Of Time and the River Read Free Page A

puzzled intentness of an animal or a bird. “What say?” she cried sharply again, as no one answered. “I thought—”
    But fortunately, at this moment, this strange and disturbing flash in which had been revealed the blind and tangled purposes, the powerful and obscure impulses, the tormented nerves, the whole tragic perplexity of soul which was of the very fabric of their lives, was interrupted by a commotion in one of the groups upon the platform, and by a great guffaw of laughter which instantly roused these three people from this painful and perplexing scene, and directed their startled attention to the place from which the laughter came.
    And now again they heard the great guffaw—a solid “Haw! Haw! Haw!” which was full of such an infectious exuberance of animal good-nature that other people on the platform began to smile instinctively, and to look affectionately towards the owner of the laugh.
    Already, at the sound of the laugh, the young woman had forgotten the weary and dejected resignation of the moment before, and with an absent and yet eager look of curiosity in her eyes, she was staring towards the group from which the laugh had come, and herself now laughing absently, she was stroking her big chin in a gesture of meditative curiosity, saying:
    “Hah! Hah! Hah! . . . That’s George Pentland. . . . You can tell him anywhere by his laugh.”
    “Why, yes,” the mother was saying briskly, with satisfaction. “That’s George all right. I’d know him in the dark the minute that I heard that laugh.—And say, what about it? He’s always had it— why, ever since he was a kid-boy—and was going around with Steve. . . . Oh, he’d come right out with it anywhere, you know, in Sunday school, church, or while the preacher was sayin’ prayers before collection—that big, loud laugh, you know, that you could hear, from here to yonder, as the sayin’ goes. . . . Now I don’t know where it comes from—none of the others ever had it in our family; now we all liked to laugh well enough, but I never heard no such laugh as that from any of ‘em—there’s one thing sure, Will Pentland never laughed like that in his life—Oh, Pett, you know! Pett!”—a scornful and somewhat malicious look appeared on the woman’s face as she referred to her brother’s wife in that whining and affected tone with which women imitate the speech of other women whom they do not like—“Pett got so mad at him one time when he laughed right out in church that she was goin’ to take the child right home an’ whip him.—Told me, says to me, you know—‘Oh, I could wring his neck! He’ll disgrace us all,’ she says, ‘unless I cure him of it,’ says, ‘He burst right out in that great roar of his while Doctor Baines was sayin’ his prayers this morning until you couldn’t hear a word the preacher said.’ Said, ‘I was so mortified to think he could do a thing like that that I’d a-beat the blood right out of him if I’d had my buggy whip,’ says, ‘I don’t know where it comes from’—oh, sneerin’ like, you know,” the woman said, imitating the other woman’s voice with a sneering and viperous dislike -“‘I don’t know where it comes from unless it’s some of that common Pentland blood comin’ out in him’—‘Now you listen to me,’ I says; oh, I looked her in the eye, you know”—here the woman looked at her daughter with the straight steady stare of her worn brown eyes, illustrating her speech with the loose and powerful gesture of the half-clasped finger-pointing hand—“‘you listen to me. I don’t know where that child gets his laugh,’ I says, ‘but you can bet your bottom dollar that he never got it from his father—or any other Pentland that I ever heard of—for none of them ever laughed that way—Will, or Jim, or Sam, or George, or Ed, or Father, or even Uncle Bacchus,’ I said—‘no, nor old Bill Pentland either, who was that child’s great-grandfather—for I’ve