GONE AWAY.
A few days later, at the breakfast table, Mrs. Staggs remarked that
Mrs. McElwin and her daughter were gone on a visit to friends and
would be absent several weeks. Lyman did not think to disguise his
concern. With an abruptness that made the cups totter in the saucers
he shoved himself back from the table and fell into a deep muse. Why
should the girl have gone away just at that particular time? Was it a
blow aimed at him? He had wanted to tell her something. It was in the
nature of a confession, not startling, not, as he now viewed it,
beyond a commonplace acknowledgment, and he wondered why he should
have suppressed it. He wanted simply to tell her that, at the time
when the joking ceremony had been performed, he had looked at her,
with his mind reverting to the sick man whose face he had seen that
day at the window, and had thought of the charm she could throw upon
the gloom-weighted scene should she step into the room. This had come
to pass; he had beheld it, and his mind had been sweetened by it; he
had walked nearly all the way home with her and had not mentioned it.
He had been too talkative as a protector and too silent as a man. And,
all day, there was a bitter taste in his mouth, and, at evening, as he
sat alone in the office he cut himself with a cynical smile. Warren
came in, bright and brusque.
"Well, I've just got back from old man Pitt's," said he. "I couldn't
wait any longer, so I went. The old man was at work in the field and I
went out and told him not to disturb himself. The old lady was weaving
a rag carpet, and I told her not to let the loom fall into silence.
The girl was churning and I told her to keep at it. Ah, what a
picture, that girl at the churn. Her red calico dress was tucked up,
and her sleeves were rolled, and her hair had been grabbed in a hurry
and fastened with a thorn. She blushed and put her hand to her hair as
if she wanted to fix it, but I cried to her not to tamper with it. I
said that she might have gold pins, but couldn't improve on that
thorn; I swore that the finest hairdresser in the world would spoil
it; and she laughed and I saw the inside of her mouth--"
"A rose with the bud pinched out," said Lyman.
"How did you know? Did you ever see the inside of her mouth? You've
hit it all right. Yes, sir, that's what you have. Well, I took hold of
the churn dasher and helped her, and she pretended to be afraid that
we might turn the churn over, and our hands came together and I felt
like throwing up my hat and dancing right there."
"Did you find out as to how she stands?"
"Lyman, would you believe that I weakened? I put both my hands on her
hair and I snatched a kiss from her, but she looked up at me and I
weakened; I couldn't ask her. She wasn't scared; she was astonished;
and when she looked down, I kissed the back of her neck, standing
there in full view of the world, and she shivered as if she was cold,
but her face was scarlet."
"Do you call it weakening when you grab a woman and kiss her? I should
think that was rather strengthening."
"I didn't find out how she stood, that is, I did not get it in words,
so I must have weakened. But I think it's all right. After dinner,
while we were in the 'big room,' she showed me a photograph of a yap
and said that it was Cousin Jerry. 'Permit me,' said I, bowing, and I
sailed the picture out into the yard where the dog lay asleep in the
sun. And there it lay, with the June bugs buzzing about it, till I
relented and went after it. I weakened in going after it, but she
pouted and I gave in. I reckon that after all, it's better not to be
so headlong. Many a fellow would have rushed the thing and spoiled it
right there. I am learning patience from you, Lyman."
"Well, don't keep on learning, or you'll get the worst of it. A woman
will pardon a thing that's rash where she would look with scorn upon a
gentle stupidity. You bite like a black bass and I'm a sucker; you
leap up into the sunshine, and I lie under a rotting log. I am
inclined to think, old boy, that there is a good deal of what they
call the chump about me. You have gone to Pitt's and said more than
you intended to say. And look at me: I have not said half of what I
ought to have said. You know where to find your girl, but I have let
mine go away. And I know now that she went away in disgust. However,
I ought not to say that. It might imply that she was impatient with me
and that would mean that she was waiting for me to say something, when
in fact I don't believe she thinks of me at all, except as her
protector and friend."
Warren sat nibbling at the stem of a corn-cob pipe. He stretched forth
his legs and chewed upon the stem till it cracked between his teeth.
"This disposition to under-estimate yourself is where the whole
trouble lies," said Warren. "It is the only weakness I have ever been
able to find in your character. Don't you think it must be on account
of some sort of work you have done? Haven't you at some time been in a
position where everybody could come along and boss you?"
"I waited in a dining-room to pay my way through college. And you have
struck it. Yes, sir, you've struck it on the top of the head. If a man
has once stood as a servant, he is, if at all sensitive, ever
afterward afflicted with a sort of self-repression. It is a sense of
independence that makes the cow-boy aggressive; it is the wear of
discipline that makes the regular soldier, long after quitting the
army, appear humble. To wear a white apron and to carry a bowl of soup
across a dining-room, one must not have had a high spirit or must have
stabbed it. I stabbed mine."
"And yet you are as proud as the devil," said Warren.
"Yes, and I am not afraid of a pistol, but I fancy that anyone could
drive me with a teaspoon. If I am ever the father of a boy I will
teach him to work, to cut down trees, to dig ditches, to do anything
rather than to wait on another man."
"But you don't regret having made the sacrifice to get the education,
do you?"
"You over-rate my learning. I don't know anything thoroughly. I sailed
through with the class and put myself in a position to learn, that's
about all. But I have acquired one great piece of knowledge, which,
had I not received a regular training, might have seemed to me as the
arrogance of ignorance, and that is the fact that profound knowledge
hurts the imagination. Of course I had read this--but ascribed it to
prejudice. I know now, however, that it is true; and I would take care
not to over-educate the boy with an instinct for art. His technique
would destroy his creation. And take it in the matter of writing. I
believe in correctness, but it is a fact that when a writer becomes a
purist he conforms but does not create. After all, I believe that
what's within a man will come out regardless of his training. There
may be mute, inglorious Miltons, but Art struggles for expression. The
German woman worked in a field and had no books, but she brought tears
to the eyes of the Empress, with a little poem, dug up out of the
ground."
"That sounds all right enough," said Warren, "but I don't know about
its truth. It strikes me--and I like to think about it--that, if Nancy
had been schooled and all that, she could have written about the
sweetest poetry that ever was sent out."
Lyman smiled at his friend. "Education would undoubtedly assist her in
the writing of verses," said he. "The log school-house would have
given her the expression for poetry."
"May be so. But I don't want her to write. She'd fill up the paper and
hurt the circulation. Sad day for a newspaper man when his wife fills
up the paper. By the way, I forgot to tell you that I had a talk with
the old man. I went out to the field with him after dinner; he was
cutting oak sprouts from among the young corn and we had quite a chat.
I reminded him of the fact that I hadn't known his daughter long, but
I gave him to understand that I was all right. I told him that the
express company had a high regard for me, and this made him open his
eyes. He gradually caught my drift, and then he leaned on his hoe and
laughed till the tears ran down his face; and I didn't have anything
to lean on, so I took hold of the hoe handle and laughed too. After
awhile the absurdity of the situation struck him, both of us leaning
on a hoe, laughing fit to kill ourselves, and then he shook me off.
But I wasn't to be put off this way. I told him I guessed I had to
have some place to laugh, and I grabbed the hoe-handle again, and went
on with my tittering. 'Young fellow,' he said, 'you just about suit
me. You won't stay shuck off, and that's the sort of a man that gets
next to me.' So we shook hands and without another word on the tender
subject we went on talking about something else. Oh, he's all right,
and the girl is too, I think. I don't know about the mother, but she
is blue-eyed and tender-looking and I think she'll give in. Have you
seen the banker lately?"
"I met him in the street this morning and spoke to him, and he bowed
very politely. I've been thinking. Suppose my serial story should be
accepted and they should send me a check. How could I get it cashed
without going to his bank? And if any royalties should come from the
sale of my book, what then? There's no other way open and I'll have to
do business through his bank."
"That will be all right, if the check should happen to be large
enough. Anyway, we don't do business with a bank because we like the
owner of the concern. Oh, I didn't tell you that we have an account
there already. We have about two hundred and fifty dollars over there
and we don't owe a cent."
"Good!" Lyman cried, not because of the money, but that Warren had
broken the ice.
"Good; I should say it is. I call it glorious. And it has come mainly
through you. Why, when you came in I was still bleeding under the
heel, you know."
"It has been your business management and economy, Warren. I have done
nothing but scribble at odd times--I have played and you have worked."
"That's all right."
"No, it isn't all right. Whatever success may come to this paper
belongs to you. What there is already has flowed through the channel
of your energy, and I am not going to claim half the profits. The
plant is yours, not mine. Without you the paper could not have lived a
week."
"We'll fix that all right. But say, isn't it terrible to wait. I don't
mind work, but I hate to wait, and I ought not to go out yonder again
before day after tomorrow."
"What, ought not to go before day after tomorrow! You ought not to go
before next week."
"Oh, come, now, old man, don't say that. This thing of waiting is
awful. I think I could stand to be hanged if they'd do it at once, but
the waiting would put me out. I never could wait. And besides I don't
believe in it. One day I saw an old man at a soldiers' home and I
asked him concerning his prospects and he said that he was waiting,
and when I asked him what for, he said, 'to die.' And then I couldn't
help but ask him what he was going to do then. I don't believe in
waiting for anything; my idea is to go to it at once."
"Yes, that's all very well; but the old soldier was right after all,
for life is but waiting for death."
"No," said Warren, "life is a constant fight against death, and we
don't wait so long if we are fighting. If I thought as you do, I
couldn't wait--I'd have to go out and hunt up death at once. I reckon
you are low-spirited today. I'm glad I'm not a writer, Lyman. Writing
saps all a man's spirit and leaves him no nourishment."
"I have always regarded the necessity to write as a sad infliction,"
Lyman replied. "A man steals from himself his most secret beliefs and
emotions and puts them in the mouth of his characters. He is a sham."
"You ain't, old fellow."
"I am a fraud. Where are you going?"
"I've got to stir about," Warren answered. "I have to think when I sit
still and I don't want to think. The truth is, I want to know how she
stands. I wish I had a picture of her as she stood at the churn. It
would make the fortune of a painter. Believe I'll get up a
prayer-meeting at Mt. Zion."
"What, you get up a prayer-meeting?"
"Yes, so I can go home with her through the woods. I think that after
a season of prayer and song she would lean toward me."
"Why not wait for a thunder storm and comfort her between flashes of
lightning?"
"I wish I could get up a thunder storm. I'd like for that girl to grab
me and choke me half to death. Well, I've got to stir around."
Warren went away, and during all the evening Lyman sat picking a
nervous quarrel with himself.