Part 31 (1/2)

He turned himself about, and she followed a little behind, the female failure in the dust cast by the male. Neither spoke until David stopped and pointed to some bushes where the fruit hung thick on bending, slender branches.

”Here,” said David. Both fell to work. David picked handfuls of berries and cast them gaily into the pail. ”What is your name?” he asked, in an undertone.

”Jane Waters,” she replied, readily. Her husband's name had been Waters, or the man who had called himself her husband, and her own middle name was Jane. The first was Sara. David remembered at once. ”She is taking her own middle name and the name of the man she married,” he thought.

Then he asked, plucking berries, with his eyes averted:

”Married?”

”No,” said the woman, flus.h.i.+ng deeply.

David's next question betrayed him. ”Husband dead?”

”I haven't any husband,” she replied, like the Samaritan woman.

She had married a man already provided with another wife, although she had not known it. The man was not dead, but she spoke the entire miserable truth when she replied as she did. David a.s.sumed that he was dead. He felt a throb of relief, of which he was ashamed, but he could not down it. He did not know what it was that was so alive and triumphant within him: love, or pity, or the natural instinct of the decent male to shelter and protect. Whatever it was, it was dominant.

”Do you have to work hard?” he asked.

”Pretty hard, I guess. I expect to.”

”And you don't get any pay?”

”That's all right; I don't expect to get any,” said she, and there was bitterness in her voice.

In spite of her stoutness she was not as strong as the man. She was not at all strong, and, moreover, the constant presence of a sense of injury at the hands of life filled her very soul with a subtle poison, to her weakening vitality. She was a child hurt and worried and bewildered, although she was to the average eye a stout, able-bodied, middle-aged woman; but David had not the average eye, and he saw her as she really was, not as she seemed. There had always been about her a little weakness and dependency which had appealed to him. Now they seemed fairly to cry out to him like the despairing voices of the children whom he had never had, and he knew he loved her as he had never loved her before, with a love which had budded and flowered and fruited and survived absence and starvation. He spoke abruptly.

”I've about got my business done in these parts,” said he. ”I've got quite a little money, and I've got a little house, not much, but mighty snug, back where I come from. There's a garden. It's in the woods. Not much pa.s.sing nor going on.”

The woman was looking at him with incredulous, pitiful eyes like a dog's. ”I hate much goin' on,” she whispered.

”Suppose,” said David, ”you take those berries home and pack up your things. Got much?”

”All I've got will go in my bag.”

”Well, pack up; tell the madam where you live that you're sorry, but you're worn out--”

”G.o.d knows I am,” cried the woman, with sudden force, ”worn out!”

”Well, you tell her that, and say you've got another chance, and--”

”What do you mean?” cried the woman, and she hung upon his words like a drowning thing.

”Mean? Why, what I mean is this. You pack your bag and come to the parson's back there, that white house.”

”I know--”

”In the mean time I'll see about getting a license, and--”

Suddenly the woman set her pail down and clutched him by both hands.