Her lips curled in the way that used to set me mad for her.
"I didn't eat a peach," I protested. "I gave them to your brothers, and Budd Haines."
"Yes, you gave them!"
"I don't believe you think me half as bad as you make me out!" I said, stopping the wringer and looking into her eyes.
"You don't know how bad I make you out," she challenged my look.
It was not hard to see why I had been crazy to marry her in the old days. There was a fire in her which no other woman I ever saw possessed. Jane was large-minded, keen as an eagle, and like steel. But there was a kind of will in this worn woman, a hanging to herself, which gave her a character all her own. Nevertheless, we two couldn't have travelled far hitched together. She would have tried her best to run me, and life would have been hell for us both.
"Well," I protested in my own defence, "there's no man and no woman living has the right to say he's the worse off on my account. I have treated the world fairly where it has treated me fairly."
"So that's your boast, Van Harrington! It's pretty hard when a man has to say a thing like that to defend his life. You don't know how many men you have ruined like that poor Hostetter. But that isn't the worst. The very sight of men like you is the worst evil in our country. You are successful, prosperous, and you have ridden over the laws that hindered you. You have hired your lawyers to find a way for you to do what you please. You think you are above the law—just the common laws for ordinary folks! You buy men as you buy wheat. And because you don't happen to have robbed your next-door neighbor or ruined his daughter, you make a boast of it to me. It's pretty mean, Van, don't you think so?"
We had sat down facing each other across the tub of clothes. As she spoke her hot words, I thought of others who had accused me in one way or another,—Parson, Will, Slocum,—most of all, Slocum. But I dismissed this sentimental reflection.
"Those are pretty serious charges you are making, May," I replied after a time. "And what do you know? What the newspapers say. There are thousands of newspaper men all over this country who get a dollar or two a column for that sort of mud. Then these same fellows come around to us and hold out their hands for tips or bribes. You take their lies for proved facts. I have never taken the trouble to answer their charges, and never shall. I will answer for what I have done."