LUCRETIA BURNS
I
Lucretia Burns had never been handsome, even in her days of earlygirlhood, and now she was middle-aged, distorted with work andchild-bearing, and looking faded and worn as one of the boulders thatlay beside the pasture fence near where she sat milking a large whitecow.
She had no shawl or hat and no shoes, for it was still muddy in thelittle yard, where the cattle stood patiently fighting the flies andmosquitoes swarming into their skins, already wet with blood. Theevening was oppressive with its heat, and a ring of just-seenthunderheads gave premonitions of an approaching storm.
She rose from the cow's side at last, and, taking her pails of foamingmilk, staggered toward the gate. The two pails hung from her lean arms,her bare feet slipped on the filthy ground, her greasy and faded calicodress showed her tired and swollen ankles, and the mosquitoes swarmedmercilessly on her neck and bedded themselves in her colorless hair.
The children were quarrelling at the well, and the sound of blows couldbe heard. Calves were querulously calling for their milk, and littleturkeys, lost in a tangle of grass, were piping plaintively.
The sun just setting struck through a long, low rift, like a boy peepingbeneath the eaves of a huge roof. Its light brought out Lucretia's faceas she leaned her sallow forehead on the top bar of the gate and lookedtoward the west.
It was a pitifully worn, almost tragic face--long, thin, sallow,hollow-eyed. The mouth had long since lost the power to shape itselfinto a kiss, and had a droop at the corners which seemed to announce abreaking-down at any moment into a despairing wail. The collarless neckand sharp shoulders showed painfully.
She felt vaguely that the night was beautiful. The setting sun, thenoise of frogs, the nocturnal insects beginning to pipe--all in some waycalled her girlhood back to her, though there was little in her girlhoodto give her pleasure. Her large gray eyes grew round, deep, and wistfulas she saw the illimitable craggy clouds grow crimson, roll slowly up,and fire at the top. A childish scream recalled her.
"Oh, my soul!" she half groaned, half swore, as she lifted her milk andhurried to the well. Arriving there, she cuffed the children right andleft with all her remaining strength, saying in justification:--
"My soul! can't you--you young'uns, give me a minute's peace? Landknows, I'm almost gone up; washin', an' milkin' six cows, and tendin'you, and cookin' f'r _him_, ought 'o be enough f'r one day! Sadie, youlet him drink now 'r I'll slap your head off, you hateful thing! Whycan't you behave, when you know I'm jest about dead?" She was weepingnow, with nervous weakness. "Where's y'r pa?" she asked after a moment,wiping her eyes with her apron.
One of the group, the one cuffed last, sniffed out, in rage and grief:--
"He's in the corn-field; where'd ye s'pose he was?"
"Good land! why don't the man work all night? Sile, you put that dipperin that milk agin, an' I'll whack you till your head'll swim! Sadie, le'go Pet, an' go 'n get them turkeys out of the grass 'fore it gits dark!Bob, you go tell y'r dad if he wants the rest o' them cows milked he'sgot 'o do it himself. I jest can't, and what's more, I _won't_," sheended, rebelliously.
Having strained the milk and fed the children, she took some skimmedmilk from the cans and started to feed the calves bawling strenuouslybehind the barn. The eager and unruly brutes pushed and struggled to getinto the pails all at once, and in consequence spilt nearly all of themilk on the ground. This was the last trial; the woman fell down on thedamp grass and moaned and sobbed like a crazed thing. The children cameto seek her and stood around like little partridges, looking at her inscared silence, till at last the little one began to wail. Then themother rose wearily to her feet, and walked slowly back toward thehouse.
She heard Burns threshing his team at the well, with the sound of oaths.He was tired, hungry, and ill-tempered, but she was too desperate tocare. His poor, overworked team did not move quickly enough for him,and his extra long turn in the corn had made him dangerous. His eyesgleamed wrathfully from his dust-laid face.
"Supper ready?" he growled.
"Yes, two hours ago."
"Well, I can't help it!" he said, understanding her reproach. "Thatdevilish corn is gettin' too tall to plough again, and I've got 'o gothrough it to-morrow or not at all. Cows milked?"
"Part of 'em."
"How many left?"
"Three."
"Hell! Which three?"
"Spot, and Brin, and Cherry."
"_Of_ course, left the three worst ones. I'll be damned if I milk a cowto-night. I don't see why you play out jest the nights I need ye most."Here he kicked a child out of the way. "Git out o' that! Hain't you gotno sense? I'll learn ye--"
"Stop that, Sim Burns," cried the woman, snatching up the child. "You'rea reg'lar ol' hyeny,--that's what you are," she added defiantly, rousedat last from her lethargy.
"You're a--beauty, that's what _you_ are," he said, pitilessly. "Keepyour brats out f'um under my feet." And he strode off to the barn afterhis team, leaving her with a fierce hate in her heart. She heard himyelling at his team in their stalls: "Git around there, damn yeh."
The children had had their supper; so she took them to bed. She wasunusually tender to them, for she wanted to make up in some way for herprevious harshness. The ferocity of her husband had shown up her ownpetulant temper hideously, and she sat and sobbed in the darkness a longtime beside the cradle where little Pet slept.
She heard Burns come growling in and tramp about, but she did not rise.The supper was on the table; he could wait on himself. There was anawful feeling at her heart as she sat there and the house grew quiet.She thought of suicide in a vague way; of somehow taking her children inher arms and sinking into a lake somewhere, where she would never morebe troubled, where she could sleep forever, without toil or hunger.
Then she thought of the little turkeys wandering in the grass, of thechildren sleeping at last, of the quiet, wonderful stars. Then shethought of the cows left unmilked, and listened to them stirringuneasily in the yard. She rose, at last, and stole forth. She could notrid herself of the thought that they would suffer. She knew what thedull ache in the full breasts of a mother was, and she could not letthem stand at the bars all night moaning for relief.
The mosquitoes had gone, but the frogs and katydids still sang, whileover in the west Venus shone. She was a long time milking the cows; herhands were so tired she had often to stop and rest them, while the tearsfell unheeded into the pail. She saw and felt little of the external asshe sat there. She thought in vague retrospect of how sweet it seemedthe first time Sim came to see her; of the many rides to town with himwhen he was an accepted lover; of the few things he had given her--acoral breastpin and a ring.
She felt no shame at her present miserable appearance; she was pastpersonal pride. She hardly felt as if the tall, strong girl, attractivewith health and hope, could be the same soul as the woman who now sat inutter despair listening to the heavy breathing of the happy cows,grateful for the relief from their burden of milk.
She contrasted her lot with that of two or three women that she knew(not a very high standard), who kept hired help, and who had fine housesof four or five rooms. Even the neighbors were better off than she, forthey didn't have such quarrels. But she wasn't to blame--Simdidn't--Then her mind changed to a dull resentment against "things."Everything seemed against her.
She rose at last and carried her second load of milk to the well,strained it, washed out the pails, and, after bathing her tired feet ina tub that stood there, she put on a pair of horrible shoes, withoutstockings, and crept stealthily into the house. Sim did not hear her asshe slipped up the stairs to the little low unfinished chamber besideher oldest children. She could not bear to sleep near _him_ thatnight,--she wanted a chance to sob herself to quiet.
As for Sim, he was a little disturbed, but would as soon have cut offhis head as acknowledged himself in the wrong. As he went to bed, andfound her still away, he yelled up the stairway:--
"Say, old woman, ain't ye comin' to
bed?" Upon receiving no answer herolled his aching body into the creaking bed. "Do as y' damn pleaseabout it. If y' want to sulk y' can." And in such wise the family grewquiet in sleep, while the moist, warm air pulsed with the ceaselesschime of the crickets.
II
When Sim Burns woke the next morning he felt a sharper twinge ofremorse. It was not a broad or well-defined feeling--just a sense thathe had been unduly irritable, not that on the whole he was not in theright. Little Pet lay with the warm June sunshine filling his baby eyes,curiously content in striking at flies that buzzed around his littlemouth.
The man thrust his dirty, naked feet into his huge boots, and, withoutwashing his face or combing his hair, went out to the barn to do hischores.
He was a type of the average prairie farmer, and his whole surroundingwas typical of the time. He had a quarter-section of fine level land,bought with incredible toil, but his house was a little box-likestructure, costing, perhaps, five hundred dollars. It had three roomsand the ever-present summer kitchen at the back. It was unpainted andhad no touch of beauty,--a mere box.
His stable was built of slabs and banked and covered with straw. Itlooked like a den, was low and long, and had but one door in the end.The cow-yard held ten or fifteen cattle of various kinds, while a fewcalves were bawling from a pen near by. Behind the barn, on the westand north, was a fringe of willows forming a "wind-break." A few brokenand discouraged fruit trees, standing here and there among the weeds,formed the garden. In short, he was spoken of by his neighbors as "ahard-working cuss, and tol'ably well fixed."
No grace had come or ever could come into his life. Back of him weregenerations of men like himself, whose main business had been to workhard, live miserably, and beget children to take their places when theydied.
His courtship had been delayed so long on account of poverty that itbrought little of humanizing emotion into his life. He never mentionedhis love-life now, or if he did, it was only to sneer obscenely at it.He had long since ceased to kiss his wife or even speak kindly to her.There was no longer any sanctity to life or love. He chewed tobacco andtoiled on from year to year without any very clearly defined idea of thefuture. His life was mainly regulated from without.
He was tall, dark, and strong, in a flat-chested, slouching sort of way,and had grown neglectful of even decency in his dress. He wore theAmerican farmer's customary outfit of rough brown pants, hickory shirt,and greasy wool hat. It differed from his neighbors' mainly in being alittle dirtier and more ragged. His grimy hands were broad and strong asthe clutch of a bear, and he was a "terrible feller to turn off work,"as Councill said. "I'd ruther have Sim Burns work for me one day thansome men three. He's a linger." He worked with unusual speed thismorning, and ended by milking all the cows himself as a sort of savagepenance for his misdeeds the previous evening, muttering inself-defence:--
"Seems 's if ever' cussid thing piles on to me at once. That corn, theroad-tax, and hayin' comin' on, and now _she_ gits her back up--"
When he went back to the well he sloshed himself thoroughly in thehorse-trough and went to the house. He found breakfast ready, but hiswife was not in sight. The older children were clamoring around theuninviting breakfast table, spread with cheap ware and with boiledpotatoes and fried salt pork as the principal dishes.
"Where's y'r ma?" he asked, with a threatening note in his voice, as hesat down by the table.
"She's in the bedroom."
He rose and pushed open the door. The mother sat with the babe in herlap, looking out of the window down across the superb field of timothy,moving like a lake of purple water. She did not look around. She onlygrew rigid. Her thin neck throbbed with the pulsing of blood to herhead.
"What's got into you _now_?" he said, brutally. "Don't be a fool. Comeout and eat breakfast with me, an' take care o' y'r young ones."
She neither moved nor made a sound. With an oath he turned on his heel andwent out to the table. Eating his breakfast in his usual wolfish fashion,he went out into the hot sun with his team and riding-plough, not alittle disturbed by this new phase of his wife's "cantankerousness." Heploughed steadily and sullenly all the forenoon, in the terrific heatand dust. The air was full of tempestuous threats, still and sultry, oneof those days when work is a punishment. When he came in at noon hefound things the same--dinner on the table, but his wife out in thegarden with the youngest child.
"I c'n stand it as long as _she_ can," he said to himself, in thehearing of the children, as he pushed back from the table and went backto work.
When he had finished the field of corn it was after sundown, and he cameup to the house, hot, dusty, his shirt wringing wet with sweat, and hisneck aching with the work of looking down all day at the corn-rows. Hismood was still stern. The multitudinous lift, and stir, and sheen of thewide, green field had been lost upon him.
"I wonder if she's milked them cows," he muttered to himself. He gave asigh of relief to find she had. But she had done so not for his sake,but for the sake of the poor, patient dumb brutes.
When he went to the bedroom after supper, he found that the cradle andhis wife's few little boxes and parcels--poor, pathetic properties!--hadbeen removed to the garret, which they called a chamber, and he knew hewas to sleep alone again.
"She'll git over it, I guess." He was very tired, but he didn't feelquite comfortable enough to sleep. The air was oppressive. His shirt,wet in places, and stiff with dust in other places, oppressed him morethan usual; so he rose and removed it, getting a clean one out of adrawer. This was an unusual thing for him, for he usually slept in thesame shirt which he wore in his day's work; but it was Saturday night,and he felt justified in the extravagance.
* * * * *
In the meanwhile poor Lucretia was brooding over her life in a mostdangerous fashion. All she had done and suffered for Simeon Burns cameback to her till she wondered how she had endured it all. All day longin the midst of the glorious summer landscape she brooded.
"I hate him," she thought, with a fierce blazing up through the murk ofher musing. "I hate t' live. But they ain't no hope. I'm tied down. Ican't leave the children, and I ain't got no money. I couldn't make aliving out in the world. I ain't never seen anything an' don't knowanything."
She was too simple and too unknowing to speculate on the loss of herbeauty, which would have brought her competency once--if sold in theright market. As she lay in her little attic bed, she was still sullenlythinking, wearily thinking of her life. She thought of a poor old horsewhich Sim had bought once, years before, and put to the plough when itwas too old and weak to work. She could see her again as in a vision,that poor old mare, with sad head drooping, toiling, toiling, till atlast she could no longer move, and lying down under the harness in thefurrow, groaned under the whip,--and died.
Then she wondered if her own numbness and despair meant death, and sheheld her breath to think harder upon it. She concluded at last, grimly,that she didn't care--only for the children.
The air was frightfully close in the little attic, and she heard the lowmutter of the rising storm in the west. She forgot her troubles alittle, listening to the far-off gigantic footsteps of the tempest.
_Boom_, _boom_, _boom_, it broke nearer and nearer, as if a vast cordonof cannon was being drawn around the horizon. Yet she was conscious onlyof pleasure. She had no fear. At last came the sweep of cool, fragrantstorm-wind, a short and sudden dash of rain, and then in the cool, sweethush which followed, the worn and weary woman fell into a deep sleep.
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 chan
ce 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 's y'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 were 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 denim 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.
"Oh, ma, Aunt Maria and Uncle William are coming. They've jest turnedin."
"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' and I'm tired o' trying 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_'."
"Wal, 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."
"Wal, 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--"
"Except 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 middle-men; 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.
IV
It was hot and brilliant again the next morning as Douglas Radbourndrove up the road with Lily Graham, the teacher of the school in thelittle white schoolhouse. It was blazing hot, even though not yet nineo'clock, and the young farmers ploughing beside the fence lookedlongingly and somewhat bitterly at Radbourn seated in a fine top-buggybeside a beautiful creature in lace and cambric.
Very beautiful the town-bred "schoolma'am" looked to those grimy, sweatyfellows, superb fellows too, physically, with bare red arms andleather-colored faces. She was as if builded of the pink and whiteclouds soaring far up there in the morning sky. So cool, and sweet, anddainty.
As she came in sight, their dusty and sweaty shirts grew biting as thepoisoned shirt of the Norse myth, their bare feet in the brown dirt grewdistressingly flat and hoof-like, and their huge, dirty, brown, chappedand swollen hands grew so repulsive that the mere remote possibility ofsome time in the far future standing a chance of having an introductionto her, caused them to wipe their palms on their trousers' legsstealthily.
Lycurgus Banks swore when he saw Radbourn: "That cuss thinks he's ol'hell this morning. He don't earn his living. But he's just the kind ofcuss to get holt of all the purty girls."
Others gazed with simple, sad wistfulness upon the slender figure, pale,sweet face, and dark eyes of the young girl, feeling that to have talkwith such a fairylike creature was a happiness too great to ever betheir lot. And when she had passed they went back to work with a sighand feeling of loss.
As for Lily, she felt a pang of pity for these people. She looked atthis peculiar form of poverty and hardship much as the fragile, tendergirl of the city looks upon the men laying a gas-main in the streets.She felt, sympathetically, the heat and grime, and, though but thefaintest idea of what it meant to wear such clothing came to her, sheshuddered. Her eyes had been opened to these things by Radbourn, aclassmate at the Seminary.
The young fellow knew that Lily was in love with him, and made distincteffort to keep the talk upon impersonal subjects. He liked her verymuch, probably because she listened so well.
"Poor fellows," sighed Lily, almost unconsciously, "I hate to see themworking there in the dirt and hot sun. It seems a hopeless sort of life,doesn't it?"
"Oh, but this is the most beautiful part of the year," said Radbourn."Think of them in the mud, in the sleet; think of them husking corn inthe snow, a bitter wind blowing; think of them a month later in theharvest; think of them imprisoned here in winter!"
"Yes, it's dreadful! But I never felt it so keenly before. You haveopened my eyes to it. Of course, I've been on a farm but not to livethere."
"Writers and orators have lied so long about 'the idyllic' in farm life,and said so much about the 'independent American farmer,' that hehimself has remained blind to the fact that he's one of thehardest-working and poorest-paid men in America. See the houses theylive in,--hovels."
"Yes, yes, I know," said Lily; a look of deeper pain swept over herface. "And the fate of the poor women; oh, the fate of the women!"
"Yes, it's a matter of statistics," went on Radbourn, pitilessly, "thatthe wives of the American farmers fill our insane asylums. See what alife they lead, most of them; no music, no books. Seventeen hours a dayin a couple of small rooms--dens. Now there is Sim Burns! What atravesty of a home! Yet there are a dozen just as bad in sight. He workslike a fiend--so does his wife--and what is their reward? Simply a holeto hibernate in and to sleep and eat in in summer. A dreary present anda well-nigh hopeless future. No, they have a future, if they knew it,and we must tell them."
"I know Mrs. Burns," Lily said, after a pause; "she sends severalchildren to my school. Poor, pathetic little things, half-clad andwistful-eyed. They make my heart ache; they are so hungry for love, andso quick to learn."
As they passed the Burns farm, they looked for the wife, but she was notto be seen. The children had evidently gone up to the little whiteschoolhouse at the head of the lane. Radbourn let the reins fall slackas he talked on. He did not look at the girl; his eyebrows were drawninto a look of gloomy pain.
"It isn't so much the grime that I abhor, nor the labor that crookstheir backs and makes their hands bludgeons. It's the horrible waste oflife involved in it all. I don't believe God intended a man to be bentto plough-handles like that, but that isn't the worst of it. The worstof it is, these people live lives approaching automata. They becomemachines to serve others more lucky or more unscrupulous thanthemselves. What is the world of art, of music, of literature, to thesepoor devils,--to Sim Burns and his wife there, for example? Or even tothe best of these farmers?"
The girl looked away over the shimmering lake of yellow-green corn. Achoking came into her throat. Her gloved hand trembled.
"What is such a life worth? It's all very comfortable for us to say,'They don't feel it.' How do we know what they feel? What do we know oftheir capacity for enjoyment of art and music? They never have leisureor opportunity. The master is very glad to be taught by preacher, andlawyer, and novelist, that his slaves are contented and never feel anylongings for a higher life. These people live lives but little higherthan their cattle--are _forced_ to live so. Their hopes and aspirationsare crushed out, their souls are twisted and deformed just as toiltwists and deforms their bodies. They are on the same level as the citylaborer. The very religion they hear is a soporific. They are taught tobe content here that they may be happy hereafter. Suppose there isn'tany hereafter?"
"Oh, don't say that, please!" Lily cried.
"But I don't _know_ that there is," he went on remorselessly, "and I doknow that these people are being robbed of something more than money, ofall that makes life worth living. The promise of milk and honey inCa
naan is all very well, but I prefer to have mine here; then I'm sureof it."
"What can we do?" murmured the girl.
"Do? Rouse these people for one thing; preach _discontent_, a noblediscontent."
"It will only make them unhappy."
"No, it won't; not if you show them the way out. If it does, it's betterto be unhappy striving for higher things, like a man, than to be contentin a wallow like swine."
"But what _is_ the way out?"
This was sufficient to set Radbourn upon his hobbyhorse. He outlined hisplan of action: the abolition of all indirect taxes, the State controlof all privileges the private ownership of which interfered with theequal rights of all. He would utterly destroy speculative holdings ofthe earth. He would have land everywhere brought to its best use, byappropriating all ground rents to the use of the state, etc., etc., towhich the girl listened with eager interest, but with only partialcomprehension.
As they neared the little schoolhouse, a swarm of midgets in pinkdresses, pink sun-bonnets, and brown legs, came rushing to meet theirteacher, with that peculiar devotion the children in the country developfor a refined teacher.
Radbourn helped Lily out into the midst of the eager little scholars,who swarmed upon her like bees on a lump of sugar, till even Radbourn'sgravity gave way, and he smiled into her lifted eyes,--an unusual smile,that strangely enough stopped the smile on her own lips, filling herface with a wistful shadow, and her breath came hard for a moment, andshe trembled.
She loved that cold, stern face, oh, so much! and to have him smile wasa pleasure that made her heart leap till she suffered a smothering pain.She turned to him to say:--
"I am very thankful, Mr. Radbourn, for another pleasant ride," adding ina lower tone, "it was a very great pleasure; you always give me so much.I feel stronger and more hopeful."
"I'm glad you feel so. I was afraid I was prosy with my land doctrine."
"Oh, no! Indeed no! You have given me a new hope; I am exalted with thethought; I shall try to think it all out and apply it."
And so they parted, the children looking on and slyly whispering amongthemselves. Radbourn looked back after a while, but the bare white hivehad absorbed its little group, and was standing bleak as a tombstone andhot as a furnace on the naked plain in the blazing sun.
"America's pitiful boast!" said the young radical, looking back at it."Only a miserable hint of what it might be."
All that forenoon, as Lily faced her noisy group of barefooted children,she was thinking of Radbourn, of his almost fierce sympathy for thesepoor, supine farmers, hopeless and in some cases content in their narrowlives. The children almost worshipped the beautiful girl who came tothem as a revelation of exquisite neatness and taste,--whose very voiceand intonation awed them.
They noted, unconsciously of course, every detail. Snowy linen, touchesof soft color, graceful lines of bust and side, the slender fingers thatcould almost speak, so beautifully flexile were they. Lily herselfsometimes, when she shook the calloused, knotted, stiffened hands of thewomen, shuddered with sympathetic pain to think that the crowning wonderand beauty of God's world should be so maimed and distorted from itstrue purpose.
Even in the children before her she could see the inherited results offruitless labor, and, more pitiful yet, in the bent shoulders of theolder ones she could see the beginnings of deformity that would soon bepermanent; and as these thoughts came to her, she clasped the wonderingchildren to her side, with a convulsive wish to make life a littlebrighter for them.
"How is your mother to-day?" she asked of Sadie Burns, as she was eatingher luncheon on the drab-colored table near the open window.
"Purty well," said Sadie, in a hesitating way.
Lily was looking out, and listening to the gophers whistling as theyraced to and fro. She could see Bob Burns lying at length on the grassin the pasture over the fence, his heels waving in the air, his handsholding a string which formed a snare. It was like fishing to youngIzaak Walton.
It was very still and hot, and the cheep and trill of the gophers andthe chatter of the kingbirds alone broke the silence. A cloud ofbutterflies were fluttering about a pool near; a couple of big fliesbuzzed and mumbled on the pane.
"What ails your mother?" Lily asked, recovering herself and looking atSadie, who was distinctly ill at ease.
"Oh, I dunno," Sadie replied, putting one bare foot across the other.
Lily insisted.
"She 'n' pa's had an awful row--"
"Sadie!" said the teacher, warningly, "what language!"
"I mean they quarrelled, an' she don't speak to him any more."
"Why, how dreadful!"
"An' pa, he's awful cross; and she won't eat when he does, an' I haf towait on table."
"I believe I'll go down and see her this noon," said Lily to herself, asshe divined a little of the state of affairs in the Burns family.
V
Sim was mending the pasture fence as Lily came down the road toward him.He had delayed going to dinner to finish his task, and was just aboutready to go when Lily spoke to him.
"Good morning, Mr. Burns. I am just going down to see Mrs. Burns. Itmust be time to go to dinner,--aren't you ready to go? I want to talkwith you."
Ordinarily he would have been delighted with the idea of walking downthe road with the schoolma'am, but there was something in her look whichseemed to tell him that she knew all about his trouble, and, besides, hewas not in good humor.
"Yes, in a minnit--soon's I fix up this hole. Them shotes, I b'lieve,would go through a keyhole, if they could once get their snoots in."
He expanded on this idea as he nailed away, anxious to gain time. Heforesaw trouble for himself. He couldn't be rude to this sweet andfragile girl. If a _man_ had dared to attack him on his domesticshortcomings, he could have fought. The girl stood waiting for him, herlarge, steady eyes full of thought, gazing down at him from the shadowof her broad-brimmed hat.
"The world is so full of misery anyway, that we ought to do the best wecan to make it less," she said at last, in a musing tone, as if herthoughts had unconsciously taken on speech. She had always appealed tohim strongly, and never more so than in this softly utteredabstraction--that it was an abstraction added to its power with him.
He could find no words for reply, but picked up his hammer and nail-box,and slouched along the road by her side, listening without a word to hertalk.
"Christ was patient, and bore with his enemies. Surely we ought to bearwith our--friends," she went on, adapting her steps to his. He took offhis torn straw hat and wiped his face on his sleeve, being muchembarrassed and ashamed. Not knowing how to meet such argument, he keptsilent.
"How _is_ Mrs. Burns!" said Lily at length, determined to make himspeak. The delicate meaning in the emphasis laid on _is_ did not escapehim.
"Oh, she's all right--I mean she's done her work jest the same as ever.I don't see her much--"
"I didn't know--I was afraid she was sick. Sadie said she was actingstrangely."
"No, she's well enough--but--"
"But what is the trouble? Won't you let me help you, _won't_ you?" shepleaded.
"Can't anybody help us. We've got 'o fight it out, I s'pose," hereplied, a gloomy note of resentment creeping into his voice. "She'sben in a devil of a temper f'r a week."
"Haven't you been in the same kind of a temper too?" demanded Lily,firmly but kindly. "I think most troubles of this kind come from badtemper on both sides. Don't you? Have you done your share at being kindand patient?"
They had reached the gate now, and she laid her hand on his arm to stophim. He looked down at the slender gloved hand on his arm, feeling as ifa giant had grasped him; then he raised his eyes to her face, flushing apurplish red as he remembered his grossness. It seemed monstrous in thepresence of this girl-advocate. Her face was like silver; her eyesseemed pools of tears.
"I don't s'pose I have," he said at last, pushing by her. He could nothave faced her glance another moment. His whole air conveyed theimpr
ession of destructive admission. Lily did not comprehend the extentof her advantage or she would have pursued it further. As it was shefelt a little hurt as she entered the house. The table was set, but Mrs.Burns was nowhere to be seen. Calling her softly, the young girl passedthrough the shabby little living-room to the oven-like bedroom whichopened off it, but no one was about. She stood for a moment shudderingat the wretchedness of the room.
Going back to the kitchen, she found Sim about beginning on his dinner.Little Pet was with him; the rest of the children were at theschoolhouse.
"Where is she?"
"I d' know. Out in the garden, I expect. She don't eat with me now. Inever see her. She don't come near _me_. I ain't seen her sinceSaturday."
Lily was shocked inexpressibly and began to see more clearly themagnitude of the task she had set herself to do. But it must be done;she felt that a tragedy was not far off. It must be averted.
"Mr. Burns, what have you done? What _have_ you done?" she asked interror and horror.
"Don't lay it all to _me_! She hain't done nawthin' but complain f'r tenyears. I couldn't do nothin' to suit her. She was always naggin' me."
"I don't think Lucretia Burns would nag anybody. I don't say you're_all_ to blame, but I'm afraid you haven't acknowledged you were _any_to blame. I'm afraid you've not been patient with her. I'm going out tobring her in. If she comes, will you _say_ you were _part_ to blame? Youneedn't beg her pardon--just say you'll try to be better. Will you doit? Think how much she has done for you! Will you?"
He remained silent, and looked discouragingly rude. His sweaty, dirtyshirt was open at the neck, his arms were bare, his scraggly teeth wereyellow with tobacco, and his uncombed hair lay tumbled about on hishigh, narrow head. His clumsy, unsteady hands played with the dishes onthe table. His pride was struggling with his sense of justice; he knewhe ought to consent, and yet it was so hard to acknowledge himself toblame. The girl went on in a voice piercingly sweet, trembling with pityand pleading.
"What word can I carry to her from you? I'm going to go and see her. IfI could take a word from _you_, I know she would come back to the table.Shall I tell her you feel to blame?"
The answer was a long time coming; at last the man nodded an assent, thesweat pouring from his purple face. She had set him thinking; hervictory was sure.
Lily almost ran out into the garden and to the strawberry patch, whereshe found Lucretia in her familiar, colorless, shapeless dress, pickingberries in the hot sun, the mosquitoes biting her neck and hands.
"Poor, pathetic, dumb sufferer!" the girl thought as she ran up to her.
She dropped her dish as she heard Lily coming, and gazed up into thetender, pitying face. Not a word was spoken, but something she saw theremade her eyes fill with tears, and her throat swell. It was puresympathy. She put her arms around the girl's neck and sobbed for thefirst time since Friday night. Then they sat down on the grass under thehedge, and she told her story, interspersed with Lily's horrifiedcomments.
When it was all told, the girl still sat listening. She heard Radbourn'scalm, slow voice again. It helped her not to hate Burns; it helped herto pity and understand him.
"You must remember that such toil brutalizes a man; it makes himcallous, selfish, unfeeling, necessarily. A fine nature must eitheradapt itself to its hard surroundings or die. Men who toil terribly infilthy garments day after day and year after year cannot easily keepgentle; the frost and grime, the heat and cold, will soon or late enterinto their souls. The case is not all in favor of the suffering wivesand against the brutal husbands. If the farmer's wife is dulled andcrazed by her routine, the farmer himself is degraded and brutalized."
As well as she could Lily explained all this to the woman, who lay withher face buried in the girl's lap. Lily's arms were about her thinshoulders in an agony of pity.
"It's hard, Lucretia, I know,--more than you can bear,--but you mustn'tforget what Sim endures too. He goes out in the storms and in the heatand dust. His boots are hard, and see how his hands are all bruised andbroken by his work! He was tired and hungry when he said that--he didn'treally mean it."
The wife remained silent.
"Mr. Radbourn says work, as things go now, _does_ degrade a man in spiteof himself. He says men get coarse and violent in spite of themselves,just as women do when everything goes wrong in the house,--when theflies are thick, and the fire won't burn, and the irons stick to theclothes. You see, you both suffer. Don't lay up this fit of temperagainst Sim--will you?"
The wife lifted her head and looked away. Her face was full of hopelessweariness.
"It ain't this once. It ain't that 't all. It's having no let-up. Justgoin' the same thing right over 'n' over--no hope of anything better."
"If you had hope of another world--"
"Don't talk that. I don't want that kind o' comfert. I want a decentchance here. I want 'o rest an' be happy _now_." Lily's big eyes werestreaming with tears. What should she say to the desperate woman?"What's the use? We might jest as well die--all of us."
The woman's livid face appalled the girl. She was gaunt, heavy-eyed,nerveless. Her faded dress settled down over her limbs, showing theswollen knees and thin calves; her hands, with distorted joints,protruded painfully from her sleeves. All about her was the everrecurring wealth and cheer of nature that knows no favor,--the bees andflies buzzing in the sun, the jay and the kingbird in the poplars, thesmell of strawberries, the motion of lush grass, the shimmer ofcorn-blades tossed gayly as banners in a conquering army.
Like a flash of keener light, a sentence shot across the girl's mind:"Nature knows no title-deed. The bounty of her mighty hands falls as thesunlight falls, copious, impartial; her seas carry all ships; her air isfor all lips, her lands for all feet."
"Poverty and suffering such as yours will not last." There was somethingin the girl's voice that roused the woman. She turned her dull eyes uponthe youthful face.
Lily took her hand in both hers as if by a caress she could impart herown faith.
"Look up, dear. When nature is so good and generous, man must come to bebetter, surely. Come, go in the house again. Sim is there; he expectsyou; he told me to tell you he was sorry." Lucretia's face twitched alittle at that, but her head was bent. "Come; you can't live this way.There isn't any other place to go to."
No, that was the bitterest truth. Where on this wide earth, with itsforth-shooting fruits and grains, its fragrant lands and shining seas,could this dwarfed, bent, broken, middle-aged woman go? Nobody wantedher, nobody cared for her. But the wind kissed her drawn lips as readilyas those of the girl, and the blooms of clover nodded to her as if to aqueen.
Lily had said all she could. Her heart ached with unspeakable pity and asort of terror.
"Don't give up, Lucretia. This may be the worst hour of your life. Liveand bear with it all for Christ's sake,--for your children's sake. Simtold me to tell you he was to blame. If you will only see that you areboth to blame and yet neither to blame, then you can rise above it. Try,dear!"
Something that was in the girl imparted itself to the wife,electrically. She pulled herself together, rose silently, and startedtoward the house. Her face was rigid, but no longer sullen. Lilyfollowed her slowly, wonderingly.
As she neared the kitchen door, she saw Sim still sitting at the table;his face was unusually grave and soft. She saw him start and shove backhis chair, saw Lucretia go to the stove and lift the tea-pot, and heardher say, as she took her seat beside the baby:--
"Want some more tea?"
She had become a wife and mother again, but in what spirit the puzzledgirl could not say.