Books: Main Travelled Roads
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Hamlin Garland >> Main Travelled Roads
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"It don't matter now," she interrupted gently. "It's the way things
go. Our boys grow up and leave us."
"Well, come in to supper," said Grant's ungracious voice from the
doorway. "Come, Mother."
Mrs. McLane moved with difficulty. Howard sprang to her aid, and
leaning on his arm she went through the little sitting room, which
was unlighted, out into the kitchen, where the supper table stood
near the cookstove.
"How, this is my wife," said Grant in a cold, peculiar tone.
Howard bowed toward a remarkably handsome young woman, on
whose forehead was a scowl, which did not change as she looked
at him and the old lady.
"Set down, anywhere," was the young woman's cordial invitation.
Howard sat down next to his mother, and facing the wife, who had
a small, fretful child in her arms. At Howard's left was the old
man, Lewis. The supper was spread upon a gay-colored oilcloth,
and consisted of a pan of milk, set in the midst, with bowls at each
plate. Beside the pan was a dipper and a large plate of bread, and
at one end of the table was a dish of fine honey.
A boy of about fourteen leaned upon the table, his bent shoulders
making him look like an old man. His hickory shirt, like that of
Grant, was still wet with sweat, and discolored here and there with
grease, or green from grass. His hair, freshly wet and combed,
was smoothed away from his face, and shone in the light of the
kerosene lamp. As he ate, he stared at Howard, as if he would
make an inventory of each thread of the visitor's clothing.
"Did I look like that at his age?" thought Howard.
"You see we live jest about the same's ever," said Grant as they
began eating, speaking with a grim, almost challenging inflection.
The two brothers studied each other curiously, as they talked of
neighborhood scenes. Howard seemed incredibly elegant and
handsome to them all, with his rich, soft clothing, his spotless
linen, and his exquisite enunciation and ease of speech. He had
always been "smooth-spoken," and he had become "elegantly
persuasive," as his friends said of him, and it was a large factor in
his success.
Every detail of the kitchen, the heat, the flies buzzing aloft, the
poor furniture, the dress of the people-all smote him like the lash
of a wire whip. His brother was a man of great character. He could
see that now. His deep-set, gray eyes and rugged face showed at
thirty a man of great natural ability. He had more of the Scotch in
his face than Howard, and he looked much older.
He was dressed, like the old man and the boy, in a checked shirt
without vest. His suspenders, once gay-colored, had given most of
their color to his shirt, and had marked irregular broad bands of
pink and brown and green over his shoulders. His hair was
uncombed, merely pushed away from his face. He wore a
mustache only, though his face was covered with a week's growth
of beard. His face was rather gaunt and was brown as leather.
Howard could not eat much. He was disturbed by his mother's
strange silence and oppression, and sickened by the long-drawn
gasps with. which the old man ate his bread and milk, and by the
way the boy ate. He had his knife gripped tightly in his fist,
knuckles up, and was scooping honey upon his bread.
The baby, having ceased to be afraid, was curious, gazing silently
at the stranger.
"Hello, little one! Come and see your uncle. Eh? 'Course 'e will,"
cooed Howard in the attempt to escape the depressing atmosphere.
The little one listened to his inflections as a kitten does, and at last
lifted its arms in sign of surrender.
The mother's face cleared up a little. "I declare, she wants to go to
you."
"'Course she does. Dogs and kittens always come to me when I call
'em. Why shouldn't my own niece come?"
He took the little one and began walking up and down the kitchen
with her, while she pulled at his beard and nose. "I ought to have
you, my lady, in my new comedy. You'd bring down the house."
"You don't mean to say you put babies on the stage, Howard," said
his mother in surprise.
"Oh, yes. Domestic comedy must have a baby these days."
"Well, that's another way of makin' a livin', sure," said Grant. The
baby had cleared the atmosphere a little. "I s'pose you fellers make
a pile of money."
"Sometimes we make a thousand a week; oftener we don't."
"A thousand dollars!" They all stared.
"A thousand dollars sometimes, and then lose it all the next week
in another town. The dramatic business is a good deal like
gambling-you take your chances."
"I wish you weren't in it, Howard. I don't like to have my son-"
"I wish I was in somethin' that paid better'n farmin'. Anything
under God's heavens is better'n farmin'," said Grant.
"No, I ain't laid up much," Howard went on, as if explaining why
he hadn't helped them. "Costs me a good deal to live, and I need
about ten thousand dollars lee-way to work on. I've made a good
living, but I-I ain't made any money."
Grant looked at him, darkly meditative.
Howard went on:
"How'd ye come to sell the old farm? I was in hopes-"
"How'd we come to sell it?" said Grant with terrible bitterness.
"We had something on it that didn't leave anything to sell. You
probably don't remember anything about it, but there was a
mortgage on it that eat us up in just four years by the almanac.
'Most killed Mother to leave it. We wrote to you for money, but I
don't s'pose you remember that."
"No, you didn't."
"Yes, I did."
"When was it? I don't-why, it's-I never received it. It must have
been that summer I went with Rob Mannmg to Europe." Howard
put the baby down and faced his brother. "Why, Grant, you didn't
think I refused to help?"
"Well, it locked that way. We never heard a word from yeh all
summer, and when y' did write, it was all about yerself 'n plays 'n
things we didn't know anything about. I swore to God I'd never
write to you again, and I won't."
"But, good heavens! I never got it."
"Suppose you didn't. You might of known we were poor as Job's
off-ox. Everybody is that earns a living. We fellers on the farm
have to earn a livin' for ourselves and you fellers that don't work. I
don't blame yeh. I'd do it if I could."
"Grant, don't talk so! Howard didn't realize-"
"I tell yeh I don't blame 'im. Only I don't want him to come the
brotherly business over me, after livin' as he has-that's all." There
was a bitter accusation in the man's voice.
Howard leaped to his feet, his face twitching. "By God, I'll go back
tomorrow morning!" he threatened.
"Go, an' be damned! I don't care what yeh do," Grant growled,
rising and going out.
"Boys," called the mother, piteously, "it's terrible to see you
quarrel."
"But I'm not to blame, Mother," cried Howard in a sickness that
made him white as chalk. "The man is a savage. I came home to
help you all, not to quarrel."
"Grant's got one o' his fits on," said the young wife, speaking for
the first time. "Don't pay any attention to him. He'll be all right in
the morning."
"If it wasn't for you, Mother, I'd leave now and never see that
savage again."
He lashed himself up and down in the room, in horrible disgust
and hate of his brother and of this home in his heart. He
remembered his tender anticipations of the homecoming with a
kind of self-pity and disgust. This was his greeting!
He went to bed, to toss about on the hard, straw-filled mattress in
the stuffy little best room. Tossing, writhing under the bludgeoning
of his brother's accusing inflections, a dozen times he said, with a
half-articulate snarl:
"He can go to hell! I'll not try to do anything more for him. I don't
care if he is my brother; he has no right to jump on me like that.
On the night of my return, too. My God! he is a brute, a savage!"
He thought of the presents in his trunk and valise which he couldn't
show to him that night, after what had been said. He had intended
to have such a happy evening of it, such a tender reunion! It was to
be so bright and cheery!
In the midst of his cursings, his hot indignation, would come
visions of himself in his own modest rooms. He seemed to be
yawning and stretching in his beautiful bed, the sun shining in, his
books, foils, pictures around him, to say good morning and tempt
him to rise, while the squat little clock on the mantel struck eleven
warningly.
He could see the olive walls, the unique copper-and-crimson
arabesque frieze (his own selection), and the delicate draperies; an
open grate full of glowing coals, to temper the sea winds; and in
the midst of it, between a landscape by Enneking and an Indian in
a canoe in a canyon, by Brush, he saw a somber landscape by a
master greater than Millet, a melancholy subject, treated with
pitiless fidelity.
A farm in the valley! Over the mountains swept jagged, gray,
angry, sprawling clouds, sending a freezing, thin drizzle of rain, as
they passed, upon a man following a plow. The horses had a sullen
and weary look, and their manes and tails streamed sidewise in the
blast. The plowman clad in a ragged gray coat, with uncouth,
muddy boots upon his feet, walked with his head inclined t~ ward
the sleet, to shield his face from the cold and sting of it. The soil
rolled away, black and sticky and with a dull sheen upon it.
Nearby, a boy with tears on his cheeks was watching cattle, a dog
seated near, his back to the gale.
As he looked at this picture, his heart softened. He looked down at
the sleeve of his soft and fleecy nightshirt, at his white, rounded
arm, muscular yet fine as a woman's, and when he looked for the
picture it was gone. Then came again the assertive odor of stagnant
air, laden with camphor; he felt the springless bed under him, and
caught dimly a few soap-advertising lithographs on the walls. He
thought of his brother, in his still more in-hospitable bedroom,
disturbed by the child, condemned to rise at five o'clock and begin
another day's pitiless labor. His heart shrank and quivered, and the
tears started to his eyes.
"I forgive him, poor fellow! He's not to blame."
II
HE woke, however, with a dull, languid pulse and an oppressive
melancholy on his heart. He looked around the little room, clean
enough, but oh, how poor! how barren! Cold plaster walls, a cheap
washstand, a wash set of three pieces, with a blue band around
each; the windows, rectangular, and fitted with fantastic green
shades.
Outside he could hear the bees humming. Chickens were merrily
moving about. Cowbells far up the road were sounding irregularly.
A jay came by and yelled an insolent reveille, and Howard sat up.
He could hear nothing in the house but the rattle of pans on the
back side of the kitchen. He looked at his watch and saw it was
half-past seven. His brother was in the field by this time, after
milking, currying the horses, and eating breakfast
-had been at work two hours and a half.
He dressed himself hurriedly in a neglige shirt with a windsor
scad, light-colored, serviceable trousers with a belt, russet shoes,
and a tennis hat-a knockabout costume, he considered. His mother,
good soul, thought it a special suit put on for her benefit and
admired it through her glasses.
He kissed her with a bright smile, nodded at Laura the young wife,
and tossed the baby, all in a breath, and with the manner, as he
himself saw, of the returned captain in the war dramas of the day.
"Been to breakfast?" He frowned reproachfully. "Why didn't you
call me? I wanted to get up, just as I used to, at sunrise."
"We thought you was tired, and so we didn't-"
"Tired! Just wait till you see me help Grant pitch hay or
something. Hasn't finished his haying, has he?"
'No, I guess not. He will today if it don't rain again."
"Well, breakfast is all ready-Howard," said Laura, hesitating a little
on his name. -
"Good! I am ready for it. Bacon and eggs, as I'm a jay! Just what I
was wanting. I was saying to myself. 'Now if they'll only get bacon
and eggs and hot biscuits and honey-' Oh, say, mother, I heard the
bees humming this morning; same noise they used to make when I
was a boy, exactly. must be the same bees. Hey, you young rascal!
come here and have some breakfast with your uncle."
"I never saw her take to anyone so quick," Laura smiled. Howard
noticed her in particular for the first time. She had on a clean
calico dress and a gingham apron, and she looked strong and fresh
and handsome. Her head was intellectual, her eyes full of power.
She seemed anxious to remove the impression of her unpleasant
looks and words the night before. Indeed, it would have been hard
to resist Howard's sunny good nature.
The baby laughed and crowed. The old mother could not take her
dim eyes off the face of her son, but sat smiling at him as he ate
and rattled on. When he rose from the table at last, after eating
heartily and praising it all, he said with a smile:
"Well, now I'll just telephone down to the express and have my
trunk brought up. I've got a few little things in there you'll enjoy
seeing. But this fellow," indicating the baby, "I didn't take into
account. But never mind; Uncle Howard make that all right."
"You ain't goin' to lay it up agin Grant, be you, my son?" Mrs.
McLane faltered as they went out into the best room.
"Of course not! He didn't mean it. Now, can't you send word down
and have my trunk brought up? Or shall I have to walk down?"
"I guess I'll see somebody goin' down," said Laura.
"All right. Now for the hayfield," he smiled and went out into the
glorious morning.
The circling hills the same, yet not the same as at night. A cooler,
tenderer, more subdued cloak of color u~ on them. Far down the
valley a cool, deep, impalpable, blue mist lay, under which one
divined the river Ian, under its elms and basswoods and wild
grapevines. On the shaven slopes of the hills cattle and sheep were
feeding, their cries and bells coming to the ear with a sweet
suggestiveness. There was something immemorial in the sunny
slopes dotted with red and brown and gray cattle.
Walking toward the haymakers, Howard felt a twinge of pain and
distrust. Would he ignore it all and smile-
He stopped short. He had not seen Grant smile in so long-he
couldn't quite see him smiling. He had been cold and bitter for
years. When he came up to them, Grant was pitching on; the old
man was loading, and the boy was raking after.
"Good morning," Howard cried cheerily. The old man nodded, the
boy stared. Grant growled something, with-out looking up. These
"finical" things of saying good morning and good night are not
much practiced in such homes as Grant McLane's.
"Need some help? I'm ready to take a hand. Got on my regimentals
this morning."
Grant looked at him a moment.
"You look like it."
"Gimme a hold on that fork, and I'll show you. I'm not so soft as I
look, now you bet."
He laid hold upon the fork in Grant's hands, who r~ leased it
sullenly and stood back sneering. Howard struck the fork into the
pile in the old way, threw his left hand to the end of the polished
handle, brought it down into the hollow of his thigh, and laid out
his strength till the handle bent like a bow. "Oop she rises!" he
called laughingly, as the whole pile began slowly to rise, and
finally rolled upon the high load.
"Oh, I ain't forgot how to do it," he laughed as he looked around at
the boy, who was studying the jacket and hat with a devouring
gaze.
Grant was studying him too, but not in admiration.
"I shouldn't say you had," said the old man, tugging at the forkful.
'Mighty funny to come out here and do a little of this. But if you
had to come here and do it all the while, you wouldn't look so
white and soft in the hands," Grant said as they moved on to
another pile. "Give me that fork. You'll be spoiling your fine
clothes."
"Oh, these don't matter. They're made for this kind of thing."
"Oh, are they? I guess I'll dress in that kind of a rig. What did that
shirt cost? I need one."
"Six dollars a pair; but then it's old."
"And them pants," he pursued; "they cost six dollars, too, didn't
they?"
Howard's face darkened. He saw his brother's purpose. He resented
it. "They cost fifteen dollars, if you want to know, and the shoes
cost six-fifty. This ring on my cravat cost sixty dollars, and the suit
I had on last night cost eighty-five. My suits are made by
Breckstein, on Fifth Avenue and Twentieth Street, if you want to
patronize him," he ended brutally, spurred on by the sneer in his
brother's eyes. "I'll introduce you."
"Good idea," said Grant with a forced, mocking smile. "I need just
such a get up for haying and corn plowing. Singular I never
thought of it. Now my pants cost eighty-five cents, s'penders
fifteen, hat twenty, shoes one-fifty; stockin's I don't bother about."
He had his brother at a disadvantage, and he grew fluent and
caustic as he went on, almost changing places with Howard, who
took the rake out of the boy's hands and followed, raking up the
scatterings.
"Singular we fellers here are discontented and mulish, am't it?
Singular we don't believe your letters when you write, sayin', 'I just
about make a live of it'? Singular we think the country's goin' to
hell, we fellers, in a two dollar suit, wadin' around in the mud or
sweatin' around in the hayfield, while you fellers lay around New
York and smoke and wear good clothes and toady to millionaires?"
Howard threw down the rake and folded his arms. 'My God! you're
enough to make a man forget the same mother bore us!"
"I guess it wouldn't take much to make you forget that. You ain't
put much thought on me nor her for ten years."
The old man cackled, the boy grinned, and Howard, sick and weak
with anger and sorrow, turned away and walked down toward the
brook. He had tried once more to get near his brother and had
failed. O God! how miserably, pitiably! The hot blood gushed all
over him as he thought of the shame and disgrace of it.
He, a man associating with poets, artists, sought after by brilliant
women, accustomed to deference even from such people, to be
sneered at, outfaced, shamed, shoved aside, by a man in a stained
hickory shirt and patched overalls, and that man his brother! He
lay down on the bright grass, with the sheep all around him, and
writhed and groaned with the agony and despair of it.
And worst of all, underneath it was a consciousness that Grant was
right in distrusting him. He had neglected him; he had said, "I
guess they're getting along all right." He had put them behind him
when the invitation to spend summer on the Mediterranean or in
the Adirondacks came.
"What can I do? What can I do?" he groaned.
The sheep nibbled the grass near him, the jays called pertly,
"Shame, shame," a quail piped somewhere on the hillside, and the
brook sung a soft, soothing melody that took away at last the sharp
edge of his pain, and he sat up and gazed down the valley, bright
with the sun and apparently filled with happy and prosperous
people.
Suddenly a thought seized him. He stood up so suddenly the sheep
fled in affright. He leaped the brook, crossed the flat, and began
searching in the bushes on the hillside. "Hurrah!" he said with a
smile.
He had found an old road which he used to travel when a boy-a
road that skirted the edge of the valley, now grown up to brush, but
still passable for footmen. As he ran lightly along down the
beautiful path, under oaks and hickories, past masses of poison
ivy, under hanging grapevines, through clumps of splendid
hazelnut bushes loaded with great sticky, rough, green burrs, his
heart threw off part of its load.
How it all came back to him! How many days, when
Up The Coulee
73
the autumn sun burned the frost off the bushes, had he gathered
hazelnuts here with his boy and girl friends-Hugh and Shelley
McTurg, Rome Sawyer, Orrin McIlvaine, and the rest! What had
become of them all? How he had forgotten them!
This thought stopped him again, and he fell into a deep muse,
leaning against an oak tree and gazing into the vast fleckless space
above. The thrilling, inscrutable mystery of life fell upon him like
a blinding light. Why was he living in the crush and thunder and
mental unrest of a great city, while his companions, seemingly his
equal, in powers, were milking cows, making butter, and growing
corn and wheat in the silence and drear monotony of the farm?
His boyish sweethearts! Their names came back to his ear now
with a dull, sweet sound as of faint bells. He saw their faces, their
pink sunbonnets tipped back upon their necks, their brown ankles
flying with the swift action of the scurrying partridge. His eyes
softened; he took off his hat. The sound of the wind and the leaves
moved him almost to tears.
A woodpecker gave a shrill, high-keyed, sustained cry, "Ki, ki, ki!"
and he started from his reverie, the dapples of sun and shade
falling upon his lithe figure as he hurried on down the path.
He came at last to a field of corn that tan to the very wall of a large
weather-beaten house, the sight of which made his breathing
quicker. It was the place where he was born. The mystery of his
life began there. In the branches of those poplar and hickory trees
he had swung and sung in the rushing breeze, fearless as a squirrel
Here was the brook where, like a larger Kildee, he with Grant had
waded after crawfish, or had stolen upon some wary trout,
rough-cut pole in hand.
Seeing someone in the garden, he went down along the corn row
through the rustling ranks of green leaves. An old woman was
picking berries, a squat and shapeless figure.
"Good morning," he called cheerily.
"Morgen," she said, looklng up at him with a startled and very red
face. She was German in every line of her body.
"Ich bin Herr McLane," he said after a pause.
"So?" she replied with a questioning inflection.
"Yah; ich bin Herr Grant's bruder."
"Ach, So!" she said with a downward inflection. "Ich no spick
Inglish. No spick Inglis."
"Ich bin durstig," he said. Leaving her pans, she went with him to
the house, which was what he wanted to see.
"Ich bin hier geboren."
"Ach, so!" She recognized the little bit of sentiment, and said
some sentences m German whose general meaning was sympathy.
She took him to the cool cellar where the spring had been trained
to run into' a tank containing pans of cream and milk, she gave him
a cool draught from a large tin cup, and then at his request they
went upstairs. The house was the same, but somehow seemed cold
and empty. It was clean and sweet, but it had so little evidence of
being lived in. The old part, which was built of logs, was used as
best room, and modeled after the best rooms of the neighboring
Yankee homes, only it was emptier, without the cabinet organ and
the rag carpet and the chromoes.
The old fireplace was bricked up and plastered-the fireplace beside
which in the far-off days he had lain on winter nights, to hear his
uncles tell tales of hunting, or to hear them play the violin, great
dreaming giants that they were.
The old woman went out and left him sitting there, the center of a
swarm of memories coming and going like so many ghostly birds
and butterflies.
A curious heartache and listlessness, a nerveless mood came on
him. What was it worth, anyhow-success? Struggle, strife,
trampling on someone else. His play crowding out some other poor
fellow's hope. The hawk eats the partridge, the partridge eats the
flies and bugs, the bugs eat each other, and the hawk, when he in
his turn is shot by man. So, in the world of business, the life of one
man seemed to him to be drawn from the life of another man, each
success to spring from other failures.
He was like a man from whom all motives had been withdrawn.
He was sick, sick to the heart. Oh, to be a boy again! An ignorant
baby, pleased with a block and string, with no knowledge and no
care of the great un-known! To lay his head again on his mother's
bosom and rest! To watch the flames on the hearth!
Why not? Was not that the very thing to do? To buy back the old
farm? It would cripple him a little for the next season, but he could
do it. Think of it! To see his mother back in the old home, with the
fireplace restored, the old furniture in the sitting room around her,
and fine new things in the parlor!
His spirits rose again. Grant couldn't stand out when he brought to
him a deed of the farm. Surely his debt would be canceled when he
had seen them all back in the wide old kitchen. He began to plan
and to dream. He went to the windows and looked out on the yard
to see how much it had changed.
He'd build a new barn and buy them a new carriage. His heart
glowed again, and his lips softened into their usual feminine
grace-lips a little full and falling easily into curves.
The old German woman came in at length, bringing some cakes
and a bowl of milk, smiling broadly and hospitably as she waddled
forward.
"Ach! Goot!" he said, smacking his lips over the pleasant draught.
"Wo ist ihre goot mann?" he inquired, ready for business.
III
WHEN Grant came in at noon, Mrs. McLane met him at the door
with a tender smile on her face.
"Where's Howard, Grant?"
"I don't know," he replied in a tone that implied "I don't care."
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