Foxfire (10 page)

“You gotta go,” said Bobby astonished. “Everyone does.”

Amanda retreated to the kitchen table and composed a brief acceptance in Mrs. Mablett's own words. Bobby departed and she returned to her chores, her curiosity mildly piqued. Any party, even a Mablett one, might be fun if only Dart were not annoyed by her acceptance. Still, there was no way of consulting him. She saw so little of him, for he spent six days a week at the mine. It was hard. In fact, everything was hard.

The shack was tidier and more habitable, since Dart had knocked up a large plaster board closet for her off the kitchen. And they had painted the walls of both kitchen and bedroom a soft sage green. Other improvements must wait because there was no money to pay for them. As it was, the plaster board and paint had been charged at the Mine Supplies Store, and not without protest from Dart, who had a horror of debt.

Amanda had inherited her mother's optimism, a comforting certainty that “there was always a way” and when you really needed something, the Lord would somehow provide.

On paper Dart's salary had seemed adequate. She and her mother had discussed it several times in the long evenings before Dart came East. “You'll have to be careful, baby”—Mrs. Lawrence had said buoyantly—“but things out there will be cheap, and, of course, you've got all your clothes and things. You'll manage.”

But things out here were not cheap. A mining town was expensive. The far eastern depression prices in the winter of 1933 scarcely affected it at all.

Food and rent were exorbitant for the value received, and by the time they paid out insurance, fuel for the stove and the car, and a portion of Mr. Tyson's loan, there was nothing at all left for “sundries.”

Already Amanda was discovering how dear to her heart were the “sundries,” and how shamefully she missed them. The latest magazines, new books and music, an ice-cream soda, a box of caramels, new cosmetics to try, the hairdresser and manicurist, above all the movies. Once a week on Saturday night the Miner's Union Hall showed an old Grade B Western, so that that deprivation was not very significant. But how strange not to be able to afford to go if they wanted to.

Amanda, trained from babyhood to be a good sport, had made valiant and unnecessary efforts to conceal her recurring dismays from Dart. The sundries of life meant nothing at all to him, nor did it occur to him that they were important to her. He recognized her right to a slightly improved house and provided it. For the rest she must be self-sufficient. If one could not pay for things, one did without. He knew that he was lucky to have a job at all when so many mines were shut down, and he considered the salary fair, especially in view of the minimum wages Mablett was paying the miners.

“I wouldn't take a raise now if they gave it to me,” he said to Amanda with finality, the once she had broached the subject of his prospects. “For the mine's sake. Every penny counts and we have enough to get along until things get better.”

She had been conscious yet again of annoyance, resentment of the mine which took so much of his life. He answered her questions reluctantly, knowing that she could not understand, and she had gained only the dimmest picture of the complexities and conflicts which seethed on the hill.

Two days after their arrival she had asked innocently, “When will you take me up to visit the mine, Dart? You know I'm dying to see it.”

“You can ride up with me any time, but there isn't much you could see.”

“Why, Dart—of course there is! It'd be thrilling to go underground, see where you work, learn something about what you're doing.”

Dart shook his head, smiling. “My poor Andy. You can't go underground. You can't even stick your head down the shaft.”

“Why not?”

“Because you're a woman. Women are forbidden in most mines. It's a strict taboo.”

“How perfectly ridiculous!” she snapped. “What could I do to your old mine, curdle the gold or something? Idiotic Mex superstition, I suppose.”

“Mexican, yes, but they all share it; the Cornish Cousin Jacks, Slovaks, the Polish—it's in every hard-rock miner's soul.” He added imperturbably, “Women bring bad luck underground.”

“And you believe it too?”

“Not particularly, but I respect the men's belief.”

Her eyes had stung with sudden tears, and she had flung out at him, “Oh, don't be so noble and inflexible. I don't care so much about seeing your old mine, but don't shut me out of your life. It's—it's
lonely!”

Ah! then, thought Amanda, remembering the scene now while she washed the breakfast dishes, he had been sweet. He had been startled by her tears. He had taken her in his arms and held her gently like a child. The way her father used to do, long ago, when he had denied her something and she had sobbed with disappointment. But Daddy had always given in at the end, and accorded her whatever it was she cried for. Dart did not. He would pet her and later, as their mutual passion mounted, she would feel that they were one in understanding as well as body, and yet he did not give in.

“Not an easy man to handle,” Mrs. Lawrence had once said laughing ruefully.

“I don't want a man I can handle,” Amanda had rejoined, laughing too, “I love masterful men.” But she had not really believed that she could not always cajole him if she wished.

The psychologists said that all human beings had mixed masculine and feminine traits no matter what their sex. But not Dart—she thought. He was all male, he had no feminine traits at all. He would be just, but he would never comply out of sentiment or a desire to please.

She was relieved when he came down the hill at six o'clock to find that he considered Mrs. Mablett's collation to be a necessary evil. “They want to look you over, I suppose, and I think Tyson'll be there. I want to talk to him.”

“Bobby Pottner says everybody goes. Who's everybody?”

“Lodestone society. Everyone who speaks English, more or less. You'll see.” He ran a comb through his thick, dark hair and rummaged in the drawer. “It'll be quite different from anything that's ever happened to you. Andy—do I
have
a clean shirt?”

Amanda had been standing by the western window carefully applying lipstick by the waning light. She turned slowly, staring at him with stricken eyes. “Oh, darling, don't you? Isn't there one left in the suitcase? I tried to wash this morning, but everything still looks sort of gray, and I don't seem to be very good at ironing.”

She sighed thinking of the rumpled pile of half-cleansed laundry which she had stuffed in the bottom of the kitchen cupboard. It still seemed to her incredible that the laundry would not be sent out. Incredible that so many women knew how to cope with the wooden tub of water which must be first pumped, then heated, and with the heavy flatiron which alternated without reason between a scorching cherry red and the blackness of cold stone.

“Well, never mind,” said Dart kindly, “I guess I can make this one do. You'll learn.”

She nodded and stifled a little voice which cried, “But I don't want to learn,” stifled too all thoughts of tomorrow's chores, and finished dressing. Then she went to him and smiled at him with coquetry. “How do I look, Dart?”

She had set her hair in the morning and the short, tawny curls clung to her small head like a shining cap. Her afternoon dress of mist-gray crepe had come from Paris and was ingeniously cut, so that it emphasized her small breasts. There was no trimming or ornament except a strand of cultured pearls and pearl button earrings. Her eyes, between slightly mascara-ed lashes, shone vivid like the blue-green of a summer wave, her cheeks were delicately pink, her mouth a more subdued scarlet than she would have made it at home, and she smelled delicately of Coty's Emeraude.

She waited with assurance for Dart's verdict, knowing that this self which she had achieved would have produced instant admiration in any masculine eyes she had ever challenged. Dart's reactions, however, were never predictable.

“You look very sophisticated, I guess,” he said. “But they may think you haven't dressed up much.”

“But don't I look pretty?” she faltered. “It's for you, Dart. You must be so sick of seeing me all frowzy and dishpanny.”

He started to say something then stopped. She saw a flash of the look which she dreaded in the back of his eyes. A weariness, the look of an indulgent parent whose patience is tried.

“You look beautiful, baby,” he said and kissed her.

They set off for the Mablett party. They were late and Mrs. Mablett met them at the door, cooing a welcome, but her eyes behind the square spectacles were guarded. Her plump body was clothed in magenta lace which consisted of a great many draperies and floating ends. There was a bunch of artificial daisies on her shoulder, and clanking silver and turquoise Navajo jewelry on her wrists and in her low décolletage. The magenta lace was an evening dress. All the other ladies were in full evening dress. Everyone stood up in a long line embracing the small cluttered living and dining rooms. They stared at Amanda, while her hostess ushered her competently around. “And here's our little bride, Mrs. Dartland—This is-” The names slipped through Amanda's ears and out again, though she repeated each one at the time, and smiled her charming smile. The men said “How d'you do,” and “Pleased to meet you” in grave accents. The ladies murmured indistinguishably, and withdrew their limp hands in a genteel way from Amanda's cordial handclasp.

Hugh Slater stood in a corner of the dining room and watched her progression. He had fortified himself from a bottle of Payson Dew and almost achieved an agreeable contemplative detachment. His early afternoon hours had been requisitioned for Susan's accouchement, but the spaniel had needed none of Hugh's assistance and presently produced three amorphous little monstrosities for Old Larky's passionate admiration. Old Larky had been as much of a hovering nuisance as any male in these circumstances, and Hugh had accepted his gold sovereign without compunction, and leaving Old Larky to brood over the new mother, had fled to the smoky comforts of “The Laundry” and two hours of concentrated oblivion. He was now by no means drunk, though he intended to be later, and he extracted from Amanda's introduction to Lodestone a rich enjoyment.

The girl had a polished smooth sparkle in contrast to the other women, all of whom fluttered and jingled. She was rather like a gem, aquamarine in a tray full of rhinestone baubles, he thought, pleased with his simile. And Viola? The thought surprised him but it revealed the exact stage, halfway, of his intoxication. Her memory seldom jumped at him like that at other times.

Well, what would Viola have been like here? A ruby? rich and deep and glowing, not transparent and palely blue like the aquamarine; no, a flame—a crimson rose, and
she
would have won them all in spite of themselves. You're a fool, dear Doctor Slater. He turned his eyes from Amanda and looked at Dart, who had greeted everyone with a brief smile and “Good evening” and now stood quietly by Alexander Tyson's chair, chatting a little. Those two men were withdrawn from the buzzes and murmurs and bowings, and yet it seemed to Hugh that they dominated the room. Dart, sloppily dressed, his hair too long and falling over his forehead, his tall body arched over the general manager's chair, yet gave an impression of complete composure. His face, as usual, was inscrutable, but to Hugh, who knew him well, it seemed that Dart no longer shared in the quality of ironic detachment which had made them congenial. There was purpose now in the set of the flexible lips, a crystallization of some sort, a feeling that Dart was biding his time. Mablett! thought Hugh, suddenly enlightened. Of course.

He looked around for the mine superintendent and found him by the sideboard ladling into punch glasses the revolting temperance mixture of canned fruit juices, cinnamon, and Karo syrup which was all that Lydia Mablett served at her collations.

Luther Mablett was built like a bull. He reminded one of an unpedigreed Hereford, the same massive shoulders encased in a brownish wool suit, the same belligerent downward curve to the mouth, the same prominent and suspicious eyes, the same tight curling hair of nondescript yellowish white. The Herefords' faces were white too, however, and Luther's was of a dull choleric red. He was spilling a good deal of the punch as he ladled, and scowling over his desk. Sneaked a few quick ones, someplace, Hugh thought, can't blame him.

Hugh moved his speculative gaze back to Dart and the general manager, and for a moment professional interest sharpened it. Old Tyson's color was leaden—the lips faintly cyanosed, respiration shallow and rapid. Hope he's got those ampules with him, thought Hugh, looks like we're going to have trouble. Still, you never could tell with cardiacs, either they'd conk out without reason or they were a hell of a lot tougher than seemed possible.

Alexander Tyson was pretty tough, for all his frailty, for all his seventy years and appearance of a gentle and ascetic monk. “Last Chance” Tyson they used to call him, all those years when his reputation was international. He'd put a hundred crumbling mines back on a paying basis, taking over often a month or so before what seemed inevitable shutdown, and pulling the tearful stockholders through and back to dividends. He had no special secret, if you excepted intuitive intelligence and the ability to learn by experience; sometimes he located a new vein, sometimes he improved equipment and cut waste, always he had provided heightened morale, and the indefinable greasing of the machinery which spelled good management. But he can't seem to do it at the Shamrock, thought Hugh, he's lost his grip and he ought to retire. But the Company would not let him retire, nor did they know how ill he was. To hell with the Company, thought Hugh, they can stand it if the mine folds. It's
us
—damn it. Every soul in the magnificent metropolis of Lodestone.