From _The Saturday Evening Post_.
It was so poor a place--a bitten-off morsel "at the beyond end of
nowhere"--that when a February gale came driving down out of a steel sky
and shut up the little lane road and covered the house with snow a
passer-by might have mistaken it all, peeping through its icy fleece,
for just a huddle of the brown bowlders so common to the country
thereabouts.
And even when there was no snow it was as bad--worse, almost, Luke
thought. When everything else went brave and young with new greenery;
when the alders were laced with the yellow haze of leaf bud, and the
brooks got out of prison again, and arbutus and violet and buttercup
went through their rotation of bloom up in the rock pastures and maple
bush--the farm buildings seemed only the bleaker and barer.
That forlorn unpainted little house, with its sagging blinds! It
squatted there through the year like a one-eyed beggar without a
friend--lost in its venerable white-beard winters, or contemplating an
untidy welter of rusty farm machinery through the summers.
When Luke brought his one scraggy little cow up the lane he always
turned away his head. The place made him think of the old man who let
the birds build nests in his whiskers. He preferred, instead, to look at
the glories of Bald Mountain or one of the other hills. There was
nothing wrong with the back drop in the home stage-set; it was only home
itself that hurt one's feelings.
There was no cheer inside, either. The sagging old floors, though
scrubbed and spotless, were uncarpeted; the furniture meager. A pine
table, a few old chairs, a shabby scratched settle covered by a thin
horse blanket as innocent of nap as a Mexican hairless--these for
essentials; and for embellishment a shadeless glass lamp on the table,
about six-candle power, where you might make shift to read the
_Biweekly_--times when there was enough money to have a Biweekly--if you
were so minded; and window shelves full of corn and tomato cans, still
wearing their horticultural labels, where scrawny one-legged geraniums
and yellowing coleus and begonia contrived an existence of sorts.
And then, of course, the mantelpiece with the black-edged funeral notice
and shiny coffin plate, relics of Grampaw Peel's taking-off; and the
pink mug with the purple pansy and "Woodstock, N.Y.," on it; the
photograph of a forgotten cousin in Iowa, with long antennæ-shaped
mustaches; the Bible with the little china knobs on the corners; and the
pile of medicine testimonials and seed catalogues--all these contributed
something.
If it was not a beautiful place within, it was, also, not even a
pleasant place spiritually. What with the open door into his father's
room, whence you could hear the thin frettings made by the man who had
lain these ten years with chronic rheumatism, and the untuneful
whistlings of whittling Tom, the big brother, the shapely supple giant
whose mind had never grown since the fall from the barn room when he was
eight years old, and the acrid complaints of the tall gaunt mother,
stepping about getting their inadequate supper, in her gray wrapper,
with the ugly little blue shawl pinned round her shoulders, it was as
bad a place as you might find in a year's journeying for anyone to keep
bright and "chirk up" in.
Not that anyone in particular expected "them poor Hayneses" to keep
bright or "chirk up." As far back as he could remember, Luke had
realized that the hand of God was laid on his family. Dragging his bad
leg up the hill pastures after the cow, day in and day out, he had
evolved a sort of patient philosophy about it. It was just inevitable,
like a lot of things known in that rock-ribbed and fatalistic region--as
immutably decreed by heaven as foreordination and the damnation of
unbaptized babes. The Hayneses had just "got it hard."
Yet there were times, now he was come to a gangling fourteen, when
Luke's philosophy threatened to fail him. It wasn't fair--so it wasn't!
They weren't bad folks; they'd done nothing wicked. His mother worked
like a dog--"no fair for her," any way you looked at it. There were
times when the boy drank in bitterly every detail of the miserable place
he called home and knew the depths of an utter despair.
If there was only some way to better it all! But there was no chance.
His father had been a failure at everything he touched in early life,
and now he was a hopeless invalid. Tom was an idiot--or almost--and
himself a cripple. And Nat! Well, Nat "wa'n't willin'"--not that one
should blame him. Times like these, a lump like a roc's egg would rise
in the boy's throat. He had to spit--and spit hard--to conquer it.
"If we hain't the gosh-awfulest lot!" he would gulp.
To-day, as he came up the lane, June was in the land. She'd done her
best to be kind to the farm. All the old heterogeneous rosebushes in the
wood-yard and front "lawn" were pied with fragrant bloom. Usually Luke
would have lingered to sniff it all, but he saw only one thing now with
a sudden skipping at his heart--an automobile standing beside the front
porch.
It was not the type of car to cause cardiac disturbance in a
connoisseur. It was, in fact, of an early vintage, high-set, chunky,
brassily æsthetic, and given to asthmatic choking on occasion; but Luke
did not know this. He knew only that it spelled luxury beyond all
dreams. It belonged, in short, to his Uncle Clem Cheesman, the rich
butcher who lived in the village twelve miles away; and its presence
here signaled the fact that Uncle Clem and Aunt Mollie had come to pay
one of their detestable quarterly visits to their poor relations. They
had come while he was out, and Maw was in there now, bearing it all
alone.
Luke limped into the house hastily. He was not mistaken. There was a
company air in the room, a stiff hostile-polite taint in the atmosphere.
Three visitors sat in the kitchen, and a large hamper, its contents
partly disgorged, stood on the table. Luke knew that it contained
gifts--the hateful, merciful, nauseating charity of the better-off.
Aunt Mollie was speaking as he entered--a large, high-colored,
pouter-pigeon-chested woman, with a great many rings with bright stones,
and a nodding pink plume in her hat. She was holding up a bifurcated
crimson garment, and greeted Luke absently.
"Three pair o' them underdrawers, Delia--an' not a break in one of 'em!
I sez, as soon as I see Clem layin' 'em aside this spring, 'Them
things'll be jest right fur Delia's Jere, layin' there with the
rheumatiz.' They may come a little loose; but, of course, you can't be
choicey. I've b'en at Clem fur five years to buy him union suits; but
he's always b'en so stuck on red flannen. But now he's got two
aut'mobiles, countin' the new delivery, I guess he's gotta be more tony;
so he made out to spare 'em. And now that hat, Delia--it ain't a mite
wore out, an' fur all you'll need one it's plenty good enough. I only
had it two years and I guess folks won't remember; an' what if they
do--they all know you get my things. Same way with that collarette. It's
a little moth-eaten, but it won't matter fur you.... The gray suit you
can easy cut down fur Luke, there--"
She droned on, the other woman making dry automatic sounds of assent.
She looked cool--Maw--Luke thought; but she wasn't. Not by a darn sight!
There was a spot of pink in each cheek and she stared hard every little
bit at Grampaw Peel's funeral plate on the mantel. Luke knew what she
was thinking of--poor Maw! She was burning in a fire of her own
lighting. She had brought it all on herself--on the whole of them.
Years ago she had been just like Aunt Mollie. The daughters of a
prosperous village carpenter, they had shared beads, beaux and bangles
until Maw, in a moment's madness, had chucked it all away to marry poor
Paw. Now she had made her bed, she must lie in it. Must sit and say
"Thank you!" for Aunt Mollie's leavings, precious scraps she dared not
refuse--Maw, who had a pride as fierce and keen as any! It was devilish!
Oh, it was kind of Aunt Mollie to give; it was the taking that came so
bitter hard. And then they weren't genteel about their giving. There was
always that air of superiority, that conscious patronage, as now, when
Uncle Clem, breaking off his conversation with the invalid in the next
room about the price of mutton on the hoof and the chances of the
Democrats' getting in again, stopped fiddling with his thick plated
watch chain and grinned across at big Tom to fling his undeviating
flower of wit:
"Runnin' all to beef, hain't ye, Tom, boy? Come on down to the market
an' we'll git some A-1 sirloins outen ye, anyway. Do your folks that
much good."
It was things like this that made Luke want to burn, poison, or shoot
Uncle Clem. He was not a bad man, Uncle Clem--a thick sandy chunk of a
fellow, given to bright neckties and a jocosity that took no account of
feelings. Shaped a little like a log, he was--back of his head and back
of his neck--all of a width. Little lively green eyes and bristling red
mustaches. A complexion a society bud might have envied. Why was it a
butcher got so pink and white and sleek? Pork, that's what Uncle Clem
resembled, Luke thought--a nice, smooth, pale-fleshed pig, ready to be
skinned.
His turn next! When crops and politics failed and the joke at poor
Tom--Tom always giggled inordinately at it, too--had come off, there was
sure to be the one about himself and the lame duck next. To divert
himself of bored expectation, Luke turned to stare at his cousin,
S'norta.
S'norta, sitting quietly in a chair across the room, was seldom known to
be emotional. Indeed, there were times when Luke wondered whether she
had not died in her chair. One had that feeling about S'norta, so
motionless was she, so uncompromising of glance. She was very
prosperous-looking, as became the heiress to the Cheesman meat
business--a fat little girl of twelve, dressed with a profusion of
ruffles, glass pearls, gilt buckles, and thick tawny curls that might
have come straight from the sausage hook in her papa's shop.
S'norta had been consecrated early in life to the unusual. Even her name
was not ordinary. Her romantic mother, immersed in the prenatal period
in the hair-lifting adventures of one Señorita Carmena, could think of
no lovelier appellation when her darling came than the first portion of
that sloe-eyed and restless lady's title, which she conceived to be
baptismal; and in due course she had conferred it, together with her own
pronunciation, on her child. A bold man stopping in at Uncle Clem's
market, as Luke knew, had once tried to pronounce and expound the
cognomen in a very different fashion; but he had been hustled
unceremoniously from the place, and S'norta remained in undisturbed
possession of her honors.
Now Luke was recalled from his contemplation by his uncle's voice again.
A lull had fallen and out of it broke the question Luke always dreaded.
"Nat, now!" said Uncle Clem, leaning forward, his thick fingers
clutching his fat knees. "You ain't had any news of him since quite a
while ago, have you?" The wit that was so preponderate a feature of
Uncle Clem's nature bubbled to the surface. "Dunno but he's landed in
jail a spell back and can't git out again!" The lively little eyes
twinkled appreciatively.
Nobody answered. It set Maw's mouth in a thin, hard line. You wouldn't
get a rise out of old Maw with such tactics--Maw, who believed in Nat,
soul and body. Into Luke's mind flashed suddenly a formless half prayer:
"Don't let 'em nag her now--make 'em talk other things!"
The Lord, in the guise of Aunt Mollie, answered him. For once, Nat and
Nat's character and failings did not hold her. She drew a deep breath
and voiced something that claimed her interest:
"Well, Delia, I see you wasn't out at the Bisbee's funeral. Though I
don't s'pose anyone really expected you, knowin' how things goes with
you. Time was, when you was a girl, you counted in as big as any and
traveled with the best; but now"--she paused delicately, and coughed
politely with an appreciative glance round the poor room--"they ain't
anyone hereabouts but's talkin' about it. My land, it was swell! I
couldn't ask no better for my own. Fourteen cabs, and the hearse sent
over from Rockville--all pale gray, with mottled gray horses. It was
what I call tasty.
"Matty wasn't what you'd call well-off--not as lucky as some I could
mention; but she certainly went off grand! The whole Methodist choir was
out, with three numbers in broken time; and her cousin's brother-in-law
from out West--some kind of bishop--to preach. Honest, it was one of the
grandest sermons I ever heard! Wasn't it, Clem?"
Uncle Clem cleared his throat thoughtfully.
"Humiliatin'!--that's what I'd call it. A strong maur'l sermon all
round. A man couldn't hear it 'thout bein' humiliated more ways'n one."
He was back at the watch-chain again.
"It's a pity you couldn't of gone, Delia--you an' Matty always was so
intimate too. You certainly missed a grand treat, I can tell you;
though, if you hadn't the right clothes--"
"Well, I haven't," Maw spoke dryly. "I don't go nowheres, as you
know--not even church."
"I s'pose not. Time was it was different, though, Delia. Ain't nobody
but talks how bad off you are. Ann Chester said she seen you in town a
while back and wouldn't of knowed it was you if it hadn't of b'en you
was wearin' my old brown cape, an' she reconnized it. Her an' me got 'em
both alike to the same store in Rockville. You was so changed, she said
she couldn't hardly believe it was you at all."
"Sometimes I wonder myself if it is," said Maw grimly.
"Well, 's I was sayin', it was a grand funeral. None better! They even
had engraved invites, over a hundred printed--and they had folks from
all over the state. They give Clem, here, the contract fur the supper
meat--"
"The best of everything!" Uncle Clem broke in. "None o' your cheap
graft. Gimme a free hand. Jim Bisbee tole me himself. 'I want the best
ye got,' he sez; an' I give it. Spring lamb and prime ribs, fancy hotel
style--"
"An' Em Carson baked the cakes fur 'em, sixteen of 'em; an' Dickison the
undertaker's tellin' all over they got the best quality shroud he
carries. Well, you'll find it all in the _Biweekly_, under Death's Busy
Sickle. Jim Bisbee shore set a store by Matty oncet she was dead. It was
a grand affair, Delia. Not but what we've had some good ones in our time
too."
It was Aunt Mollie's turn to stare pridefully at the Peel plate on the
chimney shelf.
"A thing like that sets a family up, sorta."
Uncle Clem had taken out a fat black cigar with a red-white-and-blue
band. He bit off the end and alternately thrust it between his lips or
felt of its thickness with a fondling thumb and finger. Luke, watching,
felt a sudden compassion for the cigar. It looked so harried.
"I always say," Aunt Mollie droned on, "a person shows up what he really
is at the last--what him and his family stands fur. It's what kind of a
funeral you've got that counts--who comes out an' all. An' that was
true with Matty. There wa'n't a soul worth namin' that wasn't out to
hers."
How Aunt Molly could gouge--even amicably! And funerals! What a subject,
even in a countryside where a funeral is a social event and the manner
of its furniture marks a definite social status! Would they never go?
But it seemed at last they would. Incredibly, somehow, they were taking
their leave, Aunt Mollie kissing Maw good-by, with the usual remark
about "hopin' the things would help some," and about being "glad to
spare somethin' from my great plenty."
She and Señorita were presently packed into the car and Tom had gone out
to goggle at Uncle Clem cranking up, the cold cigar still between his
lips. Now they were off--choking and snorting their way out of the
wood-yard and down the lane. Aunt Mollie's pink feather streamed into
the breeze like a pennon of triumph.
* * *
Maw was standing by the stove, a queer look in her eyes; so queer that
Luke didn't speak at once. He limped over to finger the spilled
treasures on the table.
"Gee! Lookit, Maw! More o' them prunes we liked so; an' a bag o' early
peaches; an' fresh soup meat fur a week--"
A queer trembling had seized his mother. She was so white he was
frightened.
"Did you sense what it meant, Luke--what Aunt Molly told us about Matty
Bisbee? We was left out deliberate--that's what it meant. Her an' me
that was raised together an' went to school and picnics all our girlhood
together! Never could see one 'thout the other when we was growin'
up--Jim Bisbee knew that too! But"--her voice wavered miserably--"I
didn't get no invite to her funeral. I don't count no more, Lukey. None
of us, anywheres.... We're jest them poor Gawd-forsaken Hayneses."
She slipped down suddenly into a chair and covered her face, her thin
shoulders shaking. Luke went and touched her awkwardly. Times he would
have liked to put his arms round Maw--now more than ever; but he didn't
dare.
"Don't take on, Maw! Don't!"
"Who's takin' on?" She lifted a fierce, sallow, tear-wet face. "Hain't
no use makin' a fuss. All's left's to work--to work, an' die after a
while."
"I hate 'em! Uncle Clem an' her, I mean."
"They mean kindness--their way." But her tears started afresh.
"I hate 'em!" Luke's voice grew shriller. "I'd like--I'd like--Oh, damn
'em!"
"Don't swear, boy!"
It was Tom who broke in on them. "It's a letter from Rural Free
Delivery. He jest dropped it."
He came up, grinning, with the missive. The mother's fingers closed on
it nervously.
"From Nat, mebbe--he ain't wrote in months."
But it wasn't from Nat. It was a bill for a last payment on the "new
harrow," bought three years before.