XII
Itwas Ellen’s night off and after the dispatching of the horse, she stayed with Mrs. Dietz to cheer her up and help put the two youngest children to bed. She had been so long a constant visitor and benefactor that they had ceased to regard her as an emissary from the big house and talked of their troubles freely before her.
The five of them sat about the lamp in the comfortless but warm living room of the farmhouse, listening to a monologue by Hermann Dietz on the virtues of the dead horse. Although he had been born within a hundred feet of that spot, and his father had come to America as a boy, Dietz’ accent, like many of his kind bred to the farms thereabouts, still bore traces of the German. They were a squatter-like tribe, never prosperous.
“Poor old Molly, she was not so old, yet, but it seemed like we had had her always, Mrs. Williams. She did her share, Molly.”
“What did Mr. Robert do to Molly?” asked the boy, plaintively. “Did he shoot her? Can I go see?”
“No, no, you wait until morning. Don’t you mind about Molly. She was sufferin’ terrible, and she’s better where she is. But we’ll miss her.Yes, Johnnie, when you was a little bit of a feller, two, three years old, Poppa used to put you on Molly’s back and hold you, and you’d laugh and holler and she’d walk so easy just as if she knew you was a baby.”
“Things was different in them days,” piped his wife. “Them automobile horns, now. We didn’t never used to hear them. But nowadays it’s half the night, Mrs. Williams. I can’t get used to ’em. They keep me awake so.”
“Ah, they wouldn’t be so bad,” put in the girl Lilly, “if we could ride in ’em now an’ then, the way others do. Johann Hunker’s got a m’chine.”
“Ach, you are always bellerin’ about a m’chine,” her father burst out. “When you got one you got a hole to throw money in. Listen to them rich people even, talkin’ about how much they cost. What have I got to do with a m’chine? An’ whose goin’ to run it, your Momma? I ain’t goin’ to take no risks with ’em, not since I got that sunstroke last August anyways. I git so dizzy sometimes I think I can’t get home to the house.”
“I could run it,” grumbled Lilly.
“You now, Lilly! You’ve got plenty to do without that. You don’t tend to your work the way it is.”
“She’s gettin’ so lazy she’s got no head to remember anything,” put in her mother. “I don’t dare leave the children with her.”
“M’chine!” Dietz quavered on, “I ain’t got no money for ’em if I wanted one.”
“You’ve got the money, I guess,” said Mrs. Dietz querulously, “the same as Johann Hunker, if you wanted to spend it.”
“Now, Momma, I told you twenty times already I’m takin’ care of your money. Who’s goin’ to keep it safe for a rainy day, if it ain’t me?”
“Well, we don’t see anything of it, Hermann, not since you got hold of it ... sellin’ off the farms, an’ leavin’ us with hardly a place to put foot to the ground.”
“Yes, Momma,” rejoined her husband earnestly. “I did sell off the farms. But you know what Mr. McNutt said. He said if I didn’t want to take that two hundred dollars an acre Mr. Blaydon offered, they’d all go somewheres else an’ build, and our land never would git a high price. You couldn’t git a hundred for it in them days.”
“There’s some of them waited longer an’ got more. Johann Hunker did.”
“Johann Hunker may be a slick feller, but if I hadn’t sold when I did they mightn’t have come here at all, an’ then where would Johann Hunker be? Never you mind about that money. It’s a-drawin’ good interest.”
Dietz lifted his tall, bent form from his chair and shuffled over to the stove to dump his pipe.Then he turned again to his wife, a sudden grin spreading over his cheeks.
“Well, Momma, what about a little wine? Seeing Mrs. Williams is here, eh? A little home-made wine and coffee cake. We’ll give the childern some wine to-night, eh? Lilly, bring up the chairs to the table.”
The girl rose languidly to obey and Mrs. Dietz departed for the bedroom, returning a moment later with a long bottle. Lilly brought glasses and placed them on the red-figured table cover.
“Get the coffee cake, Lilly,” her mother ordered.
Dietz toyed affectionately with the stem of his glass filled with bright red liquid.
“Ach, the home-made wine—that is good! Well, it is like old times, Momma—when the older children, Lena and Fred was here, and Lilly was a little girl about Johnnie’s size. Yes, it was fine then. None of these rich people with big houses and all that. We was the bosses then.”
“We had all the land,” put in Mrs. Dietz gloomily. “We could get enough off of it to sell a good crop every year and plenty of vegetables to the commission men, and you always had money, if you needed it for anything, like Molly dying. Now it’s in the bank and we can’t spend nothing. No, the land was better than the money.”
“Mr. Blaydon, he gives me sixty dollars amonth, and all the feed for the stock, and half the money from the truck. That is something, sixty dollars sure every month.”
“But you’ve got to work for Mr. Blaydon, and I do, and even the childern. It ain’t the same as when we worked for ourselves.”
“Poppa,” broke in Lilly, as she cut the long flat sections of coffee cake, “Mary Hunker was selling some of Johann’s wine over at Corey’s last week. She got a big price, enough to buy a new dress. Can I sell some of Momma’s wine? We can’t ever drink up what we got every year.”
“Ach Himmel!” Dietz cried, bringing his glass down with a rattle upon the table. “There is that girl. We have the land and sell that. We have the wine and we got to sell that too. Ain’t there nothing we can call our own? No, Lilly, you let the wine be.”
“I never get clothes at all like the Hunker girls,” she replied sullenly. “I saw a green dress, a pretty one, over at town that was only thirteen dollars and fifty cents.”
“But, Lilly, your sister Lena never bought no dresses for thirteen dollars and fifty cents. And Lena always looked nice. She married a man with a fine bakery business on Oak Street. He took Lena already because she was a neat, sensible girl and wouldn’t throw away his money for him. I don’t know what to think of you, Lilly. A honest, Christian girl, the way you’ve been broughtup. You ain’t like your sister, is she, Momma?”
“You wouldn’t expect all girls would be alike, Hermann,” said her mother. “Lilly is a good girl, but times have changed since Lena was her age. You give me the money, now, and I’ll go with her to look at the dress.”
“Well, well, I guess so,” replied Hermann, mollified by his wife’s firmness. “That is a lot of money, but Lilly is a pretty girl, eh? I’ll give you the money to-morrow and maybe you can buy the dress before Sunday. Then them Hunker girls won’t be so fresh up at church.”
“Pour some more wine for Mrs. Williams, Lilly,” said Mrs. Dietz.
“No,” said Ellen, “I must be going.”
“Yes, a night cap, Mrs. Williams,” said Dietz, in his best manner. “A little more wine for all of us, and then we’ll go to bed. I got to get Meyer, if I can, or Ed Becker, to help me bury poor Molly to-morrow. You got to dig a big hole for a horse.”
As Ellen left the cottage and started homeward she did not know whether to laugh or cry. It was always the same story, poverty and hard work, and the vanity of the young girl tempted as she had been most of her life by the strange, glamorous panorama of the rich at her very doorstep. And she had not the sense of pride the older folks had enjoyed, the knowledge of having been masters of the neighbourhood. Mrs. Dietz’ remarkhaunted her mind. “The land was better than the money.” For such as these people, it was. It had given them all they had, all they could possibly have, to live for.
The shortest path up the hill to the Blaydon house was rocky and steep, and a third the way up Ellen stopped for breath and regretted she had not walked around the longer way. It was dark under the trees and hard to stick to the path. She sat down to remove a pebble from her low shoe. As she stood up again facing the foot of the hill, she could see a broad patch of Dietz’ field through an opening in the branches. At that moment a figure stepped out from the trees into the open space and came to a stop as if waiting. It was a man undoubtedly, she thought, but she was curious to make sure. So few prowlers ever disturbed the peace of the place. She crept down the path, holding on to the shrubs and tree-trunks and making as little noise as possible. She decided she would wait until the man moved on and go around by the road after all. Reaching the bottom she found herself within a few yards of Rob Blaydon. A moment later, nearer the already dark and silent Dietz house, she saw another figure stirring. What could Rob be up to and who was his confederate? Then swiftly, Lilly darted from the shadow of the house and joined him. The two disappeared, exchanging whispers, around the side of the hill.
Ellen started impulsively, as though she would stop them, but she did not go far. What could she do? She knew Rob Blaydon too well to think that he would take any interference from her or from any inferior. He was not a mean boy, but he was headstrong. He would tell her that he thought her a busybody and a nuisance. And supposing she went to Lilly? Lilly would be frightened and cowed for the moment. But Ellen realized, far more sharply than the girl’s family, how deep her rebellion lay. In the end she would throw advice to the winds.
There was left the alternative of warning Mathilda or Sterling Blaydon. If she did so what could she prove? Rob was bold enough to make the thing appear in any light he desired, some boyish escapade in which he had inveigled the girl to join. To excite the Dietz family about the girl’s danger was as useless. They could not control her in any case, and it might fire her to desperate measures. Ellen could do nothing that would result in any good, nothing except create a scandal.
She sat down and wondered if she cared. She certainly cared about the child’s welfare, but now that she felt it was impossible to prevent what was happening, she could reason about it calmly. Life was a dreadfully sad thing any way you took it. But could this love affair do the girl more harm than she was sure to meet with in any event—perhaps at the hands of worse men? Might itnot come to mean something to her she would cherish despite its cost? Ellen’s only answer to these questions was her own experience. Perhaps it had been worth while. Her daughter was happy, with an unclouded future, and she was contented. Knowledge of herself had suddenly shaken her faith in the creed that one must inevitably suffer pain because of sin.