Coulee City dispatch. [volume] (Coulee City, Wash.) 19??-19??, 1935-10-17
CHAPTER VI-Continued

Oue udy, bdIIy WeuI vi, DIS IL mdh-
ing sure it should all be as simple and
clear for him as it was for her, cher
father brought man to live in their
house-a pleasant, quiet sort of man,
a good deal younger than her father
but older than she. The man was
away a good deal, but even when he
was at home the girl hardly saw him
except at breakfast and dinner; in the
evening he used to read his paper
while she and her father played cards
and talked, as they always had
"Then one day her father told her
that the man had asked him his con-
sent to their marriage-the girls and
the lodger's. Her father had given it.
He treated it so much as an ordinary
matter that, even without warning, the
girl had no real feeling about it one
way or the other. And her father
wanted it. So they were married, quiet
ly, right away, she being just under
seventeen and her husband a little
past thirty. For more than year
there was hardly any difference in her
life: she give up her beaus, counted
her husbands laundry and sewed on
his buttons as she did for her father.
1t was like a sort of dream-not happy,
not unhappy-that doesn't seem worth
breaking down because you know it
is dream and that you'll wake up
soon.
"Then her father was taken ill
very ill-so that the doctor told her
she must think of his dying She
couldn't-not possibly-it filled her
with such panic. 1t filled her so
dreadfully, so desperately, that she
never wondered what would happen
between her and her-husband. One
night her father called her to him;
he asked her to promise that she would
stick to her husband no matter what
happened, do what he wanted her to
do, no matter what it was, never leave
him nor disobey him, for ten years.
She promised; and then in his weak
ness and fever her father forgot about
it ard begged her to promise all over
again. 1t was so terribly important to
him-really terribly-terror mixed up
in it. And while she stayed watching
him after she'd promised, her father
died."
A dog parked in the still, hot town
and the dark, sleeping silence of the
plains lay out and away before them
forever under the starless black of
the sky.
Later" said Barry quietly, when
she began to believe that it had hap
pened, she told her husband she would
try to love him, if he would wait-try
to love him for the friendship and
trust her father must have had for
him, to make her promise that. Her
husband laughed at her as if she were
fool; he said, He made you promise
that because he wanted to keep his
responsibility in HI with him. and l
can have it back whenever | like He
showed her a paper, sort of receipt
that was practically a confession of
something her father had done before
he'd come here, in another bank-an
acknowledgment that her husband had
covered it up for him.
"That was four years ago. Her con-
tract still has six years to run, and
what she'll be when it ends Her hus-
bands plans are definite enough-tO
make money for him, and power for
him, in the ways he finds. The four
years have been mostly sort of
schooling for that, with a few little
try-outs."
She paused only an instant. I'D like
to help her, but there's no way, you
see. Disillusion at nineteen doesn't
seem to drown nineteen years of love
and reverence, and "a superstition
about promises, about a sort of honor
even in dishonor."
The black spread of darkness be-
fore them was oppressive, stealthy in
oppression, and Hal frightened his arms
to make sure she was still there
against him. He had shut the mean
tngs of the story out of his mind, but