She ran forward with long leaps out of the cornfield
and caught it to her neck and mumbled its wet cheeks
with hungry kisses. “Oh, my honey, my honey!
Did it think its mother had left—”
She stopped at the word with a pang, and began to
go about the rude place that was the simple home where
after years of hell she had found an earthly heaven.
Often she stopped, and wondered at herself. It
seemed impossible she could be thinking it, be doing
it, but she was thinking and doing it, and at sundown,
when she knew by the eager shadow of a man in the
doorway, pausing to listen if the baby were awake,
all had been thought and done.
The emotional frenzies, recurring through the day,
were past, and she could speak steadily to the man,
in the absence of greeting which often emphasizes
the self-forgetfulness of love as well as marks the
formlessness of common life: “Your supper’s
waitin’ for you, Laban; I’ve had mine;
you must be hungry. It’s out in the shed;
it’s cooler there. Go round; baby’s
asleep.”
The man obeyed, and she heard him drop the bucket
into the well, and lift it by the groaning sweep,
and pour the water into the basin, and then splash
himself, with murmurs of comfort, presently muffled
in the towel. Her hearing followed him through
his supper, and she knew he was obediently eating
it, and patiently waiting for her to account for whatever
was unwonted in her greeting. She loved him most
of all for his boylike submission to her will and
every caprice of it, but now she hardly knew how to
deny his tacit question as he ventured in from the
shed.
“Don’t come near me, Laban,” she
said with a stony quiet. “Don’t touch
me. I ain’t your wife, any more.”
He could not speak at first; then it was like him
to ask, “Why—why—What
have I done, Nancy?”
“You, you poor soul?” she answered.
“Nothing but good, all your days! He’s
come back.”
He knew whom she meant, but he had to ask, “Joseph
Dylks? Why I thought he was—”
“Don’t say it! It’s murder!
I don’t want you to have his blood on you too.
Oh, if he was only dead! Yes, yes!
I have a right to wish it! Oh, God be merciful
to me, a sinner!”
“When—when—how did you
know it, Nancy?”
“Yesterday morning or day before—just
after you left. I reckon he was waitin’
for you to go. I’m glad you went first.”
The man looked up at the rifle resting on the pegs
above the fireplace. “Laban, don’t!”
she cried. “I looked at it when he was
walkin’ away, and I know what you’re thinkin’.”
“What is he goin’ to do?” the man
asked from his daze.
“Nothing. He said he wouldn’t do
nothing if I didn’t. If he hadn’t
said it I might believe it!”
Laban shifted his weight where he stood from one foot
to the other.
“He passed the night at David’s.
He’s passed two nights there.”
