For a Moment after Joe had gone, Emma sat silently at the table. She was
lonely and a little depressed, as she always was when Joe left her. Even
when he went to work his fields in the morning, she looked forward to
the noon hour when he would be home for lunch. If he did not care to
stop working long enough to come home but wished to eat in the fields
instead, Emma carried him a meal whenever she could think of a plausible
excuse for so doing. It was not always possible because Barbara insisted
on doing it. Emma smiled wistfully. Barbara thought she was saving her
mother work when in reality she was robbing her of a privilege.
"What are you smiling about, Mother?" Barbara asked.
"I was thinking of your father."
Barbara looked curiously at her and Emma made no comment. For all her
lovely girlhood Barbara was still a child. She must live a few years
before she could even hope to understand some things, and it would be
futile to try to explain them now. Love was always a fine and beautiful
thing, but the quick, fierce passions of youth were only the first
flames. The smoldering fires that were fed by years of working and
struggling together really welded it so that two, in actuality, did
become one. But no young person would ever understand that. Only
experience could teach it.
Emma glanced with studied casualness at her lovely daughter. Approaching
her fifteenth birthday, for more than a year Barbara had had a large
contingent of suitors. All were gawky youths who stumbled over their
own feet, never knew what to do with their elbows, and were apt to
stutter or stammer when disconcerted. Barbara accepted them with an
almost regal poise the while she interested herself seriously in none,
and that pleased Emma. She herself had married at sixteen, which was
early enough. Emma thought with mingled pity and amusement of Lucy
Trevelyan, whose fifteen-year-old Mary had been urged upon every
eligible man in the neighborhood and who was now going around a second
time. It was more than a question of just getting a man. It had to be
the right man and, for Barbara, Emma wanted as much happiness as she had
found with Joe.
Emma looked again at her daughter, who was staring dreamily across the
table. After a moment, the youngster spoke,
"Why didn't you go to the store with Dad?"
"With all those men!" Emma was half horrified.
Barbara said thoughtfully, "I suppose it would be awkward. But you work
very hard, too. If it relaxes Dad to go to the store, it should relax
you."
Emma laughed. "I'd be as out of place there as your father would at a
sewing bee!"
"When I get married," Barbara said firmly, "I'm going everywhere my
husband goes. Everywhere!"
Tad snorted derisively, and left his chair to hone his beloved knife.
"Don't make fun of your sister, Tad."
"I didn't say nothin'," Tad protested.
"'I didn't say anything,'" Emma corrected.
"Yes, Ma."
"Let me hear you say it."
"I didn't say anything," Tad mumbled.
Emma turned from him and the incident had come, passed and was
forgotten. She had about her a quality that demanded respect and
attention, but which never left a sting.
In passing, Emma sometimes wondered at how much she herself had changed
during the years of her marriage. From a gentle girl, much in awe of
her father, admiring Joe from a distance and struck quite speechless
when he asked her to marry him, she had acquired over the years both
firmness and authority in her dealings with the children. Joe loved to
play with his children when they were little, and he admired them as
they grew older, but when it came to discipline he didn't appear to know
how to go about it. With Tad he sometimes exploded, sometimes cuffed his
ears and sometimes turned his back in despair. With the others he
somehow subtracted himself, so that Emma was left in charge of
discipline. Perhaps the trouble was that an ordinary reprimand would
have seemed unsuitable to the wonderful creatures he thought them to be.
Whatever the reason, over the years Emma had found that while all
decisions regarding the children were discussed between Joe and herself,
with Joe often playing a larger part than she did in the actual
deciding, it was usually Emma alone who had to put the decisions into
effect. She smiled ruefully. Nobody, not even Joe--_especially_ not
Joe--realized that Emma still had safely hidden away, some of the
timidity of her younger years. Within the home, in relation to the
children, she was undoubtedly a tower of strength.
Baby Emma slid from her chair to climb upon her mother's lap and lay her
head on Emma's shoulder. Emma encircled her with a gentle arm.
She knew that Joe was in awe of Barbara, stood on just about an even
footing with Tad, and regarded the other four as lovable, cuddly beings
who were still too young to have any real identities of their own. But
it was Emma who understood their hearts and, much of the time, their
minds.
Proud of Barbara's grace and beauty, she still saw beyond it. Barbara
was not, as Joe thought, fragile of body. She did have a generous nature
and a delicate, sensitive mind that must either encompass all or reject
all. There were times when Emma trembled for her and what the future
might do to her. To Emma she was an opening bud, almost ready to bloom,
and if blossoms were not tenderly nurtured they faced certain
destruction. Emma hoped and prayed that the common sense and almost
mature judgment which Barbara was already displaying would come to her
aid when she most needed it.
Tad was a reflection of Joe, and yet he was not Joe. Behind Tad's wild
impulses and rash acts, Emma saw the man to be. Tad would be a good man,
like his father, and Emma knew that she was guilty of no heresy when she
hoped that he might be even more capable and talented. Joe himself hoped
that. He wanted everything for his children.
Baby Joe was a child of infinite patience. Given a problem, such as a
knotted piece of string, he kept doggedly at it until every knot was
untied and the string straight. Emma was grateful and happy for him, for
she knew that the world never had enough people who were not afraid of
problems. One day Joe would be outstanding.
Alfred was the soul of mischief. Quick and alert, he missed no
opportunity for fun or pranks. Once, in all innocence, he had offered a
present to Barbara and put in her outstretched hand a large black
beetle. He had gone into gales of laughter when Barbara, who shrank from
all insects, flung the beetle from her. Imaginative, Alfred was forever
inventing games that he could play alone or in which all might share.
Carlyle had been born to laughter and an appreciation of the beautiful.
From the very first, a bright butterfly, a stray sunbeam, a bit of
colored ribbon, a colored leaf, had caught and held his fascinated
attention. The first word he'd ever spoken had not been the traditional
"mama," but "pretty." Emma treasured him greatly, and there was a
tradition in her family that one of her ancestors had painted some of
the world's outstanding masterpieces. Though she knew that she would
never attempt to dictate the lives of her children, Emma had more than a
faint hope that artistic talent would live again in Carlyle.
But it was the raven-haired child in her lap whom Emma cherished just a
bit more than the rest. It was not because Emma saw her own image there,
but because baby Emma was the sickly one. She was subject to sudden,
raging fevers that left her pale and weak. More than once they had
despaired of her life. But she had always come through and no night
passed that Emma did not offer up a prayer that she would always
continue to do so. The child turned to smile sleepily at her mother.
"Time for bed, darling?" Emma coaxed.
"Yes, Mama."
Emma carried her into the living room, put her on a chair and returned
to the kitchen to dip a pan of water from a kettle warming on the stove.
Tenderly she removed the clothing from baby Emma's fragile little body,
washed her daughter, put her night dress on and carried her into bed.
She leaned over to kiss the child twice on each cheek and watched her
snuggle happily beneath the quilts. This was a ritual that Emma herself
must always perform. Barbara could put the other young children to bed,
but Emma always had to take care of baby Emma.
Barbara had the giggling Carlyle in her arms when Emma went back into
the kitchen. In passing, she patted the child's curly head and started
to wash her dishes. Her china was carefully stored in the new cupboard
and there it would remain until the children were big enough to respect
it. Emma remembered poignantly one of her minor heartbreaks of years
ago. The Casper family, departing for the west, had decided that their
china was too frail to stand the trip so they'd given it to Emma. It was
lovely, delicate ware that had come across an ocean, been used by the
Caspers in New York, and brought by them to Missouri.
Emma delighted in its feel, and her heart lifted when she merely looked
at it. Often she speculated about its history. It was ancient and
expensive, the sort of china wealthy people of good taste would buy. Had
it come from some castle in England, or perhaps Spain? Who were the
people, now probably long dead, who had made merry over it? Delighted
and thrilled, Emma had set the table with it. But Barbara, at the time
their only child, was a baby then and she had pushed her cup and plate
onto the floor where they shattered.
Emma put the rest away and used her old dishes until they, too, were
broken. Joe, always handy with tools, had made her wooden plates, bowls,
and cups. He had used hard, seasoned maple, and had worked endlessly
with it until it was polished almost to the consistency of china. As
each new baby arrived, Joe had made more table ware. They were almost
alike, but not exactly so, and Emma had handled and washed them so often
that every line in every piece was familiar. She knew by touch which
plate, cup, or bowl, belonged to whom, and that gave her a good feeling.
Just as it was part of Joe's life to respond intimately to the goodness
in new-turned earth, it was part of hers to care for the various things
that meant security for her family. Security, to Emma, meant no one big
thing but a host of little ones.
She soaked her hands in the warm water, liking the feel of that too,
while she washed the dishes with a soapy cloth. Rinsing them in clean
water, she stacked them on the table beside her. She did it carefully,
meticulously. Wooden dishes could not break, but it was part of her
nature to be meticulous and nothing at all was so easy to get that one
could afford to be careless with it. Besides, the dishes were precious.
Joe had spent long hours, night hours when he could not work in the
fields, making and polishing them. Where a less particular man would
have called them good enough, Joe had worked on. He did not, he said,
want to take the chance of any slivers finding their way into baby
mouths.
Barbara brought the pajamaed Carlyle out for his good-night kiss and
took him in to bed. She stooped for Alfred. Quick as a deer, he darted
behind a chair and made faces at his sister. When Barbara went to the
chair, Alfred, howling with glee, ran to his mother and clasped both
arms about her. Emma turned to him. She herself was tired, and a bit out
of patience, and she spoke more sharply than she ordinarily talked to
any of the children.
"Go to bed now, Ally."
"Do' wanna."
"Alfred, go with Barbara!"
Meekly Alfred surrendered himself to Barbara's arms, and was carried
into the other room for his bath. Emma shook her head to dislodge a wisp
of hair that had fallen over her eye. There were rare occasions when she
worried about Alfred too. She imagined that Percy Pearl must have been a
great deal like him when he was a baby, and though she liked Percy, she
would not want any of her children to imitate his way of life. Like
everyone else, she really did not know how Percy lived. But there were
rumors, and Emma suspected more. She comforted herself with the thought
that there was really nothing to worry about. Thousands of children were
mischievous. If all of them turned out badly, the world would be made up
largely of bad people.
Emma dried her dishes as carefully as she had washed them and stacked
them in the cupboard. She poured her dish water down the drain, an
ingenious wooden spout that Joe had also constructed and which led into
a cesspool beside the house. Vigorously she began to scrub her table and
the wooden sink. In all their years together, except to praise her
cooking, Joe had never once commented on the way she kept house. That
had been a cause of minor dissension at first. Emma had worked for
hours, hand-stitching the new curtains. Proudly she draped the windows,
and when Joe came in he didn't even appear to notice. But the years had
taught her much.
Joe regarded the house as exclusively her domain and the fields as his,
though he always wanted to know what she cared to have in the family
vegetable garden and sometimes asked her advice as to what crops he
should plant. She warmed to him because he did, for it proved that he
respected her. Concerning the house, his very lack of comment was
approval. Emma poured clean water into her dish pans and scrubbed them
while Barbara brought Alfred in for his kiss and took Joe. Carefully,
Emma swept the floor and emptied the trash into the kitchen wastebasket,
a hollow stump that Joe had further hollowed and so arranged that it had
both a dust-tight bottom and a hinged cover.
Barbara came in with baby Joe, and after Emma kissed him, the girl took
him to bed. Barbara re-entered the kitchen.
"Aren't you about finished, Mother?"
"Almost. Tad, take yourself off to bed now."
"Already?" Tad was testing the razor-keen blade of his newly honed
knife.
"It's time. Take your bath and go to bed."
"Do I have to take a bath? I swam in the crick today."
"The 'creek,'" Emma corrected firmly. "If you swam you needn't bathe.
But go to bed."
"It's too early," he complained.
"Tad!"
"Yes, Ma."
Tad took himself toward the bedroom and emerged, yawning, for his
good-night kiss. After he had gone, Emma smiled covertly. Tad, at eight,
resented his own childhood fiercely. He was in an almost ferocious rush
to grow up so he could avail himself of what, in his own mind, were all
the privileges of adulthood. But he still would not go to bed without
his mother's kiss.
Emma seated herself at the table for the moment contented to rest. This,
for her, was a time of contentment and soul-satisfying joy. She arose to
each new day as though it were a complete new challenge that was sure to
present its opportunities but might offer hazards, too. But the night
always meant peace, and to know that her younger children were safe in
bed brought happiness to Emma's heart. Now she knew only a little
uneasiness because Joe was still absent. Barbara washed her hands and
face, and let her satiny, tawny hair cascade down her shoulders.
"Are we going to the Trevelyans' barn dance Saturday night, Mother?"
"I think so."
"Would you mind very much if I did not go with you?"