Clara felt like an animal driven into a corner and surrounded by foes.
Her father sat at the feast between two women, Mrs. Steve Hunter who was
inclined to corpulency, and a thin woman named Bowles, the wife of an
undertaker of Bidwell. They continually whispered, smiled, and nodded their
heads. Hugh sat on the opposite side of the same table, and when he raised
his eyes from the plate of food before him, could see past the head of a
large, masculine-looking woman into the farmhouse parlor where there was
another table, also filled with guests. Clara turned from looking at her
father to look at her husband. He was merely a tall man with a long face,
who could not raise his eyes. His long neck stuck itself out of a stiff
white collar. To Clara he was, at the moment, a being without personality,
one that the crowd at the table had swallowed up as it so busily swallowed
food and wine. When she looked at him he seemed to be drinking a good deal.
His glass was always being filled and emptied. At the suggestion of the
woman who sat beside him, he performed the task of emptying it, without
raising his eyes, and Steve Hunter, who sat on the other side of the table,
leaned over and filled it again. Steve like her father whispered and
winked. "On the night of my wedding I was piped, you bet, as piped as a
hatter. It's a good thing. It gives a man nerve," he explained to the
masculine-looking woman to whom he was telling, with a good deal of
attention to details, the tale of his own marriage night.
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