When I spoke to her, she turned around quickly.
She was a tall woman, about twenty-eight, with very
white teeth and yellow hair, which she parted a little
to one side and drew down over her ears. She had
a sullen face and large well-shaped hands, with her
nails long and very pointed.
“The ‘she-devil’ has brought you
some tea,” I said. “Where shall she
put it?”
“’She-devil’!” she repeated,
raising her eyebrows. “It’s a very
thoughtful she-devil. Who called you that?”
But, with the sight of the valise and the fear that
they might be leaving, I thought it best not to quarrel.
She had left the window, and going to her dressing-table,
had picked up her nail-file.
“Never mind,” I said. “I hope
you are not going away. These floods don’t
last, and they’re a benefit. Plenty of the
people around here rely on ’em every year to
wash out their cellars.”
“No, I’m not going away,” she replied
lazily. “I’m taking that dress to
Miss Hope at the theater. She is going to wear
it in Charlie’s Aunt next week.
She hasn’t half enough of a wardrobe to play
leads in stock. Look at this thumb-nail, broken
to the quick!”
If I had only looked to see which thumb it was!
But I was putting the tea-tray on the wash-stand,
and moving Mr. Ladley’s papers to find room
for it. Peter, the spaniel, begged for a lump
of sugar, and I gave it to him.
“Where is Mr. Ladley?” I asked.
“Gone out to see the river.”
“I hope he’ll be careful. There’s
a drowning or two every year in these floods.”
“Then I hope he won’t,” she said
calmly. “Do you know what I was doing when
you came in? I was looking after his boat, and
hoping it had a hole in it.”
“You won’t feel that way to-morrow, Mrs.
Ladley,” I protested, shocked. “You’re
just nervous and put out. Most men have their
ugly times. Many a time I wished Mr. Pitman was
gone—until he went. Then I’d
have given a good bit to have him back again.”
She was standing in front of the dresser, fixing her
hair over her ears. She turned and looked at
me over her shoulder.
“Probably Mr. Pitman was a man,” she said.
“My husband is a fiend, a devil.”
Well, a good many women have said that to me at different
times. But just let me say such a thing to them,
or repeat their own words to them the next day, and
they would fly at me in a fury. So I said nothing,
and put the cream into her tea.
I never saw her again.
There is not much sleeping done in the flood district
during a spring flood. The gas was shut off,
and I gave Mr. Reynolds and the Ladleys each a lamp.
I sat in the back room that I had made into a temporary
kitchen, with a candle, and with a bedquilt around
my shoulders. The water rose fast in the lower
hall, but by midnight, at the seventh step, it stopped
rising and stood still. I always have a skiff
during the flood season, and as the water rose, I
tied it to one spindle of the staircase after another.
