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PARTISAN REVIEW
Celia Hornby looked at her: "The tales, you said. You said
they tell tales about him."
The woman leaped at the idea. "Yes," she exclaimed, "Yes-–
that's it. It's not just being a blacksmith. It's the things he does-–
the tales."
"You said he never really strangled a bear," the girl said, hon–
estly puzzled.
"Oh, don't be a ninny!" the woman said in ferocious contempt,
hidden anger flashing between the words, like the hot molten in–
wardness showing when the crust cracks on the slow-moving lava–
field. Then seeing the girl's shocked, hurt face, she controlled herself,
tried to patch things up. "You are so young," she said, "but you
know. It's the things he does."
"I suppose he drinks," musingly said Celia Hornby, in whose
father's house that word had seemed the synonym for all unnameable
depravities.
"Drinks!" Miss Abernathy snorted, the ferocity and contempt
glinting out anew. "You could float Old Ironsides in the amount of
illegal and poisonous moonshine whisky that man has drunk. Drink!
-drinking and brawling. But-" She stopped, and scanned the girl's
face, till the face flushed with the guilt of unacknowledged specula–
tions stirring deep down. Then, as though satisfied with what she
saw on the face, she leaned closer, almost whispering, darkening the
bright winter sunshine of the street to a sudden preternatural twi–
light full of a close, musky odor, and said: "You know what! He
is shameless. It is the shameless-it is the shameless things he does
to--to women."
Well, he was never to do anything to Celia Hornby that she
thought was shameful. Except, of course, the first thing.
It was that time in the post office, the first time he had ever
spoken to her. She supposed it wasn't more his fault than hers, if it
was anybody's and not just a plain accident. She had been in a
hurry to get her mail one morning, one Sunday morning, out of her
post office box. With her key in her hand, she had made a little
dive toward the lock, just as a man, stooping with back toward her
to open a box next to hers moved a little bit as the box came open.
She bumped him. He swung around, straightening up, swinging
away on the ball of his right foot, with a lightness that, even then in
