`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.
My Lincoln chapter closed abruptly. I went home to my grandparents for a few weeks, and afterward visited my relatives in Virginia until I joined Cleric in Boston. I was then nineteen years old.
Book IV. The Pioneer Woman's Story
I
TWO YEARS AFTER I left Lincoln, I completed my academic course at Harvard.
Before I entered the Law School I went home for the summer vacation. On the night of my arrival, Mrs. Harling and Frances and Sally came over to greet me.
Everything seemed just as it used to be. My grandparents looked very little older.
Frances Harling was married now, and she and her husband managed the Harling interests in Black Hawk. When we gathered in grandmother's parlour, I could hardly believe that I had been away at all. One subject, however, we avoided all evening.
When I was walking home with Frances, after we had left Mrs. Harling at her gate, she said simply, `You know, of course, about poor Antonia.'
Poor Antonia! Everyone would be saying that now, I thought bitterly. I replied that grandmother had written me how Antonia went away to marry Larry Donovan at some place where he was working; that he had deserted her, and that there was now a baby. This was all I knew.
`He never married her,' Frances said. I haven't seen her since she came back.
She lives at home, on the farm, and almost never comes to town. She brought the baby in to show it to mama once. I'm afraid she's settled down to be Ambrosch's drudge for good.'
I tried to shut Antonia out of my mind. I was bitterly disappointed in her. I could not forgive her for becoming an object of pity, while Lena Lingard, for whom people had always foretold trouble, was now the leading dressmaker of Lincoln, much respected in Black Hawk. Lena gave her heart away when she felt like it, but she kept her head for her business and had got on in the world.
Just then it was the fashion to speak indulgently of Lena and severely of Tiny Soderball, who had quietly gone West to try her fortune the year before. A Black Hawk boy, just back from Seattle, brought the news that Tiny had
