The Dust Flower Part 20

"Oh, you went a lot farther than that. You said you were goin' to the devil. Ain't you? I mean, aren't you?"

"I--I don't seem able to."

"You're the first fellow I've ever heard say that."

"I'm the first fellow I've ever heard say it myself. But I tried to-day--and I couldn't."

"What did you do?"

"I tried to get drunk."

She half rose, shrinking away from him. "Not--not _you!_"

"Yes. Why not? I've been drunk before--not often, but----"

"Don't tell me," she cried, hastily. "I don't want to know. It's too----"

"But I thought it was just the sort of thing you'd be----"

"I'd be used to. So it is. But that's the reason. You're--you're different. I can't bear to think of it--not with you."

"But I'm just like any other man."

"Oh, no, you're not."

He looked at her curiously. "How am I--how am I--different?"

"Oh, other men are just men, and you're a--a kind of prince."

"You wouldn't think so if you were to know me better."

"But I'm not goin' to know you better, and I'd rather think of you as I see you are." She dropped this theme to say: "So the other girl----"

"She didn't mean it at all."

"She'd be crazy if she did. But what made her let you think so?"

"She's--she's simply that sort; goes off the hooks too."

"Oh! So there'll be a pair of you."

"I'm afraid so."

"That'll be b.l.o.o.d.y murder, won't it? Momma was that way with Judson Flack. Hammer and tongs--the both of them--till I took her in hand, and----"

"And what happened then?"

"She calmed down and--and died."

"So that it didn't do her much good, did it?"

"It did her that much good that she died. Death was better than the way she was livin' with Judson Flack--and it wasn't always his fault.

I do' wanta defend him, but momma got so that if he did have a quiet spell she'd go and stir him up. There's not much hope for two married people that lives like that, do you think?"

"But you say your mother, under your instruction, got over it."

"Yes, but it was too late. The more she got over it the more he'd lambaste her, and when her money was all gone----"

"But do you think all--all hot-tempered couples have to go it in that way?"

She made a little hunching movement of the shoulders. "It's mostly cat and dog anyhow. You and her--the other girl--won't be much worse than others."

"But you think we'll be worse, to some extent at least."

She ignored this to say, wistfully: "I suppose you're awful fond of her."

"I think I can say as much as that."

"And is she fond of you?"

"She says so."

"If she is I don't see how she could--" Her voice trailed away. Her eyes forsook his face to roam the shadows of the room. She added to herself rather than to him: "I couldn't ha' done it if it was me."

"Oh, if you were in love----"

The eyes wandered back from the shadows to rest on him again. They were sorrowful eyes, and unabashed. A child's would have had this unreproachful ache in them, or a dog's. Though he didn't know what it meant it disturbed him into leaving his sentence there.

It occurred to him then that they were forgetting the subject in hand.

He had not expected to be able to converse with her, yet something like conversation had been taking place. It had come to him, too, that she had a mind, and now that he really looked at her he saw that the face was intelligent. Yesterday that face had been no more to him than a smudge, without character, and almost featureless, while to-day....

The train of his thought being twofold he could think along one line, and speak along another. "So if you go to see my lawyer he'll suggest different things that you could do----"

"I'd rather do whatever 'ud make it easiest for you."

"You're very kind, but I think I'd better not suggest. I'll leave that to him and you. He knows already that he's to supply you with whatever money you need for the present; and after everything is settled I'll see that you have----"

The damask flush which Steptoe had admired stole over a face flooded with alarm. She spoke as she rose, drawing a little back from him. "I do' want any money."

He looked up at her in protestation. "Oh, but you must take it."

She was still drawing back, as if he was threatening her with something that would hurt. "I do' want to."

"But it was part of our bargain. You don't understand that I couldn't----"

"I didn't make no such--" She checked herself. Her mother had rebuked her for this form of speech a thousand times. She said the sentence over as she felt he would have said it, as the people would have said it among whom she had lived as a child. The cadence of his speech, the half forgotten cadences of theirs, helped her ear and her intuitions.

"I didn't make any such bargain," she managed to bring out, at last.

"You said you'd give me money; but I never said I'd take it."