you should come in this morning,” she said, finally. Then she was silent again.

“She’s not pretty,” thought Jessie. “Ugly, with those shadows under her great eyes!”

“Did you know—” Sarah’s smiling lips, under her sombre eyes, were sinister. “Did you know Robert left you last night for a little red-haired clerk in the village?”

“Oh, no! No!” Jessie’s cry crashed back against her own ears. The woman had laid a trap, had caught her! She huddled into her chair, her face distorted.

“Did you think he would be more faithful to you than to me?”

Jessie’s fingers clutched at her chair; she wanted to hurl herself at that pale face, to tear down the fine dark coils of hair, to beat the lie off those crooked lips. It wasn’t true! The woman was baiting her, trying to find out. Warily she spoke.

“What do you mean, saying that to me?”

“Perhaps—” the long fingers moved on the table—“perhaps you have felt bad. You don’t look so fresh and unthinking as you did in the summer. And you’ve been bothering him—” Her soft voice burrowed at the roots of Jessie’s anger. “So he went hunting, for another pretty face—”

Cold sweat on her temples, on the palms of her hands; something strangling her. Robert, striding off down the lane in the dark—a red-haired girl!

“Now you know how I felt!”

Jessie lurched forward in her chair, trying to get up, to escape. But her knees crumpled under her.

“No, you mustn’t go. I had to see you. I wondered what sort of woman you were. You’re just a little soft thing, aren’t you?”

“Oh, let me go!” Jessie cried out. “Or kill me, if you want to! I wish I was dead.”

“I did want to. You and him both.” A shudder trembled down to the tips of Sarah’s fingers. “But that was—at first.”

“You’ve known—all this time—and kept still—”

“I meant to go away. But I was sick.” On Sarah’s face had come an inscrutable pale glow, like candle flame under a hand.

“I didn’t want to love him. I tried not to. I couldn’t seem to stop. There wasn’t anything to hang on to to keep from it. I didn’t know you were—with child.” In some way that light on Sarah’s face devoured her, ate its way into her vitals. Unless she could explain, could justify herself, she would go always with that agony of humiliation within her. “I thought he loved me. And I wasn’t taking anything that was yours—if it was me he loved. He said you hated him. Oh, curse me! Spit on me! Don’t sit there—when I found out you were to have a child, I wanted just to die.”

Sarah lifted her head, the column of her throat tense.

“Why? What difference did that make—to you?” Then, swiftly, “You loved him that much? That was a lie I told you. About the girl. I wanted you to suffer, too.”

“He didn’t go—” Jessie’s hand doubled against her mouth, pulling it sidewise.

“But it would be true, some day, soon. Before you there was another woman. She sent him packing, though. She wanted a man of her own.”

“It’s between just you and me.” Jessie’s hand moved down to her breast. “You’re keeping him—when he doesn’t love you nor you him.”

“It’s more than that.” Sarah extended her arm along the table. “I thought that, up till a little while ago. I planned to go away. To leave him to you and the others. Oh, there would be others. You believed he had gone, didn’t you? I thought you must be wanton, cruel, but you aren’t. You’re only—” Her hand dropped open on the white cloth.

Jessie shivered under the black, dilated eyes; something in them beating her down into nothingness.

“You love him, and so—” Sarah drew her arms slowly from the table, clasped them about her knees; she turned her head toward the window. Her drooping neck, the curve of shoulders and extended arms, made of her heavy body a single gesture, silence, sheltering and waiting. The woman had withdrawn into remote sanctuary. Jessie was afraid; the calm white brow, the drooping neck with the coiled dark hair against the pale skin, had become unassailable.

“You saw his brother, Dick. He spoke of you. Spent, sodden, wasted. His wife, the first one, divorced him. And the rest of his women—There was another brother. And his father. They kill themselves with women and drink.” Sarah’s words came softly.

Behind them Jessie heard the old woman’s shrill, “Men of their race.” As though Sarah, too, heard it, her soft words went on:

“Have they told you about old Mrs. Cummins? People round here have almost forgotten, but she hasn’t. That’s why she’s noticed you and Robert. She was going to marry his uncle. Another Robert Walsh. Just before the wedding she threw him over. Something about another girl. She hates the Walsh men. She’s waiting to see Robert go the same way.”

That old woman, with a hate left from her youth!

“Fine lovers, never growing into men. Always the same story, their women suffering, hating them, forgiving them, leaving them.” She turned her face toward Jessie again. “And yet there’s something else in them. Robert told you I hated him. I have—this summer. But at first, last spring, it was only that I was sick. When I knew I was pregnant, I had to be alone. I didn’t want him. He didn’t like that. He was jealous—and he didn’t know what he was jealous of. So he went off.” She dropped into silence again. Then, “But the child is in my womb—you will know, someday, how that quickening makes you not a woman—grovelling with beasts before men began—yet reaching up and up. Not one woman, but more.”

Jessie swayed forward in her chair. The strange words delved within her, disturbing memories faint, terrible, intangible, memories not her own.

“I had thought I would go away with my child. I could bear it alone and care for it. Then I saw Robert and his father and men back of them, slipping back generation after generation, never going ahead. Robert is part of my child. If he slips back—oh, do you see?”

Hot tears falling now on Jessie’s face, on her clenched hands.

“Last night I felt my child move, felt it, under my hand. I thought, perhaps men, never feeling that—slip back more easily. Then I saw clearly, almost like a vision. Love, real love, has to conceive in them. Not flesh growing in flesh. But out of me, if I could love him enough, would come fruit. No child. The man himself!” Sarah paused, her eyes contracting, as though she returned from secret places and saw Jessie again. “I wanted to see you. I wondered—perhaps you could do that for him—better than I. Could you?”

Jessie’s hands pressed against her soft body, against the treacherous desires which racked her. Suppose she said yes! Would this unreal woman go away, leaving Robert—for her? What then? He wouldn’t stay. She knew. He wore his love for her lightly, a careless outer garment; he would doff it as lightly. She scarcely understood Sarah’s words, but slowly out of them rose a great fog, dissolving the room in which she sat, obscuring her own pain. A fog full of dim figures. Figures moving with abandon along precipitious paths. Stretching back beyond time. Slipping, clinging with bleeding fingers to the rocks. Below them monstrous shapes in slow, rhythmic motion; monstrous tentacles weaving sluggishly up from the abyss. One figure nearer than the rest, turning his face, strong eagle’s face, distorted as he flung his arms high, reeling at the edge.

Jessie plunged to her feet, her hands beating before her eyes, fighting at the fog. The room settled around her. She saw again Sarah’s dark, brooding eyes. Had Sarah thrown her vision out around her?

“You can’t change him!” She thrust the words out in a last, desperate cry. “He’s what he is!”

Sarah rose, leaning against the table.

“Yes,” she said. “What is he?”

Then Jessie retreated, step by step, until she felt her hand touch the door behind her.

“I’ll go away.” Her whisper implored Sarah, begged against that light in the woman’s face, a light not human, and yet brought up from the slow, warm source of life itself. “I’m going.”

Through the open door, cutting the soft air, came Robert’s voice shouting at his horses. Jessie hung taut for an instant, listening. Then, blindly, she ran down the steps across the grass to the road.

The steep hill dropped beneath her as she ran, as though the earth turned swiftly from her. If she stumbled and fell, she would be hurled over its rim into space! The wind was cold on her wet cheeks. Round a curve, gasping softly, she saw the pointed roof of the Cummins house, and slackened her flight.

She went more slowly past the orchard. Voices among the trees. They were still gathering the apples. Only a little time ago she had climbed the hill. Summer was over; they were gathering the harvest. She stood at the door of the house. In that upper room the old woman lay, waiting. She had known, all these weeks. She had told Sarah. Her hate had sharpened her eyes. Jessie shivered; she herself had been to Mrs. Cummins only another instrument of wrath against the race of Walshes. And now, when she entered the room, that dry smile would splinter into words, harsh, bitter words.

She must go up to her and say, “I am going away.” Her shoulders drooping in humility, as though the old woman’s words already beat upon her, she climbed the stairs and pushed open the door.

In the still room the old woman lay, her face toward the window, where the valley’s haze had lightened into misty blue. Her secret, hostile smile was gone, and in its place, an immobile, placid stare under half closed eyes.

Unquestioned now, Jessie could go.