"Hay? What hay? I don't know anything about any hay," she replied, laughing at his perplexity.
"I shtand here an hour already, und ven I got you up no satisfagtion comes. Py Shupiter, dot goes like a schwindle!"
He was very mad by this time, and walked back and forth in front of her door, shaking his fists and gesticulating wildly; and to prevent a scene, which might cause a collection of the inmates of the building, she quieted him as much as possible, and ascertained that some obliging person, more enthusiastic about the amount than the character of some token of esteem, had taken the trouble to order a load of hay to be delivered at her number, describing the place, room, and woman so minutely that there could be no possibility of mistake, where the owner was to collect all additional charges above two dollars, which had been paid.
It took Mrs. Winslow a long time to persuade the farmer that she owned no barn, kept no animals, had no use for hay, and that there had been some mistake, or that some person had deliberately played a joke upon him, but finally, after a shivering argument of fully fifteen minutes, and the expenditure of a dollar bill, with the seductive offer that she would give him ten dollars if he would find and bring to her the man who ordered the load, her obstinate visitor departed, roundly swearing in good German that he would have the Gottferdamter schwindler brought up by der city gourts and hung, to which Mrs. Winslow groaned a hearty approval as she shut the door of the—to her—desolate room.
If there had previously been any doubts in her mind as to there being a preconcerted plan to annoy and exasperate her beyond endurance, they were now entirely removed, and the woman broke down completely, wringing her hands in mute expression of bitter anguish. The storm without was not half so violent as the storm within, and the blinding flakes which swept from the bitter sky raged upon a no more barren, frozen, desolate soil than her own selfish heart.
There may be a kind of pity for such a woman; there should be pity for every form of human suffering, or even depravity; but in my mind there should be none to verge from pity into palliation and excuse for this woman. Great as was her mental suffering, there was in it not a single touch of remorse. Terribly as her mind was racked and tortured with doubt, uncertainty, fear, and despair, there was in it no trace of the womanhood which, however low it may descend, is still capable of regret. She was not heart-sick for the life she was leading, but dreaded the punishment she knew it deserved. Her nature had never shrunk from the countless miseries she had entailed on others, and her heart never misgave her only in the absence of her kind of happiness or in the superstitious fear of the evils which she felt assured were constantly her due. She was, as far as I ever knew, or can conceive, a soulless woman whose troubles only produced vindictiveness, whose utter aim in life was social piracy, whose injuries only begat hate, and whose sufferings only concentrated her exhaustless hunger and thirst for revenge.
After the first burst of rage and passion, she settled down into a condition of deep study and planning, and about the middle of the afternoon began passing in and out and visiting various places, in a way which, though it might not particularly attract attention, yet betokened some business project being resolutely and quietly carried out.
During one of the periods when she was within her apartments, quite a commotion was raised in the lower story, the stores of which were occupied by a tobacconist and milliner, by a call from a prominent undertaker of Main Street, who with a mysterious air exhibited the following note, at the same time asking whispered conundrums about it.
"Mr. Boxem: