II Emmy and He Were Never Apart
When seven o’clock came, old Liebereich, unrebuked, still reviled her and her housekeeping. For the Scriptures had spoken and the woman knew her duty. She did it. And not a word delayed or hastened by an instant old Liebereich’s relentless progress to bed.
Even when he was there he said:
“You can’t keep no house! My Emmy kin beat you all! Look at that!”
It was an andiron which had become dull.
“When my Emmy gits back you kin go to grass!”
But the last word was mumbled in the delicious sleep Mrs. Krantz had brought him.
Then Mrs. Krantz humbly polished the dulled andiron, cleaned the dirt out of the corners, restored the broom to its rightful corner, folded old Liebereich’s trousers and hung them over the back of a chair, lighted the lamp, shaded it, looked again at that scriptural text, as if to ask whether every cross had been borne, then went out, to return at five in the morning. For old Liebereich was permitted to sleep late. He was no trouble when he slept.
Now, while old Liebereich sleeps, I shall tell you some things you ought to know. In the idiom of the vicinage he was considered “funny,” which means only queer. Happiness had made him so, they said. His most constant and odious boast was that he had loved his wife for eighty years. It began, he said, when he was four and she was born.
And old Liebereich did not know that she was dead. Something had dulled his faculties when they told him she would die, and now he believed (as they told him, so that he would not “bother” them) that she was at her sister’s in Maryland to get well, and would be home soon. So the curious jerk of his head toward the door by the fireplace meant only that he was vigilant for his wife’s return. The neighbors thought it part of his aberration.
But even the little intelligence he retained made out this return to have been logically too long delayed. It was no longer “very soon,” as they had at first told him; it was scarcely “soon,” as they had at last told him.
And Christmas was coming!
“Do you think she will be here for Christmas?” he asked each one of them.
They assured him of this.
“Then I’ll hang up the old stockings and su’prise her!”
Here, again, I must explain that they had always cherished the element of surprise in their Christmas giving.
You will have seen that old Liebereich was living too long for his neighbors. I must be careful how I put their sentiments into words, so that no injustice be done them. I think I had better say that it began to seem to them like effrontery for him to live on. They said oftener now and with greater unction that he would be better off. And they answered Hermann Schlimm’s query (in the second paragraph of this story), when he repeated it, with accumulating anger now.
But you are not to suppose that old Liebereich was made unhappy by the least knowledge of this. On the contrary, nothing of it reached him. He found another reason for their brusqueness. They were simply women—and unlike Emmy.
One day, Mrs. Schwalm, wearily responding to his questions about his wife, asked him why he did not write to her. This at least, she thought cunningly, would consume time, keep him quiet, and give death added opportunity.
Now, in all his thoughts there had never been that one.
“Why, you see,” he said, “Emmy and me was never apart for a day. It was no need to write. And,” he went on, “I ain’t no scholar. But—say—you got any ink?”
The letter was a secret office which he attended to himself. It took many days. But he was very happy afterward, and delivered it to Mrs. Schwalm and Mrs. Krantz, who were to get a stamp and mail it.
“What we going to do with it?” whispered Mrs. Schwalm. “Burn it?”
“No. Open it.”
However, Mrs. Schwalm, who was known to be sentimental, opposed this.
“But it’s got to be answered.”
This was so. Mrs. Krantz cumulated her arguments.
“He’ll ask for the answer a dozen times a day till you’re crazy!”
“Well, anyhow, let’s wait a little. He may die any day,” was the way Mrs. Schwalm temporized.
“You’re interfering with the Lord’s business!” chided the curious Mrs. Krantz, finally.