Obscure Destinies

but I guess I ain't dat kind of a boy.

  "It was after twelve o'clock, an' terrible cold, an' I start out to

  walk about London all night. I walk along de river awhile, but dey

  was lots of drunks all along; men, and women too. I chust move

  along to keep away from de police. I git onto de Strand, an' den

  over to New Oxford Street, where dere was a big German restaurant

  on de ground floor, wid big windows all fixed up fine, an' I could

  see de people havin' parties inside. While I was lookin' in, two

  men and two ladies come out, laughin' and talkin' and feelin' happy

  about all dey been eatin' an' drinkin', and dey was speakin'

  Czech,--not like de Austrians, but like de home folks talk it.

  "I guess I went crazy, an' I done what I ain't never done before

  nor since. I went right up to dem gay people an' begun to beg dem:

  'Fellow-countrymen, for God's sake give me money enough to buy a

  goose!'

  "Dey laugh, of course, but de ladies speak awful kind to me, an'

  dey take me back into de restaurant and give me hot coffee and

  cakes, an' make me tell all about how I happened to come to London,

  an' what I was doin' dere. Dey take my name and where I work down

  on paper, an' both of dem ladies give me ten shillings.

  "De big market at Covent Garden ain't very far away, an' by dat

  time it was open. I go dere an' buy a big goose an' some pork

  pies, an' potatoes and onions, an' cakes an' oranges fur de

  children,--all I could carry! When I git home, everybody is still

  asleep. I pile all I bought on de kitchen table, an' go in an' lay

  down on my bed, an' I ain't waken up till I hear dat woman scream

  when she come out into her kitchen. My goodness, but she was

  surprise! She laugh an' cry at de same time, an' hug me and waken

  all de children. She ain't stop fur no breakfast; she git de

  Christmas dinner ready dat morning, and we all sit down an' eat all

  we can hold. I ain't never seen dat violin boy have all he can

  hold before.

  "Two three days after dat, de two men come to hunt me up, an' dey

  ask my boss, and he give me a good report an' tell dem I was a

  steady boy all right. One of dem Bohemians was very smart an' run

  a Bohemian newspaper in New York, an' de odder was a rich man, in

  de importing business, an' dey been travelling togedder. Dey told

  me how t'ings was easier in New York, an' offered to pay my passage

  when dey was goin' home soon on a boat. My boss say to me: 'You

  go. You ain't got no chance here, an' I like to see you git ahead,

  fur you always been a good boy to my woman, and fur dat fine

  Christmas dinner you give us all.' An' da's how I got to New

  York."

  That night when Rudolph and Polly, arm in arm, were running home

  across the fields with the bitter wind at their backs, his heart

  leaped for joy when she said she thought they might have his family

  come over for supper on New Year's Eve. "Let's get up a nice

  supper, and not let your mother help at all; make her be company

  for once."

  "That would be lovely of you, Polly," he said humbly. He was a

  very simple, modest boy, and he, too, felt vaguely that Polly and

  her sisters were more experienced and worldly than his people.

  VI

  The winter turned out badly for farmers. It was bitterly cold, and

  after the first light snows before Christmas there was no snow at

  all,--and no rain. March was as bitter as February. On those days

  when the wind fairly punished the country, Rosicky sat by his

  window. In the fall he and the boys had put in a big wheat

  planting, and now the seed had frozen in the ground. All that land

  would have to be ploughed up and planted over again, planted in

  corn. It had happened before, but he was younger then, and he

  never worried about what had to be. He was sure of himself and of

  Mary; he knew they could bear what they had to bear, that they

  would always pull through somehow. But he was not so sure about

  the young ones, and he felt troubled because Rudolph and Polly were

  having such a hard start.

  Sitting beside his flowering window while the panes rattled and the

  wind blew in under the door, Rosicky gave himself to reflection as

  he had not done since those Sundays in the loft of the furniture-

  factory in New York, long ago. Then he was trying to find what he

  wanted in life for himself; now he was trying to find what he

  wanted for his boys, and why it was he so hungered to feel sure

  they would be here, working this very land, after he was gone.

  They would have to work hard on the farm, and probably they would

  never do much more than make a living. But if he could think of

  them as staying here on the land, he wouldn't have to fear any

  great unkindness for them. Hardships, certainly; it was a hardship

  to have the wheat freeze in the ground when seed was so high; and

  to have to sell your stock because you had no feed. But there

  would be other years when everything came along right, and you

  caught up. And what you had was your own. You didn't have to

  choose between bosses and strikers, and go wrong either way. You

  didn't have to do with dishonest and cruel people. They were the

  only things in his experience he had found terrifying and horrible;

  the look in the eyes of a dishonest and crafty man, of a scheming

  and rapacious woman.

  In the country, if you had a mean neighbour, you could keep off his

  land and make him keep off yours. But in the city, all the

  foulness and misery and brutality of your neighbours was part of

  your life. The worst things he had come upon in his journey

  through the world were human,--depraved and poisonous specimens of

  man. To this day he could recall certain terrible faces in the

  London streets. There were mean people everywhere, to be sure,

  even in their own country town here. But they weren't tempered,

  hardened, sharpened, like the treacherous people in cities who live

  by grinding or cheating or poisoning their fellow-men. He had

  helped to bury two of his fellow-workmen in the tailoring trade,

  and he was distrustful of the organized industries that see one out

  of the world in big cities. Here, if you were sick, you had Doctor

  Ed to look after you; and if you died, fat Mr. Haycock, the kindest

  man in the world, buried you.

  It seemed to Rosicky that for good, honest boys like his, the worst

  they could do on the farm was better than the best they would be

  likely to do in the city. If he'd had a mean boy, now, one who was

  crooked and sharp and tried to put anything over on his brothers,

  then town would be the place for him. But he had no such boy. As

  for Rudolph, the discontented one, he would give the shirt off his

  back to anyone who touched his heart. What Rosicky really hoped

  for his boys was that they could get through the world without ever

  knowing much about the cruelty of human beings. "Their mother and

  me ain't prepared them for that," he sometimes said to himself.

  These thoughts brought him back to a grateful consideration of his

/>   own case. What an escape he had had, to be sure! He, too, in his

  time, had had to take money for repair work from the hand of a

  hungry child who let it go so wistfully; because it was money due

  his boss. And now, in all these years, he had never had to take a

  cent from anyone in bitter need,--never had to look at the face of

  a woman become like a wolf's from struggle and famine. When he

  thought of these things, Rosicky would put on his cap and jacket

  and slip down to the barn and give his work-horses a little extra

  oats, letting them eat it out of his hand in their slobbery

  fashion. It was his way of expressing what he felt, and made him

  chuckle with pleasure.

  The spring came warm, with blue skies,--but dry, dry as a bone.

  The boys began ploughing up the wheat-fields to plant them over in

  corn. Rosicky would stand at the fence corner and watch them, and

  the earth was so dry it blew up in clouds of brown dust that hid

  the horses and the sulky plough and the driver. It was a bad

  outlook.

  The big alfalfa-field that lay between the home place and Rudolph's

  came up green, but Rosicky was worried because during that open

  windy winter a great many Russian thistle plants had blown in there

  and lodged. He kept asking the boys to rake them out; he was

  afraid their seed would root and "take the alfalfa." Rudolph said

  that was nonsense. The boys were working so hard planting corn,

  their father felt he couldn't insist about the thistles, but he set

  great store by that big alfalfa field. It was a feed you could

  depend on,--and there was some deeper reason, vague, but strong.

  The peculiar green of that clover woke early memories in old

  Rosicky, went back to something in his childhood in the old world.

  When he was a little boy, he had played in fields of that strong

  blue-green colour.

  One morning, when Rudolph had gone to town in the car, leaving a

  work-team idle in his barn, Rosicky went over to his son's place,

  put the horses to the buggy-rake, and set about quietly raking up

  those thistles. He behaved with guilty caution, and rather enjoyed

  stealing a march on Doctor Ed, who was just then taking his first

  vacation in seven years of practice and was attending a clinic in

  Chicago. Rosicky got the thistles raked up, but did not stop to

  burn them. That would take some time, and his breath was pretty

  short, so he thought he had better get the horses back to the barn.

  He got them into the barn and to their stalls, but the pain had

  come on so sharp in his chest that he didn't try to take the

  harness off. He started for the house, bending lower with every

  step. The cramp in his chest was shutting him up like a jack-

  knife. When he reached the windmill, he swayed and caught at the

  ladder. He saw Polly coming down the hill, running with the

  swiftness of a slim greyhound. In a flash she had her shoulder

  under his armpit.

  "Lean on me, Father, hard! Don't be afraid. We can get to the

  house all right."

  Somehow they did, though Rosicky became blind with pain; he could

  keep on his legs, but he couldn't steer his course. The next thing

  he was conscious of was lying on Polly's bed, and Polly bending

  over him wringing out bath towels in hot water and putting them on

  his chest. She stopped only to throw coal into the stove, and she

  kept the tea-kettle and the black pot going. She put these hot

  applications on him for nearly an hour, she told him afterwards,

  and all that time he was drawn up stiff and blue, with the sweat

  pouring off him.

  As the pain gradually loosed its grip, the stiffness went out of

  his jaws, the black circles round his eyes disappeared, and a

  little of his natural colour came back. When his daughter-in-law

  buttoned his shirt over his chest at last, he sighed.

  "Da's fine, de way I feel now, Polly. It was a awful bad spell,

  an' I was so sorry it all come on you like it did."

  Polly was flushed and excited. "Is the pain really gone? Can I

  leave you long enough to telephone over to your place?"

  Rosicky's eyelids fluttered. "Don't telephone, Polly. It ain't no

  use to scare my wife. It's nice and quiet here, an' if I ain't too

  much trouble to you, just let me lay still till I feel like myself.

  I ain't got no pain now. It's nice here."

  Polly bent over him and wiped the moisture from his face. "Oh, I'm

  so glad it's over!" she broke out impulsively. "It just broke my

  heart to see you suffer so, Father."

  Rosicky motioned her to sit down on the chair where the tea-kettle

  had been, and looked up at her with that lively affectionate gleam

  in his eyes. "You was awful good to me, I won't never forgit dat.

  I hate it to be sick on you like dis. Down at de barn I say to

  myself, dat young girl ain't had much experience in sickness, I

  don't want to scare her, an' maybe she's got a baby comin' or

  somet'ing."

  Polly took his hand. He was looking at her so intently and

  affectionately and confidingly; his eyes seemed to caress her face,

  to regard it with pleasure. She frowned with her funny streaks of

  eyebrows, and then smiled back at him.

  "I guess maybe there is something of that kind going to happen.

  But I haven't told anyone yet, not my mother or Rudolph. You'll be

  the first to know."

  His hand pressed hers. She noticed that it was warm again. The

  twinkle in his yellow-brown eyes seemed to come nearer.

  "I like mighty well to see dat little child, Polly," was all he

  said. Then he closed his eyes and lay half-smiling. But Polly sat

  still, thinking hard. She had a sudden feeling that nobody in the

  world, not her mother, not Rudolph, or anyone, really loved her as

  much as old Rosicky did. It perplexed her. She sat frowning and

  trying to puzzle it out. It was as if Rosicky had a special gift

  for loving people, something that was like an ear for music or an

  eye for colour. It was quiet, unobtrusive; it was merely there.

  You saw it in his eyes,--perhaps that was why they were merry.

  You felt it in his hands, too. After he dropped off to sleep,

  she sat holding his warm, broad, flexible brown hand. She had

  never seen another in the least like it. She wondered if it wasn't

  a kind of gypsy hand, it was so alive and quick and light in its

  communications,--very strange in a farmer. Nearly all the farmers

  she knew had huge lumps of fists, like mauls, or they were knotty

  and bony and uncomfortable-looking, with stiff fingers. But

  Rosicky's was like quicksilver, flexible, muscular, about the

  colour of a pale cigar, with deep, deep creases across the palm.

  It wasn't nervous, it wasn't a stupid lump; it was a warm brown

  human hand, with some cleverness in it, a great deal of generosity,

  and something else which Polly could only call "gypsy-like,"--

  something nimble and lively and sure, in the way that animals are.

  Polly remembered that hour long afterwards; it had been like an

  awakening to her. It seemed to her that she had never le
arned so

  much about life from anything as from old Rosicky's hand. It

  brought her to herself; it communicated some direct and

  untranslatable message.

  When she heard Rudolph coming in the car, she ran out to meet him.

  "Oh, Rudy, your father's been awful sick! He raked up those

  thistles he's been worrying about, and afterwards he could hardly

  get to the house. He suffered so I was afraid he was going to

  die."

  Rudolph jumped to the ground. "Where is he now?"

  "On the bed. He's asleep. I was terribly scared, because, you

  know, I'm so fond of your father." She slipped her arm through his

  and they went into the house. That afternoon they took Rosicky

  home and put him to bed, though he protested that he was quite well

  again.

  The next morning he got up and dressed and sat down to breakfast

  with his family. He told Mary that his coffee tasted better than

  usual to him, and he warned the boys not to bear any tales to

  Doctor Ed when he got home. After breakfast he sat down by his

  window to do some patching and asked Mary to thread several needles

  for him before she went to feed her chickens,--her eyes were better

  than his, and her hands steadier. He lit his pipe and took up

  John's overalls. Mary had been watching him anxiously all morning,

  and as she went out of the door with her bucket of scraps, she saw

  that he was smiling. He was thinking, indeed, about Polly, and how

  he might never have known what a tender heart she had if he hadn't

  got sick over there. Girls nowadays didn't wear their heart on

  their sleeve. But now he knew Polly would make a fine woman after

  the foolishness wore off. Either a woman had that sweetness at her

  heart or she hadn't. You couldn't always tell by the look of them;

  but if they had that, everything came out right in the end.

  After he had taken a few stitches, the cramp began in his chest,

  like yesterday. He put his pipe cautiously down on the window-sill

  and bent over to ease the pull. No use,--he had better try to get

  to his bed if he could. He rose and groped his way across the

  familiar floor, which was rising and falling like the deck of a

  ship. At the door he fell. When Mary came in, she found him lying

  there, and the moment she touched him she knew that he was gone.

  Doctor Ed was away when Rosicky died, and for the first few weeks

  after he got home he was hard driven. Every day he said to himself

  that he must get out to see that family that had lost their father.

  One soft, warm moonlight night in early summer he started for the

  farm. His mind was on other things, and not until his road ran by

  the graveyard did he realize that Rosicky wasn't over there on the

  hill where the red lamplight shone, but here, in the moonlight. He

  stopped his car, shut off the engine, and sat there for a while.

  A sudden hush had fallen on his soul. Everything here seemed

  strangely moving and significant, though signifying what, he did

  not know. Close by the wire fence stood Rosicky's mowing-machine,

  where one of the boys had been cutting hay that afternoon; his own

  workhorses had been going up and down there. The new-cut hay

  perfumed all the night air. The moonlight silvered the long,

  billowy grass that grew over the graves and hid the fence; the few

  little evergreens stood out black in it, like shadows in a pool.

  The sky was very blue and soft, the stars rather faint because the

  moon was full.

  For the first time it struck Doctor Ed that this was really a

  beautiful graveyard. He thought of city cemeteries; acres of

  shrubbery and heavy stone, so arranged and lonely and unlike

  anything in the living world. Cities of the dead, indeed; cities

  of the forgotten, of the "put away." But this was open and free,

  this little square of long grass which the wind for ever stirred.

  Nothing but the sky overhead, and the many-coloured fields running