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Page 79
Well, I kept on smoking, and she kept on looking at the ceiling, and
nobody said a word for a while, till by and by the fire burnt down, and
she got up and put on a fresh log.
"You're dreadful wasteful with the wood, Nancy," says I, bound to say
something cross? and that was all I could think of.
"Take care of your own fire, then," says she, throwing the log down and
standing up as straight as she could stand. "I think it's a pity if you
haven't anything better to do, the last night before going in, than to
pick everything I do to pieces this way, and I tired enough to drop,
carrying that great crying child in my arms all day. You ought to be
ashamed of yourself, Aaron Hollis!"
Now if she had cried a little, very like I should have given up, and
that would have been the end of it, for I never could bear to see a
woman cry; it goes against the grain. But your mother wasn't one of the
crying sort, and she didn't feel like it that night.
She just stood up there by the fireplace, as proud as Queen Victory,--I
don't blame her, Johnny,--O no, I don't blame her; she had the right of
it there, I _ought_ to have been ashamed of myself; but a man never
likes to hear that from other folks, and I put my pipe down on the
chimney-shelf so hard I heard it snap like ice, and I stood up too, and
said--but no matter what I said, I guess. A man's quarrels with his wife
always make me think of what the Scripture says about other folks not
intermeddling. They're things, in my opinion, that don't concern anybody
else as a general thing, and I couldn't tell what I said without telling
what she said, and I'd rather not do that. Your mother was as good and
patient-tempered a woman as ever lived, Johnny, and she didn't mean it,
and it was I that set her on. Besides, my words were worst of the two.
Well, well, I'll hurry along just here, for it's not a time I like to
think about; but we had it back and forth there for half an hour, till
we had angered each other up so I couldn't stand it, and I lifted up my
hand,--I would have struck her if she hadn't been a woman.
"Well," says I, "Nancy Hollis, I'm sorry for the day I married you, and
that's the truth, if ever I spoke a true word in my life!"
I wouldn't have told you that now if you could understand the rest
without. I'd give the world, Johnny,--I'd give the world and all those
coupon bonds Jedediah invested for me if I could anyway forget it; but I
said it, and I can't.
Well, I've seen your mother look 'most all sorts of ways in the course
of her life, but I never saw her before, and I never saw her since, look
as she looked that minute. All the blaze went out in her cheeks, as if
somebody had thrown cold water on it, and she stood there stock still,
so white I thought she would drop.
"Aaron--" she began, and stopped to catch her breath,--"Aaron--" but she
couldn't get any further; she just caught hold of a little shawl she had
on with both her hands, as if she thought she could hold herself up by
it, and walked right out of the room. I knew she had gone to bed, for I
heard her go up and shut the door. I stood there a few minutes with my
hands in my pockets, whistling Yankee Doodle. Your mother used to say
men were queer folks, Johnny; they always whistled up the gayest when
they felt the wust. Then I went to the closet and got another pipe, and
I didn't go upstairs till it was smoked out.
When I was a young man, Johnny, I used to be that sort of fellow that
couldn't bear to give up beat. I'd acted like a brute, and I knew it,
but I was too spunky to say so. So I says to myself, "If she won't make
up first, I won't, and that's the end on't." Very likely she said the
same thing, for your mother was a spirited sort of woman when her temper
_was_ up; so there we were, more like enemies sworn against each other
than man and wife who had loved each other true for fifteen years,--a
whole winter, and danger, and death perhaps, coming between us, too.
It may seem very queer to you, Johnny,--it did to me when I was your
age, and didn't know any more than you do,--how folks can work
themselves up into great quarrels out of such little things; but they
do, and into worse, if it's a man who likes his own way, and a woman
that knows how to talk. It's my opinion, two thirds of all the divorce
cases in the law-books just grow up out of things no bigger than that
lamp-wick.
But how people that ever loved each other could come to hard words like
that, you don't see? Well, ha, ha! Johnny, that amuses me, that really
does amuse me, for I never saw a young man nor a young woman
either,--and young men and young women in general are very much like
fresh-hatched chickens, to my mind, and know just about as much of the
world, Johnny,--well, I never saw one yet who didn't say that very
thing. And what's more, I never saw one who could get it into his head
that old folks knew better.
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