ERIS
BY
ROBERT W. CHAMBERS
AUTHOR OF “THE FLAMING JEWEL,” “THE LITTLE RED
FOOT,” “THE SLAYER OF SOULS,” “IN SECRET,”
“THE COMMON LAW,” ETC.
NEW YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1922,
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
[Illustration]
ERIS. I
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
TO
MY FRIEND
HARRY PAYNE BURTON
ERIS
ERIS
CHAPTER I
The baby was born at Whitewater Farms about nine in the morning, April
19, 1900. Two pure-breed calves,--one a heifer, the other a bull,--were
dropped the same day at nearly the same hour.
Odell came in toward noon, heard these farm items from his foreman, Ed
Lister.
For twenty years Odell’s marriage had been childless. He had waited in
vain for a son,--for several sons,--and now, after twenty sterile years
of hardship, drudgery, and domestic discord, Fanny had given him a girl.
He stood in silence, chewing the bitter news.
“Awright,” he said, “that’s _that_! Is Queen doin’ good?”
Whitewater Queen was doing as well as could be expected and her fourth
heifer-calf was a miracle of Guernsey beauty.
“Awright! Veal that danged bull-caaf. That’s White Chief’s second bull
outa White Rose. I’m done. We’ll take her to Hilltop Acres next time.
And that’s that!”
He dusted the fertiliser and land plaster from his patched canvas
jacket:
“It blowed some,” he said. “I oughta waited. Cost me five dollars,
mebbe. I thought it might rain; that’s why. It’s one dum thing after
another. It allus comes like that.”
He scraped the bottom of his crusted boots against the concrete rim of
the manure pit.
A bitter winter with practically no snow; dry swamps; an April drouth;
a disastrous run of bull-calves with no market,--and now, after twenty
years, a girl baby!
How was a man going to get ahead? How was he to break even? Twenty
years Odell had waited for sons to help him. He should have had three
or four at work by this time. Instead he was paying wages.
“I guess Fanny’s kinda bad,” remarked the foreman.
Odell looked up from his brooding study of the manure.
“I dunno,” continued the foreman; “another Doc is here, too. He come
with a train nurse n’hour ago. Looks kinda bad to me, Elmer.”
Odell gazed stupidly at Lister.
“What other Doc?” he demanded.
“Old Doc Benson. Doc Wand sent Mazie for him.”
Odell said nothing. After a moment or two he walked slowly toward the
house.
In the kitchen a neighbour, one Susan Hagan, a gross widow, was
waddling around getting dinner, perspiring and garrulous. Two or three
farm hands, in bantering conversation, stood washing or drying their
faces at the sink.
Mazie, the big, buxom daughter of Ed Lister, moved leisurely about,
setting the table. She was laughing, as usual, at the men’s repartee.
But when Odell appeared the clatter of the roller-towel ceased. So did
Mazie’s laughter and the hired men’s banter.
Mrs. Hagan was the first to recover her tongue:
“Now, Elmer,” she began in unctuous tones, “you set right down here and
eat a mite o’ ham----” She already had him by the sleeve of his canvas
jacket. She grasped a smoking fry-pan in the other hand. The smoke from
it blew into Odell’s face.
“Leggo,” he grunted, jerking his arm free.
Mrs. Hagan encountered Mazie’s slanting black eyes, narrow with
derision:
“Elmer don’t want to eat; he wants to see Fanny,” said Mazie Lister.
And added: “Your ham’s burning, Mrs. Hagan.”
“Where’s Doc Wand?” demanded Odell heavily.
Mrs. Hagan savagely snatched the answer from Mazie’s red lips:
“Oh, Elmer,” she burst out, “he’s went and called in old Doc Benson;
and Benson he fetched a train nurse from Summit----” Smoke from the
burning ham strangled her. Odell left her coughing, and strode toward
the sitting room.
“Dang it!” he muttered, “what next!”
It was cool and dusky in the sitting room. He halted in the golden
gloom, sullenly apprehensive, listening for any sound from the bed-room
overhead.
After a little while Dr. Wand came downstairs. He was haggard and
white, but when he caught sight of Odell he went to him with a smile.
The village folk feared and trusted Dr. Wand. They feared his sarcasm
and trusted his skill. But, with the self-assertion of inferiority,
they all called him “Fred” or “Doc.”
“Well, Elmer,” he said, “the baby’s doing nicely.... I thought I’d like
to have Dr. Benson look at Fanny.... A fine baby, Elmer.... Fanny asked
me to think up some uncommon and pretty name for your little girl----”
“Name her anything,” said Odell thickly.... “Dang it, I waited twenty
years for a boy. And now look what I get! It all comes to once. White
Rose drops me a bull-caaf, too. But I can veal _that_!”
“Better luck next time----”
“No,” he interrupted fiercely, “I’m done!” He turned and stared at the
sun-bars on the lowered shade, his tanned features working.
“It’s like the herd,” he said. “Either the cow or the herd-bull’s to
blame for every dinged bull-caaf. And I can’t afford to breed ’em
together more’n twice.... Twenty years I been lookin’ for a boy, Doc.
No, I’m done. And that’s that!”
“You’d better go and eat,” suggested the doctor.
Odell nodded: “Fanny awright?”
“We’re watching her. Perhaps you’d better stay around this afternoon,
Elmer----”
“I gotta spread manure----”
“I want you within calling distance,” repeated the doctor mildly.
Odell looked up. After a moment’s hesitation:
“Awright, Doc. I guess I can work around nearby. You must be dead-beat.
Eat a snack with us?”
“Not now. I can’t leave your wife.”
“Do you mean that Fanny’s kinda bad?”
“Yes.... Your wife is very, very ill, Elmer. Dr. Benson is with her
now.”
* * * * *
Breaking ground for a new kitchen garden that afternoon, Odell found
the soil so infested with quack-root, horse-radish, and parsnip that he
gave it up and told Lister that they’d fence the place as cheaply as
possible and turn the hogs on it.
Lister hooked up a horse and drove away to hunt for locust posts and
wire. Odell dragged his plow to the wagon shed, stabled the fat gray
horse, walked slowly back toward the wood shed. There was a dead apple
tree he could fell while waiting.
It was very still there in the April sunshine. All signs of rain were
gone. The wind had died out. Save for the hum of bees in crocus and
snow-drop, and except for the white cock’s clarion from the runs, no
sound broke the blue silence of an April afternoon.
Odell looked up at the window of his wife’s bed-room. The white-capped
nurse was seated there, her head turned as though intent upon something
taking place within the room. She did not stir. After a while Odell
picked up his spading fork and wiped the tines.
Yes, every kind of bad luck was coming at once; drouth, bull-calves,
wind to waste fertiliser, doctors’ bills, expenses for a nurse, for
Mrs. Hagan, for posts and wire,--and the land riddled with quack and
horse-radish....
He’d about broken even, so far, during the last twenty years. All these
years he’d marked time, doggedly, plugging away. Because, after all,
there had been nothing else to do. He could not stop. To sell meant
merely to begin again somewhere else, plug away, break about even year
after year, die plugging. That was what general farming meant in White
Hills when there were wages to pay. He could have made money with sons
to help him.... Life was a tread-mill. What his cattle took from the
land they gave back; nothing more. He was tired of the tread-mill. A
squirrel in a cage travelled no further and got as far....
Odell drove his spading fork into the ground, sifted out fragments of
horse-radish roots, kicked them under the fence into the dusty road
beyond.
Dr. Wand’s roadster stood out there by the front gate. Behind it waited
Dr. Benson’s driver in the new limousine car. Odell had not felt
he could afford any kind of car,--not even a tractor. These danged
doctors....
As he stood with one foot resting on his spading fork, gazing gloomily
at the two cars, Dr. Benson, fat, ruddy and seventy, came out of the
house with his satchel.
He nodded to Odell:
“Dr. Wand wants you,” he said. “She’s conscious.”
After the portly physician had driven away down the dusty road, Odell
went into the house and ascended the stairs to the common bed-room from
which now, in all probability, he was to be excluded for a while.
Dr. Wand, beside the bed, very tired, motioned Odell to draw nearer. It
was the ghost of his wife he saw lying there.
“Well,” he grunted with an effort, “you don’t feel very spry, I guess.
You look kinda peekid, Fan.”
All the stored resentment of twenty barren years glittered in his
wife’s sunken eyes. She knew his desire for sons. She knew what he now
thought of her.
She said in a distinct voice to Dr. Wand: “Tell him.”
The doctor said: “Your wife has asked me to think up some new and
unusual name for the baby. I suggested ‘Eris,’” he added blandly. And,
after a silence: “Your wife seems to like the name.”
Odell nodded: “Awright.”
His wife said to the doctor, in her painfully distinct voice: “I want
she should have a name that no other baby’s got.... Because--that’s all
I can give her.... Something no other baby’s got.... Write it, Doctor.”
Dr. Ward wrote “Eris” on the birth certificate. His expression became
slightly ironical.
“Eris,” he repeated. “Do you both approve this name?”
Odell shrugged assent.
“Yes,” said the woman. “She’s mine. All I can give her is this name.
_I_ give it.”
“Eris was the name of a Greek goddess,” remarked the doctor. He did
not explain that Eris was the goddess of Discord. “I’m very sure,” he
added, “that no other baby is named Eris.... But plenty of ’em ought to
be.... Was there anything you wanted to say to your wife, Elmer?”
“Hey?” demanded Odell, stupidly.
Suddenly something in the physician’s eyes sent a dull shock through
Odell. He turned and stared at his wife as though he had never before
laid eyes on her. After a while he found his voice:
“You--you’ll get better after a spell,” he stammered. “Feel like eatin’
a mite o’ sunthin’ tasty? You want I should get you a little jell
’rsunthin’--Fanny----”
Her bright, sunken gaze checked him.
“You ain’t asked to see the baby,” she said in her thin, measured
voice; “I’m sorry I ever bore a child to you, Elmer.”
Odell reddened: “Where is it----?” He stumbled up from his chair,
looking vaguely about him, confused by her brilliant eyes--by their
measureless resentment.
For life was becoming too brief for pretence now. Fanny knew it; her
husband began to realise it.
She said: “I’m _glad_ I have no sons. I’m sorry I bore a child....
God forgive me.... Because I’ll never rest, never be quiet, now....
But I don’t mind so much ... if THEY will let me keep an eye on her
somehow----” She tried to lift her head from the pillow: “I want to see
her,” she said sharply.
“Yes,” said the doctor. “I want you to see her. Wait a moment----”
As he passed Odell he drew him outside. “Go downstairs,” he whispered.
“I’ll call you if she asks to see you again.”
“She ain’t a-goin’ to get no better?” demanded Odell hoarsely.
“No.”
The physician passed on into the adjoining room, where the nurse sat
watching a new-born baby in its brand new cradle.
Odell continued down the stairs, and seated himself in the dim sitting
room....
Everything was coming at once--drouth, wind, bull-calves, girl
babies--and Death.... All were coming at once.... But no sons had ever
come. None would ever come now. So--wages must go on.... A woman to
mind the baby.... And somebody to keep house for him.... Expense piling
on expense. And no outlook--no longer any chance to break even....
Where was he to get more money? He could not carry the farm on his own
shoulders all alone. The more work planned, the more men needed; and
the more it all cost. Increased acreage, redoubled production, got him
no further. Always it was, at best, merely an even break--every loss
offsetting every gain....
One of the cats came in with a barn rat hanging from her mouth, looked
furtively at Odell, then slunk out, tail twitching.
The man dropped his elbows on the centre table and took his unshaven
face between both scarred fists....
The room had grown as still as death now. Which was fitting and proper.
After a long while Dr. Wand descended the stairs. Odell stood up in the
semi-dusk of the sitting room.
“She didn’t ask for you again,” said the doctor.
“Is--is she--gone?”
“Yes.... Quite painlessly.”
They walked slowly to the porch. It was nearly milking time. The herd
was coming up the long lane,--the sun dipping low behind,--and a
delicate rosy light over everything.
“You got your milking to do,” said the doctor. “I’ll notify Wilbur
Chase. I’ll see to everything, Elmer.”
Wilbur Chase was the local undertaker. The doctor went out to the road,
cranked his car, got in wearily, and rolled away toward the village.
Odell stood motionless. In his ears sounded the cow-bells, tonk-a-tonk,
tonk-a-tonk, as the Whitewater herd turned leisurely into the
barn-yard. Ed Lister opened the sliding doors to the cow-barn. A frisky
heifer or two balked; otherwise the herd went in soberly, filing away
behind spotless, sweet-smelling rows of stalls, greeted thunderously by
the great herd-bull from his steel bull-pen.
Odell, heavy-eyed, turned on his heel and went upstairs.
But at the door of the silent room above the nurse barred his way.
“I’ll let you know when you can see her,” she said. “She isn’t ready.”
Odell gazed at her in a bewildered way.
“The baby is in the other room,” added the nurse. “Don’t wake her.
Better not touch her.”
He went, obediently, stood in the doorway, his scarred hands hanging.
Eris lay asleep in her brand new cradle, almost invisible under the
white fabrics that swathed her.
The chamber of death was no stiller than this dim room where life was
beginning. There was no sound, no light except a long, rosy ray from
the setting sun falling athwart the cradle.
So slept Eris, daughter of discord, and so named,--an unwelcome baby
born late in her parents’ lives, and opening her blind, bluish eyes
like an April wind-flower in a world still numb from winter.
Odell stared at the mound of covers.
It would be a long while before this baby could be of any use at
Whitewater Farms.