In the big farmhouse dining-room and in the parlor where the second table
of guests sat, the wedding feast went on. Afterward when she thought of it,
Clara always remembered her wedding feast as a horsey affair. Something
in the natures of Tom Butterworth and Jim Priest, she thought, expressed
itself that night. The jokes that went up and down the table were horsey,
and Clara thought the women who sat at the tables heavy and mare-like.
Jim did not come to the table to sit with the others, was in fact not
invited, but all evening he kept appearing and reappearing and had the air
of a master of ceremonies. Coming into the dining room he stood by the
door, scratching his head. Then he went out. It was as though he had
said to himself, "Well, it's all right, everything is going all right,
everything is lively, you see." All his life Jim had been a drinker of
whisky and knew his limitations. His system as a drinking man had always
been quite simple. On Saturday afternoons, when the work about the barns
was done for the day and the other employees had gone away, he went to sit
on the steps of a corncrib with the bottle in his hand. In the winter he
went to sit by the kitchen fire in a little house below the apple orchard
where he and the other employees slept. He took a long drink from the
bottle and then holding it in his hand sat for a time thinking of the
events of his life.
Pages:
310
311
312
313
314
315
316
317
318
319
320
321
322
323
324
325
326
327
328
329
330
331
332
333
334