Life at High Tide Part 3

"No; I can't say it ain't respectable; but I can say it's the foolishest thing I ever heard of. An' wrong too; 'cause anything foolish is wrong."

"Anything cruel is wrong," Lizzie said, stubbornly.

"Well, you was crazy to think of havin' him visit you. But it don't follow, 'cause he can't be visitin' you, that you got to go _marry_ him."

"I got to do something," Lizzie said, desperately; "I'd never have a minute's peace if he had to go to the Farm."

"He'd be more comfortable there."

"His stomach might be," Lizzie admitted.

"Well, then!" Mrs. b.u.t.terfield declared, triumphantly. "Now you just let him go, Lizzie. You just be sensible."

"I'm goin' to marry him. I'm goin' to take him round to Rev. Niles day after to-morrow; he said he'd marry us."

Mrs. b.u.t.terfield gasped. "Well, if Rev. Niles does that!--There! You know he was a 'Piscopal; they'll do anything. What did he say when you told him?"

"Oh, nothin' much; I asked him about him visitin' me, an' he said it wa'n't just customary. Said it was better to get married. Said we must avoid the appearance of evil."

"Well, I ain't sayin' he ain't right; but--" Then, in despair, she turned to ridicule: "Folks'll say you're marryin' him 'cause you expect he'll make money on his ghost-machine!"

"Well, you tell 'em I don't believe in ghosts. That'll settle _that_."

"If folks knew you didn't believe in any hereafter, they'd say you was a wicked woman!" cried Mrs. b.u.t.terfield, angrily;--"an' that fool machine--"

"I never said I didn't believe in a hereafter. Course his machine ain't sense. That's what makes it so pitiful."

"He'll never finish it."

"Course he won't. That's why I'm takin' him."

"Well, my _sakes!_" said Mrs. b.u.t.terfield, helplessly. And then, angrily again, "Course if you set out to go your own way, I suppose you don't expect no help from them as thinks you are all wrong?"

"I do not," Lizzie said, steadily; and then a spark glinted in her leaf-brown eye: "Folks that have means, and yet would let that poor unfortunate be taken to the Farm--I wouldn't expect no help from 'em."

"Well, Mis' Graham, you can't say I ain't warned you."

"No, Mis' b.u.t.terfield, I can't," Lizzie responded; and the two old friends parted stiffly.

The word that Lizzie Graham--"poor as Job's turkey!"--was going to marry Nathaniel May spread like gra.s.s fire through Jonesville. Mrs.

b.u.t.terfield preserved a cold silence, for her distress was great. To hear people snicker and say that Lizzie Graham must be "dyin' anxious to get married"; that she must be "lottin' considerable on a good ghost-market"; that she "took a new way o' gettin' a hired man without payin' no wages,"--these things stung her sore heart into actual anger at the friend she loved. But she did not show it.

"Mis' Graham probably knows her own business," she said, stiffly, to any one who spoke to her of the matter. Even to her own husband she was non-committal. Josh sat out by the kitchen door, tilting back against the gray-s.h.i.+ngled side of the house, his hands in his pockets, his feet tucked under him on the rung of his chair. He was in his s.h.i.+rt-sleeves, and he had unb.u.t.toned his baggy old waistcoat, for it was a hot night. Mrs. b.u.t.terfield was on the kitchen door-step. They could look across a patch of gra.s.s at the great barn, connected with the little house by a shed. Its doors were still open, and Josh could see the hay, put in that afternoon. The rick in the yard stood like a skeleton against the fading yellow of the sky; some fowls were roosting comfortably on the tongue. It was very peaceful; but Mrs.

b.u.t.terfield's face was puckered with anxiety. "Yet I don't know as I can do anything about it," she said, her foot tapping the stone step nervously; "she ain't got no call to be so foolish."

"Well," Josh said, removing his pipe from his lips and spitting thoughtfully, "seems Mis' Graham's bound to get some kind of a husband!" Then he chuckled, and thrust his pipe back under his long, shaven upper lip.

"Now look a-here, Josh b.u.t.terfield; you don't want to be talkin' that way," his wife said, bitterly. "Bad enough to have folks that don't know no better pokin' fun at her; but I ain't a-goin' to have you do it."

"Well, I was only just sayin'--"

"Well, don't you say it; that's all."

Josh poked a gnarled thumb down into the bowl of his pipe, reflectively. "You ain't got a match about you, have you, Emmy?" he said, coaxingly.

Mrs. b.u.t.terfield rose and went into the kitchen to get the match; when she handed it to him, she said, sighing, "I'm just 'most sick over it."

"You do seem consid'able shuck up," Josh said, kindly.

"Well,--I know Lizzie's just doin' it out of pure goodness; but she'll 'most starve."

"I don't see myself how she's calculatin' to run things," Josh ruminated; "course Jim's pension wa'n't much, but it was somethin'.

And without it--"

"Without it?--land! Is the government goin' to stop pensions? There! I never did like the President!"

"No; the government ain't goin' to stop it. Lizzie Graham's goin' to stop it."

"What on airth you talkin' about?"

"Why, Emmy woman, don't ye know the United States government ain't no such fool as to go on payin' a woman for havin' a dead husband when she catches holt of a livin' one? Don't you know that?"

"Josh b.u.t.terfield!--you don't mean--"

"Why, that's true. Didn't you know that? Well, well! Why, a smart widow woman could get consid'able of a income by sendin' husbands to wars, if it wa'n't for that. Well, well; to think you didn't know that! Wonder if Lizzie does?"

"She don't!" Mrs. b.u.t.terfield said, excitedly; "course she don't.

She's calculatin' on havin' that pension same as ever. Why, she _can't_ marry Nat. Goodness! I guess I'll just step down and tell her. Lucky you told me to-night; to-morrow it would 'a' been too late!"

IV

Lizzie Graham was sitting in the dark on her door-step; a cat had curled up comfortably in her lap; her elm was faintly murmurous with a constant soft rustling and whispering of the lace of leaves around its great boughs. Now and then a tree-toad spoke, or from the pasture pond behind the house came the metallic tw.a.n.g of a bullfrog. But nothing else broke the deep stillness of the summer night. Lizzie's elbow was on her knee, her chin in her hand; she was listening to the peace, and thinking--not anxiously, but seriously. After all, it was a great undertaking: Nathaniel wasn't "hearty," perhaps,--but when you don't average four eggs a day (for in November and December the hens do act like they are possessed!); when sometimes your cow will be dry; when your neighbor is mad and won't remember the potato-barrel--the outlook for one is not simple; for two it is sobering.

"But I can do it," Lizzie said to herself, and set her lips hard together.

The gate clicked shut, and Mrs. b.u.t.terfield came in, running almost.

"Look here, Lizzie Graham,--oh my! wait till I get my breath;--_Lizzie, you can't do it._ Because--" And then, panting, she explained.

"So, you see, you just can't," she repeated.

Lizzie said something under her breath, and stared with blank bewilderment at her informant.

"Maybe Josh don't know?"

"Maybe he does know," retorted Mrs. b.u.t.terfield. "Goodness! makes me tremble to think if he hadn't told me to-night! Supposin' he hadn't let on about it till this time to-morrow?"

Lizzie put her hands over her face with an exclamation of dismay.