The Cinder Buggy by Garet Garrett

Author:Garet Garrett
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Publisher: E. P. Dutton and Company

“Lovely maiden, tell me truly,

“Is the ocean very wet?

“If I meet you on the bottom,

“Will you never once——”

“Stop it!” He moved as if to menace her. She stopped and looked at him soberly.

“Is there nothing I can do to entertain you? I might recite. And you haven’t answered my question.”

“You give me the horrors,” he blurted. “No, no I’m sorry. I’m unstrung, that’s all. Please do be serious. We’ve got to think of what we shall do.”

“Who are we?”

“I beg your pardon. You, then,” he amended.

“Who are you?” she asked.

“Agnes, do for... “

“Mrs. Thane, please.”

“I don’t expect you to be amiable,” he said, “but please for one moment be reasonable.”

“When they are like that you can’t do anything with them,” she said. “Really you can’t. You will have to see my husband.”

She had seated herself on a grassy bench with her back to the fence, her feet in the dry ditch, and was viciously jabbing the earth with a limber stick. She threw the stick from her, leaned back, folded her arms and tilted her chin at the sky, with an air of casting John out of existence. He had given up trying to talk and stood observing her in an overt manner. It was thus he saw how she looked at the moon, first vacantly without seeing it, then with a start as of recognition or recollection, and at length with an expression of such twisted mocking wistfulness that he knew one shape of her heart and turned wretchedly away, almost wishing he had not seen.

For a long time she did not move. She seemed under a kind of spell. Thane found them so, in separate states of reverie. Neither heard his footsteps approaching.

“I was thinking why should I bother you like this,” said Thane, “being though as we are friends in a way. If only it was so as I could touch something.”

“Thane,” said John, slowly, “listen to what I am thinking. The skeins of our three lives have run together in a hard knot. Mine and that of Agnes were already twisted together in a very strange history. Yours got entangled by chance, heaven knows why. Fate does it. Nobody is to blame. But I am responsible.”

“For us being married?” asked Thane.

“For that, yes. But for a great deal more. I am only beginning to see the meaning of things. By inheritance I am responsible for something my father and mother did to Enoch before I was born, for the fact that Agnes is his daughter and he is not my father, for the fact that he is mad. He has had his revenge on Aaron’s son, greater than he knows. What that means I cannot tell you. I shall never say it again. But what I want you to see is that I cannot leave you to face the consequences alone. It is not a matter of friendship. You are married to Agnes. In a foster sense I am married to both of you.”

His face was lighted from within.

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