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Updated: May 13, 2025
Paul Blecker never did: the woman never spoke to him; but he noted often the sudden relaxed droop of the eyelids, when she sat alone, as if some nerve had grown weary: he had seen that peculiarity in some women before, and knew all it meant. He had nothing for her; her hunger lay out of his ken.
Nothing was lost on Blecker; his wide, nervous eyes took all in: the age and complacent quiet of this nook of the world, the full-blooded Nature asleep in the yellow June sunset; why! she had been asleep there since the beginning, he knew. The very Indians in these hills must have been a fishing, drowsy crew; their names and graves yet dreamily haunted the farms and creek-shores.
"I thought I would accompany you there, Doctor Blecker. They might only think it seemly in me to bid farewell. Blecker nodded. The man had not been able to hide an harassed frown that day under his usual vigor of speech and look.
It was altered: the contour more emphatic, the skin paler, the hazel eyes darker, lighted from farther depths. No glow of color, only in the meaning lips and the fine reddish hair. Doctor Blecker stopped to help a stout little lady out of a buggy at the stile, then sent the boy to the stable with it: it was his own, with saddle-bags under the seat.
The girl's thought now was earnest and healthful, as everybody's grows, who succeeds in discovering his real work. They encored her song: when she began, she looked up and balked suddenly, her very neck turning crimson. She had seen Doctor Blecker. "A tawdry actress!" She could have torn her stage-dress in rags from her. Then her tone grew low and clear.
There seemed to be a migration from it to-night: they met, every minute, buggies, old-fashioned carriages, horsemen. "Going out to camp," McKinstry said; "the boys all have some one to bid them good-bye." What a lonely, reserved voice the man had! Blecker had the curiosity of all sensitive men to know the soul-history of people; he glanced again keenly in McKinstry's face.
"'Yes, I do, Doctor Blecker, she said. 'Nobody ever loved me but Uncle Dan. Since he went away, I have gone every day to his house, coming nearer to him that way, growing purer, more like other women. There's a picture of his mother there, and his sister. They are dead now, but I think their souls looked at me out of those pictures and loved me.
Grey had saved some money to buy them ribbon for sashes, but Joseph had taken it from her work-basket that morning to buy cigars. One of the girls had cried, and even Grey's lips grew scarlet; her Welsh blood maddened. This woman was neither an angel nor an idiot, Paul Blecker. Then it was such a trifle! Poor Joseph! he had been her mother's favorite, was spoiled a little.
The girl never saw it afterwards without a sudden feeling of hate, as though it had jeered at her mortal pain. Then Paul Blecker stood alone by the river-side, with only a dull sense that the day was bright and unfeeling, and that something was gone from the world, never to come back.
He knew McKinstry's thought of that little girl well enough, but he held the child-hearted man's secret tenderly and charily in his hand. Paul Blecker did talk slang and assert himself; but every impulse in him was clean, delicate, liberal. So, Paul remaining silent, the Captain took heart of grace, going down the street, and ventured back to the Gurney question.
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