I
I HAD been living with my grandfather for nearly three years when he
decided to move to Black Hawk. He and grandmother were getting old for the
heavy work of a farm, and as I was now thirteen they thought I ought to be
going to school. Accordingly our homestead was rented to “that good woman,
the Widow Steavens,” and her bachelor brother, and we bought Preacher
White’s house, at the north end of Black Hawk. This was the first town
house one passed driving in from the farm, a landmark which told country
people their long ride was over.
We were to move to Black Hawk in March, and as soon as grandfather had
fixed the date he let Jake and Otto know of his intention. Otto said he
would not be likely to find another place that suited him so well; that he
was tired of farming and thought he would go back to what he called the
“wild West.” Jake Marpole, lured by Otto’s stories of adventure, decided
to go with him. We did our best to dissuade Jake. He was so handicapped by
illiteracy and by his trusting disposition that he would be an easy prey
to sharpers. Grandmother begged him to stay among kindly, Christian
people, where he was known; but there was no reasoning with him. He wanted
to be a prospector. He thought a silver mine was waiting for him in
Colorado.
Jake and Otto served us to the last. They moved us into town, put down the
carpets in our new house, made shelves and cupboards for grandmother’s
kitchen, and seemed loath to leave us. But at last they went, without
warning. Those two fellows had been faithful to us through sun and storm,
had given us things that cannot be bought in any market in the world. With
me they had been like older brothers; had restrained their speech and
manners out of care for me, and given me so much good comradeship. Now
they got on the west-bound train one morning, in their Sunday clothes,
with their oilcloth valises—and I never saw them again. Months afterward
we got a card from Otto, saying that Jake had been down with mountain
fever, but now they were both working in the Yankee Girl mine, and were
doing well. I wrote to them at that address, but my letter was returned to
me, “unclaimed.” After that we never heard from them.
Black Hawk, the new world in which we had come to live, was a clean,
well-planted little prairie town, with white fences and good green yards
about the dwellings, wide, dusty streets, and shapely little trees growing
along the wooden sidewalks. In the center of the town there were two rows
of new brick “store” buildings, a brick schoolhouse, the courthouse, and
four white churches. Our own house looked down over the town, and from our
upstairs windows we could see the winding line of the river bluffs, two
miles south of us. That river was to be my compensation for the lost
freedom of the farming country.
We came to Black Hawk in March, and by the end of April we felt like town
people. Grandfather was a deacon in the new Baptist Church, grandmother
was busy with church suppers and missionary societies, and I was quite
another boy, or thought I was. Suddenly put down among boys of my own age,
I found I had a great deal to learn. Before the spring term of school was
over I could fight, play “keeps,” tease the little girls, and use
forbidden words as well as any boy in my class. I was restrained from
utter savagery only by the fact that Mrs. Harling, our nearest neighbor,
kept an eye on me, and if my behavior went beyond certain bounds I was not
permitted to come into her yard or to play with her jolly children.
We saw more of our country neighbors now than when we lived on the farm.
Our house was a convenient stopping-place for them. We had a big barn
where the farmers could put up their teams, and their women-folk more
often accompanied them, now that they could stay with us for dinner, and
rest and set their bonnets right before they went shopping. The more our
house was like a country hotel, the better I liked it. I was glad, when I
came home from school at noon, to see a farm wagon standing in the back
yard, and I was always ready to run downtown to get beefsteak or baker’s
bread for unexpected company. All through that first spring and summer I
kept hoping that Ambrosch would bring Ántonia and Yulka to see our new
house. I wanted to show them our red plush furniture, and the
trumpet-blowing cherubs the German paper-hanger had put on our parlor
ceiling.
When Ambrosch came to town, however, he came alone, and though he put his
horses in our barn, he would never stay for dinner, or tell us anything
about his mother and sisters. If we ran out and questioned him as he was
slipping through the yard, he would merely work his shoulders about in his
coat and say, “They all right, I guess.”
Mrs. Steavens, who now lived on our farm, grew as fond of Ántonia as we
had been, and always brought us news of her. All through the wheat season,
she told us, Ambrosch hired his sister out like a man, and she went from
farm to farm, binding sheaves or working with the thrashers. The farmers
liked her and were kind to her; said they would rather have her for a hand
than Ambrosch. When fall came she was to husk corn for the neighbors until
Christmas, as she had done the year before; but grandmother saved her from
this by getting her a place to work with our neighbors, the Harlings.
II
GRANDMOTHER often said that if she had to live in town, she thanked God
she lived next the Harlings. They had been farming people, like ourselves,
and their place was like a little farm, with a big barn and a garden, and
an orchard and grazing lots,—even a windmill. The Harlings were
Norwegians, and Mrs. Harling had lived in Christiania until she was ten
years old. Her husband was born in Minnesota. He was a grain merchant and
cattle buyer, and was generally considered the most enterprising business
man in our county. He controlled a line of grain elevators in the little
towns along the railroad to the west of us, and was away from home a great
deal. In his absence his wife was the head of the household.
Mrs. Harling was short and square and sturdy-looking, like her house.
Every inch of her was charged with an energy that made itself felt the
moment she entered a room. Her face was rosy and solid, with bright,
twinkling eyes and a stubborn little chin. She was quick to anger, quick
to laughter, and jolly from the depths of her soul. How well I remember
her laugh; it had in it the same sudden recognition that flashed into her
eyes, was a burst of humor, short and intelligent. Her rapid footsteps
shook her own floors, and she routed lassitude and indifference wherever
she came. She could not be negative or perfunctory about anything. Her
enthusiasm, and her violent likes and dislikes, asserted themselves in all
the every-day occupations of life. Wash-day was interesting, never dreary,
at the Harlings’. Preserving-time was a prolonged festival, and
house-cleaning was like a revolution. When Mrs. Harling made garden that
spring, we could feel the stir of her undertaking through the willow hedge
that separated our place from hers.
Three of the Harling children were near me in age. Charley, the only
son,—they had lost an older boy,—was sixteen; Julia, who was known as the
musical one, was fourteen when I was; and Sally, the tomboy with short
hair, was a year younger. She was nearly as strong as I, and uncannily
clever at all boys’ sports. Sally was a wild thing, with sunburned yellow
hair, bobbed about her ears, and a brown skin, for she never wore a hat.
She raced all over town on one roller skate, often cheated at “keeps,” but
was such a quick shot one could n’t catch her at it.
The grown-up daughter, Frances, was a very important person in our world.
She was her father’s chief clerk, and virtually managed his Black Hawk
office during his frequent absences. Because of her unusual business
ability, he was stern and exacting with her. He paid her a good salary,
but she had few holidays and never got away from her responsibilities.
Even on Sundays she went to the office to open the mail and read the
markets. With Charley, who was not interested in business, but was already
preparing for Annapolis, Mr. Harling was very indulgent; bought him guns
and tools and electric batteries, and never asked what he did with them.
Frances was dark, like her father, and quite as tall. In winter she wore a
sealskin coat and cap, and she and Mr. Harling used to walk home together
in the evening, talking about grain-cars and cattle, like two men.
Sometimes she came over to see grandfather after supper, and her visits
flattered him. More than once they put their wits together to rescue some
unfortunate farmer from the clutches of Wick Cutter, the Black Hawk
money-lender. Grandfather said Frances Harling was as good a judge of
credits as any banker in the county. The two or three men who had tried to
take advantage of her in a deal acquired celebrity by their defeat. She
knew every farmer for miles about; how much land he had under cultivation,
how many cattle he was feeding, what his liabilities were. Her interest in
these people was more than a business interest. She carried them all in
her mind as if they were characters in a book or a play.
When Frances drove out into the country on business, she would go miles
out of her way to call on some of the old people, or to see the women who
seldom got to town. She was quick at understanding the grandmothers who
spoke no English, and the most reticent and distrustful of them would tell
her their story without realizing they were doing so. She went to country
funerals and weddings in all weathers. A farmer’s daughter who was to be
married could count on a wedding present from Frances Harling.
In August the Harlings’ Danish cook had to leave them. Grandmother
entreated them to try Ántonia. She cornered Ambrosch the next time he came
to town, and pointed out to him that any connection with Christian Harling
would strengthen his credit and be of advantage to him. One Sunday Mrs.
Harling took the long ride out to the Shimerdas’ with Frances. She said
she wanted to see “what the girl came from” and to have a clear
understanding with her mother. I was in our yard when they came driving
home, just before sunset. They laughed and waved to me as they passed, and
I could see they were in great good humor. After supper, when grandfather
set off to church, grandmother and I took my short cut through the willow
hedge and went over to hear about the visit to the Shimerdas.
We found Mrs. Harling with Charley and Sally on the front porch, resting
after her hard drive. Julia was in the hammock—she was fond of repose—and
Frances was at the piano, playing without a light and talking to her
mother through the open window.
Mrs. Harling laughed when she saw us coming. “I expect you left your
dishes on the table to-night, Mrs. Burden,” she called. Frances shut the
piano and came out to join us.
They had liked Ántonia from their first glimpse of her; felt they knew
exactly what kind of girl she was. As for Mrs. Shimerda, they found her
very amusing. Mrs. Harling chuckled whenever she spoke of her. “I expect I
am more at home with that sort of bird than you are, Mrs. Burden. They’re
a pair, Ambrosch and that old woman!”
They had had a long argument with Ambrosch about Ántonia’s allowance for
clothes and pocket-money. It was his plan that every cent of his sister’s
wages should be paid over to him each month, and he would provide her with
such clothing as he thought necessary. When Mrs. Harling told him firmly
that she would keep fifty dollars a year for Ántonia’s own use, he
declared they wanted to take his sister to town and dress her up and make
a fool of her. Mrs. Harling gave us a lively account of Ambrosch’s
behavior throughout the interview; how he kept jumping up and putting on
his cap as if he were through with the whole business, and how his mother
tweaked his coat-tail and prompted him in Bohemian. Mrs. Harling finally
agreed to pay three dollars a week for Ántonia’s services—good wages in
those days—and to keep her in shoes. There had been hot dispute about the
shoes, Mrs. Shimerda finally saying persuasively that she would send Mrs.
Harling three fat geese every year to “make even.” Ambrosch was to bring
his sister to town next Saturday.
“She’ll be awkward and rough at first, like enough,” grandmother said
anxiously, “but unless she’s been spoiled by the hard life she’s led, she
has it in her to be a real helpful girl.”
Mrs. Harling laughed her quick, decided laugh. “Oh, I’m not worrying, Mrs.
Burden! I can bring something out of that girl. She’s barely seventeen,
not too old to learn new ways. She’s good-looking, too!” she added warmly.
Frances turned to grandmother. “Oh, yes, Mrs. Burden, you did n’t tell us
that! She was working in the garden when we got there, barefoot and
ragged. But she has such fine brown legs and arms, and splendid color in
her cheeks—like those big dark red plums.”
We were pleased at this praise. Grandmother spoke feelingly. “When she
first came to this country, Frances, and had that genteel old man to watch
over her, she was as pretty a girl as ever I saw. But, dear me, what a
life she’s led, out in the fields with those rough thrashers! Things would
have been very different with poor Ántonia if her father had lived.”
The Harlings begged us to tell them about Mr. Shimerda’s death and the big
snowstorm. By the time we saw grandfather coming home from church we had
told them pretty much all we knew of the Shimerdas.
“The girl will be happy here, and she’ll forget those things,” said Mrs.
Harling confidently, as we rose to take our leave.
III
ON Saturday Ambrosch drove up to the back gate, and Ántonia jumped down
from the wagon and ran into our kitchen just as she used to do. She was
wearing shoes and stockings, and was breathless and excited. She gave me a
playful shake by the shoulders. “You ain’t forget about me, Jim?”
Grandmother kissed her. “God bless you, child! Now you’ve come, you must
try to do right and be a credit to us.”
Ántonia looked eagerly about the house and admired everything. “Maybe I be
the kind of girl you like better, now I come to town,” she suggested
hopefully.
How good it was to have Ántonia near us again; to see her every day and
almost every night! Her greatest fault, Mrs. Harling found, was that she
so often stopped her work and fell to playing with the children. She would
race about the orchard with us, or take sides in our hay-fights in the
barn, or be the old bear that came down from the mountain and carried off
Nina. Tony learned English so quickly that by the time school began she
could speak as well as any of us.
I was jealous of Tony’s admiration for Charley Harling. Because he was
always first in his classes at school, and could mend the water-pipes or
the door-bell and take the clock to pieces, she seemed to think him a sort
of prince. Nothing that Charley wanted was too much trouble for her. She
loved to put up lunches for him when he went hunting, to mend his
ball-gloves and sew buttons on his shooting-coat, baked the kind of
nut-cake he liked, and fed his setter dog when he was away on trips with
his father. Ántonia had made herself cloth working-slippers out of Mr.
Harling’s old coats, and in these she went padding about after Charley,
fairly panting with eagerness to please him.
Next to Charley, I think she loved Nina best. Nina was only six, and she
was rather more complex than the other children. She was fanciful, had all
sorts of unspoken preferences, and was easily offended. At the slightest
disappointment or displeasure her velvety brown eyes filled with tears,
and she would lift her chin and walk silently away. If we ran after her
and tried to appease her, it did no good. She walked on unmollified. I
used to think that no eyes in the world could grow so large or hold so
many tears as Nina’s. Mrs. Harling and Ántonia invariably took her part.
We were never given a chance to explain. The charge was simply: “You have
made Nina cry. Now, Jimmy can go home, and Sally must get her arithmetic.”
I liked Nina, too; she was so quaint and unexpected, and her eyes were
lovely; but I often wanted to shake her.
We had jolly evenings at the Harlings when the father was away. If he was
at home, the children had to go to bed early, or they came over to my
house to play. Mr. Harling not only demanded a quiet house, he demanded
all his wife’s attention. He used to take her away to their room in the
west ell, and talk over his business with her all evening. Though we did
not realize it then, Mrs. Harling was our audience when we played, and we
always looked to her for suggestions. Nothing flattered one like her quick
laugh.
Mr. Harling had a desk in his bedroom, and his own easy-chair by the
window, in which no one else ever sat. On the nights when he was at home,
I could see his shadow on the blind, and it seemed to me an arrogant
shadow. Mrs. Harling paid no heed to any one else if he was there. Before
he went to bed she always got him a lunch of smoked salmon or anchovies
and beer. He kept an alcohol lamp in his room, and a French coffee-pot,
and his wife made coffee for him at any hour of the night he happened to
want it.
Most Black Hawk fathers had no personal habits outside their domestic
ones; they paid the bills, pushed the baby carriage after office hours,
moved the sprinkler about over the lawn, and took the family driving on
Sunday. Mr. Harling, therefore, seemed to me autocratic and imperial in
his ways. He walked, talked, put on his gloves, shook hands, like a man
who felt that he had power. He was not tall, but he carried his head so
haughtily that he looked a commanding figure, and there was something
daring and challenging in his eyes. I used to imagine that the “nobles” of
whom Ántonia was always talking probably looked very much like Christian
Harling, wore caped overcoats like his, and just such a glittering diamond
upon the little finger.
Except when the father was at home, the Harling house was never quiet.
Mrs. Harling and Nina and Ántonia made as much noise as a houseful of
children, and there was usually somebody at the piano. Julia was the only
one who was held down to regular hours of practicing, but they all played.
When Frances came home at noon, she played until dinner was ready. When
Sally got back from school, she sat down in her hat and coat and drummed
the plantation melodies that negro minstrel troupes brought to town. Even
Nina played the Swedish Wedding March.
Mrs. Harling had studied the piano under a good teacher, and somehow she
managed to practice every day. I soon learned that if I were sent over on
an errand and found Mrs. Harling at the piano, I must sit down and wait
quietly until she turned to me. I can see her at this moment; her short,
square person planted firmly on the stool, her little fat hands moving
quickly and neatly over the keys, her eyes fixed on the music with
intelligent concentration.
IV
“I won’t have none of your weevily wheat, and I won’t have none of your
barley,
But I’ll take a measure of fine white flour, to make a cake for
Charley.”
WE were singing rhymes to tease Ántonia while she was beating up one of
Charley’s favorite cakes in her big mixing-bowl. It was a crisp autumn
evening, just cold enough to make one glad to quit playing tag in the
yard, and retreat into the kitchen. We had begun to roll popcorn balls
with syrup when we heard a knock at the back door, and Tony dropped her
spoon and went to open it. A plump, fair-skinned girl was standing in the
doorway. She looked demure and pretty, and made a graceful picture in her
blue cashmere dress and little blue hat, with a plaid shawl drawn neatly
about her shoulders and a clumsy pocketbook in her hand.
“Hello, Tony. Don’t you know me?” she asked in a smooth, low voice,
looking in at us archly.
Ántonia gasped and stepped back. “Why, it’s Lena! Of course I did n’t know
you, so dressed up!”
Lena Lingard laughed, as if this pleased her. I had not recognized her for
a moment, either. I had never seen her before with a hat on her head—or
with shoes and stockings on her feet, for that matter. And here she was,
brushed and smoothed and dressed like a town girl, smiling at us with
perfect composure.
“Hello, Jim,” she said carelessly as she walked into the kitchen and
looked about her. “I’ve come to town to work, too, Tony.”
“Have you, now? Well, ain’t that funny!” Ántonia stood ill at ease, and
did n’t seem to know just what to do with her visitor.
The door was open into the dining-room, where Mrs. Harling sat crocheting
and Frances was reading. Frances asked Lena to come in and join them.
“You are Lena Lingard, are n’t you? I’ve been to see your mother, but you
were off herding cattle that day. Mama, this is Chris Lingard’s oldest
girl.”
Mrs. Harling dropped her worsted and examined the visitor with quick, keen
eyes. Lena was not at all disconcerted. She sat down in the chair Frances
pointed out, carefully arranging her pocketbook and gray cotton gloves on
her lap. We followed with our popcorn, but Ántonia hung back—said she had
to get her cake into the oven.
“So you have come to town,” said Mrs. Harling, her eyes still fixed on
Lena. “Where are you working?”
“For Mrs. Thomas, the dressmaker. She is going to teach me to sew. She
says I have quite a knack. I’m through with the farm. There ain’t any end
to the work on a farm, and always so much trouble happens. I’m going to be
a dressmaker.”
“Well, there have to be dressmakers. It’s a good trade. But I would n’t
run down the farm, if I were you,” said Mrs. Harling rather severely. “How
is your mother?”
“Oh, mother’s never very well; she has too much to do. She’d get away from
the farm, too, if she could. She was willing for me to come. After I learn
to do sewing, I can make money and help her.”
“See that you don’t forget to,” said Mrs. Harling skeptically, as she took
up her crocheting again and sent the hook in and out with nimble fingers.
“No, ’m, I won’t,” said Lena blandly. She took a few grains of the popcorn
we pressed upon her, eating them discreetly and taking care not to get her
fingers sticky.
Frances drew her chair up nearer to the visitor. “I thought you were going
to be married, Lena,” she said teasingly. “Did n’t I hear that Nick
Svendsen was rushing you pretty hard?”
Lena looked up with her curiously innocent smile. “He did go with me quite
a while. But his father made a fuss about it and said he would n’t give
Nick any land if he married me, so he’s going to marry Annie Iverson. I
would n’t like to be her; Nick’s awful sullen, and he’ll take it out on
her. He ain’t spoke to his father since he promised.”
Frances laughed. “And how do you feel about it?”
“I don’t want to marry Nick, or any other man,” Lena murmured. “I’ve seen
a good deal of married life, and I don’t care for it. I want to be so I
can help my mother and the children at home, and not have to ask lief of
anybody.”
“That’s right,” said Frances. “And Mrs. Thomas thinks you can learn
dressmaking?”
“Yes, ’m. I’ve always liked to sew, but I never had much to do with. Mrs.
Thomas makes lovely things for all the town ladies. Did you know Mrs.
Gardener is having a purple velvet made? The velvet came from Omaha. My,
but it’s lovely!” Lena sighed softly and stroked her cashmere folds. “Tony
knows I never did like out-of-door work,” she added.
Mrs. Harling glanced at her. “I expect you’ll learn to sew all right,
Lena, if you’ll only keep your head and not go gadding about to dances all
the time and neglect your work, the way some country girls do.”
“Yes, ’m. Tiny Soderball is coming to town, too. She’s going to work at
the Boys’ Home Hotel. She’ll see lots of strangers,” Lena added wistfully.
“Too many, like enough,” said Mrs. Harling. “I don’t think a hotel is a
good place for a girl; though I guess Mrs. Gardener keeps an eye on her
waitresses.”
Lena’s candid eyes, that always looked a little sleepy under their long
lashes, kept straying about the cheerful rooms with naïve admiration.
Presently she drew on her cotton gloves. “I guess I must be leaving,” she
said irresolutely.
Frances told her to come again, whenever she was lonesome or wanted advice
about anything. Lena replied that she did n’t believe she would ever get
lonesome in Black Hawk.
She lingered at the kitchen door and begged Ántonia to come and see her
often. “I’ve got a room of my own at Mrs. Thomas’s, with a carpet.”
Tony shuffled uneasily in her cloth slippers. “I’ll come sometime, but
Mrs. Harling don’t like to have me run much,” she said evasively.
“You can do what you please when you go out, can’t you?” Lena asked in a
guarded whisper. “Ain’t you crazy about town, Tony? I don’t care what
anybody says, I’m done with the farm!” She glanced back over her shoulder
toward the dining-room, where Mrs. Harling sat.
When Lena was gone, Frances asked Ántonia why she had n’t been a little
more cordial to her.
“I did n’t know if your mother would like her coming here,” said Ántonia,
looking troubled. “She was kind of talked about, out there.”
“Yes, I know. But mother won’t hold it against her if she behaves well
here. You need n’t say anything about that to the children. I guess Jim
has heard all that gossip?”
When I nodded, she pulled my hair and told me I knew too much, anyhow. We
were good friends, Frances and I.
I ran home to tell grandmother that Lena Lingard had come to town. We were
glad of it, for she had a hard life on the farm.
Lena lived in the Norwegian settlement west of Squaw Creek, and she used
to herd her father’s cattle in the open country between his place and the
Shimerdas’. Whenever we rode over in that direction we saw her out among
her cattle, bareheaded and barefooted, scantily dressed in tattered
clothing, always knitting as she watched her herd. Before I knew Lena, I
thought of her as something wild, that always lived on the prairie,
because I had never seen her under a roof. Her yellow hair was burned to a
ruddy thatch on her head; but her legs and arms, curiously enough, in
spite of constant exposure to the sun, kept a miraculous whiteness which
somehow made her seem more undressed than other girls who went scantily
clad. The first time I stopped to talk to her, I was astonished at her
soft voice and easy, gentle ways. The girls out there usually got rough
and mannish after they went to herding. But Lena asked Jake and me to get
off our horses and stay awhile, and behaved exactly as if she were in a
house and were accustomed to having visitors. She was not embarrassed by
her ragged clothes, and treated us as if we were old acquaintances. Even
then I noticed the unusual color of her eyes—a shade of deep violet—and
their soft, confiding expression.
Chris Lingard was not a very successful farmer, and he had a large family.
Lena was always knitting stockings for little brothers and sisters, and
even the Norwegian women, who disapproved of her, admitted that she was a
good daughter to her mother. As Tony said, she had been talked about. She
was accused of making Ole Benson lose the little sense he had—and that at
an age when she should still have been in pinafores.
[Illustration: Lena Lingard knitting stockings]
Ole lived in a leaky dugout somewhere at the edge of the settlement. He
was fat and lazy and discouraged, and bad luck had become a habit with
him. After he had had every other kind of misfortune, his wife, “Crazy
Mary,” tried to set a neighbor’s barn on fire, and was sent to the asylum
at Lincoln. She was kept there for a few months, then escaped and walked
all the way home, nearly two hundred miles, traveling by night and hiding
in barns and haystacks by day. When she got back to the Norwegian
settlement, her poor feet were as hard as hoofs. She promised to be good,
and was allowed to stay at home—though every one realized she was as crazy
as ever, and she still ran about barefooted through the snow, telling her
domestic troubles to her neighbors.
Not long after Mary came back from the asylum, I heard a young Dane, who
was helping us to thrash, tell Jake and Otto that Chris Lingard’s oldest
girl had put Ole Benson out of his head, until he had no more sense than
his crazy wife. When Ole was cultivating his corn that summer, he used to
get discouraged in the field, tie up his team, and wander off to wherever
Lena Lingard was herding. There he would sit down on the draw-side and
help her watch her cattle. All the settlement was talking about it. The
Norwegian preacher’s wife went to Lena and told her she ought not to allow
this; she begged Lena to come to church on Sundays. Lena said she had n’t
a dress in the world any less ragged than the one on her back. Then the
minister’s wife went through her old trunks and found some things she had
worn before her marriage.
The next Sunday Lena appeared at church, a little late, with her hair done
up neatly on her head, like a young woman, wearing shoes and stockings,
and the new dress, which she had made over for herself very becomingly.
The congregation stared at her. Until that morning no one—unless it were
Ole—had realized how pretty she was, or that she was growing up. The
swelling lines of her figure had been hidden under the shapeless rags she
wore in the fields. After the last hymn had been sung, and the
congregation was dismissed, Ole slipped out to the hitch-bar and lifted
Lena on her horse. That, in itself, was shocking; a married man was not
expected to do such things. But it was nothing to the scene that followed.
Crazy Mary darted out from the group of women at the church door, and ran
down the road after Lena, shouting horrible threats.
“Look out, you Lena Lingard, look out! I’ll come over with a corn-knife
one day and trim some of that shape off you. Then you won’t sail round so
fine, making eyes at the men! …”
The Norwegian women did n’t know where to look. They were formal
housewives, most of them, with a severe sense of decorum. But Lena Lingard
only laughed her lazy, good-natured laugh and rode on, gazing back over
her shoulder at Ole’s infuriated wife.
The time came, however, when Lena did n’t laugh. More than once Crazy Mary
chased her across the prairie and round and round the Shimerdas’
cornfield. Lena never told her father; perhaps she was ashamed; perhaps
she was more afraid of his anger than of the corn-knife. I was at the
Shimerdas’ one afternoon when Lena came bounding through the red grass as
fast as her white legs could carry her. She ran straight into the house
and hid in Ántonia’s feather-bed. Mary was not far behind; she came right
up to the door and made us feel how sharp her blade was, showing us very
graphically just what she meant to do to Lena. Mrs. Shimerda, leaning out
of the window, enjoyed the situation keenly, and was sorry when Ántonia
sent Mary away, mollified by an apronful of bottle-tomatoes. Lena came out
from Tony’s room behind the kitchen, very pink from the heat of the
feathers, but otherwise calm. She begged Ántonia and me to go with her,
and help get her cattle together; they were scattered and might be gorging
themselves in somebody’s cornfield.
“Maybe you lose a steer and learn not to make somethings with your eyes at
married men,” Mrs. Shimerda told her hectoringly.
Lena only smiled her sleepy smile. “I never made anything to him with my
eyes. I can’t help it if he hangs around, and I can’t order him off. It
ain’t my prairie.”
V
AFTER Lena came to Black Hawk I often met her downtown, where she would be
matching sewing silk or buying “findings” for Mrs. Thomas. If I happened
to walk home with her, she told me all about the dresses she was helping
to make, or about what she saw and heard when she was with Tiny Soderball
at the hotel on Saturday nights.
The Boys’ Home was the best hotel on our branch of the Burlington, and all
the commercial travelers in that territory tried to get into Black Hawk
for Sunday. They used to assemble in the parlor after supper on Saturday
nights. Marshall Field’s man, Anson Kirkpatrick, played the piano and sang
all the latest sentimental songs. After Tiny had helped the cook wash the
dishes, she and Lena sat on the other side of the double doors between the
parlor and the dining-room, listening to the music and giggling at the
jokes and stories. Lena often said she hoped I would be a traveling man
when I grew up. They had a gay life of it; nothing to do but ride about on
trains all day and go to theaters when they were in big cities. Behind the
hotel there was an old store building, where the salesmen opened their big
trunks and spread out their samples on the counters. The Black Hawk
merchants went to look at these things and order goods, and Mrs. Thomas,
though she was “retail trade,” was permitted to see them and to “get
ideas.” They were all generous, these traveling men; they gave Tiny
Soderball handkerchiefs and gloves and ribbons and striped stockings, and
so many bottles of perfume and cakes of scented soap that she bestowed
some of them on Lena.
One afternoon in the week before Christmas I came upon Lena and her funny,
square-headed little brother Chris, standing before the drug-store, gazing
in at the wax dolls and blocks and Noah’s arks arranged in the frosty show
window. The boy had come to town with a neighbor to do his Christmas
shopping, for he had money of his own this year. He was only twelve, but
that winter he had got the job of sweeping out the Norwegian church and
making the fire in it every Sunday morning. A cold job it must have been,
too!
We went into Duckford’s dry-goods store, and Chris unwrapped all his
presents and showed them to me—something for each of the six younger than
himself, even a rubber pig for the baby. Lena had given him one of Tiny
Soderball’s bottles of perfume for his mother, and he thought he would get
some handkerchiefs to go with it. They were cheap, and he had n’t much
money left. We found a tableful of handkerchiefs spread out for view at
Duckford’s. Chris wanted those with initial letters in the corner, because
he had never seen any before. He studied them seriously, while Lena looked
over his shoulder, telling him she thought the red letters would hold
their color best. He seemed so perplexed that I thought perhaps he had n’t
enough money, after all. Presently he said gravely,—
“Sister, you know mother’s name is Berthe. I don’t know if I ought to get
B for Berthe, or M for Mother.”
Lena patted his bristly head. “I’d get the B, Chrissy. It will please her
for you to think about her name. Nobody ever calls her by it now.”
That satisfied him. His face cleared at once, and he took three reds and
three blues. When the neighbor came in to say that it was time to start,
Lena wound Chris’s comforter about his neck and turned up his jacket
collar—he had no overcoat—and we watched him climb into the wagon and
start on his long, cold drive. As we walked together up the windy street,
Lena wiped her eyes with the back of her woolen glove. “I get awful
homesick for them, all the same,” she murmured, as if she were answering
some remembered reproach.
VI
WINTER comes down savagely over a little town on the prairie. The wind
that sweeps in from the open country strips away all the leafy screens
that hide one yard from another in summer, and the houses seem to draw
closer together. The roofs, that looked so far away across the green
tree-tops, now stare you in the face, and they are so much uglier than
when their angles were softened by vines and shrubs.
In the morning, when I was fighting my way to school against the wind, I
could n’t see anything but the road in front of me; but in the late
afternoon, when I was coming home, the town looked bleak and desolate to
me. The pale, cold light of the winter sunset did not beautify—it was like
the light of truth itself. When the smoky clouds hung low in the west and
the red sun went down behind them, leaving a pink flush on the snowy roofs
and the blue drifts, then the wind sprang up afresh, with a kind of bitter
song, as if it said: “This is reality, whether you like it or not. All
those frivolities of summer, the light and shadow, the living mask of
green that trembled over everything, they were lies, and this is what was
underneath. This is the truth.” It was as if we were being punished for
loving the loveliness of summer.
If I loitered on the playground after school, or went to the post-office
for the mail and lingered to hear the gossip about the cigar-stand, it
would be growing dark by the time I came home. The sun was gone; the
frozen streets stretched long and blue before me; the lights were shining
pale in kitchen windows, and I could smell the suppers cooking as I
passed. Few people were abroad, and each one of them was hurrying toward a
fire. The glowing stoves in the houses were like magnets. When one passed
an old man, one could see nothing of his face but a red nose sticking out
between a frosted beard and a long plush cap. The young men capered along
with their hands in their pockets, and sometimes tried a slide on the icy
sidewalk. The children, in their bright hoods and comforters, never
walked, but always ran from the moment they left their door, beating their
mittens against their sides. When I got as far as the Methodist Church, I
was about halfway home. I can remember how glad I was when there happened
to be a light in the church, and the painted glass window shone out at us
as we came along the frozen street. In the winter bleakness a hunger for
color came over people, like the Laplander’s craving for fats and sugar.
Without knowing why, we used to linger on the sidewalk outside the church
when the lamps were lighted early for choir practice or prayer-meeting,
shivering and talking until our feet were like lumps of ice. The crude
reds and greens and blues of that colored glass held us there.
On winter nights, the lights in the Harlings’ windows drew me like the
painted glass. Inside that warm, roomy house there was color, too. After
supper I used to catch up my cap, stick my hands in my pockets, and dive
through the willow hedge as if witches were after me. Of course, if Mr.
Harling was at home, if his shadow stood out on the blind of the west
room, I did not go in, but turned and walked home by the long way, through
the street, wondering what book I should read as I sat down with the two
old people.
Such disappointments only gave greater zest to the nights when we acted
charades, or had a costume ball in the back parlor, with Sally always
dressed like a boy. Frances taught us to dance that winter, and she said,
from the first lesson, that Ántonia would make the best dancer among us.
On Saturday nights, Mrs. Harling used to play the old operas for
us,—“Martha,” “Norma,” “Rigoletto,”—telling us the story while she played.
Every Saturday night was like a party. The parlor, the back parlor, and
the dining-room were warm and brightly lighted, with comfortable chairs
and sofas, and gay pictures on the walls. One always felt at ease there.
Ántonia brought her sewing and sat with us—she was already beginning to
make pretty clothes for herself. After the long winter evenings on the
prairie, with Ambrosch’s sullen silences and her mother’s complaints, the
Harlings’ house seemed, as she said, “like Heaven” to her. She was never
too tired to make taffy or chocolate cookies for us. If Sally whispered in
her ear, or Charley gave her three winks, Tony would rush into the kitchen
and build a fire in the range on which she had already cooked three meals
that day.
While we sat in the kitchen waiting for the cookies to bake or the taffy
to cool, Nina used to coax Ántonia to tell her stories—about the calf that
broke its leg, or how Yulka saved her little turkeys from drowning in the
freshet, or about old Christmases and weddings in Bohemia. Nina
interpreted the stories about the crêche fancifully, and in spite of our
derision she cherished a belief that Christ was born in Bohemia a short
time before the Shimerdas left that country. We all liked Tony’s stories.
Her voice had a peculiarly engaging quality; it was deep, a little husky,
and one always heard the breath vibrating behind it. Everything she said
seemed to come right out of her heart.
One evening when we were picking out kernels for walnut taffy, Tony told
us a new story.
“Mrs. Harling, did you ever hear about what happened up in the Norwegian
settlement last summer, when I was thrashing there? We were at Iversons’,
and I was driving one of the grain wagons.”
Mrs. Harling came out and sat down among us. “Could you throw the wheat
into the bin yourself, Tony?” She knew what heavy work it was.
“Yes, mam, I did. I could shovel just as fast as that fat Andern boy that
drove the other wagon. One day it was just awful hot. When we got back to
the field from dinner, we took things kind of easy. The men put in the
horses and got the machine going, and Ole Iverson was up on the deck,
cutting bands. I was sitting against a straw stack, trying to get some
shade. My wagon was n’t going out first, and somehow I felt the heat awful
that day. The sun was so hot like it was going to burn the world up. After
a while I see a man coming across the stubble, and when he got close I see
it was a tramp. His toes stuck out of his shoes, and he had n’t shaved for
a long while, and his eyes was awful red and wild, like he had some
sickness. He comes right up and begins to talk like he knows me already.
He says: ‘The ponds in this country is done got so low a man could n’t
drownd himself in one of ’em.’
“I told him nobody wanted to drownd themselves, but if we did n’t have
rain soon we’d have to pump water for the cattle.
“‘Oh, cattle,’ he says, ‘you’ll all take care of your cattle! Ain’t you
got no beer here?’ I told him he’d have to go to the Bohemians for beer;
the Norwegians did n’t have none when they thrashed. ‘My God!’ he says,
‘so it’s Norwegians now, is it? I thought this was Americy.’
“Then he goes up to the machine and yells out to Ole Iverson, ‘Hello,
partner, let me up there. I can cut bands, and I’m tired of trampin’. I
won’t go no farther.’
“I tried to make signs to Ole, ’cause I thought that man was crazy and
might get the machine stopped up. But Ole, he was glad to get down out of
the sun and chaff—it gets down your neck and sticks to you something awful
when it’s hot like that. So Ole jumped down and crawled under one of the
wagons for shade, and the tramp got on the machine. He cut bands all right
for a few minutes, and then, Mrs. Harling, he waved his hand to me and
jumped head-first right into the thrashing machine after the wheat.
“I begun to scream, and the men run to stop the horses, but the belt had
sucked him down, and by the time they got her stopped he was all beat and
cut to pieces. He was wedged in so tight it was a hard job to get him out,
and the machine ain’t never worked right since.”
“Was he clear dead, Tony?” we cried.
“Was he dead? Well, I guess so! There, now, Nina’s all upset. We won’t
talk about it. Don’t you cry, Nina. No old tramp won’t get you while
Tony’s here.”
Mrs. Harling spoke up sternly. “Stop crying, Nina, or I’ll always send you
upstairs when Ántonia tells us about the country. Did they never find out
where he came from, Ántonia?”
“Never, mam. He had n’t been seen nowhere except in a little town they
call Conway. He tried to get beer there, but there was n’t any saloon.
Maybe he came in on a freight, but the brakeman had n’t seen him. They
could n’t find no letters nor nothing on him; nothing but an old penknife
in his pocket and the wishbone of a chicken wrapped up in a piece of
paper, and some poetry.”
“Some poetry?” we exclaimed.
“I remember,” said Frances. “It was ‘The Old Oaken Bucket,’ cut out of a
newspaper and nearly worn out. Ole Iverson brought it into the office and
showed it to me.”
“Now, was n’t that strange, Miss Frances?” Tony asked thoughtfully. “What
would anybody want to kill themselves in summer for? In thrashing time,
too! It’s nice everywhere then.”
“So it is, Ántonia,” said Mrs. Harling heartily. “Maybe I’ll go home and
help you thrash next summer. Is n’t that taffy nearly ready to eat? I’ve
been smelling it a long while.”
There was a basic harmony between Ántonia and her mistress. They had
strong, independent natures, both of them. They knew what they liked, and
were not always trying to imitate other people. They loved children and
animals and music, and rough play and digging in the earth. They liked to
prepare rich, hearty food and to see people eat it; to make up soft white
beds and to see youngsters asleep in them. They ridiculed conceited people
and were quick to help unfortunate ones. Deep down in each of them there
was a kind of hearty joviality, a relish of life, not over-delicate, but
very invigorating. I never tried to define it, but I was distinctly
conscious of it. I could not imagine Ántonia’s living for a week in any
other house in Black Hawk than the Harlings’.
VII
WINTER lies too long in country towns; hangs on until it is stale and
shabby, old and sullen. On the farm the weather was the great fact, and
men’s affairs went on underneath it, as the streams creep under the ice.
But in Black Hawk the scene of human life was spread out shrunken and
pinched, frozen down to the bare stalk.
Through January and February I went to the river with the Harlings on
clear nights, and we skated up to the big island and made bonfires on the
frozen sand. But by March the ice was rough and choppy, and the snow on
the river bluffs was gray and mournful-looking. I was tired of school,
tired of winter clothes, of the rutted streets, of the dirty drifts and
the piles of cinders that had lain in the yards so long. There was only
one break in the dreary monotony of that month; when Blind d’Arnault, the
negro pianist, came to town. He gave a concert at the Opera House on
Monday night, and he and his manager spent Saturday and Sunday at our
comfortable hotel. Mrs. Harling had known d’Arnault for years. She told
Ántonia she had better go to see Tiny that Saturday evening, as there
would certainly be music at the Boys’ Home.
Saturday night after supper I ran downtown to the hotel and slipped
quietly into the parlor. The chairs and sofas were already occupied, and
the air smelled pleasantly of cigar smoke. The parlor had once been two
rooms, and the floor was sway-backed where the partition had been cut
away. The wind from without made waves in the long carpet. A coal stove
glowed at either end of the room, and the grand piano in the middle stood
open.
There was an atmosphere of unusual freedom about the house that night, for
Mrs. Gardener had gone to Omaha for a week. Johnnie had been having drinks
with the guests until he was rather absent-minded. It was Mrs. Gardener
who ran the business and looked after everything. Her husband stood at the
desk and welcomed incoming travelers. He was a popular fellow, but no
manager.
Mrs. Gardener was admittedly the best-dressed woman in Black Hawk, drove
the best horse, and had a smart trap and a little white-and-gold sleigh.
She seemed indifferent to her possessions, was not half so solicitous
about them as her friends were. She was tall, dark, severe, with something
Indian-like in the rigid immobility of her face. Her manner was cold, and
she talked little. Guests felt that they were receiving, not conferring, a
favor when they stayed at her house. Even the smartest traveling men were
flattered when Mrs. Gardener stopped to chat with them for a moment. The
patrons of the hotel were divided into two classes; those who had seen
Mrs. Gardener’s diamonds, and those who had not.
When I stole into the parlor Anson Kirkpatrick, Marshall Field’s man, was
at the piano, playing airs from a musical comedy then running in Chicago.
He was a dapper little Irishman, very vain, homely as a monkey, with
friends everywhere, and a sweetheart in every port, like a sailor. I did
not know all the men who were sitting about, but I recognized a furniture
salesman from Kansas City, a drug man, and Willy O’Reilly, who traveled
for a jewelry house and sold musical instruments. The talk was all about
good and bad hotels, actors and actresses and musical prodigies. I learned
that Mrs. Gardener had gone to Omaha to hear Booth and Barrett, who were
to play there next week, and that Mary Anderson was having a great success
in “A Winter’s Tale,” in London.
The door from the office opened, and Johnnie Gardener came in, directing
Blind d’Arnault,—he would never consent to be led. He was a heavy, bulky
mulatto, on short legs, and he came tapping the floor in front of him with
his gold-headed cane. His yellow face was lifted in the light, with a show
of white teeth, all grinning, and his shrunken, papery eyelids lay
motionless over his blind eyes.
“Good evening, gentlemen. No ladies here? Good-evening, gentlemen. We
going to have a little music? Some of you gentlemen going to play for me
this evening?” It was the soft, amiable negro voice, like those I
remembered from early childhood, with the note of docile subservience in
it. He had the negro head, too; almost no head at all; nothing behind the
ears but folds of neck under close-clipped wool. He would have been
repulsive if his face had not been so kindly and happy. It was the
happiest face I had seen since I left Virginia.
He felt his way directly to the piano. The moment he sat down, I noticed
the nervous infirmity of which Mrs. Harling had told me. When he was
sitting, or standing still, he swayed back and forth incessantly, like a
rocking toy. At the piano, he swayed in time to the music, and when he was
not playing, his body kept up this motion, like an empty mill grinding on.
He found the pedals and tried them, ran his yellow hands up and down the
keys a few times, tinkling off scales, then turned to the company.
“She seems all right, gentlemen. Nothing happened to her since the last
time I was here. Mrs. Gardener, she always has this piano tuned up before
I come. Now, gentlemen, I expect you’ve all got grand voices. Seems like
we might have some good old plantation songs to-night.”
The men gathered round him, as he began to play “My Old Kentucky Home.”
They sang one negro melody after another, while the mulatto sat rocking
himself, his head thrown back, his yellow face lifted, its shriveled
eyelids never fluttering.
He was born in the Far South, on the d’Arnault plantation, where the
spirit if not the fact of slavery persisted. When he was three weeks old
he had an illness which left him totally blind. As soon as he was old
enough to sit up alone and toddle about, another affliction, the nervous
motion of his body, became apparent. His mother, a buxom young negro wench
who was laundress for the d’Arnaults, concluded that her blind baby was
“not right” in his head, and she was ashamed of him. She loved him
devotedly, but he was so ugly, with his sunken eyes and his “fidgets,”
that she hid him away from people. All the dainties she brought down from
the “Big House” were for the blind child, and she beat and cuffed her
other children whenever she found them teasing him or trying to get his
chicken-bone away from him. He began to talk early, remembered everything
he heard, and his mammy said he “was n’t all wrong.” She named him Samson,
because he was blind, but on the plantation he was known as “yellow
Martha’s simple child.” He was docile and obedient, but when he was six
years old he began to run away from home, always taking the same
direction. He felt his way through the lilacs, along the boxwood hedge, up
to the south wing of the “Big House,” where Miss Nellie d’Arnault
practiced the piano every morning. This angered his mother more than
anything else he could have done; she was so ashamed of his ugliness that
she could n’t bear to have white folks see him. Whenever she caught him
slipping away from the cabin, she whipped him unmercifully, and told him
what dreadful things old Mr. d’Arnault would do to him if he ever found
him near the “Big House.” But the next time Samson had a chance, he ran
away again. If Miss d’Arnault stopped practicing for a moment and went
toward the window, she saw this hideous little pickaninny, dressed in an
old piece of sacking, standing in the open space between the hollyhock
rows, his body rocking automatically, his blind face lifted to the sun and
wearing an expression of idiotic rapture. Often she was tempted to tell
Martha that the child must be kept at home, but somehow the memory of his
foolish, happy face deterred her. She remembered that his sense of hearing
was nearly all he had,—though it did not occur to her that he might have
more of it than other children.
One day Samson was standing thus while Miss Nellie was playing her lesson
to her music-master. The windows were open. He heard them get up from the
piano, talk a little while, and then leave the room. He heard the door
close after them. He crept up to the front windows and stuck his head in:
there was no one there. He could always detect the presence of any one in
a room. He put one foot over the window sill and straddled it. His mother
had told him over and over how his master would give him to the big
mastiff if he ever found him “meddling.” Samson had got too near the
mastiff’s kennel once, and had felt his terrible breath in his face. He
thought about that, but he pulled in his other foot.
Through the dark he found his way to the Thing, to its mouth. He touched
it softly, and it answered softly, kindly. He shivered and stood still.
Then he began to feel it all over, ran his finger tips along the slippery
sides, embraced the carved legs, tried to get some conception of its shape
and size, of the space it occupied in primeval night. It was cold and
hard, and like nothing else in his black universe. He went back to its
mouth, began at one end of the keyboard and felt his way down into the
mellow thunder, as far as he could go. He seemed to know that it must be
done with the fingers, not with the fists or the feet. He approached this
highly artificial instrument through a mere instinct, and coupled himself
to it, as if he knew it was to piece him out and make a whole creature of
him. After he had tried over all the sounds, he began to finger out
passages from things Miss Nellie had been practicing, passages that were
already his, that lay under the bones of his pinched, conical little
skull, definite as animal desires. The door opened; Miss Nellie and her
music-master stood behind it, but blind Samson, who was so sensitive to
presences, did not know they were there. He was feeling out the pattern
that lay all ready-made on the big and little keys. When he paused for a
moment, because the sound was wrong and he wanted another, Miss Nellie
spoke softly. He whirled about in a spasm of terror, leaped forward in the
dark, struck his head on the open window, and fell screaming and bleeding
to the floor. He had what his mother called a fit. The doctor came and
gave him opium.
When Samson was well again, his young mistress led him back to the piano.
Several teachers experimented with him. They found he had absolute pitch,
and a remarkable memory. As a very young child he could repeat, after a
fashion, any composition that was played for him. No matter how many wrong
notes he struck, he never lost the intention of a passage, he brought the
substance of it across by irregular and astonishing means. He wore his
teachers out. He could never learn like other people, never acquired any
finish. He was always a negro prodigy who played barbarously and
wonderfully. As piano playing, it was perhaps abominable, but as music it
was something real, vitalized by a sense of rhythm that was stronger than
his other physical senses,—that not only filled his dark mind, but worried
his body incessantly. To hear him, to watch him, was to see a negro
enjoying himself as only a negro can. It was as if all the agreeable
sensations possible to creatures of flesh and blood were heaped up on
those black and white keys, and he were gloating over them and trickling
them through his yellow fingers.
In the middle of a crashing waltz d’Arnault suddenly began to play softly,
and, turning to one of the men who stood behind him, whispered, “Somebody
dancing in there.” He jerked his bullet head toward the dining-room. “I
hear little feet,—girls, I ’spect.”
Anson Kirkpatrick mounted a chair and peeped over the transom. Springing
down, he wrenched open the doors and ran out into the dining-room. Tiny
and Lena, Ántonia and Mary Dusak, were waltzing in the middle of the
floor. They separated and fled toward the kitchen, giggling.
Kirkpatrick caught Tiny by the elbows. “What’s the matter with you girls?
Dancing out here by yourselves, when there’s a roomful of lonesome men on
the other side of the partition! Introduce me to your friends, Tiny.”
The girls, still laughing, were trying to escape. Tiny looked alarmed.
“Mrs. Gardener would n’t like it,” she protested. “She’d be awful mad if
you was to come out here and dance with us.”
“Mrs. Gardener’s in Omaha, girl. Now, you’re Lena, are you?—and you’re
Tony and you’re Mary. Have I got you all straight?”
O’Reilly and the others began to pile the chairs on the tables. Johnnie
Gardener ran in from the office.
“Easy, boys, easy!” he entreated them. “You’ll wake the cook, and there’ll
be the devil to pay for me. She won’t hear the music, but she’ll be down
the minute anything’s moved in the dining-room.”
“Oh, what do you care, Johnnie? Fire the cook and wire Molly to bring
another. Come along, nobody’ll tell tales.”
Johnnie shook his head. “’S a fact, boys,” he said confidentially. “If I
take a drink in Black Hawk, Molly knows it in Omaha!”
His guests laughed and slapped him on the shoulder. “Oh, we’ll make it all
right with Molly. Get your back up, Johnnie.”
Molly was Mrs. Gardener’s name, of course. “Molly Bawn” was painted in
large blue letters on the glossy white side of the hotel bus, and “Molly”
was engraved inside Johnnie’s ring and on his watch-case—doubtless on his
heart, too. He was an affectionate little man, and he thought his wife a
wonderful woman; he knew that without her he would hardly be more than a
clerk in some other man’s hotel.
At a word from Kirkpatrick, d’Arnault spread himself out over the piano,
and began to draw the dance music out of it, while the perspiration shone
on his short wool and on his uplifted face. He looked like some glistening
African god of pleasure, full of strong, savage blood. Whenever the
dancers paused to change partners or to catch breath, he would boom out
softly, “Who’s that goin’ back on me? One of these city gentlemen, I bet!
Now, you girls, you ain’t goin’ to let that floor get cold?”
Ántonia seemed frightened at first, and kept looking questioningly at Lena
and Tiny over Willy O’Reilly’s shoulder. Tiny Soderball was trim and
slender, with lively little feet and pretty ankles—she wore her dresses
very short. She was quicker in speech, lighter in movement and manner than
the other girls. Mary Dusak was broad and brown of countenance, slightly
marked by smallpox, but handsome for all that. She had beautiful chestnut
hair, coils of it; her forehead was low and smooth, and her commanding
dark eyes regarded the world indifferently and fearlessly. She looked bold
and resourceful and unscrupulous, and she was all of these. They were
handsome girls, had the fresh color of their country up-bringing, and in
their eyes that brilliancy which is called,—by no metaphor, alas!—“the
light of youth.”
D’Arnault played until his manager came and shut the piano. Before he left
us, he showed us his gold watch which struck the hours, and a topaz ring,
given him by some Russian nobleman who delighted in negro melodies, and
had heard d’Arnault play in New Orleans. At last he tapped his way
upstairs, after bowing to everybody, docile and happy. I walked home with
Ántonia. We were so excited that we dreaded to go to bed. We lingered a
long while at the Harlings’ gate, whispering in the cold until the
restlessness was slowly chilled out of us.
VIII
THE Harling children and I were never happier, never felt more contented
and secure, than in the weeks of spring which broke that long winter. We
were out all day in the thin sunshine, helping Mrs. Harling and Tony break
the ground and plant the garden, dig around the orchard trees, tie up
vines and clip the hedges. Every morning, before I was up, I could hear
Tony singing in the garden rows. After the apple and cherry trees broke
into bloom, we ran about under them, hunting for the new nests the birds
were building, throwing clods at each other, and playing hide-and-seek
with Nina. Yet the summer which was to change everything was coming nearer
every day. When boys and girls are growing up, life can’t stand still, not
even in the quietest of country towns; and they have to grow up, whether
they will or no. That is what their elders are always forgetting.
It must have been in June, for Mrs. Harling and Ántonia were preserving
cherries, when I stopped one morning to tell them that a dancing pavilion
had come to town. I had seen two drays hauling the canvas and painted
poles up from the depot.
That afternoon three cheerful-looking Italians strolled about Black Hawk,
looking at everything, and with them was a dark, stout woman who wore a
long gold watch chain about her neck and carried a black lace parasol.
They seemed especially interested in children and vacant lots. When I
overtook them and stopped to say a word, I found them affable and
confiding. They told me they worked in Kansas City in the winter, and in
summer they went out among the farming towns with their tent and taught
dancing. When business fell off in one place, they moved on to another.
The dancing pavilion was put up near the Danish laundry, on a vacant lot
surrounded by tall, arched cottonwood trees. It was very much like a
merry-go-round tent, with open sides and gay flags flying from the poles.
Before the week was over, all the ambitious mothers were sending their
children to the afternoon dancing class. At three o’clock one met little
girls in white dresses and little boys in the round-collared shirts of the
time, hurrying along the sidewalk on their way to the tent. Mrs. Vanni
received them at the entrance, always dressed in lavender with a great
deal of black lace, her important watch chain lying on her bosom. She wore
her hair on the top of her head, built up in a black tower, with red coral
combs. When she smiled, she showed two rows of strong, crooked yellow
teeth. She taught the little children herself, and her husband, the
harpist, taught the older ones.
Often the mothers brought their fancy-work and sat on the shady side of
the tent during the lesson. The popcorn man wheeled his glass wagon under
the big cottonwood by the door, and lounged in the sun, sure of a good
trade when the dancing was over. Mr. Jensen, the Danish laundryman, used
to bring a chair from his porch and sit out in the grass plot. Some ragged
little boys from the depot sold pop and iced lemonade under a white
umbrella at the corner, and made faces at the spruce youngsters who came
to dance. That vacant lot soon became the most cheerful place in town.
Even on the hottest afternoons the cottonwoods made a rustling shade, and
the air smelled of popcorn and melted butter, and Bouncing Bets wilting in
the sun. Those hardy flowers had run away from the laundryman’s garden,
and the grass in the middle of the lot was pink with them.
The Vannis kept exemplary order, and closed every evening at the hour
suggested by the City Council. When Mrs. Vanni gave the signal, and the
harp struck up “Home, Sweet Home,” all Black Hawk knew it was ten o’clock.
You could set your watch by that tune as confidently as by the Round House
whistle.
At last there was something to do in those long, empty summer evenings,
when the married people sat like images on their front porches, and the
boys and girls tramped and tramped the board sidewalks—northward to the
edge of the open prairie, south to the depot, then back again to the
post-office, the ice-cream parlor, the butcher shop. Now there was a place
where the girls could wear their new dresses, and where one could laugh
aloud without being reproved by the ensuing silence. That silence seemed
to ooze out of the ground, to hang under the foliage of the black maple
trees with the bats and shadows. Now it was broken by light-hearted
sounds. First the deep purring of Mr. Vanni’s harp came in silvery ripples
through the blackness of the dusty-smelling night; then the violins fell
in—one of them was almost like a flute. They called so archly, so
seductively, that our feet hurried toward the tent of themselves. Why had
n’t we had a tent before?
Dancing became popular now, just as roller skating had been the summer
before. The Progressive Euchre Club arranged with the Vannis for the
exclusive use of the floor on Tuesday and Friday nights. At other times
any one could dance who paid his money and was orderly; the railroad men,
the Round House mechanics, the delivery boys, the iceman, the farmhands
who lived near enough to ride into town after their day’s work was over.
I never missed a Saturday night dance. The tent was open until midnight
then. The country boys came in from farms eight and ten miles away, and
all the country girls were on the floor,—Ántonia and Lena and Tiny, and
the Danish laundry girls and their friends. I was not the only boy who
found these dances gayer than the others. The young men who belonged to
the Progressive Euchre Club used to drop in late and risk a tiff with
their sweethearts and general condemnation for a waltz with “the hired
girls.”
IX
THERE was a curious social situation in Black Hawk. All the young men felt
the attraction of the fine, well-set-up country girls who had come to town
to earn a living, and, in nearly every case, to help the father struggle
out of debt, or to make it possible for the younger children of the family
to go to school.
Those girls had grown up in the first bitter-hard times, and had got
little schooling themselves. But the younger brothers and sisters, for
whom they made such sacrifices and who have had “advantages,” never seem
to me, when I meet them now, half as interesting or as well educated. The
older girls, who helped to break up the wild sod, learned so much from
life, from poverty, from their mothers and grandmothers; they had all,
like Ántonia, been early awakened and made observant by coming at a tender
age from an old country to a new. I can remember a score of these country
girls who were in service in Black Hawk during the few years I lived
there, and I can remember something unusual and engaging about each of
them. Physically they were almost a race apart, and out-of-door work had
given them a vigor which, when they got over their first shyness on coming
to town, developed into a positive carriage and freedom of movement, and
made them conspicuous among Black Hawk women.