"You are born to be a great man," said Mitch.e.l.l. "The cards are shuffled and cut that way and you can"t help it. What are you goin" to do now?"
"I"m going to sleep for a few hours and then get to work."
"When are you goin" to take another lesson?"
"Day after to-morrow."
"Ain"t that feller a bird?"
"He understands his business."
"About when do you think you can tackle your job again?"
"Not till I have learned how. I"m going to get some gloves and have you box with me between times."
He went into the house and lay down, and when Mitch.e.l.l came in he was asleep with his head on his fist.
CHAPTER XIV.
PEEPED IN AT HIM.
Blakemore came out on Sunday morning, snapping his watch and complaining against the pall-bearing march of time. He was full of business. His pockets were stuffed with papers. He made figures on the backs of envelopes as he sat at the table. He asked after Milford. His wife said that the place had somehow lost its charm for Mr. Milford. Mrs. Goodwin and Miss Strand had seen him in the road. Mrs. Stuvic, standing near, pressed her lips close together. She shook her head. She did not understand him, she declared. Lately he had been seen in Antioch. She did not know what business could have taken him there.
"You may not be supposed to know," said George, making his figures.
"Now you keep still," she replied. "I am supposed to know more than you think for. I wasn"t born yesterday, and I"m goin" to live longer than any of you, I tell you that."
"It"s very natural for us to expect every one else to die," said George.
"It"s a pretty hard matter to picture one"s self as dead. But the old fellow is coming along yonder whetting his scythe as he comes."
"George," said his wife, "don"t talk to her that way."
"Oh, let him talk," the old woman spoke up. "I don"t care what he says.
Goes in at one ear and comes out at the other, with me. I"ll live to see him cold, I"ll tell you that."
"Oh, please don"t talk that way, Mrs. Stuvic; you give me the shudders.
By the way, Mr. Dorsey has gone back to town, hasn"t he?"
"Yes," Mrs. Stuvic answered. "And he owes me, too."
"That"s what you say about everybody," George declared. "You"ll be saying it about me, next."
"Well, you did owe me till to-day; and see that you don"t do it again.
But that feller Dorsey"ll pay. He"ll be back again in about two weeks.
He says I"ve got the finest place in the county."
"The "peach,"" George whispered, as Mrs. Goodwin and Gunhild came into the dining-room. His wife pulled at him. The boy wanted to know what he had said. For a wonder he had not heard. His mind was among the green apples in the orchard. George bowed to the ladies and began to tell them about the great improvement in business. The banks had plenty of money to lend. Real estate, the true pulse of the times, had begun to throb with a new life. Mrs. Goodwin did not think that there had been any improvement. The Doctor had written that money was scarce. Every one complained of slow collections. George asked the Norwegian if there were any sale for pictures.
"There is no sale for mine," she answered. "I do not expect to sell any."
"Then," said George, "it"s a waste of time to paint them."
"I do not paint," the girl replied. "My ambition was not dressed in colors."
Mrs. Goodwin smiled upon her, and Mrs. Blakemore drew her husband"s attention to what she termed the bright aptness of the remark. George said that it did not make any difference whether art was done with a brush or pencil, it was a waste of time if it failed to sell; and hereupon Mrs. Stuvic began to sniff as a preliminary to an important statement.
"A man boarded with me a while last winter that could knock "em all out when it comes to makin" pictures with a pen," she said. "He drew a bird without takin" his pen up from the paper, and it looked for all the world like it was flyin". But when that was said all was said. He wan"t no manner account. He went away owin" me. Now, what does he want to go to Antioch for? I"d just like for somebody to tell me that."
"The man that drew the bird?" George spoke up.
"Oh, you keep still. I mean Milford."
"Probably the woman he"s been working for so hard has moved into the neighborhood," said George. Mrs. Stuvic declared that you never could tell what a man was working for. No man was worth trusting. She knew; she had tried them. Milford was no better than the rest of them. Why didn"t he explain himself? Why didn"t he stand out where every one could see him? She had defended him. She was getting tired of it. He had not rewarded her with his confidence. He came a stranger and had been a stranger ever since. One of these days he might set fire to the house and run away.
"You shall not talk about him so," the girl declared. "No one shall abuse him."
"Good for you," Mrs. Stuvic cried. "I"ve been fightin" his battles all along and I"m glad to get some help. Why, she looks like a cat, don"t she? And it"s what I like to see, I tell you. But it"s usually the way; a man works for one woman and is took up for and defended by another."
"He is not working for any woman, madam," said Gunhild. "No woman has any claim on him."
Mrs. Blakemore shook her head. "With that dark, handsome face it would be difficult long to escape the claim of a woman."
"Come off," said George. "I don"t see anything so killing about him."
"Men never see killing features in man," his wife replied. "They are left for softer eyes to discover."
"Oh," he rejoined, looking worriedly at her.
"The "peach,"" she whispered. "Am I to hear that again?"
He scratched upon an envelope and handed to her the words: "I give in.
Let us call it even and quits."
Mrs. Goodwin looked at Gunhild as if by a new light. Next in importance to the discovery of genius itself, is the discovery that genius is picking its way along the briary path of love, lifting a th.o.r.n.y bough in bloom to peep blushingly from a hiding place, or boldly to tear through the brambles out into the open, and in honest resentment defy the wondering gaze of the common eye. It would be a pretty sight to see this girl in love, the woman mused. She did not wish to see her married to a man who labored in a field; but it would be delicious to see her love him and hating herself for it, fighting a rosy battle with her heart.
There was no romance in loving an "available" man; there was no suffering in it, and how empty was a love that did not swallow a midnight sob! She asked Gunhild to walk out into the woods with her.
They crossed a low, marshy place where pickerel split the trashy water in the spring of the year, and strolled up a slope into the woods. They gathered flowers, talking of things that interested neither of them; they found an old log covered with moss and here they sat down to rest.
It was always sad to feel that the summer would soon be gone, the elderly woman said, gazing at a soldierly mullein stalk, nodding its yellow head. More summers were coming, and the leaves and the flowers would be the same, the gra.s.s as green, the birds as full of happy life; but the heart could not be turned back to live over the hours and the days--only, in dreaming, in reminders of the time forever gone. To the youthful, two summers are twins; to the older, they are relatives; to the aged, strangers.
"You make me sad when you talk that way," said the girl.
"My dear child, a sadness to-day may be food for sweet reflection in the future. Indeed, it would even be well for you to suffer now."
"But I do not want to suffer. I do not see the need of it."