Part 30 (2/2)

”It's all off with me, that's what. My girl's married.”

”You don't mean it!” the Professor cried.

”Then what the devil do I want to say it for? She married about two hours ago, so Miles Brent tells me, and he was there--married a feller named Hogan. I see him around there once or twice, but don't think anythin' of it. Well, I'll swear. I thought I knowed her, and I did know her at one time, but she changed. Blamed if you can tell how soon they'll change on you. Hogan--an old widower.”

”I know him,” said Milford. ”He milks fifteen cows. His milk caught her.”

”I hate to think that,” Mitch.e.l.l drawled, ”but I'll have to. Yes, sir, hauled off in a milk-wagon. And she owns a piece of land worth fifty dollars an acre.”

”She must have wanted milk to wash off her freckles,” said Milford.

”Don't, Bill--don't make light of a man's trouble. She's a big loss to me, I tell you.”

”But, Bob, you didn't really love her, now, did you?”

”Bill, there's different sorts of love. I loved her in my way, as much as any man ever loved a woman, I reckon, in his way. I put my faith in her, and that was goin' a good ways. Humph! I can't hardly believe it, but I know it's so.”

”When the heart is rent,” said the Professor, twisting his beard to aid his thought; ”when the heart is rent----”

”It's the failure of the rent--on the land, that gets Bob,” Milford broke in. ”His heart has nothing to do with it.”

”Bill, I thought you had more sympathy than----”

”Sympathy for a man who has failed to beat a woman out of her property?

Of course, I wish you'd succeeded, but I'm not going to console you because you haven't. I'm a scoundrel all right enough, but a scoundrel has his limits.”

”That's all right, Bill, but somebody may give you the slip.”

”That's true enough, but my heart and not my pocket will do the grieving. I haven't any time to give to a man's pocket grief.”

”Wait till you have a real grief,” said the Professor. ”Wait till ignorance comes heavy of hoof down your hallway to tell you that your years of study are but a waste-land, covered with briars; to cut you with the blue steel of a chilling smile, and to turn you out of an inst.i.tution that you hold dear. That's grief.” He leaned forward upon the table, with his head on his arms.

”You had no right to go to see her,” said Milford. ”You had no divorce.”

”But I could've got one, couldn't I? Are they so blamed scarce that a man can't get 'em? Well, let it go.”

”Yes, I must go,” said the Professor, getting up. ”Is it raining yet? I slipped off between showers without an umbrella.”

”Sorry I haven't one,” Milford replied. ”Yes, it's raining. Take that coat up there. It may protect you some.”

”Thank you. I shall avail myself of your offer.”

He put on the coat, bade them good-night, and set out for home. The road was muddy and he walked close to the fence. Once he strode into a patch of briars. ”The waste land of my years of study,” he said. He s.h.i.+ed when he saw the light in his window, and he cleared his throat and braced himself. His wife and Miss Catherine, hearing him upon the veranda, sat down upon the floor, as if they had no chairs. He stepped in, looked at them, and sadly shook his head.

”I would be polite enough to choose a finer insinuation,” said he.

”There may be virtue in a hint--there may be all sorts of spice in it, but there's nothing but insult in squatting around on the floor like this. I don't know how to choose words for the occasion. I will simply bid you good-night.”

He heard them talking after he went to bed. He sighed out his distemper and fell asleep. In the morning he found that he had hung Milford's coat upside down. A paper had fallen from the pocket. He took it up, opened it, and with a start he recognized his medical treatise.

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