Marley looked at Powell, who had relapsed into silence, his head lowered, his eyes fixed in the distance, and there was something pathetic in the figure, or would have been, but for the humor that saved every situation for Powell. There was, however, something appealing, and something to inspire affection, too. Marley’s gaze recalled Powell, and he glanced up with a smile.
“I reckon you’ve gathered from my remarks,” said Powell, “that I consider success chiefly from a monetary standpoint, but I don’t. The main business of life is living, and the trouble with the world is that it is too busy getting ready to live to find the time for life; it has tied itself up with a thousand chains of its own forging and it has had to postpone living from time to time until most people have put the beginning of life at the gateway of death; meanwhile they’re busy gathering things, like magpies, and those that gather the most are considered the best; they have come to think that people are divided into two classes, good and bad; the good are those who own, the bad those who don’t, and the good think their business is to put down the bad. Now, here in Gordon County, we have about everything a man needs; the spring comes and the summer, and the autumn and the winter; the rain falls and the winds blow and the sun shines, and I’ve noticed that Lighttown gets about as much rain as Main Street, and Gooseville about as much wind as Scioto Street; the sun seems to shine pretty much alike on the niggers loafing in Market Space and on old Selah Dudley and Judge Blair, bowing like Christians to each other in the Square. The trees are the same color wherever they grow, and I don’t see any reason why people shouldn’t be happy if they’d only let one another be happy. Now, I would have lived, but I didn’t have time. I thought when I began that I’d have to do as the rest were doing, get hold of things, and I saw that if I did, I’d have to get my share away from them; well, I made a failure of that, being too soft inside someway; that was all right too, but meanwhile I was wasting time, and putting off living—now it’s too late.”
Marley looked at him in perplexity, not knowing how to take him.
“I know,” he said presently. “But what am I going to do? I can live all right, but I have to do better than that; I want to get married.”
“Married,” mused Powell, “married! Well, I got married.”
Marley was interested. He had never heard Powell speak of his wife, and he feared what he was about to say; for that instant Powell’s standing in his estimation trembled.
“And that was the only sensible thing I ever did.”
Marley felt a great relief.
“But I don’t know that I did right by Mary; I didn’t do her any good, I reckon; still, she’s borne up somehow; I wish I had a sky full of sunlight to pour over her.”
Powell walked to his window, and looked across into the Court-House yard where the leaves were falling slowly from the Maple-trees. Marley hoped that he would go on, and say more of his wife, but he was silent. Presently he turned about.