Obscure Destinies

stupidity. What he chiefly detected was self-satisfaction; the

  craftiness of the coarse-fibred country girl putting catch

  questions to the teacher. Yes, he decided, the woman was merely

  showing off,--she regarded it as an accomplishment to make people

  uncomfortable.

  Mrs. Templeton didn't at once take it in. Her training was all to

  the end that you must give a guest everything you have, even if he

  happens to be your worst enemy, and that to cause anyone

  embarrassment is a frightful and humiliating blunder. She felt

  hurt without knowing just why, but all evening it kept growing

  clearer to her that this was another of those thrusts from the

  outside which she couldn't understand. The neighbours were sure to

  take sides against her, apparently, if they came often to see her

  mother.

  Mr. Rosen tried to distract Mrs. Templeton, but he could feel the

  poison working. On the way home the children knew something had

  displeased or hurt their mother. When they went into the house,

  she told them to go up-stairs at once, as she had a headache. She

  was severe and distant. When Mrs. Harris suggested making her some

  peppermint tea, Victoria threw up her chin.

  "I don't want anybody waiting on me. I just want to be let alone."

  And she withdrew without saying good-night, or "Are you all right,

  Ma?" as she usually did.

  Left alone, Mrs. Harris sighed and began to turn down her bed. She

  knew, as well as if she had been at the social, what kind of thing

  had happened. Some of those prying ladies of the Woman's Relief

  Corps, or the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, had been

  intimating to Victoria that her mother was "put upon." Nothing

  ever made Victoria cross but criticism. She was jealous of small

  attentions paid to Mrs. Harris, because she felt they were paid

  "behind her back" or "over her head," in a way that implied

  reproach to her. Victoria had been a belle in their own town in

  Tennessee, but here she was not very popular, no matter how many

  pretty dresses she wore, and she couldn't bear it. She felt as if

  her mother and Mr. Templeton must be somehow to blame; at least

  they ought to protect her from whatever was disagreeable--they

  always had!

  V

  Mrs. Harris wakened at about four o'clock, as usual, before the

  house was stirring, and lay thinking about their position in this

  new town. She didn't know why the neighbours acted so; she was as

  much in the dark as Victoria. At home, back in Tennessee, her

  place in the family was not exceptional, but perfectly regular.

  Mrs. Harris had replied to Mrs. Rosen, when that lady asked why in

  the world she didn't break Vickie in to help her in the kitchen:

  "We are only young once, and trouble comes soon enough." Young

  girls, in the South, were supposed to be carefree and foolish; the

  fault Grandmother found in Vickie was that she wasn't foolish

  enough. When the foolish girl married and began to have children,

  everything else must give way to that. She must be humoured and

  given the best of everything, because having children was hard on a

  woman, and it was the most important thing in the world. In

  Tennessee every young married woman in good circumstances had an

  older woman in the house, a mother or mother-in-law or an old aunt,

  who managed the household economies and directed the help.

  That was the great difference; in Tennessee there had been plenty

  of helpers. There was old Miss Sadie Crummer, who came to the

  house to spin and sew and mend; old Mrs. Smith, who always arrived

  to help at butchering- and preserving-time; Lizzie, the coloured

  girl, who did the washing and who ran in every day to help Mandy.

  There were plenty more, who came whenever one of Lizzie's barefoot

  boys ran to fetch them. The hills were full of solitary old women,

  or women but slightly attached to some household, who were glad to

  come to Miz' Harris's for good food and a warm bed, and the little

  present that either Mrs. Harris or Victoria slipped into their

  carpet-sack when they went away.

  To be sure, Mrs. Harris, and the other women of her age who managed

  their daughter's house, kept in the background; but it was their

  own background, and they ruled it jealously. They left the front

  porch and the parlour to the young married couple and their young

  friends; the old women spent most of their lives in the kitchen and

  pantries and back dining-room. But there they ordered life to

  their own taste, entertained their friends, dispensed charity, and

  heard the troubles of the poor. Moreover, back there it was

  Grandmother's own house they lived in. Mr. Templeton came of a

  superior family and had what Grandmother called "blood," but no

  property. He never so much as mended one of the steps to the front

  porch without consulting Mrs. Harris. Even "back home," in the

  aristocracy, there were old women who went on living like young

  ones,--gave parties and drove out in their carriage and "went

  North" in the summer. But among the middle-class people and the

  country-folk, when a woman was a widow and had married daughters,

  she considered herself an old woman and wore full-gathered black

  dresses and a black bonnet and became a housekeeper. She accepted

  this estate unprotestingly, almost gratefully.

  The Templetons' troubles began when Mr. Templeton's aunt died and

  left him a few thousand dollars, and he got the idea of bettering

  himself. The twins were little then, and he told Mrs. Harris his

  boys would have a better chance in Colorado--everybody was going

  West. He went alone first, and got a good position with a mining

  company in the mountains of southern Colorado. He had been book-

  keeper in the bank in his home town, had "grown up in the bank," as

  they said. He was industrious and honourable, and the managers of

  the mining company liked him, even if they laughed at his polite,

  soft-spoken manners. He could have held his position indefinitely,

  and maybe got a promotion. But the altitude of that mountain town

  was too high for his family. All the children were sick there;

  Mrs. Templeton was ill most of the time and nearly died when Ronald

  was born. Hillary Templeton lost his courage and came north to the

  flat, sunny, semi-arid country between Wray and Cheyenne, to work

  for an irrigation project. So far, things had not gone well with

  him. The pinch told on everyone, but most on Grandmother. Here,

  in Skyline, she had all her accustomed responsibilities, and no

  helper but Mandy. Mrs. Harris was no longer living in a feudal

  society, where there were plenty of landless people glad to render

  service to the more fortunate, but in a snappy little Western

  democracy, where every man was as good as his neighbour and out to

  prove it.

  Neither Mrs. Harris nor Mrs. Templeton understood just what was the

  matter; they were hurt and dazed, merely. Victoria knew that here

  she was censured and criticized, she who had always been so admired

  and envied! Grandmother knew tha
t these meddlesome "Northerners"

  said things that made Victoria suspicious and unlike herself; made

  her unwilling that Mrs. Harris should receive visitors alone, or

  accept marks of attention that seemed offered in compassion for her

  state.

  These women who belonged to clubs and Relief Corps lived

  differently, Mrs. Harris knew, but she herself didn't like the way

  they lived. She believed that somebody ought to be in the parlour,

  and somebody in the kitchen. She wouldn't for the world have had

  Victoria go about every morning in a short gingham dress, with bare

  arms, and a dust-cap on her head to hide the curling-kids, as these

  brisk housekeepers did. To Mrs. Harris that would have meant real

  poverty, coming down in the world so far that one could no longer

  keep up appearances. Her life was hard now, to be sure, since the

  family went on increasing and Mr. Templeton's means went on

  decreasing; but she certainly valued respectability above personal

  comfort, and she could go on a good way yet if they always had a

  cool pleasant parlour, with Victoria properly dressed to receive

  visitors. To keep Victoria different from these "ordinary" women

  meant everything to Mrs. Harris. She realized that Mrs. Rosen

  managed to be mistress of any situation, either in kitchen or

  parlour, but that was because she was "foreign." Grandmother

  perfectly understood that their neighbour had a superior

  cultivation which made everything she did an exercise of skill.

  She knew well enough that their own ways of cooking and cleaning

  were primitive beside Mrs. Rosen's.

  If only Mr. Templeton's business affairs would look up, they could

  rent a larger house, and everything would be better. They might

  even get a German girl to come in and help,--but now there was no

  place to put her. Grandmother's own lot could improve only with

  the family fortunes--any comfort for herself, aside from that of

  the family, was inconceivable to her; and on the other hand she

  could have no real unhappiness while the children were well, and

  good, and fond of her and their mother. That was why it was worth

  while to get up early in the morning and make her bed neat and draw

  the red spread smooth. The little boys loved to lie on her lounge

  and her pillows when they were tired. When they were sick, Ronald

  and Hughie wanted to be in her lap. They had no physical shrinking

  from her because she was old. And Victoria was never jealous of

  the children's wanting to be with her so much; that was a mercy!

  Sometimes, in the morning, if her feet ached more than usual, Mrs.

  Harris felt a little low. (Nobody did anything about broken arches

  in those days, and the common endurance test of old age was to keep

  going after every step cost something.) She would hang up her

  towel with a sigh and go into the kitchen, feeling that it was hard

  to make a start. But the moment she heard the children running

  down the uncarpeted back stairs, she forgot to be low. Indeed, she

  ceased to be an individual, an old woman with aching feet; she

  became part of a group, became a relationship. She was drunk up

  into their freshness when they burst in upon her, telling her about

  their dreams, explaining their troubles with buttons and shoe-laces

  and underwear shrunk too small. The tired, solitary old woman

  Grandmother had been at daybreak vanished; suddenly the morning

  seemed as important to her as it did to the children, and the

  mornings ahead stretched out sunshiny, important.

  VI

  The day after the Methodist social, Blue Boy didn't come for his

  morning milk; he always had it in a clean saucer on the covered

  back porch, under the long bench where the tin wash-tubs stood

  ready for Mrs. Maude. After the children had finished breakfast,

  Mrs. Harris sent Mandy out to look for the cat.

  The girl came back in a minute, her eyes big.

  "Law me, Miz' Harris, he's awful sick. He's a-layin' in the straw

  in the barn. He's swallered a bone, or havin' a fit or somethin'."

  Grandmother threw an apron over her head and went out to see for

  herself. The children went with her. Blue Boy was retching and

  choking, and his yellow eyes were filled up with rhume.

  "Oh, Gram'ma, what's the matter?" the boys cried.

  "It's the distemper. How could he have got it?" Her voice was so

  harsh that Ronald began to cry. "Take Ronald back to the house,

  Del. He might get bit. I wish I'd kept my word and never had a

  cat again!"

  "Why, Gram'ma!" Albert looked at her. "Won't Blue Boy get well?"

  ''Not from the distemper, he won't."

  "But Gram'ma, can't I run for the veter'nary?"

  "You gether up an armful of hay. We'll take him into the coal-

  house, where I can watch him."

  Mrs. Harris waited until the spasm was over, then picked up the

  limp cat and carried him to the coal-shed that opened off the back

  porch. Albert piled the hay in one corner--the coal was low, since

  it was summer--and they spread a piece of old carpet on the hay and

  made a bed for Blue Boy. "Now you run along with Adelbert.

  There'll be a lot of work to do on Mr. Holliday's yard, cleaning up

  after the sociable. Mandy an' me'll watch Blue Boy. I expect

  he'll sleep for a while."

  Albert went away regretfully, but the drayman and some of the

  Methodist ladies were in Mr. Holliday's yard, packing chairs and

  tables and ice-cream freezers into the wagon, and the twins forgot

  the sick cat in their excitement. By noon they had picked up the

  last paper napkin, raked over the gravel walks where the salt from

  the freezers had left white patches, and hung the hammock in which

  Vickie did her studying back in its place. Mr. Holliday paid the

  boys a dollar a week for keeping up the yard, and they gave the

  money to their mother--it didn't come amiss in a family where

  actual cash was so short. She let them keep half the sum Mrs.

  Rosen paid for her milk every Saturday, and that was more spending

  money than most boys had. They often made a few extra quarters by

  cutting grass for other people, or by distributing handbills. Even

  the disagreeable Mrs. Jackson next door had remarked over the fence

  to Mrs. Harris: "I do believe Bert and Del are going to be

  industrious. They must have got it from you, Grandma."

  The day came on very hot, and when the twins got back from the

  Roadmaster's yard, they both lay down on Grandmother's lounge and

  went to sleep. After dinner they had a rare opportunity; the

  Roadmaster himself appeared at the front door and invited them to

  go up to the next town with him on his railroad velocipede. That

  was great fun: the velocipede always whizzed along so fast on the

  bright rails, the gasoline engine puffing; and grasshoppers jumped

  up out of the sagebrush and hit you in the face like sling-shot

  bullets. Sometimes the wheels cut in two a lazy snake who was

  sunning himself on the track, and the twins always hoped it was a

  rattler and felt they had done a good work.

  The boys got back fr
om their trip with Mr. Holliday late in the

  afternoon. The house was cool and quiet. Their mother had taken

  Ronald and Hughie down town with her, and Vickie was off somewhere.

  Grandmother was not in her room, and the kitchen was empty. The

  boys went out to the back porch to pump a drink. The coal-shed

  door was open, and inside, on a low stool, sat Mrs. Harris beside

  her cat. Bert and Del didn't stop to get a drink; they felt

  ashamed that they had gone off for a gay ride and forgotten Blue

  Boy. They sat down on a big lump of coal beside Mrs. Harris. They

  would never have known that this miserable rumpled animal was their

  proud tom. Presently he went off into a spasm and began to froth

  at the mouth.

  "Oh, Gram'ma, can't you do anything?" cried Albert, struggling with

  his tears. "Blue Boy was such a good cat,--why has he got to

  suffer?"

  "Everything that's alive has got to suffer," said Mrs. Harris.

  Albert put out his hand and caught her skirt, looking up at her

  beseechingly, as if to make her unsay that saying, which he only

  half understood. She patted his hand. She had forgot she was

  speaking to a little boy.

  "Where's Vickie?" Adelbert asked aggrievedly. "Why don't she do

  something? He's part her cat."

  Mrs. Harris sighed. "Vickie's got her head full of things lately;

  that makes people kind of heartless."

  The boys resolved they would never put anything into their heads,

  then!

  Blue Boy's fit passed, and the three sat watching their pet that no

  longer knew them. The twins had not seen much suffering;

  Grandmother had seen a great deal. Back in Tennessee, in her own

  neighbourhood, she was accounted a famous nurse. When any of the

  poor mountain people were in great distress, they always sent for

  Miz' Harris. Many a time she had gone into a house where five or

  six children were all down with scarlet fever or diphtheria, and

  done what she could. Many a child and many a woman she had laid

  out and got ready for the grave. In her primitive community the

  undertaker made the coffin,--he did nothing more. She had seen so

  much misery that she wondered herself why it hurt so to see her

  tom-cat die. She had taken her leave of him, and she got up from

  her stool. She didn't want the boys to be too much distressed.

  "Now you boys must wash and put on clean shirts. Your mother will

  be home pretty soon. We'll leave Blue Boy; he'll likely be easier

  in the morning." She knew the cat would die at sundown.

  After supper, when Bert looked into the coal-shed and found the cat

  dead, all the family were sad. Ronald cried miserably, and Hughie

  cried because Ronald did. Mrs. Templeton herself went out and

  looked into the shed, and she was sorry, too. Though she didn't

  like cats, she had been fond of this one.

  "Hillary," she hold her husband, "when you go down town tonight,

  tell the Mexican to come and get that cat early in the morning,

  before the children are up."

  The Mexican had a cart and two mules, and he hauled away tin cans

  and refuse to a gully out in the sage-brush.

  Mrs. Harris gave Victoria an indignant glance when she heard this,

  and turned back to the kitchen. All evening she was gloomy and

  silent. She refused to read aloud, and the twins took Ronald and

  went mournfully out to play under the electric light. Later, when

  they had said good-night to their parents in the parlour and were

  on their way upstairs, Mrs. Harris followed them into the kitchen,

  shut the door behind her, and said indignantly:

  "Air you two boys going to let that Mexican take Blue Boy and throw

  him onto some trash-pile?"

  The sleepy boys were frightened at the anger and bitterness in her

  tone. They stood still and looked up at her, while she went on:

  "You git up early in the morning, and I'll put him in a sack, and

  one of you take a spade and go to that crooked old willer tree that