The Side Of The Angels. Basil King
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"I know who you are," the woman said, ungraciously. "If you hadn't been a Masterman I shouldn't have sent for you."
He took a small chair, drawing it up beside her. "I know you've been treated by my uncle Sim—"
"He's a fool. Tries to heal a broken heart by feeding it on rainbows."
Thor smiled. "That's like him. And yet rainbows have been known to heal a broken heart before now."
"They won't heal mine. What I want is down on the solid earth." There was a kind of desperate pleading in her face as she added, "Why can't I have it?"
"That depends on what it is. If it's health—?"
"It's better than health."
He smiled. "I've always heard that health is pretty good, as things go—"
"It's good enough. But there's something better, and that's patience. If you've got patience you can do without health."
"I don't think you're much in need of a doctor, Mrs. Fay," he laughed.
"I am," she declared, savagely. "I am, because I 'ain't got either of 'em; and if I had I'd give them both for something else." She held him with her wild gray eyes, as she said: "I'd give 'em both for money. Money's better than patience and better than health. If I had money I shouldn't care how sick I was, or how unhappy. If I had money my son wouldn't be in jail."
Though startled, he knew that, like a confessor, he must show no sign of surprise. He remembered now that there had been a boy in the Fay family, two or three years younger than himself. "I didn't know—" he began, sympathetically.
"You didn't know, because we're not even talked about. If your brother was in jail for stealing money it's the first thing the town would tattle of. But you've been back from your travels for a year or more, and you 'ain't even heard that our Matt is doing three years at Colcord."
"But you'd rather people didn't hear it, wouldn't you?"
"I'd rather that they'd care whether I'm alive or dead," she said, fiercely. "I've lived all my life in this village, and my ancestors before me. Fay's family has done the same. But we're pushed aside and forgotten. It's as much as ever if some one will tell you that Jasper Fay raises lettuce in the winter, and cucumbers in spring, and a few flowers all the year round, and can't pay his rent. I don't believe you've heard that much. Have you?"
He dodged the subject by asking the usual professional questions and giving some elementary professional advice. "I'm afraid, Mrs. Fay, you're taking a discouraged view of life," he went on, by way of doing his duty.
She sat still more erect in her arm-chair, her eyes flashing. "If you'd seen yourself driven to the wall for more'n thirty year, and if when you got to the wall you were crushed against it, and crushed again, wouldn't you take a discouraged view of life? I've lived on bread and water, or pretty near it, ever since I was married, and what's come of it? We're worse off than we ever were. Fay's put everything he could scrape together into this bit of land, and now your father is shilly-shallying again about renewing the lease."
"Oh, so that's it!"
"That's it—but it's only some of it. Look out there. All Fay's sweat and blood and all of mine is in those greenhouses and that ground. It's everything we've got to live on, and God knows what kind of a living it is. Your father has never given us more'n a three years' lease, and every three years he's raised the rent on us. He's had us in his power from the first—Oh, he's crafty, getting us to rent the land from him instead of buying it, and Fay that soft that he believed him to be his friend!—he's had us in his power from the first, and he's never spared us. No wonder he's rich! And you're coming in for that Thorley money, too. I know what your grandfather Thorley's will was. Going to get it when you're thirty. Must be pretty nigh that now, ain't you?"
To humor her Thor named the date in the following February when he should reach the age fixed by his grandfather for entering on the inheritance.
"What'd I tell you? I remember your grandfather as plain as plain. Big, hard-faced man he was, something like you. My folks could remember him when he hawked garden-trucks to back doors in the city. Nothing but a farmer's son he was, just like the rest of us—and he died rich. Only difference between the Thorleys and the Fays was that the Thorleys held on to their land and the Fays didn't. Neither did my folks, the Grimeses. If we'd been crafty and hadn't sold till the city was creeping down our chimneys like the Thorleys and the Brands, we should be as rich as them. Cut your father out of his will good and hard, your grandfather did, and now it'll all come to you. Why, there was a time when the Thorleys hired out to my folks, and so did the Willoughbys! And now—!" She threw the quilt from off her knees and spread her hands outward. "Oh, I'm sick of it! I've spent my life watching every one else go up and me and mine go down—and I'm sick of it. I'm not sick any other way—"
"No, I don't think you are," he said, gently.
"But that's bad enough, isn't it? If I had a fever or a cold you could give me something to take it away. But what can you do for the state of mind I'm in?"
He answered, slowly, "I can't do much just yet—though I can do a little—but by and by, perhaps—when I know more exactly what the trouble is—"
"You can't know it better than I can tell you now. It's just this—that I've all I can do to keep from stealing down to Thorley's Pond, when no one's looking, and throwing myself in. What do you think of that?"
"I think you won't do it," he smiled, "but I wouldn't play with the idea if I were you."
"Look here," she cried, seizing him by the arm and pulling him out of his chair. "Look out of that window." He followed the pointing of her finger to a high bluff covered with oaks, to which the withered brown foliage still clung, though other trees were bare. "That's Duck Rock. Well, there's a spot there where the water's thirty foot deep. What do you think of that?"
He moved back from the window, but remained standing. "I think that it doesn't matter to you and me whether it's thirty foot deep or sixty or a hundred."
"It matters to me. In thirty foot of water I'd go down like a stone; and then it'd be all over. After that nothing but—sleep." Her eyes held him again. "You don't believe there'll be anything after it but sleep, do you?"
He dodged that question, too. "But you do."
"I was brought up an orthodox Congregational—but what's the good? All I've ever got out of it was rainbows; and what I've wanted is solid. I've wanted to do something, and be something, and have something—and not be pushed back and trampled out of sight by people who used to hire out to my folks and can treat me like dirt to-day, just because they've got the money. Why haven't I got it, too? I'm fit for it. I had good schooling. Louisa Thorley—your own mother, that is—and me went to school together. Your father ran away with her and she died when you were born. We went to school to old Miss Brand—aunt to Bessie Brand that's now Bessie Willoughby and holds her head so high. Poor as church mice they was in those days. But then every one was poor. We was all poor together—and happy. And now some are poor and some are rich—and there's upper classes and lower classes—and everything's got uneven—and I'm sick of it."
To calm her excitement he talked to her with the inspiration of young earnestness, getting his reward in an attention accorded perhaps for the very reason that the earnestness was young. "I think I must run off now," he finished, when he thought her slightly comforted, "but I'll send you something I want you to take at once. You'll take a tablespoonful in half a glass of water—"
The rebellious spirit revived, though less bitterly. "And it'll do me as much good as a dose of your uncle's rainbows. What I want is what I shall never get—or sleep."
"Well, you'll get sleep," he said, smiling and holding out his hand. "You'll sleep to-night—and I'll come again to-morrow."
He was at the door when she called out: "Do you know what our Matt got his three years for? It was for stealing money from Massy's grocery-store, where he was bookkeeper. And do you know what