Her vague, unreal existence continued. It seemed in some previous life-time that Billy had gone away, that another life-time would have to come before he returned. She still suffered from insomnia. Long nights passed in succession, during which she never closed her eyes. At other times she slept through long stupors, waking stunned and numbed, scarcely able to open her heavy eyes, to move her weary limbs. The pressure of the iron band on her head never relaxed. She was poorly nourished. Nor had she a cent of money. She often went a whole day without eating.
Once, seventy-two hours elapsed without food passing her lips.
She dug clams in the marsh, knocked the tiny oysters from the rocks, and gathered mussels.
And yet, when Bud Strothers came to see how she was getting along, she convinced him that all was well. One evening after work, Tom came, and forced two dollars upon her. He was terribly worried. He would like to help more, but Sarah was expecting another baby. There had been slack times in his trade because of the strikes in the other trades. He did not know what the country was coming to. And it was all so ******. All they had to do was see things in his way and vote the way he voted. Then everybody would get a square deal. Christ was a Socialist, he told her.
"Christ died two thousand years ago," Saxon said.
"Well?" Tom queried, not catching her implication.
"Think," she said, "think of all the men and women who died in those two thousand years, and socialism has not come yet. And in two thousand years more it may be as far away as ever. Tom, your socialism never did you any good. It is a dream."
"It wouldn't be if--" he began with a flash of resentment.
"If they believed as you do. Only they don't. You don't succeed in ****** them."
"But we are increasing every year," he argued.
"Two thousand years is an awfully long time," she said quietly.
Her brother's tired face saddened as he noted. Then he sighed:
"Well, Saxon, if it's a dream, it is a good dream."
"I don't want to dream," was her reply. "I want things real. I want them now."
And before her fancy passed the countless generations of the stupid lowly, the Billys and Saxons, the Berts and Marys, the Toms and Sarahs. And to what end? The salt vats and the grave.
Mercedes was a hard and wicked woman, but Mercedes was right. The stupid must always be under the heels of the clever ones. Only she, Saxon, daughter of Daisy who had written wonderful poems and of a soldier-father on a roan war-horse, daughter of the strong. generations who hall won half a world from wild nature and the savage Indian--no, she was not stupid. It was as if she suffered false imprisonment. There was some mistake. She would find the way out.
With the two dollars she bought a sack of flour and half a sack of potatoes. This relieved the monotony of her clams and mussels.
Like the Italian and Portuguese women, she gathered driftwood and carried it home, though always she did it with shamed pride, timing her arrival so that it would be after dark. One day, on the mud-flat side of the Rock Wall, an Italian fishing boat hauled up on the sand dredged from the channel. From the top of the wall Saxon watched the men grouped about the charcoal brazier, eating crusty Italian bread and a stew of meat and vegetables, washed down with long draughts of thin red wine. She envied them their ******* that advertised itself in the heartiness of their meal, in the tones of their chatter and laughter, in the very boat itself that was not tied always to one place and that carried them wherever they willed. Afterward, they dragged a seine across the mud-flats and up on the sand, selecting for themselves only the larger kinds of fish. Many thousands of small fish, like sardines, they left dying on the sand when they sailed away. Saxon got a sackful of the fish, and was compelled to make two trips in order to carry them home, where she salted them down in a wooden washtubs Her lapses of consciousness continued. The strangest thing she did while in such condition was on Sandy Beach. There she discovered herself, one windy afternoon, lying in a hole she had dug, with sacks for blankets. She had even roofed the hole in rough fashion by means of drift wood and marsh grass. On top of the grass she had piled sand.
Another time she came to herself walking across the marshes, a bundle of driftwood, tied with bale-rope, on her shoulder.
Charley Long was walking beside her. She could see his face in the starlight. She wondered dully how long he had been talking, what he had said. Then she was curious to hear what he was saying. She was not afraid, despite his strength, his wicked nature, and tho loneliness and darkness of the marsh.
"It's a shame for a girl like you to have to do this," he was saying, apparently in repetition of what he had already urged.
"Come on an' say the word, Saxon. Come on an' say the word."
Saxon stopped and quietly faced him.
"Listen, Charley Long. Billy's only doing thirty days, and his time is almost up. When he gets out your life won't be worth a pinch of salt if I tell him you've been bothering me. Now listen.
If you go right now away from here, and stay away, I won't tell him. That's all I've got to say."
The big blacksmith stood in scowling indecisions his face pathetic in its fierce yearning, his hands ****** unconscious, clutching contractions.
"Why, you little, small thing," he said desperately, "I could break you in one hand. I could--why, I could do anything I wanted. I don't want to hurt you, Saxon. You know that. Just say the word--"
"I've said the only word I'm going to say."
"God!" he muttered in involuntary admiration. "You ain't afraid.
You ain't afraid."
They faced each other for long silent minutes.
"Why ain't you afraid?" he demanded at last, after peering into the surrounding darkness as if searching for her hidden allies.
"Because I married a man," Saxon said briefly. "And now you'd better go."
