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The Postmistress Of Laurel Run
by
An attitude of weak admiration and foolish passion had taken the place of his former tremulous fear. He obeyed excitedly, but without a word. Mrs. Baker wiped her moist forehead and parched lips, and shook out her skirt. Well might the young expressman start at the unexpected revelation of those sparkling eyes and that demurely smiling mouth at the little window.
“Mrs. Baker!”
She put her finger quickly to her lips, and threw a world of unutterable and enigmatical meaning into her mischievous face.
“There’s a big San Francisco swell takin’ my place at Laurel to-night, Charley.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And it’s a pity that the Omnibus Way Bag happened to get such a shaking up and banging round already, coming here.”
“Eh?”
“I say,” continued Mrs. Baker, with great gravity and dancing eyes, “that it would be just AWFUL if that keerful city clerk found things kinder mixed up inside when he comes to open it. I wouldn’t give him trouble for the world, Charley.”
“No, ma’am, it ain’t like you.”
“So you’ll be particularly careful on MY account.”
“Mrs. Baker,” said Charley, with infinite gravity, “if that bag SHOULD TUMBLE OFF A DOZEN TIMES between this and Laurel Hill, I’ll hop down and pick it up myself.”
“Thank you! shake!”
They shook hands gravely across the window-ledge.
“And you ain’t going down with us, Mrs. Baker?”
“Of course not; it wouldn’t do,–for I AIN’T HERE,–don’t you see?”
“Of course!”
She handed him the bag through the door. He took it carefully, but in spite of his great precaution fell over it twice on his way to the road, where from certain exclamations and shouts it seemed that a like miserable mischance attended its elevation to the boot. Then Mrs. Baker came back into the office, and, as the wheels rolled away, threw herself into a chair, and inconsistently gave way for the first time to an outburst of tears. Then her hand was grasped suddenly and she found Green on his knees before her. She started to her feet.
“Don’t move,” he said, with weak hysteric passion, “but listen to me, for God’s sake! I am ruined, I know, even though you have just saved me from detection and disgrace. I have been mad!–a fool, to do what I have done, I know, but you do not know all–you do not know why I did it–you cannot think of the temptation that has driven me to it. Listen, Mrs. Baker. I have been striving to get money, honestly, dishonestly–any way, to look well in YOUR eyes–to make myself worthy of you–to make myself rich, and to be able to offer you a home and take you away from Laurel Run. It was all for YOU, it was all for love of YOU, Betsy, my darling. Listen to me!”
In the fury, outraged sensibility, indignation, and infinite disgust that filled her little body at that moment, she should have been large, imperious, goddess-like, and commanding. But God is at times ironical with suffering womanhood. She could only writhe her hand from his grasp with childish contortions; she could only glare at him with eyes that were prettily and piquantly brilliant; she could only slap at his detaining hand with a plump and velvety palm, and when she found her voice it was high falsetto. And all she could say was, “Leave me be, looney, or I’ll scream!”
He rose, with a weak, confused laugh, half of miserable affectation and half of real anger and shame.
“What did you come riding over here for, then? What did you take all this risk for? Why did you rush over here to share my disgrace–for YOU are as much mixed up with this now as I am–if you didn’t calculate to share EVERYTHING ELSE with me? What did you come here for, then, if not for ME?”
“What did I come here for?” said Mrs. Baker, with every drop of red blood gone from her cheek and trembling lip. “What–did–I–come here for? Well!–I came here for JOHN BAKER’S sake! John Baker, who stood between you and death at Burnt Ridge, as I stand between you and damnation at Laurel Run, Mr. Green! Yes, John Baker, lying under half of Burnt Ridge, but more to me this day than any living man crawling over it–in–in”–oh, fatal climax!–“in a month o’ Sundays! What did I come here for? I came here as John Baker’s livin’ wife to carry on dead John Baker’s work. Yes, dirty work this time, may be, Mr. Green! but his work and for HIM only–precious! That’s what I came here for; that’s what I LIVE for; that’s what I’m waiting for–to be up to HIM and his work always! That’s me–Betsy Baker!”