II
WHEN I AWOKE IN THE morning, long bands of sunshine were coming in atthe window and reaching back under the eaves where the two boys lay.Leo was wide awake and was tickling his brother's leg with a driedcone-flower he had pulled out of the hay. Ambrosch kicked at him andturned over. I closed my eyes and pretended to be asleep. Leo lay onhis back, elevated one foot, and began exercising his toes. He picked updried flowers with his toes and brandished them in the belt of sunlight.After he had amused himself thus for some time, he rose on one elbow andbegan to look at me, cautiously, then critically, blinking his eyes inthe light. His expression was droll; it dismissed me lightly. 'This oldfellow is no different from other people. He doesn't know my secret.'He seemed conscious of possessing a keener power of enjoyment thanother people; his quick recognitions made him frantically impatient ofdeliberate judgments. He always knew what he wanted without thinking.
After dressing in the hay, I washed my face in cold water at thewindmill. Breakfast was ready when I entered the kitchen, and Yulka wasbaking griddle-cakes. The three older boys set off for the fields early.Leo and Yulka were to drive to town to meet their father, who wouldreturn from Wilber on the noon train.
'We'll only have a lunch at noon,' Antonia said, and cook the geese forsupper, when our papa will be here. I wish my Martha could come down tosee you. They have a Ford car now, and she don't seem so far away fromme as she used to. But her husband's crazy about his farm and abouthaving everything just right, and they almost never get away except onSundays. He's a handsome boy, and he'll be rich some day. Everythinghe takes hold of turns out well. When they bring that baby in here, andunwrap him, he looks like a little prince; Martha takes care of him sobeautiful. I'm reconciled to her being away from me now, but at first Icried like I was putting her into her coffin.'
We were alone in the kitchen, except for Anna, who was pouring creaminto the churn. She looked up at me. 'Yes, she did. We were just ashamedof mother. She went round crying, when Martha was so happy, and the restof us were all glad. Joe certainly was patient with you, mother.'
Antonia nodded and smiled at herself. 'I know it was silly, but Icouldn't help it. I wanted her right here. She'd never been away from mea night since she was born. If Anton had made trouble about her when shewas a baby, or wanted me to leave her with my mother, I wouldn't havemarried him. I couldn't. But he always loved her like she was his own.'
'I didn't even know Martha wasn't my full sister until after she wasengaged to Joe,' Anna told me.
Toward the middle of the afternoon, the wagon drove in, with the fatherand the eldest son. I was smoking in the orchard, and as I went out tomeet them, Antonia came running down from the house and hugged the twomen as if they had been away for months.
'Papa,' interested me, from my first glimpse of him. He was shorter thanhis older sons; a crumpled little man, with run-over boot-heels, and hecarried one shoulder higher than the other. But he moved very quickly,and there was an air of jaunty liveliness about him. He had a strong,ruddy colour, thick black hair, a little grizzled, a curly moustache,and red lips. His smile showed the strong teeth of which his wife was soproud, and as he saw me his lively, quizzical eyes told me that he knewall about me. He looked like a humorous philosopher who had hitched upone shoulder under the burdens of life, and gone on his way having agood time when he could. He advanced to meet me and gave me a hard hand,burned red on the back and heavily coated with hair. He wore his Sundayclothes, very thick and hot for the weather, an unstarched white shirt,and a blue necktie with big white dots, like a little boy's, tied ina flowing bow. Cuzak began at once to talk about his holiday--frompoliteness he spoke in English.
'Mama, I wish you had see the lady dance on the slack-wire in the streetat night. They throw a bright light on her and she float through the airsomething beautiful, like a bird! They have a dancing bear, like in theold country, and two-three merry-go-around, and people in balloons, andwhat you call the big wheel, Rudolph?'
'A Ferris wheel,' Rudolph entered the conversation in a deep baritonevoice. He was six foot two, and had a chest like a young blacksmith. 'Wewent to the big dance in the hall behind the saloon last night, mother,and I danced with all the girls, and so did father. I never saw so manypretty girls. It was a Bohunk crowd, for sure. We didn't hear a word ofEnglish on the street, except from the show people, did we, papa?'
Cuzak nodded. 'And very many send word to you, Antonia. You willexcuse'--turning to me--'if I tell her.' While we walked toward thehouse he related incidents and delivered messages in the tongue he spokefluently, and I dropped a little behind, curious to know what theirrelations had become--or remained. The two seemed to be on terms of easyfriendliness, touched with humour. Clearly, she was the impulse, andhe the corrective. As they went up the hill he kept glancing at hersidewise, to see whether she got his point, or how she received it. Inoticed later that he always looked at people sidewise, as a work-horsedoes at its yokemate. Even when he sat opposite me in the kitchen,talking, he would turn his head a little toward the clock or the stoveand look at me from the side, but with frankness and good nature. Thistrick did not suggest duplicity or secretiveness, but merely long habit,as with the horse.
He had brought a tintype of himself and Rudolph for Antonia'scollection, and several paper bags of candy for the children. He lookeda little disappointed when his wife showed him a big box of candy I hadgot in Denver--she hadn't let the children touch it the night before. Heput his candy away in the cupboard, 'for when she rains,' and glancedat the box, chuckling. 'I guess you must have hear about how my familyain't so small,' he said.
Cuzak sat down behind the stove and watched his womenfolk and the littlechildren with equal amusement. He thought they were nice, and he thoughtthey were funny, evidently. He had been off dancing with the girlsand forgetting that he was an old fellow, and now his family rathersurprised him; he seemed to think it a joke that all these childrenshould belong to him. As the younger ones slipped up to him in hisretreat, he kept taking things out of his pockets; penny dolls, a woodenclown, a balloon pig that was inflated by a whistle. He beckoned to thelittle boy they called Jan, whispered to him, and presented him with apaper snake, gently, so as not to startle him. Looking over the boy'shead he said to me, 'This one is bashful. He gets left.'
Cuzak had brought home with him a roll of illustrated Bohemian papers.He opened them and began to tell his wife the news, much of which seemedto relate to one person. I heard the name Vasakova, Vasakova, repeatedseveral times with lively interest, and presently I asked him whether hewere talking about the singer, Maria Vasak.
'You know? You have heard, maybe?' he asked incredulously. When Iassured him that I had heard her, he pointed out her picture and told methat Vasak had broken her leg, climbing in the Austrian Alps, and wouldnot be able to fill her engagements. He seemed delighted to find that Ihad heard her sing in London and in Vienna; got out his pipe and litit to enjoy our talk the better. She came from his part of Prague. Hisfather used to mend her shoes for her when she was a student. Cuzakquestioned me about her looks, her popularity, her voice; but heparticularly wanted to know whether I had noticed her tiny feet, andwhether I thought she had saved much money. She was extravagant, ofcourse, but he hoped she wouldn't squander everything, and have nothingleft when she was old. As a young man, working in Wienn, he had seen agood many artists who were old and poor, making one glass of beer lastall evening, and 'it was not very nice, that.'
When the boys came in from milking and feeding, the long table was laid,and two brown geese, stuffed with apples, were put down sizzling beforeAntonia. She began to carve, and Rudolph, who sat next his mother,started the plates on their way. When everybody was served, he lookedacross the table at me.
'Have you been to Black Hawk lately, Mr. Burden? Then I wonder if you'veheard about the Cutters?'
No, I had heard nothing at all about them.
'Then you must tell him, son, though it's a terrible thing to talk aboutat supper. Now, all you children
be quiet, Rudolph is going to tellabout the murder.'
'Hurrah! The murder!' the children murmured, looking pleased andinterested.
Rudolph told his story in great detail, with occasional promptings fromhis mother or father.
Wick Cutter and his wife had gone on living in the house that Antoniaand I knew so well, and in the way we knew so well. They grew to bevery old people. He shrivelled up, Antonia said, until he looked likea little old yellow monkey, for his beard and his fringe of hair neverchanged colour. Mrs. Cutter remained flushed and wild-eyed as we hadknown her, but as the years passed she became afflicted with a shakingpalsy which made her nervous nod continuous instead of occasional. Herhands were so uncertain that she could no longer disfigure china, poorwoman! As the couple grew older, they quarrelled more and more oftenabout the ultimate disposition of their 'property.' A new law was passedin the state, securing the surviving wife a third of her husband'sestate under all conditions. Cutter was tormented by the fear that Mrs.Cutter would live longer than he, and that eventually her 'people,' whomhe had always hated so violently, would inherit. Their quarrels on thissubject passed the boundary of the close-growing cedars, and were heardin the street by whoever wished to loiter and listen.
One morning, two years ago, Cutter went into the hardware store andbought a pistol, saying he was going to shoot a dog, and adding thathe 'thought he would take a shot at an old cat while he was aboutit.' (Here the children interrupted Rudolph's narrative by smotheredgiggles.)
Cutter went out behind the hardware store, put up a target, practisedfor an hour or so, and then went home. At six o'clock that evening, whenseveral men were passing the Cutter house on their way home to supper,they heard a pistol shot. They paused and were looking doubtfully atone another, when another shot came crashing through an upstairs window.They ran into the house and found Wick Cutter lying on a sofa in hisupstairs bedroom, with his throat torn open, bleeding on a roll ofsheets he had placed beside his head.
'Walk in, gentlemen,' he said weakly. 'I am alive, you see, andcompetent. You are witnesses that I have survived my wife. You will findher in her own room. Please make your examination at once, so that therewill be no mistake.'
One of the neighbours telephoned for a doctor, while the others wentinto Mrs. Cutter's room. She was lying on her bed, in her night-gown andwrapper, shot through the heart. Her husband must have come in while shewas taking her afternoon nap and shot her, holding the revolver near herbreast. Her night-gown was burned from the powder.
The horrified neighbours rushed back to Cutter. He opened his eyesand said distinctly, 'Mrs. Cutter is quite dead, gentlemen, and I amconscious. My affairs are in order.' Then, Rudolph said, 'he let go anddied.'
On his desk the coroner found a letter, dated at five o'clock thatafternoon. It stated that he had just shot his wife; that any will shemight secretly have made would be invalid, as he survived her. He meantto shoot himself at six o'clock and would, if he had strength, fire ashot through the window in the hope that passersby might come in and seehim 'before life was extinct,' as he wrote.
'Now, would you have thought that man had such a cruel heart?' Antoniaturned to me after the story was told. 'To go and do that poor woman outof any comfort she might have from his money after he was gone!'
'Did you ever hear of anybody else that killed himself for spite, Mr.Burden?' asked Rudolph.
I admitted that I hadn't. Every lawyer learns over and over how stronga motive hate can be, but in my collection of legal anecdotes I hadnothing to match this one. When I asked how much the estate amounted to,Rudolph said it was a little over a hundred thousand dollars.
Cuzak gave me a twinkling, sidelong glance. 'The lawyers, they got agood deal of it, sure,' he said merrily.
A hundred thousand dollars; so that was the fortune that had beenscraped together by such hard dealing, and that Cutter himself had diedfor in the end!
After supper Cuzak and I took a stroll in the orchard and sat down bythe windmill to smoke. He told me his story as if it were my business toknow it.
His father was a shoemaker, his uncle a furrier, and he, being a youngerson, was apprenticed to the latter's trade. You never got anywhereworking for your relatives, he said, so when he was a journeyman he wentto Vienna and worked in a big fur shop, earning good money. But a youngfellow who liked a good time didn't save anything in Vienna; there weretoo many pleasant ways of spending every night what he'd made in theday. After three years there, he came to New York. He was badly advisedand went to work on furs during a strike, when the factories wereoffering big wages. The strikers won, and Cuzak was blacklisted. As hehad a few hundred dollars ahead, he decided to go to Florida and raiseoranges. He had always thought he would like to raise oranges! Thesecond year a hard frost killed his young grove, and he fell ill withmalaria. He came to Nebraska to visit his cousin, Anton Jelinek, andto look about. When he began to look about, he saw Antonia, and shewas exactly the kind of girl he had always been hunting for. They weremarried at once, though he had to borrow money from his cousin to buythe wedding ring.
'It was a pretty hard job, breaking up this place and making the firstcrops grow,' he said, pushing back his hat and scratching his grizzledhair. 'Sometimes I git awful sore on this place and want to quit, but mywife she always say we better stick it out. The babies come along prettyfast, so it look like it be hard to move, anyhow. I guess she was right,all right. We got this place clear now. We pay only twenty dollars anacre then, and I been offered a hundred. We bought another quarter tenyears ago, and we got it most paid for. We got plenty boys; we can worka lot of land. Yes, she is a good wife for a poor man. She ain't alwaysso strict with me, neither. Sometimes maybe I drink a little too muchbeer in town, and when I come home she don't say nothing. She don't askme no questions. We always get along fine, her and me, like at first.The children don't make trouble between us, like sometimes happens.' Helit another pipe and pulled on it contentedly.
I found Cuzak a most companionable fellow. He asked me a greatmany questions about my trip through Bohemia, about Vienna and theRingstrasse and the theatres.
'Gee! I like to go back there once, when the boys is big enough to farmthe place. Sometimes when I read the papers from the old country, Ipretty near run away,' he confessed with a little laugh. 'I never didthink how I would be a settled man like this.'
He was still, as Antonia said, a city man. He liked theatres and lightedstreets and music and a game of dominoes after the day's work was over.His sociability was stronger than his acquisitive instinct. He likedto live day by day and night by night, sharing in the excitement of thecrowd.--Yet his wife had managed to hold him here on a farm, in one ofthe loneliest countries in the world.
I could see the little chap, sitting here every evening by the windmill,nursing his pipe and listening to the silence; the wheeze of the pump,the grunting of the pigs, an occasional squawking when the hens weredisturbed by a rat. It did rather seem to me that Cuzak had been madethe instrument of Antonia's special mission. This was a fine life,certainly, but it wasn't the kind of life he had wanted to live. Iwondered whether the life that was right for one was ever right for two!
I asked Cuzak if he didn't find it hard to do without the gay companyhe had always been used to. He knocked out his pipe against an upright,sighed, and dropped it into his pocket.
'At first I near go crazy with lonesomeness,' he said frankly, 'but mywoman is got such a warm heart. She always make it as good for me as shecould. Now it ain't so bad; I can begin to have some fun with my boys,already!'
As we walked toward the house, Cuzak cocked his hat jauntily over oneear and looked up at the moon. 'Gee!' he said in a hushed voice, asif he had just wakened up, 'it don't seem like I am away from theretwenty-six year!'