Part 13 (2/2)

Ben pa.s.sed a faltering hand across his chin. ”Me? Well, I'm--we're living here, I s'pose. Livin' here.”

She glanced at him sharply. ”Left the farm, Ben?”

”Yes.”

”Wait a minute.” She concluded her business with Joe; finished it briskly and to her own satisfaction. With her bright brown eyes and her alert manner and her quick little movements she made you think of a wren--a businesslike little wren--a very early wren that is highly versed in the worm-catching way.

At her next utterance he was startled but game.

”Have you had your lunch?”

”Why, no; I----”

”I've been down here since seven, and I'm starved. Let's go and have a bite at the little Greek restaurant around the corner. A cup of coffee and a sandwich, anyway.”

Seated at the bare little table, she surveyed him with those intelligent, understanding, kindly eyes, and he felt the years slip from him. They were walking down the country road together, and she was listening quietly and advising him.

She interrogated him gently. But something of his old masterfulness came back to him. ”No, I want to know about you first. I can't get the rights of it, you being here on South Water, tradin' and all.”

So she told him briefly. She was in the commission business.

Successful. She bought, too, for such hotels as the Blackstone and the Congress, and for half a dozen big restaurants. She gave him bare facts, but he was shrewd enough and sufficiently versed in business to know that here was a woman of established commercial position.

”But how does it happen you're keepin' it up, Emma, all this time?

Why, you must be anyway--it ain't that you look it--but----” He floundered, stopped.

She laughed. ”That's all right, Ben. I couldn't fool you on that.

And I'm working because it keeps me happy. I want to work till I die.

My children keep telling me to stop, but I know better than that. I'm not going to rust out. I want to wear out.” Then, at an unspoken question in his eyes: ”He's dead. These twenty years. It was hard at first, when the children were small. But I knew garden stuff if I didn't know anything else. It came natural to me. That's all.”

So then she got his story from him bit by bit. He spoke of the farm and of Dike, and there was a great pride in his voice. He spoke of Bella, and the son who had been killed, and of Minnie. And the words came falteringly. He was trying to hide something, and he was not made for deception. When he had finished:

”Now, listen, Ben. You go back to your farm.”

”I can't. She--I can't.”

She leaned forward, earnestly. ”You go back to the farm.”

He turned up his palms with a little gesture of defeat. ”I can't.”

”You can't stay here. It's killing you. It's poisoning you. Did you ever hear of toxins? That means poisons, and you're poisoning yourself. You'll die of it. You've got another twenty years of work in you. What's ailing you? You go back to your wheat and your apples and your hogs. There isn't a bigger job in the world than that.”

For a moment his face took on a glow from the warmth of her own inspiring personality. But it died again. When they rose to go, his shoulders drooped again, his muscles sagged. At the doorway he paused a moment, awkward in farewell. He blushed a little, stammered.

”Emma--I always wanted to tell you. G.o.d knows it was luck for you the way it turned out--but I always wanted to----”

She took his hand again in her firm grip at that, and her kindly, bright brown eyes were on him. ”I never held it against you, Ben. I had to live a long time to understand it. But I never held a grudge.

It just wasn't to be, I suppose. But listen to me, Ben. You do as I tell you. You go back to your wheat and your apples and your hogs.

There isn't a bigger man-size job in the world. It's where you belong.”

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