Summer months go quickly by. The summer and early fall were soon gone,
and the long season of cold and rain set in. The tobacco was a heavy
crop. It had been cut and hung in the barn, had survived the moist,
warm spells that so often cause tobacco to heat and spoil, and was
ready to be bulked. For this it was necessary to wait for right weather
conditions. Jerry was impatient and every morning and evening he
scanned the sky anxiously.
One morning in early November when he went out to draw a bucket of
water, a soft, mild wind was blowing from the south under heavy clouds.
It was not raining, but the air was full of moisture. He sniffed
critically.
When he got back into the house, he set the bucket down with a hasty
thump that splashed some of the water out onto the floor.
"I'll be off, Judy, as quick as I git sumpin to eat. It's fine bulkin'
weather. I think the terbaccer'll be nice an' soft. An' you'd best put
me up a lunch so's I won't hev to quit work long at noon."
For several days, whenever the weather conditions were right, Jerry
worked at bulking the tobacco. At last it was done and the long job of
stripping began.
Judith had to help with the stripping, or it would never be finished in
time to get the tobacco to market while the price held. The price had a
disconcerting way of dropping when the great bulk of tobacco began to
come on the market.
Through the short gray days of late November and December the alarm
clock was set for four. Bed was never so seductively delicious as
during the few moments after its impertinent ting-a-ling had startled
them awake. They curled together luxuriously in the warmth and
softness. It was Jerry who had the strength of mind first to throw off
the covers and bound out into the icy blackness. As he hurriedly poked
kindlings into the cold stove, he cheered himself by singing, to the
accompaniment of chattering teeth, a little song that he had heard
somewhere and into which he had fitted his own name:
Jerry git up in the mornin',
Go out an' feed the foal.
Jerry git up in the mornin',
Bejasus hain't it cold!
"Naow, Judy," he would exhort her when the fire was going strong, "it's
nice an' warm an' no chore at all to git up." And he would throw a coat
on the floor by the stove, so that she could stand on it to dress.
When they arrived at the stripping room Jerry lighted a fire, while
Judith arranged a bed of coats for the baby. When the heat of the box
stove began to make the room heavy, Billy too would begin to nod and
Judith would lay him beside the baby to finish his sleep. Then the long
day began.
Hat and Luke shared the stripping room with them. Things were easier
for Hat because she had no children to bother with. Judith half envied
her. Compared with her she felt in a manner degraded and in bondage.
In the stripping room there was even less conversation than there had
been two years before. For now even Judith felt no desire to talk.
Instead she was the most preoccupied and indifferent of them all. When
she met Luke's little pig eyes fastened upon her she felt no stir
of excitement of any kind, neither interest, nor aversion, not even
disgust. Always tired and always sleepy, her body and mind alike numbed
into a dull torpor, she saw nothing and thought of nothing but the
browns and reds and yellows of the silken tobacco leaves. On account of
her unusual sense of color and texture she had become the best tobacco
stripper of them all. She could make seven grades where Luke and Jerry
could make only three and four. Hat, who up to now had considered
herself the queen of tobacco strippers, could make five. They stood
upon gunny sacks or bits of board to keep their feet from the damp
ground. Endlessly and in a heavy, sodden silence they all stripped and
stripped and stripped.
Every three hours or so, when the baby cried, she stopped to nurse him.
She was glad of this chance to sit down, for her feet and ankles ached
from the strain of long standing. Sometimes when she sat beside the
stove nursing the baby she dozed and dreamed, wakened with a start,
dozed, and dreamed again.
If the weather was not too bad Billy was wrapped up and put outside
to play. But he did not stay there long; he soon came back hungry for
company. Inside he got into people's way and was often fretful and
badgering. Sometimes he annoyed Luke and Hat, and they were not slow to
show it. As a general thing they treated him kindly enough, rallied and
teased him, and asked him if he didn't want to come and live with them.
Sometimes Hat even brought him a little paper of sugared popcorn or a
top or marble that she had found lying about. Luke made him a trumpet
out of a goat's horn and painstakingly taught him how to blow it. It
gave out a musical, melancholy sound far reaching and resonant.
They both liked the child well enough and were inclined to spoil him
with petting and teasing when he was good. But when he was bad they
guarded jealously their sacred right as a childless couple to peace and
freedom from disturbance. Hat was sometimes heard to mutter something
under her breath about "Other folks' snotty-nosed brats," and Luke
looked at the child with little cold eyes full of dislike and annoyance.
Mercifully the days were short. By half past four it was too dark to
see to grade and they bundled up the babies and went home.
But Judith's day was not yet over, nor was Jerry's. While he milked
and fed the horses and did up the other outside chores, she washed the
breakfast dishes, swept and straightened the kitchen, washed out the
diapers, washed and fed the children, and got the supper ready. After
they had eaten supper she put the children to bed and washed the dishes
and strained and put away the milk and set the table for breakfast and
fried corn cakes to take with them for lunch the next day; and at last
she was through, at least until the nursing baby waked and cried in the
night.
The next morning at four o'clock the same thing began all over again.
As they neared the end of the long job, a febrile uneasiness stirred
the dull atmosphere of the stripping room. It was the anxiety about the
market, the eagerness to get done, and catch the opening price. It was
whispered that on account of the war in Europe tobacco was going to
bring the biggest price in years. Hat and Luke came early and stayed
late. Their fingers flew. They were far ahead of Jerry and Judith,
because Judith had to stay home at least one day a week to wash for the
children. Jerry fretted at the slowness with which the work went on.
Daily the tension of his anxiety grew more strained.
Not only in the stripping rooms, but all over the face of Scott County
excitement grew and spread as the time of the opening of the market
drew near. The price of tobacco was such an unstable thing that it was
always a matter for conjecture. It was not a thing that varied within
limits and according to known conditions, like the price of hogs and
corn. In its variations the price of Kentucky Burley scorned limits;
and the circumstances that controlled it were to the tobacco growers a
shrouded mystery. Wherever men met together, there was only one thing
talked about: the price that tobacco was going to bring. Each man shook
his head sagely and hinted darkly that he had inside information on the
subject. In reality they were as babes unborn. Speculators great and
small hung about stripping rooms, appraising the tobacco. The growers
themselves began to dicker about buying each other's crops. Every man
who had a drop of sporting blood in his veins was itching to buy,
sell, to take some sort of a chance. Their wives coldly counseled them
to sit tight and tend to their own business, which advice made them
surreptitiously determined to stake something on the turn of Fortune's
wheel.
Before they had finished stripping, Jerry caught a cold which developed
into a sort of influenza. He kept on working, miserable with a swollen
throat and aching head. Then one morning he was hot with fever and had
to stay in bed. He was away from the stripping room for four days.
The day that he went back to work, Judith felt her own throat growing
sore. The next day she, too, had to stay in bed. For three days she
was unable to get up, and Jerry, who had to stay home and take care
of the children, floundered about the kitchen with the clumsiness
and helplessness possible only in a man who has been brought up by a
devoted mother in complete ignorance of every domestic detail.
When on the fourth morning, weak and shaky in the knees, she got up
and went out to the kitchen, she found everything in a dreadful mess.
The floor showed no appearance of having been swept since she went to
bed. The stove was covered with ashes, grease, and the charred remains
of something that had boiled over. Dirty dishes and dishes with little
dabs of this and that in them were to be found in the most unexpected
places. The children's clothes were unspeakably dirty; and the few
things that Jerry had tried to wash were of a pale drab color. The
slop bucket was a thing of horror. Everything she touched felt sticky,
greasy, or slimy. The room smelt of burnt grease, sour milk, and
unwashed diapers. Disgust and anger rose in her.
"Seems like you might 'a' tried to keep the place a little better'n a
hogpen while I was in bed," she snapped, wiping the top of the stove
vigorously with a rag. "Anybody'd think you'd tried to see how much
dirt you could _make_, let alone clean anything."
"Well, I don't lay claim to be no expert pot wrastler ner wet nurse
neither," returned Jerry, shrugging his shoulders. His three days of
forced kitchen service had not improved his temper. His mind was on his
tobacco and he felt irritable with anxiety. He wanted to get back to
his stripping.
As she went about trying to get the breakfast, she felt faint and ready
to drop with weakness. The dirt and confusion staggered and bewildered
her. From the bedroom Billy began to shout for her to come and dress
him, and wakened the baby, who set up a shrill cry. A shudder of
revulsion went over her. In that moment she did not know which she
hated most, him or his clamoring young ones.
"Good Gawd, man," she exclaimed in exasperation, "air you so good fer
nuthin' you couldn't even wash a cup clean?"
"Aw, shet up. You're too damn fussy," he growled, and flung out of the
room with the milk bucket.
She glared after him, her black brows drawn together with concentrated
fury. She was holding in her hand a little bowl. It had been rinsed
through cold dish water and her fingers felt the inside smeared with
grease. She gave a sharp exclamation of disgust and with a sudden
movement threw the bowl against the stove where it crashed into a
dozen pieces. For a moment she stood looking at the pieces of the
broken bowl, and her lips curled into an upward twist of sardonic
satisfaction. The lip was lifted from the teeth as a dog's lip is
lifted in a snarl. Then a heavy dismalness settled down upon her. She
swept up the pieces and went on drearily about her work.
The tobacco market opened with fine prices, some of the growers who
had especially good crops getting as high as thirteen or fourteen
cents a pound. Hat and Luke were excited beyond words. However, on the
day that Luke hauled his crop to Lexington, the market had fallen off
somewhat and he averaged only nine cents a pound. He and Hat would have
been amply satisfied with this if some of the neighbors' crops had not
brought higher prices. They were tormented by the thought that if they
had been a few days earlier, or perhaps a few days later they might
have got a cent a pound more. They calculated again and again how much
this would amount to. Even half a cent a pound would have made a very
considerable difference. Hat thought about all the things that she
might have done with chis difference. Luke, who was not so unlearned in
figures as in letters, meditated on the change it would have made in
his bank book. Being childless and stingy, he had become the owner of a
small but steadily growing bank account. The minds of both burned and
seethed with these restless promptings of avarice.
Hat permitted herself only one extravagance. She "sent off" to Sears
Roebuck for the reddest sateen petticoat in the whole catalog. She
had long coveted this petticoat, devouring the colored picture of the
flaming garment with greedy eyes. When it arrived, after examining
it in the most minute detail, she laid it reverently in the bureau
drawer; and for the first few days opened the drawer at least a half
dozen times a day to make sure that it was still there. When she went
visiting on Sundays she wore it.
Cheerfulness, like a gleam of winter sunshine, brightened the Blackford
household after the last tobacco stalk had been stripped and thrown
on the trash pile. There was a feeling of some heavy incubus thrown
off and a resulting sense of freedom and relaxation. A morning or two
of lying in bed until seven instead of turning out at four had an
enlivening effect on their spirits. Jerry whistled and sang again as
he went about loading his wagon for the trip. It was February; but
the good prices were still holding. Judith gave the house a vigorous
cleaning, washed and mended for the children, and enjoyed a feeling of
satisfaction, as she always did when she had made a fresh start. To
both of them it was an immense relief to be out of the stripping room.
Jerry borrowed his father's horses to help haul the tobacco to
Lexington; and on the third morning after they had finished stripping
he was ready to start.
They got up at half past three. It was bitterly cold that morning.
Judith turned over the contents of the bureau drawers and found three
pairs of socks, two undershirts and two pairs of drawers, all of which
Jerry put on.
"They've all got holes," he explained, "but the holes don't come in the
same places. So I reckon my hide'll be covered."
He was in festive spirits. As he went about getting ready for the trip,
he hummed a little song of the tobacco region.
When we sell the 'baccy an' the corn crop too
Susy Jane'll ride to church in a gaown an' ribbon new,
Slippers neat upon her feet. There won't be none like Sue
When we sell the 'baccy an' the corn crop too.
"What do you want me to bring you from taown, Judy?" he asked in a pause
of shaving. "I want to fetch you sumpin nice that you bin a-wantin',
sumpin that's a real treat. Shall it be a new dress or what?"
A year or so ago the mention of a new dress would have filled her with
delighted enthusiasm. Now she only smiled a little wearily. She felt
years older than he.
"I don't go nowheres to need good clothes," she said. "Bring stuff to
make Billy a warm coat. An' you'd otta git yerse'f one o' them corduroy
coats with sheepskin inside an' wear it on the trip home. Your clothes
hain't near warm enough fer sech a long trip. I'm afraid you'll be
awful cold afore you git there."
She scurried about looking for wristlets, mufflers for him to put on.
"Aw, I hain't a-goin' to be cold," he reassured her. "If my feet gits
cold I'll jump off an' walk a spell. I'll like enough walk up all the
hills anyway."
She gave him a hot breakfast and put up a big lunch for him to take
along. At last he was ready with his cap pulled down over his ears, his
neck wrapped in mufflers, two pairs of gloves on his hands. He took her
in his arms and kissed her warmly.
"Good-by, Judy, dear. When I come back I'll be wearin' di'monds."
The door clattered to behind him and he was gone. In the melting
darkness outside things were just becoming visible and the hills lifted
black shoulders against a paling eastern sky. She watched him through
the window as he led the four horses out of the barnyard.
Outside the tobacco barn, the more than two ton load towered high
above the hay frame. Jerry fastened the traces of the four horses,
climbed to the high seat and gathered the lines in his hands. Under the
overhanging mountain of tobacco he looked small and perilously poised.
He spoke to the horses; they strained; the wagon gave a lurch forward
and slipped back again. Three times they tried to start the load and
each time it fell back into the ruts made by its own weight. The
fourth time they pulled it out. Slowly, steadily, and with a certain
majesty the great brown mountain behind the two span of horses passed
along the top of the ridge. The small speck that controlled it whistled
cheerfully into the frosty morning air. When she saw the wagon pass,
Judith waved a dishtowel from the doorway and heard his answering shout.
It was almost midnight of the following day when he returned. She was
waiting up for him with a hot fire burning and the kettle boiling
ready for coffee. It was still bitterly cold. The window panes were
white with frost and the biting cold crept in around the sashes. She
had rolled up an old mat and laid it before the door to keep out the
draught. When she moved about at the end of the kitchen farthest from
the stove, her breath was seen in a white steam.
"My, how cold he must be on the road," she thought and shivered.
At last she heard far off the rumble of the wagon on the top of the
ridge, then the creaking sound of the dangerous descent down the steep
hill track over the bare, frozen ground. Peering out into the darkness,
she could see the gleam of his moving lantern. She set a lamp in the
window, made coffee and put on cakes to fry. As she laid the table and
turned the frying cakes, she could hear him unharnessing the horses and
putting them up. She was in a flutter of excitement. Tobacco is not
sold every day.
At last she heard his step approaching and rushed to open the door.
"My, but you must be near froze, Jerry--Jerry, what's the matter?"
He did not kiss her nor speak a word, but walked heavily to the stove
and stood warming his hands. She looked anxiously at his face and saw
that it was set and heavy. The eyes had a glassy, inward stare.
"Jerry, what's wrong? Haow much did you git a paound?"
"Four cents."
"Four cents!" It was all she could say. She was speechless with
astonishment and dismay.
"She dropped yestiddy. There wa'n't hardly no buyers there. The bottom
fell out clean. If I'd a been one day earlier I'd a got nine or ten."
His voice was dead and husky.
"Oh, Jerry, hain't it a shame! After all haow hard you worked an'
slaved over that crop!"
"After all haow hard we both worked an' slaved," he corrected her
harshly.
Suddenly he dropped to the floor beside her, and with his arms across
her knees and his face laid upon his arms, broke into dry, convulsive
sobs, harrowing to hear.
For a long time he shuddered and sobbed, giving way at last with a
certain relief to the disappointment that had been eating his heart
out through the thirty mile drive home. She stroked his hair and his
cheeks, murmuring over him words of consolation.
"Never mind, Jerry, dear. Lots worse things might of happened. We kin
manage along all right; an' mebbe nex' year we'll be lucky."
After the first shock, she did not feel any great bitterness of
disappointment. She had never been able to take money losses very
seriously. In spite of the daily object lesson offered her, she failed
somehow to realize their significance.
"Oh, Judy," he quavered, when at last his storm of sobbing had spent
itself. "I wanted you to have money so's you could buy things you
wanted, an' the young uns could have plenty warm clothes an' new shoes.
An' I hoped I'd be able to put some in the bank this year toward buyin'
us a place. Naow we'll jes have to skimp along same's las' year."
He buried his face in her lap and burst into another storm of weeping.
She soothed him and at last he was quiet.
"Anyway, things can't be so terrible bad so long as we have each other,
can they, Judy?" he said, slipping his arm around her waist and looking
up at her with doglike eyes, pleading and questioning.
She met his look and tried not to flinch.
"No, things'll come out all right, so long as we have each other."
As she said it and gently stroked his hair, a dreary sense of aloofness
came over her and she knew that she was lying.
"Come, Jerry, some hot coffee'll do you good," she rallied, lifting his
head from her lap. "An' this pan o' cakes is burnt clean to a crisp.
I'll have to fry another batch."
While she fried the cakes, he hunched over the stove, and shiver after
shiver turned his cheeks pale.
"Seems like I can't git warm," he said, his teeth chattering. "The
cold's gone clean into my insides an' don't wanta come out. Gawd, it
was cold on the way home. I thought the road'd never come to a end. I
walked most of the way; but even so my feet was like ice. An' when I
come to unbuckle the harness I couldn't hardly make my fingers work."
He shivered again.
She dragged the table over to the stove, poured him out coffee and set
fried bacon and hot cakes before him. He ate and felt better; but still
the shivers kept going over him.
"Dan went to-day," he said, setting down his cup after a long draught
of coffee. "I met him jes afore I come to Georgetown. I didn't have
the heart to tell him the market'd caved in; so I jes waved my arm to
him an' kep' on a-goin'. Poor Dan! It'll come hard on him, too. He was
a-buildin' great hopes on this crop--same as me."
He fell silent, musing with his chin on his hand and forgot to eat.
When he roused himself he poked more wood into the stove and put his
feet in the oven.
"Gawd, I feel like I could bake forever."
The cold spell held on. It was unusual for such extreme weather to last
so long. The next day was bitter. That night when they went to bed
they piled on old coats over the quilts for extra warmth and put hot
flatirons in the bed.
"My, but it'll be a cold trip for Dan comin' home," said Judith, as
she snuggled down under the covers. "He'll be on the road now, poor
feller."
"Yes, it'll come close to zero. An' the wind makes it that much worse."
In the middle of the night Judith stirred uneasily, then sat up in bed
listening.
"Jerry," she cried, shaking him by the shoulder. "Somebody's
a-hammerin' at the door."
He started up out of a sound sleep and sat for a moment dazed. The
knocking began again.
He jumped out of bed, pulled on his overalls, and opened the kitchen
door.
"It's Judy's sister, Lizzie May," Judith could hear in the bedroom.
"She's takin' on awful. The horses an' empty wagon has come home, an'
Dan hain't with 'em. She wants you to come on over."
She recognized the voice of Ziemer Havicus, a half-grown boy who lived
with his parents, nearest neighbor to Lizzie May. As soon as he had
delivered his shivering message the cold and dark swallowed him up
again.
Judith sprang out of bed and began to dress feverishly. In the gripping
cold her numb, bewildered fingers could hardly fasten her clothes; but
it was terror more than cold that made her teeth chatter.
Jerry hurried out with the lantern and hooked up Nip to the cart. They
wrapped the babies in blankets and plunged out silently into the bitter
night.
From Lizzie May's kitchen window a light was streaming. Two or three
lanterns moved about in the barnyard and dark figures and shadows moved
with them. There were sounds of horses being put to.
When they opened the kitchen door, she rushed to Judith and fell
shuddering into her arms.
"Oh, Judy," she cried, clutching her sister hysterically. "What do you
s'pose has happened to him? Judy, don't tell me he's been hurt. Don't
say he's got hurt, Judy."
Jerry went out with the lantern. A little later he came in again and
nodded silently to Judith in sign that he was leaving. His face was set
and serious. He was going with the searching party to look for Dan. A
few moments later the two women heard the wagon creak past and rumble
away into the distance.
The terrible minutes of suspense dragged by like hours. Outside the
night was cold, black, and silent, inscrutably hiding its secret.
Inside, Judith, having put her children to bed, kept the fire burning
and tried to deaden for Lizzie May the torture of waiting.
It was heartrending to be with her, to try to calm her with false
hopes and lying assurances. Judith under the strain began to catch
the infection of hysteria. She found herself trembling all over and
could hardly keep back her tears. She could hardly believe that only
twenty-four hours before she and Jerry had themselves felt calamity
stricken. In the face of this, their misfortune seemed less than
nothing.
The minutes dragged by. Outside the night remained cold, black and
silent, inscrutably hiding its secret.
It was growing daylight when at last they heard the creak of wheels.
For hours they had been listening for this sound with mingled dread
and eagerness. Now it came all unexpectedly like a sudden blow, like a
stab. Lizzie May heard it first and rushed to the door. Judith followed
her.
The wagon was coming at a rapid trot. It creaked loudly in the intense
cold. Jerry was driving. Judith knew him at once by his red muffler.
And there were men sitting on the sides of the wagon box. On the seat
beside Jerry was a figure that Judith did not at once recognize. For
one foolishly glad moment she thought it was Dan. She looked again and
saw that it was Jake Tobey, the coroner. Her heart contracted with a
sharp pain and involuntarily her eyes moved to the wagon box. In the
middle of the wagon box was a long, motionless object covered by a
horse blanket.
Lizzie May had seen and understood it all much more quickly than
Judith. With a terrible scream she rushed out to the wagon.
They brought him in and laid him on the bed in the best room,
composing his frozen limbs as best they could. He was frozen solid. On
one side of his head was a deep gash where he had hit against something
hard and sharp when he had fallen from the wagon. In the inside pocket
of his coat they found a check for a hundred and seventy-three dollars
and eighty-six cents, the payment for his year's work.
The coroner, a little parchment-skinned man, found that he had come to
his death by freezing.
"Like enough he started to freeze an' lost his senses an' fell off the
wagon," he said to the men assembled in the barnyard. "An' he would of
come to when he fell if the blow on his head hadn't 'a' stunned him.
Well, it's a dirty shame. He's gone, poor lad, an' one o' the best
fellers I ever knowed."
"He wouldn't of started to freeze if he hadn't a been drinkin'," put
in Bob Crupper, who had himself just got back from Lexington. "He was
a-drinkin' heavy in taown yestiddy. He tuk it hard--the drop in the
market--an' he drunk a good many drinks to try an' cheer hisse'f up.
Then on the way home the numbness set in on him. If I'd ever had a
notion what was a-goin' to happen to him I'd a kep' alongside of him on
the way back. But anybody can't know these things till it's too late."
"That's what comes o' bein' a drinkin' man," said Uncle Joe Patton, who
was one of the few total abstainers of the neighborhood.
"Waal, he's saved hisse'f a lot o' disappointments," opined Jabez
Moorhouse. "The old sayin' is the good dies young. But if I was havin'
it my way I'd say the lucky dies young. They don't live long enough to
find out haow little there is to make life wuth livin'."
"I dunno about that," drawled Uncle Sam Whitmarsh in his deliberate
way. "I'm a-goin' to be seventy-one, come the twenty-eighth o' nex'
month. An' I can't say I call to mind any time I've wished the pigs'ud
et me when I was little. Dan wanted to live, an' he had a right to
live, poor feller, an' it's all the fault o' the God damned terbaccer
company that won't give us close markets fer our crops. The idee of
havin' to pack yer terbaccer thirty miles in the dead o' winter to git
to a market! Nobody but us growers'd stand fer sech a thing a minit.
An' if yuh send it on the cars, the freight charges is so high yuh
might jes as well give it away. The railroad an' them lousy buyers has
got us by the throat."
"You damn betcha," growled Bob Crupper. "An' the dirty haounds pays
us jes what they've a mind to. They let on they're biddin' agin each
other; an' the hull lot of 'em is all in together buyin' fer the
American Terbaccer Company. Any o' them furrin buyers comes in an'
offers to give a little more, they freeze 'em out. The hull pack of 'em
hid out yestiddy tryin' to let on the market was glutted. Any dirty
dodge to git out o' payin' us a decent price. An' Gawd, when a man
goes to buy terbaccer he pays more for one o' them little bags or tins
holdin' three-four ounces than they give us for that many paounds. Then
come spring, jes afore the market closes, the price'll go away up agin,
so's us poor fools'll sweat over raisin' terbaccer agin' nex' year. You
damn betcha they got us by the throat."
He paced up and down the barnyard moodily, thinking about the three and
a half cents a pound that he had got for his crop the day before.
As the morning grew and the news traveled on the swift pinions with
which bad news is winged, the neighbors and relatives came driving into
the barnyard. As if in mockery, the cold had abated. The wind had gone
down and the winter sunshine began to melt the scant covering of snow
that had fallen the day before. The men stood about in the barnyard
talking over the accident and the drop in the tobacco market. The women
hurried into the house and tried to comfort Lizzie May.
She was wild and hysterical in her grief. Her face swollen and
distorted with weeping, she flung herself upon one or another of her
sisters, aunts, and cousins, sobbing out to them again and again her
anguish and desolation.
"Oh, Judy, Judy, what's a-goin' to become o' these poor little young
uns 'ithout no daddy? He was allus that sorry fer little orphans. He
never thought how soon his own'd be orphans. Oh, oh, oh!"
"He was too good," she kept saying in her calmer moments. "That's why
he was taken away. He was too good."
She had never entertained nor voiced such a sentiment during his life.
But now she said it and believed it too.
In a far corner of the kitchen Aunt Nannie Pooler sat and mourned
softly for her dead boy.
"He was too good," sobbed Lizzie May, burying her face on Aunt Selina's
bosom. "Oh, Aunt Selina, he was too good."
Tears streamed down the old woman's leathery cheeks. She had seen many
die, but yet death was not an old story. She could still weep as in the
days of her youth.
With each new arrival who came to offer her tribute of sympathy to the
widowed girl, she went over it all again with convulsive sobs and fresh
bursts of weeping.
"It's better she talks," whispered Aunt Mary Blackford to her neighbor.
"Some jes sits an' thinks. An' them's the ones that feels it most."
Some of the women busied themselves doing Lizzie May's work for her.
They sent one of the men to milk the cow; and when the milk was brought
in strained it and put it away. They washed and dressed and fed the
children, wiped the stove clean and swept the floor. They made coffee
and offered a cupful to Lizzie May, telling her that it would do her
good. She tried to drink it, but her throat refused to swallow.
She could not keep still a moment. When she was not pouring out her
grief to some newcomer she wandered restlessly here and there about the
kitchen. Everything she saw reminded her of Dan and brought forth new
bursts of anguish.
"There's his work cap. Oh, Luelly, he hung it on that nail. An' naow he
won't never take it off agin."
"Oh, Aunt Abigail, it was Dan put up them shelves. He made that there
little table. He used to whistle so happy when he was a-fixin' things
araound the house. Oh, I can't think he won't never whistle agin."
Having done up all the chores, the women stood and sat around in
little groups, talking together in hushed tones. They slipped in
to look at Dan lying so cold and motionless on the white bed; and
after shaking their heads over him, turned to eye with scarcely less
reverence and more lively interest the bright new rag carpet, the
lace curtains, the shiny what-not with its load of gimcracks and the
cane-seated chairs.
"Poor Lizzie May, my heart jes bleeds for her," said Hat Wolf. In truth
her large, bold eyes were softened by tears. She wiped away two that
had started to run down her cheeks.
"I wish Dan hadn't never planted that cedar tree by the house. Luke
told him while he was a-plantin' it that come time it growed large
enough to shadder a grave there'd be a death in the fam'ly. But he on'y
laughed an' said Lizzie May wanted a tree an' went on a-diggin' the
hole."
"Yes, I've allus heard cedar trees is unlucky," sighed Aunt Sally
Whitmarsh.
"I wonder what she'll do now Dan's gone," continued Hat. "If she goes
back to live with her dad she'll like enough have a auction sale. If
she has a sale I'd like to bid on the carpet an' curtains. They're both
jes the same as new."
"I dunno what she'll do," returned Aunt Sally, who was also taking a
curious survey of the things in the room. "She takes on terrible, poor
thing. But of course she'll git over it. She'll likely go back to her
dad fer a spell. But I don't hardly think she'll stay a widder long.
People that has nice things had best hang onto 'em. If I was her I'd
lay the things by so I'd have 'em." Aunt Sally slid back quietly into
the kitchen.
Hat hesitated a moment before following her. On the little what-not
amid the collection of shells and pincushions her sharp, inquisitive
eyes had spied a little square looking-glass in a gilded frame in which
were set bits of colored glass imitating jewels. There were many other
knick-knacks, but none that seemed to Hat so desirable as this one. The
trinket fascinated and held her eye. She glanced furtively about the
room. The door into the kitchen was closed, and there was no one else
in the room but the dead man. With a swift, snakelike movement, she
darted out her hand toward the looking-glass and slipped it into her
pocket, then went back rather hurriedly into the kitchen.
The undertaker came bringing a coffin and they laid Dan out in the
middle of the best room. When she saw him stretched out straight in
the long, shiny coffin, Lizzie May realized to the full the hard
inexorableness of death. It came to her as though she had not known it
before, that Dan was really dead, that her life with him was over, that
her children were without a father. Beside the hard, cold coffin she
burst into new paroxysms of grief.
When they were all gone back into the kitchen, Aunt Nannie came and
hung dumbly over the body of her boy.
The neighbors and relatives began to go home, slipping away
unobtrusively. They had their own affairs to attend to. There remained
at last only Dan's family and Lizzie May's father, her sisters, and
brothers. They decided among themselves that Dan's mother, Lizzie May's
father, and Luella should stay with her over night. Toward the close of
the afternoon the others went home to look after the horses, the cows
and chickens.
As Jerry and Judith were driving home, she roused herself from the daze
into which Dan's death had cast her to ask herself if she would have
felt as desolate as Lizzie May if it had been Jerry who was brought
home dead. Often of late she had wondered if she loved Jerry as Lizzie
May loved Dan. For a moment she imagined him lying cold and stiff, a
great gash on the side of his head, never to speak to her again nor
whistle nor laugh nor throw the children to the ceiling. The thought
was unbearable. For reassurance she looked sidewise at his healthy
weathered cheek and snuggled close against the warmth of his body.
In the evening, after the children were in bed, she came to him where
he sat by the stove thinking of Dan, slipped her arms about his neck,
and kissed him again and again with mingled tenderness and passion.
Instantly he forgot Dan. He was happy, and eager with warm and joyful
response. It was a long time since she had given him such kisses.