household labor, and running errands to tell that lady’s perennially
hopeful employers that her mother wasn’t feeling well to-day, but would
it do if she came to-morrow, Ardelia spent in playing up and down the
street with a band of little girls, or, in the very hottest days,
sitting drowsy and vindictive at the head of a flight of stone steps
that led into a down-stairs saloon. The damp, flat, beer-sweetened air
that rushed out as the men pushed open the swing-doors was cool and
refreshing to her; she was in a position to observe any possible
customers at the three push-carts in her line of vision, and could rouse
a flagging interest in life by listening to any one of the altercations
that resounded from the tenements night and day. Drays clattered
incessantly over the pavement, peddlers shouted, sharp gongs punctuated
the steadier din. A policeman was almost always in sight, and one of
them, Mr. Halloran, had more than once given her a penny for lemonade.
In the room above her head an Italian band practised every evening, and
then Ardelia was perfectly happy, for she loved music. Often before the
band began, a hurdy-gurdy would station itself at the corner, and
Ardelia and the other little girls would dance about, singly and in
pairs, shouting the tunes they knew, rejoicing in the comparative
coolness and the generally care-free atmosphere. Ardelia was the
lightest-footed of them all; her hands held her skirts out almost
gracefully, her thin little legs flew highest. Sometimes the
saloon-keeper—they called him “Old Dutchy”—would nod approval as Ardelia
skipped and pranced, and beckon her to him mysteriously.
“You trow your legs goot,” he would say. “We shall see you already
dancing, no? Here is an olluf; eat her.”
And Ardelia, who loved olives to distraction, would nibble off small,
sour, salty mouthfuls and suck the pit luxuriously while she listened to
the Italian band.
Except for Mrs. Fahey’s errands, which never carried her far off the
street, Ardelia had never left it in her life, and her journey to the
Settlement-house was one of interest to her. She was a silent child, but
for occasional fits of gabbling and chattering with the little girls in
the street; and though she did not understand why the young lady from
the Settlement should cry when she introduced her to two other ladies,
nor why so many messages should be left for her mother, and so many
local and general baths administered, she said very little. She was not
accustomed to question fate, and when it sent her two fried eggs—she
refused to eat them boiled—for her breakfast, she quietly placed them in
the credit column as opposed to the baths, and held her peace.
Later, arrayed in starched and creaking garments which had been made for
a slightly smaller child, she was transported to the station, and for
the first time introduced to a railroad car. She sat stiffly on the red
plush seat with furtive eyes and sucked-in lips, while the young lady
talked reassuringly of daisies and cows and green grass. As Ardelia had
never seen any of these things, it is hardly surprising that she was
somewhat unenthusiastic; but the young lady was disappointed by this
lack of ardor. She was so thoroughly convinced of the essential right of
every child to a healthy country life, that she was almost disposed to
blame Ardelia for not sharing her eminently creditable conviction.
“You can roll in the daisies, my dear, and pick all you want—all!” she
urged eagerly. But no answering gleam woke in Ardelia’s eyes.
“Aw right,” she answered guardedly, and stared into her lap.
“Look out, dear, and see the fields and houses—see that handsome dog,
and see the little pond!”
Ardelia shot a quick glance at the blurring green that dizzied her as it
rushed by; the train was a fast express making up for lost time. Then
with a scowl she resumed the contemplation of her starched gingham lap.
The swelteringly hot day, and the rapid, unaccustomed motion combined to
afflict her with a strange internal anticipation of future woe. Once
last summer, when she ate the liquid dregs of the ice-cream man’s great
tin, and fell asleep in the room where her mother was frying onions, she
had experienced this same foreboding, and the climax of that dreadful
day lingered yet in her memory. So she set her teeth and waited with
stoical resignation for the end, while the young lady babbled of green
fields, and wondered why the child should be so sullen. Finally she laid
it to homesickness, and recovered her faith in human nature.
At last they stopped. The young lady seized her hand, and led her
through the narrow aisle, down the steep steps, across the little
country-station platform, and Ardelia was in Arcady.
A bare-legged boy in blue overalls and a wide straw hat then drove them
many miles along a hot, dusty road, that wound endlessly through the
parched country fields. To the young lady’s remark that they needed rain
sadly, he replied, “Yep!” and held his peace for the following hour.
Occasionally they passed another horse, but for the most part the only
sight or sound of life was afforded by the hens clucking angrily as the
travelers drove them from their dust baths in the powdery road. Released
from her horror of foreboding, Ardelia took a more apparent interest in
her situation, and would perhaps have spoken if her chaperone had opened
conversation; but the young lady was weary of such efforts, disposed to
a headache from the blinding heat, and altogether inclined to silence.
At last they turned into a driveway, and drew up before a gray wooden
house. Ardelia, cramped with sitting still, for she had not altered her
position since she was placed stiffly on the seat between her
fellow-passengers, was lifted down and escorted up the shingle-walk to
the porch. A spare, dark-eyed woman in a checked apron advanced to meet
them.
“Terrible hot to-day, ain’t it?” she sighed. “I’m real glad to see you,
Miss Forsythe. Won’t you cool off a little before you go on? This is the
little girl, I s’pose. I guess it’s pretty cool to what _she’s_
accustomed to, ain’t it, Delia?”
“No, I thank you, Mrs. Slater, I’ll go right on to the house. Now,
Ardelia, here you are in the country. I’m staying with my friend in a
big white house about a quarter of a mile farther on. You can’t see it
from here, but if you want anything you can just walk over. Day after
to-morrow is the picnic I told you about. You’ll see me then, any way.
Now run right out in the grass and pick all the daisies you want. Don’t
be afraid; no one will drive you off _this_ grass!”
[Illustration: “’_Huh?_’”]
The force of this was lost on Ardelia, who had never been driven off any
grass whatever, but she gathered that she was expected to walk out into
the thick, rank growth of the unmowed side yard, and strode downward
obediently, turning when in the exact center of the plot, for further
orders.
“Now pick them! Pick the daisies!” cried Miss Forsythe excitedly. “I
want to see you.”
Ardelia looked blank.
“Huh?” she said.
“Gather them. Get a bunch. Oh, you poor child! Mrs. Slater, she doesn’t
know how!” Miss Forsythe was deeply moved and illustrated by picking
imaginary daisies on the porch. Ardelia’s quick eyes followed her
gestures, and stooping, she scooped the heads from three daisies and
started back with them, staring distrustfully into the depths of the
thick clinging grass as she pushed through it. Miss Forsythe gasped.
“No, no, dear! Pull them up! Take the stem, too,” she explained. “Pick
the whole flower!”
Ardelia bent over again, tugged at a thick-stemmed clover, brought it up
by the roots, recovered her balance with difficulty, and assaulted a
neighboring daisy. On this she cut her hands, and sucking off the blood
angrily, she grabbed a handful of coarse grass, and plowing through the
tangled mass about her feet, laid the spoils awkwardly on the young
lady’s lap.
Miss Forsythe stared at the dirty, trailing roots that stained her linen
skirt and sighed.
“Thank you, dear,” she said politely, “but I meant them for you. I meant
you to have a bunch. Don’t you want them?”
“Naw!” said Ardelia decidedly, nursing her cut hand and stepping with
relief on the smooth floor of the porch.
Miss Forsythe’s eyes brightened suddenly.
“I know what you want,” she cried, “you’re thirsty! Mrs. Slater, won’t
you get us some of your good, creamy milk? Don’t you want a drink,
Ardelia?”
Ardelia nodded. She felt very tired, and the glare of the sun seemed
reflected from everything into her dazed eyes. When Mrs. Slater appeared
with the foaming yellow glasses she wound her nervous little hands about
the stem of the goblet and began a deep draught. She did not like it, it
was hard to swallow, and instinct warned her not to go on with it; but
all the thirst of a long morning—Ardelia was used to drinking
frequently—urged her on, and its icy coldness enabled her to finish the
glass. She handed it back with a deep sigh. The young lady clapped her
hands.
“There!” she cried. “Now, how do you like real milk, Ardelia? I declare,
you look like another child already! You can have all you want every
day—why, what’s the matter?”
For Ardelia was growing ghastly pale before them; her eyes turned
inward, her lips tightened. A blinding horror surged from her toes
upward, and the memory of the liquid ice-cream and the frying onions
faded before the awful reality of her present agony.
[Illustration: “_A blinding horror surged from her toes upward._”]
Later, as she lay limp and white on the slippery hair-cloth sofa in Mrs.
Slater’s musty parlor, she heard them discussing her situation.
“There was a lot of Fresh Air children over at Mis’ Simms’s,” her
hostess explained, “and they ’most all of ’em said the milk was too
strong—did you ever! Two or three of ’em was sick, like this one, but
they got to love it in a little while. She will, too.”
Ardelia shook her head feebly. She had learned her lesson. If success,
as we are told, consists not in omitting to make mistakes, but in
omitting to make the same one twice, Ardelia’s treatment of the milk
question was eminently successful.
After a while Miss Forsythe went away, and at her urgent suggestion
Ardelia came out and sat on the porch under the shade of a black
umbrella. She sat motionless, staring into the grass, lost in the
rapture of content that follows such a crisis as her recent misery,
forgetful of all her earthly woes in the blessed certainty of her
present calm. In a few minutes she was asleep.
When she awoke she was in a strange place. Outside the umbrella all was
dusk and shadow. Only a square white mist filled the place of the barn,
the tall trees loomed vaguely toward the dark sky, the stars were few.
As she gazed in half-terror about her, a strange jangling came nearer
and nearer, and a great animal with swinging sides, panting terribly,
ran clumsily by, followed by a bare-legged boy, whose thudding feet
sounded loud on the beaten path. Ardelia shrank against the wall with a
cry that brought Mrs. Slater to her side.
“There, there, Delia, it’s only a cow. She won’t hurt you. She gives the
milk—” Ardelia shuddered—“and the butter, too. Here’s some bread and
butter for you. We’ve had our supper, but I thought the sleep would do
you more good.”
Still shaken by the shock of that panting, hairy beast, Ardelia put out
her hand for the bread and butter, and ate it greedily. Then she
stretched her cramped limbs and looked over the umbrella. On the porch
sat a bearded man in shirt-sleeves and stocking feet, his head thrown
back against his chair, his mouth open. He snored audibly. Tipped back
in another chair, his feet raised and pressed against one of the
supports of the porch roof, sat a younger man. He was not asleep, for he
was smoking a pipe, but he was as motionless as the other. Curled up on
the steps was the boy who had brought them from the station.
Occasionally he patted a mongrel collie beside him, and yawning,
stretched himself, but he did not speak.
“That’s Mr. Slater,” said the woman softly, “and the young man is my
oldest son, William. Henry brought you up with the team. They’re out in
the field all day, and they get pretty tired. It gets nice an’ cool out
here by evenin’, don’t it?”
She leaned back and rocked silently to and fro, and Ardelia waited for
the events of the evening. There were none. She wondered why the gas was
not lit in all that shadowy darkness, why the people didn’t come along.
She felt scared and lonely. Now that her stomach was filled, and her
nerves refreshed by her long sleep, she was in a condition to realize
that aside from all bodily discomfort she was sad—very sad. A new,
unknown depression weighed her down. It grew steadily, something was
happening, something constant and mournful—what? Suddenly she knew. It
was a steady, recurrent noise, a buzzing, monotonous click. Now it rose,
now it fell, accentuating the silence dense about it.
“_Zig-a-zig! Zig-a-zig!_” then a rest.
“_Zig-a-zig! Zig-a-zig-a-zig!_”
She looked restlessly at Mrs. Slater. “Wha’s ’at?” she said.
“That? Oh, those are katydids. I s’pose you never heard ’em, that’s a
fact. Kind o’ cozy, I think. Don’t you like ’em?”
“Naw,” said Ardelia.
Another long silence intervened. The rocking-chair swayed back and
forth, and Mr. Slater snored. Little bright eyes glowed and disappeared,
now high, now low, against the dark. It will never be known whether
Ardelia thought them defective gaslights or the flashing, changing
electric signs that add color to the night advertisements of her native
city, for contrary to all fictional precedent, she did not inquire with
interest what they were. She did not care, in fact.
After half an hour of the katydids William spoke.
“Nick Damon’s helpin’ in the south lot t’day,” he observed.
“Was he?” asked his mother, pausing a moment in her rocking.
“Yep.”
Again he smoked, and the monotonous clamor was uninterrupted.
“_Zig-a-zig! Zig-zig! Zig-a-zig-a-zig!_”
Slowly, against the background of this machine-like clicking, there grew
other sounds, weird, unhappy, far away.
“_Wheep, wheep, wheep!_”
This was a high, thin crying.
“_Buroom! Brrroom! broom!_”
This was low and resonant and solemn. Ardelia scowled.
“Wha’s ’at?” she asked again.
“That’s the frogs. Bull-frogs and peepers. Never heard them, either, did
ye? Well, that’s what they are.”
William took his pipe out of his mouth.
“Come here, sissy, ’n I’ll tell y’ a story,” he said lazily.
Ardelia obeyed, and glancing timorously at the shadows, slipped around
to his side.
“Onc’t they was an ol’ feller comin’ ’long cross-lots, late at night,
an’ he come to a pond, an’ he kinder stopped up an’ says to himself,
’Wonder how deep th’ ol’ pond is, anyhow?’ He was just a leetle—well,
he’d had a drop too much, y’ see——”
“Had a what?” interrupted Ardelia.
“He was sort o’ rollin’ ’round—he didn’t know just what he _was_
doin’——”
“Oh! Jagged!” said Ardelia comprehendingly.
“I guess so. An’ he heard a voice singin’ out, ’Knee _deep_! Knee
_deep_! Knee _deep_!’”
William gave a startling imitation of the peepers: his voice was a high,
shrill wail.
“’Oh, well,’ s’ he, ‘’f it’s just knee deep I’ll wade through,’ an’ he
starts in.
“Just then he hears a big feller singin’ out, ‘Better go _rrrround_!
Better go _rrround! better-goround_!’”
William rolled out a vibrating bass note that startled the bull-frogs
themselves.
“’Lord!’ says he, ‘is it s’deep’s that? Well, I’ll go round, then.’ ’N’
off he starts to walk around.
“’_Knee deep! Knee deep! Knee deep!_’ says the peepers.
“An’ there it was. Soon’s he’d start to do one thing, they’d tell him
another. Make up his mind he couldn’t, so he stands there still, they do
say, askin’ ’em every night which he better do.”
“Stands where?” Ardelia looked fearfully behind her.
“Oh, I d’know. Out in that swamp, mebbe.”
Again he smoked, and the younger boy chuckled.
Time passed by. To Ardelia it might have been minutes, hours, or
generations. An unspeakable boredom, an _ennui_ that struck to the roots
of her soul, possessed her. Her muscles twitched from nervousness. Her
feet ached and burned in the stiff boots.
Suddenly Mr. Slater coughed and arose. “Well, guess I’ll be gettin’ to
bed,” he said. “Come on, boys. Hello, little girl! Come to visit with
us, hey? Mind you don’t pick poison vine.”
He shuffled into the house, and the boys followed him in silence. Mrs.
Slater led Ardelia upstairs into a little hot room, and told her to get
into bed quick, for the lamp drew the mosquitoes.
Ardelia kicked off her shoes and approached the bed distrustfully. It
sank down with her weight and smelled hot and queer. Rolling off, she
stretched herself on the floor, and lay there disconsolately. Sharp,
quick stabs from the swarming mosquitoes stung her to rage; she tossed
about, slapping at them with exclamations that would have shocked Mrs.
Slater. The eternal chatter of the katydids maddened her. She could not
sleep. Across the swamp came the wail of the peepers.
“_Knee deep! Knee deep! Knee deep!_”
At home the hurdy-gurdy was playing, the women were gossiping on every
step, the lights were everywhere—the blessed fearless gaslights—the
little girls were dancing in the breeze that drew in from the East
River, Old Dutchy was giving Maggie Kelly an olive;—Ardelia slapped
viciously at a mosquito on her hot cheek, heard a great June bug
flopping into the room through the loosely waving netting, and burst
into tears of pain and fright, wrapping her head tightly in her gingham
skirt.
In the morning Miss Forsythe came over to inquire after her charge’s
health, accompanied by another young lady.
“How do you do, my dear?” said the new lady kindly. “How terribly the
mosquitoes have stung you! What makes you stay in the house, and miss
the beautiful fresh air? See that great plot of daisies—does she know
that she can pick all she wants, poor little thing? I suppose she never
had a chance! Come out with me, Ardelia, and let’s see which can pick
the biggest bunch.”
And Ardelia, fortified by ham and eggs, went stolidly forth into the
grass and silently attacked the daisies.
In the middle of her bunch the new young lady paused. “Why, Ethel, she
isn’t barefoot!” she cried. “Come here, Ardelia, and take off your shoes
and stockings directly. Shoes and stockings in the country! _Now_ you’ll
know what comfort is,” as she unlaced the boots rapidly on the porch.
“Oh, she’s been barefoot in the city,” explained Miss Forsythe, “but
this will be different, of course.”
And so it was, but not in the sense she intended. To patter about
bare-legged on the clear, safe pavement, was one thing; to venture
unprotected into that waving, tripping tangle was another. She stepped
cautiously upon the short grass near the house, and with jaw set and
narrowed lids felt her way into the higher growth. The ladies clapped
their hands at her happiness and freedom. Suddenly she stopped, she
shrieked, she clawed the air with outspread fingers. Her face was gray
with terror.
“Oh, gee! Oh, gee!” she screamed.
“What is it, Ardelia, what is it?” they cried lifting up their skirts in
sympathy, “a snake?”
Mrs. Slater rushed out, seized Ardelia, half rigid with fear, and
carried her to the porch. They elicited from her as she sat with her
feet tucked under her and one hand convulsively clutching Mrs. Slater’s
apron that something had rustled by her “down at the bottom,” that it
was slippery, that she had stepped on it, and wanted to go home.
“Toad,” explained Mrs. Slater briefly. “Only a little hop-toad, Delia,
that wouldn’t harm a baby, let alone a big girl nine years old, like
you.”
But Ardelia, chattering with nervousness, wept for her shoes, and sat
high and dry in a rocking-chair for the rest of the morning.
“She’s a queer child,” Mrs. Slater confided to the young ladies. “Not a
drop of anything will she drink but cold tea. It don’t seem reasonable
to give it to her all day, and I won’t do it, so she has to wait till
meals. She makes a face if I say milk, and the water tastes slippery,
she says, and salty-like. She won’t touch it. I tell her its good well
water, but she just shakes her head. She’s stubborn’s a bronze mule,
that child. Just mopes around. ’S morning she asked me when did the
parades go by. I told her there wa’n’t any but the circus, an’ that had
been already. I tried to cheer her up, sort of, with that Fresh Air
picnic of yours to-morrow, Miss Forsythe, and s’she, ‘Oh, the Dago
picnic,’ s’she, ‘will they have Tony’s band?’
“She don’t seem to take any int’rest in th’ farm, like those Fresh Air
children, either. I showed her the hens an’ the eggs, an’ she said it
was a lie about the hens layin’ ’em. ‘What d’you take me for?’ s’she.
The idea! Then Henry milked the cow, to show her—she wouldn’t believe
that, either—and with the milk streamin’ down before her, what do you
s’pose she said? ‘You put it in!’ s’she. I never should ’a’ believed
that, Miss Forsythe, if I hadn’t heard it.”
“Oh, she’ll get over it,” said Miss Forsythe easily, “just wait a few
days. Good-by, Ardelia, eat a good supper.”
But this Ardelia did not do. She gazed fascinated at Mr. Slater, who
loaded his fork with cold green peas, shot them into his mouth, and
before disposing of them ultimately added to them half a slice of rye
bread and a great gulp of tea in one breath, repeating this operation at
regular intervals in voracious silence. She regarded William, who
consumed eight large molasses cookies and three glasses of frothy milk,
as a mere afterthought to the meal, gulping furiously. He never spoke.
Henry she dared not look at, for he burst into laughter whenever she
did, and cried out, “You put it in! You put it in!” which irritated her
exceedingly. But she knew that he was biting great round bites out of
countless slices of buttered bread, and in utter silence. Now Ardelia
had never in her life eaten in silence. Mrs. Fahey, when eating,
gossiped and fought alternately with Mr. Fahey’s old, half-blind mother;
her son Danny, in a state of chronic dismissal from his various “jobs,”
sang, whistled and performed clog dances under the table during the
meal; their neighbor across the narrow hall shrieked her comments,
friendly or otherwise; and all around and above and below resounded the
busy noise of the crowded, clattering city street. It was the breath in
her nostrils, the excitement of her nervous little life, and this
cold-blooded stoking took away her appetite, never large.
Through the open door the buzz of the katydids was beginning
tentatively. In the intervals of William’s gulps a faint bass note
warned them from the swamp:
“_Better go rrround! Better go round!_”
Mrs. Slater filled their plates in silence. Henry slapped a mosquito and
chuckled interiorly at some reminiscence. A cow-bell jangled sadly out
of the gathering dusk.
Ardelia’s nerves strained and snapped. Her eyes grew wild.
“Fer Gawd’s sake, _talk_!” she cried sharply. “Are youse dumbies?”
❦
The morning dawned fresh and fair; the trees and the brown turf smelled
sweet, the homely barnyard noises brought a smile to Miss Forsythe’s
sympathetic face, as she waited for Ardelia to join her in a drive to
the station. But Ardelia did not smile. Her eyes ached with the great
green glare, the strange scattered objects, the long unaccustomed
vistas. Her cramped feet wearied for the smooth pavements, her ears
hungered for the dear familiar din. She scowled at the winding, empty
road; she shrieked at the passing oxen.
At the station Miss Forsythe shook her limp little hand.
“Good-by, dear,” she said. “I’ll bring the other little children back
with me. You’ll enjoy that. Good-by.”
“I’m comin’, too,” said Ardelia.
“Why—no, dear—you wait for us. You’d only turn around and come right
back, you know,” urged Miss Forsythe, secretly touched by this devotion
to herself.
“Come back nothin’,” said Ardelia doggedly. “I’m goin’ home.”
“Why—why, Ardelia! Don’t you really like it?”
“Naw, it’s too hot.”
Miss Forsythe stared.
“But Ardelia, you don’t want to go back to that horrible smelly street?
Not truly?”
“Betcher life I do!” said Ardelia.
The train steamed in; Miss Forsythe mounted the steps uneasily, Ardelia
clinging to her hand.
“It’s so lovely and quiet,” the young lady pleaded.
Ardelia shuddered. Again she seemed to hear that fiendish, mournful
wailing:
“_Knee deep! Knee deep! Knee deep!_”
“It smells so good, Ardelia! All the green things!”
Good! that hot, rustling breeze of noonday, that damp and empty evening
wind!
They rode in silence. But the jar and jolt of the engine made music in
Ardelia’s ears; the crying of the hot babies, the familiar jargon of the
newsboy:
“N’Yawk moyning paypers! Woyld! Joynal!” were a breath from home to her
little cockney heart.
They pushed through the great station, they climbed the steps of the
elevated track, they jingled on a cross-town car. And at a familiar
corner Ardelia slipped loose her hand, uttered a grunt of joy, and Miss
Forsythe looked for her in vain. She was gone.
But late in the evening, when the great city turned out to breathe, and
sat with opened shirt and loosened bodice on the dirty steps; when the
hurdy-gurdy executed brassy scales and the lights flared in endless
sparkling rows; when the trolley gongs at the corner pierced the air,
and feet tapped cheerfully down the cool stone steps of the beer-shop,
Ardelia, bare-footed and abandoned, nibbling at a section of bologna
sausage, secure in the hope of an olive to come, cakewalked insolently
with a band of little girls behind a severe policeman, mocking his
stolid gait, to the delight of Old Dutchy, who beamed approvingly at her
prancings.
“Ja, ja, you trow out your feet goot. Some day we pay to see you, no?
You like to get back already?”
Ardelia performed an audacious _pas seul_ and reached for her olive.