* * * * *
At the creeping edge of dawn I woke from a dream with a jerk as I slid
down an endless black abyss. The abyss was my bed's edge and I found
myself on the floor. When I went to rise again, I had to clutch things
to stand up. I was so weak I sat on the bed breathing heavily. I tumbled
backward into bed again and lay in a daze during which dream-objects
mixed with reality and my room walked full of people from all the books
I had read--all to evaporate as my father's face grew, from a cluster of
white foreheads and myriads of eyes, into _him_.
"Johnnie, wake up ... are you sick?"
"Please go away from me and let me alone." I turned my face to the wall
in loathing.
"I'll call a doctor."
* * * * *
The doctor came. He felt my pulse. Put something under my tongue.
Whispered my father in a room, apart. Left.
My father returned, dejected, yet trying to act light and merry.
"What did the doctor say?" I forced myself to ask of him.
"To be frank, Johnnie ... you're old enough to learn the truth ... he
thinks you're taken down with consumption."
"That's what my mother died of."
My father shuddered and put his face down in his hands. I felt a little
sorry for him, then.
"Well you've got to go West now ... and work on a farm ... or
something."
* * * * *
I began to get ready for my trip West. Surely enough, I had consumption,
if symptoms counted ... pains under the shoulder blades ... spitting of
blood ... night-sweats....
But my mind was quickened: I read Morley's _History of English
Literature_ ... Chaucer all through ... Spenser ... even Gower's
_Confessio Amantis_ and Lydgate's ballads ... my recent discovery of
Chatterton having made me Old English-mad.
As I read the life of young Chatterton I envied him, his fame and his
early death and more than ever, I too desired to die young.
* * * * *
The week before I was to set out my father calmly discovered to me that
he intended I should work on a farm as a hand for the next four years,
when I reached Ohio ... was even willing to pay the farmer something to
employ me. This is what the doctor had prescribed as the only thing that
would save my life--work in the open air. My father had written Uncle
Beck to see that this program was inaugurated.
"I won't become a clod-hopper," I exclaimed, seeing the dreary, endless
monotony of such a life.
"But it will do you good. It will be a fine experience for you."
"If it's such a fine experience why don't you go and do it?"
"I won't stand any nonsense."
"I'd rather die.... I'm going to die anyhow."
"Yes, if you don't do what I tell you."
"I won't."
"We'll see."
"Very well, father, we _will_ see."
"If you weren't such a sick kid I'd trounce you."
* * * * *
You could approach Antonville by surrey, buggy or foot ... along a
winding length of dusty road ... or muddy ... according to rain or
shine.
My Uncle Beck drove me out in a buggy.
Aunt Alice, so patient-faced and pretty and sweet-eyed in her neat
poverty--greeted me with a warm kiss.
"Well, you'll soon be well now."
"But I won't work on a farm."
"Never mind, dear ... don't worry about that just yet."
* * * * *
That afternoon I sat with Aunt Alice in the kitchen, watching her make
bread. Everyone else was out: Uncle Beck, on a case ... Cousin Anders,
over helping with the harvest on a neighbouring farm ... Cousin Anna was
also with the harvesters, helping cook for the hands ... for the
Doctor's family needed all the outside money they could earn.
For Uncle Beck was a dreamer. He thought more of his variorum
Shakespeare than he did of his medical practice. And he was slow-going
and slow-speaking and so conscientious that he told patients the truth
... all which did not help him toward success and solid emolument. He
would take eggs in payment for his visits ... or jars of preserves ...
or fresh meat, if the farmer happened to be slaughtering.
* * * * *
"Where's Granma?" I asked Aunt Alice, as she shoved a batch of bread in
the oven.
"She's out Halton way ... she'll go crazy with joy when she gets word
you're back home. She'll start for here right off as soon as she hears
the news. She's visiting with Lan and his folks."
When I heard Lan mentioned I couldn't help giving a savage look.
Aunt Alice misinterpreted.
"What, Johnnie--won't you be glad to see her!... you ought to ... she's
said over and over again that she loved you more than she did any of her
own children."
"It isn't that--I hate Landon. I wish he was dead or someone would kill
him for me."
"Johnnie, you ought to forgive and forget. It ain't Christian."
"I don't care. I'm not a Christian."
"O Johnnie!" shocked ... then, after a pause of reproach which I
enjoyed--"your Uncle Lan's toned down a lot since then ... married ...
has four children ... one every year." And Alice laughed whimsically.
"--and he's stopped gambling and drinking, and he's got a good job as
master-mechanic in a factory....
"He was young ... he was only a boy in the days when he whipped you."
"Yes, and I suppose I was old?... I tell you, Aunt Alice, it's something
I can't forget ... the dirty coward," and I swore violently, forgetting
myself.
At that moment Uncle Beck appeared suddenly at the door, back from a
case.
"Here, here, that won't do! I don't allow that kind of language in my
household." And he gave me a severe and admonishing look before going
off on another and more urgent call that waited him.
* * * * *
"And how's Granma been getting on?"
"--aging rapidly ... " a pause, " ... hasn't got either of the two
houses on Mansion Avenue now ... sold them and divided the money among
her children ... gave us some ... and Millie ... and Lan ... wouldn't
hear of 'no' ... " parenthetically, "Uncle Joe didn't need any; he's
always prospered since the early days, you know."
"And what's Granma up to these days?" For she was always doing sweet,
ignorant, childish, impractical things.
"--spirit-rapping is it? or palmistry? or magnetic healing? or what?"
"You'll laugh!"
"Tell me!"
"She's got a beau."
"What? a beau? and she eighty if a day!"
"Yes, we--all her children--think it's absurd. And we're all trying to
advise her against it ... but she vows she's going to get married to him
anyhow."
"And who is her 'fellow'"?
"--a one-legged Civil War veteran ... a Pennsylvania Dutchman named
Snyder ... owns a house near Beaver Falls ... draws a pension ... he's a
jolly old apple-cheeked fellow ... there's no doubt they love each other
... only--only it seems rather horrible for two people as old as they
are to go and get married like two young things ... and really fall in
love, too!"
I was silent ... amused ... interested ... then--"well, Granma'll tell
me all about it when she comes ... and I can judge for myself, and," I
added whimsically, "I suppose if they love each other it ought to be all
right."
And we both laughed.
* * * * *
When Granma heard I was West she couldn't reach Antonville fast enough.
She was the same dear childlike woman, only incredibly older-looking.
Age seemed to have fallen on her like an invading army, all at once. Her
hair was, every shred of it, not only grey, but almost white. There
shone the same patient, sweet, ignorant, too-trusting eyes ... there was
the blue burst of vein on her lower lip.
After she had kissed and kissed me, stroked and stroked my head and face
in speechless love, I looked at her intently and lied to please her:
"Why, Granma, you don't look a day older."
"But I am, Johnnie, I am. I've been working hard since you left." As if
she had not worked hard _before_ I left ... she informed me that, giving
away to her children what she had received for the sale of her two
houses (that never brought her anything because of her simplicity, while
they were in her possession) she had grown tired of "being a burden to
them," as she phrased it, and had hired herself out here and there as
scrubwoman, washerwoman, housekeeper, and what not....
Later I learned that nothing could be done with her, she was so
obstinate. She had broken away despite the solicitude of all her
children--who all loved her and wanted her to stay with them.
At last she had answered an advertisement for a housekeeper ... that
appeared in a farm journal ... and so she had met her old cork-legged
veteran, whom she now had her mind set on marrying.
"But Granma, to get married at your age?"
"I'd like to ask why not?" she answered sweetly, "I feel as young as
ever when it comes to men ... and the man ... you wait till you see him
... you'll like him ... he's such a good provider, Johnnie; he draws a
steady pension of sixty dollars a month from the Government, and he'll
give me a good home."
"But any of my aunts and uncles would do the same."
"Yes, Johnnie, but it ain't the same as having a man of your own around
... there's nothing like that, Johnnie, for a woman."
"But your own children welcome you and treat you well?"
"Oh, yes, Johnnie, my little boy, but in spite of that, I feel in the
way. And, no matter how much they love me, it's better for me to have a
home of my own and a man of my own."
"Besides, Billy loves me so much," she continued, wistfully, "and even
though he's seventy whereas I'm eighty past, he says his being younger
don't make no difference ... and he's always so jolly ... always
laughing and joking."
* * * * *
"We must begin to allow for Granma," Aunt Alice told me, "she's coming
into her second childhood."
* * * * *
Granma believed thoroughly in my aspirations to become a poet. With
great delight she retailed incidents of my childhood, reminding me of a
thousand youthful escapades of which she constituted me the hero,
drawing therefrom auguries of my future greatness.
One of the incidents which alone sticks in my memory:
"Do you 'mind,'" she would say, "how you used to follow Millie about
when she papered the pantry shelves with newspapers with scalloped
edges? and how you would turn the papers and read them, right after her,
as she laid them down, and make her frantic?"
"Yes," I would respond, highly gratified with the anecdote, "and you
would say, Oh, Millie, don't get mad at the little codger, some day he
might turn out to be a great man!'"
* * * * *
Uncle Beck had a fine collection of American Letters. I found a complete
set of Hawthorne and straightway became a moody and sombre Puritan ...
and I wrote in Hawthornian prose, quaint essays and stories. And I lived
in a world of old lace and lavender, of crinoline and brocade.
And then I discovered my uncle's books on gynecology and obstetrics ...
full of guilty fevers I waited until he had gone out on a call and then
slunk into his office to read....
One afternoon my doctor-uncle came suddenly upon me, taking me unaware.
* * * * *
"Johnnie, what are you up to?"
"--was just reading your medical books."
"Come over here," already seated at his desk, on his swivel-chair, he
motioned me to a seat.
"Sit down!"