A Yankee from the West Part 39

The hired man came into the kitchen. "Wan't that the Professor shoutin'

out there?" he asked.

"Yes, the poor old man has just come home, crushed."

"Didn't find no market, then, for his book?"

"No. He brought it back with him. And, by the way, his life insurance will soon be due, and I must pay it for him."

"Don't he owe you for one?"

"That makes no difference. I must help him. The world ought to help him, but he is laughed at by you clods."

"Bill, don't call me a clod. I don't own enough dirt to be called a clod."

"That's all right, Bob. I don't mean you. What day of the month is this?"

"Second, ain't it?"

"I asked you."

"Then I guess it's the second."

"His insurance will be due on the ninth. Bob, early in the morning you go over to Antioch and tell old Bryson that he may have those calves at the price he offered."

"Yes, but I don't think it's enough, Bill."

"Can't help it. I've got to raise money enough for that poor old fellow."

Before breakfast the next morning Milford hastened to the Professor's house. Mrs. Dolihide heard him unchaining the gate, and came out upon the veranda. He did not care to go in; he dreaded to look again upon that blasted countenance. "Good morning, madam. I wish you'd tell the Professor not to worry over his insurance. Tell him I'll make it all right."

"I will when he comes home. I expected him last night, but he didn't get back."

"What----" But he checked himself. An alarm had arisen in his breast, but he would not spread it. He muttered something and turned away, leaving her to gaze after him in wonderment. A man came running down the road. Milford stopped him, and he stood panting until he could gather breath enough for his story. It was brief. The Professor's body had been taken from the lake. At daylight he had come down to the sh.o.r.e and had shoved out in a boat. A man warned him against the tumbling ice, for the wind was fresh. He had a rod, and said that he was going to fish. The man told him that the fish would not bite. He said that they would bite for him. Out beyond the dead rushes where the water was deep the boat tipped over. It looked like an accident--the ice. There were no means of rescue, and so he drowned. The man was excited, and could not say for certain, but he thought that the Professor had cried out, "Warmer than the world!"

CHAPTER XXVIII.

CONCLUSION.

The neighbors dropped their milk-cans and flocked to the stricken home.

A bundle and a walking-stick had been reverently carried to an upper room and placed upon a desk. These relics of despair's weary journey had been picked up from the ground, beneath the old man's window. He had stood there at night, alone, when the household was asleep. And now, when all were awake, he lay asleep, beflowered, roses on his breast, a broken heart perfumed.

"He looks natural," said a man who had laughed at him.

"But he doesn't seem to be tickling any one now," Milford was bitter enough to reply.

The soft earth beneath the window, the window once of fair prospect, was many-tracked by the feet of indecisive agony, as if the old man had shambled there, debating with his despair. But that he had made up his mind early in the evening was now clear to Milford. Perhaps the sight of the window through which he had looked out upon the leafless tree, the hope that he had seen hanging from its branches--perhaps his nearness to the sleeping household had caused him for a brief time to waver, but not for long. Milford recalled his cla.s.sification of the poets, "Wordsworth, the lake." And his cry out in the dark, "Wordsworth!

Wordsworth!" His fis.h.i.+ng-rod argued that he strove to hide the appearance of self-destruction, but in the iced water he forgot his last thin pretense of caution, shouting as the excited spectator believed, "Warmer than the world!"

The awful agony of the first clod, falling with hollow sound, the tearing rush of memory, the gasp of the heart, missing a beat! The widow fell senseless at the grave, and they took her away, the daughter sobbing over her. Yes, they all took him seriously now.

"It does seem that he could have done something," said Steve Hardy, waiting for Milford outside the graveyard.

"He did," Milford replied.

"I mean--you know what I mean. I don't see how a man can give up that way. Seems to me like I'd fight till the last."

"Yes, but that man was more of a hero than you could ever be. He saw that he could not keep up his insurance, and he decided that it was better to die."

"I understand that the widow'll get ten thousand."

"Yes, the community is very quick to understand that point."

"I was talkin' to a lawyer, and he said that they couldn't keep her out of the money. The courts have decided that the money in such cases has to be paid."

"He understood it, too, or he wouldn't have drowned himself."

"I guess so. Well, you never can tell what a man may do. You form your idea of him and find out afterwards that it was all wrong. But it would be a cold day when I'd kill myself for anybody. I hear you're goin' to have a sale at your house."

"Yes, I don't care to stay here any longer."

"Every man to his own taste, but you can't find a puttier country. I guess this community right here s.h.i.+ps more milk that any section along the road. But they say that when a man once lives away out in the West he always has a likin' for it. Well, I'll be over there on the day of the sale."

Milford sold all of his belongings, with the exception of some tools, a cow, and a loft full of cattle-feed which he gave to the hired man. He was not quite ready to go, but would remain a few days and perhaps a week longer. He was waiting for a letter, and he searched the newspapers every day. Mrs. Stuvic demanded that he should spend the remaining time at her house. She was sorry to lose him. She had confessed that she was half afraid of him, and this feeling had endeared him to her.

"What makes you grab after the newspaper so?" she asked one morning, in the dining-room.

"I want to know the news."

"No, you don't; there's somethin' else. You've sold all your stuff and can't be interested in the markets."

"I am looking for Western news. I want to keep track of a certain man."

"Who was that letter from you got this mornin'?"

"From her."

"Where is she?"

"In the city."

"Has she quit her school?"

"She's given it up as a failure."

"Then you'll be goin' to town soon."