The Thing in the Woods 13 – Williams · Verses Across
Literature · Crime, Thrillers & Mystery
The Thing in the Woods 13An Afternoon Drive
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Literature · Crime, Thrillers & Mystery
The Thing in the Woods 13
An Afternoon Drive
WilliamsEnglish
It was towards the end of that week that we drove over to the bungalow, one afternoon, for tea. The teacups were set out on the porch, and Mary Lessing, in a white frock, sprang up from one of the big basket-chairs to greet us with a comical dismay.
"I've dragged you over here," she began promptly, "and now I'll tell you the worst at once. There is not--one--lump--of sugar in the entire house. I've looked. So either you will drink your tea sugarless, smile sweetly, and say it doesn't matter, or else one of you has got to come right down to the village with me and get some. You can take your full choice about it. I'm glad to see you had the thoughtfulness to drive, anyway."
Herrick sat down with alacrity.
"I am a tired man," he announced, "supposed to be on a holiday, and I'm not going to the village to get anything till I've had tea, and I'm not going to drink tea without sugar, not even if you promise to smile in the teacup, Mary Lessing. So I guess it's up to you and Haverill. And I think that after all my excellent instructions of the past fourteen years you ought to be a better housekeeper. It's scandalous and disgusting of you. Where's Dick?"
"In the laboratory."
"A day like this! I'll rout him out of that in just two seconds. Ho, Dick!"
There was no response, and he rose grumbling, and trailed round to the laboratory door. Mary looked at me.
"Do you mind?" she said meekly.
I slipped off the mare's hitching-strap, and Mary climbed into the buggy beside me. We took the road past Sliefer's, and it is to be admitted that I made no effort to hurry. Our errand might reasonably be supposed to take an hour, and since chance had so obligingly given me that hour I was going to make the most of it.
As a matter of fact, I got precious little good out of it.
Romance probably demands, here, that I should describe how Mary and I drove side by side through the mellow autumn-tinted woods, how we spoke of the beauty of nature around us, and how gradually a sweet sense of companionship grew up in our young and sympathetic souls.
Instead Mary spoilt the whole thing by her hurry to get that sugar. If the life of the whole household, including Herrick, had depended upon it, she couldn't have been more sternly anxious to get to the village, to buy that sugar and to convey that sugar swiftly and relentlessly home. Looking back, I can see now that her attitude in the matter was only part of a constraint that had been growing between us subtly ever since Herrick's arrival. A certain frank comradeship, as I had been pleased to think it, that had sprung into being on the morning of our impromptu picnic, had wavered and dropped, leaving nothing in its place. I could not decide that she actually avoided me, though she certainly devoted a good deal of attention to Herrick when we were all together. Be that as it may, her professed anxiety on the sugar question that afternoon justly irritated me. We began with constraint, and ended in something very like open warfare.
It was probably not the first time that a perverse imp of circumstance, or call it what you will, has induced two young people, who started out on apparently good terms, to waste the precious moments of each other's uninterrupted company in being pointedly and deliberately disagreeable, and that for no reason that either of them could frame. The imbecility of that drive stands out in my memory now. We should both of us have known better. The whole thing had begun in such a meaningless way as to have no possible excuse. We had started, as I say, on good terms, with every equipment for a pleasant hour, and instead we each, in our own way, chose to behave abominably.
After one unique and disastrous attempt at conversation, I remember, we said no more, but drove on side by side in a ridiculous and stony silence, each thinking how disagreeable the other was, and wondering mutually what we had ever liked in one another.
There was the usual group of loafers gathered on the porch of Haskell's grocery store when we reached the village. I left Mary seated in the buggy outside while I went in to buy the sugar. A brisk-mannered young man, with fair hair, served me, and it was my fancy that he dawdled a little over making up the parcel. The proprietor was busy near by at the time, and from the side-glance the assistant gave him I gathered that the latter was purposely stretching out his task to gain time. I was not wrong. Upon the proprietor crossing to the back of the store, where the cash register stood, the young man leaned forward across the counter.
"Doctor," he began, "I would like a few words with you sometime when you aren't busy."
"Why, certainly," I answered. "Any time you like. You want advice about something?"
It was almost the first time I had had occasion to go into the store, and the assistant was quite a stranger to me. I was probably known to him by sight, but I wondered at his choosing such a confidential way to approach me if he merely wanted medical advice; I kept the same office hours as Lennox had done, and everyone in the village knew where and when to find me.
"I'm George Freeman," he said. "It wasn't advice exactly. I just ... wanted to see you."
George Freeman ... suddenly I remembered. It was the name of Rebecca Burn's sweetheart, the young man who had shown such decision on the evening of the ghost scare at Sliefer's farm. I looked at him with new interest.
"I shall be in this evening after nine o'clock," I said. "Come round to the house. You know where it is?"
"Yes. I'll be round."
"All right." I put down a quarter on the counter, taking up the parcel he held out to me. As I did so a step creaked behind me and I turned quickly.
Aaron Menning stood near us. For a second his eyes moved shiftily from one to the other; then he put up a hand to the greasy peaked cap he wore.
"Arternoon, doctor," he drawled; "arternoon, F-Freeman. Gimme some p-plug terbaccer."
His face was impassive and stupid, but when he pushed his cap back I noticed the veins on his temples stand out. He approached the counter with something of a swagger, his hands in the pockets of his black oilskin coat, and spat on the floor. There was something in the movements of the man which I disliked, at that moment, more intensely than ever. He had a curious shambling way when he walked, which, added to his thick-set figure, gave me the feeling of something half animal, almost simian. It amounted to an actual repugnance. I gave him a curt nod while I waited for my change, and lost no time in hastening out to the buggy.
I put the parcel under the seat and took the reins from Mary's hands. Curiously, my mood of a few moments ago was all but forgotten as I climbed in beside her.
"Did the fellow say anything to you?" I asked her as we drove off. A sudden suspicion had struck me when I came out and found her waiting there.
"Who?"
"Aaron Menning."
"No. I just saw him go into the store."
She spoke with a studied indifference that put me on the alert. Instantly I was sure that he had spoken.
"Why do you ask?"
I set my teeth.
"Because if he had," I answered rashly, "I'd take the occasion to break his neck next time we meet."
Mary gave a soft little laugh.
"Really, Doctor Haverill, I didn't know you were so violent."
"I'm not," I retorted, "at least, not as a rule. But the sight of that man always rouses in me a peculiar and earnest desire to kick him."
"I dare say he's really quite a simple and kind-hearted man," said Mary, with no other purpose, I felt sure, than to irritate me.
"The rugged exterior that hides a beautiful soul," I suggested, remembering that sinister farmyard beyond the Bend. "That's as it may be. The exterior is good enough for me, or bad enough, as you choose to put it. If I get the report of a S.P.C.A. inspector on that farm of his, as I intend to do one of these days, we'll see how Aaron's simple kind-heartedness stands out."
The words slipped out almost without my knowledge. Mary looked at me quickly.
"What's wrong at the place?"
"Merely that the condition of it isn't particularly pretty. I shouldn't have mentioned it. Only a man that keeps animals in the filth and neglect that he does ought to be made an example of in any civilized community. I don't know that there's anything to be gained by interfering at the present moment, but I've seen enough to make me keep an eye on him."
For a little time we drove in silence. Mary's face was grave and troubled. I was angry with myself. I was a fool to mention Menning or his place at all. Presently I turned to her.
"Look here, you're not upset by what I said just now? Because you've no need to think twice about it. I said it because ... well, because I hated to hear you speak about him that way, even for a minute."
"No. I wasn't thinking about Aaron just then." She gave me a queer little smile. "Doctor Haverill, I guess I've behaved pretty abominably this afternoon."
I flicked the mare with the whip.
"Shall we say we both did, and call it quits? I suppose it was in the air, somehow."
"In the air," she repeated, smiling again, then shivered suddenly. "Things are in the air ... that's just it. I had a dream last night. I suppose you'll call it silly nonsense, but it's made me queer and restless all day. Doctor Haverill, has Herrick said anything to you about my brother yet?"
"We talked one evening."
"Well?"
"We ... didn't get to any conclusions, that's all. He has some theory. He hasn't told me yet what it is."
She looked at me steadily.
"If he said that, it is because he knows something. I am absolutely certain of that. And if he knows ... Doctor Haverill, you are keeping something back from me, you and Herrick together!"
"I am not. I wouldn't do it." I looked at the girl beside me. "If you want me to swear."
"No." She put out a hand. "Yes, one thing. Can you swear to me that to your knowledge there is no suspicion in his mind of any ... brain trouble with Dick?"
"Yes, I can swear to that, absolutely!"
"I am glad." She was looking straight ahead, down the road before us. "I don't think even Herrick would have kept that from me, if he thought it. Well ... I suppose I've got to wait."
We spoke of other things during the rest of the drive, and she did not once mention Herrick's name, or her brother's, again. We were passing Sliefer's place when I caught sight once of our queer little acquaintance of the morning. He was just turning in at the gateway, his hat pulled well forward, his little tin box under his arm, and I nodded to him as we drove by. He jerked his head in response, peering short-sightedly up at the buggy through his round dark glasses.
"What a funny little man!" said Mary, after we had passed by. "Is he staying down here?"
"At the Sliefers'. Herrick found him in the woods this morning. He appears to spend his time orchid-hunting in the neighbourhood."
"Orchid-hunting..." said Mary. She turned her head and looked back at Mr. Crowfoot rather deliberately. Following her gaze, I was surprised to see that he too had turned, and was standing looking after us from the Sliefers' gateway. Seeing himself observed, he moved hurriedly, and disappeared in the direction of the house like a disturbed rabbit going abruptly to earth.
