Life at High Tide | Page 4

or another of the Poor Farm, anyway," Mrs. Butterfield said, "'cept at noon. And then he could set indoors. It won't be anything so bad, Lizzie. Now don't you get to worryin' 'bout him;--I know you, Lizzie Graham!" she ended, her eyes twinkling.
Lizzie took off her sunbonnet again and fanned herself; she looked at her old neighbor anxiously.
"Say, now, Mis' Butterfield, honest: do you think folks would talk?"
"If you took Nat in and kep' him? Course they would! You know they would; you know this here town. And no wonder they'd talk. You're a nice-appearin' woman, Lizzie, yet. No; I ain't one to flatter; you be. And ain't he a man? and a likely man, too, for all he's crazy. Course they'd talk! Now, Lizzie, don't you get to figgerin' on this. It's just like you! How many cats have you got on your hands now? I bet you're feedin' that lame dog yet."
Mrs. Graham laughed, but would not say.
"Nat will get along at the Farm real good, after he gets used to it," Mrs. Butterfield went on, coaxingly; "Dean ain't hard. And Mis' Dean's many a time told me what a good table they set."
"'Tain't the victuals that would trouble Nat May."
"Well, Lizzie, now you promise me you won't think anything more about him visitin' you?" Mrs. Butterfield looked at her anxiously.
"I guess Jonesville knows me, after I've lived here all my life!" Lizzie said, evasively.
"Knows you?" Mrs. Butterfield said; "what's that got to do with it? You know Jonesville; that's more to the point."
"It's a mean place!" Lizzie said, angrily.
"I'm not sayin' it ain't," Mrs. Butterfield agreed. "Well, Lizzie, you're good, but you ain't real sensible," she ended, affectionately.
Lizzie laughed, and swung her gate shut. She stood leaning on it a minute, looking after Mrs. Butterfield laboriously climbing the hill, until the road between its walls of rusty hazel-bushes and its fringe of joepye-weed and goldenrod turned to the left and the stout, kindly figure disappeared. The great elm moved softly overhead, and Lizzie glanced up through its branches, all hung with feathery twigs, at the deep August sky.
"Jonesville's never talked about me!" she said to herself, proudly. "I mayn't be wealthy, but I got a good name. Course it wouldn't do to take Nat; but my! ain't it a poor planet where you can't do a kind act?"
II
Nathaniel May sat in his darkness, brooding over his machine. Since it had been definitely arranged that he was to go to the Poor Farm, he did not care how soon he went; there was no need, he told Dyer, to keep him for the few days which had been promised.
"I had thought," he said, patiently, "that some one would take me in and help me finish my machine--for the certain profit that I could promise them. But nobody seems to believe in me," he ended.
"Oh, folks believe in you, all right, Mr. May," Dyer told him; "but they don't believe in your machine. See?"
Nathaniel's face darkened. "Blind--blind!" he said.
"How did it come on you?" Dyer asked, sympathetically.
"I was not speaking of myself," Nathaniel told him, hopelessly.
There was really no doubt that the poor, gentle mind had staggered under the weight of hope; but it was hardly more than a deepening of old vagueness, an intensity of absorbed thought upon unpractical things. The line between sanity and insanity is sometimes a very faint one; no one can quite dare to say just when it has been crossed. But this mild creature had crossed it somewhere in the beginning of his certainty that he was going to give the world the means of seeing the unseen. That this great gift should be flung into oblivion, all for the want, as he believed, of a little time, broke his poor heart. When Lizzie Graham came to see him, she found him sitting in his twilight, his elbows on his knees, his head in his long, thin hands. On one hollow cheek there was a glistening wet streak. He put up a forlornly trembling hand and wiped it away when he heard her voice.
"Yes; yes, I do recognize it, ma'am," he said; "I can tell voices better than I used to be able to tell faces. You are Jim Graham's wife? Yes; yes, Lizzie Graham. Have you heard about me, Lizzie? I am not going to finish my machine. I am to be sent to the Farm."
"Yes, I heard," she said.
They were in the big, bare office of the hotel. The August sunshine lay dim upon the dingy window-panes; the walls, stained by years of smoke and grime, were hidden by yellowing advertisements of reapers and horse liniments; in the centre was a dirty iron stove. A poor, gaunt room, but a haven to Nathaniel May, awaiting the end of hope.
"I heard," Lizzie