THE "PEACH."
Milford was at the dinner table, talking to Blakemore, when a young
Norwegian woman entered the room. Blakemore nudged him. He looked up and
quickly looked down. He heard a woman say, "Sit here, Gunhild." He heard
her introduced as Miss Strand.
"Isn't she a peach?" Blakemore whispered.
"What did you say, George?" his wife asked, picking at him.
"I didn't say anything."
"What was it you whispered?"
"About a peach," the boy blurted. "I want a peach. Maw, give me a
peach."
She commanded him to hush; she raked the wayward flax out of his eyes,
and straightened him about in his chair. George shook with the abandoned
laughter of a man's gross mischief. His wife did not see anything to
laugh at; she thought it was impolite to whisper. Mr. Milford was not
laughing. No, Mr. Milford was not. His face wore a look of distress. He
shot sharp glances at the Norwegian girl. He heard her voice, her laugh.
A moment ago he draped Mrs. Blakemore with an overflow of sentimental
sympathy, but now his soul was as selfish as a hungry wolf. He had
talked with pleasant drollery. Now he offered nothing, and cut his
answers down to colorless brevity. Mrs. Stuvic came in and stood near
him. He was silent under her Gatling talk, chill-armored against her
fire. She said she would introduce him to the Norwegian girl, and he
flinched. He excused himself, got up, and went out. He walked as far as
the gate opening into the grove, stood there a moment, turned and came
back to the veranda.
"He was hit quick and hard," said George to his wife, as Mrs. Stuvic
left them. "She's a stunner, and she stunned him."
"George, please don't. She may remind him of some one, that's all. Why,
he's engaged, and is working----"
"That's all right. I said she hit him, and she did. Hit anybody."
"George!"
"Well, that's what I said. I can't help it."
"I despise her."
"Of course, but she's a stunner all the same. But come, now, don't look
that way. I'm not in love with her."
"I'm not so sure about it. You called her a 'peach'," she said, helping
the boy out of his chair, and telling him to run along.
It was too much to ask her not to suspect him, now that he was
determined not to be cast down by business troubles. She had buoyed him
with her sympathy, and it was natural that she should resent his notice
of the young woman, if not his good humor. But after a lowly wallow in
melancholy, a sudden rise of spirits is always viewed with suspicion by
a woman. It is one of the sentimental complexities, of her nature. She
looked at him with eyes that might never have been soft. No doubt there
was in George's breast a strong cast of the rascal. He was not a stepson
of old Adam, but a full blood. He knew, however, the proper recourse,
and he took it. He began to fret over his vanished business, and,
forgetting the "peach," she gave him her sympathy.
Milford, meanwhile, was slowly striding up and down the veranda. Mrs.
Stuvic came out, followed by the Norwegian.
"She didn't want to meet you, Bill, but here she is."
That was the introduction, an embarrassment that fed the old woman's
notion of fun. Milford stammered, and the young woman blushed.
"I did not say I did not want to meet you," she said, with a slight
accent, her unidiomatic English learned at school. "I would not say such
a thing. Mrs. Stuvic is full of jokes. She makes me laugh." And she did
laugh, strange echo from North Sea cliffs, the glow of the midnight in
her eyes, a thought that shot through the cowboy's mind as he gazed upon
her. Mrs. Stuvic went back, laughing, to the dining-room, having flushed
the young woman and turned the dark man red.
"She is a very funny woman," said the "peach," looking far across the
meadow toward the lake, her long lashes slowly rising and falling. She
was not beautiful; her features were not regular, but there was a
marvelous light in her countenance, and her bronze-tinted hair was as
rank in growth as the yellowing oats where the soil is rich and damp.
She looked to be just ripe, but was too lithe to be luscious. Mrs.
Blakemore said that her nose was slightly tipped up, a remark more
slanderous than true, and when taken to task by an oldish woman who had
no cause to be jealous, declared that it was not a matter of taste but a
question of observation. At any rate, she had come as a yellow flash,
and must soon fade.
Milford continued to gaze at her, wanting to say something, but not
knowing what to say. He heard the gruff laughter of the men in the
dining-room, joking with Mrs. Stuvic, and the romping of the children
coming out.
"I guess that's the best rabbit dog anywhere around here," he said, as a
flea-bitten cur trotted past. He had never seen the dog hunt rabbits. He
knew nothing about him except that he had been ordered to shoot him for
howling, the dreary night when old Lewson died.
"He does not look that he could run very fast," she replied, turning her
eyes upon the dog.
"Oh, yes, he runs like a streak. He outran a pack of wolves up in the
Wisconsin woods."
"Wolves!" she said, looking at him.
He knew that he was a liar, but he said "wolves." He asked if she had
ever seen any wolves. She had seen packs of coyotes on the prairie. "I
went to my uncle when I came to this country," she said. "He lived away
in the West. I stayed there two years, and then I came with him to
Chicago. I did not like it so far off. The wind was always blowing
lonesome in the night, and I thought of my old home where the grass
fringed the edge of the cliff."
"Did you speak English before you came to this country?"
"I could read it, and I did read much--old tales of fierce fights on the
sea."
"How long do you expect to stay out here?"
"I am with Mrs. Goodwin, and when she says go, I go. She is very kind to
me."
Mrs. Goodwin came out, calling "Gunhild." She was tall, with grayish
hair, and on the stage might have played the part of a duchess. Her
husband's affairs were prosperous, and she devoted herself to the
discovery of genius. She had found a young girl with a marvelous voice,
and had educated her into a common-rate singer, put her in opera, and
the critics scorched her. The discoverer swallowed a lump of
disappointment, and turned about to find another genius. In an obscure
corner of a newspaper, she found a gem in verse, the soul-spurt of a
young man. She sought him out, and paid for the printing of a volume of
verses. The critics scoffed him, and she swallowed another lump. One of
her assistant discoverers brought to her a pencil sketch of a buffalo,
and this led to the finding of Gunhild Strand. The girl was modest. She
disclaimed genius, but she was sent to the Art Institute; she would
climb the mountain. But she got no higher than the foot-hills. "I did
not have any confidence in myself," the girl declared. "And now I must
work for you to pay you for what has been spent." This was surely a
proof that she had no genius, but it was an evidence of gratitude, a
rarer quality, and Mrs. Goodwin was pleased. "You shall be my
companion," she said, "Your society will more than repay me. You must
not refuse. I set my heart upon it."
Milford was introduced, and the stately woman threw her searchlight upon
him. Here might be another genius.
"They tell me, Mr. Milford, that you are a man of great industry."
"They might have told you, madam, that I am a great fool."
Ha! a gleam of true light. She warmed toward him. She thought of Burns
plowing up a mouse. But she was skeptical of poets. They have a contempt
for their patrons if their wares do not sell.
"You credit them with too shrewd a discovery," she replied.
"I simply give them credit for ordinary eyesight, madam."
"You prove the contrary." She smiled upon him. "They tell me that you
came like a mist, out of the mysterious woods."
"A fog from the marsh," he replied, laughing; and the "peach" laughed,
too--more music from the North Sea. He saw the pink of her arm through
the gauze of her sleeve. Mrs. Goodwin thought that he knew nothing about
women, and she was right, but, as a rule, if rule can be applied, a
woman thinks this of a man when, indeed, he has mastered innocent
hearts to make wantons of them.
"Where is your field?" the discoverer inquired.
"Over yonder, where the sun is hottest."
"And your house?"
"Over on the hill, yonder, where the wind will blow coldest in winter."
Surely, he had a volume of verse hidden under the old clothes in his
trunk. She could have wished that he was even an inventor. She shuddered
at the thought of another attempt to set up a shaft to American letters.
The jovial doctor had shaken his fat sides at her. Suddenly she was
inspired with forethought. She asked him if he had ever written any
verse. He said that once he had been tempted to toss a firebrand into an
enemy's wheat-rick, but had never ruined a sheet with measured lines.
She saw that he had caught the spirit of the paragrapher's fling. So
this fear was put aside; still, he must be a genius of some sort--an
inventor, perhaps. She asked if he had ever invented anything, and he
answered, "Yes, a lie." This stimulated her interest in him. He was so
frank, so refreshing. She had heard that a laborer could be quaintly
entertaining. She contrasted him with the numerous men of her
acquaintance, men whose sentences were as dried herbs, the sap and the
fragrance gone. She was weary of the doctor's shop-talk, the
impoverished blood of conversation, the dislocated joint of utterance.
She would have welcomed track talk with a race-horse starter. And the
bluntness of this man from the hillside was invigorating. His words
were not dry herbs, but fresh pennyroyal, sharp with scent. Milford
smiled at her, wishing that she were locked among her husband's jars of
pickled atrocities. He wanted to talk silliness with the girl.
The other boarders came out, George and his wife among them. George
handed Milford a cigar, telling him to light it,--that the ladies did
not object to smoking.
"You haven't asked them," said his wife.
"Well, I know they don't."
"There, don't you see? Mrs. Dorch is moving off."
George grinned. "Her husband is a great smoker, and she don't want to be
reminded of home," he said.
"You ought to be ashamed of yourself," she replied.
"I can't afford it. I'm too much loser."
Mrs. Goodwin asked Gunhild to walk with her. She looked at Milford, but
he lost his nerve and did not offer to go with them.
"That was a bid," said George. His wife reprimanded him. "It is a wonder
you didn't offer to go," she declared. "But let us take a walk," she
added.
"Too soon after eating. Believe I'll go up and take a snooze," he said.
A mother, worn out with hot nights of worrying over the ills of a
teething child, sat rocking the little one. Bobbie stood looking on with
the critical eye of a boy. "A baby sticks out his tongue when you wipe
his face with a wet rag," he said, and George snorted. "What a boy
don't see ain't worth seeing," he said. The boy's mother reached out,
drew him to her, and attempted to take from his clenched hands a piece
of castiron, a rusty key, and a hog's tooth. "Throw those nasty things
away."
"Let him keep his tools," said George. "A boy can't work without tools."
He clung to the implements of his trade. She turned him about and set him
adrift. "Mr. Milford," she said, "you don't seem to be quite yourself
this afternoon. You aren't enjoying yourself."
He appeared surprised that she should think so. If he were not enjoying
himself it was news to him, deserving of a big headline. She saw his eye
searching the woods; she thought of the young woman who sighed out her
breath at a window far away, waiting for him to hoe out a place for her.
The wreath that she had hung upon him began to wither. After all, he was
but a man with a shifting soul, and she did not believe that his talk
had morally helped her husband. George was nodding. She shook him, and
he looked up quickly, as if he expected a railway conductor to tell him
that he was to get off there.
"What makes you so stupid?"
"The beastly weather. Well, I'm going up."
She sat there rocking herself, with a knife in her bosom for the man who
sat near, the deceitful laborer. He was, after all, nothing but a hired
man. What could she have expected of him? She was foolish to believe
that there was anything spiritual about him. She would give him a dig.
"The young woman whom you were pleased to call a 'peach'----"
"I didn't call her a 'peach'."
"No matter. The young woman who has been called a 'peach,' with a
bouquet of man's promises perfuming her heart, thinks, no doubt, that he
is longing to see her again, when, perhaps, he has forgotten her, or
remembers her only as a joke. Those foreign girls are so simple." She
looked at him with her drooping eyes. Her fancy rewarded her with the
belief that there was a sudden mixture of red in the brown of his face.
"Don't you think she's handsome?" she asked, after waiting for him to
speak.
"No," he answered, glad to disappoint her.
"Oh, I do. Don't you, really?"
"Well, she's not ugly."
"But don't you think she's handsome?"
"Yes," he said, and looked as if he wanted to add: "Now what are you
going to do about it?"
"I knew you did. Men have such queer tastes. Well, I don't think she's a
bit handsome. It's no trick at all to keep the eyes wide open; and any
woman can let her hair go to seed. Of course, I ought not to say
anything, but I should think that you would hold a brighter picture of
some one who is waiting--but what am I saying? How warm it is! We are
surely going to have rain."
She heard the boy bawling out in the orchard. She ran to him. Milford
stalked off toward home. "She's a little fool," he thought, and
dismissed her. In the road he met the "discoverer" and the "peach,"
decked with purple flowers. He waited for them to show a disposition to
halt. They did not, so he bowed and passed them by. On the knoll in the
oat field he turned and looked back. On the veranda he saw a purple
glimmer. Was the girl waving flowers at him? He turned toward home, with
the music of her accent in his heart. The place was deserted. The hired
man was out among the women, poverty once bitten, looking for another
bite. Milford stretched himself out upon the grass under the walnut
tree. Grimly, he compared himself with a man thrown from a horse, not
knowing yet whether or not he was hurt. He had the plainsman's sense of
humor, and he laughed at himself. "No matter which way I turn, I'm
generally up against it," he said, and he could hear his words whispered
up among the leaves of the tree. The earth seemed to throb beneath him.
The heat made the whole world pant. He dozed, and dreamed that he saw
violets rained from a purple cloud.