Obrázky na stránke
PDF
ePub
[graphic]
[ocr errors]

"He he woke up and got out. Oh, I knew it, I knew it!"

[ocr errors]

And he does this every time?" "When I don't get him early enough." "But how did he get this knife ?"

"I don't know. I always go through the house and gather everything. I've got the ax and revolver in my room."

[ocr errors]

Suddenly I felt like choking the life out of this drunken brute. The children were whimpering in the bedroom, and Billie began to cry wildly :

"What will become of them?" she sobbed. "The superintendent said the next time it happened he'd lose his job-oh, what will ever become of them? I'll never forgive him, never, never!"

I turned on her almost fiercely. "Billie," I said, "you go straight to bed. I'm going to tend to your father.

She went, like a scolded child. I lugged him on to my cot and held him till he slept. Then I lit the lamp and sat down on the rocker in the bathrobe. Now and then I dozed. But dawn was not far off.

Morning was brilliant with sunshine when I awoke; wind was stirring trees outside the window, and fresh gusts blew into the room. I seemed to emerge from some dreadful nightmare, but Ludlow was still lying there, with handsome face discolored and snoring heavily. I slipped on my clothes and stole downstairs. And then the glory of the brisk autumn morning was revealed. Sunlight flooded the kitchen, shining on every bit of glass and tin, and in the warmth and glow tiny Walter sat in his nightie on a kitchen chair, his bare feet hanging, and Billie knelt and dressed Winnie. I exulted in the sight, felt like hugging all three.

Hello there!" I shouted.

Billie sent me a sparkling smile-we were good friends again.

"Well and good!" I yelped. "Here

goes!"

I stooped and kissed her, then kissed Winnie, then kissed Walter. Billie laughed ashamedly.

And then came fun. I pitched in and helped; we had breakfast, we bundled the children off to Mrs. Mason, a wise-hearted. neighbor, we washed dishes, "did" the rooms-and all the while Billie and I became great chums.

I wish you'd be our hired girl, Uncle Thad," she laughed.

[graphic]

So she let me go marketing with her. She went upstairs first, and locked her sleeping father in his room, and when she came down I saw again on her face a startling frigidity of hate.

"He'll sleep?" I asked.

"Yes," she breathed low-" but it doesn't matter-he's lost his job. I'm done with him."

It seemed unbelievable that this bud of loveliness had bitter roots. But the marketing in the fresh sunlight revived her-absorbing her as it absorbed me. Rough beauty was in the butcher-shop, with its rich reds, its slabs of meat, its clean smell, and the strong butcher, aproned, pencil over ear, deft with knives and saw, beautifully trimming off fat, or chopping off bones, or slicing raw beefand satisfied, knowing that his work was good. He and his busy customers, including Billie, seemed on the inside of Life; I watched them from the outside; they shared the great secret.

And I noticed that Grabie's store showed the autumn as vividly as the reddened woodlands; for in place of flimsy summer whiteness there were the heavy woolen grays, browns, and blacks of a colder season. Surely the trade of a man has its romance.

So we went the rounds, but as we started to trudge home I saw that all at once the brightness of the morning fell from Billie : she felt how tired she was, how despairing it was as if her home was a prison to which she was returning.

[merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small]

and Italians, Germans and native-bornbabies, too, who when they whimpered were fed at the mother's breast. And it was the most modern of miracles: the drudges of the kitchen and the sweated cogs of the mills, the undermost of people, who through all ages have been denied beauty and art and vivid careless joy, merged here their narrow lives with the broadcast splendor of the world. The great outdoors came into this narrow room, with spacious prairie and breaking sea; beauty came in the shapes of men and women making love; adventure brought its rough riders, its miners and sailors; and a girdle was put about the earth in thirty minThis was art democratic; this gave back to the people their withheld heritage of the rich ages; and who could doubt that the starved hearts of men and women were fed? For I heard the laughter and the weeping and the naïve exclamations that showed that these watchers had become the actors.

utes.

It was so with Billie, wonderfully so. She was a child among children.

"Oh, Uncle Thad," she exclaimed, "do you think those soldiers will come in time?" "Yes, I think so,” I said.

She clapped her hands when they didand I knew then that she was entering into a new life, that now the magic casements had been opened for her, that at the turn of a key she could leave children and father and the harsh problems of life and escape into enchanted regions of the spirit. At one stroke she regained childhood.

And swiftly then came a film that wrought on her profoundly-a deserter husband returning to his wife, and met, of course, with the divine forgiveness of the woman. Billie's hand went trembling into mine, and the cleansing tears fell.

"Oh," she whispered, "had she ought to have forgiven him?"

[ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]
[merged small][ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors]
[merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small]

Out we went, both tense and hushed, an undercurrent of struggle tugging us; out and over the bridge and along the riverside until we came to Costigan's living heart—a redand-black heart naked to the open air, and smoking and roaring with its whirl of humanity and machinery--the iron-mills on which Costigan lived. Over the railway switches we went to a little outbuilding of red brick. In the hall a boy stopped us.

"You'll have to wait. Mr. Ward is busy."

So we sat down, the thunder of the mills rolling through the air, and I saw that Billie was dreadfully nervous and afraid. She looked very small, very pale.

After a heart-sinking interval the boy motioned us in. I pressed Billie's hand and she preceded me. In the plain room and at a flat oak desk sat the superintendent-a determined-looking man of about thirty-five, with brown mustache and clear brown eyes. He indicated the chairs, and we sat down. "Yes?" he questioned.

Billie tried hard to speak bravely-but her voice shook.

"I—I'm Mr. Ludlow's daughter."

Ward pursed his lips, drew down his forehead....

"I'm sorry-there's nothing to do about Mr. Ludlow. I've been more than generous with him."

She met his glance.
"But-it was my fault."

He stared at her. "Your fault?"

"Yes," she said in a lovely eager way, "I brought him home from the saloon and I should have stayed up and watched him, but I went to bed, and he got out again." He looked at her, amazed.

"You did? Where's your mother?"
"She's dead."

"Are you the head of the house?"
"Yes."

"And there are some more children ?"
"Two little ones."

Ward turned to me:

"Isn't that man a brute ?"

Billie spoke tremulously :

[ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors][merged small]
[ocr errors]

Oh," cried Billie," the children and I will board with Mrs. Mason-she wants us to-and dad can."

She got no further, but doubled up, with long coarse sobs.

Ward himself lifted her and kissed her, and sped us on our way.

All along the riverside, her arm through mine, she wept at my side, a heartbroken child, and I longed to carry her off to some new country and away from it all. We crossed the bridge, turned up the street, entered the kitchen. Ludlow was sitting listlessly at the table.

[merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]
[graphic]
[merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small]

But sharply she seized my head, turned it, and kissed me straight, and for a moment she clung to me.

Wild autumn dogged me again with dust and leaves and homing birds, and again I was a mere tramp, again I was alone in the world-and again it seemed to me that I had to leave a bit of my bleeding heart behind, every time I went on-but my soul was richer, nevertheless, for Billie had been added unto it.

I

HOW I BOUGHT MY FARM

BY MARY RANKIN CRANSTON

HAD been a New York librarian for six years when the country life microbe found access to my brain, entered in, and took possession. Whether the germ was in the air and chose me as a likely subject, whether it was the call of Mother Nature, which comes to almost every person at one time or another, I do not know. Certainly nothing in my experience had paved the way to a longing for the country, because I had never spent more than a few weeks there in my life. Perhaps the little visitor found lodgment because I had begun to realize that I was wearing my life out, day by day, and working toward nothing, as so many business women do. Success had come to me; yes, but at such a price!

Each advance

in salary or position had brought corresponding responsibilities. The exacting obligations of business that made me Jenny-on-the-Spot from nine to five left me a lump of flesh and bones from five to nine. Nerves that were beginning to jangle out of tune sounded a warning note for the future. What preparation was I making for the time when I could work no longer; what plans for a home when I should be sorely in need of one?

I began to long for a quiet spot far away from the city's noise and strain-a place I could call my own-a little corner of the earth where I might make a home for myself and really live. Every business woman sees this will-o'-the-wisp dancing before her eyesa vision more enticing for her than if she had never crossed the threshold of her home to enter the workaday world.

The little country life microbe found me

indeed an easy mark.

The desire for green

fields, blue sky, and abundant sunshine became a perfect obsession. I simply had to have a little farm, go there and live.

I had saved six hundred dollars, earned by writing for magazines in my spare time; so I named the farm Pendidit, and started out to find it. First of all, it must consist of not less than five acres, with a house of some sort; then it must have near neighbors for protection, for, having no immediate family, I would live alone; it must be accessible to a good railway; and, lastly, but quite as important as anything else, it must be convenient to a good market, for it should be, as far as possible, a self-supporting home.

The search began one day in May, but it was six months later before I found Pendidit. In my ignorance I expected to be a fullfledged landowner by June, and to spend that summer upon my own domain. Alas! I soon discovered that no royal road led to the farm any more than to other things one wants in this world. It is all a slow matter of rejection and selection. It was so easy to find the farms I did not want, or could not afford to buy; I went to look at so many of them, it seemed as if mine ought to come to light through the process of elimination. weeks and months slipped by in fruitless search, winter threatened to postpone further effort until spring, when the farm appeared quite unexpectedly.

As

One day in October, 1906, my answer to a real estate dealer's advertisement in a New York paper took me, a little later, to New Brunswick, New Jersey, to look at one more

[graphic]

friend, with tired nerves to match my own, came to share Pendidit's pleasures-and inconveniences. Such good times as we had that summer, doing all of the housework, preparing the meals, and learning how to live without modern improvements!

I wanted a good-sized garden, but, wishing to spend no more money than was absolutely necessary, I cast about in my mind to devise a way of supplying our table with fresh vegetables at a minimum outlay. A neighbor, a farm-hand, had two fine cows, but only three acres of land, not enough for pasturage. I had two good hay-fields, but no stock, so I suggested an exchange of part of the hay and pasturage for 'his labor-an offer that was eagerly accepted. He prepared, planted, and worked the garden, gathered apples and pears, and did many an odd job for us all through the summer. The garden cost only the price of the seed, for no fertilizer was used, as I wanted to see just what the land would do without other encouragement than good tillage. We had fresh vegetables in abundance all through the season.

When crisp November winds reminded us that summer was past and we must turn our faces cityward, all four of us were beautifully sunburned, my friend and I thoroughly rested, and in fit condition to get back into business harness.

The rest and a better knowledge of the farm's needs and possibilities were the only gains that summer, for the novelty of adapting myself to a new environment was enough to keep me occupied as well as interested. Then little could be done with the place until I could become a permanent resident. It is true, the hay not exchanged for labor was sold in the field for fifteen dollars, fruit was sold to peddlers who came to the farm asking for it, but no systematic attempt was made to sell anything.

As that first summer of temporary residence drew to a close, the one fact that stood out more clearly than anything else was the impossibility of ever living all the year round in the little cottage, too old to justify repairs that would make it comfortable. The original plan must be altered. Instead of having freedom in my hand when Pendidit's mortgage was paid off and a small reserve fund saved up, I would need a modern house and a barn, with a larger reserve fund, before it would be wise to leave the city for good. A small house would cost at least fifteen hundred dollars; my surplus capital must be suf

« PredošláPokračovať »