第60章 THE REVENGE(2)

"I told him you were on your way to the house, pa, but he said he had only a minute, so he came out here.""Oh, I've jest been to borrow some Jamaica ginger from Mrs.

Weatherby," explained Sol Peterkin, carefully closing the shutter after his entrance.

"My wife's took so bad that I'm beginnin' to fear she'll turn out as po' a bargain as the last.It's my luck--I always knew I was ill-fated--but, Lord a-mercy, how's a man goin' to tell the state of a woman's innards from the way she looks on top? All the huggin' in the world won't make her wink an eyelash, an' then there'll crop out heart disease or dropsy befo' the year is up.

When I think of the trouble I had pickin' that thar woman it makes me downright sick.It ain't much matter about the colour or the shape, I said--a freckled face an' a scrawny waist I kin stand--only let it be the quality that wears.If you believe it, suh, I chose the very ugliest I could find, thinkin' that the Lord might be mo' willin' to overlook her--an' now this is what's come of it.She's my fourth, too, an' I'll begin to be a joke when I go out lookin' for a fifth.Naw, suh; if Mary dies, pure shame will keep me a widower to my death.""Thar ain't but one thing sartain about marriage, in my mind,"commented Matthew Field, "an' that is that it gits most of its colour from the distance that comes between.The more your mouth waters for a woman, the likelier 'tis that 'tain't the woman for you--that's my way of thinkin'.The woman a man don't git somehow is always the woman he ought to have had.It's a curious, mixed-up business, however you look at it.""That's so," said Tom Spade; "I always noticed it.The woman who is your wife may be a bouncin' beauty, an' the woman who ain't may be as ugly as sin, but you'd go twice as far to kiss her all the same.Thar is always a sight more spice about the woman who ain't.""Jest look at Eliza, now," pursued Matthew, wrapped in the thought of his own domestic infelicities."What I could never understand about Eliza was that John Sales went clean to the dogs because he couldn't git her.To think of sech a thing happenin', jest as if I was to blame, when if I'd only known it I could hev turned about an' taken her sister Lizzie.Thar were five of 'em in all, an' I settled on Eliza, as it was, with my eyes blindfold.Poor John--poor John! It was sech a terrible waste of wantin'.""Well, it's a thing to stiddy about," said old Jacob, with a sigh."They tell me now that that po' young gal of Bill Fletcher's has found it a thorny bed, to be sho'.Her letters are all bright an' pleasant enough, they say, filled with fine clothes an' the names of strange places, but a gentleman who met her somewhar over thar wrote Fletcher that her husband used her like a dumb brute."Christopher started and looked up inquiringly.

"Have you heard anything about that, Jim?" he asked in a queer voice.

"Nothin' more.Fletcher told me he had written to her to come home, but she answered that she would stick to Wyndham for better or for worse.It's a great pity--the marriage promised so well, too.""Oh, the gal's got a big heart; I could tell it from her eyes,"said old Jacob."When you see those dark, solemn eyes, lookin'

out of a pale, peaked face, it means thar's a heart behind 'em, an' a heart that bodes trouble some day, whether it be in man or woman."Christopher passed his hand across his brow and stood staring vacantly at the smouldering logs.He could not tell whether the news saddened or rejoiced him, but, at least, it brought Maria's image vividly before his eyes.The spell of her presence was over him again, and he felt, as he had felt on that last evening, the mysterious attraction of her womanhood.So intense was the visionary appeal that it had for the moment almost the effect of hallucination; it was as if she still entreated him across all the distance.The brooding habit of his mind had undoubtedly done much to conserve his emotion, as had the rural isolation in which he lived.In a city life the four years would probably have blotted out her memory; but where comparison was impossible, and lighter distractions almost unheard of, what chance was there for him to forget the single passionate experience he had known?

Among his primitive neighbours Maria had flitted for a time like a bewildering vision; then the great distant world had caught her up into its brightness, and the desolate waste country was become the guardian of the impression she had left.

"If thar's a man who has had bad luck with his children, it's Bill Fletcher," old Jacob was saying thoughtfully."He's been a hard man an' a mean one, too, an' when he couldn't beg or borrow it's my opinion that he never hesitated to put forth his hand an'

steal.Thar's a powerful lot of judgment in dumb happenin's, an'

when you see a family waste out an' run to seed like that it usually means that the good Lord is havin' His way about matters.

It takes a mighty sharp eye to tell the difference between judgment an' misfortune, an' I've seen enough in this world to know that, no matter how skilfully you twist up good an' evil, God Almighty may be a long time in the unravelling, but He'll straighten 'em out at last.Now as to Bill Fletcher, his sins got in the bone an' they're workin' out in the blood.Look at his son Bill--didn't he come out of the army to drink himself to death?