“It’s my woman I’m a-thinkin’ of.” He spoke without looking up. “This thing’s the last and the wust,—it’s goin’ to down her awful. And there ain’t nothin’ I can do,—nothin’!” Here he passed his sleeve across his eyes, and then glanced at the unaccustomed moisture, and had a dulled remembrance of having cried long years before; he failed to recall why or just when.
“You’re a-thinkin’ I’m a mean man to be a-drinkin’ and that child a-dyin’ in yon; and that woman! That’s where it gits a man. I ain’t been a bad man to her; I’ve took care of them children right along, Mr. Lyndsay, and I never beat her none, and I don’t mind me I ever used no bad words to her, not when I was wore out, and—and—hadn’t a shillin’, and was busted up with blackleg.[[3]] I don’t git it clear, sir; I don’t care most none for that child, but she might kill me if it would git it well. I don’t see nothin’ to do but drink, and that’s the fact.”
[3]. The scurvy of the lumberman,—more rare nowadays.
Lyndsay stood silent in thought. He had seen enough of life not to wonder that drink could be distinctly regarded as, under stress of circumstances, an available resource. He had also seen men or women capable of a single affection, and of only one. What there was to know of this man’s relations to his wife and her offspring had been uncovered with frank brutality. He had said there was nothing for him except to drink.
“But if you love your wife, my man, you want to help her, and if you drink you are useless,—and, in fact, you add to her troubles.”
“It ain’t that, sir. Fact is, she don’t care a’most none for me,—and there’s the truth. You wouldn’t think, sir, what a pretty woman she was. She took me to get them children a home and feed. Dory, she knows. I ain’t given to tellin’ it round, but you’re different. Somehow it helps a man to say things out.”
Here was the strange hurt of a limited tenderness, with all this rudeness of self-disclosure, and, too, some of the stupid, careless immodesty of drink.
“I take it kindly,” said Lyndsay, “that you have told me the whole of your troubles. Come over and see me. I left some tobacco on the table for you.”