Page:The Tattooed Countess (1924).pdf/109

 It's very humiliating for a man. You must make allowances.

Lennie, who had heard these arguments before, was not listening. Presently, she began to cry. Mother, I just can't bear it, she sobbed.

Mrs. Colman made no futile effort to comfort her daughter. Removing the creamed chipped-beef from the stove, she poured the mess into a cracked, white vegetable dish. She dried the potatoes. Then she carried the chopped greens into the dining-room and put them on the table.

A moment later, seated at this table, she and Lennie tried to eat. Lennie had stopped crying, but there was no further conversation between the two. From the sitting-room drifted the sound of a running monologue, now soft, now loud, now high, now low, now whining, now groaning. Mr. Colman was enjoying a fine frenzy of self-reproachful hysteria.

I wish I'd never been born, he moaned. My daughter's 'shamed o' me an' my wife's 'shamed o' me. Haven't anything to live for. Can't get work an' have to live on what poor, dear daughter makes, my daughter 't I love with my heart's blood. I'll kill myself, that's what I'll do: I'll kill myself. Then everybody'll be better off. Then everybody'll be happy. Then nobody'll be bothered with an ol' man any more. That'll be shlution of everything. I'll kill myself. I'll take poison or hang myself or