One night when I've been there more'n a week, and am getting kind o'
tired staying in one place so long, I don't want to go to bed after I
eats, and I gets a-holt of some of the perfessor's cigars and goes
into the lib'ary to see if he's got anything fit to read. Setting there
thinking of the awful remarkable people they is in this world I must of
went to sleep. Purty soon, in my sleep, I hearn two voices. Then I waked
up sudden, and still hearn 'em, low and quicklike, in the room that
opens right off of the lib'ary with a couple of them sliding doors like
is onto a box car. One voice was a woman's voice, and it wasn't Miss
Estelle's.
“But I _must_ see them before we go, Henry,” she says.
And the other was a man's voice and it wasn't no one around our house.
“But, my God,” he says, “suppose you get it yourself, Jane!”
I set up straight then, fur Jane was the perfessor's wife's first name.
“You mean suppose _you_ get it,” she says. I like to of seen the look she
must of give him to fit in with the way she says that _you_. He didn't say
nothing, the man didn't; and then her voice softens down some, and
she says, low and slow: “Henry, wouldn't you love me if I _did_ get it?
Suppose it marked and pitted me all up?”
“Oh, of course,” he says, “of course I would. Nothing can change the way
I feel. _You_ know that.” He said it quick enough, all right, jest the way
they does in a show, but it sounded _too much_ like it does on the stage
to of suited me if _I_'d been her. I seen folks overdo them little talks
before this.
I listens some more, and then I sees how it is. This is that musician
feller Biddy Malone's been talking about. Jane's going to run off with
him all right, but she's got to kiss the kids first. Women is like that.
They may hate the kids' pa all right, but they's dad-burned few of 'em
don't like the kids. I thinks to myself: “It must be late. I bet they
was already started, or ready to start, and she made him bring her here
first so's she could sneak in and see the kids. She jest simply couldn't
get by. But she's taking a fool risk, too. Fur how's she going to see
Margery with that nurse coming and going and hanging around all night?
And even if she tries jest to see William Dear it's a ten to one shot
he'll wake up and she'll be ketched at it.”
And then I thinks, suppose she _is_ ketched at it? What of it? Ain't a
woman got a right to come into her own house with her own door key, even
if they is a quarantine onto it, and see her kids? And if she is ketched
seeing them, how would any one know she was going to run off? And ain't
she got a right to have a friend of hern and her husband's bring her
over from her mother's house, even if it is a little late?
Then I seen she wasn't taking no great risks neither, and I thinks mebby
I better go and tell that perfessor what is going on, fur he has treated
me purty white. And then I thinks: “I'll be gosh-derned if I meddle.
So fur as I can see that there perfessor ain't getting fur from what's
coming to him, nohow. And as fur _her_, you got to let some people find
out what they want fur theirselves. Anyhow, where do _I_ come in at?”
But I want to get a look at her and Henry, anyhow. So I eases off my
shoes, careful-like, and I eases acrost the floor to them sliding doors,
and I puts my eye down to the little crack. The talk is going backward
and forward between them two, him wanting her to come away quick, and
her undecided whether to risk seeing the kids. And all the time she's
kind o' hoping mebby she will be ketched if she tries to see the kids,
and she's begging off fur more time ginerally.
Well, sir, I didn't blame that musician feller none when I seen her. She
was a peach.
And I couldn't blame her so much, neither, when I thought of Miss
Estelle and all them scientifics of the perfessor's strung out fur years
and years world without end.
Yet, when I seen the man, I sort o' wished she wouldn't. I seen right
off that Henry wouldn't do. It takes a man with a lot of gumption to
keep a woman feeling good and not sorry fur doing it when he's married
to her. But it takes a man with twicet as much to make her feel right
when they ain't married. This feller wears one of them little, brown,
pointed beards fur to hide where his chin ain't. And his eyes is too
much like a woman's. Which is the kind that gets the biggest piece of
pie at the lunch counter and fergits to thank the girl as cuts it big.
She was setting in front of a table, twisting her fingers together, and
he was walking up and down. I seen he was mad and trying not to show it,
and I seen he was scared of the smallpox and trying not to show that,
too. And jest about that time something happened that kind o' jolted me.
They was one of them big chairs in the room where they was that has got
a high back and spins around on itself. It was right acrost from me, on
the other side of the room, and it was facing the front window, which
was a bow window. And that there chair begins to turn, slow and easy.
First I thought she wasn't turning. Then I seen she was. But Jane and
Henry didn't. They was all took up with each other in the middle of the
room, with their backs to it.
Henry is a-begging of Jane, and she turns a little more, that chair
does. Will she squeak, I wonders?
“Don't you be a fool, Jane,” says the Henry feller.
Around she comes three hull inches, that there chair, and nary a squeak.
“A fool?” asts Jane, and laughs. “And I'm not a fool to think of going
with you at all, then?”
That chair, she moved six inches more and I seen the calf of a leg and
part of a crumpled-up coat tail.
“But I _am_ going with you, Henry,” says Jane. And she gets up jest like
she is going to put her arms around him.
But Jane don't. Fur that chair swings clear around and there sets the
perfessor. He's all hunched up and caved in and he's rubbing his eyes
like he's jest woke up recent, and he's got a grin onto his face that
makes him look like his sister Estelle looks all the time.
“Excuse me,” says the perfessor.
They both swings around and faces him. I can hear my heart bumping. Jane
never says a word. The man with the brown beard never says a word. But
if they felt like me they both felt like laying right down there and
having a fit. They looks at him and he jest sets there and grins at
them.
But after a while Jane, she says:
“Well, now you _know!_ What are you going to do about it?”
Henry, he starts to say something too. But--
“Don't start anything,” says the perfessor to him. “_You_ aren't going to
do anything.” Or they was words to that effect.
“Professor Booth,” he says, seeing he has got to say something or else
Jane will think the worse of him, “I am--”
“Keep still,” says the perfessor, real quiet. “I'll tend to you in a
minute or two. _You_ don't count for much. This thing is mostly between me
and my wife.”
When he talks so decided I thinks mebby that perfessor has got something
into him besides science after all. Jane, she looks kind o' surprised
herself. But she says nothing, except:
“What are you going to do, Frederick?” And she laughs one of them mean
kind of laughs, and looks at Henry like she wanted him to spunk up a
little more, and says: “What _can_ you do, Frederick?”
Frederick, he says, not excited a bit:
“There's quite a number of things I _could_ do that would look bad when
they got into the newspapers. But it's none of them, unless one of you
forces me to it.” Then he says:
“You _did_ want to see the children, Jane?”
She nodded.
“Jane,” he says, “can't you see I'm the better man?”
The perfessor, he was woke up after all them years of scientifics, and
he didn't want to see her go. “Look at him,” he says, pointing to the
feller with the brown beard, “he's scared stiff right now.”
Which I would of been scared myself if I'd a-been ketched that-a-way
like Henry was, and the perfessor's voice sounding like you was chopping
ice every time he spoke. I seen the perfessor didn't want to have no
blood on the carpet without he had to have it, but I seen he was making
up his mind about something, too. Jane, she says:
“_You_ a better man? _You_? You think you've been a model husband just
because you've never beaten me, don't you?”
“No,” says the perfessor, “I've been a blamed fool all right. I've been
a worse fool, maybe, than if I _had_ beaten you.” Then he turns to Henry
and he says:
“Duels are out of fashion, aren't they? And a plain killing looks bad in
the papers, doesn't it? Well, you just wait for me.” With which he gets
up and trots out, and I hearn him running down stairs to his labertory.
Henry, he'd ruther go now. He don't want to wait. But with Jane
a-looking at him he's shamed not to wait. It's his place to make some
kind of a strong action now to show Jane he is a great man. But he don't
do it. And Jane is too much of a thoroughbred to show him she expects
it. And me, I'm getting the fidgets and wondering to myself, “What is
that there perfessor up to now? Whatever it is, it ain't like no one
else. He is looney, that perfessor is. And she is kind o' looney, too.
I wonder if they is any one that ain't looney sometimes?” I been
around the country a good 'eal, too, and seen and hearn of some awful
remarkable things, and I never seen no one that wasn't more or less
looney when the _search us the femm_ comes into the case. Which is a Dago
word I got out'n a newspaper and it means: “Who was the dead gent's lady
friend?” And we all set and sweat and got the fidgets waiting fur that
perfessor to come back.
Which he done with that Sister Estelle grin onto his face and a pill box
in his hand. They was two pills in the box. He says, placid and chilly:
“Yes, sir, duels are out of fashion. This is the age of science. All the
same, the one that gets her has got to fight for her. If she isn't worth
fighting for, she isn't worth having. Here are two pills. I made 'em
myself. One has enough poison in it to kill a regiment when it gets to
working well--which it does fifteen minutes after it is taken. The other
one has got nothing harmful in it. If you get the poison one, I keep
her. If I get it, you can have her. Only I hope you will wait long
enough after I'm dead so there won't be any scandal around town.”
Henry, he never said a word. He opened his mouth, but nothing come of
it. When he done that I thought I hearn his tongue scrape agin his cheek
on the inside like a piece of sand-paper. He was scared, Henry was.
“But _you_ know which is which,” Jane sings out. “The thing's not fair!”
“That is the reason my dear Jane is going to shuffle these pills around
each other herself,” says the perfessor, “and then pick out one for him
and one for me. _You_ don't know which is which, Jane. And as he is the
favourite, he is going to get the first chance. If he gets the one I
want him to get, he will have just fifteen minutes to live after taking
it. In that fifteen minutes he will please to walk so far from my house
that he won't die near it and make a scandal. I won't have a scandal
without I have to. Everything is going to be nice and quiet and
respectable. The effect of the poison is similar to heart failure. No
one can tell the difference on the corpse. There's going to be no blood
anywhere. I will be found dead in my house in the morning with heart
failure, or else he will be picked up dead in the street, far enough
away so as to make no talk.” Or they was words to that effect.
He is rubbing it in considerable, I thinks, that perfessor is. I wonder
if I better jump in and stop the hull thing. Then I thinks: “No, it's
between them three.” Besides, I want to see which one is going to get
that there loaded pill. I always been intrusted in games of chancet of
all kinds, and when I seen the perfessor was such a sport, I'm sorry I
been misjudging him all this time.
Jane, she looks at the box, and she breathes hard and quick.
“I won't touch 'em,” she says. “I refuse to be a party to any murder of
that kind.”
“Huh? You do?” says the perfessor. “But the time when you might have
refused has gone by. You have made yourself a party to it already.
You're really the _main_ party to it.
“But do as you like,” he goes on. “I'm giving him more chance than I
ought to with those pills. I might shoot him, and I would, and then face
the music, if it wasn't for mixing the children up in the scandal, Jane.
If you want to see him get a fair chance, Jane, you've got to hand out
these pills, one to him and then one to me. _You_ must kill one or the
other of us, or else _I'll kill him_ the other way. And _you_ had better
pick one out for him, because _I_ know which is which. Or else let him
pick one out for himself,” he says.
Henry, he wasn't saying nothing. I thought he had fainted. But he
hadn't. I seen him licking his lips. I bet Henry's mouth was all dry
inside.
Jane, she took the box and she went round in front of Henry and she
looked at him hard. She looked at him like she was thinking: “Fur God's
sake, spunk up some, and take one if it _does_ kill you!” Then she says
out loud: “Henry, if you die I will die, too!”
And Henry, he took one. His hand shook, but he took it out'n the box. If
she had of looked like that at me mebby I would of took one myself. Fur
Jane, she was a peach, she was. But I don't know whether I would of or
not. When she makes that brag about dying, I looked at the perfessor.
What she said never fazed him. And I thinks agin: “Mebby I better jump
in now and stop this thing.” And then I thinks agin: “No, it is between
them three and Providence.” Besides, I'm anxious to see who is going
to get that pill with the science in it. I gets to feeling jest like
Providence hisself was in that there room picking out them pills with
his own hands. And I was anxious to see what Providence's ideas of right
and wrong was like. So fur as I could see they was all three in the
wrong, but if I had of been in there running them pills in Providence's
place I would of let them all off kind o' easy.
Henry, he ain't eat his pill yet. He is jest looking at it and shaking.
The perfessor pulls out his watch and lays it on the table.
“It is a quarter past eleven,” he says. “Mr. Murray, are you going to
make me shoot you, after all? I didn't want a scandal,” he says. “It's
for you to say whether you want to eat that pill and get your even
chance, or whether you want to get shot. The shooting method is sure,
but it causes talk. These pills won't _which_?”
And he pulls a revolver. Which I suppose he had got that too when he
went down after them pills.
Henry, he looks at the gun.
Then he looks at the pill.
Then he swallers the pill.
The perfessor puts his gun back into his pocket, and then he puts his
pill into his mouth. He don't swaller it. He looks at the watch, and he
looks at Henry.
“Sixteen minutes past eleven,” he says. “_At exactly twenty-nine minutes
to twelve Mr. Murray will be dead_. I got the harmless one. I can tell by
the taste.”
And he put the pieces out into his hand, to show that he has chewed
his'n up, not being willing to wait fifteen minutes fur a verdict from
his digestive ornaments. Then he put them pieces back into his mouth and
chewed 'em up and swallered 'em down like he was eating cough drops.
Henry has got sweat breaking out all over his face, and he tries to make
fur the door, but he falls down onto a sofa.
“This is murder,” he says, weak-like. And he tries to get up again, but
this time he falls to the floor in a dead faint.
“It's a dern short fifteen minutes,” I thinks to myself. “That perfessor
must of put more science into Henry's pill than he thought he did fur it
to of knocked him out this quick. It ain't skeercly three minutes.”
When Henry falls the woman staggers and tries to throw herself on top
of him. The corners of her mouth was all drawed down, and her eyes was
turned up. But she don't yell none. She can't. She tries, but she jest
gurgles in her throat. The perfessor won't let her fall acrost Henry.
He ketches her. “Sit up, Jane,” he says, with that Estelle look onto his
face, “and let us have a talk.”
She looks at him with no more sense in her face than a piece of putty
has got. But she can't look away from him.
And I'm kind o' paralyzed, too. If that feller laying on the floor
had only jest kicked oncet, or grunted, or done something, I could of
loosened up and yelled, and I would of. I jest _needed_ to fetch a yell.
But Henry ain't more'n dropped down there till I'm feeling jest like
he'd _always_ been there, and I'd _always_ been staring into that room, and
the last word any one spoke was said hundreds and hundreds of years ago.
“You're a murderer,” says Jane in a whisper, looking at the perfessor in
that stare-eyed way. “You're a _murderer_,” she says, saying it like she
was trying to make herself feel sure he really was one.
“Murder!” says the perfessor. “Did you think I was going to run any
chances for a pup like him? He's scared, that's all. He's just fainted
through fright. He's a coward. Those pills were both just bread and
sugar. He'll be all right in a minute or two. I've just been showing
you that the fellow hasn't got nerve enough nor brains enough for a fine
woman like you, Jane,” he says.
Then Jane begins to sob and laugh, both to oncet, kind o' wild like, her
voice clucking like a hen does, and she says:
“It's worse then, it's worse! It's worse for me than if it were a
murder! Some farces can be more tragic than any tragedy ever was,” she
says. Or they was words to that effect.
And if Henry had of been really dead she couldn't of took it no harder
than she begun to take it now when she saw he was alive, but jest wasn't
no good. But I seen she was taking on fur herself now more'n fur Henry.
Doctor Kirby always use to say women is made unlike most other animals
in many ways. When they is foolish about a man they can stand to have
that man killed a good 'eal better than to have him showed up ridiculous
right in front of them. They will still be crazy about the man that is
dead, even if he was crooked. But they don't never forgive the fellow
that lets himself be made a fool and lets them look foolish, too. And
when the perfessor kicks Henry in the ribs, and Henry comes to and
sneaks out, Jane, she never even turns her head and looks at him.
“Jane,” says the perfessor, when she quiets down some, “you have a lot
o' things to forgive me. But do you suppose I have learned enough so
that we can make a go of it if we start all over again?”
But Jane she never said nothing.
“Jane,” he says, “Estelle is going back to New England, as soon as
Margery gets well, and she will stay there for good.”
Jane, she begins to take a little intrust then.
“Did Estelle tell you so?” she asts.
“No,” says the perfessor. “Estelle doesn't know it yet. I'm going to
break the news to her in the morning.”
But Jane still hates him. She's making herself hate him hard. She
wouldn't of been a human woman if she had let herself be coaxed up all
to oncet. Purty soon she says: “I'm tired.” And she went out looking
like the perfessor was a perfect stranger. She was a peace, Jane was.
After she left, the perfessor set there quite a spell and smoked. And he
was looking tired out, too. They wasn't no mistake about me. I was jest
dead all through my legs.