CHAPTER V.

NEEDED HIS SPIRITUAL HELP.

Early the next morning, before the clanging bell had shattered the boarder's dream, the old woman hastened to Milford's cottage. When she surprised him at breakfast, he thought that possibly the old man might have called at some time during the night, and that she had come to bring the good news, but this early hope was killed by the darkness of her brow. "I've come over to tell you that if ever you say a word about what happened last night, I'll drive you out of the county," she said, her lips parted and her teeth sharp-set.

"Why, nothing did happen," he replied with a laugh.

"No, you bet! But don't you ever dare to say that I expected anythin' to happen. I won't allow any old man, dead or alive, to make a monkey of me. Well, I'll eat breakfast with you. What, is this all you've got, just bread and bacon? Conscience alive! you are livin' hard."

"I can't afford anything else," he replied, looking down upon his rough fare.

"Well, you ought to get rich at this rate. There's not one man in a thousand that would be willin' to put up with it. What's your aim, anyway?"

"To make money."

"Money! It's some woman, that's what it is. Well, you're a fool. What thanks do you reckon she'll ever give you? She'll growl because you didn't make more. I'll get back. I don't like your grub. But recollect, now," she added, as she turned toward the door, "that if you say a word about what I expected to happen last night, I'll drive you out of the county." She went out, but her head soon reappeared at the door. "Bill,"

she said, "there's a sucker born every minute."

"And sometimes twins," he replied. She leaned against the door-facing to laugh, not in the jollity of good-humor, but in the sharp and racking t.i.tter of soured self-pity. "Sometimes twins--yes, you bet!"

"If I didn't have a word for it that I couldn't dispute, I'd think that I was the weakling of a set of triplets," said Milford.

"Oh, you'll do. There's no flies buzzing around you, I tell you. Well, I'll leave you, sure enough now."

For a time, he clattered the rough dishes, clearing them out of the way, despising the work--a loathing shared by all human beings. Mitch.e.l.l was at the barn, among the horses, and there came the occasional and almost rhythmic tap, tap, tap of his currycomb against the thin wall. In the damp sags of the corn field, the plow could not be used with advantage, and Milford a.s.signed to himself the work of covering this territory with a hoe. The advisory board, men who drove past in milk wagons, condemned it as a piece of folly. They said that a man might wear himself out among the clods, and to no great purpose, either; but Milford appeared to rejoice in his conquest over the combative soil. Steve Hardy said that he must be doing penance in the hot sun for some crime committed in the cool shade. But the old woman had given it out that her man was working for a woman, and the women commended it. How soft is the voice of woman when she speaks of one who sweats for her s.e.x! They sat upon the veranda, watching Milford as he delved in the blaze of the sun. It was a romance. Afar off there must be a sighing woman, waiting for him.

Mrs. Blakemore could see her, and she sighed with her, watching the hero dealing the hard licks of love. With her scampering son, she crossed the field, going toward the lake, the morning after the expected visit from Lewson. She was determined to speak to Milford. Mrs. Stuvic had just said, "That man is killin' himself for a woman." On she came, her feet faring ill among the clods. She stumbled and laughed, and the boy, in budding derision of woman's weakness, shouted contemptuously.

"Why did you come across this rough place?" Milford asked, planting his hoe in front of him. To her he was a man behind the flag-staff of his honor.

"Because it's so much nearer to the lake," she answered. The boy cried out that he had found a rattlesnake, and proceeded to attack with clods a rusty toad.

"Come away, Bobbie. He'll bite you." She saw that it was a toad, and she knew that it would not bite him; but motherly instinct demanded that she must warn him. "Oh, it's such a jaunt, coming across here. Really, I don't see how you can stand it to work so long in the hot sun. Let me bring you some cool water."

She felt that she ought to do something for him. He smiled, and glanced down at her thin-shod feet. He felt that there was genuineness in this slim creature, and he was moved to reply: "No, I thank you. Your sympathy ought to relieve a man of thirst."

"Really, that is so nice of you. No wonder all the women like you when you say such kind things. But there is one thing I wish, Mr. Milford--I wish you'd taken more to my husband. He's awfully low-spirited, and I'm so distressed about him. He's worried nearly to death in town, and he comes out here and mopes about. I didn't know but you might say something to interest him. He'll be out again this evening. Will you please come over to the house to see him?"

He thought of his weariness after his day of strain, of his own melancholy that came with the shades of night. He thought that, in comparison with himself, the man ought to be boyishly happy; but he told her that to come would give him great pleasure.

"Oh, I'm so glad to hear you say so. Tell him of fights, of men that wouldn't give up, but fought their way out of hard luck. Tell him what you are doing. I know it's preposterous to ask you, but will you do it?"

Her eyes were as bright as the dew caught by the cobweb, shaded by the clod, he thought--as he stood there leaning on the handle of his hoe, looking at her; and he read woman's great chapter of anxious affection.

"I will tell him of a man who failed in everything, and then found that he had a fortune in his wife," he said. She put out her hand toward him, and s.n.a.t.c.hed it back to hide her eyes for a moment. She turned toward the boy, and in a cool voice commanded him not to romp so hard over the rough ground. Milford saw a soul that loved to be loved, that lived to be loved, a soul that may not be the most virtuous, but which is surely the most beautiful. He did not presume to understand women; he estimated her by a "hunch" as to whether she was good or bad. He remembered that he had jumped upon his pony and galloped off to the further West, to keep from falling in love with one. And since that time he had felt himself safe, so into this woman's eyes he could look without fear.

"Yes," she said, "tell him that love is the greatest estate. It will make him think, coming from a man. Poor George was in the hardware business, and he failed not long ago, and I don't know why, for I'm sure I saved every cent I could. What you tell him will have a good deal of weight."

Milford had to laugh at this. "I don't know why," said he.

"Because you are a good man."

Milford sneered. "Madam, I'm a crank." He begged her pardon for his harshness. Her forgiveness came with a smile. He told her that he was as morbid as a mad dog, and he said it with such energy that she drew back from him. "But you won't fail to see George, will you? Come on, Bobbie. Oh, I forgot to tell you of some new arrivals--a Mrs. Goodwin, wife of a well-known doctor in town, and her companion, one of the handsomest young women I ever saw--a Norwegian girl, as graceful as one of her native pines. You won't fail to come, will you? Good-bye."

The evening was sultry, with a lingering smear of red in the western sky. At the supper table Milford nodded in his chair. The hired man spoke to him, and he looked up, his batting eyes fighting off sleep.

"Them slashes have about got the best of you, haven't they, Bill? I'd let that corn go before I'd dig my life out among them tough clods. I'm givin' it to you straight."

"I don't doubt it. But it will pay in the end. I've come to the conclusion that all hard work pays. It pays a man's mind, and he couldn't get a much better reward. But I'd like to go to bed, just the same."

"Why don't you? Not goin' to dig any more to-night, are you?"

"No, but I've got to go over to Mrs. Stuvic's to see a man."

"A man?" Mitch.e.l.l asked, with a wink.

"I said a man."

"Yes, I know you said a man."

"Then why not a man?"

"Well, I don't know, only it seems to me that if I was as tired as you look I wouldn't go to see no man's man."

"How about any woman's woman?"

"Well, that's different. You can put off seein' a man, and you might put off seein' a woman, but you don't want to. But maybe you ain't as big a chump about a woman as I am."

Milford said that the wisest man among wise men could easily be a fool among women. Solomon's wisdom, diluted by woman, became a weak quality.

"Except once," he added, taking down his pipe from the clock shelf, "and that was when he called for a sword to cut a child in two to divide it between two mothers; but if the question had been between himself and a woman, I don't know but he'd have got the worst of it."

It was the hired man's turn to clear away the dishes, and Milford sat smoking in a muse. Night flies buzzed about the lamp, and the mosquito, winged sting of the darkness, sang his sharp tune over the rain-water barrel beneath the window. The hired man put away the dishes, and went into his sh.e.l.l-like bedroom, a thin addition built against the house.

Milford heard him sit upon the edge of his bed, heard his heavy shoes drop upon the floor, heard him stretch out upon the creaking slats to lie a log till the peep of day. The tired laborer's pipe fell to the floor. He got up with a straining shrug of his stiff shoulders, s.n.a.t.c.hed off his sticking garments, bathed in a tub, put on clean clothing, and set out to keep his appointment. He muttered as he walked along the road. He halted upon a knoll in the oat-field, and stood to breathe the cool air from the low-lying meadow. As he drew near to the house, he heard the shouts of children and the imploring tones of nurses and mothers, begging them to go to bed. A lantern hanging under the eaves of the veranda shed light upon women eager to hear gossip from the city apartment house, and men, who, though breathing a fresh escape from business, had already begun to inquire as to the running of the trains.

In the dooryard, a dull fire smoked in a tin pan,--a "smudge" to drive off the mosquitoes. Some one flailed the piano. The Dutch girl, singing a song of the lowlands, was grabbing clothes off a line, with no fear of running over an old man. Mrs. Blakemore and George were sitting at a corner of the veranda, apart from the general nest of gossipers. Bobbie had been bribed to bed. The woman got up and gave Milford her hand. In his calloused palm it felt like the soft paw of a kitten. George nodded with an indistinct grunt.

"Well, how is everything?" Milford asked.

"Rotten," George answered. His wife sighed, and brushed off a white moth that had lighted on his coat sleeve. "But it will get better," she said.

"Don't you think so, Mr. Milford?"

"Bound to," Milford agreed. "I'm a firm believer in everything coming out all right. I've seen it tested time and again. Hope is the world's best bank account." George looked at him. "That's all right enough," he admitted.

"Hope is the soul's involuntary prayer," his wife observed, and he looked at her. "That's all well enough, too," said he, "but what's the use of tying a ribbon around your neck in a snow-storm, when what you need is an overcoat? A man can wrap all the hope in the world around himself, and then freeze to death."

"That's true," said Milford, catching sight of the woman's eyes as she drew a long breath, "but hope may lead him out of the storm. Pardon me, but I infer that you've met business reverses."

"Struck the ceiling," said George.