III.
When she woke the younger children were playing about on the floor intheir 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 andsqualid his surroundings were--the patch of sunshine flung on the floorglorified it all. He--little animal--was happy.
The poor of the Western prairies lie almost as unhealthily closetogether as do the poor of the city tenements. In the small hut of thepeasant there is as little chance to escape close and tainting contactas in the coops and dens of the North End of proud Boston. In the midstof oceans of land, floods of sunshine and gulfs of verdure, the farmerlives in two or three small rooms. Poverty's eternal cordon is everround the poor.
"Ma, why didn't you sleep with Pap last night?" asked Bob, theseven-year-old, when he saw she was awake at last. She flushed a dullred.
"You hush, will yeh? Because--I--it was too warm--and there was a stormcomin'. 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 'sy'can, an' Bob an' Sile, you run down an' bring s'm' water," shecommanded, in nervous haste, beginning to dress. In the middle of theroom there was scarce space to stand beneath the rafters.
When Sim came in for his breakfast he found it on the table, but hiswife was absent.
"Where's y'r ma?" he asked, with a little less of the growl in hisvoice.
"She's upstairs with Pet."
The man ate his breakfast in dead silence, till at last Bob ventured tosay:
"What makes ma ac' so?"
"Shut up!" was the brutal reply. The children began to take sides withthe mother--all but the oldest girl, who was ten years old. To her thefather turned now for certain things to be done, treating her in hisrough fashion as a housekeeper, and the girl felt flattered and docileaccordingly.
They wore pitiably clad; like many farm-children, indeed, they couldhardly be said to be clad at all. Sadie had on but two garments, a sortof undershirt of cotton and a faded calico dress, out of which her bare,yellow little legs protruded, lamentably dirty and covered withscratches.
The boys also had two garments, a hickory shirt and a pair of pants liketheir father's, made out of brown-denims by the mother's never-restinghands--hands that in sleep still sewed, and skimmed, and baked, andchurned. The boys had gone to bed without washing their feet, which nowlooked like toads, calloused, brown, and chapped.
Part of this the mother saw with her dull eyes as she came down, afterseeing the departure of Sim up the road with the cows. It was abeautiful Sunday morning, and the woman might have sung like a bird ifmen had been as kind to her as Nature. But she looked dully out upon theseas of ripe grasses, tangled and flashing with dew, out of which thebobolinks and larks sprang. The glorious winds brought her no melody, noperfume, no respite from toil and care.
She thought of the children she saw in the town,--children of themerchant and banker, clean as little dolls, the boys in knickerbockersuits, the girls in dainty white dresses,--and a vengeful bitternesssprang up in her heart. She soon put the dishes away, but felt too tiredand listless to do more.
"Taw-bay-wies! Pet want ta-aw-bay-wies!" cried the little one, tuggingat her dress.
Listlessly, mechanically she took him in her arms, and went out into thegarden, which was fragrant and sweet with dew and sun. After pickingsome berries for him, she sat down on the grass under the row ofcottonwoods, and sank into a kind of lethargy. A kingbird chattered andshrieked overhead, the grasshoppers buzzed in the grasses, strangeinsects with ventriloquistic voices sang all about her--she could nottell 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 heavenlyships, floated far above in the vast, dazzling deeps of blue sky; thebirds rustled and chirped around her; leaping insects buzzed andclattered in the grass and in the vines and bushes. The goodness andglory of God was in the very air, the bitterness and oppression of manin every line of her face.
But her quiet was broken by Sadie, who came leaping like a fawn downthrough the grass.
"O 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 thereimmovably, till Mrs. Councill came down to see her, piloted by two orthree of the children. Mrs. Councill, a jolly, large-framed woman,smiled brightly, and greeted her in a loud, jovial voice. She made themistake of taking the whole matter lightly; her tone amounted toridicule.
"Sim says you've been having a tantrum, Creeshy. Don't know what for, hesays."
"He don't," said the wife, with a sullen flash in her eyes." _He_ don'tknow why! Well, then, you just tell him what I say. I've lived in helllong enough. I'm done. I've slaved here day in and day out f'r twelveyears without pay--not even a decent word. I've worked like no niggerever worked 'r could work and live. I've given him all I had, 'r everexpect to have. I'm wore out. My strength is gone, my patience is gone.I'm done with it--that's a _part_ of what's the matter."
"My sakes, Lucreeshy! You mustn't talk that way."
"But I _will_," said the woman, as she supported herself on one palm andraised the other. "I've _got_ to talk that way." She was ripe for anexplosion like this. She seized upon it with eagerness. "They ain't nouse o' livin' this way, anyway. I'd take poison if it wa'n't f'r theyoung 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--theyain't no way out of it, an' I'm tired o' tryin' to _find_ a way. Go offan' let me be."
Her tone was so bitterly hopeless that the great, jolly face of Mrs.Councill stiffened into a look of horror such as she had not known foryears. The children, in two separate groups, could be heard rioting.Bees were humming around the clover in the grass, and the kingbirdchattered ceaselessly from the Lombardy poplar tip. Both women felt allthis peace and beauty of the morning dimly, and it disturbed Mrs.Councill because the other was so impassive under it all. At last, aftera long and thoughtful pause, Mrs. Councill asked a question whose answershe 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 knewthat 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 andhollow cheeks. She seemed to be sleeping, half-buried in the grass. Shedid not look up nor reply to her sister-in-law, whose life was one oftoil and trouble, also, but not so hard and helpless as Lucretia's. Bycontrast with most of her neighbors, she seemed comfortable.
"Sim Burns, what you ben doin' to that woman?" she burst out, as shewaddled 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, andlooking uneasy.
"You needn't try t' git out of it like that, Sim Burns," replied hissister. "That woman never got into that fit f'r _nawthin_'."
"Wall, if you know more about it than I do, whadgy ask _me_ fur?" hereplied, 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 allt' blame. Keep cool an' swear less."
"Wai, I'll bet Sim's more to blame than she is. Why, they ain't aharder-workin' woman in the hull State of Ioway than she is"----
"Exc
ept Marm Councill."
"Except nobody. Look at her, jest skin and bones."
Councill chuckled in his vast way. "That's so, mother; measured in thatway, she leads over you. You git fat on it."
She smiled a little, her indignation oozing away. She never "_could_stay mad," her children were accustomed to tell her. Burns refused totalk any more about the matter, and the visitors gave it up, and got outtheir team and started for home, Mrs. Councill firing this partingshot:
"The best thing you can do to-day is t' let her alone. Mebbe thechildren 'll bring her round ag'in. If she does come round, you see 'tyou 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 the pasture to salt thecows. On the sunlit slope of the field, where the cattle came runningand bawling to meet him, he threw down the salt in handfuls, and thenlay down to watch them as they eagerly licked it up, even gnawing a barespot in the sod in their eagerness to get it all.
Burns was not a drinking man; he was hard-working, frugal; in fact, hehad no extravagances except his tobacco. His clothes he wore until theyall but dropped from him; and he worked in rain and mud, as well as dustand sun. It was this suffering and toiling all to no purpose that madehim sour and irritable. He didn't see why he should have so little afterso much hard work.
He was puzzled to account for it all. His mind--the average mind--wasweary with trying to solve an insoluble problem. His neighbors, who hadgot along a little better than himself, were free with advice andsuggestion as to the cause of his persistent poverty.
Old man Bacon, the hardest-working man in the county, laid it to Burns'slack of management. Jim Butler, who owned a dozen farms (which he hadtaken on mortgages), and who had got rich by buying land at governmentprice and holding for a rise, laid all such cases as Burns's to "lack ofenterprise, 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' wheatgittin' cheaper 'n' cheaper. Machinery eatin' up profits--got to _have_machinery to harvest the cheap grain, an' then the machinery eats upprofits. Taxes goin' up. Devil to pay all round; I d' know what inthunder _is_ the matter."
The Democrats said protection was killing the farmers; the Republicanssaid no. The Grangers growled about the middlemen; the Greenbackerssaid there wasn't circulating medium enough, and, in the midst of itall, 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 andthought, till he rose with an oath and gave it up.