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Page 79
She shook her head. `Not me.'
`But why not? What makes you say that?' I persisted.
Lena laughed.
`Well, it's mainly because I don't want a husband. Men are all right for
friends, but as soon as you marry them they turn into cranky old fathers,
even the wild ones. They begin to tell you what's sensible and what's
foolish, and want you to stick at home all the time. I prefer to be
foolish when I feel like it, and be accountable to nobody.'
`But you'll be lonesome. You'll get tired of this sort of life, and you'll
want a family.'
`Not me. I like to be lonesome. When I went to work for Mrs. Thomas I was
nineteen years old, and I had never slept a night in my life when there
weren't three in the bed. I never had a minute to myself except when I was
off with the cattle.'
Usually, when Lena referred to her life in the country at all, she
dismissed it with a single remark, humorous or mildly cynical. But tonight
her mind seemed to dwell on those early years. She told me she couldn't
remember a time when she was so little that she wasn't lugging a heavy baby
about, helping to wash for babies, trying to keep their little chapped
hands and faces clean. She remembered home as a place where there were
always too many children, a cross man and work piling up around a sick
woman.
`It wasn't mother's fault. She would have made us comfortable if she
could. But that was no life for a girl! After I began to herd and milk, I
could never get the smell of the cattle off me. The few underclothes I had
I kept in a cracker-box. On Saturday nights, after everybody was in bed,
then I could take a bath if I wasn't too tired. I could make two trips to
the windmill to carry water, and heat it in the wash-boiler on the stove.
While the water was heating, I could bring in a washtub out of the cave,
and take my bath in the kitchen. Then I could put on a clean night-gown
and get into bed with two others, who likely hadn't had a bath unless I'd
given it to them. You can't tell me anything about family life. I've had
plenty to last me.'
`But it's not all like that,' I objected.
`Near enough. It's all being under somebody's thumb. What's on your mind,
Jim? Are you afraid I'll want you to marry me some day?'
Then I told her I was going away.
`What makes you want to go away, Jim? Haven't I been nice to you?'
`You've been just awfully good to me, Lena,' I blurted. `I don't think
about much else. I never shall think about much else while I'm with you.
I'll never settle down and grind if I stay here. You know that.'
I dropped down beside her and sat looking at the floor. I seemed to have
forgotten all my reasonable explanations.
Lena drew close to me, and the little hesitation in her voice that had hurt
me was not there when she spoke again.
`I oughtn't to have begun it, ought I?' she murmured. `I oughtn't to have
gone to see you that first time. But I did want to. I guess I've always
been a little foolish about you. I don't know what first put it into my
head, unless it was Antonia, always telling me I mustn't be up to any of my
nonsense with you. I let you alone for a long while, though, didn't I?'
She was a sweet creature to those she loved, that Lena Lingard!
At last she sent me away with her soft, slow, renunciatory kiss.
`You aren't sorry I came to see you that time?' she whispered. `It seemed
so natural. I used to think I'd like to be your first sweetheart. You
were such a funny kid!'
She always kissed one as if she were sadly and wisely sending one away
forever.
We said many good-byes before I left Lincoln, but she never tried to hinder
me or hold me back. `You are going, but you haven't gone yet, have you?'
she used to say.
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