"You say the fellow's mouth was mashed?" said Milford.
"Yes, mashed as flat as a pancake."
"Then you want to keep your mouth shut."
"All right, Bill, I understand."
Milford walked about the room. "We are neglecting everything," he said. "It's time to feed the cattle." They went out to the barn, neither of them speaking. Mitchell climbed into the loft and tossed down the hay; Milford measured out oats to the horses. In silence they returned to the house.
"Why don't you say something?" said Milford.
"When I said the feller's mouth was mashed you said I wanted to keep mine shut. I help you learn how to box till you could out-box me, and I guess you can mash my mouth easy enough, Bill."
"But do you think I would, Bob?"
"No, I can't hardly think so. Got any smokin' tobacco?"
"Fresh bag up there on the shelf. Fill up that briar of mine—the old-timer."
"But you don't want nobody to smoke it, do you?"
"You may keep it; I've got another one."
"But you've had that one so long, Bill."
"Then it's all the sweeter."
"I'm a thousand times obliged to you."
"All right." He was silent for a thoughtful minute, and then he said: "The summer is about gone. It will leave on the train next Tuesday."
The hired man nodded as if he understood. "And I've got to be lookin' out for somethin' to do in the winter," he said. "I don't reckon you can afford to keep me."
"Yes, I want you. I expect to be busy all winter, trading around. Your wages may go on just the same."
"You don't mean at eighteen dollars?"
"I said just the same."
Mitchell's face beamed with satisfaction. "That would scare some of these farmers around here half to death," said he. "They never think of payin' more than ten in winter."
"But I'm not one of these farmers round here."
"That's what you ain't, and I don't know what you have been, nur what you're goin' to be, but to me you're about the best feller I ever struck up with."
They talked of affairs on the farm, the hay, the ripening corn. In the renting of the place a number of ragged sheep had been included, a contingent sale; and a few months of care had wrought almost a miracle in the appearance of the flock, so much so that the old woman regretted her terms and would have withdrawn from them, but Milford had insisted upon a witnessed contract. They talked about the sheep, the increase to come in the winter, the sale of lambs in the early summer. They laid plans for work in the fall, for the cutting and the husking of the corn.
"But I thought you were going to marry," said Milford.
"Yes, but not for a year, Bill. I've got a good deal to attend to first. I've got to get a divorce, you know. That won't take long, of course, but a man's divorce ought to get cool before he marries again. I've talked to my girl about it, and she thinks so. She's a proper thing."
"Did it ever occur to you that she can't be a very proper thing to talk to you about marriage or to receive attentions from you before you get your divorce?"
"I don't guess she ever thought of that. But I believe she did say she wanted I should get a divorce before I said much more about it. It's all right, anyway. I don't believe in holding a woman to strict rule. If you force the rule on her before you're married, she'll force it on you afterwards, and then where'll you be? Well," he added, leaning over to untie his shoe, "believe I'll go to bed. I'm glad you're pleased with my work. I want to save up enough to git them shirts, you know. It wouldn't look right to draw on her at once. Some fellers would, but I'm rather careful that way."
Early Tuesday morning a girl from the poor-house went to Mrs. Stuvic's place. This meant that the season was about closed, that the "journeyman" cook had been discharged, the "help" told to go, and that this wretched creature was to do the work. Careful not to appear too early, Milford came almost too late. The carriage had set out for the station. He ordered the driver to stop. He reminded Gunhild of her promise to walk with him across the fields. She declared that she had not promised, but said that she was willing enough to walk. Mrs. Goodwin cautioned her not to loiter by the way; it would greatly put her out to miss the train. Gunhild jumped out, Milford catching at her, and the carriage drove on. They walked down the road to a place where there was a gap in the fence, and here they entered the field. Down deep in the grass a horde of insects shouted their death songs. Their day of judgment was soon to lie white upon the ground. Artists in their way, with no false notes, with mission ended, they were to die in art, among fantastic pictures wrought by the frost. Milford did not try to hide his sadness. The girl was livelier; the girl nearly always is.
"The other day I got near you, although otherswere present, but now you are far off," he said. "Must I rope you every time I want you?"
She laughed at this picture of life in the West, thrown in a word. Again she saw men lassoing the cattle. But the potato field came back to her, the rough words of the men, the drudgery, and her face grew sad. "I am as close to you now as I was then."
"Not with your eyes. Stop. Let me look at you."
They halted and stood face to face. "Give me your eyes." She gave them to him without a waver. But she reminded him that they must not miss the train. Afar off they could see the carriage turn a corner.
"When am I to see you again?" he asked, as they walked on.
"I do not know that," she answered. "I shall not stay in the winter time at Mrs. Goodwin's house. She will have many persons there then, and will not need me."
"The kingdom of heaven, though it were full, would need you."
"Sometimes you are a wild book, with sentences jumping out at me," she said. "I must rope you," she added, laughing.
"I wish you would—I wish you'd choke me to death, and——"
"And what?"
"And then take my head in your lap."
"In your other life you must have stood at the bow of a boat, making the sea red with the blood ofyour enemy—and in my other life I bound up your wounds."
They came to a broad ditch. On each side was a forest of wild sunflowers. "You could stand in there and blaze with them," he said, stepping down into the ditch. "Give me your hand, and I'll help you across."
"I can jump."
"Give me your hand—and I hope you'll stumble and fall."
She stood among the sunflowers, looking down at him. "Did you see the cowboy preacher that came West?" she asked. "Would he not have had a wild steer if he had roped your soul?"
"Give me your hand—both."
She gave him her hands, and leaped across the ditch. "I wish there were a thousand," he said, climbing out. "But you haven't answered me. When am I to see you again?"
"I am coming again with Mrs. Goodwin next summer."
"That'll be like a boy's Christmas—ten years in coming. Can't I come to see you in town?"
"I shall not be in the town. I am going into the country to teach."
"Then I can come into the country."
"No. With your wild ways you would make me feel ashamed."
"You are right—I've got sense enough to see it. But is there to be no better understanding between us?"
"Didn't you say that all—something could notkeep us apart? Is not that understanding enough?" They had halted again, and she had given him her eyes.
"It's an acknowledgment, but not a plan. What I want is something to work up to."
"There is the carriage coming down the road over yonder. Mrs. Goodwin is waving her handkerchief at me. The station is just across the fence."
"I know all that. But won't you let me write to you?"
"I should like to hear from you. A letter from you in the winter might bring the summer back—the crickets in the grass and the wild sunflowers by the ditch. Yes, you may write to me."
"And you will send me your address?"
"Yes, I will write first—when I go to the country. Not before."
"And if you don't go to the country I am not to know where you are?"
"But I am going to the country. You shall hear."
Near the road, between them and the station, stood an old cheese factory, now inhabited by summer vagabonds. The windows were stuffed with cast-off clothes. It was a wretched place, but now it served a purpose—it shut off all view from the station. It made no difference as to who might peep from the windows.
They walked on slowly a few paces, and halted behind the old house. They heard the rumble of the train. He looked down at her up-turned face. Her lips were slightly apart as if on the eve of Utterance. He thought of the seam in a ripe peach.
"There, the train is coming," she said.
"Plenty—plenty of time."
"No. Mrs. Goodwin is calling me. Good-bye," she said, still suffering him to hold her hand. "Are you always going to be a wild man?"
"You remember what they used to call me."
"Yes, that bad name. But I must go."
She ran away from him. He strode back across the field. He heard the train when it stopped and when it started again, but did not look round. He stood in the ditch where he had helped her across. There was the print of her foot in the moist earth. He heard the crickets crying in the deep grass. He lay down for a moment, and felt that the cry of his heart drowned all sounds of earth. "If it were only different," he said to himself, over and over again. "When she knows, what will she think? Must she know? Perhaps not—I hope not. When it is all over, I will kill it in my own breast." He was conscious of the theatrical. He was on the stage. Glow-worms were his footlights; his orchestra was deep-hidden in the grass. "Why can't a man be genuine?" he asked himself. "Why does a heart put on, talk to itself, and strut?"
In the road he met Mrs. Blakemore walking with Bobbie. The boy had a long stick, pushing it on the ground in front of himself. He called it his plow. His mother cautioned him. He might hurt himself. The stick struck a lump in the road and punched him. He howled just as Milford came up.
"I told you not to shove that stick. And nowyou've nearly ruined yourself. Here's Mr. Milford. Perhaps he will carry you."
Milford took the boy on his back. "You are my horse," said the boy, whimpering. They turned toward the house, Mrs. Blakemore striving to keep step with Milford. "Don't go so fast. I can't keep step with you," she said.
"Get up," the boy commanded.
"How long do you expect to stay?" Milford asked.
"I don't know," she answered. "George is away on a tour, and I am to wait till I hear from him. I don't think I'll be here but a few days longer. I ought to put Bobbie in school."
"We'll have a good deal more of warm weather," Milford said; "and October out here I should think is the finest time of the year."
"Oh, yes, but you know we must get back. After all, the summer spent in the country is a hardship. We give up everything for the sake of being out of doors. Put him down when he gets heavy."
"He's all right. Yes, hardship in many ways. But hardships make us stronger; still, I don't know that we need to be much stronger. We are strong enough now for our weak purposes."
"You mean spiritually stronger, don't you? Well, I don't know. But, of course, we are more meditative when we have been close to nature, and that always gives us a sort of spiritual help. But the time out here might be spent to great advantage, in reading and serious converse. As it is, however, people seem ashamed to talk anything but nonsense. They hoot at anything that has a particleof sentiment in it. And as for art—well, so few persons know anything about art. And on this account I shall miss Mrs. Goodwin so much. She talked beautifully on art. Don't you think so?"
"She talks well on almost any subject."
"And Gunhild is a real artist," she said, looking at him. "Did she show you any of her drawings?"
"No. I didn't ask her and she didn't offer to show them."
"Perhaps you were more interested in the artist than in her art."
"Yes, that may be about the size of it."
"Do you know, Mr. Milford, I can't fathom you. Sometimes you speak with positive sentiment and dignity, and then again you are a repository of slang. Why is it? Is it because that, at times, I am incapable of—shall I say inspiring?"
"Yes, I guess that's about the proper thing to say. No. What am I talking about? You are always inspiring, of course. The fault lies with me."
"Such a strange man!" she said, meditatively. "Mrs. Stuvic declares she doesn't know you any better now than she did the first day, but I believe I do, though not much better, I must confess. I wish you would tell me something."
"Well, what is it?"
"Did you know Gunhild before she came out here?"
"I had never spoken to her."
"Well, it's very strange. You got acquainted very soon. Oh, I know she was out here quite awhile, still—oh, you know what I mean. Yes, you met her at the haunted house—once. More than once? Am I too inquisitive? But I am so interested."
He acted the part of a politer man; he said that she was not too inquisitive—glad that she was interested. The boy, pulling at his ears, the bridle, turned his head toward her, and he caught the drooping of her eye. Over him she had established a sentimental protectorate, in accordance with a Monroe Doctrine of the heart, and resented foreign aggression.
"So much interested in Gunhild, you know," she said. "Peculiar girl, not yet Americanized. Perhaps it is her almost blunt honesty that gives her the appearance of lacking tact. But tact is the protection of honesty. Don't you think so?"
"I don't know anything about tact, as you understand it. I know what it is to get the drop on a man, and I suppose the woman of tact always has the drop. Is that it?"
"Yes," she laughed, walking close beside him. "A woman of tact is never taken unawares."
"A suspicious woman, I take it."
"Well, a ready woman. And Gunhild is not dull, but she is not always ready. Do you think so?"
"I'll be—I don't know what you're driving at."
"Get up," the boy cried, clucking.
"Perhaps I am a little obscure. But I thought you would understand."
"But I swear I don't."
"Then it would be cruel to explain."
"It would? You've got to explain now." He halted and turned to her. The boy pulled at his ears. Her laughter came like the rippling of cool water.
"You know that Gunhild is an experiment," she said. "She was a girl of talent with uncertain manners. Even her restraint is blunt. And I think that Mrs. Goodwin has found her a failure."
Milford began to ease the boy to the ground. "I must bid you good evening here," he said.
"Won't you come to the house to supper?"
"No. I'll go and eat at a table where no restraint is blunt and where no experiment is a failure."
"I have offended you," she said, taking the boy by the hand. "And I didn't mean it, I'm sure. I hope you don't think that I would say a word against her. We are all fond of her, I'm sure. But we are all interested in you."
"In me? Who the—the deuce am I? What cause have you to be interested in me? You are not interested in me, except as a sort of freak—a mud-turtle, caught in the lake, viewed by woman with their 'ahs' and 'ohs,' standing back holding their skirts. I know that woman. She is worth——"
"I thought you said you didn't know her till she came out here?"
"I said I'd never spoken to her."
"Know her but had never spoken to her. The plot curdles. Really, Mr. Milford, what I said was simply to draw you out. I don't know a thing against her; I don't think she's a failure. Now tell me what you know. I am hungry for something ofinterest; I'm tired to death of this everlasting market report. If she and you have been mixed up in a romance, tell me, please. Bobbie, don't pull at me. I'm going in a moment."
"The ripening fruit of a romance," said Milford, putting his hand on the boy's head. "Isn't that enough for you?"
"The fruit is a tender care; the bud a careless pleasure," she replied. "Tell me about it—now. I might not see you again."
"Then you will soon forget."
"Oh, no, I can't forget you. You have had a strong influence on me—for good, I am sure. You have some noble purpose, hidden away, and when we meet one with a noble purpose we feel stronger, though we may not know what that purpose is. I long to do something in the world, too——"
"Then love your husband," said the tactless man.
"What are you saying? I do love him."
"If you love him, you have a noble purpose."
"But who are you to talk so morally?"
"A man who has seen so much vice that he would like to see virtue. There's my road," he said, pointing to the gate. "I must bid you good-bye."
A cow that had been hurt by a falling tree went limping down the road, and Milford, looking at her, said that she pictured the passing of time. And when at evening he saw her again, he said that she was the same hour, passing twice. In the woods he met the girl from the poor-house, and she told him that Mrs. Blakemore was gone. One afternoon Mrs. Stuvic sent for him, and when he went she scolded him for not having come sooner to lighten the dark hour of her loneliness. She was afraid of solitude. In the bustle of a boarding-house, in fault-finding, in all annoyances, there was life, with no time to muse upon the soul's fall of the year; but in the empty rooms, the quiet yard, the hushed piano, there was a mocking stillness, the companion of death. She hated death. It had a cold grip, and old Lewson had proved that there was no breaking away from it. To her it was not generous Nature's humane leveler; it was vicious Nature giving one's enemies an opportunity to exult. She declared that if all her enemies were dead, she would not oppose death. A woman in the neighborhood had sworn that she would drag a dead cat over her grave; she was a spiteful wretch, and she would do it. Years ago there had been a fight over a linefence, and Mrs. Stuvic had won the suit, hence the only proper thing to do was to wait till she was buried and then to drag a dead cat over her grave. A terrible triumph! The old woman shuddered as she spoke of it. She had a premonition that she was to die in the winter, alone, at night, while creaking wagons passed the gate and stiff-jointed dogs bayed the frozen moon. They would cut away the snow and bury her—and then at night would come the woman with the dead cat. She could see it all, the frozen clods, the pine head-board with her name in pencil upon it, the cat left lying there, the woman returning home to gloat in the light of a warm room. Upon a bench on the veranda Milford sat and listened and did not smile, and accepting his grimness as a sympathy, her hard eye grew moist, a flint-stone wet with dew. She asked him if he had an idea as to who that woman was; and when he answered that he did not, she said:
"Nobody but my own sister. Now, you keep still. And that's the reason I was so quick to let you have that farm almost at your own terms. I was afraid some one would rent it for her. Oh, but you may call me unnatural and all that sort of thing, but you don't know what I've had to contend with. My first husband died a drunkard. Many a time I've hauled him home almost frozen. He'd leave me without a bite to eat and spend every cent of money he had. And many a time I told him I'd pour whiskey on him after he was dead—and I did—yes, you bet! I said, 'Now go soak in it throughout eternity.' Ah, Lord, one person don't know howanother one lives. I've had nothin' but trouble, trouble—all the time trouble."
"We all have our troubles, madam."
"Hush your mouth. You don't know what troubles are. Think of havin' to fight with your own blood kin, your own children. Think of your own daughter slanderin' you, and your own son havin' you arrested!"
"I expect you've had a pretty hard life, Mrs. Stuvic."
"Hard life! That don't tell half of it."
"And yet you want to stay here longer."
"What! Do you reckon I want to give Nan a chance to drag that cat over my grave?"
"Let her drag it. What's the difference? You won't know anything about it."
"But how do I know that? And I'd be in a pretty fix, havin' her drag a cat over me and not bein' able to help myself. No, I want to wait till she dies, the unnatural thing."
"Can't you make it up with her?"
"Make it up with her? Do you reckon I want to make it up with her? Do you reckon I'd stoop that much?"
"You call her unnatural. Don't you think you may be just a little unnatural yourself?"
"Now, look here, if you're goin' to take her part you march yourself off this place."
"I'm not taking her part. I don't know her."
"Then keep still. Don't you think you'd better come over to the house and stay durin' the winter?"
"No, I'd rather stay over there."
"All by yourself?"
"Bob'll be there."
"Land's sakes, are you goin' to keep him all winter? I thought you had more sense than to put on such lugs. But you've got to come over here every night or two. I don't want to die here alone."
A boy on a horse rode up to the gate. The old woman went out to him. She came running back, with her limp hands flapping in the air. Her sister had sent for her. She begged Milford to hitch up the pony as fast as he could. She said that he must drive her over there.
On the road she did not speak a word, except to give directions. She sat stiff and grim. Persons whom they passed stared at her, straight, squaw-like, with a hawk feather standing sharp in her hat. They drew up at a small white house in the woods. Yellow leaves were falling about it. A peacock spread the harsh alarm of their arrival. The old woman commanded Milford to get out and to wait for her. She did not know how long she might stay. A woman opened the door for them. Mrs. Stuvic recognized her as the mother of the girl from the poor-house. Milford sat down in the dreary passage-way. Mrs. Stuvic followed the woman into a room. The lines about her mouth tightened as she caught sight of her sister, on a bed in a corner. She drew up a chair, and sat down by the bedside.
"What's the matter, Nan?"
The sister slowly turned upon her pillow and looked at her with gaunt eyes and open mouth.
"Dying," she whispered in her hard breathing.
"Do you think you be?"
"I know it—taken last night—doctor's gone. Couldn't do anythin'. Worn out, Mary Ann."
"No, Nan, you just think you be. Look at me. I've had twice as much trouble as you."
The dying woman slowly shook her head. "It's been all trouble—nothin' but trouble. Mary Ann, you know the threat I made."
"Don't now—keep still."
"Well, the Lord has taken that out of my heart. Do you think—think you could kiss me, Mary Ann?"
Milford heard the old woman sob, and he walked out beneath the trees where the leaves were falling. The day grew yellow, and brown, and the stars came out, and still he waited, with the leaves falling slowly in the quiet air. The insects sang, and sitting with his back against a tree, he fell asleep. Something touched him. He looked up with a start, and there stood Mrs. Stuvic, her feather sharp in the moonlight. "Drive me home," she said.
On the way home she did not speak, but when the buggy drew up at the gate she said: "If there's a God—and there must be one—I thank him for the tears I've shed this night. Now, you keep still. Turn the pony loose and go home. Don't come into the house. I don't want to see anybody. Keep all my affairs to yourself and you'll make no mistake."
In a pelting rain a funeral passed along the road, and a man who had no time for such affairs, hastening with his milk-cans to the railway station, caught sight of Mrs. Stuvic's face, pressed against the water-streaked glass of a carriage window. He lashed his team to make up for loss of time in turning aside; he wondered at the mysterious tie that could have drawn her out, not indeed on such a day, but at all, for he knew her to be at enmity's edge with neighbors and frosty to every relative. At the station he met Milford, walking up and down beneath the shed. Milford remembered him, Steve Hardy, the man who had given him a "lift" from the station on the day of his coming into the neighborhood. And to his head-shakings, winks, nods, wise mutterings, the new-comer owed much of his reputation for mystery.
"I see your old boss off down the road there goin' to a funeral," said Hardy.
"Did you? It's one of the privileges granted by the constitution of the State."
"Yes. They don't have to take out license to go to funerals, or I don't guess the old woman would er went. Guess all her boarders have gone, or I don't s'pose she'd found the time. Who's dead?"
"Her sister, I believe."
"That so? Then I wonder more than ever. Believe I did hear somethin' about it t'uther evenin', but I was milkin' at the time and I didn't think that she was the old woman's sister. They must have made it up."
"Made what up?"
"Why, the row they had over the line-fence a good while ago. Somebody told me you wanted to buy some calves."
"Yes, I'd like to get a few good ones."
"Well, mine are as good as ever stood on four feet. I guess you mean to settle here permanently. Well, folks that have stirred around a good bit tell me that there ain't a purtier place on the earth. I've had my house full all summer, and there ain't been a word of complaint. Goin' out my way?"
"Not till after the mail comes."
The post office was in a weather-beaten cottage, in the midst of an apple orchard, just across the railway tracks; and of late Milford had become well-acquainted with the postmaster, calling on him early and sitting with him till the last pouch had been thrown off for the day. But not a word had he received from Gunhild. He strove to console himself with the thought that it was too soon, that she had not gone to the country, but a consolation that comes with strife, consoles but poorly. The train came, the mail-pouch was thrown off, and he followed the postmaster to the house, stood close in anxiety till the letters were all put into the pigeon-holes, and then turned sadly away. He took his course through the wet grass, across the fields. Hehalted at the ditch, and in the rain and the gathering dark stood there to think, amid the wind-tangled stems and the rain-shattered blooms of the wild sunflowers. He stepped down into the ditch, deep with mire, and the grim humor of his nickname in the West, "Hell-in-the-Mud," fell upon him like a cowboy's rope. He drew himself out, threw down a handful of grass that he had pulled up by the roots, and strode on, through the green slop of the low land. As he turned in at the gate, to pass through the hickory grove, he saw the light of a lantern moving about in Mrs. Stuvic's barnyard. He spoke to a dog that came scampering to meet him; the light shot upward, came toward him; and he recognized the old woman, bareheaded, with the rain pattering on her gray hair.
"Is that you, Bill? Now what are you pokin' round in this rain for? Come over to the house and get your supper."
"No, I must go home."
"Home? Why, you haven't got any home and never will have."
"That's true," he agreed.
"Not till you go where we took my old sister to-day," she said, letting the lantern down till her face was in the dark. "And just to think it should have come as it did, while I was talkin' about her! I'd been thinkin' about her all day, and I knowed somethin' was goin' to happen. But come on in the house, and don't be standin' here in the rain like a fool. Get away, Jack. I do think he's got less sense than any dog I ever set eyes on. Now, if youdo put your muddy feet on me I'll cut your throat. You just dare to do it, you triflin' whelp! Are you goin' to the house with me, Bill?"
"You're not afraid, are you?" he asked, now that her fear of the dead cat was gone.
"Now you keep still. I'm not afraid of the devil himself. But this is just the sort of a night for me to die. Yes, I'll tell you that."
"I thought you were to die on a cold night, with the wagons creaking along the road."
"That was the plan, but it has been changed. Now I'm goin' to die when the ground is soaked. You don't know Peterson, do you? Well, no matter. But he lived just down the road there not long ago, and a meaner neighbor never breathed. I caught him drivin' his turkeys into my tomato patch. Yes. And his well went dry, and he come to my house and wanted to haul off water in barrels. Yes. And I wouldn't let him. And what did he say? He said he'd see my grave full of water. And now just think of what I've had to contend with all my life. Think of me lyin' there in the water, with that feller prancin' around!"
"But the chances are that you'll outlive him, Mrs. Stuvic."
"Yes, you bet, that's what I'm goin' to do," she said, her voice strong with encouragement. "I'll outlive the whole pack of 'em, and then mebbe they'll let me alone. Well, I'm not goin' to stand here any longer like a fool."
When Milford reached home he found the Professor warm in a disquisition delivered to the hiredman. He hopped up from his chair and seized Milford by the hand. "Ha," said he, "I was just telling our friend here that exact memory is not the vital part of true culture. It is the absorption of the idea rather than the catching of the words."
"Sit down," said Milford. "But what does he know about it? Woman is his culture, and he's not only caught her idea, but has learned her by heart."
"Now you're trottin'," spoke the hired man. "If there's anything in a woman's nature that I don't know, why, it must have come to her in the last hour or so."
The Professor crossed his legs and slowly nodded his head. "You ask," said he, speaking to Milford, "what does he know about it? A man never knows unless he learns. Even to the ignorant, wisdom may be music. The man whose mind has been dried and hardened in the field of harsh toil, may sip the delicious luxury, the god-flavored juice of knowledge. Wisdom cannot be concealed. You may lock it in an iron box, but it will seep through."
Upon entering the room Milford had seen the hired man put aside an earthen ewer, and now he knew that cider had been brought from the cellar.
"Nearly all utterances upon knowledge, human nature or life, are trite," the learned man proceeded. "And so are herbs and flowers trite, the stars in the heavens common, but once in a while there appears from the ground a shoot so new that botany marvels, a star in the sky so strange that astronomers gape in the wonder of a discovery. And I, humble as the lowly earth, may sprout a new thought."
"I was going to suggest more cider," said Milford, "but I guess you've had enough."
"Ha! enough and not too much. To pause at the line, a virtue; to cross but an inch, a vice. Do you know of a publication that would buy a paper upon the decadence of the modern drama? I have one in my head, a hot and withering blast of fierce contempt."
"The last play I saw was a hummer," said the hired man. "There was a whole lot of dancin' and cavortin' before they got down to it, fellers givin' each other gags, and women singin' songs. But when they got down to her she was there—a sort of a Mormon play; and they had a bed that reached clear across the platform."
"Melpomene rioting as a bawd," declared the Professor. "I could elucidate if permitted one more russet cup, drawn from the oak." He looked at Milford. "One more, and let it be russet."
"No more to-night, Professor," said Milford. "I am going to get a bite to eat pretty soon. Won't you join me?"
"To eat, to clog the stomach, to stupefy the nimble brain, that fine machinery of wheels invisible and pulleys more delicate than the silkworm's dream of a gauzy thread! No, I will not eat, but I will drink—one more russet cup."
"Just one," said Milford.
"I spoke one, one in true sincerity; and if I squeeze the gentle hand of hospitality till the bones crack, and ask for more—give it to me," he roared, throwing his head back.
"Bob, bring him a cup of cider," said Milford.
"This has been an off day with me," the Professor remarked, following the hired man with his eyes. "The mill shut down to undergo repairs, and I am a boy out of school." He listened, as if straining his ears to catch the babble of the cider. "I sat about the house, with a dry book, to feel the contrast of the rain; I sniffed the dust of an Elizabethan's pedantry—and then my wife and my daughter began on me. I beggared myself and got them a sofa, and now they want a set of chairs. I made with them a treaty of peace, and, barbarians, they violated it. What a reproach it is to woman to see a man think! She must stir him up, scatter his faculties."
"Not all women," said Milford.
"Ha! About how many women have you married, sir?"
Mitchell came in with the cider, and the Professor reached for it. He placed the cup on the table and gazed at the bursting beads as if counting them. He drank, smacked his mouth, and no whip-lash could have popped keener; he gazed down into the cup, regretting the fall of the yellow tide. He leaned back, with his eyes turned upward, and breathed long; he whistled softly as if to coax back a thought that had escaped him; he leaned forward, drained the cup, and sadly put it down, shoving it far across the table. "Just within arm's reach of a temptation to ask for more," he said, thrusting forth his hand. "But I will not. My word has been given. Yes, about how many women have you married?"
"Well, just about one fewer than yourself if you've married only one," Milford answered.
The Professor's eyes snapped. "Was that word fewer contemplated or was it an accident? Do you study to find such niceties of distinction?"
"I don't give a snap for niceties of distinction, Professor; I don't know them, in fact. They might have been hammered into my head once, but they were jolted out by bucking horses. Sometimes we forced them out. We didn't want to be hampered. I knew a rancher, an Oxford man, who wilfully clawed the polish off his tongue. He wanted to live down among men, he said, and the rougher the better. One day I saw him get down off his horse to kick a book that some one had dropped in the trail."
"I don't blame him for kicking a book that he might find out there," said the Professor.
"You don't? A scholar lost an Æschylus on the prairie, and some one might have kicked it."
"Ha! I draw you on apace. We'll discuss the ancient goat-song next."
"No, I'd rather talk about sheep and calves. I know more about them. I never look at a learned man that I don't fancy him weary of his burden. Think of a professor's moldy pack, dead languages, dried thought——"
"Hold on, my dear friend. I was a professor, and I had no such pack. Like the modern peddler, I carried the wants of to-day. But, after all, I agree with you in the main. I know that the average doctor of learning is not able to seevirtue in the new. To him old platitude is of more value than new vigor. And with one more cup I could——"
"No more."
"Not in the interest of clear elucidation?"
"Not in any interest that you can fish up. I don't want you to go home drunk."
"Drunk! Why, my dear boy, I hadn't thought of such a thing; it hasn't entered my head. You mistake me, and I am here to refute it. A man needs something beyond his needs; there are times when we look for something aside from our own natural forces; there are wants which nature was ages in supplying. Look at tobacco. The Greeks missed it as they sat deep in the discussion of their philosophy. They did not know what it was they were missing, but they knew it was something and I know it was tobacco. But be that as it may. You have said that I shall have no more, and I bow." He twisted his beard and seemed to force into himself the spirit of resignation. They heard a tramping on the veranda. A voice called Mitchell. He went to the door and opened it, told some one to come in, and then stepped out. There came a mumbling, and then a profane exclamation. Mitchell stepped back into the room and slammed the door. He sat down and leaned over with his arms upon his knees. The Professor looked at him, still twisting his beard. Milford asked him what had happened. He looked up with a sour snarl. "It's all off," he said.
"What's all off?" Milford asked.
"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," Mitchell 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 getsBob," 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 institution 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 shied 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.
Early the next morning Milford was leading a horse out of the barn when he met the Professor at the door. For a moment the scholar stood puffing the short breath of his haste; he had not picked his way, for his clothes were bespattered with mud, as if in his eagerness he had split the middle of the road.
"You're out early," said Milford.
"But not early enough. One who has been deceived is always too late. Mr. Milford, I have been grossly imposed upon by—by your generosity, sir. That paper, the medical treatise. It fell out of your coat. I found it this morning. Can you explain?"
"Well, I haven't time just now," said Milford, preparing to mount the horse. "I've got to ride over to Hardy's to see about some calves. We'll talk about the treatise some other time."
"No, sir," the Professor replied, holding up his hand. "We must talk about it now. You were to take that paper to the Doctor's wife. You brought me the money for it. You said that she liked it. And this morning it fell out of the pocket of your coat."
"It does seem a little strange, I admit."
"Strange! No, it is not strange. It is a generous outrage. I don't know what else to call it. I havebeen tricked, laughed at in the pocket of your treacherous coat."
Milford mounted the horse. The Professor took hold of the bridle rein. "You must not leave me thus. I have been left too long to simper and smirk in self-cajolery, with an inward swell to think that my pen had paid my insurance. You must explain."
"All right, I'll tell you. I thought well of your paper, you understand, but when I got over to the house and faced the woman, my nerve failed me, and I couldn't ask her to buy it."
"But you praised it," said the Professor, with a gulp, still holding the bridle reins.
"Yes, and it was all right, but I lost my nerve. I had conjured up a sort of speech to make to her, but it slipped me, and then my nerve failed. It wasn't my fault, for I liked the paper all right enough, you understand."
"But you brought the money. How about that?"
"Well, I had a few dollars, and I borrowed the rest from the old woman. But that needn't worry you, for I paid her back when I sold my oats. It's all right."
"Needn't worry me! Why, you fail to catch the spirit of my distress. Your act leaves me in debt. Why did you do it, Milford? Why?"
Milford looked down at him, his eyes half closed. "You'd acknowledged yourself a thief. You said you'd stolen a dog."
"Yes, I know," the Professor agreed, glancing about. "I know, but what of that?"
"Well, it made you my brother. And don't you think a man ought to help his brother in distress? Don't let it worry you. Don't think about it. If you can ever pay it back, all right. If you can't, it's still all right, so there you are. Let me go."
"Milford, in the idiom of the day, I am not a dead beat. I do not like the term, and I employ it only out of necessity. Beat is well enough, but dead is lacking in the significance of natural growth. I hope that you give me credit for seriousness. I am not a flippant man; I am innately solemn, knowing that the only progressive force in the human family is earnestness. But sometimes in the hour of my heaviest solemnity I may appear light; and why? In the hope that I may deceive my own heart into a few moments of forgetful levity. And you say that you are going over to look at some calves. Now that gives me an idea. I can fatten two calves very nicely—could keep them all winter and get a very good price for them in the spring. I abhor debt, but do you think you could make arrangements for me to get two, or three? Do you think you could?"
"The man I am to deal with is close and I don't believe he'll give credit."
"Very likely he might object. I didn't know, however, but that you might make some arrangements with him, and let me settle with you afterward. Such things have been done in trade, you know."
"Yes, but I'm not prepared to do it now, Professor."
"Well, you know best. But I want you to understand that the money you advanced me shall be repaid."
"I understand that."
"But you must understand it thoroughly. I am afraid that you do not grasp the full significance of it."
"I think I do. Well, I must go."
"Yes, and so must I. One of these days, Milford, you will think well of me."
"I do now, Professor. You are my brother."
"Ah! I have strengths that you——"
"Your brother on account of your weaknesses, Professor."
"I would rather that our kinship rested upon other qualities, but we will not discuss the question, since we both of us are in a hurry. Therefore, I bid you good-morning and wish you good luck."
When Milford returned at noontime the hired man gave him a letter. It was from Gunhild. In a Michigan community she had found, not a field, indeed, but a garden-patch for her labors. "The pay is very small, but it is an encouragement," she said. "It has been hard to find a place, and I was willing to accept almost anything. The people are not awake to art; to them life demands something sterner, and I have come to believe that everything but a necessity is a waste of time, but then what I do is a necessity, and I find my excuse to myself in that. I had a letter from Mrs. Goodwin a few days ago, and I also met a woman who had seen her recently. She has made another discovery, amusical genius on the piano, a girl whom she found in a mission school. I take this to mean that she has put me aside, for with her the new blots out the old. And this makes my success as a teacher all the more——" Here she had erased several words and substituted "needful." "She will never remind me of my obligation, I am sure, but I cannot forget it. I feel that she was disappointed in me, but it is not my fault, for I all the time told her that I was not to be great. I will make no false modesty to hide that I have thought of you many times. I dreamed of you in English. This may not mean much to you, but I nearly always dream in Norwegian, and persons who speak English to me when I am awake, speak Norwegian in my dreams. But you did not. I thought I saw you standing in a ditch and the rain was falling, and it was night. I ran to you, and you spoke the name they used to call you in the West. It was the ditch you helped me over. I had been thinking about it in the day, and was sorry because the sunflowers must be all dead. I had to send some money to my uncle. He lost his place on the street-car, but they have taken him back. He has five children and cannot afford to be idle. Oh, that was a beautiful summer out there. Do you remember the night at the house where they said the spirits are? I can see you now, kneeling on the floor. I will be bold and say that I wanted to kneel beside you. Will there ever come another summer like that? It was my first rest. But I cannot hope for another soon. Mrs. Goodwin will not want me to come out withher next year. She will have with her the musical genius then. But we shall see each other. I feel that you spoke the truth when you said that all—something could not keep us apart. I board at the house of a man who had this season a large potato field. I went out when the digging time was at hand, and behind the plow I saw a woman from Norway and I wanted to help her, but it would not do for these people to know that I have ever worked in a field. The teacher of the public school spoke of me as the graceful young woman, and I thought that it might please you to know that he had said it."
"Please me?" said Milford, talking aloud to himself. "Blast his impudence, what right——"
"Anything wrong, Bill?" Mitchell inquired.
"Oh, no, everything's all right."
"Letter from her, ain't it?"
"Yes. She's in Michigan."
"I used to go with a woman from Michigan," said the hired man. "And I thought I'd like to marry her, but I found out she'd been married twice, and I didn't feel like bein' no third choice."
"I didn't suppose you'd object to that," Milford replied, folding his letter.
"Well, I may be more particular than most fellers, but it sorter stuck in my crop. I guess it's a good plan to let all the women alone. For awhile at least," he added. "The best of 'em don't bring a man nothin' but trouble. What does your girl say in her letter?"
"Oh, nothing much. She's teaching."
"I guess she's a pretty good sort of a woman. Are you goin' to bring her here?"
"Not if I know myself."
"Yes, but a feller that keeps on foolin' with a woman gits so after a while he don't know himself. What's your object in not wantin' to bring her here?"
"I've got something else to do first. She may not want me after I've told her—the truth."
"Then don't do it, Bill. Talk to a woman all you're a mind to, but don't tell her any more truth than you can help. It gives her the upper hand of you."
"I don't know, Bob, that I'd be warranted in accepting your theories about woman."
"Mebbe not, but I'm the chap that's had the experience."
Milford replied in effect that experience does not always make us wise. It sometimes tends to weaken rather than to make us strong. It might make freshness stale; it is a thief that steals enthusiasm; it enjoins caution at the wrong time. He took out his letter and read it again, studying the form of each word. The hired man said that he had received many a letter, had read them over and over, but that did not alter the fact that the writer thereof had proved false to him. "I don't want to pile up trash in no man's path," he said, "but I want to give it out strong that it's a mighty hard matter for a woman to be true even to herself. Look how I've been treated."
Milford did not reply. He studied his letter, and the words, "wanted to kneel beside you," gathered a melody, and were sweet music to him.
Now and then there was a blustery day, but good weather remained till late in November. But the ground tightened with the cold, and a snow-whirlwind came from the Northwest. Nowhere had the autumn been fuller of color, but a hiss and a snarl had buried it all beneath the crackly white of winter. Windmills creaked in the fierce blast, sucking smoky water from the ground, to gush, to drip, and then to hang from the spout a frozen beard. Black-capped milkmen, with flaps drawn down over ears, sat upon their wagons, appearing in their garb as if the hangman had rigged them up for a final journey. To look upon the frozen fields and to stand in the groaning woods it did not seem possible that there had ever been a day of lazy heat and nodding bloom. At tightening midnight the flinty lake cracked with a running shriek. The dawn was a gray shudder, the sunrise a shiver of pale red, and then a black cloud blot-out and more snow. A day that promised to be good-tempered often ended in a fury; and sometimes, when it seemed that nature could not be more harsh, the wind would soften, a thaw come with rain, and then another freeze with a snow-storm fiercer than before. Sometimes thunder growled, a lost mood of summer in the upper air; sometimes a lagging autumn bird waswhirled through the freezing wind. And with it all the Yankee man was full of spirit, almost happy, happy as the Yankee well can be. His cool nature demanded a fight with the cold. The ears of all his ancestors had been frozen in bleak New England. His religion had been nurtured in a snow-drift, and unlike the breath of a freezing rabbit, did not melt an inch of it. In the howl of a cutting wind he heard a psalm to his vengeful Deity. And to-day the winter reminds him that his army was victorious in the summer South. It was a fight of Winter against Summer.
Milford had no idle time upon his hands. When not at work in the barn he was trading among the farmers. They called him sharp, and this was a compliment. He had beaten Steve Hardy in a trade, and this was praise. An honest sort of a fellow is an eyesore to the genuine Yankee. He must have other virtues—thrift. There was but one drawback in the Rollins community: The land was too productive. It yielded a good living without the full exercise of the Yankee quality. The Yankee is happiest when strongly opposed. His religion was sweetest when he had to pray with one eye open, sighting at the enemy, the dragoon sent by the king to break up the Conventicle, or the American Indian come to burn the meeting-house.
The winter had brought out Milford's strong points. He doubled his money on a flock of sheep. Fathers spoke of it to their daughters. Mothers asked their sons if they were acquainted with Mr. Milford. Mrs. Stuvic was proud of him.
"Oh, I knowed what I was doin'," she said one night, sitting near the hot stove in Milford's dining-room. "You can't fool me. I know lots, I tell you. Do you know the Bunker girl? Well, she was at my house yesterday, and she talked like she knowed you but wanted to know you better. Now put down that newspaper and talk to me. Do you know her?"
"I think I've met her," said Milford.
"You think you have. Well, a woman has taken mighty little hold of a man when he thinks he's met her. She'd make you a good wife; yes, you bet!"
"I don't want a wife, good or bad."
"Oh, you keep still. What the deuce are you workin' for? You know there's a woman somewhere waitin' for you."
"And if there is, why should I want to marry the Bunker girl?"
"Now listen at him! Why, I didn't know but you'd got tired of foolin' with the other one. Who is she? That tall critter that was out here? Well, I don't know about her, with her art. Art the cat's foot! You'd better marry a woman that knows how to do housework. She may be all right for summer, but you'd better marry a woman for winter. Don't you think so, Bob?"
"For winter and summer, I should think," said the hired man. "But I married one for winter, and she went away along in July. But I guess I could get her again."
"And he's just about fool enough to take her," Milford spoke up. "Why, she'd run away again."
"I don't think that, Bill. I guess she's got more sense now."
"At any rate, she's got more sense than you," said the old woman. "She had sense enough to run away and you didn't. But I hear that somebody else run away, Bill. I heard that you left a wife out West."
"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 Mitchell'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 shiver 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 passed 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," Mitchell 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."
"I don't know anything, Mrs. Stuvic. I can only hope."
She turned loose his wrist and shoved herself back further from him. "You can only hope. You mean that you're only a fool. That's what you mean. What do you want to hope for? Why don't you find out? What's all the smart men doin' that they don't find out? Talk to me about the world gettin' wiser! Oh, they can invent their machines and all that, but why don't they find out the truth?"
"Some of the wisest of them think they have found out long ago," Milford replied. "Don't you see the churches? Somebody must believe that the truth is known or there wouldn't be so many churches."
"Churches," she sneered, "yes, churches. But I don't believe in 'em, and you don't neither. Same old thing all the time; believe, believe, nothin' but believe. Well, I'm goin' home. I see you don'tknow any more than I do. We're all a pack of fools."
Mitchell said that he was going her way, and she told him to come on. At the door going out they met the Professor coming in. The old woman fell back as if she had seen a ghost. She declared that for a moment he was Old Lewson, just as he looked on the day when last he urged her to accept his faith. She sat down to recover breath. The Professor assured her that he meant no harm. Any resemblance that he might bear to the living or the dead was wholly unintentional on his part. She told him to shut up, that he was a fool. He acknowledged it with a bow, and said that this fact also was wholly unintentional.
"You pretend to be so smart," she said. "Yes, but why don't you know the truth?"
"I should know it, madam, were I to hear it."
"Oh, you get out! You don't know half the time what you're talkin' about. What's to become of us all? That's what I want to know."
The Professor sat down. The hired man stood at the door. Milford leaned back in his chair. The old woman looked at the learned man and repeated her question. He began to say something about philosophy, and she broke in with a contemptuous snort and the cat's foot. She did not want philosophy; she wanted the truth. The Professor attempted to persuade her that philosophy was the truth, and she fluttered like a hen. It was nothing of the sort; it was ignorance put in big words. What she wanted was the truth.
"But if you won't listen I can't give it to you," said the Professor. "You cut me off at the beginning. Now, you say that what you want is the truth. You demand an answer to your question of what is to become of us all, after this life. You want me to answer it in a word, when the books that have been written on the subject would sink the biggest ship afloat."
"Yes, and you don't know anythin' about it. What I want to know is, can we come back? Answer me that."
"Madam, in my opinion——"