A Yankee from the West Part 24

"I can make a great noise in shallow water," said Milford, "but if I follow you, you'll lead me out over my head. I believe you, however; I believe you speak the truth. I don't know anything about art, but, so far as I am concerned, it is a waste of time for any scholar to pick flaws in a thing that makes me feel. He may tell me why it is bad taste to feel, but he can't convince me that I haven't felt."

He said this looking at the girl, and their eyes warmed with the communion. "I have studied art," she said, "until I do not know anything about it; and I am beginning to believe if the world listens to--to a talk about it, it is with a sneer. No one wants to know. No one is willing to listen, except like this, out in the country when there is nothing else to do."

"I find plenty to do," said Mrs. Stuvic, overhearing the remark and turning from Blakemore, who had been "jos.h.i.+ng" her about an old man.

"Yes, you bet. There's always a plenty to do in the country if a body's a mind to do it. The country people ain't such fools. No, you bet. The most of 'em's got sense enough to keep a horse from kickin' 'em. Yes, walked right over in the woods and let a horse kick him. Why, old Lewson would've knowed better than that, and he didn't have sense enough to know that he couldn't come back. Now, Bill, you keep quiet. Don't you say a word."

"If you were afraid the old fellow would come back, why didn't you marry him?" said Blakemore.

"Now, you keep still, too. I wan't so anxious about him comin' back. It wan't nothin' to me. But I do believe he robbed my hens' nests after he was dead. Now, whose team is that goin' along the road? If a man would rein up my horses that way I'd break his neck. Bill, why haven't you been over here?"

"I've been too busy."

"You haven't been too busy to trudge off to Antioch. What did you go for?"

"Because it was n.o.body's business but mine."

"Oh, you don't say so? What made you box with that Irishman? Oh, you can't fool me. I know more than you think I do. Went up there to practice. And then a horse kicked Dorsey over in the woods. How about that? You met him over in the grove some time ago, and he licked you.

How about that? Then you took lessons till you was able to knock his teeth out. How about that?"

"Who told you all that rubbish?" Milford demanded, uneasy under the gaze of the company.

"Never mind. There's a freckled faced woman not far from here. And she couldn't keep a secret any more than a sieve could hold water. You've got a hired man, too, you must remember."

"Yes, and I'll----"

"You'll do nothin' of the sort. It was perfectly natural. I knowed it was comin'. I knowed that he mashed your mouth. And what was it all about? How about that?"

Milford arose to go. Mrs. Goodwin begged him to sit down. Mrs. Blakemore was in a flutter of excitement. Blakemore stood with his mouth open.

Gunhild looked straight at Milford. "Did you hit him, Mr. Milford?" she asked.

"Yes," he promptly answered.

"Then you must have had a good cause, and I shall wait before feeling sorry for him. But I could not feel very sorry anyway. I do not like him. He has the eye of a beast. May we ask why you struck him?"

"He made a remark about you."

The girl jumped up from her seat, anger flaming in her eyes. Mrs.

Goodwin made some sort of cooing noise. Mrs. Blakemore cried "Oh!" and fluttered.

"That's all I've got to say," said Milford. "I oughtn't to have said that much, and wouldn't if it hadn't come round as it did. And now I must ask you to let the subject drop."

Gunhild sat down without a word. But in her quietness of manner was a turbulent spirit choked into subjection. In all things it seemed that her modesty was a conscious immodesty held in restraint. The uncouth girl, with utterance harsh in rough words of men from the far north, had been remodeled by the English school. But the blood of the Viking was strong within her, as she sat there, striving to appear submissive; but Milford fancied that she would like to dash out Dorsey's brains with a war-club. He sat down beside her, and with a cool smile she said: "Made a remark about me. It takes me back to the potato-field. I must thank you. We are fellow workmen." She spoke in a low voice. He looked from one to another, as if afraid that they might hear her. "It makes no difference," she said.

"Yes, it does. It is none of their business. I am going to set claim to all that part of the past. You may share your pleasure with them, but your trouble belongs to me. I will mix it with mine."

"The color might be dark," she replied.

"But two dark colors may make a white hope."

She shook her head and looked about as if now she were afraid that some one might hear. But the other boarders were talking among themselves.

Mrs. Goodwin, at the far end of the bench, was giving to Blakemore her idea of the future life; Mrs. Blakemore had run off, summoned by an alarming howl from the boy; Mrs. Stuvic, still a believer in spiritualism and a devotee of fortune-telling, stood near, sniffing in contempt.

"Nothing can keep us apart," said Milford. "I'm not a soft wooer; I don't know how to play the he dove; I don't know how to sing a lie made by some one else; I don't pretend to be a gentleman; I am out of the rut, and they may call me unnatural. But let me tell you that all h.e.l.l can't keep us apart."

"Mr. Milford, you must not talk like that. I too am out of the rut, and they may call me unnatural, but I do not like to hear you talk that way."

"Yes, you do. You can't help yourself. If it's the devil that brought us together, then blessed be the name of the devil."

"Hush, Mr. Milford."

"I won't hush. I must talk. I suppose I ought to call you an angel. But you are not. You are a woman--once a hired hand. But you jump on me like a panther; you suck the blood out of my heart. Am I a brute? Yes. So are you. You are a beautiful brute--the panther and the grizzly. Is that it?"

She looked at him, and her eyes were not soft. "I used to peep in at the grizzly--into the dining-room when he had come to feed. But no more now.

No, nothing can keep us apart. But we must wait. What a courts.h.i.+p!" she said, with a sigh.

"It's not a courts.h.i.+p," he replied. "It's a fight, a draw fight. Now I'll hush. What's the wrangle?" he asked, turning toward Mrs. Goodwin.

"Nothing," she answered, moving closer to him. "It hasn't the dignity of a wrangle. Mrs. Stuvic is trying to convert me to fortune-telling."

"Nothing of the sort," said Mrs. Stuvic. "I don't care whether she believes in it or not. It's nothin' to me; but truth's truth, and you can't get round it; no, Bill, you bet. I know what I've been told, and I know what's come to pa.s.s. A woman told me that a man was goin' to beat me out of board, and he did. She never saw him. How about that? And she told me I was goin' to lose a cow, and I did. She was dead by the time I got home. How about that? Don't come talkin' to me about what you expect after you're dead. Truth's truth. Now, there's Bill. He thinks I'm an old fool. But I know more than he thinks I do. Yes, you bet!"

"No, I don't think that, Mrs. Stuvic," Milford replied. "I'm under too many obligations to you to think that."

"Now, there is honesty," Mrs. Goodwin spoke up. "Gunhild, my dear, do you catch the drift of it?"

"It's not honesty, but villainy," Blakemore declared, and turning to his wife, who had just returned, he asked if the boy were hurt. She said that he had got hung in the forks of an apple tree.

"But villainy holds a virtue when it tells the truth," Mrs. Goodwin replied.

"Holds fiddlesticks," said Mrs. Stuvic, with a sniff. "Why can't you folks talk sense? Just as soon as a woman reads a book, she's got to talk highfurlutin' blabber. Now, what does that man out there want?"

"He wants beer," said Blakemore.

"Well, he can't get it. He looks like the man that had me fined last summer. I hate a detective on the face of the earth. One went down in my cellar and drank beer, and then had me up. Go on away from here," she shouted. "There's not a drop of beer on this place. Move on off with you. I'll let you know that I don't keep beer."

The man went away, grumbling. Blakemore turned to Milford and said: "Come join me in a bottle."

"Now, you keep still," Mrs. Stuvic snapped. "Bill don't drink. And the first thing I know you'll have me up."

Milford asked Mrs. Goodwin when she expected to go home. She answered that she would leave on the following Tuesday. He remarked that he would come over to go to the station with her, and then, waving a farewell to the company, he strode off toward home. In his heart there flamed the exultation of a great conquest after a fierce battle.

CHAPTER XVII.

AN AMBITION.