THE GREAT MAN
ON ordinary Christmas days, when only the squire and the doctor and
Uncle Edwin and Aunt Sally and little Adam and Bevy Schnepp dined at
Grandfather Gaumer's, Grandmother Gaumer and Bevy prepared a fairly
elaborate feast. There was always a turkey, a twenty-five pounder with
potato filling, there were all procurable vegetables, there were always
cakes and pies and preserves and jellies without number. One gave one's
self up with cheerful helplessness to indigestion, one resigned one's
self to next day's headache--that is, if one were not a Gaumer. No
Gaumer ever had headache.
It cannot be claimed for Katy that she was of much assistance to her
elders on this Christmas Day, tall girl though she was. Grandfather
Gaumer and the governor started soon after breakfast to pay calls in the
village and her thoughts were with them. How glad every one would be to
see the governor; how they would press cakes and candy upon him; how he
would joke with them; how they would treasure what he said! What a
wonderful thing it was to be famous and to have every one admire you!
"I would keep the chair he sat in," said Katy. "I would put it away and
keep it."
Presently Katy saw Katy Gaumer coming back to her native Millerstown,
covered with honors, of what sort Katy did not exactly know, and going
about on Christmas morning to see the Millerstown Christmas trees and to
receive the homage of a delighted community.
Meanwhile, Katy tripped over her own feet and sent a dish flying from
the kitchen table, and started to fill the teakettle from the
milk-pitcher. Finally, to Bevy Schnepp's disgust, Katy spilled the salt.
Bevy was as much one of the party as the governor. She moved swiftly
about, her little face twisted into a knot, profoundly conscious of the
importance of her position as assistant to the chief cook on this great
day, her shrill voice now breathing forth commands, now recounting
strange tales. Grandmother Gaumer, to whose kitchen Bevy was a thrice
daily visitor, had long ago accustomed herself not to listen to the flow
of speech, and had thereby probably saved her own reason.
"You fetch me hurry a few coals, Katy. Now don't load yourself down so
you cannot walk! 'The more haste the less speed!' Adam, you take your
feet to yourself or they will get stepped on for sure. Gran'mom, your
pies! You better get them out or they burn to nothing! Go in where the
Putz is, Adam, then you are not all the time under the folks' feet.
Sally Edwin, you peel a few more potatoes for me, will you, Sally, for
the mashed potatoes? Mashed potatoes go down like nothing. Ach, I had
the worst time with my supper yesterday! The chicken wouldn't get, and
the governor was there. I tell you, the Old Rip was in it! But I carried
the pan three times round the house and then it done fine for me. Katy,
if you take another piece of celery, I'll teach you the meaning. To eat
my nice celery that I cleaned for dinner! And the hard, yet! If you want
celery, fetch some for yourself and clean it and eat it. I'd be ashamed,
Katy, a big girl like you! You want to be so high gelernt, you think you
are a platform speaker, yet you would eat celery out of the plate. Look
out, the salt, Katy! Well, Katy! Would you spill the salt, yet! Do you
want to put a hex on everything? I--"
"Bevy!" Katie exploded with alarm.
"What is it?" cried Bevy.
"Your mouth is open!"
"I--I--" Bevy gurgled, then gasped. Bevy was not slow on the uptake. "I
opened it, I opened it a-purpose to tell you what I think of you. I--"
But Katy, hearing an opening door, had gone, dancing into the
sitting-room, where, on great days like this, the feast was spread. The
room was larger than the kitchen; in the center stood the long table,
and in one corner was the Christmas tree with the elaborate "Putz," a
garden in which miniature sheep and cows walked through forests and
swans swam on glass lakelets. Before the "Putz," entranced, sat fat
Adam; near by, beside the shiny "double-burner," the governor and his
brothers and young Dr. Benner were establishing themselves. The governor
had still a hundred questions to ask.
Katy perched herself on the arm of her grandfather's chair, saying to
herself that Bevy might call forever now and she would not answer. The
odor of roasting turkey filled the house, intoxicating the souls of
hungry men, but it was not half so potent as this breath of power, this
atmosphere of the great world of affairs, which surrounded Great-Uncle
Gaumer. Katy's heart thumped as she listened; the great, vague plans
which she had made in the night seemed at one moment possible of
execution, at the next absolutely mad. Her face flushed and her skin
pricked as she thought of making known her desires; her heart seemed to
sink far below its proper resting-place. She listened to the governor
with round, excited eyes, now praying for courage, now yielding to
despair.
The governor's questions did not refer to the great world,--it seemed as
though the world had become of no account to him,--but to Millerstown,
the Millerstown of his youth, of apple-butter matches, of raffles, of
battalions, of the passing through of troops to the war, of the rough
preachers of a stirring age. He remembered many things which his
brothers had forgotten; they and the younger folk listened entranced. As
for Bevy, moving about on tiptoe, so as not to miss a word,--it was a
marvel that she was able to finish the dinner.
"He traveled on horseback," said the governor. "He had nothing to his
name in all the world but his horse and his old saddlebags, and he
visited the people whether they wanted him or not. At our house he was
always welcome,--he stayed once a whole winter,--and on Sundays he used
to give it to us in church, I can tell you! Everything he'd yell out
that would come into his mind. One Sunday he yelled at me, 'There you
stand in the choir, and you couldn't get a pig's bristle between your
teeth. Sing out, Daniel!'
"But he could preach powerfully! He made the people listen! There was no
sleeping in the church when he was in the pulpit. If the young people
did not pay attention, he called right out, 'John, behave! Susy, look at
me!'"
"We have such a preacher here," said Uncle Edwin in his slow way. "He is
a Improved New Mennonite. He--"
"They wear hats with Scripture on them, and they sing, 'If you love your
mother, keep her in the sky,'" interrupted Katy.
"'_Meet_ her in the sky,'" corrected Grandmother Gaumer. "That has some
sense to it."
"He won't read the words as they are written in the Bible," went on
Uncle Edwin, apparently not minding the interruption. He shared with the
rest of Katy's kin their foolish opinion of Katy. "He says the words
that are printed fine don't belong there, they are put in. It is like
riding on a bad road, his reading. It goes bump, bump. It sounds very
funny."
"He preaches on queer texts," said Katy. "He preached on 'She Fell in
Love with her Mother-in-Law.'"
"Now, Katy!" admonished Grandmother Gaumer.
Bevy Schnepp had endured as much as she could of insult to the
denomination to which she belonged and to the preacher under whom she
sat.
"Your Lutheran preachers have 'kein Saft und kein Kraft, kein Salz und
kein Peffer' [no sap and no strength, no salt and no pepper]," she
quoted. "They are me too leppish [insipid]. You must give these things a
spiritual meaning. It meant Naomi and Ruth."
The governor smiled his approval at Bevy. "Right you are, Bevy!" Then he
began to ask questions about his former acquaintances.
"What has come over John Hartman?"
"While he is so cross, you mean?" said Grandfather Gaumer. "I don't know
what has come over him. It is a strange thing. He is so long queer that
we forget he was ever any other way."
"Was he ugly this morning?" asked Grandmother Gaumer.
"He didn't ask us to come in and she didn't come to the door at all."
Bevy Schnepp, entering with laden hands, made sharp comment.
"She is afraid her things will get spoiled if the sun or the moon or the
cold air strikes them. She is crazy for cleanness. She will get yet like
fat Abby. Fat Abby once washed her hands fifteen times before breakfast,
and if he (her husband) touched the coffee-pot even to push it back with
his finger if it was boiling over, then she would make fresh."
"And do the Koehlers still live on the mountain?"
"There are only two Koehlers left," answered the squire, "William and
his boy." The squire shook his head solemnly. "It is a queer thing about
the Koehlers, too. The others were honest and right in their minds, but
William, he is none of these things."
"Not _honest_!" said the governor.
"About fifteen years ago he did some bricklaying at the church and he
had the key of the communion cupboard. The solid service was there and
while he was working it disappeared."
"Disappeared!" repeated the governor. "You mean he took it? What could
he do with it?"
"I don't know. Nobody knows. He goes about muttering and praying over
it. They say his boy hardly gets enough to eat. I can't understand it."
"He!" Bevy now had the great turkey platter in her arms; its weight and
her desire to express herself made her gasp. "He! He looks at a penny
till it is a twenty-dollar gold-piece. And you ought to see his boy! He
is for all the world like a girl. 'Like father, like son!' He'll do
something, too, yet."
Katy slid from the arm of her grandfather's chair, her cheeks aflame.
"You have to look at pennies when you are poor," she protested. "You
can't throw money round when you don't have it!"
Bevy slid the platter gently to its place on the table, then she faced
about.
"Now, listen once!" cried she with admiration. "You can't throw money
round when you don't have it, can't you? What do you know about it, you
little chicken?"
Katy's face flushed a deeper crimson. If looks could have slain, Bevy
would have dropped. Young Dr. Benner turned and looked at Katy suddenly
and curiously. She would have gone on expostulating had not Grandmother
Gaumer risen and the other Gaumers with her, all moving with one accord
toward the feast. There was time only for a secret and threatening
gesture toward Bevy, then Katy bent her head with the rest.
"'The eyes of all wait upon Thee,'" said Grandfather Gaumer in German.
"'Thou givest them their meat in due season.'"
Heartily the Gaumers began upon the Christmas feast, the feast beside
which the ordinary Christmas dinner was so poor and simple a thing. Here
was the turkey, done to a turn, here were all possible vegetables, all
possible pies and cakes and preserves. To these Grandmother Gaumer had
added a few common side-dishes, so that her brother-in-law might not
return to the West without a taste, at least, of all the staple foods of
his childhood. There was a slice of home-raised, home-cured ham; there
was a piece of smoked sausage; there was a dish of Sauerkraut and a dish
of "Schnitz und Knöpf,"--these last because the governor had mentioned
them yesterday in his speech. It was well that the squire lived next
door and that Bevy had her own stove to use as well as Grandmother
Gaumer's.
Bevy occupied the chair nearest the kitchen door. There are few class
distinctions in Millerstown, though one is not expected to leave the
station in life in which he was born. It was proper for Bevy to occupy
the position of maid and for little Katy to go to school. If Katy had
undertaken to live out, or Bevy to become learned, Millerstown would
have disapproved of both of them. When each remained in her place, they
were equal.
The governor tasted all the dishes serenely, and Grandmother Gaumer
apologized from beginning to end, as is polite in Millerstown. The
turkey might have been heavier--if he had, he would certainly have
perished long before Grandfather's axe was sharpened for him! The pie
might have been flakier, the sausage might have been smoked a bit
longer--it would have been sinful to add a breath of smoke to what was
already perfect.
"And then it wouldn't have been ready for to-day!" said the governor.
"But we might have begun earlier." Grandmother Gaumer would not yield
her point. "If we had butchered two days earlier, it would have been
better."
When human power could do no more, when Bevy had no more breath for
urgings, such as, "Ach, eat it up once, so it gets away!" or "Ach,
finish it; it stood round long enough already!" the Gaumers pushed back
their chairs and talked with mellower wit and softer hearts of old
times, of father and mother and grandparents, and of the little sister
who had died.
"She was just thirteen," said Governor Gaumer. "She was the liveliest
little girl! I often think if she had lived, she would have made of
herself something different from the other people in Millerstown. But
now she would have been an old woman, think of that!" The governor held
out his hand and Katy came across to him, her eyes filled with tears.
Katy was always easily moved. "Didn't she look like this one?"
"Yes," agreed Grandfather Gaumer. "That I always said."
The governor laid both his hands on Katy's shoulders.
"And what"--said he,--"what are you going to do in this world, Miss
Katy?"
Katy looked up at him with a deep, deep breath. She had thought that
yesterday held a great moment, but here was a much greater one. She
clasped her hands, she gasped again, she looked the governor straight in
the face. Here was her opportunity, the opportunity which she had begun
to think would never come.
"Ach," said Katy with a deep sigh, "when I am through the Millerstown
school, I should like to go to a big school and learn _everything_!"
The governor smiled upon her.
"Everything, Katy!"
"Yes," sighed Katy.
"Listen to her once!" cried Bevy Schnepp with pride.
"Can't you learn enough here?"
"I am already in the next to the highest class," explained Katy. "And
our teacher, he is not a very good one. He wants to be English and a
teacher ought to be English, but he is werry Germaner than the scholars.
He said to us in school, 'We are to have nothing but English here, _do
you versteh_?' That is exactly the way he said it to us. He says lots of
words that are not English. I want to be English. I--"
"Just listen now!" cried Bevy again, her hands piled high with dishes.
"I want to be well educated," finished Katy with glowing cheeks.
"And what would you do when you were educated?" asked the governor.
"I would leave Millerstown," said Katy.
"Why?" asked the governor.
"It would be no use having an education in Millerstown," answered Katy
with conviction. "You have no idea how slow Millerstown is."
"And where did you think you would go?"
"Perhaps to Phildel'phy," answered Katy. "Perhaps I would be a
missionary to Africay."
Strange sounds issued from the throats of Katy's kin.
"You are sure you could do nothing in Millerstown with an education?"
asked the governor.
"It is nothing to do here," explained Katy. "You can walk round
Millerstown a whole evening and you don't hear anything and you don't
see anything."
"Would she like _murders_?" demanded Bevy Schnepp.
"You go in the store and Caleb Stemmel and Danny Koser are too dumb and
lazy even to read the paper, and Sarah Ann Mohr is hemming and everybody
else is sleeping. The married people sit round and don't say anything,
and--"
"Do you want them to _fight_?" Bevy was not discouraged by being
ignored.
"You think it would be better to be a missionary?" said the governor.
"It would be better to be _anything_," declared Katy fervently. "I
_cannot stand_ Millerstown!" Katy clasped her hands and looked into the
face of her distinguished relative. "Oh, please, please make them send
me away to a big school! I prayed for it!" added Katy.
Over Katy's head the eyes of her elders met. The older folk thought of
the little girl who might have been something different, the squire
remembered the journeys he had planned in his youth and the years he had
waited to take them.
But to Katy's chagrin and bitter disappointment, no one said another
word about an education. Grandmother Gaumer suggested that Katy might
help Aunt Sally and Bevy with the dishes. Afterwards, Katy was called
upon to say her piece once more. When little Adam followed with his
Bible verse and was given equal praise, Katy's poor heart, sinking lower
and lower, reached the most depressed position which it is possible for
a heart to assume. Her cause was lost.
Then the governor prepared to start on his long journey to the West.
There he had grown sons and daughters and little grandchildren whom
these Eastern cousins might never see. He kissed Grandmother Gaumer and
his niece Sally and little Adam and Katy, and shook hands with Bevy
Schnepp, then he returned and kissed Grandmother Gaumer once more. There
was something solemn in his farewell; at sight of Grandmother Gaumer's
face Katy was keenly conscious once more of her own despair. From the
window she watched the three old men go down the street, the famous man
who had gone away from Millerstown and the two who had stayed. It seemed
to Katy that the two were less noble because of the obscurity of their
lives.
"Why did gran'pop stay here always?" she asked when she and her
grandmother were alone. "Why did uncle go away?"
"Gran'pop was the oldest, and he and the squire had to stay here. Uncle
had the chance to go."
"But--" Katy crossed to her grandmother's side. Everything was still in
the warm, pine-scented room. "But, grandmother, why do you cry?"
"I am not crying," said grandmother brightly.
"But you look--you look as if"--Katy struggled for words in which to
express her thoughts--"as if everything were finished!"
Grandmother sighed gently. "I am an old woman, Katy, and your uncle is
an old man. We may never see each other again."
"Oh, dear! oh, dear!" cried Katy. "This is a very sad Christmas!"
It was not the sadness of parting which made Katy cry. It was
unthinkable that anything should change for her. Everything would be the
same, always--alas, that it should be so! She, Katy Gaumer, with all her
smartness in school, and all her ability to plan and manage
entertainments, would stay here in this spot until she died. Grandmother
Gaumer, reproaching herself, comforted her for that which was not a
grief at all.
"We will be here a long time yet. And you are to go away to school,
and--"
Katy sprang to her feet.
"Who says it, gran'mom? Who says I dare go to school?"
"Your gran'pop said it, and your uncles said it when you were out with
Bevy. You are to study here till you are through with the highest class,
then you are to go away. Your uncle will find a school: he will send us
catalogues and he will give us advice."
Katy clasped her hands.
"I do not deserve it!"
"You said you prayed for it," reminded Grandmother Gaumer.
"But I prayed without faith," confessed Katy. "I did not believe for one
little minute it would ever come true in this world!"
"Well," said Grandmother Gaumer, "it is coming true."
Here for once was bliss without alloy, here was a rapture without
reaction. Christmas entertainments, at which one did well, ended; there
was no outlook from them, and it was the same with perfect recitations
in school. But this was different. One had the moment's complete joy,
one had also something much better.
"I must study," planned Katy. "I must learn. I must make"--alas, that
one's joy should be another's bitter trial!--"I must make that teacher
learn me everything he knows!"
It was dusk when Grandfather Gaumer came home.
"I told Katy," said Grandmother Gaumer.
"Daniel gave me two hundred dollars to put in the bank in Katy's name,"
announced Grandfather Gaumer solemnly. "It shall be spent for books and
to start Katy. He and the squire and I will see her through."
Katy flung herself upon her grandfather.
"I will learn everything," she promised. "I will make you proud of me.
Like it says in the Sunday School book, 'I will bring home my sheaves.'
And now," said Katy, "I am going to run out to the schoolhouse and
back."
In an instant she was gone, scarlet shawl about her, slamming the door.
Perhaps the two old people sitting together were not sorry to have her
away for a while. The day with its memories and its parting had been
hard, and the mere youthfulness of youth is sometimes difficult for age
to bear.
"Her legs fly like the arms of a windmill," said Grandfather Gaumer.
Then they sat silently together.
Already Katy was halfway out to the schoolhouse. The threatened snow had
fallen and the sky had cleared at sunset. There was still a faint, rosy
glow in the west, a glow which was presently dimmed by the brighter
light which spread over the landscape as the cinder ladle at the furnace
turned out its fiery charge upon the cinder bank. When that flame faded,
the stars were shining brightly; Katy stood in the road before the
schoolhouse and looked up at them and then round about her. The
schoolhouse, glorified by her recent triumph, was further sanctified by
her great hopes. Beside it on the hillside stood the little church,
where she had been confirmed and had had her first communion, where
during the long German sermons she had dreamed many dreams, and where
she had been thrilled by solemn watch-night services. Millerstown was
not without power to impress itself even upon one who hated it.
Now Katy raced down the hill. But she was not ready to go into the
house. She shrieked into Bevy Schnepp's kitchen window; she almost upset
Caleb Stemmel as he plodded to his place behind the stove in the store,
wishing that there were no Christmases; she ran once more to the end of
Locust Street and across to Church Street and looked through the thick
trees at the Hartman house. David had surely some handsome Christmas
gifts from his parents. Then, straining her eyes, she gazed up at the
little white house on the mountain-side. There was not much Christmas
there, that was certain, but Alvin was there, handsome, adorable. Alvin
would pay heed to her if she was going away, the one person in
Millerstown to be educated!
Then Katy stretched out her arms.
"Oh, dear Millerstown!" cried Katy. "Oh, dear, dumb Millerstown, I am
going away from you!"