by Don Marquis
CHAPTER XXIII
Fur my part, as the train kept getting further and further north, myfeelings kept getting more and more mixed. It come to me that I might besteering straight fur a bunch of trouble. The feeling that sadness andmelancholy and seriousness was laying ahead of me kept me from reallyenjoying them dollar-apiece meals on the train. It was Martha that doneit. All this past and gone love story I had been hearing about remindedme of Martha. And I was steering straight toward her, and no way out ofit. How did I know but what that there girl might be expecting fur tomarry me, or something like that? Not but what I was awful in love withher whilst we was together. But it hadn't really set in on me verydeep. I hadn't forgot about her right away. But purty soon I had got toforgetting her oftener than I remembered her. And now it wasn't no usetalking--I jest wasn't in love with Martha no more, and didn't haveno ambition to be. I had went around the country a good bit, and gotintrusted in other things, and saw several other girls I liked purtywell. Keeping steady in love with jest one girl is mighty hard if youare moving around a good bit.
But I was considerable worried about Martha. She was an awful romancefulkind of girl. And even the most sensible kind is said to be fools aboutgetting their hearts broke and pining away and dying over a feller. Iwould hate to think Martha had pined herself sick.
I couldn't shut my eyes to the fact we was engaged to each other legal,all right. And if she wanted to act mean about it and take it to a courtit would likely be binding on me. Then I says to myself is she is meanenough to do that I'll be derned if I don't go to jail before I marryher, and stay there.
And then my conscience got to working inside of me agin. And a pictureof her getting thin and not eating her vittles regular and waiting andwaiting fur me to show up, and me never doing it, come to me. And I feltsorry fur poor Martha, and thought mebby I would marry her jest to keepher from dying. Fur you would feel purty tough if a girl was to get sostuck on you it killed her. Not that I ever seen that really happen,either; but first and last there has been considerable talk about it.
It wasn't but what I liked Martha well enough. It was the idea ofgetting married, and staying married, made me feel so anxious. Beingmarried may work out all right fur some folks. But I knowed it neverwould work any with me. Or not fur long. Because why should I want to betied down to one place, or have a steady job? That would be a mean wayto live.
Of course, with a person that was the doctor's age it would bedifferent. He had done his running around and would be willing to settledown now, I guessed. That is, if he could get his differences with thishere Buckner family patched up satisfactory. I wondered whether he wouldbe able to or not. Him and Colonel Tom were talking constant on thetrain all the way up. From the little stretches of their talk I couldn'thelp hearing, I guessed each one was telling the other all that hadhappened to him in the time that had passed by. Colonel Tom what kindof a life he had lived, and how he had married and his wife had died andleft him a widower without any kids. And the doctor--it was alwayshard fur me to get to calling him anything but Doctor Kirby--how he hadhappened to start out with a good chancet in life and turn into jest atravelling fakir.
Well, I thinks to myself now that he has got to be that, mebby her andhim won't suit so well now, even if they does get their differencespatched up. Fur all the forgiving in the world ain't going to changethings, or make them no different. But, so long as the doctor appearedto want to find her so derned bad, I was awful glad I had been the meansof getting him and Miss Lucy together. He had done a lot fur me, firstand last, the doctor had, and I felt like it helped pay him a little.Though if they was to settle down like married folks I would feel like agood old sport was spoiled in the doctor, too.
We had to change cars at Indianapolis to get to that there little town.We was due to reach it about two o'clock in the afternoon. And thenearer we got to the place the nervouser and nervouser all three of usbecome. And not owning we was. The last hour before we hit the place, Itook a drink of water every three minutes, I was so nervous. And whenwe come into the town I was already standing out onto the platform. Iwouldn't of been surprised to find Martha and Miss Lucy down there tothe station. But, of course, they wasn't. Fur some reason I felt gladthey wasn't.
"Now," I says to them two, as we got off the train, "foller me and Iwill show you the house."
Everybody rubbers at strangers in a country town, and wonders why theyhave come, and what they is selling, and if they are mebby going tostart a new grain elevator, or buy land, or what. The usual ones aroundthe depot rubbered at us, and I hearn one geezer say to another:
"See that big feller there? He was through here a year or two agoselling patent medicine."
"You don't say so!" says the other one, like it was something important,like a president or a circus had come, and his eyes a-bugging out. Andthe doctor hearn them, too. Fur some reason or other he flushed up andcut a look out of the corner of his eye at Colonel Tom.
We went right through the main street and out toward the edge of town,by the crick, where Miss Lucy's house was. And, if anything, all of usfeeling nervouser yet. And saying nothing and not looking at each other.And Colonel Tom rolling cigarettes and fumbling fur matches and lightingthem and slinging them away. Fur how does anybody know how women isgoing to take even the most ordinary little things?
I knowed the way well enough, and where the house was, but as we wentaround the turn in the road I run acrost a surprised feeling. I comeonto the place where our campfire had been them nights we was there.Looey had drug an old fence post onto the fire one night, and the posthad only burned half up. The butt end of it, all charred and flaked,was still laying in the grass and weeds there. It hit me with a queerfeeling--like it was only yesterday that fire had been lit there. Andyet I knowed it had been a year and a half ago.
Well, it has always been my luck to run into things without the rightkind of a lie fixed up ahead of time. They was three or four purty goodstories I had been trying over in my head to tell Martha when I seenher. Any one of them stories might of done all right; but I hadn'tdecided WHICH one to use. And, of course, I run plumb into Martha. Shewas standing by the gate, which was about twenty yards from the veranda.And all four lies popped into my head at oncet, and got so mixed upwith one another there, I seen right off it was useless to try to tellanything that sounded straight. Besides, when you are in the fix I wasin, what can you tell a girl anyhow?
So I jest says to her:
"Hullo!"
Martha, she had been fussing around some flower bushes with a pair ofshears and gloves on. She looks up when I says that, and she sizes usall up standing by the gate, and her eyes pops open, and so does hermouth, and she is so surprised to see me she drops her shears.
And she looks scared, too.
"Is Miss Buckner at home?" asts Colonel Tom, lifting his hat verypolite.
"Miss B-B-Buckner?" Martha stutters, very scared-like, and not takingher eyes off of me to answer him.
"Miss Hampton, Martha," I says.
"Y-y-y-es, s-sh-she is," says Martha. I wondered what was the matterwith her.
It is always my luck to get left all alone with my troubles. The doctorand the colonel, they walked right past us when she said yes, and uptoward the house, and left her and me standing there. I could of wentalong and butted in, mebby. But I says to myself I will have the dernedthing out here and now, and know the worst. And I was so interested inmy trouble and Martha that I didn't even notice if Miss Lucy met 'em atthe door, and if so, how she acted. When I next looked up they was allin the house.
"Martha--" I begins. But she breaks in.
"Danny," she says, looking like she is going to cry, "don't l-l-look atme l-l-like that. If you knew ALL you wouldn't blame me. You--"
"Wouldn't blame you fur what?" I asts her.
"I know it's wrong of me," she says, begging-like.
"Mebby it is and mebby it ain't," I says. "But what is it?"
"But you never wrote to me," she says.
"Y
ou never wrote to me," I says, not wanting her to get the best of me,whatever it was she might be talking about.
"And then HE came to town!--"
"Who?" I asts her.
"Don't you know?" she says. "The man I am going to marry."
When she said that I felt, all of a sudden, like when you are broke andhungry and run acrost a half dollar you had forgot about in your otherpants. I was so glad I jumped.
"Great guns!" I says.
I had never really knowed what being glad was before.
"Oh, Danny, Danny," she says, putting her hands in front of her face,"and here you have come to claim me for your bride!"
Which showed me why she had looked so scared. That there girl had wentand got engaged to another feller. And had been laying awake nightssuffering fur fear I would turn up agin. And now I had. Looey, he alwayssaid never to trust a woman!
"Martha," I says, "you ain't acted right with me."
"Oh, Danny, Danny," she says, "I know it! I know it!"
"Some fellers in my place," I says, "would raise a dickens of a row."
"I DID love you once," she says, looking at me from between her fingers.
"Yes," says I, acting real melancholy, "you did. And now you've quit it,they don't seem to me to be nothing left to live fur." Martha, she wasan awful romanceful girl. I got the notion that mebby she was enjoyingher own remorsefulness a little bit. I fetched a deep sigh and I says:
"Some fellers would kill theirselves on the spot!"
"Oh!--Oh!--Oh!--" says Martha.
"But, Martha," says I, "I ain't that mean. I ain't going to do that."
That dern girl ackshellay give me a disappointed look! If anything, shewas jest a bit TOO romanceful, Martha was.
"No," says I, cheering up a little, "I am going to do something theyain't many fellers would do, Martha. I'm going to forgive you. Free andfair and open. And give you back my half of that ring, and--"
Dern it! I had forgot I had lost that half of that there ring! Iremembered so quick it stopped me.
"You always kept it, Danny?" she asts me, very soft-spoken, so as not togive pain to one so faithful and so noble as what I was. "Let me see it,Danny."
I made like I was feeling through all my pockets fur it. But thatcouldn't last forever. I run out of pockets purty soon. And her facebegun to show she was smelling a rat. Finally I says:
"These ain't my other clothes--it must be in them."
"Danny," she says, "I believe you LOST it."
"Martha," I says, taking a chancet, "you know you lost YOUR half!"
She owns up she has lost it a long while ago. And when she lost it, shesays, she knowed that was fate and that our love was omened in under anevil star. And who was she, she says, to struggle agin fate?
"Martha," I says, "I'll be honest with you. Fate got away with myhalf too one day when I didn't know they was crooks like her stickingaround."
Well, I seen that girl seen through me then. Martha was awful smartsometimes. And each one was so derned tickled the other one wasn't goingto do any pining away we like to of fell into love all over agin. Butnot quite. Fur neither one would ever trust the other one agin. So wefelt more comfortable with each other. You ain't never comfortable witha person you know is more honest than you be.
"But," says Martha, after a minute, "if you didn't come back to make memarry you, what does Doctor Kirby want to see Miss Hampton about? Andwho was that with him?"
I had been nigh to forgetting the main thing we had all come here fur,in my gladness at getting rid of any danger of marrying Martha. But itcome to me all to oncet I had been missing a lot that must be takingplace inside that house. I had even missed the way they first lookedwhen she met 'em at the door, and I wouldn't of missed that fur a lot.And I seen all to oncet what a big piece of news it will be to Martha.
"Martha," I says, "they ain't no Dr. Hartley L. Kirby. The man known assuch is David Armstrong!"
I never seen any one so peetrified as Martha was fur a minute.
"Yes," says I, "and the other one is Miss Lucy's brother. And theyare all three in there straightening themselves out and finding whereeverybody gets off at, and why. One of these here serious times you readabout. And you and me are missing it all, like a couple of gumps. Howcan we hear?"
Martha says she don't know.
"You THINK," I told her. "We've wasted five good minutes already. I'veGOT to hear the rest of it. Where would they be?"
Martha guesses they will all be in the sitting room, which has got thebest chairs in it.
"What is next to it? A back parlour, or a bedroom, or what?" I wasthinking of how I happened to overhear Perfessor Booth and his famblythat-a-way.
Martha says they is nothing like that to be tried.
"Martha," I says, "this is serious. This here story they are thrashingout in there is the only derned sure-enough romanceful story eitheryou or me is ever lible to run up against personal in all our lives. Itwould of been a good deal nicer if they had ast us in to see the wind-upof it. Fur, if it hadn't of been fur me, they never would of beenreunited and rejuvenated the way they be. But some people get stingystreaks with their concerns. You think!"
Martha, she says: "Danny, it wouldn't be honourable to listen."
"Martha," I tells her, "after the way you and me went and jilted eachother, what kind of senses of honour have WE got to brag about?"
She remembers that the spare bedroom is right over the sitting room.The house is heated with stoves in the winter time. There is a registerright through the floor of the spare bedroom and the ceiling ofthe sitting room. Not the kind of a register that comes from atwisted-around shaft in a house that uses furnace heat. But jest reallya hole in the floor, with a cast-iron grating, to let the heat fromthe room below into the one above. She says she guesses two people thatwasn't so very honourable might sneak into the house the back way, andup the back stairs, and into the spare bedroom, and lay down on theirstummicks on the floor, being careful to make no noise, and both see andhear through that register. Which we done it.
CHAPTER XXIV
I could hear well enough, but at first I couldn't see any of them. ButI gathered that Miss Lucy was standing up whilst she was talking, andmoving around a bit now and then. I seen one of her sleeves, and then awisp of her hair. Which was aggervating, fur I wanted to know what shewas like. But her voice was so soft and quiet that you kind of knowedbefore you seen her how she orter look.
"Prentiss McMakin came to me that day," she was saying, "with anappeal--I hardly know how to tell you." She broke off.
"Go ahead, Lucy," says Colonel Tom's voice.
"He was insulting," she said. "He had been drinking. He wanted meto--to--he appealed to me to run off with him.
"I was furious--NATURALLY." Her voice changed as she said it enough soyou could feel how furious Miss Lucy could get. She was like her brotherTom in some ways.
"I ordered him out of the house. His answer to that was an offer tomarry me. You can imagine that I was surprised as well as angry--I wasperplexed.
"'But I AM married!' I cried. The idea that any of my own people, or anyone whom I had known at home, would think I wasn't married was too muchfor me to take in all at once.
"'You THINK you are,' said Prentiss McMakin, with a smile.
"In spite of myself my breath stopped. It was as if a chilly hand hadtaken hold of my heart. I mean, physically, I felt like that.
"'I AM married,' I repeated, simply.
"I suppose that McMakin had got the story of our wedding from YOU." Shestopped a minute. The doctor's voice answered:
"I suppose so," like he was a very tired man.
"Anyhow," she went on, "he knew that we went first to Clarksville. Hesaid:
"'You think you are married, Lucy, but you are not.'
"I wish you to understand that Prentiss McMakin did it all very, verywell. That is my excuse. He acted well. There was something abouthim--I scarcely know how to put it. It sounds odd, but the truth is thatPrentiss McMakin
was always a more convincing sort of a person when hehad been drinking a little than when he was sober. He lacked warmth--helacked temperament. I suppose just the right amount put it into him. Itput the devil into him, too, I reckon.
"He told me that you and he, Tom, had been to Clarksville, and had madeinvestigations, and that the wedding was a fraud. And he told it with awealth of convincing detail. In the midst of it he broke off to ask tosee my wedding certificate. As he talked, he laughed at it, and toreit up, saying that the thing was not worth the paper it was on, and hethrew the pieces of paper into the grate. I listened, and I let him doit--not that the paper itself mattered particularly. But the very factthat I let him tear it showed me, myself, that I was believing him.
"He ended with an impassioned appeal to me to go with him.
"I showed him the door. I pretended to the last that I thought he waslying to me. But I did not think so. I believed him. He had done itall very cleverly. You can understand how I might--in view of what hadhappened?"
I wanted to see Miss Lucy--how she looked when she said differentthings, so I could make up my mind whether she was forgiving the doctoror not. Not that I had much doubt but what they would get their personaltroubles fixed up in the end. The iron grating in the floor was helddown by four good-sized screws, one at each corner. They wasn't nofilling at all betwixt it and the iron grating that was in the ceilingof the room below. The space was hollow. I got an idea and took out myjack-knife.
"What are you going to do?" whispers Martha.
"S-sh-sh," I says, "shut up, and you'll see."
One of the screws was loose, and I picked her out easy enough. Thesecond one I broke the point off of my knife blade on. Like you nearlyalways do on a screw. When it snapped Colonel Tom he says:
"What's that?" He was powerful quick of hearing, Colonel Tom was. I laidlow till they went on talking agin. Then Martha slides out on tiptoe andcomes back in three seconds with one of these here little screw-driversthey use around sewing-machines and the little oil can that goes withit. I oils them screws and has them out in a holy minute, and lifts thegrating from the floor careful and lays it careful on the rug.
By doing all of which I could get my head and shoulders down into thatthere hole. And by twisting my neck a good deal, see a little ways toeach side into the room, instead of jest underneath the grating. Thedoctor I couldn't see yet, and only a little of Colonel Tom, but MissLucy quite plain.
"You mean thing," Martha whispers, "you are blocking it up so I can'thear."
"Keep still," I whispers, pulling my head out of the hole so the soundwouldn't float downward into the room below. "You are jest like allother women--you got too much curiosity."
"How about yourself?" says she.
"Who was it thought of taking the grating off?" I whispers back to her.Which settles her temporary, but she says if I don't give her a chancetat it purty soon she will tickle my ribs.
When I listens agin they are burying that there Prent McMakin. Butwithout any flowers.
Miss Lucy, she was half setting on, half leaning against, the arm of achair. Which her head was jest a bit bowed down so that I couldn't seeher eyes. But they was the beginnings of a smile onto her face. It wasboth soft and sad.
"Well," says Colonel Tom, "you two have wasted almost twenty years oflife."
"There is one good thing," says the doctor. "It is a good thing thatthere was no child to suffer by our mistakes."
She raised her face when he said that, Miss Lucy did, and looked in hisdirection.
"You call that a good thing?" she says, in a kind of wonder. And aftera minute she sighs. "Perhaps," she says, "you are right. Heaven onlyknows. Perhaps it WAS better that he died."
"DIED!" sings out the doctor.
And I hearn his chair scrape back, like he had riz to his feet sudden.I nearly busted my neck trying fur to see him, but I couldn't. I was alltwisted up, head down, and the blood getting into my head from it so Ihad to pull it out every little while.
"Yes," she says, with her eyes wide, "didn't you know he died?" And thenshe turns quick toward Colonel Tom. "Didn't you tell him--" she begins.But the doctor cuts in.
"Lucy," he says, his voice shaking and croaking in his throat, "I neverknew there was a child!"
I hears Colonel Tom hawk in HIS throat like a man who is either goingto spit or else say something. But he don't do either one. No one saysanything fur a minute. And then Miss Lucy says agin:
"Yes--he died."
And then she fell into a kind of a muse. I have been myself in the fixshe looked to be in then--so you forget fur a while where you are, orwho is there, whilst you think about something that has been in the backpart of your mind fur a long, long time.
What she was musing about was that child that hadn't lived. I could tellthat by her face. I could tell how she must have thought of it, oftenand often, fur years and years, and longed fur it, so that it seemed toher at times she could almost touch it. And how good a mother she wouldof been to it. Some women has jest natcherally GOT to mother somethingor other. Miss Lucy was one of that kind. I knowed all in a flash,whilst I looked at her there, why she had adopted Martha fur her child.
It was a wonderful look that was onto her face. And it was a wonderfulface that look was onto. I felt like I had knowed her forever when Iseen her there. Like the thoughts of her the doctor had been carryingaround with him fur years and years, and that I had caught him thinkingoncet or twicet, had been my thoughts too, all my life.
Miss Lucy, she was one of the kind there's no use trying to describe.The feller that could see her that-a-way and not feel made good by itorter have a whaling. Not the kind of sticky, good feeling that makesyou uncomfortable, like being pestered by your conscience to jine achurch or quit cussing. But the kind of good that makes you forget theyis anything on earth but jest braveness of heart and being willing tobear things you can't help. You knowed the world had hurt her a lot whenyou seen her standing there; but you didn't have the nerve to pity hernone, either. Fur you could see she had got over pitying herself. Evenwhen she was in that muse, longing with all her soul fur that child shehad never knowed, you didn't have the nerve to pity her none.
"He died," she says agin, purty soon, with that gentle kind of smile.
Colonel Tom, he clears his throat agin. Like when you are awful dry.
"The truth is--" he begins.
And then he breaks off agin. Miss Lucy turns toward him when he speaks.By the strange look that come onto her face there must of been somethingright curious in HIS manner too. I was jest simply laying onto myforehead mashing one of my dern eyeballs through a little hole in thegrating. But I couldn't, even that way, see fur enough to one side tosee how HE looked.
"The truth is," says Colonel Tom, trying it agin, "that I--well, Lucy,the child may be dead, but he didn't die when you thought he did."
There was a flash of hope flared into her face that I hated to see comethere. Because when it died out in a minute, as I expected it would haveto, it looked to me like it might take all her life out with it. Herlips parted like she was going to say something with them. But shedidn't. She jest looked it.
"Why did you never tell me this--that there was a child?" says thedoctor, very eager.
"Wait," says Colonel Tom, "let me tell the story in my own way."
Which he done it. It seems when he had went to Galesburg this here childhad only been born a few days. And Miss Lucy was still sick. And the kiditself was sick, and liable to die any minute, by the looks of things.
Which Colonel Tom wishes that it would die, in his heart. He thinks thatit is an illegitimate child, and he hates the idea of it and he hatesthe sight of it. The second night he is there he is setting in hissister's room, and the woman that has been nursing the kid and Miss Lucytoo is in the next room with the kid.
She comes to the door and beckons to him, the nurse does. He tiptoestoward her, and she says to him, very low-voiced, that "it is all over."Meaning the kid has quit struggling fur to live, and
jest natcherallyfloated away. The nurse had thought Miss Lucy asleep, but as both herand Colonel Tom turn quick toward her bed they see that she has heardand seen, and she turns her face toward the wall. Which he tries fur tocomfort her, Colonel Tom does, telling her as how it is an illegitimatechild, and fur its own sake it was better it was dead before it everlived any. Which she don't answer of him back, but only stares ina wild-eyed way at him, and lays there and looks desperate, and saysnothing.
In his heart Colonel Tom is awful glad that it is dead. He can't helpfeeling that way. And he quits trying to talk to his sister, fur hesuspicions that she will ketch onto the fact that he is glad that it isdead. He goes on into the next room.
He finds the nurse looking awful funny, and bending over the dead kid.She is putting a looking-glass to its lips. He asts her why.
She says she thought she might be mistaken after all. She couldn'tsay jest WHEN it died. It was alive and feeble, and then purty soon itshowed no signs of life. It was like it hadn't had enough strength tostay and had jest went. I didn't show any pulse, and it didn't appearto be breathing. And she had watched it and done everything before shebeckoned to Colonel Tom and told him that it was dead. But as she comeback into the room where it was she thought she noticed something thatwas too light to be called a real flutter move its eyelids, which shehad closed down over its eyes. It was the ghost of a move, like it hadtried to raise the lids, or they had tried to raise theirselves, and hadbeen too weak. So she has got busy and wrapped a hot cloth around it,and got a drop of brandy or two between its lips, and was fighting tobring it back to life. And thought she was doing it. Thought she hadfelt a little flutter in its chest, and was trying if it had breath atall.
Colonel Tom thinks of what big folks the Buckner fambly has always beenat home. And how high they had always held their heads. And how none ofthe women has ever been like this before. Nor no disgrace of any kind.And that there kid, if it is alive, is a sign of disgrace. And he hopedto God, he said, it wasn't alive.
But he don't say so. He stands there and watches that nurse fight fur tohold onto the little mist of life she thinks now is still into it. Sheunbuttons her dress and lays the kid against the heat of her own breast.And wills fur it to live, and fights fur it to, and determines that itmust, and jest natcherally tries fur to bullyrag death into going away.And Colonel Tom watching, and wishing that it wouldn't. But he getsinterested in that there fight, and so purty soon he is hoping both waysby spells. And the fight all going on without a word spoken.
But finally the nurse begins fur to cry. Not because she is sure it isdead. But because she is sure it is coming back. Which it does, slow.
"'But I have told HER that it is dead,'" says Colonel Tom, jerking hishead toward the other room where Miss Lucy is lying. He speaks in a lowvoice and closes the door when he speaks. Fur it looks now like it wasgetting strong enough so it might even squall a little.
"I don't know what kind of a look there was on my face," says ColonelTom, telling of the story to his sister and the doctor, "but she musthave seen that I was--and heaven help me, but I WAS!--sorry that thebaby was alive. It would have been such an easy way out of it had itbeen really dead!
"'She mustn't know that it is living,' I said to the nurse, finally,"says Colonel Tom, going on with his story. I had been watching MissLucy's face as Colonel Tom talked and she was so worked up by that fightfur the kid's life she was breathless. But her eyes was cast down, Iguess so her brother couldn't see them. Colonel Tom goes on with hisstory:
"'You don't mean--' said the nurse, startled.
"'No! No!' I said, 'of course--not that! But--why should she ever knowthat it didn't die?'"
"'It is illegitimate?' asked the nurse.
"'Yes,' I said." The long and short of it was, Colonel Tom went on totell, that the nurse went out and got her mother. Which the two of themlived alone, only around the corner. And give the child into the keepingof her mother, who took it away then and there.
Colonel Tom had made up his mind there wasn't going to be no bastards inthe Buckner fambly. And now that Miss Lucy thought it was dead he wouldlet her keep on thinking so. And that would be settled for good and all.He figgered that it wouldn't ever hurt her none if she never knowed it.
The nurse's mother kept it all that week, and it throve. Colonel Tom wascoaxing of his sister to go back to Tennessee. But she wouldn't go. Sohe had made up his mind to go back and get his Aunt Lucy Davis to comeand help him coax. He was only waiting fur his sister to get well enoughso he could leave her. She got better, and she never ast fur the kid,nor said nothing about it. Which was probable because she seen he hatedit so. He had made up his mind, before he went back after their AuntLucy Davis, to take the baby himself and put it into some kind of aninstitution.
"I thought," he says to Miss Lucy, telling of the story, "that youyourself were almost reconciled to the thought that it hadn't lived."
Miss Lucy interrupted him with a little sound. She was breathing hard,and shaking from head to foot. No one would have thought to look at herthen she was reconciled to the idea that it hadn't lived. It was cruelhard on her to tear her to pieces with the news that it really hadlived, but had lived away from her all these years she had been longingfur it. And no chancet fur her ever to mother it. And no way to tellwhat had ever become of it. I felt awful sorry fur Miss Lucy then.
"But when I got ready to leave Galesburg," Colonel Tom goes on, "itsuddenly occurred to me that there would be difficulties in the way ofputting it in a home of any sort. I didn't know what to do with it--"
"What DID you? What DID you? WHAT DID YOU?" cries out Miss Lucy,pressing her hand to her chest, like she was smothering.
"The first thing I did," says Colonel Tom, "was to get you to anotherhouse--you remember, Lucy?"
"Yes, yes!" she says, excited, "and what then?"
"Perhaps I did a very foolish thing," says Colonel Tom.
"After I had seen you installed in the new place and had bidden yougood-bye, I got a carriage and drove by the place where the nurse andher mother lived. I told the woman that I had changed my mind--that youwere going to raise the baby--that I was going to permit it. I don'tthink she quite believed me, but she gave me the baby. What else couldshe do? Besides, I had paid her well, when I discharged her, to saynothing to you, and to keep the baby until I should come for it. Theyneeded money; they were poor.
"I was determined that it should never be heard of again. It was aboutnoon when I left Galesburg. I drove all that afternoon, with the babyin a basket on the seat of the carriage beside me. Everybody has readin books, since books were first written--and seen in newspapers,too--about children being left on door steps. Given an infant to disposeof, that is perhaps the first thing that occurs to a person. There wasa thick plaid shawl wrapped about the child. In the basket, beside thebaby, was a nursing bottle. About dusk I had it refilled with warm milkat a farmhouse near--"
My head was beginning fur to swim. I pulled my head out of that therehole, and rammed my foot into it. It banged against that grating andloosened it. It busted loose some plaster, which showered down into theroom underneath. Miss Lucy, she screamed. And the doctor and Colonel Tomboth yelled out to oncet:
"Who's that?"
"It's me," I yells, banging that grating agin. "Watch out below there!"And the third lick I give her she broke loose and clattered down rightonto a centre table and spilled over some photographs and a vase full offlowers, and bounced off onto the floor.
"Look out below," I yells, "I'm coming down!"
I let my legs through first, and swung them so I would land to one sideof the table, and held by my hands, and dropped. But struck the table asideways swipe and turned it over, and fell onto the floor. The doctor,he grabbed me by the collar and straightened me up, and give me a shakeand stood me onto my feet.
"What do you mean--" he begins. But I breaks in.
"Now then," I says to Colonel Tom, "did you leave that there childsucking that there bottle on the doorstep of a bla
cksmith's house nextto his shop at the edge of a little country town about twenty milesnortheast of Galesburg wrapped up in that there plaid shawl?"
"I did," says Colonel Tom.
"Then," says I, turning to Miss Lucy, "I can understand why I have beenfeeling drawed to YOU fur quite a spell. I'm him."
Transcribers Note: The following changes made: ORIGINAL PAGE LINE ORIGINAL CHANGED TO 17 28 Primose, Primrose, 41 12 jests looks jest looks 83 14 to, too, 84 4 jests sets jest sets 89 28 it it. 99 13 our fur out fur 121 4 Chieftan. Chieftain. 121 16 i it if it 160 8 them. then. 183 18 sir fo' sir, fo' 189 16 shedon' she don' 207 22 purty seen purty soon 210 5 They way The way 212 6 pintetdly pintedly 251 2 Witherses.' Witherses'. 251 22 toe hurt to hurt 269 3 "Gentleman, "Gentlemen, 276 19 'Will," "Will," 282 9 won't!" won't 288 16 real y really 292 10 t ouble. trouble. 308 1 al right all right 316 4 I says," they I says, "they