PAGE 10
"Ma’am?"
by
“No,” said he, “I won’t. An’ you’ll hardly be in time to steer your girl away from my boy.”
“Oh,” she said, “you misconceive me entirely, Mr. Saterlee. As far as I’m concerned, my only regret now is that I shan’t be in time to dance at the wedding.”
“Ma’am?” he said, and there was something husky in his voice.
V
About midnight they saw a light, and, forsaking what they believed in hopeful moments to be the road, they made for it across country. Across open spaces of sand, into gullies and out of gullies, through stinging patches of yucca and prickly pear, through breast-high chaparral, meshed, knotted, and matted, like a clumsy weaving together of very tough ropes, some with thorns, and all with sharp points and elbows.
They had long since dispensed with all conversation except what bore on their situation. Earlier in the night the darkness and the stars had wormed a story of divorce out of Mrs. Kimbal, and Saterlee had found himself longing to have the man at hand and by the throat.
And she had prattled of her many failures on the stage and, latterly, of her more successful ventures, and of a baby boy that she had had, and how that while she was off playing “on the road” her husband had come in drunk and had given the baby the wrong medicine. And it was about then that she had left off conversing.
For in joy it is hard enough to find the way in the dark, while for those in sorrow it is not often that it can be found at all.
The light proved to be a lantern upon the little porch of a ramshackle shanty. An old man with immense horn-rimmed spectacles was reading by it out of a tattered magazine. When the couple came close, the old man looked up from his reading, and blessed his soul several times.
“It do beat the Dutch!” he exclaimed in whining nasal tones, “if here ain’t two more.”
“Two more what?” said Saterlee.
“It’s the floods, I reckon,” whined the old man. “There’s three on the kitchen floor and there’s two ladies in my bed. That’s why I’m sittin’ up. There wa’n’t no bed for a man in his own house. But I found this here old copy of the Medical Revoo, ‘n’ I’m puttin’ in the time with erysipelis.”
“But,” said Saterlee, “you must find some place for this lady to rest. She is worn out with walking and hunger.”
“Stop!” whined the old man, smiting his thigh, “if there ain’t that there mattress in the loft! And I clean forgot, and told the boys that I hadn’t nothin’ better than a rug or two ‘n the kitchen floor.”
“A mattress!” exclaimed Saterlee. “Splendid! I guess you can sleep some on anything near as good as a mattress. Can’t you, ma’am?”
“Indeed I could!” she said. “But you have been through as much as I have–more. I won’t take it.”
The old man’s whine interrupted.
“Ain’t you two married?” he said.
“Nop,” said Saterlee shortly.
“Now ain’t that ridiculous?” meditated the old man; “I thought you was all along.” His eyes brightened behind the spectacles. “It ain’t for me to interfere in course,” he said, “but hereabouts I’m a Justice of the Peace.” Neither spoke.
“I could rouse up the boys in the kitchen for witnesses,” he insinuated.
Saterlee turned suddenly to Mrs. Kimbal, but his voice was very humble.
“Ma’am?” he suggested.