Part 32 (2/2)

”You heard a lie, madam,” Milford replied. ”But that's not hard to hear.

A man may be ever so deaf, and sometimes might hear a lie.”

”That's gospel, Mrs. Stuvic,” said the hired man. ”I was out at the deaf and dumb asylum one time, and they had a boy shut up for lyin' with his fingers.”

”Well, what do you come tellin' me about it for? Do you s'pose I care? I wasn't talkin' about lyin'. I was talkin' about some folks not havin'

much sense, and you was right at the top of the pot, I'll tell you that.

You haven't got sense enough to catch a good woman.”

”I might not have from your standpoint, but I have from mine. I don't believe I'd want the woman you'd call good. She'd think it was her duty to keep a man stirred up all the time; she'd make him work himself to death.”

”Well,” she snapped, ”a woman's better off every time she makes a man work himself to death, I'll tell you that.”

”Yes, from your standpoint,” drawled the hired man, opening the stove door to get a light for his pipe. ”But I wouldn't kill myself for no woman, would you, Bill?”

”I don't know that I'm called on to do it,” Milford replied. ”Give me that,” he added, reaching for the bit of blazing paper which the hired man was about to put out. He lighted his pipe, threw the burning paper on the stove, and idly looked at the cinder waving in the draft. ”As unsteadfast as Mitch.e.l.l's love,” he said.

”What is?” the hired man inquired. ”That thing, there? No, that's a woman's love. See, it's blowed away.”

”Such nonsense!” said the old woman. ”How can you keep it up so long?

I'd get sick to death of it. Woman's love, woman's love--I never was as tired of hearing of a thing. I hear it all summer, and now you're talkin' it. Conscience alive, how the wind blows! It makes me think of old Lewson, the cold made him s.h.i.+ver so. I've knowed him to sit up at night with his fire out and his teeth chatterin', waitin' for the spirits to come. One night I asked him who he expected, and he said his wife, and I told him she was a fool to come out such a night, and he flung his spirit book at me, and the Dutch girl kindled the fire with it the next mornin'. Poor old feller! I pa.s.sed his grave the other day, all heaped up with snow; and it made me shake so to think I'd be lyin' there sometime, with the snow fallin' an' the cows mooin' down the road. But I'm not gone yet, Bill. Do you understand that? I say I'm not gone yet, and many a one of 'em 'll be hauled off before I do go. Yes, you bet!

I'll outlive all of you; the last one of you.”

”I hope so, Mrs. Stuvic,” said Milford.

”You do? Thank you for the compliment.”

”But you've got to go sometime,” Mitch.e.l.l spoke up; and she frowned upon him.

”You shut your mouth, now,” she snapped. ”I wan't talkin' to you. I'll go when I get ready, and it's none of your business. But ain't it awful,” she added, speaking to Milford, ”that we've got to go? And we don't know where and don't know what'll happen to us afterwards. Lord, Lord, such a world! If we could only be dead for a while to see what it's like; but to think forever and ever, all the summers and all the winters to come! Dead, all the time dead. I wake up in the night, and think about it and wish I'd never been born. Sometimes I look at my hand and say, 'Yes, the flesh has got to drop off.' Not long ago a doctor stopped at my house one night with a skeleton. He was a young fool, and had bought it somewhere. He jerked the thing around like it was a jumpin'-jack; and I said to myself, 'You'd do me the same way, you scoundrel.' And I told him to drive away from there as fast as he could.

And old Lewson's failin' to come back has made it worse. I wonder if he did lie to me. I wonder if he could come back. And if he could, why didn't he? I'd always been kind to him; took him when his own flesh and blood turned him out. Then what made him lie to me? I don't care so much about his not comin' back; all I want is to know that he could have come. That would satisfy me. And why couldn't he let me know that much?

Bill, you lump of mud, don't you think about dyin'?”

”You're coming pretty close to my name, old lady. Yes, I think about it, but death will have to take care of itself. I haven't the time to worry with it just at present.”

”Yes, and the first thing you know you can't worry about it.”

”Then I'll be all right; won't need to worry.”

She reached over and gripped his wrist. ”Ah, that's it; that's just it.

How do you know that you won't need to worry? What proof have you got?

Tell me, if you've got any.” She jerked him. ”Tell me. Don't you see how I'm sufferin'? If you know anythin', tell me. I want the truth. That's all I want, the truth.”

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