One night when I've been there more'n a week, and am getting kind o' tired staying in one place so long, I don't want to go to bed after I eats, and I gets a-holt of some of the perfessor's cigars and goes into the lib'ary to see if he's got anything fit to read. Setting there thinking of the awful remarkable people they is in this world I must of went to sleep. Purty soon, in my sleep, I hearn two voices. Then I waked up sudden, and still hearn 'em, low and quick-like, in the room that opens right off of the lib'ary with a couple of them sliding doors like is onto a box car. One voice was a woman's voice, and it wasn't Miss Estelle's.
"But I MUST see them before we go, Henry," she says.
And the other was a man's voice and it wasn't no one around our house.
"But, my God," he says, "suppose you get it yourself, Jane!"I set up straight then, fur Jane was the perfessor's wife's first name.
"You mean suppose YOU get it," she says. I like to of seen the look she must of give him to fit in with the way she says that YOU. He didn't say nothing, the man didn't; and then her voice softens down some, and she says, low and slow:
"Henry, wouldn't you love me if I DID get it?
Suppose it marked and pitted me all up?"
"Oh, of course," he says, "of course I would.
Nothing can change the way I feel. YOU know that." He said it quick enough, all right, jest the way they does in a show, but it sounded TOO MUCHlike it does on the stage to of suited me if _I_'D been her. I seen folks overdo them little talks before this.
I listens some more, and then I sees how it is.
This is that musician feller Biddy Malone's been talking about. Jane's going to run off with him all right, but she's got to kiss the kids first. Women is like that. They may hate the kids' pa all right, but they's dad-burned few of 'em don't like the kids. I thinks to myself: "It must be late.
I bet they was already started, or ready to start, and she made him bring her here first so's she could sneak in and see the kids. She jest simply couldn't get by. But she's taking a fool risk, too. Fur how's she going to see Margery with that nurse coming and going and hanging around all night?
And even if she tries jest to see William Dear it's a ten to one shot he'll wake up and she'll be ketched at it."And then I thinks, suppose she IS ketched at it?
What of it? Ain't a woman got a right to come into her own house with her own door key, even if they is a quarantine onto it, and see her kids? And if she is ketched seeing them, how would any one know she was going to run off? And ain't she got a right to have a friend of hern and her husband's bring her over from her mother's house, even if it is a little late?
Then I seen she wasn't taking no great risks neither, and I thinks mebby I better go and tell that perfessor what is going on, fur he has treated me purty white. And then I thinks: "I'll be gosh-derned if I meddle. So fur as I can see that there perfessor ain't getting fur from what's coming to him, nohow. And as fur HER, you got to let some people find out what they want fur their-selves. Anyhow, where do _I_ come in at?"
But I want to get a look at her and Henry, anyhow. So I eases off my shoes, careful-like, and I eases acrost the floor to them sliding doors, and I puts my eye down to the little crack. The talk is going backward and forward between them two, him wanting her to come away quick, and her undecided whether to risk seeing the kids. And all the time she's kind o' hoping mebby she will be ketched if she tries to see the kids, and she's begging off fur more time ginerally.
Well, sir, I didn't blame that musician feller none when I seen her. She was a peach.
And I couldn't blame her so much, neither, when I thought of Miss Estelle and all them scientifics of the perfessor's strung out fur years and years world without end.
Yet, when I seen the man, I sort o' wished she wouldn't. I seen right off that Henry wouldn't do. It takes a man with a lot of gumption to keep a woman feeling good and not sorry fur doing it when he's married to her. But it takes a man with twicet as much to make her feel right when they ain't married. This feller wears one of them little, brown, pointed beards fur to hide where his chin ain't. And his eyes is too much like a woman's. Which is the kind that gets the biggest piece of pie at the lunch counter and fergits to thank the girl as cuts it big. She was setting in front of a table, twisting her fingers together, and he was walking up and down. I seen he was mad and trying not to show it, and I seen he was scared of the smallpox and trying not to show that, too.
And jest about that time something happened that kind o' jolted me.
They was one of them big chairs in the room where they was that has got a high back and spins around on itself. It was right acrost from me, on the other side of the room, and it was facing the front window, which was a bow window. And that there chair begins to turn, slow and easy.
First I thought she wasn't turning. Then I seen she was. But Jane and Henry didn't. They was all took up with each other in the middle of the room, with their backs to it.
Henry is a-begging of Jane, and she turns a little more, that chair does. Will she squeak, Iwonders?
"Don't you be a fool, Jane," says the Henry feller.
Around she comes three hull inches, that there chair, and nary a squeak.
"A fool?" asts Jane, and laughs. "And I'm not a fool to think of going with you at all, then?"That chair, she moved six inches more and I seen the calf of a leg and part of a crumpled-up coat tail.
"But I AM going with you, Henry," says Jane.
And she gets up jest like she is going to put her arms around him.
But Jane don't. Fur that chair swings clear around and there sets the perfessor. He's all hunched up and caved in and he's rubbing his eyes like he's jest woke up recent, and he's got a grin onto his face that makes him look like his sister Estelle looks all the time.
"Excuse me," says the perfessor.
They both swings around and faces him. I can hear my heart bumping. Jane never says a word.
The man with the brown beard never says a word.
