First contact with the people disappointed Robert. In the work of moving
in he had to do with people who work at day's work, and the fault was his
more than theirs. He forgot that they did not consider their work
degrading. They resented his bossing. The drayman grew rebellious.
"Look a-here, my Christian friend, if you'll go 'long in the house and
let us alone it'll be a good job. We know what we're about."
This was not pleasant, and he did not perceive the trouble. In the same
way he got foul of the carpenter and the man who ploughed his garden.
Some way his tone was not right. His voice was cold and distant. He
generally found that the men knew better than he what was to be done and
how to do it; and sometimes he felt like apologizing, but their attitude
had changed till apology was impossible.
He had repelled their friendly advances because he considered them
(without meaning to do so) as workmen, and not as neighbors. They
reported, therefore, that he was cranky and rode a high horse.
"He thinks he's a little tin god on wheels," the drayman said.
"Oh, he'll get over that," said McLane. "I knew the boy's folks years
ago--tiptop folks, too. He ain't well, and that makes him a little
crusty."
"That's the trouble--he thinks he's an upper crust," said Jim Cullen, the
drayman.
At the end of ten days they were settled, and nothing remained to do but
plan a little garden and--get well. The boys, with their unspoiled
natures, were able to melt into the ranks of the village-boy life at
once, with no more friction than was indicated by a couple of
rough-and-tumble fights. They were sturdy fellows, like their mother, and
these fights gave them high rank.
Robert got along in a dull, smooth way with his neighbors. He was too
formal with them. He met them only at the meat-shop and the post-office.
They nodded genially, and said, "Got settled yet?" And he replied,
"Quite comfortable, thank you." They felt his coldness. Conversation
halted when he came near, and made him feel that he was the subject of
their talk. As a matter of fact, he generally was. He was a source of
great speculation with them. Some of them had gone so far as to bet he
wouldn't live a year. They all seemed grotesque to him, so work-scarred
and bent and hairy. Even the men whose names he had known from childhood
were queer to him. They seemed shy and distant, too, not like his ideas
of them.
To Mate they were almost caricatures. "What makes them look so--so 'way
behind the times, Robert?"
"Well, I suppose they are," said Robert. "Life in these coulies goes on
rather slower than in Chicago. Then there are a great many Welsh and
Germans and Norwegians, living 'way up the coulies, and they're the ones
you notice. They're not all so." He could be generous toward them in
general; it was in special cases where he failed to know them.
They had been there nearly two weeks without meeting any of them
socially, and Robert was beginning to change his opinion about them.
"They let us severely alone," he was saying one night to his wife.
"It's very odd. I wonder what I'd better do, Robert. I don't know the
etiquette of these small towns. I never lived in one before, you know.
Whether I ought to call first--and, good gracious, who'll I call on? I'm
in the dark."
"So am I, to tell the truth. I haven't lived in one of these small towns
since I was a lad. I have a faint recollection that introductions were
absolutely necessary. They have an etiquette which is as binding as that
of McAllister's Four Hundred, but what it is I don't know."
"Well, we'll wait."
"The boys are perfectly at home," said Robert, with a little emphasis on
boys, which was the first indication of his disappointment. The people he
had failed to reach.
There came a knock on the door that startled them both. "Come in," said
Robert, in a nervous shout.
"Land sakes! did I scare ye? Seem so, way ye yelled," said a high-keyed
nasal voice, and a tall woman came in, followed by an equally stalwart
man.
"How d'e do, Mrs. Folsom? My wife, Mr. Folsom."
Folsom's voice was lost in the bustle of getting settled, but Mrs.
Folsom's voice rose above the clamor. "I was tellin' him it was about
time we got neighborly. I never let anybody come to town a week without
callin' on 'em. It does a body a heap o' good to see a face outside the
family once in a while, specially in a new place. How do you like up here
on the hill?"
"Very much. The view is so fine."
"Yes, I s'pose it is. Still, it ain't my notion. I don't like to climb
hills well enough. Still, I've heard of people buildin' just for the
view. It's all in taste, as the old woman said that kissed the cow."
There was an element of shrewdness and self-analysis in Mrs. Folsom which
saved her from being grotesque. She knew she was queer to Mrs. Bloom, but
she did not resent it. She was still young in form and face, but her
teeth were gone, and, like so many of her neighbors, she was too poor to
replace them from the dentist's. She wore a decent calico dress and a
shawl and hat.
As she talked her eyes took in every article of furniture in the room,
and every little piece of fancy-work and bric-à-brac. In fact, she
reproduced the pattern of one of the tidies within two days.
Folsom sat dumbly in his chair. Robert, who met him now as a neighbor for
the first time, tried to talk with him, but failed, and turned himself
gladly to Mrs. Folsom, who delighted him with her vigorous phrases.
"Oh, we're a-movin', though you wouldn't think it. This town is filled
with a lot of old skinflints. Close ain't no name for 'em. Jest ask
Folsom thar about 'em. He's been buildin' their houses for 'em. Still, I
suppose they say the same thing o' me," she added, with a touch of
humor which always saved her. She used a man's phrases. "We're always
ready to tax some other feller, but we kick like mules when the tax falls
on us," she went on. "My land! the fight we've had to git sidewalks in
this town!"
"You should be mayor."
"That's what I tell Folsom. Takes a woman to clean things up. Well, I
must run along. Thought I'd jest call in and see how you all was. Come
down when ye kin."
"Thank you, I will."