The Mettle of the Pasture | Page 5

never known any eyes to
be. He had taken off his hat and held it in his hand, and a light wind
blew his thick hair about his forehead and temples. She, looking at him
with senses preternaturally aroused, afterwards remembered all this.

Before he began to speak he saw rush over her face a look of final
entreaty that he would not strike her too cruel a blow. This, when he
had ceased speaking, was succeeded by the expression of one who has
received a shock beyond all imagination. Thus they stood looking into
each other's eyes; then she shrank back and started toward the house.
He sprang after her.
"You are leaving me!" he cried horribly.
She walked straight on, neither quickening nor slackening her pace nor
swerving, although his body began unsteadily to intercept hers.
He kept beside her.
"Don't! Isabel!" he prayed out of his agony. "Don't leave me like
this--!"
She walked on and reached the steps of the veranda. Crying out in his
longing he threw his arms around her and held her close.
"You must not! You shall not! Do you know what you are doing,
Isabel?"
She made not the least reply, not the least effort to extricate herself. But
she closed her eyes and shuddered and twisted her body away from him
as a bird of the air bends its neck and head as far as possible from a
repulsive captor; and like the heart of such a bird, he could feel the
throbbing of her heart.
Her mute submission to his violence stung him: he let her go. She
spread out her arms as though in a rising flight of her nature and the
shawl, tossed backward from her shoulders, fell to the ground: it was as
if she cast off the garment he had touched. Then she went quickly up
the steps. Before she could reach the door he confronted her again; he
pressed his back against it. She stretched out her hand and rang the bell.
He stepped aside very quickly--proudly. She entered, closing and
locking noiselessly the door that no sound might reach the servant she

had summoned. As she did so she heard him try the knob and call to
her in an undertone of last reproach and last entreaty:
"Isabel!--Isabel!--Isabel!"
Hurrying through the hall, she ran silently up the stairs to her room and
shut herself in.
Her first feeling was joy that she was there safe from him and from
every one else for the night. Her instant need was to be alone. It was
this feeling also that caused her to go on tiptoe around the room and
draw down the blinds, as though the glimmering windows were large
eyes peering at her with intrusive wounding stare. Then taking her
position close to a front window, she listened. He was walking slowly
backward and forward on the pavement reluctantly, doubtfully; finally
he passed through the gate. As it clanged heavily behind him, Isabel
pressed her hands convulsively to her heart as though it also had gates
which had closed, never to reopen.
Then she lighted the gas-jets beside the bureau and when she caught
sight of herself the thought came how unchanged she looked. She stood
there, just as she had stood before going down to supper, nowhere a
sign of all the deep displacement and destruction that had gone on
within.
But she said to herself that what he had told her would reveal itself in
time. It would lie in the first furrows deepening down her cheeks; it
would be the earliest frost of years upon her hair.
A long while she sat on the edge of the couch in the middle of the room
under the brilliant gaslight, her hands forgotten in her lap, her brows
arched high, her eyes on the floor. Then her head beginning to ache, a
new sensation for her, she thought she should bind a wet handkerchief
to it as she had often done for her aunt; but the water which the maid
had placed in the room had become warm. She must go down to the
ewer in the hall. As she did so, she recollected her shawl.
It was lying on the wet grass where it had fallen. There was a

half-framed accusing thought that he might have gone for it; but she put
the thought away; the time had passed for courtesies from him. When
she stooped for the shawl, an owl flew viciously at her, snapping its bill
close to her face and stirring the air with its wings. Unnerved, she ran
back into the porch, but stopped there ashamed and looking kindly
toward the tree in which it made its home.
An old vine of darkest green had wreathed itself about the pillars