CHAPTER V.CORN PLANTING.
Punctual to the minute, there was Madame with her bag of corn on her left arm, following Brother Huntley and his plough-horses to the field, in the damp white fog of sunrise. Balthasar in deep disgust was there too, as in duty bound, but he had not a wag for anybody. How could a rational dog be in good spirits at that hour of the morning! Madame was dressed in a short calico frock well up to her ankles. Her fair hair was loosely wisped at the back of her head, and a large straw hat, tied down with a green gauze veil, made her look at once comfortable in the fog and ready for the expected sunshine. There were no corn-planters at Perfection City: farm-machinery was not then so plentiful on the prairie as now, and money was if possible scarcer. Corn planting was, therefore, done by hand. Brother Dummy’s drills of longitude were already ploughed, and he began on the drills of latitude forthwith. Into the hollows made by the intersection of these two sets of drills Madame was to drop three grains of corn,neither more nor less. It is dizzying work. After walking up and down the drills for hours one becomes oppressed by the never-ceasing square constantly recurring every two steps. The check pattern bewilders you, and you begin to wonder how a chess-man would feel if, endowed with sensibility and the power of motion, he had to march up and down his chess-board, always keeping to the lines for hours at a stretch.
About seven o’clock Mary Winkle came upon the scene and plodded and planted for four hours. The sun was blazing down upon them pitilessly, and the parching south wind blew the fine black dust up from the rich dry soil, until their eyes and ears and noses were full of it.
The field which they were planting was on the extreme verge of the community-land, far away from the houses. These were somewhat clustered towards the centre of the holding, which consisted of two sections or a little over twelve hundred acres. The workers, therefore, were a long way from home, considerably over a mile, and since corn planting entails ceaseless walking through heavy ploughed land, it had been settled that their dinner should be brought out to them, so as to enable the workers to rest during the whole dinner hour. Olive and Mrs. Ruby were to supply the necessary food, and the former, aided by Napoleon Pompey, was to bring it to the field at eleven o’clock. The little grove of locust trees just beginning to grow beside the far spring was the trystingplace. Water would thus be handy, and the horses’ feed was already put there by the provident Brother Huntley. A little before the hour Olive and her black attendant arrived at the grove, bringing their load of food, and Olive set down her big tin can with a sigh of relief. Her arms ached with carrying it, for it was heavy and the way was long. Napoleon Pompey had carried two cans, each heavier than hers, but the lad seemed to feel no inconvenience from the load. Olive looked at him with envy and thought with contempt of her own muscles which appeared so inefficient. As she unpacked the food, it seemed to her that nothing she had learnt at Smyrna and could best do, was wanted on the prairie, and she remembered with some amusement and not a little bitterness Mary Winkle’s words about food for the mind. At this moment she reflected that all the learning in the world was not so much needed by that philosophical lady as the very gross and material food which was being taken out of the heavy tin cans and laid on the grass. The working-party, men, women and horses, arrived while Olive was thus engaged. Mary Winkle instantly sat down and leaned against a tree and threw off her sunbonnet. Her thin black hair was matted down to her temples, her cheeks were yellow, and her eyes looked dull. Madame also took off her hat and veil and shook up the coil of hair on her head with a sigh of relief.
“Does your head ache too?” said Mary Winkle wearily.
“Not in the least,” replied Madame. “A sunbonnet is a bad shelter against heat. You should wear a good hat, it is far better.”
“I wonder how you can bear all that hair on your head. Why don’t you cut it off?”
“Why, it is an admirable protection against both heat and cold,” said Madame laughing. “It is my greatest comfort.” She might have added her greatest beauty.
The food which Olive brought was most appetising, roast chicken, hot corn-bread, and pumpkin pies, with plenty of milk and water to drink. Before eating Madame went to the spring to wash her hands and face, and Mary Winkle sat limply against the tree trunk with her eyes shut.
“Eat something, it will revive you,” said Olive, looking with pity upon her sallow cheeks.
“I don’t feel hardly able to eat,” she said in a weak voice. “It seems to me I don’t ever want to open my eyes again.”
“You are overworking yourself,” said Olive, “you should not attempt this field work: it is beyond your strength.”
“What! and let her see me give in?” said Mary Winkle with reviving spirit.
Madame came up at this moment looking as fresh as a lily: she glanced sharply at Sister Mary. “You appear very much exhausted,” she remarked.
Sister Mary raised her head and opened her eyes, but did not speak.
“It’s a pity you don’t take wine,” she continued, sitting down and beginning on her piece of chicken with relish. “A good glass of Burgundy would set you up in no time.”
Sister Mary herself sat up at this.
“I wouldn’t touch wine, no, not if I was dying,” she said resolutely.
Madame smiled. “I didn’t recommend it because you were dying: wine as everything else is then useless: but because you look weak. I suggested a medicine.”
“As a medicine it is worse than useless, and as a drink I scorn to take a rank poison.”
“Poisons are sometimes given as medicine, witness strychnine in small doses for certain forms of dyspepsia, and I believe satisfactorily,” said Madame.
“Wine is worse than strychnine, because more insidious in its action and more liable to abuse,” said Mary Winkle decisively, as she took the tin cup of milk and water handed her by Olive, and drank it with eagerness.
“Well, at all events admit that wine has been of benefit to you on this occasion,” observed Madame smiling. “I merely mentioned it to you, and you look already revived and more like yourself. Doesn’t she, Sister Olive?”
“It was the milk and water did it,” said SisterMary Winkle hurriedly, at which Madame smiled again.
Brother Dummy and Napoleon Pompey now came up to the group of women. They had been watering and unharnessing the horses who were at the present moment munching their corn. The white man, although dirty as a ploughman would be after half a day’s hard work, sat down promptly beside Mary Winkle and helped himself to a leg of chicken: the negro boy stood aside doubtfully, eyeing the group and the food with longing looks.
“Come along, N. P.,” said Olive brightly, “sit down there.” She pointed to a place on the other side of Mary Winkle, where there seemed a good opening in front of a huge piece of corn-bread.
“No, if you please,” said Sister Mary, rising to her feet with resentment.
“Why, what’s the matter?” asked Olive flushing with surprise. “Napoleon Pompey won’t bite you.”
“I have never sat down to eat beside a negro, and I don’t feel inclined to begin now.”
“Let the lad sit beside me,” said Madame gently. “I have seen people of too many shades of colour and no colour to mind a little extra dash of black. Come here, boy, come and have this piece of bread and meat.”
Napoleon Pompey grinning with all his white teeth sprang to the place beside Madame, and buried those same teeth eagerly in his chunk of bread. Mary Winklesat down again and leaned against the tree. Olive’s face took a deeper tinge of red and her eyes snapped.
“Do you consider yourself made of such fine clay that it won’t bear contact with a negro?” she asked hotly. “It seems to me a little of what used to be called Christian charity might come in useful here. I never aspired to the heights of Perfection City people, but I never refused the rights of brotherhood to the negro simply because of the curl of his hair or the colour of his skin.”
“I am quite willing to give them all their rights and will be glad to see them educated and all that, but I never sat at dinner with a negro, and I am not going to begin now,” said Mary Winkle setting her thin pale lips with the utmost stubbornness.
“Well, I call it perfectly monstrous,” retorted Olive, “and you setting yourself up to show the better life and all the rest of it! I should have thought the first thing to do before teaching the highest perfection was to practise the simplest justice.”
“And you, Sister Olive,” said Madame’s cool sweet voice, “will have to learn to respect the prejudices of other people even when they run counter to your most cherished theories. I do not myself share the feeling of repulsion that Sister Mary has in this case, but I respect it. I would suggest to you to do the same. It is an inconvenient fact, perhaps, that people do not all think alike, but it is one that must be resolutely faced nevertheless.”
Olive was silent under this reproof, but she looked angrily at Mary Winkle from time to time, and revenged herself by feeding up Napoleon Pompey and petting him to an alarming extent, much to the delight of that young darkie who ate until he seemed to ooze out unctuous joy.
Brother Dummy ate, as he worked, silently, conscientiously, continuously. Olive was amazed at the amount he seemed able to consume, while of milk and water he drank half a gallon or thereabouts.
“How can he do it?” said Olive in astonishment.
“You forget,” replied Madame, “that he has been following that plough for six long hours, and the dry wind raised such a dust around him that he must have swallowed a vast quantity of it in the course of the day. It takes a good deal to slake the thirst after such a dust visitation as that.”
When Brother Dummy had eaten and drunk his fill he lay down on the grass and went instantly to sleep. The three women looked at him for a moment or two.
“He seems to have very little enjoyment in his life,” said Olive compassionately.
“But then he has also few sorrows,” said Madame. “The high lights are wanting, perhaps, but so are the dark shadows. His life is like a grey landscape. It has a beauty of its own, but not everyone can see it.”
“To live in eternal silence seems to me the most awful curse,” said Olive.
“I can imagine many a worse one,” replied Madame, looking out from among the few bare trees away across the open prairie.
“What could be worse?”
“Well, for example, to know that someone you loved did not love you. To have to shut up your heart within iron doors, and never open them to let it out. That would be worse than to be denied the power of speech, which after all can now be supplemented in many ways by artificial means. Brother Huntley is not actively unhappy, I should judge. He and his wife have always appeared to me to be a very united couple.”
“They cannot quarrel, at all events,” said Olive.
“No, not, at least, in the ordinary way,” replied Madame.
When Brother Dummy awoke after his little snooze, he got up, looked at the sun to see what time of day it was, and then signed to Napoleon Pompey to rouse up. That young person was lethargic, owing to his anaconda-like meal, accordingly Brother Dummy roused him with his foot. The darkie rolled over and said “Yah!” and started for the horses, who were nodding over their corn-cobs, now nibbled down to the smallest dimensions. Olive, whose resentment at the slight put upon Napoleon Pompey by Mary Winkle urged her to identify herself with the negro boy, walked away with him and Brother Dummy to watch the hitching up. Madame employed herself in throwingscraps of bread to Balthasar, who would have much preferred eating the chicken bones, only that was a debauch not permitted to a dog of his manners. Mary Winkle looked hopelessly along those weary furrows, up and down which it would be her duty to march again, dropping her seeds of corn as before.
“Are you going to work all the afternoon?” she asked of her companion.
“Yes, I think so. We shall get this field planted and covered in by sun-down, I should think. And that will be a great piece of work done. We cannot afford to let the individualists beat us at corn planting, can we? We must do at least as well as they, and I should hope we might do better.”
“I don’t know how you can stand so much heat and hard work,” said Mary, “and in that dress too. Why, if I were to attempt to work in long skirts I should be dead in a week.”
“I don’t mind my dress at all,” said Madame. “It never bothers me. I don’t think about it.”
“But don’t you think about it when your back aches?”
“It never does.”
“I don’t understand it,” says Mary once more.
“I suspect that the reason you American women find your dress such a burden is because you are so weak yourselves,” said Madame.
“American women accomplish as much or more than any others, I should say,” observed Mary.
“Precisely, but not from their muscular strength. They work out of their nerves, and that is why they never last any length of time.”
Madame finished her day’s work at six o’clock, and then walked home humming a German dance tune to herself. Mary Winkle stopped at four o’clock, and dragged herself home to bed with a fearsome headache, still puzzling how it was that her perfect dress had not done better for her in that day’s trial. She did not know that all her scientific dressing was as nothing compared with the robust vitality, which Madame brought with her from another land, and which, running in such vigorous beats through her blood, was inherited from generations of strong healthy ancestors. Madame’s father was a Russian colonel noted for his size and strength and also for his wildness. Her mother was a pretty English girl, who had nothing to bequeath to her daughter but health, personal beauty, and this piece of advice: “Never stake your happiness on any man, it always brings disaster to the woman.” Mary Winkle’s mother, on the other hand, was a nervous invalid at thirty, and her father was a dyspeptic dietetic reformer, who pinned his salvation on never eating salt. Small wonder, therefore, that the daughter of the one pair should be able to plant corn all day long and walk lightly home at evening, while the offspring of the other pair could do only three quarters of a day’s work, after which headache and nervous exhaustion.