White Narcissus by Raymond Knister Page B

query.
    “No; this tobacco’s been a good thing for him. He fits up a few acres, and lets it on shares, and makes a little money that way. The rest of the farm he pastures, and grows some stuff on. Of course, he can’t keep a hired man,” said Bill Burnstile, looking him in the eyes. “Never has for years and years, they tell me. You’d know all about that, of course, as well as me. A fellow’s got to feel sorry for him.”
    “It seems that nothing has changed….” Richard’s voice was tinged by a fleeting memory of those very words between himself and Ada Lethen.
    “Naw.” The gaunt man spat. “Of course, there’s something there you and me can’t make out. I guess old lady Lethen is all right, from what I’ve always gathered. It just seems funny these days. I’ve heard my father talk about people who never spoke to each other, but I never come across but those two. … Makes it hard for the girl. Now she’s smart, right sensible. If they would let her alone she’d fix things up, run the farm – there must be a mortgage – in no time, just like nothing; good head on her. But them – why they don’t seem livin’.”
    “Strange existence,” mused the young man, wondering at the interest generated, and impelling the man’s words.
    “You understand me, they don’t seem alive,” continued Bill argumentatively. “Now when I’d go over there to borrow a tool or something, and get to the door, the old lady would be so polite, just as nice as pie, ask about the family, tell me where she thought I might find the old man, and all that. But if he wasn’t home, no use leaving any message with her. Might as well save your breath. She’d never tell him anything if it was going to save you from the grave. Makes it unhandy that way for the neighbours.”
    Richard Milne roused himself from the reverie which he knew might divert the interest of his companion, and, without replying to the reference to Ada Lethen, took leave, after promising to visit the family some day soon.

SIX
    S omehow the day had become overcast for him. It was as though a shadowy thought of happiness had been driven from his mind by some intervening emergency, and now he could not even recall in what this mood consisted. Probably it was no more than morning hope and healthy spirits. And those were as likely to be illusion as the anonymous doubt which was now filling his mind. At least he could not blame Bill Burnstile. He should have been – he was, he told himself – gratified by the encounter with his old friend of his boyhood, now a man, honest, simple, rough, real, true to himself, and open-eyed to what reality came his way.
    It was what the man had told of the Lethens which bothered him. Somehow he must have thought that he possessed the secret in his own right, and that, possessing it, he might be able alone to unfathom the riddle. Behold now, though, others had watched, baffled, even dispirited as himself by the sight. Bill Burnstile had talked as though absorbed by the subject, though without ulterior intent; and Carson Hymerson spoke with bitterness. Richard could not help wondering whether all the neighbours were so deeplyconcerned, whether an atmosphere had not been caused to rise about these people which would forever forbid his imposing reality or recognition upon them. In what reality did they believe? What could he have believed in Ada Lethen’s place?
    He was sitting on an old wooden gate at the head of a green lane which sloped down into a farm, with no buildings in sight, and he jumped off to continue his walk when he saw the girl before him. He paused. It was Ada Lethen who came up to him. The stateliness which he had known in the dusk of last night was modified by a languor which must have been weariness, for he saw that she was really thin. Her smile quite transfigured her dark, pale face; her eyes remembered themselves in a glint of happiness, looking at him steadfastly.
    “You’re going the wrong way,” he