A DAY OF GRACE
Sunday is the day for courtship on the prairie. It has also the piety of cleanliness. It allows the young man to get back to a self-respecting sweetness of person, and enables the girls to look as nature intended, dainty and sweet as posies.
The change from everyday clothing on the part of young workmen like Ben Griswold was more than change; it approached transformation. It took more than courage to go through the change,—it required love.
Ben arose a little later on Sunday morning than on weekdays, but there were the chores to do as usual. The horses must be watered, fed, and curried, and the cows were to milk, but after breakfast Ben threw off the cares of the hired hand. When he came down from the little garret into which the hot August sun streamed redly, he was a changed creature. Clean from tip to toe, newly shaven, wearing a crackling white shirt, a linen collar and a new suit of store clothes, he felt himself a man again, fit to meet maidens.
His partner, being a married man, was slouching around in his tattered and greasy brown denim overalls. He looked at Ben and grinned.
"Got a tag on y'rself?"
"No, why?"
"Nobod'y know ye, if anything happened on the road. There's thirty dollars gone to the dogs." He sighed. "Oh, well, you'll get over that, just as I did."
"I hope I won't get over liking to be clean," Ben said a little sourly. "I won't be back to milk."
"Didn't expect ye. That's the very time o' day the girls are purtiest,—just about sundown. Better take Rock. I may want the old team myself."
Ben hitched up and drove off in the warm bright morning, with wonderful elation, clean and self-respecting once more. His freshly shaven face felt cool, and his new suit fitted him well. His heart took on a great resolution, which was to call upon Grace.
The thought of her made his brown hands shake, and he remembered how many times he had sworn to visit her, but had failed of courage, though it seemed she had invited him by word and look to do so.
He overtook Milton Jennings on his way along the poplar-lined lane.
"Hello, Milt, where you bound?"
Milton glanced up with a curious look in his laughing eyes. From the pockets of his long linen duster he drew a handful of beautiful scarlet and yellow Siberian crab-apples.
"See them crabs?"
"Yes, I see 'em."
Milton drew a similar handful out of his left pocket. "See those?"
"What y' going to do with 'em?"
"Take 'em home again."
Something in Milton's voice led him to ask soberly:—
"What did you intend doing with 'em?"
"Present 'em to Miss Cole."
"Well, why didn't y' do it?"
Milton showed his white teeth in a smile that was frankly derisive of himself.
"Well, when I got over there I found young Conley's sorrel hitched to one post and Walt Brown's gray hitched to the other. I went in, but I didn't stay long; in fact, I didn't sit down. I was afraid those infernal apples would roll out o' my pockets. I was afraid they'd find out I brought 'em over there for Miss Cole, like the darn fool I was."
They both laughed heartily. Milton was always as severe upon himself as upon any one else.
"That's tough," said Ben, "but climb in, and let's go to Sunday-school."
Milton got in, and they ate the apples as they rode along.
The Grove schoolhouse was the largest in the township, and was the only one with a touch of redeeming grace. It was in a lovely spot; great oaks stood all about, and back of it the woods grew thick, and a clear creek gurgled over its limestone bed not far away.
To Ben and Milton there was a wondrous charm about the Grove schoolhouse. It was the one place where the boys and girls met in garments disassociated from toil. Sundays in summer, and on winter nights at lyceums or protracted meetings, the boys came tosee the girls in their bright dresses, with their clear and (so it seemed) scornful bright eyes.
All through the service Ben sat where he could see Grace by turning his head, but he had not the courage to do so. Once or twice he caught a glimpse of the curve of her cheek and the delicate lines of her ear, and a suffocating throb came into his throat.
He wanted to ask her to go with him down to Cedarville to the Methodist camp-meeting, but he knew it was impossible. He could not even say "good day" when she took pains to pass near him after church. He nodded like a great idiot, all ease and dignity lost, his throat too dry and hot to utter a sound.
He cursed his shyness as he went out after his horse. He saw her picking her dainty way up the road with Conrad Sieger walking by her side. What made it worse for Ben was a dim feeling that she liked him, and would go with him if he had the courage to ask her.
"Well, Ben," said Milton, "it's settled, we go to Rock River to-night to the camp-meeting. Did you ask Grace?"
"No, she's going with Con. It's just my blasted luck."
"That's too bad. Well, come with us. Take Maud."
As he rode away Ben passed Grace on the road.
"Going to the camp-meeting, Con?" asked Milton, in merry voice.
"I guess so," said Conrad, a handsome, but slow-witted German.
As they went on Ben could have wept. His keener perception told him there was a look of appeal in Grace's upturned eyes.
He made a poor companion at dinner, and poor plain Maud knew his mind was elsewhere. She was used to that and accepted it with a pathetic attempt to color it differently.
They got away about five o'clock.
Ben drove the team, driving took his mind off his weakness and failure; while Milton in the seclusion of the back seat of the carryall was happy with Amelia Turner.
It was growing dark as they entered upon the curving road along the river which was a relief from the rectangular and sun-smitten roads of the prairie. They lingered under the great oaks and elms which shaded them. It would have been perfect Ben thought, if Grace had been beside him in Maud's place.
He wondered how he should manage to speak to Grace. There was a time when it seemed easier. Now the consciousness of his love made the simplest question seem like the great question of all.
Other teams were on the road, some returning, some going. A camp-meeting had come to be an annual amusement, like a circus, and young people from all over the country drove down on Sundays, as if to some celebration with fireworks.
"There's the lane," said Milton. "See that team goin' in?"
Ben pulled up and they looked at it doubtfully. Itlooked dangerously miry. It was quite dark now and Ben said:—
"That's a scaly piece of road."
"Oh, that's all right. Hark!"
As they listened they could hear the voice of the exhorter nearly a mile away. It pushed across the cool spaces with a wild and savage sound. The young people thrilled with excitement.
Insects were singing in the grass. Frogs with deepening chorus seemed to announce the coming of night, and above these peaceful sounds came the wild shouts of the far-off preacher, echoing through the cool green arches of the splendid grove.
The girls became silent, as the voice grew louder.
Lights appeared ahead, and the road led up a slight hill to a gate. Ben drove on under a grove of oaks, past dimly lighted tents, whose open flaps showed tumbled beds and tables laden with crockery. Heavy women were moving about inside, their shadows showing against the tent walls like figures in a pantomime.
The young people alighted in curious silence. As they stood a moment, tying the team, the preacher lifted his voice in a brazen, clanging, monotonous reiteration of worn phrases.
"Come to theLord! Comenow! Come to thelight! Jesus will give it!Nowis the appointed time,—come to thelight!"
From a tent near by arose the groaning, gasping, gurgling scream of a woman in mortal agony.
"O my God!"
It was charged with the most piercing distress. It cut to the heart's palpitating centre like a poniard thrust. It had murder and outrage in it.
The girls clutched Ben and Milton. "Oh, let's go home!"
"No, let's go and see what it all is."
The girls hung close to the arms of the young men and they went down to the tent and looked in.
It was filled with a motley throng of people, most of them seated on circling benches. A fringe of careless or scoffing onlookers stood back against the tent wall. Many of them were strangers to Ben.
Occasionally a Norwegian farm-hand, or a bevy of young people from some near district, lifted the flap and entered with curious or laughing or insolent faces.
The tent was lighted dimly by kerosene lamps, hung in brackets against the poles, and by stable lanterns set here and there upon the benches.
Ben and Milton ushered the girls in and seated them a little way back. The girls smiled, but only faintly. The undertone of women's cries moved them in spite of their scorn of it all.
"What cursed foolishness!" said Ben to Milton.
Milton smiled, but did not reply. He only nodded toward the exhorter, a man with a puffy jumble of features and the form of a gladiator, who was uttering wild and explosive phrases.
"Oh, my friends! I bless the Lord for the SHALL in the word. You SHALL get light. You SHALLbe saved. Oh, the SHALL in the word! You SHALL be redeemed!"
As he grew more excited, his hoarse voice rose in furious screams, as if he were defying hell's legions. Foam lay on his lips and flew from his mouth. At every repetition of the word "shall" he struck the desk a resounding blow with his great palm.
"He's a hard hitter," said Milton.
At length he leaped, apparently in uncontrollable excitement, upon the mourners' bench, and ran up and down close to the listening, moaning audience. He walked with a furious rhythmic, stamping action, like a Sioux in the war dance. Wild cries burst from his audience, antiphonal with his own.
"He 'SHALL' send light!"
"Send Thy arrows, O Lord."
"O God, come!"
"He 'SHALL' keep His word!"
One old negro woman, fat, powerful, and gloomy, suddenly arose and uttered a scream that had the dignity and savagery of a mountain lion's cry. It rang far out into the night.
The exhorter continued his mad, furious, thumping, barbaric walk.
Behind him a row of other exhorters sat, a relay ready to leap to his aid. They urged on the tumult with wild cries.
"A-men, brother."
"YES, brother, YES!" clapping their hands in rhythm.
The exhorter redoubled his fury. He was like a jaded actor rising at applause, carried out of his self-command.
Out of the obscure tumult of faces and tossing hands there came at last certain recognizable features. The people were mainly farming folks of the more ignorant sort, rude in dress and bearing, hard and bent with toil. They were recognizably of a class subject to these low forms of religious excitement which were once well-nigh universal.
The outer fringe continued to smile scornfully and to jest, yet they were awed, in a way, by this suddenly revealed deep of barbaric emotion.
The girls were appalled by the increasing clangor. Milton was amused, but Ben grew bitter. Something strong came out in him, too. His lip curled in disgust.
Suddenly, out of the level space of bowed shoulders, tossing hands, and frenzied, upturned faces, a young girl leaped erect. She was strong and handsome, powerful in the waist and shoulders. Her hair was braided like a child's, and fell down her back in a single strand. Her head was girlish, but her face looked old and drawn and tortured.
She moaned pitifully; she clapped her hands with wild gestures, ending in a quivering motion. The action grew to lightning-like quickness. Her head seemed to set in its socket. Her whole body stiffened. Gasping moans came from her clenched teeth as she fell to the ground and rolled under the seats, wallowing in the muddy straw and beating her feet upon the ground like a dying partridge.
The people crowded about her, but the preacher, roared above the tumult:—
"Si' down! Never mind that party. She's all right; she's in the hands of the Lord!"
The people settled into their seats, and the wild tumult went on again. Ben rose to go over where the girl was and the others followed.
A young man seated by the struggling sinner held her hand and fanned her with his hat, while some girl friends, scared and sobbing, kept the tossing limbs covered. She rolled from side to side restlessly, thrusting forth her tongue as if her throat were dry. She looked like a dying animal.
Maud clung to Milton.
"Oh, can't something be done?"
"Her soul is burdened foryou!" cried a wild old woman to the impassive youth who clung to the frenzied girl's hand.
A moment later, as the demoniacal chorus of yells, songs, incantations, shrieks, groans, and prayers swelled high, a farmer's wife on the left uttered a hoarse cry and stiffened and fell backward upon the ground. She rolled her head from side to side. Her eyes turned in; her lips wore a maniac's laugh, and her troubled brow made her look like the death mask of a tortured murderer, the hell horror frozen on it.
She sank at last into a hideous calm, with her strained and stiffened hands pointing weirdly up. She was like marble. She did not move a hair's breadth during the next two hours.
Over to the left a young man leaped to his feet with a scream:—
"Jesus,Jesus,Jesus!"
The great negress caught him in her arms as he fell, and laid him down, then leaped up and down, shrieking:—
"O Jesus, come. Come, God's Lamb!"
Around her a dozen women took up her cry. Most of them had no voices. Their horrifying screams had become hoarse hisses, yet still they strove. Scores of voices were mixed in the pandemonium of prayer.
All order was lost. Three of the preachers now stood shouting before the mourners' bench, two were in the aisles.
One came down the aisle toward the girl with the braided hair. As he came he prayed. Foam was on his lips, but his eyes were cool and calculating; they betrayed him.
As he came he fixed his gaze upon a woman seated near the prostrate girl, and with a horrible outcry the victim leaped into the air and stiffened as if smitten with epilepsy. She fell against some scared boys, who let her fall, striking her head against the seats. She too rolled down upon the straw and lay beside her sister. Both had round, pretty, but childish faces.
Milton's party retreated. They smiled no more; they were horror-stricken.
Squads of "workers" now moved down the aisles; in one they surrounded two people, a tall, fair girl and a young man.
"Why, it's Grace!" exclaimed Maud.
Ben turned quickly, "Where?"
They pointed her out.
"She can't get away. See! Oh, boys, don't let them—"
Ben pushed his way toward her, his face set in a fierce frown, bitter, desperate.
Grace stood silently beside one of the elders; a woman exhorter stood before her. Conrad, overawed, had fallen into a trembling stupor; Grace was defenseless.
The elder's hand hovered over her head, on her face a deadly pallor had settled, her eyes were cast down, she breathed painfully and trembled from head to foot. She was about to fall, when Ben set his eyes upon her.
"Get out o' my way," he shouted, shouldering up the aisle. His words had oaths, his fists were like mauls.
"Grace!" he cried, and she heard. She looked up and saw him coming; the red flamed over her face.
The power of the preacher was gone.
"Let me go," she cried, trying to wring herself loose.
"You are going to hell. You are lost if you do not—"
"God damn ye. Get out o' way. I'll kill ye if you lay a hand on her."
With one thrust Ben cleared her tormentor from her arm. For one moment the wordless young man looked into her eyes; then she staggered toward him. He faced the preacher.
"I'd smash hell out o' you for a leather cent," he said. In the tumult his words were lost, but the look on his face was enough. The exhorter fell away.
Their retreat was unnoted in the tumult. At the door they looked back for an instant at the scene.
At the mourners' bench were six victims in all stages of induced catalepsy, one man with head flung back, one with his hands pointing, fixed in furious appeal. Another with bowed head was being worked upon by a brother of hypnotic appeal. He struck with downward, positive gestures on either side of the victim's head.
Over another the negress towered, screaming with panther-like ferocity:—
"Git under de blood! Git under de blood!"
As she screamed she struck down at the mourner with her clenched fist. On her face was the grin of a wildcat.
Out under the cool, lofty oaks, the outcry was more inexpressibly hellish, because overhead the wind rustled the sweet green leaves, crickets were chirping, and the scent of flowering fields of buckwheat was in the air.
Grace grew calmer, but she clung with strange weakness to her lover. She felt he had saved her from something, she did not know what, but it was something terrifying to look back upon.
Conrad was forgotten—set aside. Ben bundled him into the carryall and took his place with Grace. He no longer hesitated, argued, or apologized. He had claimed his own.
On the long ride home, Grace lay within his right arm, and the young man's tongue was unchained. He talked, and his spirit grew tender and manly and husbandlike, as he told his plans and his hopes. Hell was very far away, and Heaven was very near.
LUCRETIA BURNS
Lucretia Burns had never been handsome, even in her days of early girlhood, and now she was middle-aged, distorted with work and child-bearing, and looking faded and worn as one of the boulders that lay beside the pasture fence near where she sat milking a large white cow.
She had no shawl or hat and no shoes, for it was still muddy in the little yard, where the cattle stood patiently fighting the flies and mosquitoes swarming into their skins, already wet with blood. The evening was oppressive with its heat, and a ring of just-seen thunderheads gave premonitions of an approaching storm.
She rose from the cow's side at last, and, taking her pails of foaming milk, staggered toward the gate. The two pails hung from her lean arms, her bare feet slipped on the filthy ground, her greasy and faded calico dress showed her tired and swollen ankles, and the mosquitoes swarmed mercilessly on her neck and bedded themselves in her colorless hair.
The children were quarrelling at the well, and the sound of blows could be heard. Calves were querulously calling for their milk, and little turkeys, lost in a tangle of grass, were piping plaintively.
The sun just setting struck through a long, low rift, like a boy peeping beneath the eaves of a huge roof. Its light brought out Lucretia's face as she leaned her sallow forehead on the top bar of the gate and looked toward the west.
It was a pitifully worn, almost tragic face—long, thin, sallow, hollow-eyed. The mouth had long since lost the power to shape itself into a kiss, and had a droop at the corners which seemed to announce a breaking-down at any moment into a despairing wail. The collarless neck and sharp shoulders showed painfully.
She felt vaguely that the night was beautiful. The setting sun, the noise of frogs, the nocturnal insects beginning to pipe—all in some way called her girlhood back to her, though there was little in her girlhood to give her pleasure. Her large gray eyes grew round, deep, and wistful as she saw the illimitable craggy clouds grow crimson, roll slowly up, and fire at the top. A childish scream recalled her.
"Oh, my soul!" she half groaned, half swore, as she lifted her milk and hurried to the well. Arriving there, she cuffed the children right and left with all her remaining strength, saying in justification:—
"My soul! can't you—you young'uns, give me a minute's peace? Land knows, I'm almost gone up; washin', an' milkin' six cows, and tendin' you, and cookin' f'rhim, ought 'o be enough f'r one day! Sadie, you let him drink now 'r I'll slap your head off, you hateful thing! Why can't you behave, when you know I'm jest about dead?" She was weeping now, withnervous weakness. "Where's y'r pa?" she asked after a moment, wiping her eyes with her apron.
One of the group, the one cuffed last, sniffed out, in rage and grief:—
"He's in the corn-field; where'd ye s'pose he was?"
"Good land! why don't the man work all night? Sile, you put that dipper in that milk agin, an' I'll whack you till your head'll swim! Sadie, le' go Pet, an' go 'n get them turkeys out of the grass 'fore it gits dark! Bob, you go tell y'r dad if he wants the rest o' them cows milked he's got 'o do it himself. I jest can't, and what's more, Iwon't," she ended, rebelliously.
Having strained the milk and fed the children, she took some skimmed milk from the cans and started to feed the calves bawling strenuously behind the barn. The eager and unruly brutes pushed and struggled to get into the pails all at once, and in consequence spilt nearly all of the milk on the ground. This was the last trial; the woman fell down on the damp grass and moaned and sobbed like a crazed thing. The children came to seek her and stood around like little partridges, looking at her in scared silence, till at last the little one began to wail. Then the mother rose wearily to her feet, and walked slowly back toward the house.
She heard Burns threshing his team at the well, with the sound of oaths. He was tired, hungry, and ill-tempered, but she was too desperate to care. His poor, overworked team did not move quickly enough for him,and his extra long turn in the corn had made him dangerous. His eyes gleamed wrathfully from his dust-laid face.
"Supper ready?" he growled.
"Yes, two hours ago."
"Well, I can't help it!" he said, understanding her reproach. "That devilish corn is gettin' too tall to plough again, and I've got 'o go through it to-morrow or not at all. Cows milked?"
"Part of 'em."
"How many left?"
"Three."
"Hell! Which three?"
"Spot, and Brin, and Cherry."
"Ofcourse, left the three worst ones. I'll be damned if I milk a cow to-night. I don't see why you play out jest the nights I need ye most." Here he kicked a child out of the way. "Git out o' that! Hain't you got no sense? I'll learn ye—"
"Stop that, Sim Burns," cried the woman, snatching up the child. "You're a reg'lar ol' hyeny,—that's what you are," she added defiantly, roused at last from her lethargy.
"You're a—beauty, that's whatyouare," he said, pitilessly. "Keep your brats out f'um under my feet." And he strode off to the barn after his team, leaving her with a fierce hate in her heart. She heard him yelling at his team in their stalls: "Git around there, damn yeh."
The children had had their supper; so she took themto bed. She was unusually tender to them, for she wanted to make up in some way for her previous harshness. The ferocity of her husband had shown up her own petulant temper hideously, and she sat and sobbed in the darkness a long time beside the cradle where little Pet slept.
She heard Burns come growling in and tramp about, but she did not rise. The supper was on the table; he could wait on himself. There was an awful feeling at her heart as she sat there and the house grew quiet. She thought of suicide in a vague way; of somehow taking her children in her arms and sinking into a lake somewhere, where she would never more be troubled, where she could sleep forever, without toil or hunger.
Then she thought of the little turkeys wandering in the grass, of the children sleeping at last, of the quiet, wonderful stars. Then she thought of the cows left unmilked, and listened to them stirring uneasily in the yard. She rose, at last, and stole forth. She could not rid herself of the thought that they would suffer. She knew what the dull ache in the full breasts of a mother was, and she could not let them stand at the bars all night moaning for relief.
The mosquitoes had gone, but the frogs and katydids still sang, while over in the west Venus shone. She was a long time milking the cows; her hands were so tired she had often to stop and rest them, while the tears fell unheeded into the pail. She saw and felt little of the external as she sat there. She thought in vague retrospect of how sweet it seemed the first time Sim came tosee her; of the many rides to town with him when he was an accepted lover; of the few things he had given her—a coral breastpin and a ring.
She felt no shame at her present miserable appearance; she was past personal pride. She hardly felt as if the tall, strong girl, attractive with health and hope, could be the same soul as the woman who now sat in utter despair listening to the heavy breathing of the happy cows, grateful for the relief from their burden of milk.
She contrasted her lot with that of two or three women that she knew (not a very high standard), who kept hired help, and who had fine houses of four or five rooms. Even the neighbors were better off than she, for they didn't have such quarrels. But she wasn't to blame—Sim didn't—Then her mind changed to a dull resentment against "things." Everything seemed against her.
She rose at last and carried her second load of milk to the well, strained it, washed out the pails, and, after bathing her tired feet in a tub that stood there, she put on a pair of horrible shoes, without stockings, and crept stealthily into the house. Sim did not hear her as she slipped up the stairs to the little low unfinished chamber beside her oldest children. She could not bear to sleep nearhimthat night,—she wanted a chance to sob herself to quiet.
As for Sim, he was a little disturbed, but would as soon have cut off his head as acknowledged himself in the wrong. As he went to bed, and found her still away, he yelled up the stairway:—
"Say, old woman, ain't ye comin' to bed?" Upon receiving no answer he rolled his aching body into the creaking bed. "Do as y' damn please about it. If y' want to sulk y' can." And in such wise the family grew quiet in sleep, while the moist, warm air pulsed with the ceaseless chime of the crickets.
When Sim Burns woke the next morning he felt a sharper twinge of remorse. It was not a broad or well-defined feeling—just a sense that he had been unduly irritable, not that on the whole he was not in the right. Little Pet lay with the warm June sunshine filling his baby eyes, curiously content in striking at flies that buzzed around his little mouth.
The man thrust his dirty, naked feet into his huge boots, and, without washing his face or combing his hair, went out to the barn to do his chores.
He was a type of the average prairie farmer, and his whole surrounding was typical of the time. He had a quarter-section of fine level land, bought with incredible toil, but his house was a little box-like structure, costing, perhaps, five hundred dollars. It had three rooms and the ever-present summer kitchen at the back. It was unpainted and had no touch of beauty,—a mere box.
His stable was built of slabs and banked and covered with straw. It looked like a den, was low and long, and had but one door in the end. The cow-yard held ten or fifteen cattle of various kinds, while a few calveswere bawling from a pen near by. Behind the barn, on the west and north, was a fringe of willows forming a "wind-break." A few broken and discouraged fruit trees, standing here and there among the weeds, formed the garden. In short, he was spoken of by his neighbors as "a hard-working cuss, and tol'ably well fixed."
No grace had come or ever could come into his life. Back of him were generations of men like himself, whose main business had been to work hard, live miserably, and beget children to take their places when they died.
His courtship had been delayed so long on account of poverty that it brought little of humanizing emotion into his life. He never mentioned his love-life now, or if he did, it was only to sneer obscenely at it. He had long since ceased to kiss his wife or even speak kindly to her. There was no longer any sanctity to life or love. He chewed tobacco and toiled on from year to year without any very clearly defined idea of the future. His life was mainly regulated from without.
He was tall, dark, and strong, in a flat-chested, slouching sort of way, and had grown neglectful of even decency in his dress. He wore the American farmer's customary outfit of rough brown pants, hickory shirt, and greasy wool hat. It differed from his neighbors' mainly in being a little dirtier and more ragged. His grimy hands were broad and strong as the clutch of a bear, and he was a "terrible feller to turn off work," as Councill said. "I'd ruther have Sim Burns work for me one day than some men three. He's a linger." He workedwith unusual speed this morning, and ended by milking all the cows himself as a sort of savage penance for his misdeeds the previous evening, muttering in self-defence:—
"Seems 's if ever' cussid thing piles on to me at once. That corn, the road-tax, and hayin' comin' on, and nowshegits her back up—"
When he went back to the well he sloshed himself thoroughly in the horse-trough and went to the house. He found breakfast ready, but his wife was not in sight. The older children were clamoring around the uninviting breakfast table, spread with cheap ware and with boiled potatoes and fried salt pork as the principal dishes.
"Where's y'r ma?" he asked, with a threatening note in his voice, as he sat down by the table.
"She's in the bedroom."
He rose and pushed open the door. The mother sat with the babe in her lap, looking out of the window down across the superb field of timothy, moving like a lake of purple water. She did not look around. She only grew rigid. Her thin neck throbbed with the pulsing of blood to her head.
"What's got into younow?" he said, brutally. "Don't be a fool. Come out and eat breakfast with me, an' take care o' y'r young ones."
She neither moved nor made a sound. With an oath he turned on his heel and went out to the table. Eating his breakfast in his usual wolfish fashion, he went out into the hot sun with his team and riding-plough, not a little disturbed by this new phase of his wife's "cantankerousness."He ploughed steadily and sullenly all the forenoon, in the terrific heat and dust. The air was full of tempestuous threats, still and sultry, one of those days when work is a punishment. When he came in at noon he found things the same—dinner on the table, but his wife out in the garden with the youngest child.
"I c'n stand it as long asshecan," he said to himself, in the hearing of the children, as he pushed back from the table and went back to work.
When he had finished the field of corn it was after sundown, and he came up to the house, hot, dusty, his shirt wringing wet with sweat, and his neck aching with the work of looking down all day at the corn-rows. His mood was still stern. The multitudinous lift, and stir, and sheen of the wide, green field had been lost upon him.
"I wonder if she's milked them cows," he muttered to himself. He gave a sigh of relief to find she had. But she had done so not for his sake, but for the sake of the poor, patient dumb brutes.
When he went to the bedroom after supper, he found that the cradle and his wife's few little boxes and parcels—poor, pathetic properties!—had been removed to the garret, which they called a chamber, and he knew he was to sleep alone again.
"She'll git over it, I guess." He was very tired, but he didn't feel quite comfortable enough to sleep. The air was oppressive. His shirt, wet in places, and stiff with dust in other places, oppressed him more than usual; so he rose and removed it, getting a clean oneout of a drawer. This was an unusual thing for him, for he usually slept in the same shirt which he wore in his day's work; but it was Saturday night, and he felt justified in the extravagance.
In the meanwhile poor Lucretia was brooding over her life in a most dangerous fashion. All she had done and suffered for Simeon Burns came back to her till she wondered how she had endured it all. All day long in the midst of the glorious summer landscape she brooded.
"I hate him," she thought, with a fierce blazing up through the murk of her musing. "I hate t' live. But they ain't no hope. I'm tied down. I can't leave the children, and I ain't got no money. I couldn't make a living out in the world. I ain't never seen anything an' don't know anything."
She was too simple and too unknowing to speculate on the loss of her beauty, which would have brought her competency once—if sold in the right market. As she lay in her little attic bed, she was still sullenly thinking, wearily thinking of her life. She thought of a poor old horse which Sim had bought once, years before, and put to the plough when it was too old and weak to work. She could see her again as in a vision, that poor old mare, with sad head drooping, toiling, toiling, till at last she could no longer move, and lying down under the harness in the furrow, groaned under the whip,—and died.
Then she wondered if her own numbness and despair meant death, and she held her breath to think harderupon it. She concluded at last, grimly, that she didn't care—only for the children.
The air was frightfully close in the little attic, and she heard the low mutter of the rising storm in the west. She forgot her troubles a little, listening to the far-off gigantic footsteps of the tempest.
Boom,boom,boom, it broke nearer and nearer, as if a vast cordon of cannon was being drawn around the horizon. Yet she was conscious only of pleasure. She had no fear. At last came the sweep of cool, fragrant storm-wind, a short and sudden dash of rain, and then in the cool, sweet hush which followed, the worn and weary woman fell into a deep sleep.
When she woke the younger children were playing about on the floor in their night-clothes, and little Pet was sitting in a square of sunshine, intent on one of his shoes. He was too young to know how poor and squalid his surroundings were,—the patch of sunshine flung on the floor glorified it all. He—little animal—was happy.
The poor of the Western prairies lie almost as unhealthily close together as do the poor of the city tenements. In the small hut of the peasant there is as little chance to escape close and tainting contact as in the coops and dens of the North End of proud Boston. In the midst of oceans of land, floods of sunshine and gulfs of verdure, the farmer lives in twoor three small rooms. Poverty's eternal cordon is ever round the poor.
"Ma, why didn't you sleep with Pap last night?" asked Bob, the seven-year-old, when he saw she was awake at last. She flushed a dull red.
"You hush, will yeh? Because—I—it was too warm—and there was a storm comin'. You never mind askin' such questions. Is he gone out?"
"Yup. I heerd him callin' the pigs. It's Sunday, ain't it, ma?"
The fact seemed to startle her.
"Why, yes, so it is! Wal! Now, Sadie, you jump up an' dress quick 's y' can, an' Bob an' Sile, you run down an' bring s'm' water," she commanded, in nervous haste, beginning to dress. In the middle of the room there was scarce space to stand beneath the rafters.
When Sim came in for his breakfast he found it on the table, but his wife was absent.
"Where's y'r ma?" he asked, with a little less of the growl in his voice.
"She's upstairs with Pet."
The man ate his breakfast in dead silence, till at last Bob ventured to say:—
"What makes ma ac' so?"
"Shut up!" was the brutal reply. The children began to take sides with the mother—all but the oldest girl, who was ten years old. To her the father turned now for certain things to be done, treating her in his rough fashion as a housekeeper, and the girl felt flattered and docile accordingly.
They were pitiably clad; like many farm-children, indeed, they could hardly be said to be clad at all. Sadie had on but two garments, a sort of undershirt of cotton and a faded calico dress, out of which her bare, yellow little legs protruded, lamentably dirty and covered with scratches.
The boys also had two garments, a hickory shirt and a pair of pants like their father's, made out of brown denim by the mother's never-resting hands—hands that in sleep still sewed, and skimmed, and baked, and churned. The boys had gone to bed without washing their feet, which now looked like toads, calloused, brown, and chapped.
Part of this the mother saw with her dull eyes as she came down, after seeing the departure of Sim up the road with the cows. It was a beautiful Sunday morning, and the woman might have sung like a bird if men had been as kind to her as Nature. But she looked dully out upon the seas of ripe grasses, tangled and flashing with dew, out of which the bobolinks and larks sprang. The glorious winds brought her no melody, no perfume, no respite from toil and care.
She thought of the children she saw in the town,—children of the merchant and banker, clean as little dolls, the boys in knickerbocker suits, the girls in dainty white dresses,—and a vengeful bitterness sprang up in her heart. She soon put the dishes away, but felt too tired and listless to do more.
"Taw-bay-wies! Pet want ta-aw-bay-wies!" cried the little one, tugging at her dress.
Listlessly, mechanically she took him in her arms, and went out into the garden, which was fragrant and sweet with dew and sun. After picking some berries for him, she sat down on the grass under the row of cottonwoods, and sank into a kind of lethargy. A kingbird chattered and shrieked overhead, the grasshoppers buzzed in the grasses, strange insects with ventriloquistic voices sang all about her—she could not tell where.
"Ma, can't I put on my clean dress?" insisted Sadie.
"I don't care," said the brooding woman, darkly. "Leave me alone."
Oh, if she could only lie here forever, escaping all pain and weariness! The wind sang in her ears; the great clouds, beautiful as heavenly ships, floated far above in the vast, dazzling deeps of blue sky; the birds rustled and chirped around her; leaping insects buzzed and clattered in the grass and in the vines and bushes. The goodness and glory of God was in the very air, the bitterness and oppression of man in every line of her face.
But her quiet was broken by Sadie, who came leaping like a fawn down through the grass.
"Oh, ma, Aunt Maria and Uncle William are coming. They've jest turned in."
"I don't care if they be!" she answered in the same dully irritated way. "What're they comin' here to-day for, I wan' to know." She stayed there immovably, till Mrs. Councill came down to see her, piloted by two or three of the children. Mrs. Councill, a jolly, large-framed woman, smiled brightly, and greeted her in a loud, jovialvoice. She made the mistake of taking the whole matter lightly; her tone amounted to ridicule.
"Sim says you've been having a tantrum, Creeshy. Don't know what for, he says."
"He don't," said the wife, with a sullen flash in her eyes. "Hedon't know why! Well, then, you just tell him what I say. I've lived in hell long enough. I'm done. I've slaved here day in and day out f'r twelve years without pay,—not even a decent word. I've worked like no nigger ever worked 'r could work and live. I've given him all I had, 'r ever expect to have. I'm wore out. My strength is gone, my patience is gone. I'm done with it,—that's apartof what's the matter."
"My sakes, Lucreeshy! You mustn't talk that way."
"But Iwill" said the woman, as she supported herself on one palm and raised the other. "I'vegotto talk that way." She was ripe for an explosion like this. She seized upon it with eagerness. "They ain't no use o' livin' this way, anyway. I'd take poison if it wa'n't f'r the young ones."
"Lucreeshy Burns!"
"Oh, I mean it."
"Land sakes alive, I b'lieve you're goin' crazy!"
"I shouldn't wonder if I was. I've had enough t' drive an Indian crazy. Now you jest go off an' leave me 'lone. I ain't no mind to visit,—they ain't no way out of it' and I'm tired o' trying tofinda way. Go off an' let me be."
Her tone was so bitterly hopeless that the great, jollyface of Mrs. Councill stiffened into a look of horror such as she had not known for years. The children, in two separate groups, could be heard rioting. Bees were humming around the clover in the grass, and the kingbird chattered ceaselessly from the Lombardy poplar tip. Both women felt all this peace and beauty of the morning dimly, and it disturbed Mrs. Councill because the other was so impassive under it all. At last, after a long and thoughtful pause, Mrs. Councill asked a question whose answer she knew would decide it all—asked it very kindly and softly:—
"Creeshy, are you comin' in?"
"No," was the short and sullenly decisive answer. Mrs. Councill knew that was the end, and so rose with a sigh, and went away.
"Wal, good-by," she said, simply.
Looking back, she saw Lucretia lying at length, with closed eyes and hollow cheeks. She seemed to be sleeping, half buried in the grass. She did not look up nor reply to her sister-in-law, whose life was one of toil and trouble also, but not so hard and helpless as Lucretia's. By contrast with most of her neighbors, she seemed comfortable.
"Sim Burns, what you ben doin' to that woman?" she burst out, as she waddled up to where the two men were sitting under a cottonwood tree, talking and whittling after the manner of farmers.
"Nawthin' 's fur 's I know," answered Burns, not quite honestly, and looking uneasy.
"You needn't try t' git out of it like that, Sim Burns,"replied his sister. "That woman never got into that fit f'rnawthin'."
"Wal, if you know more about it than I do, whadgy askmefur?" he replied, angrily.
"Tut, tut!" put in Councill, "hold y'r horses! Don't git on y'r ear, children! Keep cool, and don't spile y'r shirts. Most likely you're all t' blame. Keep cool an' swear less."
"Wal, I'll bet Sim's more to blame than she is. Why, they ain't a harder-workin' woman in the hull State of Ioway than she is—"
"Except Marm Councill."
"Except nobody. Look at her, jest skin and bones."
Councill chuckled in his vast way. "That's so, mother; measured in that way, she leads over you. You git fat on it."
She smiled a little, her indignation oozing away. She never "couldstay mad," her children were accustomed to tell her. Burns refused to talk any more about the matter, and the visitors gave it up, and got out their team and started for home, Mrs. Councill firing this parting shot:—
"The best thing you can do to-day is t' let her alone. Mebbe the children 'll bring her round ag'in. If she does come round, you see 't you treat her a little more 's y' did when you was a-courtin' her."
"This way," roared Councill, putting his arm around his wife's waist. She boxed his ears, while he guffawed and clucked at his team.
Burns took a measure of salt and went out into thepasture to salt the cows. On the sunlit slope of the field, where the cattle came running and bawling to meet him, he threw down the salt in handfuls, and then lay down to watch them as they eagerly licked it up, even gnawing a bare spot in the sod in their eagerness to get it all.
Burns was not a drinking man; he was hard-working, frugal; in fact, he had no extravagances except his tobacco. His clothes he wore until they all but dropped from him; and he worked in rain and mud, as well as dust and sun. It was this suffering and toiling all to no purpose that made him sour and irritable. He didn't see why he should have so little after so much hard work.
He was puzzled to account for it all. His mind—the average mind—was weary with trying to solve an insoluble problem. His neighbors, who had got along a little better than himself, were free with advice and suggestion as to the cause of his persistent poverty.
Old man Bacon, the hardest-working man in the county, laid it to Burns's lack of management. Jim Butler, who owned a dozen farms (which he had taken on mortgages), and who had got rich by buying land at government price and holding for a rise, laid all such cases as Burns's to "lack of enterprise, foresight."
But the larger number, feeling themselves in the same boat with Burns, said:—
"I d' know. Seems as if things get worse an' worse. Corn an' wheat gittin' cheaper 'n' cheaper. Machinery eatin' up profits—got tohavemachinery to harvestthe cheap grain, an' then the machinery eats up profits. Taxes goin' up. Devil to pay all round; I d' know what in thunderisthe matter."
The Democrats said protection was killing the farmers; the Republicans said no. The Grangers growled about the middle-men; the Greenbackers said there wasn't circulating medium enough, and, in the midst of it all, hard-working, discouraged farmers, like Simeon Burns, worked on, unable to find out what really was the matter.
And there, on this beautiful Sabbath morning, Sim sat and thought and thought, till he rose with an oath and gave it up.
It was hot and brilliant again the next morning as Douglas Radbourn drove up the road with Lily Graham, the teacher of the school in the little white schoolhouse. It was blazing hot, even though not yet nine o'clock, and the young farmers ploughing beside the fence looked longingly and somewhat bitterly at Radbourn seated in a fine top-buggy beside a beautiful creature in lace and cambric.
Very beautiful the town-bred "schoolma'am" looked to those grimy, sweaty fellows, superb fellows too, physically, with bare red arms and leather-colored faces. She was as if builded of the pink and white clouds soaring far up there in the morning sky. So cool, and sweet, and dainty.
As she came in sight, their dusty and sweaty shirtsgrew biting as the poisoned shirt of the Norse myth, their bare feet in the brown dirt grew distressingly flat and hoof-like, and their huge, dirty, brown, chapped and swollen hands grew so repulsive that the mere remote possibility of some time in the far future standing a chance of having an introduction to her, caused them to wipe their palms on their trousers' legs stealthily.
Lycurgus Banks swore when he saw Radbourn: "That cuss thinks he's ol' hell this morning. He don't earn his living. But he's just the kind of cuss to get holt of all the purty girls."
Others gazed with simple, sad wistfulness upon the slender figure, pale, sweet face, and dark eyes of the young girl, feeling that to have talk with such a fairylike creature was a happiness too great to ever be their lot. And when she had passed they went back to work with a sigh and feeling of loss.
As for Lily, she felt a pang of pity for these people. She looked at this peculiar form of poverty and hardship much as the fragile, tender girl of the city looks upon the men laying a gas-main in the streets. She felt, sympathetically, the heat and grime, and, though but the faintest idea of what it meant to wear such clothing came to her, she shuddered. Her eyes had been opened to these things by Radbourn, a classmate at the Seminary.
The young fellow knew that Lily was in love with him, and made distinct effort to keep the talk upon impersonal subjects. He liked her very much, probably because she listened so well.
"Poor fellows," sighed Lily, almost unconsciously, "I hate to see them working there in the dirt and hot sun. It seems a hopeless sort of life, doesn't it?"
"Oh, but this is the most beautiful part of the year," said Radbourn. "Think of them in the mud, in the sleet; think of them husking corn in the snow, a bitter wind blowing; think of them a month later in the harvest; think of them imprisoned here in winter!"
"Yes, it's dreadful! But I never felt it so keenly before. You have opened my eyes to it. Of course, I've been on a farm but not to live there."
"Writers and orators have lied so long about 'the idyllic' in farm life, and said so much about the 'independent American farmer,' that he himself has remained blind to the fact that he's one of the hardest-working and poorest-paid men in America. See the houses they live in,—hovels."
"Yes, yes, I know," said Lily; a look of deeper pain swept over her face. "And the fate of the poor women; oh, the fate of the women!"
"Yes, it's a matter of statistics," went on Radbourn, pitilessly, "that the wives of the American farmers fill our insane asylums. See what a life they lead, most of them; no music, no books. Seventeen hours a day in a couple of small rooms—dens. Now there is Sim Burns! What a travesty of a home! Yet there are a dozen just as bad in sight. He works like a fiend—so does his wife—and what is their reward? Simply a hole to hibernate in and to sleep and eat in in summer. A dreary present and a well-nigh hopeless future. No,they have a future, if they knew it, and we must tell them."
"I know Mrs. Burns," Lily said, after a pause; "she sends several children to my school. Poor, pathetic little things, half-clad and wistful-eyed. They make my heart ache; they are so hungry for love, and so quick to learn."
As they passed the Burns farm, they looked for the wife, but she was not to be seen. The children had evidently gone up to the little white schoolhouse at the head of the lane. Radbourn let the reins fall slack as he talked on. He did not look at the girl; his eyebrows were drawn into a look of gloomy pain.
"It isn't so much the grime that I abhor, nor the labor that crooks their backs and makes their hands bludgeons. It's the horrible waste of life involved in it all. I don't believe God intended a man to be bent to plough-handles like that, but that isn't the worst of it. The worst of it is, these people live lives approaching automata. They become machines to serve others more lucky or more unscrupulous than themselves. What is the world of art, of music, of literature, to these poor devils,—to Sim Burns and his wife there, for example? Or even to the best of these farmers?"
The girl looked away over the shimmering lake of yellow-green corn. A choking came into her throat. Her gloved hand trembled.
"What is such a life worth? It's all very comfortable for us to say, 'They don't feel it.' How do we know what they feel? What do we know of their capacity for enjoyment of art and music? Theynever have leisure or opportunity. The master is very glad to be taught by preacher, and lawyer, and novelist, that his slaves are contented and never feel any longings for a higher life. These people live lives but little higher than their cattle—areforcedto live so. Their hopes and aspirations are crushed out, their souls are twisted and deformed just as toil twists and deforms their bodies. They are on the same level as the city laborer. The very religion they hear is a soporific. They are taught to be content here that they may be happy hereafter. Suppose there isn't any hereafter?"
"Oh, don't say that, please!" Lily cried.
"But I don'tknowthat there is," he went on remorselessly, "and I do know that these people are being robbed of something more than money, of all that makes life worth living. The promise of milk and honey in Canaan is all very well, but I prefer to have mine here; then I'm sure of it."
"What can we do?" murmured the girl.
"Do? Rouse these people for one thing; preachdiscontent, a noble discontent."
"It will only make them unhappy."
"No, it won't; not if you show them the way out. If it does, it's better to be unhappy striving for higher things, like a man, than to be content in a wallow like swine."
"But whatisthe way out?"
This was sufficient to set Radbourn upon his hobbyhorse. He outlined his plan of action: the abolition of all indirect taxes, the State control of all privilegesthe private ownership of which interfered with the equal rights of all. He would utterly destroy speculative holdings of the earth. He would have land everywhere brought to its best use, by appropriating all ground rents to the use of the state, etc., etc., to which the girl listened with eager interest, but with only partial comprehension.
As they neared the little schoolhouse, a swarm of midgets in pink dresses, pink sun-bonnets, and brown legs, came rushing to meet their teacher, with that peculiar devotion the children in the country develop for a refined teacher.
Radbourn helped Lily out into the midst of the eager little scholars, who swarmed upon her like bees on a lump of sugar, till even Radbourn's gravity gave way, and he smiled into her lifted eyes,—an unusual smile, that strangely enough stopped the smile on her own lips, filling her face with a wistful shadow, and her breath came hard for a moment, and she trembled.
She loved that cold, stern face, oh, so much! and to have him smile was a pleasure that made her heart leap till she suffered a smothering pain. She turned to him to say:—
"I am very thankful, Mr. Radbourn, for another pleasant ride," adding in a lower tone, "it was a very great pleasure; you always give me so much. I feel stronger and more hopeful."
"I'm glad you feel so. I was afraid I was prosy with my land doctrine."
"Oh, no! Indeed no! You have given me a newhope; I am exalted with the thought; I shall try to think it all out and apply it."
And so they parted, the children looking on and slyly whispering among themselves. Radbourn looked back after a while, but the bare white hive had absorbed its little group, and was standing bleak as a tombstone and hot as a furnace on the naked plain in the blazing sun.
"America's pitiful boast!" said the young radical, looking back at it. "Only a miserable hint of what it might be."
All that forenoon, as Lily faced her noisy group of barefooted children, she was thinking of Radbourn, of his almost fierce sympathy for these poor, supine farmers, hopeless and in some cases content in their narrow lives. The children almost worshipped the beautiful girl who came to them as a revelation of exquisite neatness and taste,—whose very voice and intonation awed them.
They noted, unconsciously of course, every detail. Snowy linen, touches of soft color, graceful lines of bust and side, the slender fingers that could almost speak, so beautifully flexile were they. Lily herself sometimes, when she shook the calloused, knotted, stiffened hands of the women, shuddered with sympathetic pain to think that the crowning wonder and beauty of God's world should be so maimed and distorted from its true purpose.
Even in the children before her she could see the inherited results of fruitless labor, and, more pitiful yet,in the bent shoulders of the older ones she could see the beginnings of deformity that would soon be permanent; and as these thoughts came to her, she clasped the wondering children to her side, with a convulsive wish to make life a little brighter for them.
"How is your mother to-day?" she asked of Sadie Burns, as she was eating her luncheon on the drab-colored table near the open window.
"Purty well," said Sadie, in a hesitating way.
Lily was looking out, and listening to the gophers whistling as they raced to and fro. She could see Bob Burns lying at length on the grass in the pasture over the fence, his heels waving in the air, his hands holding a string which formed a snare. It was like fishing to young Izaak Walton.
It was very still and hot, and the cheep and trill of the gophers and the chatter of the kingbirds alone broke the silence. A cloud of butterflies were fluttering about a pool near; a couple of big flies buzzed and mumbled on the pane.
"What ails your mother?" Lily asked, recovering herself and looking at Sadie, who was distinctly ill at ease.
"Oh, I dunno," Sadie replied, putting one bare foot across the other.
Lily insisted.
"She 'n' pa's had an awful row—"
"Sadie!" said the teacher, warningly, "what language!"
"I mean they quarrelled, an' she don't speak to him any more."
"Why, how dreadful!"
"An' pa, he's awful cross; and she won't eat when he does, an' I haf to wait on table."
"I believe I'll go down and see her this noon," said Lily to herself, as she divined a little of the state of affairs in the Burns family.
Sim was mending the pasture fence as Lily came down the road toward him. He had delayed going to dinner to finish his task, and was just about ready to go when Lily spoke to him.
"Good morning, Mr. Burns. I am just going down to see Mrs. Burns. It must be time to go to dinner,—aren't you ready to go? I want to talk with you."
Ordinarily he would have been delighted with the idea of walking down the road with the schoolma'am, but there was something in her look which seemed to tell him that she knew all about his trouble, and, besides, he was not in good humor.
"Yes, in a minnit—soon's I fix up this hole. Them shotes, I b'lieve, would go through a keyhole, if they could once get their snoots in."
He expanded on this idea as he nailed away, anxious to gain time. He foresaw trouble for himself. He couldn't be rude to this sweet and fragile girl. If amanhad dared to attack him on his domestic shortcomings, he could have fought. The girl stood waiting for him, her large, steady eyes full of thought, gazingdown at him from the shadow of her broad-brimmed hat.
"The world is so full of misery anyway, that we ought to do the best we can to make it less," she said at last, in a musing tone, as if her thoughts had unconsciously taken on speech. She had always appealed to him strongly, and never more so than in this softly uttered abstraction—that it was an abstraction added to its power with him.
He could find no words for reply, but picked up his hammer and nail-box, and slouched along the road by her side, listening without a word to her talk.
"Christ was patient, and bore with his enemies. Surely we ought to bear with our—friends," she went on, adapting her steps to his. He took off his torn straw hat and wiped his face on his sleeve, being much embarrassed and ashamed. Not knowing how to meet such argument, he kept silent.
"HowisMrs. Burns!" said Lily at length, determined to make him speak. The delicate meaning in the emphasis laid onisdid not escape him.
"Oh, she's all right—I mean she's done her work jest the same as ever. I don't see her much—"
"I didn't know—I was afraid she was sick. Sadie said she was acting strangely."
"No, she's well enough—but—"
"But what is the trouble? Won't you let me help you,won'tyou?" she pleaded.
"Can't anybody help us. We've got 'o fight it out, I s'pose," he replied, a gloomy note of resentment creepinginto his voice. "She's ben in a devil of a temper f'r a week."
"Haven't you been in the same kind of a temper too?" demanded Lily, firmly but kindly. "I think most troubles of this kind come from bad temper on both sides. Don't you? Have you done your share at being kind and patient?"
They had reached the gate now, and she laid her hand on his arm to stop him. He looked down at the slender gloved hand on his arm, feeling as if a giant had grasped him; then he raised his eyes to her face, flushing a purplish red as he remembered his grossness. It seemed monstrous in the presence of this girl-advocate. Her face was like silver; her eyes seemed pools of tears.
"I don't s'pose I have," he said at last, pushing by her. He could not have faced her glance another moment. His whole air conveyed the impression of destructive admission. Lily did not comprehend the extent of her advantage or she would have pursued it further. As it was she felt a little hurt as she entered the house. The table was set, but Mrs. Burns was nowhere to be seen. Calling her softly, the young girl passed through the shabby little living-room to the oven-like bedroom which opened off it, but no one was about. She stood for a moment shuddering at the wretchedness of the room.
Going back to the kitchen, she found Sim about beginning on his dinner. Little Pet was with him; the rest of the children were at the schoolhouse.
"Where is she?"
"I d' know. Out in the garden, I expect. She don't eat with me now. I never see her. She don't come nearme. I ain't seen her since Saturday."
Lily was shocked inexpressibly and began to see more clearly the magnitude of the task she had set herself to do. But it must be done; she felt that a tragedy was not far off. It must be averted.
"Mr. Burns, what have you done? Whathaveyou done?" she asked in terror and horror.
"Don't lay it all tome! She hain't done nawthin' but complain f'r ten years. I couldn't do nothin' to suit her. She was always naggin' me."
"I don't think Lucretia Burns would nag anybody. I don't say you'reallto blame, but I'm afraid you haven't acknowledged you wereanyto blame. I'm afraid you've not been patient with her. I'm going out to bring her in. If she comes, will yousayyou werepartto blame? You needn't beg her pardon—just say you'll try to be better. Will you do it? Think how much she has done for you! Will you?"
He remained silent, and looked discouragingly rude. His sweaty, dirty shirt was open at the neck, his arms were bare, his scraggly teeth were yellow with tobacco, and his uncombed hair lay tumbled about on his high, narrow head. His clumsy, unsteady hands played with the dishes on the table. His pride was struggling with his sense of justice; he knew he ought to consent, and yet it was so hard to acknowledge himself to blame. The girl went on in a voice piercingly sweet, trembling with pity and pleading.
"What word can I carry to her from you? I'm going to go and see her. If I could take a word fromyou, I know she would come back to the table. Shall I tell her you feel to blame?"
The answer was a long time coming; at last the man nodded an assent, the sweat pouring from his purple face. She had set him thinking; her victory was sure.
Lily almost ran out into the garden and to the strawberry patch, where she found Lucretia in her familiar, colorless, shapeless dress, picking berries in the hot sun, the mosquitoes biting her neck and hands.
"Poor, pathetic, dumb sufferer!" the girl thought as she ran up to her.
She dropped her dish as she heard Lily coming, and gazed up into the tender, pitying face. Not a word was spoken, but something she saw there made her eyes fill with tears, and her throat swell. It was pure sympathy. She put her arms around the girl's neck and sobbed for the first time since Friday night. Then they sat down on the grass under the hedge, and she told her story, interspersed with Lily's horrified comments.