"--baby killed her, she was that small ... she was like a little girl
... she oughtn't to of had no baby at all, doctor said...."
"I killed her, Johnnie," he cried in agony, "and that's the God's truth
of it."
Another long silence.
The lamp guttered but didn't go out. A moth had flown down its chimney,
was sizzling, charring, inside ... Paul lifted off the globe. Burnt his
hands, but said nothing ... flicked the wingless, blackened body to the
floor....
"But the baby?--it lived?"
"Yes, it lived ... a girl ... if it hadn't of lived ... if it had gone,
too, I wouldn't of wanted to live, either!..."
"That's why I'm workin' so hard, these days, with no lay-offs fer
huntin' or fishin' or anything."
* * * * *
The next day I learned more from Rachel of how Paul had agonized over
the death of his tiny wife ... "'she was that small you had a'most to
shake out the sheets to find her,' as Josh useter say," said Rachel
gravely and unhumorously ... and she told how the bereaved husband
savagely fought off all his womenfolk and insisted on mothering, for a
year, the baby whose birth had killed its mother.
"At last he's gittin' a little cheer in his face. But every so often the
gloomy fit comes over him like it did last night at supper. I keep
tellin' him it ain't Christian, with her dead two years a'ready--but he
won't listen ... he's got to have his fit out each time."
* * * * *
As if this had not been enough of the tragic, the next day when I asked
about Phoebe, Aunt Rachel started crying.
"Phoebe's gone, too," she sobbed.
"O, Aunt Rachel, I'm so sorry ... but I didn't know ... nobody told me."
"That's all right, Johnnie. Somehow it relieves me to talk about
Phoebe." She rose from her rocker, laid down her darning, and went to a
dresser in the next room. She came out again, holding forth to me a
picture ... Phoebe's picture....
A shy, small, oval, half-wild face like that of a dryad's. Her chin
lifted as if she were some wood-creature listening to the approaching
tread of the hunter and ready on the instant to spring forth and run
along the wind....
An outdoor picture, a mere snapshot, but an accidental work of art.
Voluminous leafage blew behind and above her head, splashed with the
white of sunlight and the gloom of swaying shadow.
"Why, she's--she's beautiful!"
"Yes--got prettier and prettier every time you looked at her...."
"But," and Aunt Rachel sighed, "I couldn't do nothin' with her at all.
An' scoldin' an' whippin' done no good, neither. Josh useter whip her
till he was blue in the face, an' she wouldn't budge. Only made her more
sot and stubborner....
"--guess she was born the way she was ... she never could stay still a
minute ... always fidgettin' ... when she was a little girl, even--I
used to say, 'Now, look here, Phoebe,' I'd say, 'your ma 'ull give you a
whole dime all at once if you'll set still jest for five minutes in that
chair.' An' she'd try ... and, before sixty seconds was ticked off she'd
be on her feet, sayin', 'Ma, I guess you kin keep that dime.'
"When she took to runnin' out at nights," my great-aunt continued, in a
low voice, "yes, an' swearin' back at her pa when he gave her a bit of
his mind, it nigh broke my heart ... and sometimes she'd see me cryin',
and that would make her feel bad an' she'd quiet down fer a few days ...
an' she'd say, 'Ma, I'm goin' to be a good girl now,' an' fer maybe two
or three nights she'd help clean up the supper-things--an' then--" with
a breaking voice, "an' then all at once she'd scare me by clappin' both
hands to that pretty brown head o' hers, in sech a crazy way, an'
sayin', 'Honest, Ma, I can't stand it any longer ... this life's too
slow.... I've gotta go out where there's some life n' fun!'
"It was only toward the last that she took to sneakin' out after she
pretended to go to bed.. gangs of boys an' girls, mixed, would come an'
whistle soft fer her, under the window ... an' strange men would
sometimes hang aroun' the house ... till Josh went out an' licked a
couple.
"It drove Josh nigh crazy.
"One evenin', after this had gone on a long time, Josh ups an' says,
'Ma, Phoebe's run complete out o' hand ... she'll hafta be broke o' this
right now ... when she comes back to-night I'm going to give her the
lickin' of her life.'
"'Josh, you mustn't whip her. Let's both have a long talk with her. (I
knowed Josh 'ud hurt her bad if he whipped her. He has a bad temper when
he is het up.) Maybe goin' down on our knees with her an' prayin' might
do some good.'"
"'No, Ma, talkin' nor prayin' won't do no good ... the only thing left's
a good whippin' to straighten her out.'"
"O Aunt Rachel," I cried, all my desire of Phoebe breaking but into
tenderness. I looked at the lovely face, crossed with sunlight, full of
such quick intelligence, such mischievousness....
You can catch a wild animal in a trap, but to whip it would be sacrilege
... that might do for domesticated animals.
"Josh never laid a hand on her, though, that night ... she never came
home ... men are so awful in their pride, Johnnie ... don't you be like
that when you grow to be a man...."
Then Aunt Rachel said no more, as Paul came in at that moment. Nor did
she resume the subject.
* * * * *
Next morning I packed away to visit Uncle Lan. I might as well go, even
if I hated him. It would be too noticeable, not to go.
He was at the train, waiting for me. He proffered me his hand. To my
surprise, I took it. He seized my grip from me, put his other hand
affectionately on my shoulder.
"I've often wondered whether you'd ever forgive me for the way I beat
you.... I've learned better since."
Before I knew it my voice played me the trick of saying yes, I forgave
him.
"That's a good boy!" and Lan gave my hand such a squeeze that it almost
made me cry out with the pain of it.
* * * * *
"Lan," as we walked along, "can you tell me more about Phoebe.... Aunt
Rachel told me some, but--"
"Oh, she ended up by running away with a drummer ... she hadn't been
gone long when her ma got word from her asking her to forgive her ...
that she'd run off with a man she loved, and was to be married to him
pretty soon.... Phoebe gave no address, but the letter had a Pittsburgh
postmark....
"A month ... six months went by. Then a letter came in a strange hand.
The girl that wrote it said that she was Phoebe's 'Roommate.'" Lan
paused here, and gave me a significant look, then resumed:
"Paul went down to bring the body home, and found she'd been buried
already. They were too poor to have it dug up and brought home."
"It seems that the man that took Phoebe off was nothing but a pimp!"
* * * * *
Suicide: early one Sunday morning; early, for girls of their profession,
the two girls, Phoebe and her roommate were sitting in their bedrooms in
kimonos.
"What a nice Sunday," Phoebe had said, looking out at the window.
"Jenny," she continued to her roommate, "I have a feeling I'd like to go
to church this morning...."
Jenny had thought _that_ was rather a queer thing for Phoebe to say....
Jenny went out to go to the delicatessen around the corner, to buy a
snack for them to eat, private, away from the rest of the girls, it
being Sunday morning. She'd bring in a Sunday paper, too.
When she returned, Phoebe didn't seem to be in the room. Jenny felt that
something was wrong, had felt it all along, anyhow....
She heard a sort of gasping and gurgling....
She found Phoebe on the floor, two-thirds under the bed. Her eyes were
rolled back to the whites from agony. A creamy froth was on her mouth.
And all her mouth and chin and pretty white neck were burned brown with
the carbolic acid she had drunk.. a whole damn bottle of it.
Jenny dropped on her knees by Phoebe and called out her name--loud....
"Phoebe, why don't you speak to me!" Took her head in her lap and it
only lolled. Then she began screaming, did Jenny, and brought the whole
house up. And the madame had shouted:
"Shut up, you bitch, do you want people to think someone's gettin'
killed? Ain't we in bad enough already?"
"So Phoebe came to a bad end," commented Lan, "as we always thought she
would."
* * * * *
The nearest I came to having my long-cherished revenge on Landon:
Once, in the night, during my week's stay with him, I stepped from bed,
sleep-walking, moving toward the room where he and Aunt Emily lay.
Imagining I held a knife in my left hand (I am left-handed) to stick him
through the heart with.
But I bumped terrifically into a door half ajar, and received such a
crash between the eyes that it not only brought me broad awake, but gave
me a bump as big as a hen's egg, into the bargain.
The dream of my revenge had been so strong in my brain that still I
could feel the butcher-knife in my hand ... and I looked into the empty
palm to verify the sensation, still there, of clasping the handle.
"--that you, Johnnie?" called my uncle.
"Yep!"
"What's the matter? can't you sleep?"
"No!--got up to take a drink of water."
"You'll find a bucketful on the kitchen table, and the dipper floating
in it ... and there's matches on the stand by your bed." A pause. He
continued: "You must of run into something. I heard a bang."
"I did. I bumped my head into the door."
* * * * *