WEDDING RING
397
of Phebe, the suffering and rage and great change of the woman I had
loved-all had come from my single act of sin and perfidy, as the
boughs from the bole and the leaves from the bough. Or to figure the
matter differently, it was as though the vibration set up in the whole
fabric of the world by my act had spread infinitely and with ever
increasing power and no man could know the end. I did not put
it
into words in such fashion, but I stood there shaken by a tempest of
feeling."
When Cass had somewhat controlled his agitation, he said, "To
whom did you sell the girl?"
"What's it to you?" she answered.
"To whom did you. sell the girl?" he repeated.
"I'll not tell you," she said.
"I will find out," he said. "I will go to Paducah and find out."
She grasped him by the arm, driving her fingers deep into the
fltsh, "like talons," and demanded, "Why-why are you going?"
"To find her," he said. "To find her and buy her and set her
free." He had not premeditated this. He heard the words, he wrote
in the journal, and knew that that was his intention. "To find her and
buy her and set her free," he said, and felt the grasp on his arm re–
leased and then in the dark suddenly felt the rake of her nails dow:J.
his cheek, and heard her voice in a kind of "wild .sibilance" saying,
"If
you do-if you do-oh, I'll not abide it-I will not!"
She flung herself from his side and to the bench. He heard her
gasp and sob, "a hard dry sob like a man's." He did not move., Then
he heard her voice,
"If
you do-if you do- she looked at me that
way, and I'll not abide it-if you do-" Then after a pause, very
quietly:
"If
you do, I shall never see you again."
He made no reply. He stood theve for some minutes, he did not
know how long, then he left the summer house, where she still sat, and
walked down the alley.
The next morning he left for Paducah. He learned the name of
the trader, but he also learned that the trader had sold Phebe (a yel–
low wench who answered to Phebe's description) to a "private party"
who happened to be in Paducah at the time but who had gone on
down river. His name was unknown in Paducah. The trader had
presumably sold Phebe so that he would be free to accompany his cof–
fle when it had been made up. He had now headed, it was said, into
south Kentucky, with a few bucks and wenches, to pick up more.
As
Cass had predicted, he had not wanted to wear Phebe down by taking
her in the cofHe. So getting a good figure of profit in Paducah, he had
