Three Lives, Gertrude Stein [graded readers .txt] 📗

me or else I certainly get awful angry with you. Yes I love you, sure, Jeff, though you don’t anyway deserve it from me. Yes, yes I love you. Yes Jeff I say it till I certainly am very sleepy. Yes I love you now Jeff, and you certainly must stop asking me to tell you. Oh you great silly boy Jeff Campbell, sure I love you, oh you silly stupid, my own boy Jeff Campbell. Yes I love you and I certainly never won’t say it one more time tonight Jeff, now you hear me.”

Yes Jeff Campbell heard her, and he tried hard to believe her. He did not really doubt her but somehow it was wrong now, the way Melanctha said it. Jeff always now felt baffled with Melanctha. Something, he knew, was not right now in her. Something in her always now was making stronger the torment that was tearing every minute at the joy he once always had had with her.

Always now Jeff wondered did Melanctha love him. Always now he was wondering, was Melanctha right when she said, it was he had made all their beginning. Was Melanctha right when she said, it was he had the real responsibility for all the trouble they had and still were having now between them. If she was right, what a brute he always had been in his acting. If she was right, how good she had been to endure the pain he had made so bad so often for her. But no, surely she had made herself to bear it, for her own sake, not for his to make him happy. Surely he was not so twisted in all his long thinking. Surely he could remember right what it was had happened every day in their long loving. Surely he was not so poor a coward as Melanctha always seemed to be thinking. Surely, surely, and then the torment would get worse every minute in him.

One night Jeff Campbell was lying in his bed with his thinking, and night after night now he could not do any sleeping for his thinking. Tonight suddenly he sat up in his bed, and it all came clear to him, and he pounded his pillow with his fist, and he almost shouted out alone there to him, “I ain’t a brute the way Melanctha has been saying. Its all wrong the way I been worried thinking. We did begin fair, each not for the other but for ourselves, what we were wanting. Melanctha Herbert did it just like I did it, because she liked it bad enough to want to stand it. It’s all wrong in me to think it anyway except the way we really did it. I certainly don’t know now whether she is now real and true in her loving. I ain’t got anyway ever to find out if she is real and true now always to me. All I know is I didn’t ever make her to begin to be with me. Melanctha has got to stand for her own trouble, just like I got to stand for my own trouble. Each man has got to do it for himself when he is in real trouble. Melanctha, she certainly don’t remember right when she says I made her begin and then I made her trouble. No by God, I ain’t no coward nor a brute either ever to her. I been the way I felt it honest, and that certainly is all about it now between us, and everybody always has just got to stand for their own trouble. I certainly am right this time the way I see it.” And Jeff lay down now, at last in comfort, and he slept, and he was free from his long doubting torment.

“You know Melanctha,” Jeff Campbell began, the next time he was alone to talk a long time to Melanctha. “You know Melanctha, sometimes I think a whole lot about what you like to say so much about being game and never doing any hollering. Seems to me Melanctha, I certainly don’t understand right what you mean by not hollering. Seems to me it certainly ain’t only what comes right away when one is hit, that counts to be brave to be bearing, but all that comes later from your getting sick from the shock of being hurt once in a fight, and all that, and all the being taken care of for years after, and the suffering of your family, and all that, you certainly must stand and not holler, to be certainly really brave the way I understand it.” “What you mean Jeff by your talking.” “I mean, seems to me really not to holler, is to be strong not to show you ever have been hurt. Seems to me, to get your head hurt from your trouble and to show it, ain’t certainly no braver than to say, oh, oh, how bad you hurt me, please don’t hurt me mister. It just certainly seems to me, like many people think themselves so game just to stand what we all of us always just got to be standing, and everybody stands it, and we don’t certainly none of us like it, and yet we don’t ever most of us think we are so much being game, just because we got to stand it.”

“I know what you mean now by what you are saying to me now Jeff Campbell. You make a fuss now to me, because I certainly just have stopped standing everything you like to be always doing so cruel to me. But that’s just the way always with you Jeff Campbell, if you want to know it. You ain’t got no kind of right feeling for all I always been forgiving to you.” “I said it once for fun, Melanctha, but now I certainly do mean it, you think you got a right to go where you got no business, and you say, I