In the farmhouse
kitchen, where now three or four cooks worked so busily, she had worked her
life out alone. From the kitchen she had gone directly upstairs and to bed
with her husband. Once a week on Saturday afternoons she went into town and
stayed long enough to buy supplies for another week of cooking. "She must
have been kept going until she dropped down dead," Clara thought, and her
mind taking another turn, added, "and many others, both men and women, must
have been forced by circumstances to serve my father in the same blind way.
It was all done in order that prosperity and money with which to do vulgar
things might be his."
Clara's mother had brought but one child into the world. She wondered why.
Then she wondered if she would become the mother of a child. Her hands no
longer gripped the arms of her chair, but lay on the table before her. She
looked at them and they were strong. She was herself a strong woman. After
the feast was over and the guests had gone away, Hugh, given courage by the
drinks he continued to consume, would come upstairs to her. Some twist of
her mind made her forget her husband, and in fancy she felt herself about
to be attacked by a strange man on a dark road at the edge of a forest. The
man had tried to take her into his arms and kiss her and she had managed to
get her hands on his throat. Her hands lying on the table twitched
convulsively.
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