Books: Main Travelled Roads
H >>
Hamlin Garland >> Main Travelled Roads
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 | 8 |
9 |
10 |
11 |
12 |
13 |
14 |
15 |
16 |
17 |
18 |
19
Rob's manly and self-reliant nature had the settler's typical
buoyancy and hopefulness, as well as a certain power of analysis,
which enabled him now to say: "The fact is, we fellers holdin'
down claims out here ain't fools clear to the rine. We know a
couple o' things. Now I didn't leave Waupac County f'r fun. Did y'
ever see Wanpac? Well, it's one o' the handsomest counties the sun
ever shone on, full o' lakes and rivers and groves of timber. I miss
'em all out here, and I miss the boys an' girls; but they wa'n't no
chance there f'r a feller. Land that was good was so blamed high
you couldn't touch it with a ten-foot pole from a balloon. Rent was
high, if you wanted t' rent, an' so a feller like me had t' get out, an'
now I'm out here, I'm goin' f make the most of it. An other thing,"
he went on, after a pause-"we fellers work-in' out back there got
more 'n' more like hands, an' less like human beings. Y'know,
Waupac is a kind of a summer resort, and the people that use' t'
come in summers looked down on us cusses in the fields an'
shops. I couldn't stand it. By God!" he said with a sudden im pulse
of rage quite unlike him, "I'd rather live on an ice-berg and claw
crabs f'r a livin' than have some feller passin' me on the road an'
callin' me fellah!'"
Seagraves knew what he meant and listened in astonishment at this
outburst.
"I consider myself a sight better 'n any man who lives on somebody
else's hard work. I've never had a cent I didn't earn with them
hands." He held them up and broke into a grin. "Beauties, ain't
they? But they never wore gloves that some other poor cuss
earned."
Seagraves thought them grand hands, worthy to grasp the hand of
any man or woman living.
"Well, so I come West, just like a thousand other fellers, to get a
start where the cussed European aristocracy hadn't got a holt on the
people. I like it here-course I'd like the lakes an' meadows of
Waupac better-but I'm my own boss, as I say, an' I'm goin' to stay
my own boss if I haf to live on crackers an' wheat coffee to do it;
that's the kind of a hairpin I am."
In the pause which followed, Seagraves, plunged deep into thought
by Rob's words, leaned his head on his hand. This working farmer
had voiced the modem idea. It was an absolute overturn of all the
ideas of nobility and special privilege born of the feudal past. Rob
had spoken upon impulse, but that impulse appeared to Sea-graves
to be right.
"I'd like to use your idea for an editorial, Rob," he said.
"My ideas!" exclaimed the astounded host, pausing in the act of
filling his pipe. "My ideas! why, I didn't know I had any."
"Well, you've given me some, anyhow."
Seagraves felt that it was a wild, grand upstirring of the modem
democrat against the aristocratic, against the idea of caste and the
privilege of living on the labor of others. This atom of humanity
(how infinitesimal this drop in the ocean of humanity!) was feeling
the name-less longing of expanding personality, and had already
pierced the conventions of society and declared as nil the laws of
the land-laws that were survivals of hate and prejudice. He had
exposed also the native spring of the emigrant by uttering the
feeling that it is better to be an equal among peasants than a
servant before nobles.
"So I have good reasons f'r liking the country," Rob resumed in a
quiet way. "The soil is rich, the climate good so far, an' if I have a
couple o' decent crops you'll see a neat upright goin' up here, with
a porch and a bay winder."
"And you'll still be livin' here alone, frying leathery slapjacks an'
choppin' taters and bacon."
"I think I see myself," drawled Rob, "goin' around all summer
wearin' the same shirt without washin', an' wipin' on the same
towel four straight weeks, an' wearin' holes in my socks, an' eatin'
musty gingersnaps, moldy bacon, an' canned Boston beans f'r the
rest o' my endurin' days! Oh, yes; I guess not! Well, see y' later.
Must go water my bulls."
As he went off down the slope, Seagraves smiled to hear him sing:
"I wish that some kindhearted girl
Would pity on me take,
And extricate me from the mess I'm in.
The angel-how I'd bless her,
li this her home she'd make,
In my little old sod shanty on the plain!"
The boys nearly fell off their chairs in the Western House dining
room, a few days later, at seeing Rob come into supper with a
collar and necktie as the finishing touch of a remarkable outfit.
"Hit him, somebody!"
"It's a clean collar!"
"He's started f'r Congress!"
"He's going to get married," put in Seagraves in a tone that brought
conviction.
"What!" screamed Jack Adams, O'Neill, and Wilson in one breath.
"That man?"
"That man," replied Seagraves, amazed at Rob, who coolly took
his seat, squared his elbows, pressed his collar down at the back,
and called for the bacon and eggs.
The crowd stared at him in a dead silence.
"Where's he going to do it?" asked Jack Adarns. "where's he going
to find a girl?"
"Ask him," said Seagraves.
"I ain't tellin'," put in Rob, with his mouth full of potato.
"You're afraid of our competition."
"That's right; our competition, Jack; not your competition. Come,
now, Rob, tell us where you found her."
"I ain't found her."
"What! And yet you're goin' away t' get married!"
"I'm goin' t' bring a wife back with me ten days fr'm date."
"I see his scheme," put in Jim Rivers. "He's goin' back East
somewhere, an' he's goin' to propose to every girl he meets."
"Hold on!" interrupted Rob, holding up his fork. "Ain't quite right.
Every good-lookin' girl I meet."
"Well, I'll be blanked!" exclaimed Jack impatientiy; "that simply
lets me out. Any man with such a cheek ought to-"
"Succeed," interrupted Seagraves.
"That's what I say," bawled Hank whiting, the proprietor of the
house. "You fellers ain't got any enterprise to yeh. Why don't you
go to work an' help settle the country like men? 'Cause y' ain't got
no sand. Girls are thicker'n huckleberries back East. I say it's a
dum shame!"
"Easy, Henry," said the elegant bank clerk, Wilson, looking
gravely about through his spectacles. "I commend the courage and
the resolution of Mr. Rodemaker. I pray the lady may not
"Mislike him for his complexion,
The shadowed livery of the burning sun."
"Shakespeare," said Adams at a venture.
"Brother in adversity, when do you embark? Another 3ason on an
untried sea~"
"Hay!" said Rob, winking at Seagraves. "Oh, I go tonight-night
train."
"And return?"
"Ten days from date."
"I'll wager a wedding supper he brings a blonde," said Wilson in
his clean-cut, languid speech.
"Oh, come now, Wilson; that's too thin! We all know that rule
about dark marryin' light."
"I'll wager she'll be tall," continued Wilson. "I'll wager you, friend
Rodemaker, she'll be blonde and tall."
The rest roared at Rob's astonishment and contusion. The absurdity
of it grew, and they went into spasms of laughter. But Wilson
remained impassive, not the twitching of a muscle betraying that
he saw anything to laugh at in the proposition.
Mrs. Whiting and the kitchen girls came in, wondering at the
merriment. Rob began to get uneasy.
"What is it? What is it?" said Mrs. Whiting, a jolly little matron.
Rivers put the case. "Rob's on his way back to Wisconsin t' get
married, and Wilson has offered to bet him that his wife will be a
blonde and tall, and Rob dassent bet!" And they roared again.
"Why, the idea! The man's crazy!" said Mrs. Whiting. The crowd
looked at each other. This was hint enough; they sobered, nodding
at each other.
"Aha! I see; I understand."
"It's the heat."
"And the Boston beans."
"Let up on him, Wilson. Don't badger a poor irresponsible fellow. I
thought something was wrong when I saw the collar."
"Oh, keep it up!" said Rob, a little nettled by their evident intention
to "have fun" with him.
"Soothe him-soo-o-o-o-the him!" said Wilson. "Don't be harsh."
Rob rose from the table. "Go to thunder! You make me tired."
"The fit is on him again!"
He rose disgustedly and went out. They followed him in singie file.
The rest of the town "caught on." Frank Graham heaved an apple
at him and joined the procession. Rob went into the store to buy
some tobacco. They followed and perched like crows on the
counters till he went out; then they followed him, as before. They
watched him check his trunk; they witnessed the purchase of the
ticket. The town had turned out by this time.
"Waupac!" announced the one nearest the victim.
"Waupac!" said the next man, and the word was passed along the
street up town.
"Make a note of it," said Wilson: "Waupa-a county where a man's
proposal for marriage is honored upon presentation. Sight drafts."
Rivers struck up a song, while Rob stood around, patientiy bearing
the jokes of the crowd:
"We're lookin' rather seedy now,
While holdin' down our claims,
And our vittles are not always of the best,
And the mice play slyly round us
As we lay down to sleep
In our little old tarred shanties on the claim.
"Yet we rather like the novelty
Of livin' in this way,
Though the bill of fare is often rather tame;
An' we're happy as a clam
On the land of Uncle Sam
In our little old tarred shanty on the claim."
The train drew up at length, to the immense relief of Rob, whose
stoical resiguation was beginning to weaken.
"Don't y' wish y' had sand?" he yelled to the crowd as he plunged
into the car, thinking he was rid of them.
But no; their last stroke was to follow him into the car, nodding,
pointing to their heads, and whispering, managing in the
half-minute the train stood at the platform to set every person in
the car staring at the crazy man. Rob groaned and pulled his hat
down over his eyes-an action which confirmed his tormentors'
words and made several ladies click their tongues in
sympathy-"Tick! tick! poor fellow!"
"All abo-o-o-a-rd!' said the conductor, grinning his appreciation at
the crowd, and the train was off.
"Oh, won't we make him groan when he gets back!" said Barney,
the young lawyer who sang the shouting tenor.
"We'll meet him with the timbrel and the harp. Anybody want to
wager? I've got two to one on a short brunette," said Wilson.
II
"Follow it far enough and it may pass the bend in the river where
the water laughs eternally over its shallows."
A CORNFIELD in July is a hot place. The soil is hot and dry; the
wind comes across the lazily murmuring leaves laden with a warm
sickening smell drawn from the rapidly growing, broad-flung
banners of the corn. The sun, nearly vertical, drops a flood of
dazzing light and heat upon the field over which the cool shadows
run, only to make the heat seem the more intense.
Julia Peterson, faint with fatigue, was tolling back and forth
between the corn rows, holding the handles of the double-shovel
corn plow while her little brother Otto rode the steaming horse.
Her heart was full of bitterness, and her face flushed with heat, and
her muscles aching with fatigue. The heat grew terrible. The corn
came to her shoulders, and not a breath seemed to reach her, while
the sun, nearing the noon mark, lay pitilessly upon her shoulders,
protected only by a calico dress. The dust rose under her feet, and
as she was wet with perspiration it soiled her till, with a woman's
instinctive cleanliness, she shuddered. Her head throbbed
dangerously. what matter to her that the king bird pitched jovially
from the maples to catch a wandering bluebottle fly, that the robin
was feeding its young, that the bobolink was singing? All these
things, if she saw them, only threw her bondage to labor into
greater relief.
Across the field, in another patch of corn, she could see her
father-a big, gruff-voiced, wide-bearded Norwegian-at work also
with a plow. The corn must be plowed, and so she toiled on, the
tears dropping from the shadow of the ugly sunbonnet she wore.
Her shoes, coarse and square-toed, chafed her feet; her hands,
large and strong, were browned, or more properly burned, on the
backs by the sun. The horse's harness "creak-cracked" as he swung
steadily and patientiy forward, the moisture pouring from his sides,
his nostrils distended.
The field ran down to a road, and on the other side of the road ran
a river-a broad, clear, shallow expanse at that point, and the eyes
of the boy gazed longingly at the pond and the cool shadow each
time that he turned at the fence.
"Say, Jule, I'm goin' in! Come, can't I? Come-say!" he pleaded as
they stopped at the fence to let the horse breathe.
"I've let you go wade twice."
"But that don't do any good. My legs is all smarty, 'cause ol' Jack
sweats so." The boy turned around on the horse's back and slid
back to his rump. "I can't stand it!" he burst out, sliding off and
darting under the fence. "Father can't see."
The girl put her elbows on the fence and watched her little brother
as be sped away to the pool, throwing off his clothes as he ran,
whooping with uncontrollable delight. Soon she could hear him
splashing about in the water a short distance up the stream, and
caught glimpses of his little shiny body and happy face. How cool
that water looked! And the shadows there by the big basswood!
How that water would cool her blistered feet! An impulse seized
her, and she squeezed between the rails of the fence and stood in
the road looking up and down to see that the way was clear. It was
not a main-travelled road; no one was likely to come; why not?
She hurriedly took off her shoes and stockings-how delicious the
cool, soft velvet of the grass!-and sitting down on the bank under
the great basswood, whose roots formed an abrupt bank, she slid
her poor blistered, chafed feet into the water, her bare head leaned
against the huge tree trunk.
And now as she rested, the beauty of the scene came to her. Over
her the wind moved the leaves. A jay screamed far off, as if
answering the cries of the boy. A kingfisher crossed and recrossed
the stream with dipping sweep of his wings. The river sang with its
lips to the pebbles. The vast clouds went by majestically, far above
the treetops, and the snap and buzzing and ringing whir of July
insects made a ceaseless, slumberous undertone of song solvent of
all else. The tired girl forgot her work. She began to dream. This
would not last always. Some one would come to release her from
such drudgery. This was her constant, tenderest, and most secret
dream. He would be a Yankee, not a Norwegian; the Yankees
didn't ask their wives to work in the field. He would have a home.
Perhaps he'd live in town-perhaps a merchant! And then she
thought of the drug clerk in Rock River who had looked at her- A
voice broke in on her dream, a fresh, manly voice.
"Well, by jinks! if it ain't Julia! Just the one I wanted to see!"
The girl turned, saw a pleasant-faced young fellow in a derby hat
and a fifteen-dollar suit of diagonals.
"Rod Rodemaker! How come-"
She remembered her situation, and flushed, looked down at the
water, and remained perfectly still.
"Ain't ye goin' to shake hands? Y' don't seem very glad t' see me."
She began to grow angry. "If you had any eyes you'd see!"
Rob looked over the edge of the bank, whistled, turned away. "Oh,
I see! Excuse me! Don't blame yeh a bit, though. Good weather f'r
corn," he went on' looking up at the trees. 'Corn seems to be pretty
well for-ward," he continued in a louder voice as he walked away,
still gazing into the air. "Crops is looking first-class in Boomtown.
Hello! This Otto? H'yare y' little scamp! Get onto that horse agin.
Quick, 'r I'll take y'r skin off an, hang it on the fence. what y' been
doing?"
"Ben in swimmm'. Jimminy, ain't it fun! when 'd y' get back?" said
the boy, grinning.
"Never you mind," replied Rob, leaping the fence by laying his left
hand on the top rail. "Get onto that horse." He tossed the boy up on
the horse, hung his coat on the fence. "I s'pose the ol' man makes
her plow same as usual?"
"Yup," said Otto.
"Dod ding a man that'll do that! I don't mind if it's necessary, but it
ain't necessary m his case." He continued to mutter in this way as
he went across to the other side of the field. As they turned to
come back, Rob went up and looked at the horse's mouth. "Gettin'
purty near of age. Say, who's sparkin' Julia now-anybody?"
"Nobody 'cept some ol' Norwegians. She won't have them. Por
wants her to, but she won't."
"Good f'r her. Nobody comes t' see her Sunday nights, eh?"
"Nope, only 'Tias Anderson an' Ole Hoover; but she goes off an'
leaves 'em."
"Chk!" said Rob, starting old Jack across the field.
It was almost noon, and Jack moved reluctantly. He knew the time
of day as well as the boy. He made this round after distinct protest.
In the meantime Julia, putting on her shoes and stockings, went to
the fence and watched the man's shining white shirt as he moved
across the cornfield. There had never been any special tenderness
between them, but she had always liked him. They had been at
school together. She wondered why he had come back at this time
of the year, and wondered how long he would stay. How long had
he stood looking at her? She flushed again at the thought of it. But
he wasn't to blame; it was a public road. She might have known
better.
She stood under a little popple tree, whose leaves shook musically
at every zephyr, and her eyes through half-shut lids roved over the
sea of deep-green glossy leaves, dappled here and there by
cloud-shadows, stirred here and there like water by the wind, and
out of it all a longing to be free from such toil rose like a breath,
filling her throat, and quickening the motion of her heart. Must this
go on forever, this life of heat and dust and labor? what did it all
mean?
The girl laid her chin on her strong red wrists, and looked up into
the blue spaces between the vast clouds -aerial mountains
dissolving in a shoreless azure sea. How cool and sweet and restful
they looked! li she might only lie out on the billowy, snow-white,
sunlit edge! The voices of the driver and the plowman recalled her,
and she fixed her eyes again upon the slowly nodding head of the
patient horse, on the boy turned half about on the horse, talking to
the white-sleeved man, whose derby hat bobbed up and down quite
curiously, like the horse's head. Would she ask him to dinner?
what would her people say?
"Phew! it's hot!" was the greeting the young fellow gave as he
came up. He smiled in a frank, boyish way as he hung his hat on
the top of a stake and looked up at her. "D' y' know, I kind o' enjoy
getting at it again. Fact. It ain't no work for a girl, though," he
added.
"When 'd you get back?" she asked, the flush not yet out of her
face. Rob was looking at her thick, fine hair and full Scandinavian
face, rich as a rose in color, and did not reply for a few seconds.
She stood with her hideous sun bonnet pushed back on her
shoulders. A kingbird was chattering overhead.
"Oh' a few days ago."
"How long y' goin' t' stay?"
"Oh, I d' know. A week, mebbe."
A far-off halloo came pulsing across the shimmering air. The boy
screamed "Dinner!" and waved his hat with an answering whoop,
then flopped off the horse like a turtle off a stone into water. He
had the horse unhooked in an instant, and had flung his toes up
over the horse's back, in act to climb on, when Rob said:
"H'yare, young feller! wa!t a minute. Tired?" he asked the girl with
a tone that was more than kindly; it was almost tender.
"Yes," she replied in a low voice. "My shoes hurt me."
"Well, here y' go," he replied, taking his stand by the horse and
holding out his hand like a step. She colored and smiled a little as
she lifted her foot into his huge, hard, sunburned hand.
"Oop-a-daisy!" he called. She gave a spring and sat the horse like
one at home there.
Rob had a deliciously unconscious, abstracted, businesslike air. He
really left her nothing to do but enjoy his company, while he went
ahead and did precisely as he pleased.
"We don't raise much corn out there, an' so I kind o' like to see it
once more."
"I wish I didn't have to see another hill of corn as long as I live!"
replied the girl bitterly.
"Don't know as I blame yeh a bit. But, all the same, I'm glad you
was working in it today," he thought to hiniseif as he walked
beside her horse toward the house.
"Will you stop to dinner?" she inquired bluntly, almost surmy. It
was evident that there were reasons why she didn't mean to press.
hirn to'. do so.
"You bet I will," he replied; "that is, if you want I should."
"You know how we live," she replied evasively. "I' you c'n stand it,
why-" She broke off abruptly.
Yes, he remembered how they lived in that big, square, dirty,
white frame house. It had been- three or four years since he had
been ill it, but the smell of the cabbage and onions, the
penetrating, peculiar mixture of odors, assailed his memory as
something unforgettable.
"I guess I'll stop," he said as she hesitated. She said no more, but
tried to act as if she were not in any way responsible for what
came afterward.
"I guess I c'n stand fr one meal what you stand all the while," he
added.
As she left them at the well and went to the house, he saw her limp
painfully, and the memory of her face so close to his 1ips as he
helped her down from the horse gave him pleasure, at the same
time that he was touched by its tired and gloomy look. Mrs.
Peterson came to the door of the kitchen, looking just the same as
ever. Broadfaced, unwieldly, flabby, apparently wearing the same
dress he remembered to have seen her in years before a dirty
drab-colored thing-she looked as shapeless as a sack of wool. Her
English was limited to "How de do, Rob?"
He washed at the pump, while the girl, in the attempt to be
hospitable, held the clean towel for him.
"You're purty well used up, eh?" he said to her.
"Yes; it's awful hot out there."
"Can't you lay off this afternoon? It ain't right"
"No. He won't listen to that."
"Well, let me take your place."
"No; there ain't any use o' that."
Peterson, a brawny wide-bearded Norwegian, came up at this
moment and spoke to Rob in a sullen, gruff way
"He ain't very glad to see me," said Rob, winking at Julia. "He ain't
b'ilin' over with enthusiasm; but I c'n stand it, for your sake," he
added with amazing assurance; but the girl had turned away, and it
was wasted.
At the table he ate heartily of the "bean swaagen," which filled a
large wooden bowl in the center of the table, and which was ladled
into smaller wooden bowls at each plate. Julia had tried hard to
convert her mother to Yankee ways, and had at last given it up in
despair. Rob kept on safe subjects, mainly asking questions about
the it comes t' workin' outdoors in the dirt an' hot sun, gettin' all
sunburned and chapped up, it's another thing. An' then it seems as
if he gets stingier 'n' stingier every year. I ain't had a new dress in-I
d'-know-how-long. He says it's all nonsense, an' Mother's just about
as bad. She don't want a new dress, an' so she thinks I don't." The
girl was feeling the influence of a sympathetic listener and was
making up for her long silence. "I've tried t' go out t' work, but they
won't let me. They'd have t' pay a hand twenty dollars a month f'r
the work I do, an' they like cheap help; but I'm not goin' t' stand it
much longer, I can tell you that."
Rob thought she was yery handsome as she sat there with her eyes
fixed on the horizon, while these rebellious thoughts found
utterance in her quivering, passionate voice.
"Yulie! Kom heat!" roared the old man from the well. A frown of
anger and pain came into her face. She looked at Rob. "That
means more work."
"Say! let me go out in your place. Come, now; what's the use-"
"No; it wouldn't do no good. It ain't t'day s' much; it's every day,
and-"
"Yulie!" called Peterson again with a string of impatient
Norwegian.
"Well, all right, only I'd like to"
"Well, goodbye," she said, with a little touch of feeling. "When
d'ye go back?"
"I don't know. I'll see y' again before I go. Goodbye." He stood
watching her slow, painful pace till she reached the well, where
Otto was standing with the horse. He stood watching them as they
moved out into the road and turned down toward the field. He felt
that she had sent him away; but still there was a look in her eyes
which was not altogether-
He gave it up in despair at last. He was not good at analyses of this
nature; he was used to plain, blunt expressions. There was a
woman's subtlety here quite beyond his reach.
He sauntered slowly off up the road after his talk with Julia. His
head was low on his breast; he was thinking as one who is about to
take a decided and important step.
He stopped at length, and turning, watched the girl moving along
in the deeps of the corn. Hardly a leaf was stirring; the untempered
sunlight fell in a burning flood upon the field; the grasshoppers
rose, snapped, buzzed, and fell; the locust uttered its dry,
heat-intensifving cry. The man lifted his head.
"It's a d-n shame!" he said, beginning rapidly to retrace his steps.
He stood leaning on the fence, awaiting the girl's coming very
much as she had waited his on the round he had made before
dinner. He grew impatient at the slow gait of the horse and
drummed on their rail while he whistled. Then he took off his hat
and dusted it nervously. As the horse got a little nearer he wiped
his face carefully, pushed his hat back on his head, and climbed
over the fence, where he stood with elbows on the middle rail as
the girl and boy and horse came to the end of the furrow.
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 | 8 |
9 |
10 |
11 |
12 |
13 |
14 |
15 |
16 |
17 |
18 |
19