Country Neighbors Part 32

"Don't you want I should pull your boots off?"

This she said unwillingly, because she was about to break the current of his peace, and it seemed deceitful to offer him an alleviation that would do him no good after all.

"No," said Myron sleepily. "Let 'em be as they are."

Mrs. Dill drew up a chair and sat down in it at his side, as if she were the watcher by a sick-bed or the partner in a cosy conversation.

"Myron," said she. Her voice frightened her. It sounded hoa.r.s.e and strange, and yet there was very little of it, deserted by her failing breath.

"What say?" he answered from his drowse.

"I found a real interestin' piece in the 'Monitor' this mornin'. It was how some folks ain't jest one person, as we think, but they're two and sometimes three. And mebbe one of 'em's good, and t'other two are bad, and when they're bad they can't help it. They can't help it, Myron, the bad ones can't, no matter how hard they try."

"Yes, I believe I come acrost it," said Myron. "Terrible foolish it was.

That's one o' the things doctors get up to feather their own nest."

"No, Myron, it ain't foolish," said his wife. She moved her chair nearer, and her gla.s.ses glittered at him. "It ain't foolish, for I'm one o' that same kind, and I know."

His eyes came open, and he turned his head to look at her.

"Ain't you feelin' well, Caddie?" he asked kindly.

"Oh, yes, I'm well as common," she answered. "But it ain't foolish, Myron, and you've got to hear me. 'Double Personality,' that's what they call it. Well, I've got it. I've got double personality."

Myron Dill put his feet to the floor, and sat upright. He was regarding his wife anxiously, but he took pains to speak with a commonplace a.s.surance.

"We might as well be gettin' off to bed early, I guess. I'm tired, and so be you."

"I've felt it for quite a long spell," said his wife earnestly. "I don't know but I've always felt it--leastways, all through my married life. It's somethin' that makes me as mad as tophet when you start me out to do anything I don't feel it's no ways right to do, and it keeps whisperin' to me I'm a fool to do it. That's what it says, Myron.

'You're a fool to do it!'"

Myron was touched at last, through his armor of esteem.

"I ain't asked you to do what ain't right, Caddie," he a.s.severated.

"What makes you tell me I have?"

"That's what it says to me," she repeated fixedly. "'You're a fool to do it.' That's what it says. It's my double personality."

It seemed best to Myron to humor this inexplicable mood, until he could persuade her back into a normal one.

"That wa'n't the way I understood it," he told her, "when I read the piece. The folks that were afflicted seemed like different folks. Now, you ain't any different, rain or shine. You're as even as anybody I should wish to see. That's what I've liked about ye, Caddie."

The softness of the implication she swept aside, as if she hardly dared regard it lest it weaken her resolve.

"Oh, I ain't goin' to be the same, day in, day out," she declared eagerly. "I feel I ain't, Myron. It's gettin' the best of me, the other creatur' that wants to have its own way. It's been growin' and growin', same as a child grows up, and now it's goin' to take its course. Same 's Hermie's growed up, you know. He's old enough to have his way, and lead his life same's we've led ours, and we've got to stand one side and let him do it."

Her husband gave her a sharp, sudden glance, and then fell again to the contemplation of his knotted brown hands that seemed, like all his equipment, informed with specialized power.

"Well," he said at length, "I guess you need a kind of a change. You'll feel better when you get over to t'other house. There's a different outlook over there, and you'll have more to take up your mind."

She answered instantly, in the haste that dares not wait upon reflection. Her eyes were brighter now, and her hands worked nervously.

"Oh, I ain't goin' to move, Myron. I might as well tell you that now.

I'm goin' to stay right here where I be. I don't feel able to help it.

That's my double personality. It won't let me."

Her husband was looking at her now in what seemed to her a very threatening way. His s.h.a.ggy eyebrows were drawn together and his eyes had lightning in them. She continued staring at him, held by the fascination of her terror. In that instant she realized a great many things: chiefly that she had never seen her husband angry with her, because she had taken every path to avoid the possibility, and that it was even more sickening than she could have thought. But she knew also that the battle was on, and suddenly, for no reason she could formulate, she remembered one of her own fighting ancestors who was said to have died hard in the Revolution.

"That was old Abner Kinsman," she broke out; and when her husband asked, out of his amaze at her irrelevance, "What's that you said?" she only answered confusedly, "Nothin', I guess."

At that the storm seemed to Myron to be over, and his forehead cleared of anger. He looked at her in much concern.

"I guess you better lay late to-morrer mornin'," he said, rising to close the windows and wind the clock. "I'll ride over and get Sally Drew to come and stay a spell and help you."

Something tightened through her tense body, and she answered instantly in a clear, loud note,--

"I ain't goin' to have Sally Drew. Last time I had her she washed up the hearth with the dish-cloth. If I want me a girl, I'll get one; but mebbe I sha'n't want one till Hermie brings Annie into the neighborhood to live."

She stood still in her place for a moment, trembling all over, and wondering what would happen when Myron had wound the clock and closed the windows and turned the wooden b.u.t.ton of the door. He did not look at her, nor did he speak again, and when she heard his deep, regular breathing from the bedroom she slipped in softly, made ready for bed, and lay down beside him.

She slept very little that night. He seemed to be a stranger, because there had been outward division between them; and yet, curiously, she felt nearer to him because she might have hurt him, and the jealous partisanship within her kept prompting her to a more tumultuous good-will, a warmer service.

Next morning, when Hermie had left them at the breakfast-table, and gone silently to his tasks, his mother leaned across the table as if, for some reason, she had to attract her husband's attention before speaking to him. He was just taking the last swallow of coffee, and now he set down his cup with decision, and moved away his plate. She knew what the next step would be. He would push back his chair, clear his throat, and then he would be gone.

"Myron!" she said. She spoke as something within Myron remembered the school-teacher speaking, when she called him to the board. The something within him responded to it, and without knowing why, he straightened and looked attentive. "You noticed Hermie, didn't you?" she adjured him. "You noticed he didn't have a word to say for himself, and he wouldn't look neither of us in the face?"

"What's he been up to?" Myron queried, with his ready frown. "He done somethin' out o' the way?"

"No, he ain't. I should think you'd be ashamed to hint such a thing, Myron Dill, your own boy, too! All he's done is to stay here, and work his fingers to the bone, and no thanks for it, and he's right down discouraged. I know how the boy feels. Myron, I want you should do somethin'. I want you should do it now."

Myron gave his chair the expected push, but he still sat there.

"Well," he said, "what is it? I've got to be off down to the medderlands."

"I want you should make over the Turnbull place to Hermie, and have him fetch Annie there as soon as ever she'll come, and let him farm it without if or but from you and me."

Myron was on his feet. He looked portentously large and masterful.

"You better not think o' packin' the chiny," he said, in his ordinary tone of generalship. "We can set it into baskets with a mite o' hay, and it'll get as fur as that without any breakages."

His wife slipped out of her chair, and went round the table to him. She laid a hand on his arm. Myron wanted, in the irritation of the moment, to shake it off, but he was a man of dignity, and forbore. His wife was speaking in a very gentle tone, but somehow different from the one he was used to noting.

"Myron, ain't you goin' to hear me?"

"I ain't goin' to listen to any tomfoolery, and I ain't goin' to have anybody dictatin' to me about my own business."

"It ain't your business, Myron, any more'n 'tis mine. Hermie's much my son as he is your'n, and what you bought that place with is as much mine as 'tis your'n. I helped you earn it. Myron, it's comin' up in me. I can feel it."