She’s getting fatter, though. Guess the climate out in California must
agree with her.'
'Is she as fat as I am?'
'Just about, I guess.'
'Did she look as if they were well off? What kind of a dress did she
have on?'
'I don’t know. Good enough, I guess. I didn’t see anything wrong with
it. While she ran into the store to get this picture and write this note
to you, old Jackson was bragging to me about how well Elmer had done. He
said Min had married about as well as any girl round here.'
'Did he say anything about whether she ever paints any?'
'Paints? What ever are you talking about, Em?'
She had bent over her sewing again, and he could not see her face as she
answered, 'When Minnie and I were little girls, I reckon we never had
any secrets from each other, at all. I know I talked about things to her
I never could have told anybody else. She was that way with me, too.
Well, she always said she wanted to paint, and I wanted to play. She was
always copying every picture she saw. I remember she did one picture
called A yard of Roses, from a calendar. It was so good you couldn’t
have told the difference. Don’t you remember the time she took the prize
at the art exhibit at the country fair, with a picture she had copied,
called The Storm? One of the judges said it just made him shiver to
look at it, it was so real.'
'Come to think of it, I believe I do recollect something about Min
having queer notions. I know us boys used to think she was stuck-up.
What did she mean about the vow and about this picture being of you, by
her?'
For a moment there was only the little click of her thimble against the
needle. Then she said, 'I guess I can’t make it clear to you, Jake.
Minnie always did have her own way of putting things. We had lots of
fancies, as we used to call them. But I suppose she was thinking about
our old dreams. If they’d come true, she might have painted me, sitting
like that.'
'It don’t look much like you, even when you was young,' was the reply of
the man, not given to 'fancies'; 'but what is it about the vow?'
'I don’t know,' said his wife shortly.
It was one of the few lies she had ever told her husband. Just why,
having told him so much, she couldn’t tell him that Minnie Jackson and
she had promised each other that, no matter what happened, nothing
should keep them from realizing their ambitions, and that each year they
would give a report to each other on their birthday, she could not have
said. But suddenly her throat contracted and she could not see the patch
on the coat.
'How this lamp does smoke!' she said, as she brushed her hand over her
eyes.
'Well,' yawned her husband, 'I guess most folks, leastwise most girls,
have silly notions when they’re young. Who’d ever think to see you now,
that you ever had any such ideas? You’re a good wife for a farmer, Em.
There ain’t a better woman anywhere, than you.'
It was one of the few times in all the years of their marriage that he
had praised her. Jacob Black had never been one to question life or to
marvel at its wonders. For him, it held no wonders. The spell of life
had caught him when he was young. He had 'fallen in love' with Emmeline
Mead and he had married her. She had borne him eight children. Five of
them had lived. If Jacob Black had thought about it at all, which he did
not, he would have said that was the way life went. One was young. Then
one grew old. When one was young, one married, and probably there were
children.
The wing of romance had brushed him so lightly in its passing, that at
the time it had brought to him no yearning for an unknown rapture, no
wonder at the mystery of life. After twenty-one years, if he had given
it any thought whatsoever, he would have said that their marriage 'had
turned out well.' Em had been a good wife; she had risen at daylight and
worked until after dark. She wasn’t foolish about money. She never went
to town unless there was something to take her there. She went to
church, of course, and when it was her turn, she entertained the Ladies'
Aid. Such recreations were to be expected. Yes, Em had been a good wife.
But then, he had been a good husband. He never drank. He was a church
member. He always hired a woman to do the housework, for two weeks, when
there was a new baby. He let Em have the butter and chicken money.
The clock struck nine.
'I’m going to bed,' he said, 'there’s lots to do to-morrow. Nearly
through your mending?'
'No. Anyhow, I guess I’ll wait up for John and Victoria to come home.'
'Better not, if you’re tired. John may get in early, but probably Vic
will be mooning along.'
'What?' she cried. 'What do you mean by that, Jake Black?'
'Say, Em, are you blind? Can’t you see there’s something between her and
Jim? Haven’t you noticed that it isn’t John he comes to see now? Haven’t
you seen how Vic spruces up nights when, he’s coming over?'
The woman dropped her sewing in her lap. The needle ran into her thumb.
Mechanically, she pulled it out. She was so intent, looking at him,
trying to grasp his meaning, that she did not notice the drops of blood
which fell on her mending. When she spoke, it was with difficulty.
'O Jake, it can’t be. It just can’t be.'
'Why can’t it?'
'Why, he’s not good enough for Victoria.'
'Not good enough? Why, what’s the matter with Jim? I never heard a word
against him and I’ve known him ever since he was a little shaver. He’s
steady as can be, and a hard worker.'
'I know all that. I wasn’t thinking about such things. I was thinking
about--oh, about--other things.'
'Other things? Well, what on earth is the matter with the other things?
Forman’s place is as good as any hereabouts, and it’s clear, and only
three children to be divided among. There’s money in the bank, too, I’ll
bet.'
'But Victoria is so young, Jake. Why, she’s just a girl!'
'She’s old as you was, when we got married, Em.'
He went into the kitchen for another drink of water. When he came
through the room, he bent over to pick up his shoes.
'Say, Em,' he said, 'you surely don’t mean what you’ve been saying, do
you, about Jim not being good enough for Vic? 'Cause it ain’t likely
that she’ll ever get another chance as good.'
She did not answer. The man looking at her, the man who had lived with
her for more than twenty years, did not know that a sudden rage against
life was in her heart. He did not know that the lost dreams of her
youth were crying out in her against the treachery of life. He did not
know that the bandage which the years had mercifully bound across her
eyes had fallen away, and that she was seeing the everlasting tragedy of
the conflict between dreams and life. He did not know that, in that
moment, she was facing the supreme sorrow of motherhood in the knowledge
that the beloved child cannot be spared the disillusions of the years.
He only knew that she was worried.
'Don’t you be giving Vic any of your queer notions,' he said, in a voice
which was almost harsh.
Jacob Black was an easygoing man. But he had set his heart on seeing his
daughter the wife of Jim Forman. Did not the Forman farm join his on the
southeast?
Until she heard him walking around in their bedroom overhead, she sewed
on. Then she laid down her work. She picked up the picture. It was
small, but she held it clutched in both hands, as though it were heavy.
It would not have mattered to her if she had known that critics of art
scoffed at the picture. To her it was more than a masterpiece; it was a
miracle. Had she not felt like the pictured saint, when she had sat at
the organ, years ago? She, too, had raised her eyes in just that way;
and if actual roses had not fallen on the keys, the mystical ones of
hopes too fragile for words, and beauties only dreamed of, had fallen
all about her. There was a time when she had played the little organ in
church. How her soul had risen on the chords which she struck for the
Doxology, which always came just before the benediction! Even after
Victoria was born, she had played the organ for a time. Then the babies
came fast, and when one has milking to do and dishes to wash and one’s
fingers are needle-pricked, it is hard to find the keys. Also, when one
works from daylight till dark, one wants only rest. There is a sleep too
deep for dreams.
It was years since Emmeline Black had dreamed except in the terms of her
motherhood. For herself, the dream had gone. She did not rebel. She
accepted. It was the way of life with women like her. She would not have
said her life was hard. Jacob Black had been a good husband to her. Only
a fool, having married a poor farmer, could expect that the dreams of a
romantic girl would ever come true. Once she had expected it, of course.
That was when Jacob Black had seemed as a prince to Emmeline Mead. She
had felt the wing of romance as it brushed past her. But that was long
ago. She did not like the routine of her life. But neither did she hate
it. For herself, it had come to seem the natural, the expected thing.
But for Victoria--
Her dreams had not all gone when Victoria was born. That first year of
her marriage, it had seemed like playing at being a housekeeper to do
the work for Jacob and herself. She had loved her garden, and often,
just because she had loved to be with him and because she loved the
smell of the earth and the growing things which came from it, she had
gone into the fields with her husband. Then, when the year was almost
gone, her baby was born. She had loved the other children as they came,
and she had grieved for the girls and the boy who had died; but Victoria
was the child of her dreams. The other children had been named for aunts
and uncles and grandfathers, and so had satisfied family pride. But that
first baby had been named for a queen.
None of the boys cared for music. They 'took after' the Black family.
But Victoria, so Emmeline felt, belonged to her. She had always been
able to play by ear, and her voice was sweet and true. The
butter-and-egg money for a long time had gone for music lessons for
Victoria. When the girl was twelve, her mother had begun a secret fund.
Every week she pilfered a few pennies from her own small income and put
them away. Some time Victoria was to go to the city and have lessons
from the best teacher there. For five years she did not purchase a thing
for herself to wear, except now and then a dress pattern of calico. That
was no real sacrifice to her. The hard thing was to deny pretty clothes
to Victoria.
Then a year of sickness came. She tried to forget the little sum of
money hidden away. Surely their father could pay the bills. If she had
spent the butter-and-egg money, as he had thought she had done, he would
have had to pay them alone. But when the doctor said that Henry must be
taken to the county seat for an operation, there was no thought of
questioning her duty. Her husband had been surprised and relieved when
she gave him her little hoard. It was another proof that he had a good
wife, and one who was not foolish about money.
At last, her sewing was finished. She went into the kitchen and began to
set the bread. But her thoughts were not on it. She was thinking of
Emmeline Mead and her dreams, and how they had failed her. She had
expected Victoria Black to redeem those dreams. And now Victoria was to
marry and go the same hard way toward drab middle-age. She heard some
one step on the front porch. There was a low murmur of voices for a
moment and a little half-stifled laugh. Then the door opened.
'Mother, is that you?' came something which sounded half-whisper,
half-laugh from the door.
She raised her eyes from the bread-pan. She smiled. But she could not
speak. It seemed as if the fingers of some world-large hand had fastened
around her heart. To her Victoria had always been the most beautiful,
the most wonderful being, on earth. But she had never seen this Victoria
before. The girl was standing in the door--eyes shining, lips
trembling, her slim young body swaying as if to some hidden harmony.
Then she leaped across the kitchen, and threw her strong arms round her
mother.
'I’m so glad you’re up and alone! O mother, I had to see you to-night. I
couldn’t have gone to bed without talking to you. I was thinking it was
a blessed thing father always sleeps so hard, for I could tip-toe in and
get you and he’d never know the difference.' She stifled a little laugh
and went on, 'Come on, outdoors. It is too lovely to stay inside.' She
drew her mother, who had not yet spoken, through the door. 'I guess,
mother,' she said, as if suddenly shy when the confines of the kitchen
were left behind for the star-lighted night, 'that you know what it is,
don’t you?'
For answer, Emmeline Black sobbed.
'Don’t, mother, don’t. You mustn’t mind. Just think how near home I’ll
be! Isn’t that something to be glad about?'
Her mother nodded her head as she wiped her eyes on her gingham apron.
'I wondered if you saw it coming?' the girlish voice went on. 'You never
let on, and the kids never teased me any. So I thought perhaps you told
'em not to. I haven’t felt like being teased about Jim, some way. It’s
been too wonderful, you know.'
Not until that moment did Emmeline Black acknowledge the defeat of her
dreams. Wonderful! To love and be loved by Jim Forman, of whom the most
that could be said was that he was steady and a hard worker, and that
there were only two other children to share his father’s farm!
'Don’t cry, mother,' implored Victoria, 'though I know why you’re doing
it. I feel like crying, too, only something won’t let me cry to-night. I
guess I’m just too happy ever to cry again.'
Still her mother had not spoken. She had stopped crying and stood
twisting her apron with nervous fingers.
'Mother,' said Victoria, suddenly, 'you like Jim, don’t you?'
She said it as if the possibility of any one’s not liking Jim was
preposterous. But, nevertheless, there was anxiety in her voice.
Her mother nodded her head.
'Then why aren’t you really glad? I thought you would be, mother.'
There was no resisting that appeal in Victoria’s voice. Never in her
life had she failed her daughter. Was she to fail her in this hour?
'You seem like a little girl to me, Victoria,' she found voice to say,
at last. 'I guess all mothers feel like this when their daughters tell
them they are going to leave them. I reckon I never understood until
just now, why my mother acted just like she did when I told her your
father and I were going to be married.'
Victoria laughed joyously. 'I’m not a little girl. I’m a woman. And,
mother, Jim is so good. He wants to be married right away. He says he
can’t bear to think of waiting. But he said I was to tell you that if
you couldn’t spare me for a while, it would be all right.'
There was pride in her lover’s generosity. But deeper than that was the
woman’s pride in the knowledge that he could not 'bear to think of
waiting.'
'It isn’t that I can’t spare you, dear,' said her mother. 'But, O
Victoria, I’d wanted to have you go off and study to be a fine musician.
I’ve dreamed of it ever since you were born.'
'But I couldn’t go even if it wasn’t for Jim. Where would we ever get
the money? Anyway, mother, Jim is going to buy me a piano. What do you
think of that?'
'A piano?'
'Yes. He has been saving money for it for years. He says I play too well
for an old-fashioned organ. And on our wedding trip we’re going to
Chicago, and we’re going to pick it out there, and we’re going to a
concert and to a theatre and to some show that has music in it.'
In spite of herself, Emmeline Black was dazzled. In all her life she
never had gone to the city except in her dreams. Until that far-off day
of magic when Victoria should be a fine musician, she had never hoped to
replace the squeaky little organ with a piano.
'He says he has planned it ever since he loved me, and that has been
nearly always. He says he can just see me sitting at the piano playing
to him nights when he comes in from work. I guess, mother, we all have
to have our dreams. And now Jim’s and mine are coming true.'
'Have you always dreamed things, too?' asked her mother.
It did not seem strange to her that she and this beloved child of hers
had never talked about the things which were in their hearts until this
night. Mothers and daughters were like that. But there was a secret
jealousy in knowing that they would not have found the way to those
hidden things if it had not been for Jim Forman. It was he, and not she,
who had unlocked the secrets of Victoria’s heart.
'Why, yes, of course, mother. Don’t you remember how you used to ask me
what was the matter when I was a little girl, and would go off sometimes
by myself and sit and look across the fields? I didn’t know how to tell
you. I didn’t know just what it was. And don’t you remember asking me
sometimes if I was sick or if somebody had hurt my feelings, because
you’d see tears in my eyes? I’d tell you no. But some way I couldn’t
tell you it was because the red of the sunset or the apple trees in
blossom or the crescent moon, or whatever it happened to be, made me
feel so queer inside.' She laughed, but there was a hint of a sob in her
voice. 'Isn’t it strange, mother, that we don’t seem able to tell folks
any of these things? I couldn’t tell you even now, except that I always
had an idea you’d felt just the same way, yourself. I seemed to know I
got the dreams from you.'
'Hush,' warned her mother. 'There’s some one coming. Oh, John, is that
you?'
'Yes. Why don’t you two go to bed?' answered the boy. 'It’s getting
late, and there’s lot to do to-morrow.'
'It is bed-time, I guess,' said his mother. 'Run along, Victoria. And
sweet dreams.'
She cautioned John and his sister not to wake the others, as they
prepared for bed. She walked into the house. She tried the clock. Yes,
Jake had wound it. She locked the door. She folded her mending neatly
and put it away. She placed Minnie Jackson’s letter in the drawer of the
table. She took the picture of St. Cecilia and balanced it on the little
shelf above the organ, where had been a china vase with dried grasses in
it. She stood off and looked at it critically. She decided that was the
very place for the picture. She looked around the room for a place to
put the vase, and made room for it on top of the little pine book-case.
She walked to the table and hunted in the drawer until she found pen and
ink and a piece of ruled paper.
'Dear Minnie,' she wrote in her cramped, old-fashioned hand, 'I was so
glad to get your note and the picture. I want to thank you for it. Can’t
you come out right away and spend the day with me? I have so much to
tell you, and I want that you should tell me all about yourself, too.
You see I’m keeping the vow, just as you did, although we had forgotten
it for so long. Isn’t it strange, Minnie, about things? Here I’d thought
for years that my dreams were gone. And now it seems Victoria had them,
all the time. It’s a secret yet, but I want to tell you, and I know she
won’t mind, that Victoria is going to be married. You know Jim Forman,
don’t you? Anyway, you knew Cy Forman and Milly Davis, and he’s their
eldest child. I hope Victoria can keep the dreams for herself better
than I did. Perhaps she can. She’s going to have things easier than I
have, I hope. But if she can’t, surely she can keep them until she has a
child to give them to, just as I gave mine to her. I never thought of it
before, but it seems to me to-night that perhaps that is the surest way
there is of having our dreams last. I don’t see how I’m going to stand
it to see my girl growing fat and tired and old from hard work, like
I’ve done. But there is another side to it. You’re a mother, too,
Minnie, so I guess I don’t need to tell you that all the music and all
the pictures in the world wouldn’t make up to me, now, for my children.
We didn’t know that when we had our "fancies," did we? But we know it
now. Come out soon, Minnie. We’ll have so much to talk about, and I want
that you and Victoria should know each other.'
She folded the paper and slipped it into an envelope which she addressed
and stamped. Then she blew out the light.
A YEAR IN A COAL-MINE
BY JOSEPH HUSBAND
TEN days after my graduation from Harvard I took my place as an
unskilled workman in one of the largest of the great soft-coal mines
that lie in the Middle West. It was with no thought of writing my
experiences that I chose my occupation, but with the intention of
learning by actual work the 'operating end' of the great industry, in
the hope that such practical knowledge as I should acquire would fit me
to follow the business successfully. That this mine was operated in
direct opposition to the local organization of union labor, and had won
considerable notoriety by successfully mining coal in spite of the most
active hostility, gave an added interest to the work. The physical
conditions of the mine were the most perfect that modern engineering has
devised: the 'workings' were entirely electrified; the latest inventions
in coal-mining machinery were everywhere employed, and every precaution
for the safety of the men was followed beyond the letter of the law.
I
It was half-past six on a July morning when the day-shift began
streaming out of the wash-house: some four hundred men,--white, black,
and of perhaps twenty-eight nationalities,--dressed in their tattered,
black, and greasy mine-clothes. The long stream wound out of the
wash-house door, past the power-house where the two big generators that
feed the arteries of the great mine all day long with its motive power
were screaming in a high, shrill rhythm of sound,--past the tall
skeleton structure of the tipple-tower, from which the light morning
breeze blew black clouds of coal-dust as it eddied around the skeleton
of structural iron-work,--to a small house at the mine-mouth, sheathed
in corrugated iron, where the broken line formed a column, and the men,
one by one, passed through a gate by a small window and gave their
numbers to a red-faced man, who checked down in a great book the men who
were entering the mine.
From the window we passed along to a little inclosure directly above the
mouth of the main hoisting-shaft. Sheer above it the black tower of the
tipple pointed up into the hot, blue morning sky; and the dull, dry heat
of the flat Illinois country seemed to sink down around it. But from the
square, black mouth of the shaft a strong, steady blast of cool air
struck the faces of the men who stood at the head of the little column
waiting for the next hoist. On the one side of the shaft-mouth, long
lines of empty railroad cars stretched out beyond into the flat country,
each waiting its turn to be filled some time during the day with coal
that would come pouring down over the great screens in the tipple; and
on the other side of the shaft-mouth, under the seamed roof of the
building where the checker wrote down the numbers of the day-shift, sat
the hoisting engineer--a scrawny, hard-faced man with a mine-cap pushed
back from his forehead.
Beside him was the great drum on which the long steel cables that lifted
and lowered the hoisting-cage were rapidly unwinding, and in his hand he
held a lever by which he controlled the ascent or descent of the 'cage.'
The first cage had been lowered, and as I watched him and the dial
before him, I saw his hand follow his eye, and as the white arrow passed
the 300-foot level, the hand drew back a notch and the long, lithe wire
began to uncoil more slowly. Three hundred and fifty feet,--and another
notch,--and as the arrow reached near the 400-foot mark, his foot came
down hard on the brake, and a minute later a bell at his elbow sounded
the signal of the safe arrival of the hoist. A minute, and another
signal; and then, releasing his foot from the brake, and pulling another
lever toward him, the drums, reversed, began to rewind; and as the arrow
flew backwards, I realized that the cage was nearing the top--the cage
on which a minute later I was to make my descent as a 'loader' into one
of the largest, and perhaps most famous, of the vast soft-coal mines
that lie in our Middle States.
As the thin cables streamed upward and over the sheave-wheels above the
shaft and down to the reeling-drums, I looked at the men about me and
felt a sudden mortification at the clean blue of my overalls, and the
bright polish on my pick and shovel. A roar at the shaft-mouth, the
grind of the drums as the brakes shot in, and the cage lifted itself
suddenly from the shaft.