“Esther has sued you for a bill of divorce,” the lawyer explained bluntly. “Charge, cruel and abusive treatment. From what she tells me you are knowing to the whys and wherefores.”
Dunham stumbled to a tussock and sat down. “Di-vose! Di-vose!” he stammered. “Esther sue me? I don’t believe it. It is some kind of a lawyer trick. Lawyers is alwa’s stirrin’ trouble, but I didn’t reckon you was one of that kind, Squire Look.”
“Look here, ’Caje,” the lawyer’s voice was bluff and businesslike; “it’s better for me to handle this matter than to have it left to that young whippet over to the Corner, who’d have your heart out if he could pile up costs that way. Now, what do you mean by volunteering in the cause of education?” he inquired, jerking his thumb at the school house, whose roof was visible above the rise of ground.
Micajah lowered his eyes under the keen look, visibly discomposed.
“Still she’s a-dingin’ away at that, hey?” he growled. “If you was a school agent in a deestrick, Squire, and there was a poor, lonesome little wusser’n-orphan critter of a schoolmarm teachin’ the school, wouldn’t you sort of show her a few attentions so’s to keep her in the deestrick, seein’ that the children all love her? I’ve tried to explain to Esther, Squire, that it’s all in the way of school gov’ummunt, as you might say, but you know what a woman is!”
“I’m afraid I don’t understand quite as well as I’d like to,” admitted the lawyer sadly, “but as for you, I reckon you don’t know ’em at all, ’Caje. And you don’t know even your own self, you old numbhead. You’re sitting meeching there on that tussock, and you don’t know your heart well enough to understand whether you ought to be ashamed of your attentions to the schoolma’am or to be proud of them, as showing that you still have human feelings left. And the result of it all is that you’ve blundered ’round till you’ve made your wife jealous, instead of putting tenderness and generosity and mother-feeling into her heart. You blind old mole, you simply don’t know—-don’t know! Here! You come along after me with that paper in your hand!”
He led the way across the field, up the apple-tree bordered lane and into the house. There was no one in the kitchen or in the little sitting-room, where Esther Dunham always sat at her sewing o’ afternoons, the sun filtering on her through the leaves of the window plant? No one in the house! They searched and called, and only the clock’s tick-tack answered in the silences.
Everything was tidied. The table had been reset after the noon meal, and its well scoured ware glinted cheerfully. Micajah grabbed the lawyer’s arm.
“She’s took her napkin ring!” he gasped. “She’s gone, Squire!”
The husband hurried into the west bedroom and fumbled in the closet. “And her clothes is gone, Squire!” he called dismally. “Oh, my Gawd, if this ain’t trouble come double then I don’t know what ’tis.” He sat down on the edge of the bed and seemed about to weep.