I heard my own voice cutting like the edge of a knife, and felt half-ashamed when that weak, shaking thing lifted up its foolish face, and stared at me with watery, uncomprehending eyes.
"My clothes," I reiterated; "are they here or upstairs?"
"Guess-s-so," stammered the uncertain voice, "g-guess so."
"Nothing for it but to find them myself," I muttered, beginning the search through the pile on the couch. Nothing of mine there, so I needs must climb to the Golgotha on the second floor, from which the Cross had disappeared, but which still bore traces of its victim's long crucifixion,—a pair of old bed-slippers still by the window, a sleeping-cap on the wall. Some cannot but leave so the things that have touched their dead.
One by one I found the "rough-dry" garments, here, there, in the hallway, in the garret, hanging or crumpled up among dozens of others. And all the while I hunted, the rain beat and the wind blew, and a low third sound kept mingling with them, rising from the lower floor. My heart smote me when I heard it, for I knew it was the woman sobbing. The self-righteous Pharisee within me gave an impatient sneer: "Alcohol tears!" But something else clutched at my throat, and I found myself glancing at the dead man's shoes.
When I went downstairs, I avoided the rocking-chair, tied up my bundle, counted out the money, laid it on the table, and then turning round said, deliberately and harshly: "There is your money; don't buy whisky with it, Mrs. Bossert."
Crying had a little sobered her. She looked up, still with less light in her face than in an intelligent dog's, but with some dim self-consciousness. It was as a face that had appeared behind deforming bubbles of water. She half lifted her hand, let it fall, and stammered, "No, I won't, I won't. It don't do nobody no good."
The senseless desire to preach seized hold of me. "Mrs. Bossert," I cried out, "aren't you ashamed of yourself? A woman like you, who went through so much, and so long, and so bravely! And now, when you could get along all right, to act like this!"
The soggy mouth dropped open, the glazy eyes stared at me, fixedly and foolishly, then shifted to the portrait on the wall; and with a mawkish simper, as of some old drab playing sixteen, she slobbered out, nodding to the portrait: "All—for the love—o' him."
It was so utterly ludicrous that I laughed. Then a cold rage took me: "Look here," I said (and again I heard my own voice, grim and quiet, cutting the air like a whip), "if you believe, as I have heard you say, that your husband can look down on you from anywhere, remember you couldn't do a thing to hurt him worse than you're doing now. 'Love' indeed!"