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MY ÁNTONIA
BY WILLA CATHER
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Introduction
Last summer I
happened to be crossing the plains of Iowa in a season of intense
heat, and it was my good fortune to have for a traveling companion
James Quayle BurdenJim Burden, as we still call him in the
West. He and I are old friendswe grew up together in the same
Nebraska townand we had much to say to each other. While the
train flashed through never-ending miles of ripe wheat, by country
towns and bright-flowered pastures and oak groves wilting in the sun,
we sat in the observation car, where the woodwork was hot to the touch
and red dust lay deep over everything. The dust and heat, the burning
wind, reminded us of many things. We were talking about what it is
like to spend ones childhood in little towns like these, buried
in wheat and corn, under stimulating extremes of climate: burning
summers when the world lies green and billowy beneath a brilliant sky,
when one is fairly stifled in vegetation, in the color and smell of
strong weeds and heavy harvests; blustery winters with little snow,
when the whole country is stripped bare and gray as sheet-iron. We
agreed that no one who had not grown up in a little prairie town could know anything about it. It was a kind of freemasonry, we
said.
Although Jim Burden and I both live in New York, and
are old friends, I do not see much of him there. He is legal counsel
for one of the great Western railways, and is sometimes away from his
New York office for weeks together. That is one reason why we do not
often meet. Another is that I do not like his wife.
When Jim was still an obscure young lawyer,
struggling to make his way in New York, his career was suddenly
advanced by a brilliant marriage. Genevieve Whitney was the only
daughter of a distinguished man. Her marriage with young Burden was
the subject of sharp comment at the time. It was said she had been
brutally jilted by her cousin, Rutland Whitney, and that she married
this unknown man from the West out of bravado. She was a restless,
headstrong girl, even then, who liked to astonish her friends. Later,
when I knew her, she was always doing something unexpected. She gave
one of her town houses for a Suffrage headquarters, produced one of
her own plays at the Princess Theater, was arrested for picketing
during a garment-makers strike, etc. I am never
able to believe that she has much feeling for the causes to which she
lends her name and her fleeting interest. She is handsome, energetic,
executive, but to me she seems unimpressionable and temperamentally
incapable of enthusiasm. Her husbands quiet tastes irritate
her, I think, and she finds it worth while to play the patroness to a
group of young poets and painters of advanced ideas and mediocre
ability. She has her own fortune and lives her own life. For some
reason, she wishes to remain Mrs. James Burden.
As for Jim, no disappointments have been severe
enough to chill his naturally romantic and ardent disposition. This
disposition, though it often made him seem very funny when he was a
boy, has been one of the strongest elements in his success. He loves
with a personal passion the great country through which his railway
runs and branches. His faith in it and his knowledge of it have played
an important part in its development. He is always able to raise
capital for new enterprises in Wyoming or Montana, and has helped
young men out there to do remarkable things in mines and timber and
oil. If a young man with an idea can once get Jim Burdens
attention, can manage to accompany him when he goes off into the wilds
hunting for lost parks or exploring new canyons, then the money which
means action is usually forthcoming. Jim is still able to lose himself
in those big Western dreams. Though he is over forty now, he meets new
people and new enterprises
with the impulsiveness by which his boyhood friends remember him. He
never seems to me to grow older. His fresh color and sandy hair and
quick-changing blue eyes are those of a young man, and his
sympathetic, solicitous interest in women is as youthful as it is
Western and American.
During that burning day when we were crossing Iowa,
our talk kept returning to a central figure, a Bohemian girl whom we
had known long ago and whom both of us admired. More than any other
person we remembered, this girl seemed to mean to us the country, the
conditions, the whole adventure of our childhood. To speak her name
was to call up pictures of people and places, to set a quiet drama
going in ones brain. I had lost sight of her altogether, but
Jim had found her again after long years, had renewed a friendship
that meant a great deal to him, and out of his busy life had set apart
time enough to enjoy that friendship. His mind was full of her that
day. He made me see her again, feel her presence, revived all my old
affection for her.
I can t see, he said impetuously,
why you have never written anything about
Ántonia.
I told him I had always felt that other peoplehe himself, for oneknew her much better than I. I was
ready, however, to make an agreement with him; I would set down on paper all
that I remembered of Ántonia if he would do the same. We might,
in this way, get a picture of her.
He rumpled his hair with a quick, excited gesture,
which with him often announces a new determination, and I could see
that my suggestion took hold of him. Maybe I will, maybe I
will! he declared. He stared out of the window for a few
moments, and when he turned to me again his eyes had the sudden
clearness that comes from something the mind itself sees. Of
course, he said, I should have to do it in a direct way,
and say a great deal about myself. Its through myself that I
knew and felt her, and I ve had no practice in any other form of
presentation.
I told him that how he knew her and felt her was
exactly what I most wanted to know about Ántonia. He had had
opportunities that I, as a little girl who watched her come and go,
had not.
Months afterward Jim Burden arrived at my apartment
one stormy winter afternoon, with a bulging legal portfolio sheltered
under his fur overcoat. He brought it into the sitting-room with him
and tapped it with some pride as he stood warming his hands.
I finished it last nightthe thing
about Ántonia, he said. Now, what about yours?
I had to confess that mine had not gone beyond a few
straggling notes.
Notes? I did nt make any. He
drank his tea all at once and put down the cup. I did nt
arrange or rearrange. I simply wrote down what of herself and myself
and other people Ántonias name recalls to me. I suppose
it has nt any form. It has nt any title, either.
He went into the next room, sat down at my desk and wrote on the
pinkish face of the portfolio the word, Ántonia.
He frowned at this a moment, then prefixed another word, making it
My Ántonia. That seemed to satisfy him.
Read it as soon as you can, he said,
rising, but don t let it influence your own
story.
My own story was never written, but the following
narrative is Jims manuscript, substantially as he brought it to
me.
Book I The Shimerdas
I
I first heard of
Ántonia
on what seemed to me an interminable journey across the great midland
plain of North America. I was ten years old then; I had lost both my
father and mother within a year, and my Virginia relatives were
sending me out to my grandparents, who lived in Nebraska. I traveled
in the care of a mountain boy, Jake Marpole, one of the
hands on my fathers old farm under the Blue
Ridge, who was now going West to work for my grandfather. Jakes
experience of the world was not much wider than mine. He had never
been in a railway train until the morning when we set out together to
try our fortunes in a new world.
We went all the way in day-coaches, becoming more
sticky and grimy with each stage of the journey. Jake bought
everything the newsboys offered him: candy, oranges, brass collar
buttons, a watch-charm, and for me a Life of Jesse
James, which I remember as one of the most satisfactory books I
have ever read. Beyond Chicago we were under the protection of a
friendly passenger conductor, who knew all about the country to which
we were going and gave us a great deal of advice in exchange for our
confidence. He seemed to us an experienced and worldly man who had
been almost everywhere; in his conversation he threw out lightly the
names of distant States and cities. He wore the rings and pins and
badges of different fraternal orders to which he belonged. Even his
cuff-buttons were engraved with hieroglyphics, and he was more
inscribed than an Egyptian obelisk. Once when he sat down to chat, he
told us that in the immigrant car ahead there was a family from
across the water whose destination was the same as
ours.
They can t any of them speak English,
except one little girl, and all she can say is We go Black Hawk,
Nebraska. Shes not
much older than you, twelve or thirteen, maybe, and shes as
bright as a new dollar. Don t you want to go ahead and see her,
Jimmy? Shes got the pretty brown eyes, too!
This last remark made me bashful, and I shook my head
and settled down to Jesse James. Jake nodded at me
approvingly and said you were likely to get diseases from
foreigners.
I do not remember crossing the Missouri River, or
anything about the long days journey through Nebraska. Probably
by that time I had crossed so many rivers that I was dull to them. The
only thing very noticeable about Nebraska was that it was still, all
day long, Nebraska.
I had been sleeping, curled up in a red plush seat,
for a long while when we reached Black Hawk. Jake roused me and took
me by the hand. We stumbled down from the train to a wooden siding,
where men were running about with lanterns. I could nt see any
town, or even distant lights; we were surrounded by utter darkness.
The engine was panting heavily after its long run. In the red glow
from the fire-box, a group of people stood
huddled together on the platform, encumbered by bundles and boxes. I
knew this must be the immigrant family the conductor had told us
about. The woman wore a fringed shawl tied over her head, and she
carried a little tin trunk in her arms, hugging it as if it were a
baby. There was an old man, tall and stooped. Two half-grown boys and
a girl stood holding
oil-cloth bundles, and a little girl clung to her mothers skirts.
Presently a man with a lantern approached them and began to talk,
shouting and exclaiming. I pricked up my ears, for it was positively
the first time I had ever heard a foreign tongue.
Another lantern came along. A bantering voice called
out: Hello, are you Mr. Burdens folks? If
you are, its me you re looking for. Im Otto Fuchs.
Im Mr. Burdens hired man, and Im to
drive you out. Hello, Jimmy, ain t you scared to come so far
west?
I looked up with interest at the new face in the
lantern light. He might have stepped out of the pages of Jesse
James. He wore a sombrero hat, with a wide leather band and a
bright buckle, and the ends of his mustache were twisted up stiffly,
like little horns. He looked lively and ferocious, I thought, and
as if he had a history. A long scar ran across one cheek and drew the
corner of his mouth up in a sinister curl. The top of his left ear was
gone, and his skin was brown as an Indians. Surely this was the
face of a desperado. As he walked about the platform in his
high-heeled boots, looking for our trunks, I saw that he was a rather
slight man, quick and wiry, and light on his feet. He told us we had a
long night drive ahead of us, and had better be on the hike. He led us
to a hitching-bar where two farm wagons were tied, and I saw the
foreign family crowding into one of them. The other was for us. Jake
got on the front seat with Otto Fuchs, and I rode on the straw in the
bottom of the wagon-box, covered up with a buffalo hide. The
immigrants rumbled off into the empty darkness, and we followed
them.
I tried to go to sleep, but the jolting made me bite
my tongue, and I soon began to ache all over. When the straw settled
down I had a hard bed. Cautiously I slipped from under the buffalo
hide, got up on my knees and peered over the side of the wagon. There
seemed to be nothing to see; no fences, no creeks or trees, no hills
or fields. If there was
a road, I could not make it out in the faint starlight. There was
nothing but land: not a country at all, but the material out of which
countries are made. No, there was nothing but landslightly
undulating, I knew, because often our wheels ground against the brake
as we went down into a hollow and lurched up again on the other side.
I had the feeling that the world was left behind, that we had got over
the edge of it, and were outside mans jurisdiction. I had never
before looked up at the sky when there was not a familiar mountain
ridge against it. But this was the complete dome of heaven, all there
was of it. I did not believe that my dead father and mother were
watching me from up there; they would still be looking for me at the
sheep-fold down by the creek, or along the white road that led to the
mountain pastures. I had left even their spirits behind me. The wagon
jolted on, carrying me I knew not whither. I don t think I was
homesick. If we never arrived anywhere, it did not matter. Between
that earth and that sky I felt erased, blotted out. I did not say my
prayers that night: here, I felt, what would be would be.
II
I do not remember
our arrival at my grandfathers farm sometime before daybreak,
after a drive of nearly twenty miles with heavy work-horses. When I
awoke, it was afternoon. I was lying in a little room, scarcely larger
than the bed that held me, and the window-shade at my head was
flapping softly in a warm wind. A tall woman, with wrinkled brown skin
and black hair, stood looking down at me; I knew that she must be my
grandmother. She had been crying, I could see, but when I opened my
eyes she smiled, peered at me anxiously, and sat down on the foot of
my bed.
Had a good sleep, Jimmy? she asked
briskly. Then in a very different tone she said, as if to herself,
My, how you do look like your father! I remembered that
my father had been her little boy; she must often have come to wake
him like this when he overslept. Here are your clean
clothes, she went on, stroking my coverlid with her brown hand
as she talked. But first you come down to the kitchen with me,
and have a nice warm bath
behind the stove. Bring your things; theres nobody
about.
Down to the kitchen struck me as
curious; it was always out in the kitchen at home. I
picked up my shoes and stockings and followed her through the
living-room and down a flight of stairs into a basement. This basement
was divided into a dining-room at the right of the stairs and a
kitchen at the left. Both rooms were plastered and whitewashedthe plaster laid directly upon the earth walls, as it used to be in
dugouts. The floor was of hard cement. Up under the wooden ceiling
there were little half-windows with white curtains, and pots of
geraniums and wandering Jew in the deep sills. As I entered the
kitchen I sniffed a pleasant smell of gingerbread baking. The stove
was very large, with bright nickel trimmings, and behind it there was
a long wooden bench against the wall, and a tin washtub, into which
grandmother poured hot and cold water. When she brought the soap and
towels, I told her that I was used to taking my bath without help.
Can you do your ears, Jimmy? Are you sure?
Well, now, I call you a right smart little boy.
It was pleasant there in the kitchen. The sun shone
into my bath-water through the west half-window, and a big Maltese cat
came up and rubbed himself against the tub, watching me curiously.
While I scrubbed, my grandmother busied herself in the dining-room
until I called anxiously, Grandmother, Im afraid the
cakes are burning! Then she came laughing, waving her apron
before her as if she were shooing chickens.
She was a spare, tall woman, a little stooped, and
she was apt to carry her head thrust forward in an attitude of
attention, as if she were looking at something, or listening to
something, far away. As I grew older, I came to believe that it was
only because she was so often thinking of things that were far away.
She was quick-footed and energetic in all her movements. Her voice was
high and rather shrill, and she often spoke with an anxious
inflection, for she was exceedingly desirous that everything should go
with due order and decorum. Her laugh, too, was high, and perhaps a
little strident, but there was a lively intelligence in it. She was
then fifty-five years old, a strong woman, of unusual endurance.
After I was dressed I explored the long cellar
next the kitchen. It was dug out under the wing of the house, was
plastered and cemented, with a stairway and an outside door by which
the men came and went. Under one of the windows there was a place for
them to wash when they came in from work.
While my grandmother was busy about supper I settled
myself on the wooden bench behind the stove and got acquainted with
the cathe caught not only rats and mice, but gophers, I was
told. The patch of yellow sunlight on the floor traveled back toward
the stairway, and grandmother and I talked about my journey, and about
the arrival of the new Bohemian family; she said they were to be our
nearest neighbors. We did not talk about the farm in Virginia, which
had been her home for so many years. But after the men came in from
the fields, and we were all seated at the supper-table, then she asked
Jake about the old place and about our friends and neighbors
there.
My grandfather said little. When he first came in he
kissed me and spoke kindly to me, but he was not demonstrative. I felt
at once his deliberateness and personal dignity, and was a little in
awe of him. The thing one
immediately noticed about him was his beautiful, crinkly, snow-white
beard. I once heard a missionary say it was like the beard of an
Arabian sheik. His bald crown only made it more impressive.
Grandfathers eyes were not at all like those
of an old man; they were bright blue, and had a fresh, frosty sparkle.
His teeth were white and regularso sound that he had never
been to a dentist in his life. He had a delicate skin, easily
roughened by sun and wind. When he was a young man his hair and beard
were red; his eyebrows were still coppery.
As we sat at the table Otto Fuchs and I kept stealing
covert glances at each other. Grandmother had told me while she was
getting supper that he was an Austrian who came to this country a
young boy and had led an adventurous life in the Far West among
mining-camps and cow outfits. His iron constitution was somewhat
broken by mountain pneumonia, and he had drifted back to live in a
milder country for a while. He had relatives in Bismarck, a German
settlement to the north of us, but for a year now he had been working
for grandfather.
The minute supper was over, Otto took me into the
kitchen to whisper to me about a pony down in the barn that had been
bought for me at a sale; he had been riding him to find out whether he
had any bad tricks, but he was a perfect gentleman, and
his name was Dude. Fuchs told me everything I wanted to know: how he
had lost his ear in a Wyoming blizzard when he was a stage-driver, and
how to throw a lasso. He promised to rope a steer for me before
sundown next day. He got out his chaps and silver spurs
to show them to Jake and me, and his best cowboy boots, with tops
stitched in bold designroses, and true-lovers knots,
and undraped female figures. These, he solemnly explained, were
angels.
Before we went to bed Jake and Otto were called up to
the living-room for prayers. Grandfather put on silver-rimmed
spectacles and read several Psalms. His voice was so sympathetic and
he read so interestingly that I wished he had chosen one of my
favorite chapters in the Book of Kings. I was awed by his intonation
of the word Selah. He shall
choose our inheritance for us, the excellency of Jacob whom He loved.
Selah. I had no idea what the word meant; perhaps he had not.
But, as he uttered it, it became oracular, the most sacred of
words.
Early the next morning I ran out of doors to look
about me. I had been told that ours was the only wooden house west of
Black Hawkuntil you came to the Norwegian settlement, where
there were several. Our neighbors lived in sod houses and dugoutscomfortable, but not very roomy. Our white frame house, with a
story and half-story above the basement, stood at the east end of what
I might call the farmyard, with the windmill close by the kitchen
door. From the windmill the ground sloped westward, down to the barns
and granaries and pig-yards. This slope was trampled hard and bare,
and washed out in winding gullies by the rain. Beyond the corncribs,
at the bottom of the shallow draw, was a muddy little pond, with rusty
willow bushes growing about it. The road from the post-office came
directly by our door, crossed the farmyard, and curved round this
little pond, beyond which it began to climb the gentle swell of
unbroken prairie to the west. There, along the western sky-line, it
skirted a great cornfield, much larger than any field I had ever seen.
This cornfield, and the
sorghum patch behind the barn, were the only broken land in sight.
Everywhere, as far as the eye could reach, there was nothing but
rough, shaggy, red grass, most of it as tall as I.
North of the house, inside the ploughed fire-breaks,
grew a thick-set strip of box-elder trees, low and bushy, their leaves
already turning yellow. This hedge was nearly a quarter of a mile
long, but I had to look very hard to see it at all. The little trees
were insignificant against the grass. It seemed as if the grass were
about to run over them, and over the plum-patch behind the sod
chicken-house.
As I looked about me I felt that the grass was the
country, as the water is the sea. The red of the grass made all the
great prairie the color of wine-stains, or of certain seaweeds when
they are first washed up. And there was so much motion in it; the
whole country seemed, somehow, to be running.
I had almost forgotten that I had a grandmother, when
she came out, her sunbonnet on her head, a grain-sack in her hand, and
asked me if I did not want to go to the garden with her to dig
potatoes for dinner. The garden, curiously enough, was a quarter of a
mile from
the house, and the way to it led up a shallow draw past the cattle
corral. Grandmother called my attention to a stout hickory cane,
tipped with copper, which hung by a leather thong from her belt. This,
she said, was her rattlesnake cane. I must never go to the garden
without a heavy stick or a corn-knife; she had killed a good many
rattlers on her way back and forth. A little girl who lived on the
Black Hawk road was bitten on the ankle and had been sick all
summer.
I can remember exactly how the country looked to me
as I walked beside my grandmother along the faint wagon-tracks on that
early September morning. Perhaps the glide of long railway travel was
still with me, for more than anything else I felt motion in the
landscape; in the fresh, easy-blowing morning wind, and in the earth
itself, as if the shaggy grass were a sort of loose hide, and
underneath it herds of wild buffalo were galloping, galloping
.
Alone, I should never have found the gardenexcept,
perhaps, for the big yellow pumpkins that lay about
unprotected by their withering vinesand I felt very little
interest in it when I got there. I wanted to walk straight on
through the red grass and over the edge of the world, which could not
be very far away. The light air about me told me that the world ended
here: only the ground and sun and sky were left, and if one went a
little farther there would be only sun and sky, and one would float
off into them, like the tawny hawks which sailed over our heads making
slow shadows on the grass. While grandmother took the pitchfork we
found standing in one of the rows and dug potatoes, while I picked
them up out of the soft brown earth and put them into the bag, I kept
looking up at the hawks that were doing what I might so easily do.
When grandmother was ready to go, I said I would like
to stay up there in the garden awhile.
She peered down at me from under her sunbonnet.
Are nt you afraid of snakes?
A little, I admitted, but
I d like to stay anyhow.
Well, if you see one, don t have
anything to do with him. The big yellow and brown ones won t
hurt you; they re bull-snakes and help to keep the gophers down.
Don t be scared if you see anything look out of that
hole in the bank over there. Thats a badger hole. Hes
about as big as a big possum, and his face is striped, black
and white. He takes a chicken once in a while, but I won t let
the men harm him. In a new country a body feels friendly to the
animals. I like to have him come out and watch me when Im at
work.
Grandmother swung the bag of potatoes over her
shoulder and went down the path, leaning forward a little. The road
followed the windings of the draw; when she came to the first bend she
waved at me and disappeared. I was left alone with this new feeling of
lightness and content.
I sat down in the middle of the garden, where snakes
could scarcely approach unseen, and leaned my back against a warm
yellow pumpkin. There were some ground-cherry bushes growing along the
furrows, full of fruit. I turned back the papery triangular sheaths
that protected the berries and ate a few. All about me giant
grasshoppers, twice as big as any I had ever seen, were doing
acrobatic feats among the dried vines. The gophers scurried up and
down the ploughed ground. There in the sheltered draw-bottom the wind
did not blow very hard, but I could hear it
singing its humming tune up on the level, and I could see the tall
grasses wave. The earth was warm under me, and warm as I crumbled it
through my fingers. Queer little red bugs came out and moved in slow
squadrons around me. Their backs were polished vermilion, with black
spots. I kept as still as I could. Nothing happened. I did not expect
anything to happen. I was something that lay under the sun and felt
it, like the pumpkins, and I did not want to be anything more. I was
entirely happy. Perhaps we feel like that when we die and become a
part of something entire, whether it is sun and air, or goodness and
knowledge. At any rate, that is happiness; to be dissolved into
something complete and great. When it comes to one, it comes as
naturally as sleep.
III
On Sunday morning
Otto Fuchs was to drive us over to make the acquaintance of our new
Bohemian neighbors. We were taking them some provisions, as they had
come to live on a wild place where there was no garden or
chicken-house, and very little broken land. Fuchs brought up a sack of
potatoes and a piece of cured pork from the cellar, and grandmother
packed some loaves of Saturdays bread, a jar of butter, and
several pumpkin pies in the straw of the wagon-box. We clambered up to
the front seat and jolted off past the little pond and along the road
that climbed to the big cornfield.
I could hardly wait to see what lay beyond that
cornfield; but there was only red grass like ours, and nothing else,
though from the high wagon-seat one could look off a long way. The
road ran about like a wild thing, avoiding the deep draws, crossing
them where they were wide and shallow. And all along it, wherever it
looped or ran, the sunflowers grew; some of them were as big as little trees, with
great rough leaves and many branches which bore dozens of blossoms.
They made a gold ribbon across the prairie. Occasionally one of the
horses would tear off with his teeth a plant full of blossoms, and
walk along munching it, the flowers nodding in time to his bites as he
ate down toward them.
The Bohemian family, grandmother told me as we drove
along, had bought the homestead of a fellow-countryman, Peter Krajiek,
and had paid him more than it was worth. Their agreement with him was
made before they left the old country, through a cousin of his, who
was also a relative of Mrs. Shimerda. The Shimerdas were
the first Bohemian family to come to this part of the county. Krajiek
was their only interpreter, and could tell them anything he chose.
They could not speak enough English to ask for advice, or even to make
their most pressing wants known. One son, Fuchs said, was well-grown,
and strong enough to work the land; but the father was old and frail
and knew nothing about farming. He was a weaver by trade; had been a
skilled workman on tapestries and upholstery materials. He had brought
his fiddle with him, which would nt be of much
use here, though he used to pick up money by it at home.
If they re nice people, I hate to think
of them spending the winter in that cave of Krajieks,
said grandmother. Its no better than a badger hole; no
proper dugout at all. And I hear hes made them pay twenty
dollars for his old cookstove that ain t worth ten.
Yes., said Otto; and
hes sold em his oxen and his two bony old horses for the
price of good work-teams. I d have interfered about the horsesthe old man can understand some Germanif I d
a thought it would do any good. But Bohemians has a
natural distrust of Austrians.
Grandmother looked interested. Now, why is
that, Otto?
Fuchs wrinkled his brow and nose. Well,
ma m, its politics. It would take me a long while to
explain.
The land was growing rougher; I was told that we were
approaching Squaw Creek, which cut up the west half of the
Shimerdas place and made the land of little value for farming.
Soon we could see the broken, grassy clay cliffs which indicated the
windings of the
stream, and the glittering tops of the cottonwoods and ash trees that
grew down in the ravine. Some of the cottonwoods had already turned,
and the yellow leaves and shining white bark made them look like the
gold and silver trees in fairy tales.
As we approached the Shimerdas dwelling, I
could still see nothing but rough red hillocks, and draws with
shelving banks and long roots hanging out where the earth had crumbled
away. Presently, against one of those banks, I saw a sort of shed,
thatched with the same wine-colored grass that grew everywhere. Near
it tilted a shattered windmill-frame, that had no wheel. We drove up
to this skeleton to tie our horses, and then I saw a door and window
sunk deep in the draw-bank. The door stood open, and a woman and a
girl of fourteen ran out and looked up at us hopefully. A little girl
trailed along behind them. The woman had on her head the same
embroidered shawl with silk fringes that she wore when she had
alighted from the train at Black Hawk. She was not old, but she was
certainly not young. Her face was alert and lively, with a sharp chin
and shrewd little eyes. She shook grandmothers hand
energetically.
Very glad, very glad! she ejaculated.
Immediately she pointed to the bank out of which she had emerged and
said, House no good, house no good!
Grandmother nodded consolingly. You ll
get fixed up comfortable after while, Mrs. Shimerda; make
good house.
My grandmother always spoke in a very loud tone to
foreigners, as if they were deaf. She made Mrs. Shimerda
understand the friendly intention of our visit, and the Bohemian woman
handled the loaves of bread and even smelled them, and examined the
pies with lively curiosity, exclaiming, Much good, much
thank!and again she wrung grandmothers hand.
The oldest son, Ambroz,they called it
Ambrosch,came out of the cave and stood beside his mother. He
was nineteen years old, short and broad-backed, with a close-cropped,
flat head, and a wide, flat face. His hazel eyes were little and
shrewd, like his mothers, but more sly and suspicious; they
fairly snapped at the food. The family had been living on corncakes
and sorghum molasses for three days.
The little girl was pretty, but Án-tonia
they accented the name thus, strongly, when they spoke to herwas
still prettier. I remembered what the conductor had said about her
eyes. They were big and warm and full of light, like the sun shining
on brown pools in the wood. Her skin was brown, too, and in her cheeks
she had a glow of rich, dark color. Her brown hair was curly and
wild-looking. The little sister, whom they called Yulka (Julka), was
fair, and seemed mild and obedient. While I stood awkwardly
confronting the two girls, Krajiek came up from the barn to see what
was going on. With him was another Shimerda son. Even from a distance
one could see that there was something strange about this boy. As he
approached us, he began to make uncouth noises, and held up his hands
to show us his fingers, which were webbed to the first knuckle, like a
ducks foot. When he saw me draw back, he began to crow
delightedly, Hoo, hoo-hoo, hoo-hoo! like a rooster. His
mother scowled and said sternly, Marek! then spoke
rapidly to Krajiek in Bohemian.
She wants me to tell you he won t hurt
nobody, Mrs. Burden. He was born like that. The others
are smart. Ambrosch, he make good farmer. He struck Ambrosch on the back, and the boy smiled
knowingly.
At that moment the father came out of the hole in the
bank. He wore no hat, and his thick, iron-gray hair was brushed
straight back from his forehead. It was so long that it bushed out
behind his ears, and made him look like the old portraits I remembered
in Virginia. He was tall and slender, and his thin shoulders stooped.
He looked at us understandingly, then took grandmothers hand
and bent over it. I noticed how white and well-shaped his own hands
were. They looked calm, somehow, and skilled. His eyes were
melancholy, and were set back deep under his brow. His face was
ruggedly formed, but it looked like asheslike something from
which all the warmth and light had died out. Everything about this old
man was in keeping with his dignified manner. He was neatly dressed.
Under his coat he wore a knitted gray vest, and, instead of a collar,
a silk scarf of a dark bronze-green, carefully crossed and held
together by a red coral pin. While Krajiek was translating for
Mr. Shimerda, Ántonia came up to me and held out
her hand coaxingly. In a moment we were running up
the steep drawside together, Yulka trotting after us.
When we reached the level and could see the gold
tree-tops, I pointed toward them, and Ántonia laughed and
squeezed my hand as if to tell me how glad she was I had come. We
raced off toward Squaw Creek and did not stop until the ground itself
stoppedfell away before us so abruptly that the next step
would have been out into the tree-tops. We stood panting on the edge
of the ravine, looking down at the trees and bushes that grew below
us. The wind was so strong that I had to hold my hat on, and the
girls skirts were blown out before them. Ántonia seemed
to like it; she held her little sister by the hand and chattered away
in that language which seemed to me spoken so much more rapidly than
mine. She looked at me, her eyes fairly blazing with things she could
not say.
Name? What name? she asked, touching me
on the shoulder. I told her my name, and she repeated it after me and
made Yulka say it. She pointed into the gold cottonwood tree behind
whose top we stood and said again, What name?
We sat down and made a nest in the
long red grass. Yulka curled up like a baby rabbit and played with a
grasshopper. Ántonia pointed up to the sky and questioned me
with her glance. I gave her the word, but she was not satisfied and
pointed to my eyes. I told her, and she repeated the word, making it
sound like ice. She pointed up to the sky, then to my
eyes, then back to the sky, with movements so quick and impulsive that
she distracted me, and I had no idea what she wanted. She got up on
her knees and wrung her hands. She pointed to her own eyes and shook
her head, then to mine and to the sky, nodding violently.
Oh, I exclaimed, blue; blue
sky.
She clapped her hands and murmured, Blue sky,
blue eyes, as if it amused her. While we snuggled down there
out of the wind she learned a score of words. She was quick, and very
eager. We were so deep in the grass that we could see nothing but the
blue sky over us and the gold tree in front of us. It was wonderfully
pleasant. After Ántonia had said the new words over and over,
she wanted to give me a little chased silver ring she wore on her
middle finger. When she coaxed and insisted, I repulsed her quite
sternly. I didn t
want her ring, and I felt there was something reckless and extravagant
about her wishing to give it away to a boy she had never seen before.
No wonder Krajiek got the better of these people, if this was how they
behaved.
While we were disputing about the ring, I heard a
mournful voice calling, Án-tonia,
Án-tonia! She sprang up like a hare.
Tatinek,
Tatinek! she shouted,
and we ran to meet the old man who was coming toward us.
Ántonia reached him first, took his hand and kissed it. When I
came up, he touched my shoulder and looked searchingly down into my
face for several seconds. I became somewhat embarrassed, for I was
used to being taken for granted by my elders.
We went with Mr. Shimerda back to the
dugout, where grandmother was waiting for me. Before I got into the
wagon, he took a book out of his pocket, opened it, and showed me a
page with two alphabets, one English and the other Bohemian. He placed
this book in my grandmothers hands, looked at her entreatingly,
and said with an earnestness which I shall never forget,
Te-e-ach, te-e-ach my Án-tonia!
IV
On the afternoon
of that same Sunday I took my first long ride on my pony, under
Ottos direction. After that Dude and I went twice a week to the
post-office, six miles east of us, and I saved the men a good deal of
time by riding on errands to our neighbors. When we had to borrow
anything, or to send about word that there would be preaching at the
sod schoolhouse, I was always the messenger. Formerly Fuchs attended
to such things after working hours.
All the years that have passed have not dimmed my
memory of that first glorious autumn. The new country lay open before
me: there were no fences in those days, and I could choose my own way
over the grass uplands, trusting the pony to get me home again.
Sometimes I followed the sunflower-bordered roads. Fuchs told me that
the sunflowers were introduced into that country by the Mormons; that
at the time of the persecution, when they left Missouri and struck out
into the wilderness to find a place where they could worship
God in their own way, the members of the first exploring party,
crossing the plains to Utah, scattered sunflower seed as they went.
The next summer, when the long trains of wagons came through with all
the women and children, they had the sunflower trail to follow. I
believe that botanists do not confirm
Jakes
story, but insist that the sunflower was native to those plains.
Nevertheless, that legend has stuck in my mind, and sunflower-bordered
roads always seem to me the roads to freedom.
I used to love to drift along the pale yellow
cornfields, looking for the damp spots one sometimes found at their
edges, where the smartweed soon turned a rich copper color and the
narrow brown leaves hung curled like cocoons about the swollen joints
of the stem. Sometimes I went south to visit our German neighbors and
to admire their catalpa grove, or to see the big elm tree that grew up
out of a deep crack in the earth and had a hawks nest in its
branches. Trees were so rare in that country, and they had to make
such a hard fight to grow, that we used to feel anxious about them,
and visit them as if they were persons. It must have been the scarcity of
detail in that tawny landscape that made detail so precious.
Sometimes I rode north to the big prairie-dog town to
watch the
brown,
earth-owls fly home in the late afternoon and go down to their nests
underground with the dogs. Ántonia Shimerda liked to go with
me, and we used to wonder a great deal about these birds of
subterranean habit. We had to be on our guard there, for rattlesnakes
were always lurking about. They came to pick up an easy living among
the dogs and owls, which were quite defenseless against them; took
possession of their comfortable houses and ate the eggs and puppies.
We felt sorry for the owls. It was always mournful to see them come
flying home at sunset and disappear under the earth. But, after all,
we felt, winged things who would live like that must be rather
degraded creatures. The dog-town was a long way from any pond or
creek. Otto Fuchs said he had seen populous dog-towns in the desert
where there was no surface water for fifty miles; he insisted that
some of the holes must go down to waternearly two hundred
feet, hereabouts. Ántonia said she did nt believe it;
that the dogs probably
lapped up the dew in the early morning, like the rabbits.
Ántonia had opinions about everything, and she
was soon able to make them known. Almost every day she came running
across the prairie to have her reading lesson with me.
Mrs. Shimerda grumbled, but realized it was important
that one member of the family should learn English. When the lesson
was over, we used to go up to the watermelon patch behind the garden.
I split the melons with an old corn-knife, and we lifted out the
hearts and ate them with the juice trickling through our fingers. The
white Christmas melons we did not touch, but we watched them with
curiosity. They were to be picked late, when the hard frosts had set
in, and put away for winter use. After weeks on the ocean, the
Shimerdas were famished for fruit. The two girls would wander for
miles along the edge of the cornfields, hunting for
ground-cherries.
Ántonia loved to help grandmother in the
kitchen and to learn about cooking and housekeeping. She would stand
beside her, watching her every movement. We were willing to believe
that Mrs. Shimerda was a good housewife in her own
country, but she managed
poorly under new conditions: the conditions were bad enough,
certainly!
I remember how horrified we were at the sour,
ashy-gray bread she gave her family to eat. She mixed her dough, we
discovered, in an old tin peck-measure that Krajiek had used about the
barn. When she took the paste out to bake it, she left smears of dough
sticking to the sides of the measure, put the measure on the shelf
behind the stove, and let this residue ferment. The next time she made
bread, she scraped this sour stuff down into the fresh dough to serve
as yeast.
During those first months the Shimerdas never went to
town. Krajiek encouraged them in the belief that in Black Hawk they
would somehow be mysteriously separated from their money. They hated
Krajiek, but they clung to him because he was the only human being
with whom they could talk or from whom they could get information. He
slept with the old man and the two boys in the dugout barn, along with
the oxen. They kept him in their hole and fed him for the same reason
that the prairie dogs and the brown owls housed the rattlesnakesbecause they did not know how to get rid of him.
V
We knew that
things were hard for our Bohemian neighbors, but the two girls were
light-hearted and never complained. They were always ready to forget
their troubles at home, and to run away with me over the prairie,
scaring rabbits or starting up flocks of quail.
I remember Ántonias excitement when she
came into our kitchen one afternoon and announced: My papa find
friends up north, with Russian mans. Last night he take me for see,
and I can understand very much talk. Nice mans, Mrs.
Burden. One is fat and all the time laugh. Everybody laugh. The first
time I see my papa laugh in this kawn-tree. Oh, very nice!
I asked her if she meant the two Russians who lived
up by the big dog-town. I had often been tempted to go to see them
when I was riding in that direction, but one of them was a
wild-looking fellow and I was a little afraid of him. Russia seemed to
me more remote than any other countryfarther away than China,
almost as far as the North Pole. Of
all the strange, uprooted people among the first settlers, those two
men were the strangest and the most aloof. Their last names were
unpronounceable, so they were called Pavel and Peter. They went about
making signs to people, and until the Shimerdas came they had no
friends. Krajiek could understand them a little, but he had cheated
them in a trade, so they avoided him. Pavel, the tall one, was said to
be an anarchist; since he had no means of imparting his opinions,
probably his wild gesticulations and his generally excited and
rebellious manner gave rise to this supposition. He must once have
been a very strong man, but now his great frame, with big, knotty
joints, had a wasted look, and the skin was drawn tight over his high
cheek-bones. His breathing was hoarse, and he always had a cough.
Peter, his companion, was a very different sort of
fellow; short, bow-legged, and as fat as butter. He always seemed
pleased when he met people on the road, smiled and took off his cap to
every one, men as well as women. At a distance, on his wagon, he
looked like an old man; his hair and beard were of such a pale flaxen
color that they seemed white in
the sun. They were as thick and curly as carded wool. His rosy face,
with its snub nose, set in this fleece, was like a melon among its
leaves. He was usually called Curly Peter, or
Rooshian Peter.
The two Russians made good farmhands, and in summer
they worked out together. I had heard our neighbors laughing when they
told how Peter always had to go home at night to milk his cow. Other
bachelor homesteaders used canned milk, to save trouble. Sometimes
Peter came to church at the sod schoolhouse. It was there I first saw
him, sitting on a low bench by the door, his plush cap in his hands,
his bare feet tucked apologetically under the seat.
After Mr. Shimerda discovered the
Russians, he went to see them almost every evening, and sometimes took
Ántonia with him. She said they came from a part of Russia
where the language was not very different from Bohemian, and if I
wanted to go to their place, she could talk to them for me. One
afternoon, before the heavy frosts began, we rode up there together on
my pony.
The Russians had a neat log house built on a grassy
slope, with a windlass well beside the
door. As we rode up the draw we skirted a big melon patch, and a
garden where squashes and yellow cucumbers lay about on the sod. We
found Peter out behind his kitchen, bending over a washtub. He was
working so hard that he did not hear us coming. His whole body moved
up and down as he rubbed, and he was a funny sight from the rear, with
his shaggy head and bandy legs. When he straightened himself up to
greet us, drops of perspiration were rolling from his thick nose down
on to his curly beard. Peter dried his hands and seemed glad to leave
his washing. He took us down to see his chickens, and his cow that was
grazing on the hillside. He told Ántonia that in his country
only rich people had cows, but here any man could have one who would
take care of her. The milk was good for Pavel, who was often sick, and
he could make butter by beating sour cream with a wooden spoon. Peter
was very fond of his cow. He patted her flanks and talked to her in
Russian while he pulled up her lariat pin and set it in a new
place.
After he had shown us his garden, Peter trundled a
load of watermelons up the hill in his wheelbarrow. Pavel was not at
home. He
was off somewhere helping to dig a well. The house I thought very
comfortable for two men who were batching. Besides the
kitchen, there was a living-room, with a wide double bed built against
the wall, properly made up with blue gingham sheets and pillows. There
was a little storeroom, too, with a window, where they kept guns and
saddles and tools, and old coats and boots. That day the floor was
covered with garden things, drying for winter; corn and beans and fat
yellow cucumbers. There were no screens or window-blinds in the house,
and all the doors and windows stood wide open, letting in flies and
sunshine alike.
Peter put the melons in a row on the oilcloth-covered
table and stood over them, brandishing a butcher knife. Before the
blade got fairly into them, they split of their own ripeness, with a
delicious sound. He gave us knives, but no plates, and the top of the
table was soon swimming with juice and seeds. I had never seen any one
eat so many melons as Peter ate. He assured us that they were good for
onebetter than medicine; in his country people lived on them
at this time of year. He was very hospitable and jolly.
Once, while he was looking at Ántonia, he sighed and told us
that if he had stayed at home in Russia perhaps by this time he would
have had a pretty daughter of his own to cook and keep house for him.
He said he had left his country because of a great
trouble.
When we got up to go, Peter looked about in
perplexity for something that would entertain us. He ran into the
storeroom and brought out a gaudily painted harmonica, sat down on a
bench, and spreading his fat legs apart began to play like a whole
band. The tunes were either very lively or very doleful, and he sang
words to some of them.
Before we left, Peter put ripe cucumbers into a sack
for Mrs. Shimerda and gave us a lard-pail full of milk to
cook them in. I had never heard of cooking cucumbers, but
Ántonia assured me they were very good. We had to walk the pony
all the way home to keep from spilling the milk.
VI
One afternoon we
were having our reading lesson on the warm, grassy bank where the
badger lived. It was a day of amber sunlight, but there was a shiver
of coming winter in the air. I had seen ice on the little horse-pond
that morning, and as we went through the garden we found the tall
asparagus, with its red berries, lying on the ground, a mass of slimy
green.
Tony was barefooted, and she shivered in her cotton
dress and was comfortable only when we were tucked down on the baked
earth, in the full blaze of the sun. She could talk to me about almost
anything by this time. That afternoon she was telling me how highly
esteemed our friend the badger was in her part of the world, and how
men kept a special kind of dog, with very short legs, to hunt him.
Those dogs, she said, went down into the hole after the badger and
killed him there in a terrific struggle underground; you could hear
the barks and yelps outside. Then the dog dragged himself back,
covered with bites and scratches, to be rewarded and petted by his
master. She
knew a dog who had a star on his collar for every badger he had
killed.
The rabbits were unusually spry that afternoon. They
kept starting up all about us, and dashing off down the draw as if
they were playing a game of some kind. But the little buzzing things
that lived in the grass were all deadall but one. While we
were lying there against the warm bank, a little insect of the palest,
frailest green hopped painfully out of the buffalo grass and tried to
leap into a bunch of bluestem. He missed it, fell back, and sat with
his head sunk between his long legs, his antenna quivering, as
if he were waiting for something to come and finish him. Tony made a
warm nest for him in her hands; talked to him gayly and indulgently in
Bohemian. Presently he began to sing for usa thin, rusty
little chirp. She held him close to her ear and laughed, but a moment
afterward I saw there were tears in her eyes. She told me that in her
village at home there was an old beggar woman who went about selling
herbs and roots she had dug up in the forest. If you took her in and
gave her a warm place by the fire, she sang old songs to the children
in a cracked voice, like this. Old Hata, she
was called, and the children loved to see her coming and saved their
cakes and sweets for her.
When the bank on the other side of the draw began to
throw a narrow shelf of shadow, we knew we ought to be starting
homeward; the chill came on quickly when the sun got low, and
Ántonias dress was thin. What were we to do with the
frail little creature we had lured back to life by false pretenses? I
offered my pockets, but Tony shook her head and carefully put the
green insect in her hair, tying her big handkerchief down loosely over
her curls. I said I would go with her until we could see Squaw Creek,
and then turn and run home. We drifted along lazily, very happy,
through the magical light of the late afternoon.
All those fall afternoons were the same, but I never
got used to them. As far as we could see, the miles of copper-red
grass were drenched in sunlight that was stronger and fiercer than at
any other time of the day. The blond cornfields were red gold, the
haystacks turned rosy and threw long shadows. The whole prairie was
like the bush that burned with fire and was not consumed. That hour
always had the exultation of victory, of
triumphant ending, like a heros deathheroes who died
young and gloriously. It was a sudden transfiguration, a lifting-up of
day.
How many an afternoon Ántonia and I have
trailed along the prairie under that magnificence! And always two long
black shadows flitted before us or followed after, dark spots on the
ruddy grass.
We had been silent a long time, and the edge of the
sun sank nearer and nearer the prairie floor, when we saw a figure
moving on the edge of the upland, a gun over his shoulder. He was
walking slowly, dragging his feet along as if he had no purpose. We
broke into a run to overtake him.
My papa sick all the time, Tony panted
as we flew. He not look good, Jim.
As we neared Mr. Shimerda she shouted,
and he lifted his head and peered about. Tony ran up to him, caught
his hand and pressed it against her cheek. She was the only one of his
family who could rouse the old man from the torpor in which he seemed
to live. He took the bag from his belt and showed us three rabbits he
had shot, looked at Ántonia with a wintry flicker of a smile
and began to tell her something. She turned to me.
My
tatinek make me little hat with
the skins, little hat for win-ter! she exclaimed joyfully.
Meat for eat, skin for hat,she told off these
benefits on her fingers.
Her father put his hand on her hair, but she caught
his wrist and lifted it carefully away, talking to him rapidly. I
heard the name of old Hata. He untied the handkerchief, separated her
hair with his fingers, and stood looking down at the green insect.
When it began to chirp faintly, he listened as if it were a beautiful
sound.
I picked up the gun he had dropped; a queer piece
from the old country, short and heavy, with a stags head on the
cock. When he saw me examining it, he turned to me with his far-away
look that always made me feel as if I were down at the bottom of a
well. He spoke kindly and gravely, and Ántonia
translated:
My
tatinek say when you are big
boy, he give you his gun. Very fine, from Bohemie. It was belong to a
great man, very rich, like what you not got here; many fields, many
forests, many big house. My papa play for his wedding, and he give my
papa fine gun, and my papa give you.
I was glad that this project was one of
futurity. There never were such people as the Shimerdas for wanting to
give away everything they had. Even the mother was always offering me
things, though I knew she expected substantial presents in return. We
stood there in friendly silence, while the feeble minstrel sheltered
in Ántonias hair went on with its scratchy chirp. The
old mans smile, as he listened, was so full of sadness, of pity
for things, that I never afterward forgot it. As the sun sank there
came a sudden coolness and the strong smell of earth and drying grass.
Ántonia and her father went off hand in hand, and I buttoned up
my jacket and raced my shadow home.
VII
Much as I liked
Ántonia, I hated a superior tone that she sometimes took with
me. She was four years older than I, to be sure, and had seen more of
the world; but I was a boy and she was a girl, and I resented her
protecting manner. Before the autumn was over she began to treat me
more like an equal and to defer to me in other things than reading
lessons. This change came about from an adventure we had together.
One day when I rode over to the Shimerdas I
found Ántonia starting off on foot for Russian Peters
house, to borrow a spade Ambrosch needed. I offered to take her on the
pony, and she got up behind me. There had been another black frost the
night before, and the air was clear and heady as wine. Within a week
all the blooming roads had been despoiledhundreds of miles of
yellow sunflowers had been transformed into brown, rattling, burry
stalks.
We found Russian Peter digging his potatoes. We were
glad to go in and get warm
by his kitchen stove and to see his squashes and Christmas melons,
heaped in the storeroom for winter. As we rode away with the spade,
Ántonia suggested that we stop at the prairie-dog town and dig
into one of the holes. We could find out whether they ran straight
down, or were horizontal, like mole-holes; whether they had
underground connections; whether the owls had nests down there, lined
with feathers. We might get some puppies, or owl eggs, or
snake-skins.
The dog-town was spread out over perhaps ten acres.
The grass had been nibbled short and even, so this stretch was not
shaggy and red like the surrounding country, but gray and velvety. The
holes were several yards apart, and were disposed with a good deal of
regularity, almost as if the town had been laid out in streets and
avenues. One always felt that an orderly and very sociable kind of
life was going on there. I picketed Dude down in a draw, and we went
wandering about, looking for a hole that would be easy to dig. The
dogs were out, as usual, dozens of them, sitting up on their hind legs
over the doors of their houses. As we approached, they barked, shook
their tails at us, and scurried
underground. Before the mouths of the holes were little patches of
sand and gravel, scratched up, we supposed, from a long way below the
surface. Here and there, in the town, we came on larger gravel
patches, several yards away from any hole. If the dogs had scratched
the sand up in excavating, how had they carried it so far? It was on
one of these gravel beds that I met my adventure.
We were examining a big hole with two entrances. The
burrow sloped into the ground at a gentle angle, so that we could see
where the two corridors united, and the floor was dusty from use, like
a little highway over which much travel went. I was walking backward,
in a crouching position, when I heard Ántonia scream. She was
standing opposite me, pointing behind me and shouting something in
Bohemian. I whirled round, and there, on one of those dry gravel beds,
was the biggest snake I had ever seen. He was sunning himself, after
the cold night, and he must have been asleep when Ántonia
screamed. When I turned he was lying in long loose waves, like a
letter W. He twitched and began to coil
slowly. He was not merely a big snake, I thoughthe was a
circus monstrosity. His
abominable muscularity, his loathsome, fluid motion, somehow made me
sick. He was as thick as my leg, and looked as if millstones could
nt crush the disgusting vitality out of him. He lifted his
hideous little head, and rattled. I did nt run because I did
nt think of itif my back had been against a stone wall
I could nt have felt more cornered. I saw his coils tightennow he would spring, spring his length, I remembered. I ran up
and drove at his head with my spade, struck him fairly across the
neck, and in a minute he was all about my feet in wavy loops. I struck
now from hate. Ántonia, barefooted as she was, ran up behind
me. Even after I had pounded his ugly head flat, his body kept on
coiling and winding, doubling and falling back on itself. I walked
away and turned my back. I felt seasick. Ántonia came after me,
crying, O Jimmy, he not bite you? You sure? Why you not run
when I say?
What did you jabber Bohunk for? You might have
told me there was a snake behind me! I said petulantly.
I know I am just awful, Jim, I was so
scared. She took my handkerchief from my pocket and tried to
wipe my face with it, but
I snatched it away from her. I suppose I looked as sick as I felt.
I never know you was so brave, Jim, she
went on comfortingly. You is just like big mans; you wait for
him lift his head and then you go for him. Ain t you feel scared
a bit? Now we take that snake home and show everybody. Nobody
ain t seen in this kawn-tree so big snake like you
kill.
She went on in this strain until I began to think
that I had longed for this opportunity, and had hailed it with joy.
Cautiously we went back to the snake; he was still groping with his
tail, turning up his ugly belly in the light. A faint, fetid smell
came from him, and a thread of green liquid oozed from his crushed
head.
Look, Tony, thats his poison, I
said.
I took a long piece of string from my pocket, and she
lifted his head with the spade while I tied a noose around it. We
pulled him out straight and measured him by my riding-quirt; he was
about five and a half feet long. He had twelve rattles, but they were
broken off before they began to taper, so I insisted that he must once
have had twenty-four. I explained to Ántonia how this meant
that he
was twenty-four years old, that he must have been there when white men
first came, left on from buffalo and Indian times. As I turned him
over I began to feel proud of him, to have a kind of respect for his
age and size. He seemed like the ancient, eldest Evil. Certainly his
kind have left horrible unconscious memories in all warm-blooded life.
When we dragged him down into the draw, Dude sprang off to the end of
his tether and shivered all overwould nt let us come
near him.
We decided that Ántonia should ride Dude home,
and I would walk. As she rode along slowly, her bare legs swinging
against the ponys sides, she kept shouting back to me about how
astonished everybody would be. I followed with the spade over my
shoulder, dragging my snake. Her exultation was contagious. The great
land had never looked to me so big and free. If the red grass were
full of rattlers, I was equal to them all. Nevertheless, I stole
furtive glances behind me now and then to see that no avenging mate,
older and bigger than my quarry, was racing up from the rear.
The sun had set when we reached our garden and went
down the draw toward the
house. Otto Fuchs was the first one we met. He was sitting on the edge
of the cattle-pond, having a quiet pipe before supper. Ántonia
called him to come quick and look. He did not say anything for a
minute, but scratched his head and turned the snake over with his
boot.
Where did you run onto that beauty,
Jim?
Up at the dog-town, I answered
laconically.
Kill him yourself? How come you to have a
weepon?
We d been up to Russian Peters,
to borrow a spade for Ambrosch.
Otto shook the ashes out of his pipe and squatted
down to count the rattles. It was just luck you had a
tool, he said cautiously. Gosh! I would nt want
to do any business with that fellow myself, unless I had a fence-post
along. Your grandmothers snake-cane would nt more than
tickle him. He could stand right up and talk to you, he could. Did he
fight hard?
Ántonia broke in: He fight something
awful! He is all over Jimmys boots. I scream for him to run,
but he just hit and hit that snake like he was crazy.
Otto winked at me. After Ántonia rode on he
said: Got him in the head first crack, did nt you? That
was just as well.
We hung him up to the windmill, and when I went down
to the kitchen I found Ántonia standing in the middle of the
floor, telling the story with a great deal of color.
Subsequent experiences with rattlesnakes taught me
that my first encounter was fortunate in circumstance. My big rattler
was old, and had led too easy a life; there was not much fight in him.
He had probably lived there for years, with a fat prairie dog for
breakfast whenever he felt like it, a sheltered home, even an
owl-feather bed, perhaps, and he had forgot that the world does
nt owe rattlers a living. A snake of his size, in fighting
trim, would be more than any boy could handle. So in reality it was a
mock adventure; the game was fixed for me by chance, as it probably
was for many a dragon-slayer. I had been adequately armed by Russian
Peter; the snake was old and lazy; and I had Ántonia beside me,
to appreciate and admire.
That snake hung on our corral fence for several days;
some of the neighbors came to see it and agreed that it was the
biggest rattler
ever killed in those parts. This was enough for Ántonia. She
liked me better from that time on, and she never took a supercilious
air with me again. I had killed a big snakeI was now a big
fellow.
VIII
While the autumn
color was growing pale on the grass and cornfields, things went badly
with our friends the Russians. Peter told his troubles to
Mr. Shimerda: he was unable to meet a note which fell due
on the first of November; had to pay an exorbitant bonus on renewing
it, and to give a mortgage on his pigs and horses and even his milk
cow. His creditor was Wick Cutter, the merciless Black Hawk
money-lender, a man of evil name throughout the county, of whom I
shall have more to say later. Peter could give no very clear account
of his transactions with Cutter. He only knew that he had first
borrowed two hundred dollars, then another hundred, then fiftythat each time a bonus was added to the principal, and the debt grew
faster than any crop he planted. Now everything was plastered with
mortgages.
Soon after Peter renewed his note, Pavel strained
himself lifting timbers for a new barn, and fell over among the
shavings with such a gush of blood from the lungs that his
fellow-workmen thought he would die on the spot. They hauled him home
and put him into his bed, and there he lay, very ill indeed.
Misfortune seemed to settle like an evil bird on the roof of the log
house, and to flap its wings there, warning human beings away. The
Russians had such bad luck that people were afraid of them and liked
to put them out of mind.
One afternoon Ántonia and her father came over
to our house to get buttermilk, and lingered, as they usually did,
until the sun was low. Just as they were leaving, Russian Peter drove
up. Pavel was very bad, he said, and wanted to talk to
Mr. Shimerda and his daughter; he had come to fetch them.
When Ántonia and her father got into the wagon, I entreated
grandmother to let me go with them: I would gladly go without my
supper, I would sleep in the Shimerdas barn and run home in the
morning. My plan must have seemed very foolish to her, but she was
often large-minded about humoring the desires of other people. She
asked Peter to wait a moment, and when she came back from the kitchen
she brought a bag of sandwiches and doughnuts for us.
Mr. Shimerda and Peter were on the front seat; Ántonia and I sat in the straw behind and ate our lunch
as we bumped along. After the sun sank, a cold wind sprang up and
moaned over the prairie. If this turn in the weather had come sooner,
I should not have got away. We burrowed down in the straw and curled
up close together, watching the angry red die out of the west and the
stars begin to shine in the clear, windy sky. Peter kept sighing and
groaning. Tony whispered to me that he was afraid Pavel would never
get well. We lay still and did not talk. Up there the stars grew
magnificently bright. Though we had come from such different parts of
the world, in both of us there was some dusky superstition that those
shining groups have their influence upon what is and what is not to
be. Perhaps Russian Peter, come from farther away than any of us, had
brought from his land, too, some such belief.
The little house on the hillside was so much the
color of the night that we could not see it as we came up the draw.
The ruddy windows guided usthe light from the kitchen stove,
for there was no lamp burning.
We entered softly. The man in the wide bed seemed to
be asleep. Tony and I sat down
on the bench by the wall and leaned our arms on the table in front of
us. The firelight flickered on the hewn logs that supported the thatch
overhead. Pavel made a rasping sound when he breathed, and he kept
moaning. We waited. The wind shook the doors and windows impatiently,
then swept on again, singing through the big spaces. Each gust, as it
bore down, rattled the panes, and swelled off like the others. They
made me think of defeated armies, retreating; or of ghosts who were
trying desperately to get in for shelter, and then went moaning on.
Presently, in one of those sobbing intervals between the blasts, the
coyotes tuned up with their whining howl; one, two, three, then all
togetherto tell us that winter was coming. This sound brought
an answer from the bed,a long complaining cry,as if
Pavel were having bad dreams or were waking to some old misery. Peter
listened, but did not stir. He was sitting on the floor by the kitchen
stove. The coyotes broke out again; yap, yap, yapthen the
high whine. Pavel called for something and struggled up on his
elbow.
He is scared of the wolves,
Ántonia whispered to me. In his country there are very many, and they eat men and women. We slid closer together along
the bench.
I could not take my eyes off the man in the bed. His
shirt was hanging open, and his emaciated chest, covered with yellow
bristle, rose and fell horribly. He began to cough. Peter shuffled to
his feet, caught up the tea-kettle and mixed him some hot water and
whiskey. The sharp smell of spirits went through the room.
Pavel snatched the cup and drank, then made Peter
give him the bottle and slipped it under his pillow, grinning
disagreeably, as if he had outwitted some one. His eyes followed Peter
about the room with a contemptuous, unfriendly expression. It seemed
to me that he despised him for being so simple and docile.
Presently Pavel began to talk to Mr.
Shimerda, scarcely above a whisper. He was telling a long story, and
as he went on, Ántonia took my hand under the table and held it
tight. She leaned forward and strained her ears to hear him. He grew
more and more excited, and kept pointing all around his bed, as if
there were things there and he wanted Mr. Shimerda to see
them.
Its wolves, Jimmy,
Ántonia whispered. Its awful, what he
says!
The sick man raged and shook his fist. He seemed to
be cursing people who had wronged him. Mr. Shimerda
caught him by the shoulders, but could hardly hold him in bed. At last
he was shut off by a coughing fit which fairly choked him. He pulled a
cloth from under his pillow and held it to his mouth. Quickly it was
covered with bright red spotsI thought I had never seen any
blood so bright. When he lay down and turned his face to the wall, all
the rage had gone out of him. He lay patiently fighting for breath,
like a child with croup. Ántonias father uncovered one
of his long bony legs and rubbed it rhythmically. From our bench we
could see what a hollow case his body was. His spine and
shoulder-blades stood out like the bones under the hide of a dead
steer left in the fields. That sharp backbone must have hurt him when
he lay on it.
Gradually, relief came to all of us. Whatever it was,
the worst was over. Mr. Shimerda signed to us that Pavel
was asleep. Without a word Peter got up and lit his lantern. He was
going out to get his team to drive us
home. Mr. Shimerda went with him. We sat and watched the
long bowed back under the blue sheet, scarcely daring to breathe.
On the way home, when we were lying in the straw,
under the jolting and rattling Ántonia told me as much of the
story as she could. What she did not tell me then, she told later; we
talked of nothing else for days afterward.
When Pavel and Peter were young men, living at home
in Russia, they were asked to be groomsmen for a friend who was to
marry the belle of another village. It was in the dead of winter and
the grooms party went over to the wedding in sledges. Peter and
Pavel drove in the grooms sledge, and six sledges followed with
all his relatives and friends.
After the ceremony at the church, the party went to a
dinner given by the parents of the bride. The dinner lasted all
afternoon; then it became a supper and continued far into the night.
There was much dancing and drinking. At midnight the parents of the
bride said good-bye to her and blessed her. The groom took her up in
his arms and carried her out to his sledge and tucked her under the
blankets. He sprang in beside her, and Pavel and Peter (our Pavel and
Peter!) took the front seat. Pavel drove. The party set out with
singing and the jingle of sleigh-bells, the grooms sledge going
first. All the drivers were more or less the worse for merry-making,
and the groom was absorbed in his bride.
The wolves were bad that winter, and every one knew
it, yet when they heard the first wolf-cry, the drivers were not much
alarmed. They had too much good food and drink inside them. The first
howls were taken up and echoed and with quickening repetitions. The
wolves were coming together. There was no moon, but the starlight was
clear on the snow. A black drove came up over the hill behind the
wedding party. The wolves ran like streaks of shadow; they looked no
bigger than dogs, but there were hundreds of them.
Something happened to the hindmost sledge: the driver
lost control,he was probably very drunk,the horses
left the road, the sledge was caught in a clump of trees, and
overturned. The occupants rolled out over the snow, and the fleetest
of the wolves sprang upon them. The shrieks that followed made
everybody sober. The drivers stood up and
lashed their horses. The groom had the best team and his sledge was
lightestall the others carried from six to a dozen
people.
Another driver lost control. The screams of the
horses were more terrible to hear than the cries of the men and women.
Nothing seemed to check the wolves. It was hard to tell what was
happening in the rear; the people who were falling behind shrieked as
piteously as those who were already lost. The little bride hid her
face on the grooms shoulder and sobbed. Pavel sat still and
watched his horses. The road was clear and white, and the
grooms three blacks went like the wind. It was only necessary
to be calm and to guide them carefully.
At length, as they breasted a long hill, Peter rose
cautiously and looked back. There are only three sledges
left, he whispered.
And the wolves? Pavel asked.
Enough! Enough for all of us.
Pavel reached the brow of the hill, but only two
sledges followed him down the other side. In that moment on the
hilltop, they saw behind them a whirling black group on the snow.
Presently the groom screamed. He saw his fathers sledge
overturned, with his mother
and sisters. He sprang up as if he meant to jump, but the girl
shrieked and held him back. It was even then too late. The black
ground-shadows were already crowding over the heap in the road, and
one horse ran out across the fields, his harness hanging to him,
wolves at his heels. But the grooms movement had given Pavel an
idea.
They were within a few miles of their village now.
The only sledge left out of six was not very far behind them, and
Pavels middle horse was failing. Beside a frozen pond something
happened to the other sledge; Peter saw it plainly. Three big wolves
got abreast of the horses, and the horses went crazy. They tried to
jump over each other, got tangled up in the harness, and overturned
the sledge.
When the shrieking behind them died away, Pavel
realized that he was alone upon the familiar road. They still
come? he asked Peter.
Yes.
How many?
Twenty, thirtyenough.
Now his middle horse was being almost dragged by the
other two. Pavel gave Peter the reins and stepped carefully into the
back of the sledge. He called to the groom that
they must lightenand pointed to the bride. The young man
cursed him and held her tighter. Pavel tried to drag her away. In the
struggle, the groom rose. Pavel knocked him over the side of the
sledge and threw the girl after him. He said he never remembered
exactly how he did it, or what happened afterward. Peter, crouching in
the front seat, saw nothing. The first thing either of them noticed
was a new sound that broke into the clear air, louder than they had
ever heard it beforethe bell of the monastery of their own
village, ringing for early prayers.
Pavel and Peter drove into the village alone, and
they had been alone ever since. They were run out of their village.
Pavels own mother would not look at him. They went away to
strange towns, but when people learned where they came from, they were
always asked if they knew the two men who had fed the bride to the
wolves. Wherever they went, the story followed them. It took them five
years to save money enough to come to America. They worked in Chicago,
Des Moines, Fort Wayne, but they were always unfortunate. When
Pavels health grew so bad, they decided to try farming.
Pavel died a few days after he unburdened his mind to
Mr. Shimerda, and was buried in the Norwegian graveyard.
Peter sold off everything, and left the countrywent to be
cook in a railway construction camp where gangs of Russians were
employed.
At his sale we bought Peters wheelbarrow and
some of his harness. During the auction he went about with his head
down, and never lifted his eyes. He seemed not to care about anything.
The Black Hawk money-lender who held mortgages on Peters
live-stock was there, and he bought in the sale notes at about fifty
cents on the dollar. Every one said Peter kissed the cow before she
was led away by her new owner. I did not see him do it, but this I
know: after all his furniture and his cook-stove and pots and pans had
been hauled off by the purchasers, when his house was stripped and
bare, he sat down on the floor with his clasp-knife and ate all the
melons that he had put away for winter. When Mr. Shimerda
and Krajiek drove up in their wagon to take Peter to the train, they
found him with a dripping beard, surrounded by heaps of melon
rinds.
The loss of his two friends had a depressing
effect upon old Mr. Shimerda. When he was out hunting, he
used to go into the empty log house and sit there, brooding. This
cabin was his hermitage until the winter snows penned him in his cave.
For Ántonia and me, the story of the wedding party was never at
an end. We did not tell Pavels secret to any one, but guarded
it jealouslyas if the wolves of the Ukraine had gathered that
night long ago, and the wedding party been sacrificed, to give us a
painful and peculiar pleasure. At night, before I went to sleep, I
often found myself in a sledge drawn by three horses, dashing through
a country that looked something like Nebraska and something like
Virginia.
IX
The first snowfall
came early in December. I remember how the world looked from our
sitting-room window as I dressed behind the stove that morning: the
low sky was like a sheet of metal; the blond cornfields had faded out
into ghostliness at last; the little pond was frozen under its stiff
willow bushes. Big white flakes were whirling over everything and
disappearing in the red grass.
Beyond the pond, on the slope that climbed to the
cornfield, there was, faintly marked in the grass, a great circle
where the Indians used to ride. Jake and Otto were sure that when they
galloped round that ring the Indians tortured prisoners, bound to a
stake in the center; but grandfather thought they merely ran races or
trained horses there. Whenever one looked at this slope against the
setting sun, the circle showed like a pattern in the grass; and this
morning, when the first light spray of snow lay over it, it came out
with wonderful distinctness, like strokes of Chinese white on canvas.
The old figure stirred me as it had
never done before and seemed a good omen for the winter.
As soon as the snow had packed hard I began to drive
about the country in a clumsy sleigh that Otto Fuchs made for me by
fastening a wooden goods-box on bobs. Fuchs had been apprenticed to a
cabinet-maker in the old country and was very handy with tools. He
would have done a better job if I had nt hurried him. My first
trip was to the post-office, and the next day I went over to take
Yulka and Ántonia for a sleigh-ride.
It was a bright, cold day. I piled straw and buffalo
robes into the box, and took two hot bricks wrapped in old blankets.
When I got to the Shimerdas I did not go up to the house, but
sat in my sleigh at the bottom of the draw and called. Ántonia
and Yulka came running out, wearing little rabbit-skin hats their
father had made for them. They had heard about my sledge from Ambrosch
and knew why I had come. They tumbled in beside me and we set off
toward the north, along a road that happened to be broken.
The sky was brilliantly blue, and the sunlight on the
glittering white stretches of prairie was almost blinding. As
Ántonia said, the
whole world was changed by the snow; we kept looking in vain for
familiar landmarks. The deep arroyo through which Squaw Creek wound
was now only a cleft between snow-driftsvery blue when one
looked down into it. The tree-tops that had been gold all the autumn
were dwarfed and twisted, as if they would never have any life in them
again. The few little cedars, which were so dull and dingy before, now
stood out a strong, dusky green. The wind had the burning taste of
fresh snow; my throat and nostrils smarted as if some one had opened a
hartshorn bottle. The cold stung, and at the same time delighted one.
My horses breath rose like steam, and whenever we stopped he
smoked all over. The cornfields got back a little of their color under
the dazzling light, and stood the palest possible gold in the sun and
snow. All about us the snow was crusted in shallow terraces, with
tracings like ripple-marks at the edges, curly waves that were the
actual impression of the stinging lash in the wind.
The girls had on cotton dresses under their shawls;
they kept shivering beneath the buffalo robes and hugging each other
for warmth. But they were so glad to get away from their
ugly cave and their mothers scolding that they begged me to go
on and on, as far as Russian Peters house. The great fresh
open, after the stupefying warmth indoors, made them behave like wild
things. They laughed and shouted, and said they never wanted to go
home again. Could nt we settle down and live in Russian
Peters house, Yulka asked, and could nt I go to town and
buy things for us to keep house with?
All the way to Russian Peters we were
extravagantly happy, but when we turned back,it must have
been about four o clock,the east wind grew stronger and
began to howl; the sun lost its heartening power and the sky became
gray and somber. I took off my long woolen comforter and wound it
around Yulkas throat. She got so cold that we made her hide her
head under the buffalo robe. Ántonia and I sat erect, but I
held the reins clumsily, and my eyes were blinded by the wind a good
deal of the time. It was growing dark when we got to their house, but
I refused to go in with them and get warm. I knew my hands would ache
terribly if I went near a fire. Yulka forgot to give me back my
comforter, and I had to drive home directly
against the wind. The next day I came down with an attack of quinsy,
which kept me in the house for nearly two weeks.
The basement kitchen seemed heavenly safe and warm in
those dayslike a tight little boat in a winter sea. The men
were out in the fields all day, husking corn, and when they came in at
noon, with long caps pulled down over their ears and their feet in
red-lined overshoes, I used to think they were like Arctic
explorers.
In the afternoons, when grandmother sat upstairs
darning, or making husking-gloves, I read The Swiss Family
Robinson aloud to her, and I felt that the Swiss family had no
advantages over us in the way of an adventurous life. I was convinced
that mans strongest antagonist is the cold. I admired the
cheerful zest with which grandmother went about keeping us warm and
comfortable and well-fed. She often reminded me, when she was
preparing for the return of the hungry men, that this country was not
like Virginia, and that here a cook had, as she said, very
little to do with. On Sundays she gave us as much chicken as we
could eat, and on other days we had ham or bacon or sausage meat.
She baked either pies or cake for us every day, unless, for a change,
she made my favorite pudding, striped with currants and boiled in a
bag.
Next to getting warm and keeping warm, dinner and
supper were the most interesting things we had to think about. Our
lives centered around warmth and food and the return of the men at
nightfall. I used to wonder, when they came in tired from the fields,
their feet numb and their hands cracked and sore, how they could do
all the chores so conscientiously: feed and water and bed the horses,
milk the cows, and look after the pigs. When supper was over, it took
them a long while to get the cold out of their bones. While
grandmother and I washed the dishes and grandfather read his paper
upstairs, Jake and Otto sat on the long bench behind the stove,
easing their inside boots, or rubbing mutton tallow into
their cracked hands.
Every Saturday night we popped corn or made taffy,
and Otto Fuchs used to sing, For I Am a Cowboy and Know
I ve Done Wrong, or, Bury Me Not on the Lone
Prairee. He had a good baritone voice and always led the
singing when we went to church services at the sod schoolhouse.
I can still see those two men sitting on the bench;
Ottos close-clipped head and Jakes shaggy hair slicked
flat in front by a wet comb. I can see the sag of their tired
shoulders against the whitewashed wall. What good fellows they were,
how much they knew, and how many things they had kept faith with!
Fuchs had been a cowboy, a stage-driver, a
bar-tender, a miner; had wandered all over that great Western country
and done hard work everywhere, though, as grandmother said, he had
nothing to show for it. Jake was duller than Otto. He could scarcely
read, wrote even his name with difficulty, and he had a violent temper
which sometimes made him behave like a crazy mantore him all
to pieces and actually made him ill. But he was so soft-hearted that
any one could impose upon him. If he, as he said, forgot
himself and swore before grandmother, he went about depressed
and shamefaced all day. They were both of them jovial about the cold
in winter and the heat in summer, always ready to work overtime and to
meet emergencies. It was a matter of pride with them not to spare
themselves. Yet they were the sort
of men who never get on, somehow, or do anything but work hard for a
dollar or two a day.
On those bitter, starlit nights, as we sat around the
old stove that fed us and warmed us and kept us cheerful, we could
hear the coyotes howling down by the corrals, and their hungry, wintry
cry used to remind the boys of wonderful animal stories; about gray
wolves and bears in the Rockies, wildcats and panthers in the Virginia
mountains. Sometimes Fuchs could be persuaded to talk about the
outlaws and desperate characters he had known. I remember one funny
story about himself that made grandmother, who was working her bread
on the bread-board, laugh until she wiped her eyes with her bare arm,
her hands being floury. It was like this:
When Otto left Austria to come to America, he was
asked by one of his relatives to look after a woman who was crossing
on the same boat, to join her husband in Chicago. The woman started
off with two children, but it was clear that her family might grow
larger on the journey. Fuchs said he got on fine with the
kids, and liked the mother, though she played a sorry trick on
him. In mid-ocean she proceeded to have not one baby, but three!
This event made Fuchs the object of undeserved notoriety, since he was
traveling with her. The steerage stewardess was indignant with him,
the doctor regarded him with suspicion. The first-cabin passengers,
who made up a purse for the woman, took an embarrassing interest in
Otto, and often inquired of him about his charge. When the triplets
were taken ashore at New York, he had, as he said, to carry
some of them. The trip to Chicago was even worse than the ocean
voyage. On the train it was very difficult to get milk for the babies
and to keep their bottles clean. The mother did her best, but no
woman, out of her natural resources, could feed three babies. The
husband, in Chicago, was working in a furniture factory for modest
wages, and when he met his family at the station he was rather crushed
by the size of it. He, too, seemed to consider Fuchs in some fashion
to blame. I was sure glad, Otto concluded, that
he did nt take his hard feeling out on that poor woman; but he
had a sullen eye for me, all right! Now, did you ever hear of a young
fellers having such hard luck, Mrs.
Burden?
Grandmother told him she was sure the
Lord had remembered these things to his credit, and had helped him out
of many a scrape when he did nt realize that he was being
protected by Providence.
X
For several weeks
after my sleigh-ride, we heard nothing from the Shimerdas. My sore
throat kept me indoors, and grandmother had a cold which made the
housework heavy for her. When Sunday came she was glad to have a day
of rest. One night at supper Fuchs told us he had seen
Mr. Shimerda out hunting.
Hes made himself a rabbit-skin cap,
Jim, and a rabbit-skin collar that he buttons on outside his coat.
They ain t got but one overcoat among em over there, and
they take turns wearing it. They seem awful scared of cold, and stick
in that hole in the bank like badgers.
All but the crazy boy, Jake put in.
He never wears the coat. Krajiek says hes turrible
strong and can stand anything. I guess rabbits must be getting scarce
in this locality. Ambrosch come along by the cornfield yesterday where
I was at work and showed me three prairie dogs he d shot. He
asked me if they was good to eat. I spit and made a face and took on,
to scare him, but he just looked like
he was smarter n me and put em back in his sack and
walked off.
Grandmother looked up in alarm and spoke to
grandfather. Josiah, you don t suppose Krajiek would let
them poor creatures eat prairie dogs, do you?
You had better go over and see our neighbors
to-morrow, Emmaline, he replied gravely.
Fuchs put in a cheerful word and said prairie dogs
were clean beasts and ought to be good for food, but their family
connections were against them. I asked what he meant, and he grinned
and said they belonged to the rat family.
When I went downstairs in the morning, I found
grandmother and Jake packing a hamper basket in the kitchen.
Now, Jake, grandmother was saying,
if you can find that old rooster that got his comb froze, just
give his neck a twist, and we ll take him along. Theres
no good reason why Mrs. Shimerda could nt have got
hens from her neighbors last fall and had a henhouse going by now. I
reckon she was confused and did nt know where to begin.
I ve come strange to a new country myself, but I never forgot
hens
are a good thing to have, no matter what you don t
have.
Just as you say, mam, said Jake,
but I hate to think of Krajiek getting a leg of that old
rooster. He tramped out through the long cellar and dropped the
heavy door behind him.
After breakfast grandmother and Jake and I bundled
ourselves up and climbed into the cold front wagon-seat. As we
approached the Shimerdas we heard the frosty whine of the pump
and saw Ántonia, her head tied up and her cotton dress blown
about her, throwing all her weight on the pump-handle as it went up
and down. She heard our wagon, looked back over her shoulder, and
catching up her pail of water, started at a run for the hole in the
bank.
Jake helped grandmother to the ground, saying he
would bring the provisions after he had blanketed his horses. We went
slowly up the icy path toward the door sunk in the
drawside.
Blue puffs of smoke came from the stovepipe that stuck out through the
grass and snow, but the wind whisked them roughly away.
Mrs. Shimerda opened the door before we
knocked and seized grandmothers hand. She did not say
How do! as usual, but at once began to cry, talking very
fast in her own language, pointing to her feet which were tied up in
rags, and looking about accusingly at every one.
The old man was sitting on a stump behind the stove,
crouching over as if he were trying to hide from us. Yulka was on the
floor at his feet, her kitten in her lap. She peeped out at me and
smiled, but, glancing up at her mother, hid again. Ántonia was
washing pans and dishes in a dark corner. The crazy boy lay under the
only window, stretched on a gunnysack stuffed with straw. As soon as
we entered he threw a
grainsack
over the crack at the bottom of the door. The air in the cave was
stifling, and it was very dark, too. A lighted lantern, hung over the
stove, threw out a feeble yellow glimmer.
Mrs. Shimerda snatched off the covers of
two barrels behind the door, and made us look into them. In one there
were some potatoes that had been frozen and were rotting, in the other
was a little pile of flour. Grandmother murmured something in
embarrassment, but the Bohemian woman laughed scornfully, a
kind of whinny-laugh, and catching up an empty coffee-pot from the
shelf, shook it at us with a look positively vindictive.
Grandmother went on talking in her polite Virginia
way, not admitting their stark need or her own remissness, until Jake
arrived with the hamper, as if in direct answer to Mrs.
Shimerdas reproaches. Then the poor woman broke down. She
dropped on the floor beside her crazy son, hid her face on her knees,
and sat crying bitterly. Grandmother paid no heed to her, but called
Ántonia to come and help empty the basket. Tony left her corner
reluctantly. I had never seen her crushed like this before.
You not mind my poor
mamenka,
Mrs. Burden. She is so sad, she whispered, as she
wiped her wet hands on her skirt and took the things grandmother
handed her.
The crazy boy, seeing the food, began to make soft,
gurgling noises and stroked his stomach. Jake came in again, this time
with a sack of potatoes. Grandmother looked about in perplexity.
Have nt you got any sort of cave or
cellar outside, Ántonia? This is no place to keep vegetables.
How did your potatoes get frozen?
We get from Mr. Bushy, at the
post-office,what he throw out. We got no potatoes,
Mrs. Burden, Tony admitted mournfully.
When Jake went out, Marek crawled along the floor and
stuffed up the door-crack again. Then, quietly as a shadow,
Mr. Shimerda came out from behind the stove. He stood
brushing his hand over his smooth gray hair, as if he were trying to
clear away a fog about his head. He was clean and neat as usual, with
his green neckcloth and his coral pin. He took grandmothers arm
and led her behind the stove, to the back of the room. In the rear
wall was another little cave; a round hole, not much bigger than an
oil barrel, scooped out in the black earth. When I got up on one of
the stools and peered into it, I saw some quilts and a pile of straw.
The old man held the lantern. Yulka, he said in a low,
despairing voice, Yulka; my Ántonia!
Grandmother drew back. You mean they sleep in
there,your girls? He bowed his head.
Tony slipped under his arm. It is very cold on
the floor, and this is warm like the badger hole. I like for sleep
there, she insisted eagerly. My
mamenka
have nice bed,
with pillows from our own geese in Bohemie. See, Jim? She
pointed to the narrow bunk which Krajiek had built against the wall
for himself before the Shimerdas came.
Grandmother sighed. Sure enough, where
would you sleep, dear! I don t doubt
you re warm there. You ll have a better house after while,
Ántonia, and then you ll forget these hard
times.
Mr. Shimerda made grandmother sit down
on the only chair and pointed his wife to a stool beside her. Standing
before them with his hand on Ántonias shoulder, he
talked in a low tone, and his daughter translated. He wanted us to
know that they were not beggars in the old country; he made good
wages, and his family were respected there. He left Bohemia with more
than a thousand dollars in savings, after their passage money was
paid. He had in some way lost on exchange in New York, and the railway
fare to Nebraska was more than they had expected. By the time they
paid Krajiek for the land, and bought his horses and oxen and some old
farm machinery, they had very little money left. He wished grandmother
to know, however, that he still had some money. If they
could get through until spring came, they would buy a cow and chickens
and plant a garden, and would then do very well. Ambrosch and
Ántonia were both old enough to work in the fields, and they
were willing to work. But the snow and the bitter weather had
disheartened them all.
Ántonia explained that her father meant to
build a new house for them in the spring; he and Ambrosch had already
split the logs for it, but the logs were all buried in the snow, along
the creek where they had been felled.
While grandmother encouraged and gave them advice, I
sat down on the floor with Yulka and let her show me her kitten. Marek
slid cautiously toward us and began to exhibit his webbed fingers. I
knew he wanted to make his queer noises for meto bark like a
dog or whinny like a horse,but he did not dare in the
presence of his elders. Marek was always trying to be agreeable, poor
fellow, as if he had it on his mind that he must make up for his
deficiencies.
Mrs. Shimerda grew more calm and
reasonable before our visit was over, and, while Ántonia
translated, put in a word now and then
on her own account. The woman had a quick ear, and caught up phrases
whenever she heard English spoken. As we rose to go, she opened her
wooden chest and brought out a bag made of bed-ticking, about as long
as a flour sack and half as wide, stuffed full of something. At sight
of it, the crazy boy began to smack his lips. When Mrs.
Shimerda opened the bag and stirred the contents with her hand, it
gave out a salty, earthy smell, very pungent, even among the other
odors of that cave. She measured a teacup full, tied it up in a bit of
sacking, and presented it ceremoniously to grandmother.
For cook, she announced. Little
now; be very much when cook, spreading out her hands as if to
indicate that the pint would swell to a gallon. Very good. You
no have in this country. All things for eat better in my
country.
Maybe so, Mrs. Shimerda,
grandmother said drily. I can t say but I prefer our
bread to yours, myself.
Ántonia undertook to explain. This very
good, Mrs. Burden,she clasped her hands
as if she could not express how good, it make very much
when you cook, like what
my mama say. Cook with rabbit, cook with chicken, in the gravy,oh, so good!
All the way home grandmother and Jake talked about
how easily good Christian people could forget they were their
brothers keepers.
I will say, Jake, some of our brothers and
sisters are hard to keep. Wheres a body to begin, with these
people? They re wanting in everything, and most of all in
horse-sense. Nobody can give em that, I guess. Jimmy, here, is
about as able to take over a homestead as they are. Do you reckon that
boy Ambrosch has any real push in him?
Hes a worker, all right, mam, and
hes got some ketch-on about him; but hes a mean one.
Folks can be mean enough to get on in this world; and then,
ag in, they can be too mean.
That night, while grandmother was getting supper, we
opened the package Mrs. Shimerda had given her. It was
full of little brown chips that looked like the shavings of some root.
They were as light as feathers, and the most noticeable thing about
them was their penetrating, earthy odor. We could not determine
whether they were animal or vegetable.
They might be dried meat from some
queer beast, Jim. They ain t dried fish, and they never grew on
stalk or vine. Im afraid of em. Anyhow, I should
nt want to eat anything that had been shut up for months with
old clothes and goose pillows.
She threw the package into the stove, but I bit off a
corner of one of the chips I held in my hand, and chewed it
tentatively. I never forgot the strange taste; though it was many
years before I knew that those little brown shavings, which the
Shimerdas had brought so far and treasured so jealously, were dried
mushrooms. They had been gathered, probably, in some deep Bohemian
forest...
XI
During the week
before Christmas, Jake was the most important person of our household,
for he was to go to town and do all our Christmas shopping. But on the
21st of December, the snow began to fall. The flakes came down so
thickly that from the sitting-room windows I could not see beyond the
windmillits frame looked dim and gray, unsubstantial like a
shadow. The snow did not stop falling all day, or during the night
that followed. The cold was not severe, but the storm was quiet and
resistless. The men could not go farther than the barns and corral.
They sat about the house most of the day as if it were Sunday;
greasing their boots, mending their suspenders, plaiting
whiplashes.
On the morning of the 22d, grandfather announced at
breakfast that it would be impossible to go to Black Hawk for
Christmas purchases. Jake was sure he could get through on horseback,
and bring home our things in saddle-bags; but grandfather told him the
roads would be obliterated, and a newcomer
in the country would be lost ten times over. Anyway, he would never
allow one of his horses to be put to such a strain.
We decided to have a country Christmas, without any
help from town. I had wanted to get some picture-books for Yulka and
Ántonia; even Yulka was able to read a little now. Grandmother
took me into the ice-cold storeroom, where she had some bolts of
gingham and sheeting. She cut squares of cotton cloth and we sewed
them together into a book. We bound it between pasteboards, which I
covered with brilliant calico, representing scenes from a circus. For
two days I sat at the dining-room table, pasting this book full of
pictures for Yulka. We had files of those good old family magazines
which used to publish colored lithographs of popular paintings, and I
was allowed to use some of these. I took Napoleon Announcing
the Divorce to Josephine for my frontispiece. On the white
pages I grouped Sunday-School cards and advertising cards which I had
brought from my old country. Fuchs got out the old
candle-moulds and made tallow candles. Grandmother hunted up her fancy
cake-cutters and baked gingerbread men and roosters,
which we decorated with burnt sugar and red cinnamon drops.
On the day before Christmas, Jake packed the things
we were sending to the Shimerdas in his saddle-bags and set off on
grandfathers gray gelding. When he mounted his horse at the
door, I saw that he had a hatchet slung to his belt, and he gave
grandmother a meaning look which told me he was planning a surprise
for me. That afternoon I watched long and eagerly from the
sitting-room window. At last I saw a dark spot moving on the west
hill, beside the half-buried cornfield, where the sky was taking on a
coppery flush from the sun that did not quite break through. I put on
my cap and ran out to meet Jake. When I got to the pond I could see
that he was bringing in a little cedar tree across his pommel. He used
to help my father cut Christmas trees for me in Virginia, and he had
not forgotten how much I liked them.
By the time we had placed the cold, fresh-smelling
little tree in a corner of the sitting-room, it was already Christmas
Eve. After supper we all gathered there, and even grandfather, reading
his paper by the table, looked up with friendly interest now and then.
The cedar was about five feet high and very shapely. We hung it with
the gingerbread animals, strings of popcorn, and bits of candle which
Fuchs had fitted into pasteboard sockets. Its real splendors, however,
came from the most unlikely place in the worldfrom
Ottos cowboy trunk. I had never seen anything in that trunk but
old boots and spurs and pistols, and a fascinating mixture of yellow
leather thongs, cartridges, and shoemakers wax. From under the
lining he now produced a collection of brilliantly colored paper
figures, several inches high and stiff enough to stand alone. They had
been sent to him year after year, by his old mother in Austria. There
was a bleeding heart, in tufts of paper lace; there were the three
kings, gorgeously appareled, and the ox and the ass and the shepherds;
there was the Baby in the manger, and a group of angels, singing;
there were camels and leopards, held by the black slaves of the three
kings. Our tree became the talking tree of the fairy tale; legends and
stories nestled like birds in its branches. Grandmother said it
reminded her of the Tree of Knowledge. We put sheets of cotton wool
under it for a snow-field, and Jakes pocket-mirror for a frozen
lake.
I can see them now, exactly as they looked, working
about the table in the lamplight: Jake with his heavy features, so
rudely moulded that his face seemed, somehow, unfinished; Otto with
his half-ear and the savage scar that made his upper lip curl so
ferociously under his twisted mustache. As I remember them, what
unprotected faces they were; their very roughness and violence made
them defenseless. These boys had no practiced manner behind which they
could retreat and hold people at a distance. They had only their hard
fists to batter at the world with. Otto was already one of those
drifting, case-hardened laborers who never marry or have children of
their own. Yet he was so fond of children!
XII
On Christmas
morning, when I got down to the kitchen, the men were just coming in
from their morning choresthe horses and pigs always had their
breakfast before we did. Jake and Otto shouted
Merry Christmas! to me, and winked at each other when they saw the waffle-irons on the
stove. Grandfather came down, wearing a white shirt and his Sunday
coat. Morning prayers were longer than usual. He read the chapters
from St. Matthew about the birth of Christ, and as we
listened it all seemed like something that had happened lately, and
near at hand. In his prayer he thanked the Lord for the first
Christmas, and for all that it had meant to the world ever since. He
gave thanks for our food and comfort, and prayed for the poor and
destitute in great cities, where the struggle for life was harder than
it was here with us. Grandfathers prayers were often very
interesting. He had the gift of simple and moving expression. Because
he talked so little, his words had a peculiar force; they were not
worn dull from constant use. His prayers reflected what he was
thinking about at the time, and it was chiefly through them that we
got to know his feelings and his views about things.
After we sat down to our waffles and sausage, Jake
told us how pleased the Shimerdas had been with their presents; even
Ambrosch was friendly and went to the creek with him to cut the
Christmas tree. It was a soft gray day outside, with heavy clouds
working across the sky, and occasional squalls of snow. There were
always odd jobs to be done about the barn on holidays, and the men
were busy until afternoon. Then Jake and I played dominoes, while Otto
wrote a long letter home to his mother. He always wrote to her on
Christmas Day, he said, no matter where he was, and no matter how long
it had been since his last letter. All afternoon he sat in the
dining-room. He would write for a while, then sit idle, his clenched
fist lying on the table, his eyes following the pattern of the
oilcloth. He spoke and wrote his own language so seldom that it came
to him awkwardly. His effort to remember entirely absorbed him.
At about four o clock a visitor appeared:
Mr. Shimerda, wearing his rabbit-skin cap and collar, and
new mittens his wife had knitted. He had come to thank us for the
presents, and for all grandmothers kindness to his family. Jake
and Otto joined us from the basement and we sat about the stove,
enjoying the deepening gray of the winter afternoon and the atmosphere
of comfort and security in my grandfathers house. This feeling
seemed completely to take possession of Mr. Shimerda. I
suppose, in the crowded clutter of their cave, the old man had come to
believe that peace and order had vanished from the earth, or existed
only in the old world he had left so far behind. He sat still and
passive, his head resting against the back of the wooden
rocking-chair, his hands relaxed upon the arms. His face had a look of
weariness and pleasure, like that of sick people when they feel relief
from pain. Grandmother insisted on his drinking a glass of Virginia
apple-brandy after his long walk in the cold, and when a faint flush
came up in his cheeks, his features might have been cut out of a
shell, they were so transparent. He said almost nothing, and smiled
rarely; but as he rested there we all had a sense of his utter
content.
As it grew dark, I asked whether I might light the
Christmas tree before the lamp was brought. When the candle ends sent
up their conical yellow flames, all the colored figures from Austria
stood out clear and full of meaning against the green boughs.
Mr. Shimerda rose, crossed himself, and quietly knelt
down before the tree, his head sunk forward. His long body formed a
letter S. I saw grandmother look
apprehensively at grandfather. He was rather narrow in religious
matters, and sometimes spoke out and hurt peoples feelings.
There had been nothing strange about the tree before, but now, with
some one kneeling before it,images, candles,...
Grandfather merely put his finger-tips to his brow and bowed his
venerable head, thus Protestantizing the atmosphere.
We persuaded our guest to stay for supper with us. He
needed little urging. As we sat down to the table, it occurred to me
that he liked to look at us, and that our faces were open books to
him. When his deep-seeing eyes rested on me, I felt as if he were
looking far ahead into the future for me, down the road I would have
to travel.
At nine o clock Mr. Shimerda
lighted one
of our lanterns and put on his overcoat and fur collar. He stood in
the little entry hall, the lantern and his fur cap under his arm,
shaking hands with us. When he took grandmothers hand, he bent
over it as he always did, and said slowly, Good wo-man!
He made the sign of the cross over me, put on his cap and went off in
the dark. As we turned back to the sitting-room, grandfather looked at
me searchingly. The prayers of all good people are good,
he said quietly.
XIII
The week following
Christmas brought in a thaw, and by New Years Day all the world
about us was a broth of gray slush, and the guttered slope between the
windmill and the barn was running black water. The soft black earth
stood out in patches along the roadsides. I resumed all my chores,
carried in the cobs and wood and water, and spent the afternoons at
the barn, watching Jake shell corn with a hand-sheller.
One morning, during this interval of fine weather,
Ántonia and her mother rode over on one of their shaggy old
horses to pay us a visit. It was the first time Mrs.
Shimerda had been to our house, and she ran about examining our
carpets and curtains and furniture, all the while commenting upon them
to her daughter in an envious, complaining tone. In the kitchen she
caught up an iron pot that stood on the back of the stove and said:
You got many, Shimerdas no got. I thought it weak-minded
of grandmother to give the pot to her.
After dinner, when she was helping to wash the
dishes, she said, tossing her head: You got many things for
cook. If I got all things like you, I make much better.
She was a conceited, boastful old thing, and even
misfortune could not humble her. I was so annoyed that I felt coldly
even toward Ántonia and listened unsympathetically when she
told me her father was not well.
My papa sad for the old country. He not look
good. He never make music any more. At home he play violin all the
time; for weddings and for dance. Here never. When I beg him for play,
he shake his head no. Some days he take his violin out of his box and
make with his fingers on the strings, like this, but never he make the
music. He don t like this kawn-tree.
People who don t like this country ought
to stay at home, I said severely. We don t make
them come here.
He not want to come, nev-er! she burst
out. My
mamenka
make him come. All the time she say: America big country; much
money, much land for my boys, much husband for my girls. My
papa, he cry for leave his old friends what make music with him. He
love very much the man what play the long horn like thisshe indicated a slide trombone. They go to school
together and are friends from boys. But my mama, she want Ambrosch for
be rich, with many cattle.
Your mama, I said angrily, wants
other peoples things.
Your grandfather is rich, she retorted
fiercely. Why he not help my papa? Ambrosch be rich, too, after
while, and he pay back. He is very smart boy. For Ambrosch my mama
come here.
Ambrosch was considered the important person in the
family. Mrs. Shimerda and Ántonia always deferred
to him, though he was often surly with them and contemptuous toward
his father. Ambrosch and his mother had everything their own way.
Though Ántonia loved her father more than she did any one else,
she stood in awe of her elder brother.
After I watched Ántonia and her mother go over
the hill on their miserable horse, carrying our iron pot with them, I
turned to grandmother, who had taken up her darning, and said I hoped
that snooping old woman would nt come to see us any more.
Grandmother chuckled and drove her bright
needle across a hole in Ottos sock. Shes not old,
Jim, though I expect she seems old to you. No, I would nt mourn
if she never came again. But, you see, a body never knows what traits
poverty might bring out in em. It makes a woman grasping to see
her children want for things. Now read me a chapter in The
Prince of the House of David. Lets forget the
Bohemians.
We had three weeks of this mild, open weather. The
cattle in the corral ate corn almost as fast as the men could shell it
for them, and we hoped they would be ready for an early market. One
morning the two big bulls, Gladstone and Brigham Young, thought spring
had come, and they began to tease and butt at each other across the
barbed wire that separated them. Soon they got angry. They bellowed
and pawed up the soft earth with their hoofs, rolling their eyes and
tossing their heads. Each withdrew to a far corner of his own corral,
and then they made for each other at a gallop. Thud, thud, we could
hear the impact of their great heads, and their bellowing shook the
pans on the kitchen shelves. Had they not been dehorned, they would
have torn each other to pieces. Pretty
soon the fat steers took it up and began butting and horning each
other. Clearly, the affair had to be stopped. We all stood by and
watched admiringly while Fuchs rode into the corral with a pitchfork
and prodded the bulls again and again, finally driving them apart.
The big storm of the winter began on my eleventh
birthday, the 20th of January. When I went down to breakfast that
morning, Jake and Otto came in white as snow-men, beating their hands
and stamping their feet. They began to laugh boisterously when they
saw me, calling:
You ve got a birthday present this time,
Jim, and no mistake. They was a full-grown blizzard ordered for
you.
All day the storm went on. The snow did not fall this
time, it simply spilled out of heaven, like thousands of feather-beds
being emptied. That afternoon the kitchen was a carpenter-shop; the
men brought in their tools and made two great wooden shovels with long
handles. Neither grandmother nor I could go out in the storm, so Jake
fed the chickens and brought in a pitiful contribution of eggs.
Next day our men had to shovel until noon to reach
the barnand the snow was still
falling! There had not been such a storm in the ten years my
grandfather had lived in Nebraska. He said at dinner that we would not
try to reach the cattlethey were fat enough to go without
their corn for a day or two; but to-morrow we must feed them and thaw
out their water-tap so that they could drink. We could not so much as
see the corrals, but we knew the steers were over there, huddled
together under the north bank. Our ferocious bulls, subdued enough by
this time, were probably warming each others backs.
This.l take the bile out of em! Fuchs
remarked gleefully.
At noon that day the hens had not been heard from.
After dinner Jake and Otto, their damp clothes now dried on them,
stretched their stiff arms and plunged again into the drifts. They
made a tunnel under the snow to the henhouse, with walls so solid that
grandmother and I could walk back and forth in it. We found the
chickens asleep; perhaps they thought night had come to stay. One old
rooster was stirring about, pecking at the solid lump of ice in their
water-tin. When we flashed the lantern in their eyes, the hens set up
a great cackling and flew about clumsily,
scattering down-feathers. The mottled, pin-headed guinea-hens, always
resentful of captivity, ran screeching out into the tunnel and tried
to poke their ugly, painted faces through the snow walls. By five
o clock the chores were donejust when it was time to
begin them all over again! That was a strange, unnatural sort of
day.
XIV
On the morning of
the 22d I wakened with a start. Before I opened my eyes, I seemed to
know that something had happened. I heard excited voices in the
kitchengrandmothers was so shrill that I knew she must
be almost beside herself. I looked forward to any new crisis with
delight. What could it be, I wondered, as I hurried into my clothes.
Perhaps the barn had burned; perhaps the cattle had frozen to death;
perhaps a neighbor was lost in the storm.
Down in the kitchen grandfather was standing before
the stove with his hands behind him. Jake and Otto had taken off their
boots and were rubbing their woolen socks. Their clothes and boots
were steaming, and they both looked exhausted. On the bench behind the
stove lay a man, covered up with a blanket. Grandmother motioned me to
the dining-room. I obeyed reluctantly. I watched her as she came and
went, carrying dishes. Her lips were tightly compressed and she kept
whispering to herself: Oh, dear Saviour! Lord,
Thou knowest!
Presently grandfather came in and spoke to me:
Jimmy, we will not have prayers this morning, because we have a
great deal to do. Old Mr. Shimerda is dead, and his
family are in great distress. Ambrosch came over here in the middle of
the night, and Jake and Otto went back with him. The boys have had a
hard night, and you must not bother them with questions. That is
Ambrosch, asleep on the bench. Come in to breakfast, boys.
After Jake and Otto had swallowed their first cup of
coffee, they began to talk excitedly, disregarding grandmothers
warning glances. I held my tongue, but I listened with all my ears.
No, sir, Fuchs said in answer to a
question from grandfather, nobody heard the gun go off.
Ambrosch was out with the ox team, trying to break a road, and the
women folks
was shut up tight in their cave. When Ambrosch come in it was dark and
he did nt see nothing, but the oxen acted kind of queer. One of
em ripped around and got away from himbolted clean out
of the stable. His hands is blistered where the rope run through. He
got a lantern and went back and found the old man, just as we seen
him.
Poor soul, poor soul! grandmother
groaned. I d like to think he never done it. He was
always considerate and un-wishful to give trouble. How could he forget
himself and bring this on us!
I don t think he was out of his head for
a minute, Mrs. Burden, Fuchs declared. He
done everything natural. You know he was always sort of fixy, and fixy
he was to the last. He shaved after dinner, and washed hisself all
over after the girls was done the dishes. Ántonia heated the
water for him. Then he put on a clean shirt and clean socks, and after
he was dressed he kissed her and the little one and took his gun and
said he was going out to hunt rabbits. He must have gone right down to
the barn and done it then. He layed down on that bunk-bed, close to
the ox stalls, where he always slept. When we found him, everything
was decent except,Fuchs wrinkled his brow and
hesitated, except what he could nt nowise
foresee. His coat was hung on a peg, and his boots was under the bed.
He d took off that silk neckcloth he always wore, and folded it
smooth and stuck his pin through it. He turned back his shirt at the
neck and rolled up his sleeves.
I don t see how he could do it!
grandmother kept saying.
Otto misunderstood her. Why, mam, it was
simple enough; he pulled the trigger with his big toe. He layed over
on his side and put the end of the barrel in his mouth, then he drew
up one foot and felt for the trigger. He found it all right!
Maybe he did, said Jake grimly.
Theres something mighty queer about it.
Now what do you mean, Jake? grandmother
asked sharply.
Well, mam, I found Krajieks axe under
the manger, and I picks it up and carries it over to the corpse, and I
take my oath it just fit the gash in the front of the old mans
face. That there Krajiek had been sneakin round, pale and
quiet, and when he seen me examinin the axe, he begun
whimperin , My God, man, don t do that!
I reckon Im a-goin to look into this, says
I. Then he begun to squeal like a rat and run about wringin his
hands. They ll hang me! says he. My God,
they ll hang me sure!
Fuchs spoke up impatiently. Krajieks
gone silly, Jake, and so have you. The old man would nt have
made all them
preparations for Krajiek to murder him, would he? It don t hang
together. The gun was right beside him when Ambrosch found
him.
Krajiek could a put it there,
could nt he? Jake demanded.
Grandmother broke in excitedly: See here, Jake
Marpole, don t you go trying to add murder to suicide.
We re deep enough in trouble. Otto reads you too many of them
detective stories.
It will be easy to decide all that,
Emmaline, said grandfather quietly. If he shot himself
in the way they think, the gash will be torn from the inside
outward.
Just so it is, Mr. Burden,
Otto affirmed. I seen bunches of hair and stuff sticking to the
poles and straw along the roof. They was blown up there by gunshot, no
question.
Grandmother told grandfather she meant to go over to the
Shimerdas
with him.
There is nothing you can do, he said
doubtfully. The body can t be touched until we get the
coroner here from Black Hawk, and that will be a matter of several
days, this weather.
Well, I can take them some victuals, anyway,
and say a word of comfort to them poor little girls. The oldest one was his darling, and was like a right
hand to him. He might have thought of her. Hes left her alone
in a hard world. She glanced distrustfully at Ambrosch, who was
now eating his breakfast at the kitchen table.
Fuchs, although he had been up in the cold nearly all
night, was going to make the long ride to Black Hawk to fetch the
priest and the coroner. On the gray gelding, our best horse, he would
try to pick his way across the country with no roads to guide him.
Don t you worry about me,
Mrs. Burden, he said cheerfully, as he put on a
second pair of socks. I ve got a good nose for
directions, and I never did need much sleep. Its the gray
Im worried about. I ll save him what I can, but
it ll strain him, as sure as Im telling you!
This is no time to be over-considerate of
animals, Otto; do the best you can for yourself. Stop at the Widow
Steavenss for dinner. Shes a good woman, and
she ll do well by you.
After Fuchs rode away, I was left with Ambrosch. I
saw a side of him I had not seen before. He was deeply, even
slavishly, devout.
He did not say a word all morning, but sat with his rosary in his
hands, praying, now silently, now aloud. He never looked away from his
beads, nor lifted his hands except to cross himself. Several times the
poor boy fell asleep where he sat, wakened with a start, and began to
pray again.
No wagon could be got to the Shimerdas until a
road was broken, and that would be a days job. Grandfather came
from the barn on one of our big black horses, and Jake lifted
grandmother up behind him. She wore her black hood and was bundled up
in shawls. Grandfather tucked his bushy white beard inside his
overcoat. They looked very Biblical as they set off, I thought. Jake
and Ambrosch followed them, riding the other black and my pony,
carrying bundles of clothes that we had got together for
Mrs. Shimerda. I watched them go past the pond and over
the hill by the drifted cornfield. Then, for the first time, I
realized that I was alone in the house.
I felt a considerable extension of power and
authority, and was anxious to acquit myself creditably. I carried in
cobs and wood from the long cellar, and filled both the stoves. I
remembered that in the hurry and excitement
of the morning nobody had thought of the chickens, and the eggs had
not been gathered. Going out through the tunnel, I gave the hens their
corn, emptied the ice from their drinking-pan, and filled it with
water. After the cat had had his milk, I could think of nothing else
to do, and I sat down to get warm. The quiet was delightful, and the
ticking clock was the most pleasant of companions. I got
Robinson Crusoe and tried to read, but his life on the
island seemed dull compared with ours. Presently, as I looked with
satisfaction about our comfortable sitting-room, it flashed upon me
that if Mr. Shimerdas soul were lingering about in
this world at all, it would be here, in our house, which had been more
to his liking than any other in the neighborhood. I remembered his
contented face when he was with us on Christmas Day. If he could have
lived with us, this terrible thing would never have happened.
I knew it was homesickness that had killed
Mr. Shimerda, and I wondered whether his released spirit
would not eventually find its way back to his own country. I thought
of how far it was to Chicago, and then to Virginia, to Baltimore,and then the great
wintry ocean. No, he would not at once set out upon that long journey.
Surely, his exhausted spirit, so tired of cold and crowding and the
struggle with the ever-falling snow, was resting now in this quiet
house.
I was not frightened, but I made no noise. I did not
wish to disturb him. I went softly down to the kitchen which, tucked
away so snugly underground, always seemed to me the heart and center
of the house. There, on the bench behind the stove, I thought and
thought about Mr. Shimerda. Outside I could hear the wind
singing over hundreds of miles of snow. It was as if I had let the old
man in out of the tormenting winter, and were sitting there with him.
I went over all that Ántonia had ever told me about his life
before he came to this country; how he used to play the fiddle at
weddings and dances. I thought about the friends he had mourned to
leave, the trombone-player, the great forest full of game,belonging, as Ántonia said, to the nobles,from which she and her mother used to steal wood on moonlight
nights. There was a white hart that lived in that forest, and if any
one killed it, he would be hanged, she said. Such vivid pictures came
to me that they might
have been Mr. Shimerdas memories, not yet faded
out from the air in which they had haunted him.
It had begun to grow dark when my household returned,
and grandmother was so tired that she went at once to bed. Jake and I
got supper, and while we were washing the dishes he told me in loud
whispers about the state of things over at the Shimerdas.
Nobody could touch the body until the coroner came. If any one did,
something terrible would happen, apparently. The dead man was frozen
through, just as stiff as a dressed turkey you hang out to
freeze, Jake said. The horses and oxen would not go into the
barn until he was frozen so hard that there was no longer any smell of
blood. They were stabled there now, with the dead man, because there
was no other place to keep them. A lighted lantern was kept hanging
over Mr. Shimerdas head. Ántonia and
Ambrosch and the mother took turns going down to pray beside him. The
crazy boy went with them, because he did not feel the cold. I believed
he felt cold as much as any one else, but he liked to be thought
insensible to it. He was always coveting distinction, poor Marek!
Ambrosch, Jake said, showed more human feeling than
he would have supposed him capable of; but he was chiefly concerned
about getting a priest, and about his fathers soul, which he
believed was in a place of torment and would remain there until his
family and the priest had prayed a great deal for him. As I
understand it, Jake concluded, it will be a matter of
years to pray his soul out of Purgatory, and right now hes in
torment.
I don t believe it, I said
stoutly. I almost know it is nt true. I did not,
of course, say that I believed he had been in that very kitchen all
afternoon, on his way back to his own country. Nevertheless, after I
went to bed, this idea of punishment and Purgatory came back on me
crushingly. I remembered the account of Dives in torment, and
shuddered. But Mr. Shimerda had not been rich and
selfish; he had only been so unhappy that he could not live any
longer.
XV
Otto Fuchs got
back from Black Hawk at noon the next day. He reported that the
coroner would reach the Shimerdas sometime that afternoon, but
the missionary priest was at the other end of his parish, a hundred
miles away, and the trains were not running. Fuchs had got a few
hours sleep at the livery barn in town, but he was afraid the
gray gelding had strained himself. Indeed, he was never the same horse
afterward. That long trip through the deep snow had taken all the
endurance out of him.
Fuchs brought home with him a stranger, a young
Bohemian who had taken a homestead near Black Hawk, and who came on
his only horse to help his fellow-countrymen in their trouble. That
was the first time I ever saw Anton Jelinek. He was a strapping young
fellow in the early twenties then, handsome, warm-hearted, and full of
life, and he came to us like a miracle in the midst of that grim
business. I remember exactly how he strode into our kitchen in his
felt boots and long
wolfskin coat, his eyes and cheeks bright with the cold. At sight of
grandmother, he snatched off his fur cap, greeting her in a deep,
rolling voice which seemed older than he.
I want to thank you very much,
Mrs. Burden, for that you are so kind to poor strangers
from my kawn-tree.
He did not hesitate like a farmer boy, but looked one
eagerly in the eye when he spoke. Everything about him was warm and
spontaneous. He said he would have come to see the Shimerdas before,
but he had hired out to husk corn all the fall, and since winter began
he had been going to the school by the mill, to learn English, along
with the little children. He told me he had a nice
lady-teacher and that he liked to go to school.
At dinner grandfather talked to Jelinek more than he
usually did to strangers.
Will they be much disappointed because we
cannot get a priest? he asked.
Jelinek looked serious. Yes, sir, that is very
bad for them. Their father has done a great sin, he looked
straight at grandfather. Our Lord has said that.
Grandfather seemed to like his frankness. We
believe that, too, Jelinek. But we believe
that Mr. Shimerdas soul will come to its Creator
as well off without a priest. We believe that Christ is our only
intercessor.
The young man shook his head. I know how you
think. My teacher at the school has explain. But I have seen too much.
I believe in prayer for the dead. I have seen too much.
We asked him what he meant.
He glanced around the table. You want I shall
tell you? When I was a little boy like this one, I begin to help the
priest at the altar. I make my first communion very young; what the
Church teach seem plain to me. By n by war-times come,
when the Austrians
fight us. We have very many soldiers in camp near my village, and the
cholera break out in that camp, and the men die like flies. All day
long our priest go about there to give the Sacrament to dying men, and
I go with him to carry the vessels with the Holy Sacrament. Everybody
that go near that camp catch the sickness but me and the priest. But
we have no sickness, we have no fear, because we carry that blood and
that body of Christ, and it preserve us. He paused, looking at
grandfather. That I know, Mr. Burden, for it
happened to myself. All the soldiers know,
too. When we walk along the road, the old priest and me, we meet all
the time soldiers marching and officers on horse. All those officers,
when they see what I carry under the cloth, pull up their horses and
kneel down on the ground in the road until we pass. So I feel very bad
for my kawntree-man to die without the Sacrament, and to die in a bad
way for his soul, and I feel sad for his family.
We had listened attentively. It was impossible not to
admire his frank, manly faith.
I am always glad to meet a young man who
thinks seriously about these things, said grandfather,
and I would never be the one to say you were not in Gods
care when you were among the soldiers.
After dinner it was decided that young Jelinek should
hook our two strong black farmhorses to the scraper and break a road
through to the Shimerdas, so that a wagon could go when it was
necessary. Fuchs, who was the only cabinet-maker in the neighborhood,
was set to work on a coffin.
Jelinek put on his long wolfskin coat, and when we
admired it, he told us that he had shot and skinned the coyotes, and
the young man who batched with him, Jan Bouska,
who had been a fur-worker in Vienna, made the coat. From the windmill
I watched Jelinek come out of the barn with the blacks, and work his
way up the hillside toward the cornfield. Sometimes he was completely
hidden by the clouds of snow that rose about him; then he and the
horses would emerge black and shining.
Our heavy carpenters bench had to be brought
from the barn and carried down into the kitchen. Fuchs selected boards
from a pile of planks grandfather had hauled out from town in the fall
to make a new floor for the oats bin. When at last the lumber and
tools were assembled, and the doors were closed again and the cold
drafts shut out, grandfather rode away to meet the coroner at the
Shimerdas, and Fuchs took off his coat and settled down to
work. I sat on his work-table and watched him. He did not touch his
tools at first, but figured for a long while on a piece of paper, and
measured the planks and made marks on them. While he was thus engaged,
he whistled softly to himself, or teasingly pulled at his half-ear.
Grandmother moved about quietly, so as not to disturb him. At last he
folded his ruler and turned a cheerful face to us.
The hardest part of my jobs
done, he announced. Its the head end of it that
comes hard with me, especially when Im out of practice. The
last time I made one of these, Mrs. Burden, he
continued, as he sorted and tried his chisels, was for a fellow
in the Black Tiger mine, up above Silverton, Colorado. The mouth of
that mine goes right into the face of the cliff, and they used to put
us in a bucket and run us over on a trolley and shoot us into the
shaft. The bucket traveled across a box canon three hundred
feet deep, and about a third full of water. Two Swedes had fell out of
that bucket once, and hit the water, feet down. If you ll
believe it, they went to work the next day. You can t kill a
Swede. But in my time a little Eyetalian tried the high dive, and it
turned out different with him. We was snowed in then, like we are now,
and I happened to be the only man in camp that could make a coffin for
him. Its a handy thing to know, when you knock about like
I ve done.
We d be hard put to it now, if you did
nt know, Otto, grandmother said.
Yes, m, Fuchs admitted with
modest pride. So few folks does know how to make
a good tight box that ll turn water. I sometimes wonder if
there ll be anybody about to do it for me. However, I m
not at all particular that way.
All afternoon, wherever one went in the house, one
could hear the panting wheeze of the saw or the pleasant purring of
the plane. They were such cheerful noises, seeming to promise new
things for living people: it was a pity that those freshly planed pine
boards were to be put underground so soon. The lumber was hard to work
because it was full of frost, and the boards gave off a sweet smell of
pine woods, as the heap of yellow shavings grew higher and higher. I
wondered why Fuchs had not stuck to cabinet-work, he settled down to
it with such ease and content. He handled the tools as if he liked the
feel of them; and when he planed, his hands went back and forth over
the boards in an eager, beneficent way as if he were blessing them. He
broke out now and then into German hymns, as if this occupation
brought back old times to him.
At four o clock Mr. Bushy, the
postmaster, with another neighbor who lived east of us, stopped in to
get warm. They were on their
way to the Shimerdas. The news of what had happened over there
had somehow got abroad through the snow-blocked country. Grandmother
gave the visitors sugar-cakes and hot coffee. Before these callers
were gone, the brother of the Widow Steavens, who lived on the Black
Hawk road, drew up at our door, and after him came the father of the
German family, our nearest neighbors on the south. They dismounted and
joined us in the dining-room. They were all eager for any details
about the suicide, and they were greatly concerned as to where
Mr. Shimerda would be buried. The nearest Catholic
cemetery was at Black Hawk, and it might be weeks before a wagon could
get so far. Besides, Mr. Bushy and grandmother were sure
that a man who had killed himself could not be buried in a Catholic
graveyard. There was a burying-ground over by the Norwegian church,
west of Squaw Creek; perhaps the Norwegians would take
Mr. Shimerda in.
After our visitors rode away in single file over the
hill, we returned to the kitchen. Grandmother began to make the icing
for a chocolate cake, and Otto again filled the house with the
exciting, expectant song of the plane.
One pleasant thing about this time was that everybody talked more than
usual. I had never heard the postmaster say anything but Only
papers, to-day, or, I ve got a sackful of mail for
ye, until this afternoon. Grandmother always talked, dear
woman; to herself or to the Lord, if there was no one else to listen;
but grandfather was naturally taciturn, and Jake and Otto were often
so tired after supper that I used to feel as if I were surrounded by a
wall of silence. Now every one seemed eager to talk. That afternoon
Fuchs told me story after story; about the Black Tiger mine, and about
violent deaths and casual buryings, and the queer fancies of dying
men. You never really knew a man, he said, until you saw him die. Most
men were game, and went without a grudge.
The postmaster, going home, stopped to say that
grandfather would bring the coroner back with him to spend the night.
The officers of the Norwegian church, he told us, had held a meeting
and decided that the Norwegian graveyard could not extend its
hospitality to Mr. Shimerda.
Grandmother was indignant. If these foreigners
are so clannish, Mr. Bushy, we ll have
to have an American graveyard that will be more liberal-minded.
I ll get right after Josiah to start one in the spring. If
anything was to happen to me, I don t want the Norwegians
holding inquisitions over me to see whether Im good enough to
be laid amongst em.
Soon grandfather returned, bringing with him Anton
Jelinek, and that important person, the coroner. He was a mild,
flurried old man, a Civil War veteran, with one sleeve hanging empty.
He seemed to find this case very perplexing, and said if it had not
been for grandfather he would have sworn out a warrant against
Krajiek. The way he acted, and the way his axe fit the wound,
was enough to convict any man.
Although it was perfectly clear that Mr.
Shimerda had killed himself, Jake and the coroner thought something
ought to be done to Krajiek because he behaved like a guilty man. He
was badly frightened, certainly, and perhaps he even felt some
stirrings of remorse for his indifference to the old mans
misery and loneliness.
At supper the men ate like vikings, and the chocolate
cake, which I had hoped would linger on until to-morrow in a mutilated condition, disappeared on the second round. They talked excitedly
about where they should bury Mr. Shimerda; I gathered
that the neighbors were all disturbed and shocked about something. It
developed that Mrs. Shimerda and Ambrosch wanted the old
man buried on the southwest corner of their own land; indeed, under
the very stake that marked the corner. Grandfather had explained to
Ambrosch that some day, when the country was put under fence and the
roads were confined to section lines, two roads would cross exactly on
that corner. But Ambrosch only said, It makes no
matter.
Grandfather asked Jelinek whether in the old country
there was some superstition to the effect that a suicide must be
buried at the cross-roads.
Jelinek said he did nt know; he seemed to
remember hearing there had once been such a custom in Bohemia.
Mrs. Shimerda is made up her mind, he
added. I try to persuade her, and say it looks bad for her to
all the neighbors; but she say so it must be. There I will bury
him, if I dig the grave myself, she say. I have to promise her
I help Ambrosch make the grave to-morrow.
Grandfather smoothed his beard and looked judicial.
I don t know whose wish should decide the matter, if not
hers. But if she thinks she will live to see the people of this
country ride over that old mans head, she is
mistaken.
XVI
Mr.
Shimerda lay dead in the barn four days, and on the fifth they
buried him. All day Friday Jelinek was off with Ambrosch digging the
grave, chopping out the frozen earth with old axes. On Saturday we
breakfasted before daylight and got into the wagon with the coffin.
Jake and Jelinek went ahead on horseback to cut the body loose from
the pool of blood in which it was frozen fast to the ground.
When grandmother and I went into the Shimerdas
house, we found the women-folk alone; Ambrosch and Marek were at the
barn. Mrs. Shimerda sat crouching by the stove,
Ántonia was washing dishes. When she saw me she ran out of her
dark corner and threw her arms around me. Oh, Jimmy, she
sobbed, what you tink for my lovely papa! It seemed to
me that I could feel her heart breaking as she clung to me.
Mrs. Shimerda, sitting on the stump by
the stove, kept looking over her shoulder toward the door while the
neighbors were arriving. They came on horseback, all except the
postmaster, who brought his family in a wagon over the only broken
wagon-trail. The Widow Steavens rode up from her farm eight miles down
the Black Hawk road. The cold drove the women into the cave-house, and
it was soon crowded. A fine, sleety snow was beginning to fall, and
every one was afraid of another storm and anxious to have the burial
over with.
Grandfather and Jelinek came to tell
Mrs. Shimerda that it was time to start. After bundling
her mother up in clothes the neighbors had brought, Ántonia put
on an old cape from our house and the rabbit-skin hat her father had
made for her. Four men carried Mr. Shimerdas box
up the hill; Krajiek slunk along behind them. The coffin was too wide
for the door, so it was put down on the slope outside. I slipped out
from the cave and looked at Mr. Shimerda. He was lying on
his side, with his knees drawn up. His body was draped in a black
shawl, and his head was bandaged in white muslin, like a
mummy s; one of his long, shapely hands lay out on the black
cloth; that was all one could see of him.
Mrs. Shimerda came out and placed an open
prayer-book against the body, making the sign of the cross on the
bandaged head with her fingers. Ambrosch knelt down and made the same
gesture, and after him Ántonia and Marek. Yulka hung back. Her
mother pushed her forward, and kept saying something to her over and
over. Yulka knelt down, shut her eyes, and put out her hand a little
way, but she drew it back and began to cry wildly. She was afraid to
touch the bandage. Mrs. Shimerda caught her by the
shoulders and pushed her toward the coffin, but grandmother
interfered.
No, Mrs. Shimerda, she
said firmly, I won t stand by and see that child
frightened into spasms. She is too little to understand what you want
of her. Let her alone.
At a look from grandfather, Fuchs and Jelinek placed
the lid on the box, and began to nail it down over Mr.
Shimerda. I was afraid to look at Ántonia. She put her arms
round Yulka and held the little girl close to her.
The coffin was put into the wagon. We drove slowly
away, against the fine, icy snow which cut our faces like a
sand-blast. When we reached the grave, it looked a very little spot in
that snow-covered waste. The men
took the coffin to the edge of the hole and lowered it with ropes. We
stood about watching them, and the powdery snow lay without melting on
the caps and shoulders of the men and the shawls of the women. Jelinek
spoke in a persuasive tone to Mrs. Shimerda, and then
turned to grandfather.
She says, Mr. Burden, she is very
glad if you can make some prayer for him here in English, for the
neighbors to understand.
Grandmother looked anxiously at grandfather. He took
off his hat, and the other men did likewise. I thought his prayer
remarkable. I still remember it. He began, Oh, great and just
God, no man among us knows what the sleeper knows, nor is it for us to
judge what lies between him and Thee. He prayed that if any man
there had been remiss toward the stranger come to a far country, God
would forgive him and soften his heart. He recalled the promises to
the widow and the fatherless, and asked God to smooth the way before
this widow and her children, and to incline the hearts of men
to deal justly with her. In closing, he said we were leaving
Mr. Shimerda at Thy judgment seat, which is also
Thy mercy seat.
All the time he was praying, grandmother watched him
through the black fingers of her glove, and when he said
Amen, I thought she looked satisfied with him. She
turned to Otto and whispered, Can t you start a hymn,
Fuchs? It would seem less heathenish.
Fuchs glanced about to see if there was general
approval of her suggestion, then began, Jesus, Lover of my
Soul, and all the men and women took it up after him. Whenever
I have heard the hymn since, it has made me remember that white waste
and the little group of people; and the bluish air, full of fine,
eddying snow, like long veils flying:
While the nearer waters roll,
While the tempest still is high.
Years afterward, when the open-grazing days were
over, and the red grass had been ploughed under and under until it had
almost disappeared from the prairie; when all the fields were under
fence, and the roads no longer ran about like wild things, but
followed the surveyed section-lines, Mr. Shimerdas
grave was still there, with a sagging wire fence around it, and an
unpainted wooden cross.
As grandfather had predicted, Mrs. Shimerda never saw the
roads going over his head. The road from the north curved a little to
the east just there, and the road from the west swung out a little to
the south; so that the grave, with its tall red grass that was never
mowed, was like a little island; and at twilight, under a new moon or
the clear evening star, the dusty roads used to look like soft gray
rivers flowing past it. I never came upon the place without emotion,
and in all that country it was the spot most dear to me. I loved the
dim superstition, the propitiatory intent, that had put the grave
there; and still more I loved the spirit that could not carry out the
sentencethe error from the surveyed lines, the clemency of
the soft earth roads along which the home-coming wagons rattled after
sunset. Never a tired driver passed the wooden cross, I am sure,
without wishing well to the sleeper.
XVII
When spring came,
after that hard winter, one could not get enough of the nimble air.
Every morning I wakened with a fresh consciousness that winter was
over. There were none of the signs of spring for which I used to watch
in Virginia, no budding woods or blooming gardens. There was onlyspring itself; the throb of it, the light restlessness, the
vital essence of it everywhere; in the sky, in the swift clouds, in
the pale sunshine, and in the warm, high windrising suddenly,
sinking suddenly, impulsive and playful like a big puppy that pawed
you and then lay down to be petted. If I had been tossed down
blindfold on that red prairie, I should have known that it was
spring.
Everywhere now there was the smell of burning grass.
Our neighbors burned off their pasture before the new grass made a
start, so that the fresh growth would not be mixed with the dead stand
of last year. Those light, swift fires, running about the country,
seemed a part of the same kindling that was in the air.
The Shimerdas were in their new log house by then.
The neighbors had helped them to build it in March. It stood directly
in front of their old cave, which they used as a cellar. The family
were now fairly equipped to begin their struggle with the soil. They
had four comfortable rooms to live in, a new windmill,bought
on credit,a chicken-house and poultry. Mrs.
Shimerda had paid grandfather ten dollars for a milk cow, and was to
give him fifteen more as soon as they harvested their first crop.
When I rode up to the Shimerdas one bright
windy afternoon in April, Yulka ran out to meet me. It was to her,
now, that I gave reading lessons; Ántonia was busy with other
things. I tied my pony and went into the kitchen where
Mrs. Shimerda was baking bread, chewing poppy seeds as
she worked. By this time she could speak enough English to ask me a
great many questions about what our men were doing in the fields. She
seemed to think that my elders withheld helpful information, and that
from me she might get valuable secrets. On this occasion she asked me
very craftily when grandfather expected to begin planting corn. I told
her,
adding that he thought we should have a dry spring and that the corn
would not be held back by too much rain, as it had been last year.
She gave me a shrewd glance. He not
Jesus, she blustered; he not know about the wet and the
dry.
I did not answer her; what was the use? As I sat
waiting for the hour when Ambrosch and Ántonia would return
from the fields, I watched Mrs. Shimerda at her work. She
took from the oven a coffee-cake which she wanted to keep warm for
supper, and wrapped it in a quilt stuffed with feathers. I have seen
her put even a roast goose in this quilt to keep it hot. When the
neighbors were there building the new house they saw her do this, and
the story got abroad that the Shimerdas kept their food in their
feather beds.
When the sun was dropping low, Ántonia came up
the big south draw with her team. How much older she had grown in
eight months! She had come to us a child, and now she was a tall,
strong young girl, although her fifteenth birthday had just slipped
by. I ran out and met her as she brought her horses up to the windmill
to water them. She
wore the boots her father had so thoughtfully taken off before he shot
himself, and his old fur cap. Her outgrown cotton dress switched about
her calves, over the boot-tops. She kept her sleeves rolled up all
day, and her arms and throat were burned as brown as a sailors.
Her neck came up strongly out of her shoulders, like the bole of a
tree out of the turf. One sees that draft-horse neck among the peasant
women in all old countries.
She greeted me gayly, and began at once to tell me
how much ploughing she had done that day. Ambrosch, she said, was on
the north quarter, breaking sod with the oxen.
Jim, you ask Jake how much he ploughed to-day.
I don t want that Jake get more done in one day than me. I want
we have very much corn this fall.
While the horses drew in the water, and nosed each
other, and then drank again, Ántonia sat down on the windmill
step and rested her head on her hand. You see the big prairie
fire from your place last night? I hope your grandpa ain t lose
no stacks?
No, we did n t. I came to ask you
something, Tony. Grandmother wants to know if you can t go to
the term of school that begins
next week over at the sod schoolhouse. She says theres a good
teacher, and you d learn a lot.
Ántonia stood up, lifting and dropping her
shoulders as if they were stiff. I ain t got time to
learn. I can work like mans now. My mother can t say no more how
Ambrosch do all and nobody to help him. I can work as much as him.
School is all right for little boys. I help make this land one good
farm.
She clucked to her team and started for the barn. I
walked beside her, feeling vexed. Was she going to grow up boastful
like her mother, I wondered? Before we reached the stable, I felt
something tense in her silence, and glancing up I saw that she was
crying. She turned her face from me and looked off at the red streak
of dying light, over the dark prairie.
I climbed up into the loft and threw down the hay for
her, while she unharnessed her team. We walked slowly back toward the
house. Ambrosch had come in from the north quarter, and was watering
his oxen at the tank.
Ántonia took my hand. Sometime you will
tell me all those nice things you learn at the
school, won t you, Jimmy? she asked with a sudden rush of
feeling in her voice. My father, he went much to school. He
know a great deal; how to make the fine cloth like what you not got
here. He play horn and violin, and he read so many books that the
priests in Bohemie come to talk to him. You won t forget my
father, Jim?
No, I said, I will never forget
him.
Mrs. Shimerda asked me to stay for
supper. After Ambrosch and Ántonia had washed the field dust
from their hands and faces at the wash-basin by the kitchen door, we
sat down at the oilcloth-covered table. Mrs. Shimerda
ladled meal mush out of an iron pot and poured milk on it. After the
mush we had fresh bread and sorghum molasses, and coffee with the cake
that had been kept warm in the feathers. Ántonia and Ambrosch
were talking in Bohemian; disputing about which of them had done more
ploughing that day. Mrs. Shimerda egged them on,
chuckling while she gobbled her food.
Presently Ambrosch said sullenly in English:
You take them ox to-morrow and try the sod plough. Then you not
be so smart.
His sister laughed. Don t be mad. I know
its awful hard work for break sod. I milk the cow for you
to-morrow, if you want.
Mrs. Shimerda turned quickly to me.
That cow not give so much milk like what your grandpa say. If
he make talk about fifteen dollars, I send him back the cow.
He does nt talk about the fifteen
dollars, I exclaimed indignantly. He does nt find
fault with people.
He say I break his saw when we build, and I
never, grumbled Ambrosch.
I knew he had broken the saw, and then hid it and
lied about it. I began to wish I had not stayed for supper. Everything
was disagreeable to me. Ántonia ate so noisily now, like a man,
and she yawned often at the table and kept stretching her arms over
her head, as if they ached. Grandmother had said, Heavy field
work ll spoil that girl. She ll lose all her nice ways and
get rough ones. She had lost them already.
After supper I rode home through the sad, soft spring
twilight. Since winter I had seen very little of Ántonia. She
was out in the fields from sun-up until sun-down. If I rode over to
see her where she was ploughing, she stopped at the end of a row to
chat for a
moment, then gripped her plough-handles, clucked to her team, and
waded on down the furrow, making me feel that she was now grown up and
had no time for me. On Sundays she helped her mother make garden or
sewed all day. Grandfather was pleased with Ántonia. When we
complained of her, he only smiled and said, She will help some
fellow get ahead in the world.
Nowadays Tony could talk of nothing but the prices of
things, or how much she could lift and endure. She was too proud of
her strength. I knew, too, that Ambrosch put upon her some chores a
girl ought not to do, and that the farmhands around the country joked
in a nasty way about it. Whenever I saw her come up the furrow,
shouting to her beasts, sunburned, sweaty, her dress open at the neck,
and her throat and chest dust-plastered, I used to think of the tone
in which poor Mr. Shimerda, who could say so little, yet
managed to say so much when he exclaimed, My
Án-tonia!
XVIII
After I began to
go to the country school, I saw less of the Bohemians. We were sixteen
pupils at the sod schoolhouse, and we all came on horseback and
brought our dinner. My schoolmates were none of them very interesting,
but I somehow felt that by making comrades of them I was getting even
with Ántonia for her indifference. Since the fathers
death, Ambrosch was more than ever the head of the house and he seemed
to direct the feelings as well as the fortunes of his women-folk.
Ántonia often quoted his opinions to me, and she let me see
that she admired him, while she thought of me only as a little boy.
Before the spring was over, there was a distinct coldness between us
and the Shimerdas. It came about in this way.
One Sunday I rode over there with Jake to get a
horse-collar which Ambrosch had borrowed from him and had not
returned. It was a beautiful blue morning. The buffalo-peas were
blooming in pink and purple masses along the roadside, and the larks,
perched on
last years dried sunflower stalks, were singing straight at the
sun, their heads thrown back and their yellow breasts a-quiver. The
wind blew about us in warm, sweet gusts. We rode slowly, with a
pleasant sense of Sunday indolence.
We found the Shimerdas working just as if it were a
week-day. Marek was cleaning out the stable, and Ántonia and
her mother were making garden, off across the pond in the draw-head.
Ambrosch was up on the windmill tower, oiling the wheel. He came down,
not very cordially. When Jake asked for the collar, he grunted and
scratched his head. The collar belonged to grandfather, of course, and
Jake, feeling responsible for it, flared up.
Now, don t you say you have nt
got it, Ambrosch, because I know you have, and if you ain t
a-going to look for it, I will.
Ambrosch shrugged his shoulders and sauntered down the
hill toward the stable. I could see that it was one of his mean days.
Presently he returned, carrying a collar that had been badly usedtrampled in the dirt and gnawed by rats until the hair was
sticking out of it.
This what you want? he asked
surlily.
Jake jumped off his horse. I saw a wave of red come
up under the rough stubble on his face. That ain t the
piece of harness I loaned you, Ambrosch; or if it is, you ve
used it shameful. I ain t a-going to carry such a looking thing
back to Mr. Burden.
Ambrosch dropped the collar on the ground. All
right, he said coolly, took up his oil-can, and began to climb
the mill. Jake caught him by the belt of his trousers and yanked him
back. Ambroschs feet had scarcely touched the ground when he
lunged out with a vicious kick at Jakes stomach. Fortunately
Jake was in such a position that he could dodge it. This was not the
sort of thing country boys did when they played at fisticuffs, and
Jake was furious. He landed Ambrosch a blow on the headit
sounded like the crack of an axe on a cow-pumpkin. Ambrosch dropped
over, stunned.
We heard squeals, and looking up saw Ántonia
and her mother coming on the run. They did not take the path around
the pond, but plunged through the muddy water, without even lifting
their skirts. They came on, screaming and clawing the air. By this
time Ambrosch had come to his senses and was
sputtering with nose-bleed. Jake sprang into his saddle.
Lets get out of this, Jim, he called.
Mrs. Shimerda threw her hands over her
head and clutched as if she were going to pull down lightning.
Law, law! she shrieked after us. Law for knock my
Ambrosch down!
I never like you no more, Jake and Jim
Burden, Ántonia panted. No friends any
more!
Jake stopped and turned his horse for a second.
Well, you re a damned ungrateful lot, the whole pack of
you, he shouted back. I guess the Burdens can get along
without you. You ve been a sight of trouble to them,
anyhow!
We rode away, feeling so outraged that the fine
morning was spoiled for us. I had nt a word to say, and poor
Jake was white as paper and trembling all over. It made him sick to
get so angry. They ain t the same, Jimmy, he kept
saying in a hurt tone. These foreigners ain t the same.
You can t trust em to be fair. Its dirty to kick a
feller. You heard how the women turned on youand after all we
went through on account of em last
winter! They ain t to be trusted. I don t want to see you
get too thick with any of em.
I ll never be friends with them again,
Jake, I declared hotly. I believe they are all like
Krajiek and Ambrosch underneath.
Grandfather heard our story with a twinkle in his
eye. He advised Jake to ride to town to-morrow, go to a justice of the
peace, tell him he had knocked young Shimerda down, and pay his fine.
Then if Mrs. Shimerda was inclined to make troubleher son was still under ageshe would be forestalled.
Jake said he might as well take the wagon and haul to market the pig
he had been fattening. On Monday, about an hour after Jake had
started, we saw Mrs. Shimerda and her Ambrosch proudly
driving by, looking neither to the right nor left. As they rattled out
of sight down the Black Hawk road, grandfather chuckled, saying he had
rather expected she would follow the matter up.
Jake paid his fine with a ten-dollar bill grandfather
had given him for that purpose. But when the Shimerdas found that Jake
sold his pig in town that day, Ambrosch worked it out in his shrewd
head that Jake had to sell his pig to pay his fine. This theory
afforded the Shimerdas great satisfaction, apparently. For weeks
afterward, whenever Jake and I met Ántonia on her way to the
post-office, or going along the road with her work-team, she would
clap her hands and call to us in a spiteful, crowing voice:
Jake-y, Jake-y, sell the pig and pay the
slap!
Otto pretended not to be surprised at
Ántonias behavior. He only lifted his brows and said,
You can t tell me anything new about a Czech; I m
an Austrian.
Grandfather was never a party to what Jake called our
feud with the Shimerdas. Ambrosch and Ántonia always greeted
him respectfully, and he asked them about their affairs and gave them
advice as usual. He thought the future looked hopeful for them.
Ambrosch was a far-seeing fellow; he soon realized that his oxen were
too heavy for any work except breaking sod, and he succeeded in
selling them to a newly arrived German. With the money he bought
another team of horses, which grandfather selected for him. Marek was
strong, and Ambrosch worked him hard; but he could never teach him to
cultivate corn, I remember. The one idea that had ever got
through poor Mareks thick head was that all exertion was
meritorious. He always bore down on the handles of the cultivator and
drove the blades so deep into the earth that the horses were soon
exhausted.
In June Ambrosch went to work at Mr.
Bushys for a week, and took Marek with him at full wages.
Mrs. Shimerda then drove the second cultivator; she and
Ántonia worked in the fields all day and did the chores at
night. While the two women were running the place alone, one of the
new horses got colic and gave them a terrible fright.
Ántonia had gone down to the barn one night to
see that all was well before she went to bed, and she noticed that one
of the roans was swollen about the middle and stood with its head
hanging. She mounted another horse, without waiting to saddle him, and
hammered on our door just as we were going to bed. Grandfather
answered her knock. He did not send one of his men, but rode back with
her himself, taking a syringe and an old piece of carpet he kept for
hot applications when our horses were sick. He found Mrs.
Shimerda sitting by the horse with her lantern, groaning and wringing
her hands. It took but a few
moments to release the gases pent up in the poor beast, and the two
women heard the rush of wind and saw the roan visibly diminish in
girth.
If I lose that horse, Mr.
Burden, Ántonia exclaimed, I never stay here till
Ambrosch come home! I go drown myself in the pond before
morning.
When Ambrosch came back from Mr.
Bushys, we learned that he had given Mareks wages to the
priest at Black Hawk, for masses for their fathers soul.
Grandmother thought Ántonia needed shoes more than
Mr. Shimerda needed prayers, but grandfather said
tolerantly, If he can spare six dollars, pinched as he is, it
shows he believes what he professes.
It was grandfather who brought about a
reconciliation with the Shimerdas. One morning he told us that the
small grain was coming on so well, he thought he would begin to cut
his wheat on the first of July. He would need more men, and if it were
agreeable to every one he would engage Ambrosch for the reaping and
thrashing, as the Shimerdas had no small grain of their own.
I think, Emmaline, he concluded,
I will
ask Ántonia to come over and help you in the kitchen. She will
be glad to earn something, and it will be a good time to end
misunderstandings. I may as well ride over this morning and make
arrangements. Do you want to go with me, Jim? His tone told me
that he had already decided for me.
After breakfast we set off together. When
Mrs. Shimerda saw us coming, she ran from her door down
into the draw behind the stable, as if she did not want to meet us.
Grandfather smiled to himself while he tied his horse, and we followed
her.
Behind the barn we came upon a funny sight. The cow
had evidently been grazing somewhere in the draw. Mrs.
Shimerda had run to the animal, pulled up the lariat pin, and, when we
came upon her, she was trying to hide the cow in an old cave in the
bank. As the hole was narrow and dark, the cow held back, and the old
woman was slapping and pushing at her hind quarters, trying to spank
her into the draw-side.
Grandfather ignored her singular occupation and
greeted her politely. Good-morning, Mrs. Shimerda.
Can you tell me where I will find Ambrosch? Which field?
He with the sod corn. She pointed
toward the north, still standing in front of the cow as if she hoped
to conceal it.
His sod corn will be good for fodder this
winter, said grandfather encouragingly. And where is
Ántonia?
She go with. Mrs. Shimerda
kept wiggling her bare feet about nervously in the dust.
Very well. I will ride up there. I want them
to come over and help me cut my oats and wheat next month. I will pay
them wages. Good-morning. By the way, Mrs.
Shimerda, he said as he turned up the path, I think we
may as well call it square about the cow.
She started and clutched the rope tighter. Seeing
that she did not understand, grandfather turned back. You need
not pay me anything more; no more money. The cow is yours.
Pay no more, keep cow? she asked in a
bewildered tone, her narrow eyes snapping at us in the sunlight.
Exactly. Pay no more, keep cow. He
nodded.
Mrs. Shimerda dropped the rope, ran
after us, and crouching down beside grandfather,
she took his hand and kissed it. I doubt if he had ever been so much
embarrassed before. I was a little startled, too. Somehow, that seemed
to bring the Old World very close.
We rode away laughing, and grandfather said: I
expect she thought we had come to take the cow away for certain, Jim.
I wonder if she would nt have scratched a little if we d
laid hold of that lariat rope!
Our neighbors seemed glad to make peace with us. The
next Sunday Mrs. Shimerda came over and brought Jake a
pair of socks she had knitted. She presented them with an air of great
magnanimity, saying, Now you not come any more for knock my
Ambrosch down?
Jake laughed sheepishly. I don t want to
have no trouble with Ambrosch. If he ll let me alone, I ll
let him alone.
If he slap you, we ain t got no pig for
pay the fine, she said insinuatingly.
Jake was not at all disconcerted. Have the
last word, mam, he said cheerfully. Its a
ladys privilege.
XIX
July came on with
that breathless, brilliant heat which makes the plains of Kansas and
Nebraska the best corn country in the world. It seemed as if we could
hear the corn growing in the night; under the stars one caught a faint
crackling in the dewy, heavy-odored cornfields where the feathered
stalks stood so juicy and green. If all the great plain from the
Missouri to the Rocky Mountains had been under glass, and the heat
regulated by a thermometer, it could not have been better for the
yellow tassels that were ripening and fertilizing
each other day by day. The cornfields were far apart in those times, with miles
of wild grazing land between. It took a clear, meditative eye like my
grandfathers to foresee that they would enlarge and multiply
until they would be, not the Shimerdas cornfields, or
Mr. Bushys, but the worlds cornfields; that
their yield would be one of the great economic facts, like the wheat
crop of Russia, which underlie all the activities of men, in peace or
war.
The burning sun of those few weeks, with occasional
rains at night, secured the corn. After the milky ears were once
formed, we had little to fear from dry weather. The men were working
so hard in the wheatfields that they did not notice the heat,though I was kept busy carrying water for them,and
grandmother and Ántonia had so much to do in the kitchen that
they could not have told whether one day was hotter than another. Each
morning, while the dew was still on the grass, Ántonia went
with me up to the garden to get early vegetables for dinner.
Grandmother made her wear a sunbonnet, but as soon as we reached the
garden she threw it on the grass and let her hair fly in the breeze. I
remember how, as we bent over the pea-vines, beads of perspiration
used to gather on her upper lip like a little mustache.
Oh, better I like to work out of doors than in
a house! she used to sing joyfully. I not care that your
grandmother say it makes me like a man. I like to be like a
man. She would toss her head and ask me to feel the muscles
swell in her brown arm.
We were glad to have her in the house. She was so gay
and responsive that one did not
mind her heavy, running step, or her clattery way with pans.
Grandmother was in high spirits during the weeks that Ántonia
worked for us.
All the nights were close and hot during that harvest
season. The harvesters slept in the hayloft because it was cooler
there than in the house. I used to lie in my bed by the open window,
watching the heat lightning play softly along the horizon, or looking
up at the gaunt frame of the windmill against the blue night sky. One
night there was a beautiful electric storm, though not enough rain
fell to damage the cut grain. The men went down to the barn
immediately after supper, and when the dishes were washed
Ántonia and I climbed up on the slanting roof of the
chicken-house to watch the clouds. The thunder was loud and metallic,
like the rattle of sheet iron, and the lightning broke in great
zigzags across the heavens, making everything stand out and come close
to us for a moment. Half the sky was checkered with black
thunderheads, but all the west was luminous and clear: in the
lightning-flashes it looked like deep blue water, with the sheen of
moonlight on it; and the mottled part of the sky was like marble
pavement, like the quay of some splendid sea-coast city, doomed to
destruction. Great warm splashes of rain fell on our upturned faces.
One black cloud, no bigger than a little boat, drifted out into the
clear space unattended, and kept moving westward. All about us we
could hear the felty beat of the raindrops on the soft dust of the
farmyard. Grandmother came to the door and said it was late, and we
would get wet out there.
In a minute we come, Ántonia
called back to her. I like your grandmother, and all things
here, she sighed. I wish my papa live to see this
summer. I wish no winter ever come again.
It will be summer a long while yet, I
reassured her. Why are nt you always nice like this,
Tony?
How nice?
Why, just like this; like yourself. Why do you
all the time try to be like Ambrosch?
She put her arms under her head and lay back, looking
up at the sky. If I live here, like you, that is different.
Things will be easy for you. But they will be hard for us.
Book IIThe Hired Girls
I
I had been living
with my grandfather for nearly three years when he decided to move to
Black Hawk. He and grandmother were getting old for the heavy work of
a farm, and as I was now thirteen they thought I ought to be going to
school. Accordingly our homestead was rented to that good
woman, the Widow Steavens, and her bachelor brother, and we
bought Preacher Whites house, at the north end of Black Hawk.
This was the first town house one passed driving in from the farm, a
landmark which told country people their long ride was over.
We were to move to Black Hawk in March, and as soon
as grandfather had fixed the date he let Jake and Otto know of his
intention. Otto said he would not be likely to find another place that
suited him so well; that he was tired of farming and thought he would
go back to what he called the wild
West. Jake Marpole, lured by Ottos stories of adventure,
decided to go with him. We did our best to dissuade Jake. He was so
handicapped by illiteracy and by his trusting disposition that he
would be an easy prey to sharpers. Grandmother begged him to stay
among kindly, Christian people, where he was known; but there was no
reasoning with him. He wanted to be a prospector. He thought a silver
mine was waiting for him in Colorado.
Jake and Otto served us to the last. They moved us
into town, put down the carpets in our new house, made shelves and
cupboards for grandmothers kitchen, and seemed loath to leave
us. But at last they went, without warning. Those two fellows had been
faithful to us through sun and storm, had given us things that cannot
be bought in any market in the world. With me they had been like older
brothers; had restrained their speech and manners out of care for me,
and given me so much good comradeship. Now they got on the west-bound
train one morning, in their Sunday clothes, with their oilcloth
valisesand I never saw them again. Months afterward we got a
card from Otto, saying that Jake had been down with mountain fever,
but now they were both working in the Yankee Girl mine, and were doing
well. I wrote to them at that address, but my letter was returned to
me, unclaimed. After that we never heard from them.
Black Hawk, the new world in which we had come to
live, was a clean, well-planted little prairie town, with white fences
and good green yards about the dwellings, wide, dusty streets, and
shapely little trees growing along the wooden sidewalks. In the center
of the town there were two rows of new brick store
buildings, a brick schoolhouse, the courthouse, and four white
churches. Our own house looked down over the town, and from our
upstairs windows we could see the winding line of the river bluffs,
two miles south of us. That river was to be my compensation for the
lost freedom of the farming country.
We came to Black Hawk in March, and by the end of
April we felt like town people. Grandfather was a deacon in the new
Baptist Church, grandmother was busy with church suppers and
missionary societies, and I was quite another boy, or thought I was.
Suddenly put down among boys of my own age, I found I had a great deal
to learn. Before
the spring term of school was over I could fight, play
keeps, tease the little girls, and use forbidden words
as well as any boy in my class. I was restrained from utter savagery
only by the fact that Mrs. Harling, our nearest neighbor,
kept an eye on me, and if my behavior went beyond certain bounds I was
not permitted to come into her yard or to play with her jolly
children.
We saw more of our country neighbors now than when we
lived on the farm. Our house was a convenient stopping-place for them.
We had a big barn where the farmers could put up their teams, and
their women-folk more often accompanied them, now that they could stay
with us for dinner, and rest and set their bonnets right before they
went shopping. The more our house was like a country hotel, the better
I liked it. I was glad, when I came home from school at noon, to see a
farm wagon standing in the back yard, and I was always ready to run
downtown to get beefsteak or bakers bread for unexpected
company. All through that first spring and summer I kept hoping that
Ambrosch would bring Ántonia and Yulka to see our new house. I
wanted to show them our red plush
furniture, and the trumpet-blowing cherubs the German paper-hanger had
put on our parlor ceiling.
When Ambrosch came to town, however, he came alone,
and though he put his horses in our barn, he would never stay for
dinner, or tell us anything about his mother and sisters. If we ran
out and questioned him as he was slipping through the yard, he would
merely work his shoulders about in his coat and say, They all
right, I guess.
Mrs. Steavens, who now lived on our
farm, grew as fond of Ántonia as we had been, and always
brought us news of her. All through the wheat season, she told us,
Ambrosch hired his sister out like a man, and she went from farm to
farm, binding sheaves or working with the thrashers. The farmers liked
her and were kind to her; said they would rather have her for a hand
than Ambrosch. When fall came she was to husk corn for the neighbors
until Christmas, as she had done the year before; but grandmother
saved her from this by getting her a place to work with our neighbors,
the Harlings.
II
Grandmother often
said that if she had to live in town, she thanked God she lived next
the Harlings. They had been farming people, like ourselves, and their
place was like a little farm, with a big barn and a garden, and an
orchard and grazing lots,even a windmill. The Harlings were
Norwegians, and Mrs. Harling had lived in Christiania
until she was ten years old. Her husband was born in Minnesota. He was
a grain merchant and cattle buyer, and was generally considered the
most enterprising business man in our county. He controlled a line of
grain elevators in the little towns along the railroad to the west of
us, and was away from home a great deal. In his absence his wife was
the head of the household.
Mrs. Harling was short and square and
sturdy-looking, like her house. Every inch of her was charged with an
energy that made itself felt the moment she entered a room. Her face
was rosy and solid, with bright, twinkling eyes and a stubborn little
chin. She
was quick to anger, quick to laughter, and jolly from the depths of
her soul. How well I remember her laugh; it had in it the same sudden
recognition that flashed into her eyes, was a burst of humor, short
and intelligent. Her rapid footsteps shook her own floors, and she
routed lassitude and indifference wherever she came. She could not be
negative or perfunctory about anything. Her enthusiasm, and her
violent likes and dislikes, asserted themselves in all the every-day
occupations of life. Wash-day was interesting, never dreary, at the
Harlings. Preserving-time was a prolonged festival, and
house-cleaning was like a revolution. When Mrs. Harling
made garden that spring, we could feel the stir of her undertaking
through the willow hedge that separated our place from hers.
Three of the Harling children were near me in age.
Charley, the only son,they had lost an older boy,was
sixteen; Julia, who was known as the musical one, was fourteen when I
was; and Sally, the tomboy with short hair, was a year younger. She
was nearly as strong as I, and uncannily clever at all boys
sports. Sally was a wild thing, with sunburned yellow hair, bobbed
about her ears,
and a brown skin, for she never wore a hat. She raced all over town on
one roller skate, often cheated at keeps, but was such a
quick shot one could nt catch her at it.
The grown-up daughter, Frances, was a very important
person in our world. She was her fathers chief clerk, and
virtually managed his Black Hawk office during his frequent absences.
Because of her unusual business ability, he was stern and exacting
with her. He paid her a good salary, but she had few holidays and
never got away from her responsibilities. Even on Sundays she went to
the office to open the mail and read the markets. With Charley, who
was not interested in business, but was already preparing for
Annapolis, Mr. Harling was very indulgent; bought him
guns and tools and electric batteries, and never asked what he did
with them.
Frances was dark, like her father, and quite as tall.
In winter she wore a sealskin coat and cap, and she and
Mr. Harling used to walk home together in the evening,
talking about grain-cars and cattle, like two men. Sometimes she came
over to see grandfather after supper, and her visits flattered him.
More than once they put their wits together to
rescue some unfortunate farmer from the clutches of Wick Cutter, the
Black Hawk money-lender. Grandfather said Frances Harling was as good
a judge of credits as any banker in the county. The two or three men
who had tried to take advantage of her in a deal acquired celebrity by
their defeat. She knew every farmer for miles about; how much land he
had under cultivation, how many cattle he was feeding, what his
liabilities were. Her interest in these people was more than a
business interest. She carried them all in her mind as if they were
characters in a book or a play.
When Frances drove out into the country on business,
she would go miles out of her way to call on some of the old people,
or to see the women who seldom got to town. She was quick at
understanding the grandmothers who spoke no English, and the most
reticent and distrustful of them would tell her their story without
realizing they were doing so. She went to country funerals and
weddings in all weathers. A farmers daughter who was to be
married could count on a wedding present from Frances Harling.
In August the Harlings Danish cook had
to leave them. Grandmother entreated them to try Ántonia. She
cornered Ambrosch the next time he came to town, and pointed out to
him that any connection with Christian Harling would strengthen his
credit and be of advantage to him. One Sunday Mrs.
Harling took the long ride out to the Shimerdas with Frances.
She said she wanted to see what the girl came from and
to have a clear understanding with her mother. I was in our yard when
they came driving home, just before sunset. They laughed and waved to
me as they passed, and I could see they were in great good humor.
After supper, when grandfather set off to church, grandmother and I
took my short cut through the willow hedge and went over to hear about
the visit to the Shimerdas.
We found Mrs. Harling with Charley and
Sally on the front porch, resting after her hard drive. Julia was in
the hammockshe was fond of reposeand Frances was at
the piano, playing without a light and talking to her mother through
the open window.
Mrs. Harling laughed when she saw us
coming. I expect you left your dishes on the table to-night,
Mrs. Burden, she called.
Frances shut the piano and came out to join us.
They had liked Ántonia from their first
glimpse of her; felt they knew exactly what kind of girl she was. As
for Mrs. Shimerda, they found her very amusing.
Mrs. Harling chuckled whenever she spoke of her. I
expect I am more at home with that sort of bird than you are,
Mrs. Burden. They re a pair, Ambrosch and that old
woman!
They had had a long argument with Ambrosch about
Ántonias allowance for clothes and pocket-money. It was
his plan that every cent of his sisters wages should be paid
over to him each month, and he would provide her with such clothing as
he thought necessary. When Mrs. Harling told him firmly
that she would keep fifty dollars a year for Ántonias
own use, he declared they wanted to take his sister to town and dress
her up and make a fool of her. Mrs. Harling gave us a
lively account of Ambroschs behavior throughout the interview;
how he kept jumping up and putting on his cap as if he were through
with the whole business, and how his mother tweaked his coat-tail and
prompted him in Bohemian. Mrs. Harling finally agreed
to pay three dollars a week for Ántonias servicesgood wages in those daysand to keep her in shoes.
There had been hot dispute about the shoes, Mrs. Shimerda
finally saying persuasively that she would send Mrs.
Harling three fat geese every year to make even.
Ambrosch was to bring his sister to town next Saturday.
She ll be awkward and rough at first,
like enough, grandmother said anxiously, but unless
shes been spoiled by the hard life shes led, she has it
in her to be a real helpful girl.
Mrs. Harling laughed her quick, decided
laugh. Oh, Im not worrying, Mrs. Burden! I
can bring something out of that girl. Shes barely seventeen,
not too old to learn new ways. Shes good-looking, too!
she added warmly.
Frances turned to grandmother. Oh, yes,
Mrs. Burden, you did nt tell us that! She was
working in the garden when we got there, barefoot and ragged. But she
has such fine brown legs and arms, and splendid color in her cheekslike those big dark red plums.
We were pleased at this praise. Grandmother spoke
feelingly. When she first came to this country, Frances, and
had that
genteel old man to watch over her, she was as pretty a girl as ever I
saw. But, dear me, what a life shes led, out in the fields with
those rough thrashers! Things would have been very different with poor
Ántonia if her father had lived.
The Harlings begged us to tell them about
Mr. Shimerdas death and the big snowstorm. By the
time we saw grandfather coming home from church we had told them
pretty much all we knew of the Shimerdas.
The girl will be happy here, and she ll
forget those things, said Mrs. Harling
confidently, as we rose to take our leave.
III
On Saturday
Ambrosch drove up to the back gate, and Ántonia jumped down
from the wagon and ran into our kitchen just as she used to do. She
was wearing shoes and stockings, and was breathless and excited. She
gave me a playful shake by the shoulders. You ain t
forget about me, Jim?
Grandmother kissed her. God bless you, child!
Now you ve come, you must try to do right and be a credit to
us.
Ántonia looked eagerly about the house and
admired everything. Maybe I be the kind of girl you like
better, now I come to town, she suggested hopefully.
How good it was to have Ántonia near us again;
to see her every day and almost every night! Her greatest fault,
Mrs. Harling found, was that she so often stopped her
work and fell to playing with the children. She would race about the
orchard with us, or take sides in our hay-fights in the barn, or be
the old bear that came down from the mountain and carried off Nina.
Tony learned English
so quickly that by the time school began she could speak as well as
any of us.
I was jealous of Tonys admiration for Charley
Harling. Because he was always first in his classes at school, and
could mend the water-pipes or the door-bell and take the clock to
pieces, she seemed to think him a sort of prince. Nothing that Charley
wanted was too much trouble for her. She loved to put up lunches for
him when he went hunting, to mend his ball-gloves and sew buttons on
his shooting-coat, baked the kind of nut-cake he liked, and fed his
setter dog when he was away on trips with his father. Ántonia
had made herself cloth working-slippers out of Mr.
Harlings old coats, and in these she went padding about after
Charley, fairly panting with eagerness to please him.
Next to Charley, I think she loved Nina best. Nina
was only six, and she was rather more complex than the other children.
She was fanciful, had all sorts of unspoken preferences, and was
easily offended. At the slightest disappointment or displeasure her
velvety brown eyes filled with tears, and she would lift her chin and
walk silently away. If we ran after her and tried to appease her, it
did no good. She walked on unmollified. I used to think that no eyes
in the world could grow so large or hold so many tears as
Ninas. Mrs. Harling and Ántonia invariably
took her part. We were never given a chance to explain. The charge was
simply: You have made Nina cry. Now, Jimmy can go home, and
Sally must get her arithmetic. I liked Nina, too; she was so
quaint and unexpected, and her eyes were lovely; but I often wanted to
shake her.
We had jolly evenings at the
Harlings
when the father was away. If he was at home, the children had to go to
bed early, or they came over to my house to play. Mr.
Harling not only demanded a quiet house, he demanded all his
wifes attention. He used to take her away to their room in the
west ell, and talk over his business with her all evening. Though we
did not realize it then, Mrs. Harling was our audience
when we played, and we always looked to her for suggestions. Nothing
flattered one like her quick laugh.
Mr. Harling had a desk in his bedroom,
and his own easy-chair by the window, in which no one else ever sat.
On the nights when he was at home, I could see his shadow on the blind,
and it seemed to me an arrogant shadow. Mrs. Harling paid
no heed to any one else if he was there. Before he went to bed she
always got him a lunch of smoked salmon or anchovies and beer. He kept
an alcohol lamp in his room, and a French coffee-pot, and his wife
made coffee for him at any hour of the night he happened to want
it.
Most Black Hawk fathers had no personal habits
outside their domestic ones; they paid the bills, pushed the baby
carriage after office hours, moved the sprinkler about over the lawn,
and took the family driving on Sunday. Mr. Harling,
therefore, seemed to me autocratic and imperial in his ways. He
walked, talked, put on his gloves, shook hands, like a man who felt
that he had power. He was not tall, but he carried his head so
haughtily that he looked a commanding figure, and there was something
daring and challenging in his eyes. I used to imagine that the
nobles of whom Ántonia was always talking
probably looked very much like Christian Harling, wore caped overcoats
like his, and just such a glittering diamond upon the little
finger.
Except when the father was at home, the Harling house
was never quiet. Mrs. Harling
and Nina and Ántonia made as much noise as a houseful of
children, and there was usually somebody at the piano. Julia was the
only one who was held down to regular hours of practicing, but they
all played. When Frances came home at noon, she played until dinner
was ready. When Sally got back from school, she sat down in her hat
and coat and drummed the plantation melodies that negro minstrel
troupes brought to town. Even Nina played the Swedish Wedding
March.
Mrs. Harling had studied the piano under
a good teacher, and somehow she managed to practice every day. I soon
learned that if I were sent over on an errand and found
Mrs. Harling at the piano, I must sit down and wait
quietly until she turned to me. I can see her at this moment; her
short, square person planted firmly on the stool, her little fat hands
moving quickly and neatly over the keys, her eyes fixed on the music
with intelligent concentration.
IV
I won t have none of your weevily wheat, and I won t have none of your barley,
But I ll take a measure of fine white flour, to make a cake for Charley.
We were singing
rhymes to tease Ántonia while she was beating up one of
Charleys favorite cakes in her big mixing-bowl. It was a crisp
autumn evening, just cold enough to make one glad to quit playing tag
in the yard, and retreat into the kitchen. We had begun to roll
popcorn balls with syrup when we heard a knock at the back door, and
Tony dropped her spoon and went to open it. A plump, fair-skinned girl
was standing in the doorway. She looked demure and pretty, and made a
graceful picture in her blue cashmere dress and little blue hat, with
a plaid shawl drawn neatly about her shoulders and a clumsy pocketbook
in her hand.
Hello, Tony. Don t you know me?
she asked in a smooth, low voice, looking in at us archly.
Ántonia gasped and stepped back. Why,
its Lena! Of course I did nt know you, so dressed
up!
Lena Lingard laughed, as if this pleased her. I had
not recognized her for a moment, either. I had never seen her before
with a hat on her heador with shoes and stockings on her
feet, for that matter. And here she was, brushed and smoothed and
dressed like a town girl, smiling at us with perfect composure.
Hello, Jim, she said carelessly as she
walked into the kitchen and looked about her. I ve come
to town to work, too, Tony.
Have you, now? Well, ain t that
funny! Ántonia stood ill at ease, and did nt seem
to know just what to do with her visitor.
The door was open into the dining-room, where
Mrs. Harling sat crocheting and Frances was reading.
Frances asked Lena to come in and join them.
You are Lena Lingard, are nt you?
I ve been to see your mother, but you were off herding cattle
that day. Mama, this is Chris Lingards oldest girl.
Mrs. Harling dropped her worsted and
examined the visitor with quick, keen eyes. Lena was not at all
disconcerted. She sat down in the chair Frances pointed out,
carefully arranging her pocketbook and gray cotton gloves on her lap.
We followed with our popcorn, but Ántonia hung backsaid she had to get her cake into the oven.
So you have come to town, said
Mrs. Harling, her eyes still fixed on Lena. Where
are you working?
For Mrs. Thomas, the dressmaker.
She is going to teach me to sew. She says I have quite a knack.
Im through with the farm. There ain t any end to the work
on a farm, and always so much trouble happens. Im going to be a
dressmaker.
Well, there have to be dressmakers. Its
a good trade. But I would nt run down the farm, if I were
you, said Mrs. Harling rather severely. How
is your mother?
Oh, mothers never very well; she has
too much to do. She d get away from the farm, too, if she could.
She was willing for me to come. After I learn to do sewing, I can make
money and help her.
See that you don t forget to,
said Mrs. Harling skeptically, as she took up her
crocheting again and sent the hook in and out with nimble fingers.
No, m, I won t, said Lena
blandly. She
took a few grains of the popcorn we pressed upon her, eating them
discreetly and taking care not to get her fingers sticky.
Frances drew her chair up nearer to the visitor.
I thought you were going to be married, Lena, she said
teasingly. Did nt I hear that Nick Svendsen was rushing
you pretty hard?
Lena looked up with her curiously innocent smile.
He did go with me quite a while. But his father made a fuss
about it and said he would nt give Nick any land if he married
me, so hes going to marry Annie Iverson. I would nt like
to be her; Nicks awful sullen, and he ll take it out on
her. He ain t spoke to his father since he promised.
Frances laughed. And how do you feel about
it?
I don t want to marry Nick, or any other
man, Lena murmured. I ve seen a good deal of
married life, and I don t care for it. I want to be so I can
help my mother and the children at home, and not have to ask lief of
anybody.
Thats right, said Frances.
And Mrs. Thomas thinks you can learn
dressmaking?
Yes, m. I ve always liked to sew,
but I
never had much to do with. Mrs. Thomas makes lovely
things for all the town ladies. Did you know Mrs.
Gardener is having a purple velvet made? The velvet came from Omaha.
My, but its lovely! Lena sighed softly and stroked her
cashmere folds. Tony knows I never did like out-of-door
work, she added.
Mrs. Harling glanced at her. I
expect you ll learn to sew all right, Lena, if you ll only
keep your head and not go gadding about to dances all the time and
neglect your work, the way some country girls do.
Yes, m. Tiny Soderball is coming to
town, too. Shes going to work at the Boys Home Hotel.
She ll see lots of strangers, Lena added wistfully.
Too many, like enough, said
Mrs. Harling. I don t think a hotel is a
good place for a girl; though I guess Mrs. Gardener keeps
an eye on her waitresses.
Lenas candid eyes, that always looked a little
sleepy under their long lashes, kept straying about the cheerful rooms
with naive admiration. Presently she drew on her cotton gloves.
I guess I must be leaving, she said irresolutely.
Frances told her to come again, whenever she was
lonesome or wanted advice about anything. Lena replied that she did
nt believe she would ever get lonesome in Black Hawk.
She lingered at the kitchen door and begged
Ántonia to come and see her often. I ve got a room
of my own at Mrs. Thomas., with a
carpet.
Tony shuffled uneasily in her cloth slippers.
I ll come sometime, but Mrs. Harling
don t like to have me run much, she said evasively.
You can do what you please when you go out,
can t you? Lena asked in a guarded whisper.
Ain t you crazy about town, Tony? I don t care what
anybody says, Im done with the farm! She glanced back
over her shoulder toward the dining-room, where Mrs.
Harling sat.
When Lena was gone, Frances asked Ántonia why
she had nt been a little more cordial to her.
I did nt know if your mother would like
her coming here, said Ántonia, looking troubled.
She was kind of talked about, out there.
Yes, I know. But mother won t hold it
against her if she behaves well here. You
need nt say anything about that to the children. I guess Jim
has heard all that gossip?
When I nodded, she pulled my hair and told me I knew
too much, anyhow. We were good friends, Frances and I.
I ran home to tell grandmother that Lena Lingard had
come to town. We were glad of it, for she had a hard life on the
farm.
Lena lived in the Norwegian settlement west of Squaw
Creek, and she used to herd her fathers cattle in the open
country between his place and the Shimerdas. Whenever we rode
over in that direction we saw her out among her cattle, bareheaded and
barefooted, scantily dressed in tattered clothing, always knitting as
she watched her herd. Before I knew Lena, I thought of her as
something wild, that always lived on the prairie, because I had never
seen her under a roof. Her yellow hair was burned to a ruddy thatch on
her head; but her legs and arms, curiously enough, in spite of
constant exposure to the sun, kept a miraculous whiteness which
somehow made her seem more undressed than other girls who went
scantily clad. The first time I stopped to talk to her, I was
astonished at her soft voice and easy, gentle ways. The girls out
there usually got rough and mannish after they went to herding. But
Lena asked Jake and me to get off our horses and stay awhile, and
behaved exactly as if she were in a house and were accustomed to
having visitors. She was not embarrassed by her ragged clothes, and
treated us as if we were old acquaintances. Even then I noticed the
unusual color of her eyesa shade of deep violetand
their soft, confiding expression.
Chris Lingard was not a very successful farmer, and
he had a large family. Lena was always knitting stockings for little
brothers and sisters, and even the Norwegian women, who disapproved of
her, admitted that she was a good daughter to her mother. As Tony
said, she had been talked about. She was accused of making Ole Benson
lose the little sense he hadand that at an age when she
should still have been in pinafores.
Ole lived in a leaky dugout somewhere at the edge of
the settlement. He was fat and lazy and discouraged, and bad luck had
become a habit with him. After he had had every other kind of
misfortune, his wife, Crazy Mary, tried to set a
neighbors barn on fire, and was sent to the asylum at Lincoln.
She was kept
there for a few months, then escaped and walked all the way home,
nearly two hundred miles, traveling by night and hiding in barns and
haystacks by day. When she got back to the Norwegian settlement, her
poor feet were as hard as hoofs. She promised to be good, and was
allowed to stay at homethough every one realized she was as
crazy as ever, and she still ran about barefooted through the snow,
telling her domestic troubles to her neighbors.
Not long after Mary came back from the asylum, I
heard a young Dane, who was helping us to thrash, tell Jake and Otto
that Chris Lingards oldest girl had put Ole Benson out of his
head, until he had no more sense than his crazy wife. When Ole was
cultivating his corn that summer, he used to get discouraged in the
field, tie up his team, and wander off to wherever Lena Lingard was
herding. There he would sit down on the draw-side and help her watch
her cattle. All the settlement was talking about it. The Norwegian
preachers wife went to Lena and told her she ought not to allow
this; she begged Lena to come to church on Sundays. Lena said she had
nt a dress in the world any less ragged than the one on her
back. Then the ministers wife went
through her old trunks and found some things she had worn before her
marriage.
The next Sunday Lena appeared at church, a little
late, with her hair done up neatly on her head, like a young woman,
wearing shoes and stockings, and the new dress, which she had made
over for herself very becomingly. The congregation stared at her.
Until that morning no oneunless it were Olehad
realized how pretty she was, or that she was growing up. The swelling
lines of her figure had been hidden under the shapeless rags she wore
in the fields. After the last hymn had been sung, and the congregation
was dismissed, Ole slipped out to the hitch-bar and lifted Lena on her
horse. That, in itself, was shocking; a married man was not expected
to do such things. But it was nothing to the scene that followed.
Crazy Mary darted out from the group of women at the church door, and
ran down the road after Lena, shouting horrible threats.
Look out, you Lena Lingard, look out!
I ll come over with a corn-knife one day and trim some of that
shape off you. Then you won t sail round so fine, making eyes at
the men!...
The Norwegian women did nt know where to look.
They were formal housewives, most of them, with a severe sense of
decorum. But Lena Lingard only laughed her lazy, good-natured laugh
and rode on, gazing back over her shoulder at Oles infuriated
wife.
The time came, however, when Lena did nt
laugh. More than once Crazy Mary chased her across the prairie and
round and round the Shimerdas cornfield. Lena never told her
father; perhaps she was ashamed; perhaps she was more afraid of his
anger than of the corn-knife. I was at the Shimerdas one
afternoon when Lena came bounding through the red grass as fast as her
white legs could carry her. She ran straight into the house and hid in
Ántonias feather-bed. Mary was not far behind; she came
right up to the door and made us feel how sharp her blade was, showing
us very graphically just what she meant to do to Lena.
Mrs. Shimerda, leaning out of the window, enjoyed the
situation keenly, and was sorry when Ántonia sent Mary away,
mollified by an apronful of bottle-tomatoes. Lena came out from
Tonys room behind the kitchen, very pink from the heat of the
feathers, but otherwise calm. She begged
Ántonia and me to go with her, and help get her cattle
together; they were scattered and might be gorging themselves in
somebodys cornfield.
Maybe you lose a steer and learn not to make
somethings with your eyes at married men, Mrs.
Shimerda told her hectoringly.
Lena only smiled her sleepy smile. I never
made anything to him with my eyes. I can t help it if he hangs
around, and I can t order him off. It ain t my
prairie.
V
After Lena came to
Black Hawk I often met her downtown, where she would be matching
sewing silk or buying findings for Mrs.
Thomas. If I happened to walk home with her, she told me all about the
dresses she was helping to make, or about what she saw and heard when
she was with Tiny Soderball at the hotel on Saturday nights.
The Boys Home was the best hotel on our branch
of the Burlington, and all the commercial travelers in that territory
tried to get into Black Hawk for Sunday. They used to assemble in the
parlor after supper on Saturday nights. Marshall Fields man,
Anson Kirkpatrick, played the piano and sang all the latest
sentimental songs. After Tiny had helped the cook wash the dishes, she
and Lena sat on the other side of the double doors between the parlor
and the dining-room, listening to the music and giggling at the jokes
and stories. Lena often said she hoped I would be a traveling man when
I grew up. They had a gay life of it; nothing to do but ride about on
trains all
day and go to theaters when they were in big cities. Behind the hotel
there was an old store building, where the salesmen opened their big
trunks and spread out their samples on the counters. The Black Hawk
merchants went to look at these things and order goods, and
Mrs. Thomas, though she was retail trade,
was permitted to see them and to get ideas. They were
all generous, these traveling men; they gave Tiny Soderball
handkerchiefs and gloves and ribbons and striped stockings, and so
many bottles of perfume and cakes of scented soap that she bestowed
some of them on Lena.
One afternoon in the week before Christmas I came
upon Lena and her funny, square-headed little brother Chris, standing
before the drug-store, gazing in at the wax dolls and blocks and
Noahs arks arranged in the frosty show window. The boy had come
to town with a neighbor to do his Christmas shopping, for he had money
of his own this year. He was only twelve, but that winter he had got
the job of sweeping out the Norwegian church and making the fire in it
every Sunday morning. A cold job it must have been, too!
We went into Duckfords dry-goods store, and
Chris unwrapped all his presents and showed them to mesomething for each of the six younger than himself, even a rubber pig
for the baby. Lena had given him one of Tiny Soderballs bottles
of perfume for his mother, and he thought he would get some
handkerchiefs to go with it. They were cheap, and he had nt
much money left. We found a tableful of handkerchiefs spread out for
view at Duckfords. Chris wanted those with initial letters in
the corner, because he had never seen any before. He studied them
seriously, while Lena looked over his shoulder, telling him she
thought the red letters would hold their color best. He seemed so
perplexed that I thought perhaps he had nt enough money, after
all. Presently he said gravely,
Sister, you know mothers name is
Berthe. I don t know if I ought to get B for Berthe, or M for
Mother.
Lena patted his bristly head. I d get
the B, Chrissy. It will please her for you to think about her name.
Nobody ever calls her by it now.
That satisfied him. His face cleared at once, and he
took three reds and three blues. When
the neighbor came in to say that it was time to start, Lena wound
Chriss comforter about his neck and turned up his jacket collarhe had no overcoatand we watched him climb into the
wagon and start on his long, cold drive. As we walked together up the
windy street, Lena wiped her eyes with the back of her woolen glove.
I get awful homesick for them, all the same, she
murmured, as if she were answering some remembered reproach.
VI
Winter comes down
savagely over a little town on the prairie. The wind that sweeps in
from the open country strips away all the leafy screens that hide one
yard from another in summer, and the houses seem to draw closer
together. The roofs, that looked so far away across the green
tree-tops, now stare you in the face, and they are so much uglier than
when their angles were softened by vines and shrubs.
In the morning, when I was fighting my way to school
against the wind, I could nt see anything but the road in front
of me; but in the late afternoon, when I was coming home, the town
looked bleak and desolate to me. The pale, cold light of the winter
sunset did not beautifyit was like the light of truth itself.
When the smoky clouds hung low in the west and the red sun went down
behind them, leaving a pink flush on the snowy roofs and the blue
drifts, then the wind sprang up afresh, with a kind of bitter song, as
if it said: This is reality, whether you like it or not. All
those frivolities of summer, the light and shadow, the living mask of green that trembled over everything, they were
lies, and this is what was underneath. This is the truth. It
was as if we were being punished for loving the loveliness of
summer.
If I loitered on the playground after school, or went
to the post-office for the mail and lingered to hear the gossip about
the cigar-stand, it would be growing dark by the time I came home. The
sun was gone; the frozen streets stretched long and blue before me;
the lights were shining pale in kitchen windows, and I could smell the
suppers cooking as I passed. Few people were abroad, and each one of
them was hurrying toward a fire. The glowing stoves in the houses were
like magnets. When one passed an old man, one could see nothing of his
face but a red nose sticking out between a frosted beard and a long
plush cap. The young men capered along with their hands in their
pockets, and sometimes tried a slide on the icy sidewalk. The
children, in their bright hoods and comforters, never walked, but
always ran from the moment they left their door, beating their mittens
against their sides. When I got as far as the Methodist Church, I was
about halfway home. I can remember how
glad I was when there happened to be a light in the church, and the
painted glass window shone out at us as we came along the frozen
street. In the winter bleakness a hunger for color came over people,
like the Laplanders craving for fats and sugar. Without knowing
why, we used to linger on the sidewalk outside the church when the
lamps were lighted early for choir practice or prayer-meeting,
shivering and talking until our feet were like lumps of ice. The crude
reds and greens and blues of that colored glass held us there.
On winter nights, the lights in the Harlings
windows drew me like the painted glass. Inside that warm, roomy house
there was color, too. After supper I used to catch up my cap, stick my
hands in my pockets, and dive through the willow hedge as if witches
were after me. Of course, if Mr. Harling was at home, if
his shadow stood out on the blind of the west room, I did not go in,
but turned and walked home by the long way, through the street,
wondering what book I should read as I sat down with the two old
people.
Such disappointments only gave greater zest to the
nights when we acted charades, or had a costume ball in the back
parlor, with
Sally always dressed like a boy. Frances taught us to dance that
winter, and she said, from the first lesson, that Ántonia would
make the best dancer among us. On Saturday nights, Mrs.
Harling used to play the old operas for us, Martha, Norma, Rigoletto,telling us the story while she played. Every Saturday night
was like a party. The parlor, the back parlor, and the dining-room
were warm and brightly lighted, with comfortable chairs and sofas, and
gay pictures on the walls. One always felt at ease there.
Ántonia brought her sewing and sat with usshe was
already beginning to make pretty clothes for herself. After the long
winter evenings on the prairie, with Ambroschs sullen silences
and her mothers complaints, the Harlings house seemed,
as she said, like Heaven to her. She was never too tired
to make taffy or chocolate cookies for us. If Sally whispered in her
ear, or Charley gave her three winks, Tony would rush into the kitchen
and build a fire in the range on which she had already cooked three
meals that day.
While we sat in the kitchen waiting for the cookies
to bake or the taffy to cool, Nina used to coax Ántonia to tell
her storiesabout the
calf that broke its leg, or how Yulka saved her little turkeys from
drowning in the freshet, or about old Christmases and weddings in
Bohemia. Nina interpreted the stories about the creche
fancifully, and in spite of our derision she cherished a belief that
Christ was born in Bohemia a short time before the Shimerdas left that
country. We all liked Tonys stories. Her voice had a peculiarly
engaging quality; it was deep, a little husky, and one always heard
the breath vibrating behind it. Everything she said seemed to come
right out of her heart.
One evening when we were picking out kernels for
walnut taffy, Tony told us a new story.
Mrs. Harling, did you ever hear
about what happened up in the Norwegian settlement last summer, when I
was thrashing there? We were at Iversons, and I was driving one
of the grain wagons.
Mrs. Harling came out and sat down among
us. Could you throw the wheat into the bin yourself,
Tony? She knew what heavy work it was.
Yes, mam, I did. I could shovel just as fast
as that fat Andern boy that drove the other
wagon. One day it was just awful hot. When we got back to the field
from dinner, we took things kind of easy. The men put in the horses
and got the machine going, and Ole Iverson was up on the deck, cutting
bands. I was sitting against a
straw stack,
trying to get some shade. My wagon was nt going out first, and
somehow I felt the heat awful that day. The sun was so hot like it was
going to burn the world up. After a while I see a man coming across
the stubble, and when he got close I see it was a tramp. His toes
stuck out of his shoes, and he had nt shaved for a long while,
and his eyes was awful red and wild, like he had some sickness. He
comes right up and begins to talk like he knows me already. He says:
The ponds in this country is done got so low a man could
nt drownd himself in one of em.
I told him nobody wanted to drownd themselves,
but if we did nt have rain soon we d have to pump water
for the cattle.
Oh, cattle, he says,
you ll all take care of your cattle! Ain t you got
no beer here? I told him he d have to go to the Bohemians
for beer; the Norwegians did nt have none when they thrashed.
My God! he says, so
its Norwegians now, is it? I thought this was
Americy.
Then he goes up to the machine and yells out
to Ole Iverson, Hello, partner, let me up there. I can cut
bands, and Im tired of trampin . I won t go no
farther.
I tried to make signs to Ole, cause I
thought that man was crazy and might get the machine stopped up. But
Ole, he was glad to get down out of the sun and chaffit gets
down your neck and sticks to you something awful when its hot
like that. So Ole jumped down and crawled under one of the wagons for
shade, and the tramp got on the machine. He cut bands all right for a
few minutes, and then, Mrs. Harling, he waved his hand to
me and jumped head-first right into the thrashing machine after the
wheat.
I begun to scream, and the men run to stop the
horses, but the belt had sucked him down, and by the time they got her
stopped he was all beat and cut to pieces. He was wedged in so tight
it was a hard job to get him out, and the machine ain t never
worked right since.
Was he clear dead, Tony? we cried.
Was he dead? Well, I guess so! There,
now, Ninas all upset. We won t talk about it. Don t
you cry, Nina. No old tramp won t get you while Tonys
here.
Mrs. Harling spoke up sternly.
Stop crying, Nina, or I ll always send you upstairs when
Ántonia tells us about the country. Did they never find out
where he came from, Ántonia?
Never, mam. He had nt been seen nowhere
except in a little town they call Conway. He tried to get beer there,
but there was nt any saloon. Maybe he came in on a freight, but
the brakeman had nt seen him. They could nt find no
letters nor nothing on him; nothing but an old penknife in his pocket
and the wishbone of a chicken wrapped up in a piece of paper, and some
poetry.
Some poetry? we exclaimed.
I remember, said Frances. It was
The Old Oaken Bucket, cut out of a newspaper and nearly
worn out. Ole Iverson brought it into the office and showed it to
me.
Now, was nt that strange, Miss
Frances? Tony asked thoughtfully. What would anybody
want to kill themselves in summer for? In thrashing time, too!
Its nice everywhere then.
So it is, Ántonia, said
Mrs. Harling heartily. Maybe I ll go home
and help you thrash next summer. Is nt that taffy nearly ready
to eat? I ve been smelling it a long while.
There was a basic harmony between Ántonia and
her mistress. They had strong, independent natures, both of them. They
knew what they liked, and were not always trying to imitate other
people. They loved children and animals and music, and rough play and
digging in the earth. They liked to prepare rich, hearty food and to
see people eat it; to make up soft white beds and to see youngsters
asleep in them. They ridiculed conceited people and were quick to help
unfortunate ones. Deep down in each of them there was a kind of hearty
joviality, a relish of life, not over-delicate, but very invigorating.
I never tried to define it, but I was distinctly conscious of it. I
could not imagine Ántonias living for a week in any
other house in Black Hawk than the Harlings.
VII
Winter lies too
long in country towns; hangs on until it is stale and shabby, old and
sullen. On the farm the weather was the great fact, and mens
affairs went on underneath it, as the streams creep under the ice. But
in Black Hawk the scene of human life was spread out shrunken and
pinched, frozen down to the bare stalk.
Through January and February I went to the river with
the Harlings on clear nights, and we skated up to the big island and
made bonfires on the frozen sand. But by March the ice was rough and
choppy, and the snow on the river bluffs was gray and
mournful-looking. I was tired of school, tired of winter clothes, of
the rutted streets, of the dirty drifts and the piles of cinders that
had lain in the yards so long. There was only one break in the dreary
monotony of that month; when Blind d Arnault, the negro pianist,
came to town. He gave a concert at the Opera House on Monday night,
and he and his manager spent Saturday and Sunday at our comfortable
hotel. Mrs.
Harling had known d Arnault for years. She told Ántonia
she had better go to see Tiny that Saturday evening, as there would
certainly be music at the Boys Home.
Saturday night after supper I ran downtown to the
hotel and slipped quietly into the parlor. The chairs and sofas were
already occupied, and the air smelled pleasantly of cigar smoke. The
parlor had once been two rooms, and the floor was sway-backed where
the partition had been cut away. The wind from without made waves in
the long carpet. A coal stove glowed at either end of the room, and
the grand piano in the middle stood open.
There was an atmosphere of unusual freedom about the
house that night, for Mrs. Gardener had gone to Omaha for
a week. Johnnie had been having drinks with the guests until he was
rather absent-minded. It was Mrs. Gardener who ran the
business and looked after everything. Her husband stood at the desk
and welcomed incoming travelers. He was a popular fellow, but no
manager.
Mrs. Gardener was admittedly the
best-dressed woman in Black Hawk, drove the best horse, and had a
smart trap and a little white-and-gold sleigh. She seemed indifferent
to her
possessions, was not half so solicitous about them as her friends
were. She was tall, dark, severe, with something Indian-like in the
rigid immobility of her face. Her manner was cold, and she talked
little. Guests felt that they were receiving, not conferring, a favor
when they stayed at her house. Even the smartest traveling men were
flattered when Mrs. Gardener stopped to chat with them
for a moment. The patrons of the hotel were divided into two classes;
those who had seen Mrs. Gardeners diamonds, and
those who had not.
When I stole into the parlor Anson Kirkpatrick,
Marshall Fields man, was at the piano, playing airs from a
musical comedy then running in Chicago. He was a dapper little
Irishman, very vain, homely as a monkey, with friends everywhere, and
a sweetheart in every port, like a sailor. I did not know all the men
who were sitting about, but I recognized a furniture salesman from
Kansas City, a drug man, and Willy O Reilly, who traveled for a
jewelry house and sold musical instruments. The talk was all about
good and bad hotels, actors and actresses and musical prodigies. I
learned that Mrs. Gardener had gone to Omaha to hear
Booth and Barrett, who
were to play there next week, and that Mary Anderson was having a
great success in A Winters Tale, in London.
The door from the office opened, and Johnnie Gardener
came in, directing Blind d Arnault,he would never
consent to be led. He was a heavy, bulky mulatto, on short legs, and
he came tapping the floor in front of him with his gold-headed cane.
His yellow face was lifted in the light, with a show of white teeth,
all grinning, and his shrunken, papery eyelids lay motionless over his
blind eyes.
Good evening,
gentlemen. No ladies here? Good-evening, gentlemen. We going to have a
little music? Some of you gentlemen going to play for me this
evening? It was the soft, amiable negro voice, like those I
remembered from early childhood, with the note of docile subservience
in it. He had the negro head, too; almost no head at all; nothing
behind the ears but folds of neck under close-clipped wool. He would
have been repulsive if his face had not been so kindly and happy. It
was the happiest face I had seen since I left Virginia.
He felt his way directly to the piano. The moment he
sat down, I noticed the nervous infirmity of which Mrs.
Harling had told me.
When he was sitting, or standing still, he swayed back and forth
incessantly, like a rocking toy. At the piano, he swayed in time to
the music, and when he was not playing, his body kept up this motion,
like an empty mill grinding on. He found the pedals and tried them,
ran his yellow hands up and down the keys a few times, tinkling off
scales, then turned to the company.
She seems all right, gentlemen. Nothing
happened to her since the last time I was here. Mrs.
Gardener, she always has this piano tuned up before I come. Now,
gentlemen, I expect you ve all got grand voices. Seems like we
might have some good old plantation songs to-night.
The men gathered round him, as he began to play
My Old Kentucky Home. They sang one negro melody after
another, while the mulatto sat rocking himself, his head thrown back,
his yellow face lifted, its shriveled eyelids never fluttering.
He was born in the Far South, on the d Arnault
plantation, where the spirit if not the fact of slavery persisted.
When he was three weeks old he had an illness which left him totally
blind. As soon as he was old enough
to sit up alone and toddle about, another affliction, the nervous
motion of his body, became apparent. His mother, a buxom young negro
wench who was laundress for the d Arnaults, concluded that her
blind baby was not right in his head, and she was
ashamed of him. She loved him devotedly, but he was so ugly, with his
sunken eyes and his fidgets, that she hid him away from
people. All the dainties she brought down from the Big
House were for the blind child, and she beat and cuffed her
other children whenever she found them teasing him or trying to get
his chicken-bone away from him. He began to talk early, remembered
everything he heard, and his mammy said he was nt all
wrong. She named him Samson, because he was blind, but on the
plantation he was known as yellow Marthas simple
child. He was docile and obedient, but when he was six years
old he began to run away from home, always taking the same direction.
He felt his way through the lilacs, along the boxwood hedge, up to the
south wing of the Big House, where Miss Nellie
d Arnault practiced the piano every morning. This angered his
mother more than anything else he could have done; she was so
ashamed of his ugliness that she could nt bear to have white
folks see him. Whenever she caught him slipping away from the cabin,
she whipped him unmercifully, and told him what dreadful things old
Mr. d Arnault would do to him if he ever found him
near the Big House. But the next time Samson had a
chance, he ran away again. If Miss d Arnault stopped practicing
for a moment and went toward the window, she saw this hideous little
pickaninny, dressed in an old piece of sacking, standing in the open
space between the hollyhock rows, his body rocking automatically, his
blind face lifted to the sun and wearing an expression of idiotic
rapture. Often she was tempted to tell Martha that the child must be
kept at home, but somehow the memory of his foolish, happy face
deterred her. She remembered that his sense of hearing was nearly all
he had,though it did not occur to her that he might have more
of it than other children.
One day Samson was standing thus while Miss Nellie
was playing her lesson to her music-master. The windows were open. He
heard them get up from the piano, talk a little while, and then leave
the room. He heard the
door close after them. He crept up to the front windows and stuck his
head in: there was no one there. He could always detect the presence
of any one in a room. He put one foot over the window sill and
straddled it. His mother had told him over and over how his master
would give him to the big mastiff if he ever found him
meddling. Samson had got too near the mastiffs
kennel once, and had felt his terrible breath in his face. He thought
about that, but he pulled in his other foot.
Through the dark he found his way to the Thing, to
its mouth. He touched it softly, and it answered softly, kindly. He
shivered and stood still. Then he began to feel it all over, ran his
finger tips
along the slippery sides, embraced the carved legs, tried to get some
conception of its shape and size, of the space it occupied in primeval
night. It was cold and hard, and like nothing else in his black
universe. He went back to its mouth, began at one end of the keyboard
and felt his way down into the mellow thunder, as far as he could go.
He seemed to know that it must be done with the fingers, not with the
fists or the feet. He approached this highly artificial instrument
through a mere instinct, and coupled himself to it, as if he knew it
was to piece him out and make a whole creature of him. After he had
tried over all the sounds, he began to finger out passages from things
Miss Nellie had been practicing, passages that were already his, that
lay under the bones of his pinched, conical little skull, definite as
animal desires. The door opened; Miss Nellie and her music-master
stood behind it, but blind Samson, who was so sensitive to presences,
did not know they were there. He was feeling out the pattern that lay
all ready-made on the big and little keys. When he paused for a
moment, because the sound was wrong and he wanted another, Miss Nellie
spoke softly. He whirled about in a spasm of terror, leaped forward in
the dark, struck his head on the open window, and fell screaming and
bleeding to the floor. He had what his mother called a fit. The doctor
came and gave him opium.
When Samson was well again, his young mistress led
him back to the piano. Several teachers experimented with him. They
found he had absolute pitch, and a remarkable memory. As a very young
child he could repeat, after a fashion, any composition that
was played for him. No matter how many wrong notes he struck, he never
lost the intention of a passage, he brought the substance of it across
by irregular and astonishing means. He wore his teachers out. He could
never learn like other people, never acquired any finish. He was
always a negro prodigy who played barbarously and wonderfully. As
piano playing, it was perhaps abominable, but as music it was
something real, vitalized by a sense of rhythm that was stronger than
his other physical senses,that not only filled his dark mind,
but worried his body incessantly. To hear him, to watch him, was to
see a negro enjoying himself as only a negro can. It was as if all the
agreeable sensations possible to creatures of flesh and blood were
heaped up on those black and white keys, and he were gloating over
them and trickling them through his yellow fingers.
In the middle of a crashing waltz d Arnault
suddenly began to play softly, and, turning to one of the men who
stood behind him, whispered, Somebody dancing in there.
He jerked his bullet head toward the dining-room. I hear little
feet,girls, I spect.
Anson Kirkpatrick mounted a chair and
peeped over the transom. Springing down, he wrenched open the doors
and ran out into the dining-room. Tiny and Lena, Ántonia and
Mary Dusak, were waltzing in the middle of the floor. They separated
and fled toward the kitchen, giggling.
Kirkpatrick caught Tiny by the elbows.
Whats the matter with you girls? Dancing out here by
yourselves, when theres a roomful of lonesome men on the other
side of the partition! Introduce me to your friends, Tiny.
The girls, still laughing, were trying to escape.
Tiny looked alarmed. Mrs. Gardener would nt
like it, she protested. She d be awful mad if you
was to come out here and dance with us.
Mrs. Gardeners in Omaha,
girl. Now, you re Lena, are you?and you re Tony
and you re Mary. Have I got you all straight?
O Reilly and the others began to pile the
chairs on the tables. Johnnie Gardener ran in from the office.
Easy, boys, easy! he entreated them.
You ll wake the cook, and there ll be the devil to
pay for me. She won t hear the music, but she ll be down
the minute anythings moved in the dining-room.
Oh, what do you care, Johnnie? Fire the cook
and wire Molly to bring another. Come along, nobody ll tell
tales.
Johnnie shook his head. s a fact,
boys, he said confidentially. If I take a drink in Black
Hawk, Molly knows it in Omaha!
His guests laughed and slapped him on the shoulder.
Oh, we ll make it all right with Molly. Get your back up,
Johnnie.
Molly was Mrs. Gardeners name, of
course. Molly Bawn was painted in large blue letters on
the glossy white side of the hotel bus, and Molly was
engraved inside Johnnies ring and on his watch-casedoubtless on his heart, too. He was an affectionate little man, and he
thought his wife a wonderful woman; he knew that without her he would
hardly be more than a clerk in some other mans hotel.
At a word from Kirkpatrick, d Arnault spread
himself out over the piano, and began to draw the dance music out of
it, while the perspiration shone on his short wool and on his uplifted
face. He looked like some glistening African god of pleasure, full of
strong, savage blood. Whenever the dancers paused to change partners
or to catch breath, he would boom out softly, Whos that
goin
back on me? One of these city gentlemen, I bet! Now, you girls, you
ain t goin to let that floor get cold?
Ántonia seemed frightened at first, and kept
looking questioningly at Lena and Tiny over Willy
O Reillys shoulder. Tiny Soderball was trim and slender,
with lively little feet and pretty anklesshe wore her dresses
very short. She was quicker in speech, lighter in movement and manner
than the other girls. Mary Dusak was broad and brown of countenance,
slightly marked by smallpox, but handsome for all that. She had
beautiful chestnut hair, coils of it; her forehead was low and smooth,
and her commanding dark eyes regarded the world indifferently and
fearlessly. She looked bold and resourceful and unscrupulous, and she
was all of these. They were handsome girls, had the fresh color of
their country up-bringing, and in their eyes that brilliancy which is
called,by no metaphor, alas! the light of
youth.
D Arnault played until his manager came and
shut the piano. Before he left us, he showed us his gold watch which
struck the hours, and a topaz ring, given him by some Russian nobleman
who delighted in negro
melodies, and had heard d Arnault play in New Orleans. At last
he tapped his way upstairs, after bowing to everybody, docile and
happy. I walked home with Ántonia. We were so excited that we
dreaded to go to bed. We lingered a long while at the Harlings
gate, whispering in the cold until the restlessness was slowly chilled
out of us.
VIII
The Harling
children and I were never happier, never felt more contented and
secure, than in the weeks of spring which broke that long winter. We
were out all day in the thin sunshine, helping Mrs.
Harling and Tony break the ground and plant the garden, dig around the
orchard trees, tie up vines and clip the hedges. Every morning, before
I was up, I could hear Tony singing in the garden rows. After the
apple and cherry trees broke into bloom, we ran about under them,
hunting for the new nests the birds were building, throwing clods at
each other, and playing hide-and-seek with Nina. Yet the summer which
was to change everything was coming nearer every day. When boys and
girls are growing up, life can t stand still, not even in the
quietest of country towns; and they have to grow up, whether they will
or no. That is what their elders are always forgetting.
It must have been in June, for Mrs.
Harling and Ántonia were preserving cherries, when I stopped
one morning to tell them that a dancing pavilion had come to town. I
had seen
two drays hauling the canvas and painted poles up from the depot.
That afternoon three cheerful-looking Italians
strolled about Black Hawk, looking at everything, and with them was a
dark, stout woman who wore a long gold watch chain about her neck and
carried a black lace parasol. They seemed especially interested in
children and vacant lots. When I overtook them and stopped to say a
word, I found them affable and confiding. They told me they worked in
Kansas City in the winter, and in summer they went out among the
farming towns with their tent and taught dancing. When business fell
off in one place, they moved on to another.
The dancing pavilion was put up near the Danish
laundry, on a vacant lot surrounded by tall, arched cottonwood trees.
It was very much like a merry-go-round tent, with open sides and gay
flags flying from the poles. Before the week was over, all the
ambitious mothers were sending their children to the afternoon dancing
class. At three o clock one met little girls in white dresses
and little boys in the round-collared shirts of the time, hurrying
along the sidewalk on their way to the tent. Mrs. Vanni
received them at the
entrance, always dressed in lavender with a great deal of black lace,
her important watch chain lying on her bosom. She wore her hair on the
top of her head, built up in a black tower, with red coral combs. When
she smiled, she showed two rows of strong, crooked yellow teeth. She
taught the little children herself, and her husband, the harpist,
taught the older ones.
Often the mothers brought their fancy-work and sat on
the shady side of the tent during the lesson. The popcorn man wheeled
his glass wagon under the big cottonwood by the door, and lounged in
the sun, sure of a good trade when the dancing was over.
Mr. Jensen, the Danish laundryman, used to bring a chair
from his porch and sit out in the grass plot. Some ragged little boys
from the depot sold pop and iced lemonade under a white umbrella at
the corner, and made faces at the spruce youngsters who came to dance.
That vacant lot soon became the most cheerful place in town. Even on
the hottest afternoons the cottonwoods made a rustling shade, and the
air smelled of popcorn and melted butter, and Bouncing Bets wilting in
the sun. Those hardy flowers had run away from the
laundrymans garden, and the grass in the middle of the lot was
pink with them.
The Vannis kept exemplary order, and closed every
evening at the hour suggested by the City Council. When
Mrs. Vanni gave the signal, and the harp struck up
Home, Sweet Home, all Black Hawk knew it was ten
o clock. You could set your watch by that tune as confidently as
by the Round House whistle.
At last there was something to do in those long,
empty summer evenings, when the married people sat like images on
their front porches, and the boys and girls tramped and tramped the
board sidewalksnorthward to the edge of the open prairie,
south to the depot, then back again to the post-office, the ice-cream
parlor, the butcher shop. Now there was a place where the girls could
wear their new dresses, and where one could laugh aloud without being
reproved by the ensuing silence. That silence seemed to ooze out of
the ground, to hang under the foliage of the black maple trees with
the bats and shadows. Now it was broken by light-hearted sounds. First
the deep purring of Mr. Vannis harp came in
silvery ripples through the blackness of the
dusty-smelling night; then the violins fell inone of them was
almost like a flute. They called so archly, so seductively, that our
feet hurried toward the tent of themselves. Why had nt we had a
tent before?
Dancing became popular now, just as roller skating
had been the summer before. The Progressive Euchre Club arranged with
the Vannis for the exclusive use of the floor on Tuesday and Friday
nights. At other times any one could dance who paid his money and was
orderly; the railroad men, the Round House mechanics, the delivery
boys, the iceman, the farmhands who lived near enough to ride into
town after their days work was over.
I never missed a Saturday night dance. The tent was
open until midnight then. The country boys came in from farms eight
and ten miles away, and all the country girls were on the floor,Ántonia and Lena and Tiny, and the Danish laundry girls
and their friends. I was not the only boy who found these dances gayer
than the others. The young men who belonged to the Progressive Euchre
Club used to drop in late and risk a tiff with their sweethearts and
general condemnation for a waltz with the hired
girls.
IX
There was a
curious social situation in Black Hawk. All the young men felt the
attraction of the fine, well-set-up country girls who had come to town
to earn a living, and, in nearly every case, to help the father
struggle out of debt, or to make it possible for the younger children
of the family to go to school.
Those girls had grown up in the first bitter-hard
times, and had got little schooling themselves. But the younger
brothers and sisters, for whom they made such sacrifices and who have
had advantages, never seem to me, when I meet them now,
half as interesting or as well educated. The older girls, who helped
to break up the wild sod, learned so much from life, from poverty,
from their mothers and grandmothers; they had all, like
Ántonia, been early awakened and made observant by coming at a
tender age from an old country to a new. I can remember a score of
these country girls who were in service in Black Hawk during the few
years I lived there, and
I can remember something unusual and engaging about each of them.
Physically they were almost a race apart, and out-of-door work had
given them a vigor which, when they got over their first shyness on
coming to town, developed into a positive carriage and freedom of
movement, and made them conspicuous among Black Hawk women.
That was before the day of High-School athletics.
Girls who had to walk more than half a mile to school were pitied.
There was not a tennis court in the town; physical exercise was
thought rather inelegant for the daughters of well-to-do families.
Some of the High-School girls were jolly and pretty, but they stayed
indoors in winter because of the cold, and in summer because of the
heat. When one danced with them their bodies never moved inside their
clothes; their muscles seemed to ask but one thingnot to be
disturbed. I remember those girls merely as faces in the schoolroom,
gay and rosy, or listless and dull, cut off below the shoulders, like
cherubs, by the ink-smeared tops of the high desks that were surely
put there to make us round-shouldered and hollow-chested.
The daughters of Black Hawk merchants
had a confident, uninquiring belief that they were
refined, and that the country girls, who worked
out, were not. The American farmers in our county were quite as
hard-pressed as their neighbors from other countries. All alike had
come to Nebraska with little capital and no knowledge of the soil they
must subdue. All had borrowed money on their land. But no matter in
what straits the Pennsylvanian or Virginian found himself, he would
not let his daughters go out into service. Unless his girls could
teach a country school, they sat at home in poverty. The Bohemian and
Scandinavian girls could not get positions as teachers, because they
had had no opportunity to learn the language. Determined to help in
the struggle to clear the homestead from debt, they had no alternative
but to go into service. Some of them, after they came to town,
remained as serious and as discreet in behavior as they had been when
they ploughed and herded on their fathers farm. Others, like
the three Bohemian Marys, tried to make up for the years of youth they
had lost. But every one of them did what she had set out to do, and
sent home those hard-earned dollars. The girls I knew were always
helping to pay for ploughs and reapers, brood-sows, or steers to
fatten.
One result of this family solidarity was that the
foreign farmers in our county were the first to become prosperous.
After the fathers were out of debt, the daughters married the sons of
neighbors,usually of like nationality,and the girls
who once worked in Black Hawk kitchens are to-day managing big farms
and fine families of their own; their children are better off than the
children of the town women they used to serve.
I thought the attitude of the town people toward
these girls very stupid. If I told my schoolmates that Lena
Lingards grandfather was a clergyman, and much respected in
Norway, they looked at me blankly. What did it matter? All foreigners
were ignorant people who could nt speak English. There was not
a man in Black Hawk who had the intelligence or cultivation, much less
the personal distinction, of Ántonias father. Yet people
saw no difference between her and the three Marys; they were all
Bohemians, all hired girls.
I always knew I should live long enough to see my
country girls come into their own, and I have. To-day the best that a
harassed Black
Hawk merchant can hope for is to sell provisions and farm machinery
and automobiles to the rich farms where that first crop of stalwart
Bohemian and Scandinavian girls are now the mistresses.
The Black Hawk boys looked forward to marrying Black
Hawk girls, and living in a brand-new little house with best chairs
that must not be sat upon, and hand-painted china that must not be
used. But sometimes a young fellow would look up from his ledger, or
out through the grating of his fathers bank, and let his eyes
follow Lena Lingard, as she passed the window with her slow,
undulating walk, or Tiny Soderball, tripping by in her short skirt and
striped stockings.
The country girls were considered a menace to the
social order. Their beauty shone out too boldly against a conventional
background. But anxious mothers need have felt no alarm. They mistook
the mettle of their sons. The respect for respectability was stronger
than any desire in Black Hawk youth.
Our young man of position was like the son of a royal
house; the boy who swept out his office or drove his delivery wagon
might frolic with the jolly country girls, but he himself
must sit all evening in a plush parlor where conversation dragged so
perceptibly that the father often came in and made blundering efforts
to warm up the atmosphere. On his way home from his dull call, he
would perhaps meet Tony and Lena, coming along the sidewalk whispering
to each other, or the three Bohemian Marys in their long plush coats
and caps, comporting themselves with a dignity that only made their
eventful histories the more piquant. If he went to the hotel to see a
traveling man on business, there was Tiny, arching her shoulders at
him like a kitten. If he went into the laundry to get his collars,
there were the four Danish girls, smiling up from their
ironing-boards, with their white throats and their pink cheeks.
The three Marys were the heroines of a cycle of
scandalous stories, which the old men were fond of relating as they
sat about the cigar-stand in the drug-store. Mary Dusak had been
housekeeper for a bachelor rancher from Boston, and after several
years in his service she was forced to retire from the world for a
short time. Later she came back to town to take the place of her
friend, Mary Svoboda, who was similarly embarrassed. The three Marys
were considered as dangerous as high explosives to have about the
kitchen, yet they were such good cooks and such admirable housekeepers
that they never had to look for a place.
The Vannis tent brought the town boys and the
country girls together on neutral ground. Sylvester Lovett, who was
cashier in his fathers bank, always found his way to the tent
on Saturday night. He took all the dances Lena Lingard would give him,
and even grew bold enough to walk home with her. If his sisters or
their friends happened to be among the onlookers on popular
nights, Sylvester stood back in the shadow under the cottonwood
trees, smoking and watching Lena with a harassed expression. Several
times I stumbled upon him there in the dark, and I felt rather sorry
for him. He reminded me of Ole Benson, who used to sit on the
draw-side and watch Lena herd her cattle. Later in the summer, when
Lena went home for a week to visit her mother, I heard from
Ántonia that young Lovett drove all the way out there to see
her, and took her buggy-riding. In my ingenuousness I hoped that
Sylvester would marry Lena, and thus give all the country girls a
better position in the town.
Sylvester dallied about Lena until he began to make
mistakes in his work; had to stay at the bank until after dark to make
his books balance. He was daft about her, and every one knew it. To
escape from his predicament he ran away with a widow six years older
than himself, who owned a half-section. This remedy worked,
apparently. He never looked at Lena again, nor lifted his eyes as he
ceremoniously tipped his hat when he happened to meet her on the
sidewalk.
So that was what they were like, I thought, these
white-handed, high-collared clerks and bookkeepers! I used to glare at
young Lovett from a distance and only wished I had some way of showing
my contempt for him.
X
It was at the
Vannis tent that Ántonia was discovered. Hitherto she
had been looked upon more as a ward of the Harlings than as one of the
hired girls. She had lived in their house and yard and
garden; her thoughts never seemed to stray outside that little
kingdom. But after the tent came to town she began to go about with
Tiny and Lena and their friends. The Vannis often said that
Ántonia was the best dancer of them all. I sometimes heard
murmurs in the crowd outside the pavilion that Mrs.
Harling would soon have her hands full with that girl. The young men
began to joke with each other about the Harlings
Tony as they did about the Marshalls Anna
or the Gardeners Tiny.
Ántonia talked and thought of nothing but the
tent. She hummed the dance tunes all day. When supper was late, she
hurried with her dishes, dropped and smashed them in her excitement.
At the first call of the music, she became irresponsible. If she had
nt time to dress, she merely flung off her apron and shot
out of the kitchen door. Sometimes I went with her; the moment the
lighted tent came into view she would break into a run, like a boy.
There were always partners waiting for her; she began to dance before
she got her breath.
Ántonias success at the tent had its
consequences. The iceman lingered too long now, when he came into the
covered porch to fill the refrigerator. The delivery boys hung about
the kitchen when they brought the groceries. Young farmers who were in
town for Saturday came tramping through the yard to the back door to
engage dances, or to invite Tony to parties and picnics. Lena and
Norwegian Anna dropped in to help her with her work, so that she could
get away early. The boys who brought her home after the dances
sometimes laughed at the back gate and wakened Mr.
Harling from his first sleep. A crisis was inevitable.
One Saturday night Mr. Harling had gone
down to the cellar for beer. As he came up the stairs in the dark, he
heard scuffling on the back porch, and then the sound of a vigorous
slap. He looked out through the side door in time to see a pair of
long legs vaulting over
the picket fence. Ántonia was standing there, angry and
excited. Young Harry Paine, who was to marry his employers
daughter on Monday, had come to the tent with a crowd of friends and
danced all evening. Afterward, he begged Ántonia to let him
walk home with her. She said she supposed he was a nice young man, as
he was one of Miss Francess friends, and she did nt
mind. On the back porch he tried to kiss her, and when she protested,because he was going to be married on Monday,he
caught her and kissed her until she got one hand free and slapped
him.
Mr. Harling put his beer bottles down on
the table. This is what I ve been expecting,
Ántonia. You ve been going with girls who have a
reputation for being free and easy, and now you ve got the same
reputation. I won t have this and that fellow tramping about my
back yard all the time. This is the end of it, to-night. It stops,
short. You can quit going to these dances, or you can hunt another
place. Think it over.
The next morning when Mrs. Harling and
Frances tried to reason with Ántonia, they found her agitated
but determined. Stop going to the tent? she panted.
I would nt
think of it for a minute! My own father could nt make me stop!
Mr. Harling ain t my boss outside my work. I
won t give up my friends, either. The boys I go with are nice
fellows. I thought Mr. Paine was all right, too, because
he used to come here. I guess I gave him a red face for his wedding,
all right! she blazed out indignantly.
You ll have to do one thing or the
other, Ántonia, Mrs. Harling told her
decidedly. I can t go back on what Mr.
Harling has said. This is his house.
Then I ll just leave, Mrs.
Harling. Lenas been wanting me to get a place closer to her for
a long while. Mary Svobodas going away from the Cutters
to work at the hotel, and I can have her place.
Mrs. Harling rose from her chair.
Ántonia, if you go to the
Cutters
to work, you cannot come back to this house again. You know what that
man is. It will be the ruin of you.
Tony snatched up the tea-kettle and began to pour
boiling water over the glasses, laughing excitedly. Oh, I can
take care of myself! Im a lot stronger than Cutter is. They pay
four dollars there, and theres no children.
The works nothing; I can have every evening, and be out a lot
in the afternoons.
I thought you liked children. Tony,
whats come over you?
I don t know, something has.
Ántonia tossed her head and set her jaw. A girl like me
has got to take her good times when she can. Maybe there won t
be any tent next year. I guess I want to have my fling, like the other
girls.
Mrs. Harling gave a short, harsh laugh.
If you go to work for the Cutters, you re likely to have
a fling that you won t get up from in a hurry.
Frances said, when she told grandmother and me about
this scene, that every pan and plate and cup on the shelves trembled
when her mother walked out of the kitchen. Mrs. Harling
declared bitterly that she wished she had never let herself get fond
of Ántonia.
XI
Wick Cutter was
the money-lender who had fleeced poor Russian Peter. When a farmer
once got into the habit of going to Cutter, it was like gambling or
the lottery; in an hour of discouragement he went back.
Cutters first name was Wycliffe, and he liked
to talk about his pious bringing-up. He contributed regularly to the
Protestant churches, for sentiments sake, as he
said with a flourish of the hand. He came from a town in Iowa where
there were a great many Swedes, and could speak a little Swedish,
which gave him a great advantage with the early Scandinavian
settlers.
In every frontier settlement there are men who have
come there to escape restraint. Cutter was one of the fast
set of Black Hawk business men. He was an inveterate gambler,
though a poor loser. When we saw a light burning in his office late at
night, we knew that a game of poker was going on. Cutter boasted that
he never drank anything stronger than sherry, and he said he got his
start in life
by saving the money that other young men spent for cigars. He was full
of moral maxims for boys. When he came to our house on business, he
quoted Poor Richards Almanack to me, and told me
he was delighted to find a town boy who could milk a cow. He was
particularly affable to grandmother, and whenever they met he would
begin at once to talk about the good old times and
simple living. I detested his pink, bald head, and his yellow
whiskers, always soft and glistening. It was said he brushed them
every night, as a woman does her hair. His white teeth looked
factory-made. His skin was red and rough, as if from perpetual
sunburn; he often went away to hot springs to take mud baths. He was
notoriously dissolute with women. Two Swedish girls who had lived in
his house were the worse for the experience. One of them he had taken
to Omaha and established in the business for which he had fitted her.
He still visited her.
Cutter lived in a state of perpetual warfare with his
wife, and yet, apparently, they never thought of separating. They
dwelt in a fussy, scroll-work house, painted white and buried in thick
evergreens, with a fussy white fence and
barn. Cutter thought he knew a great deal about horses, and usually
had a colt which he was training for the track. On Sunday mornings one
could see him out at the fair grounds, speeding around the race-course
in his trotting-buggy, wearing yellow gloves and a
black-and-white-check traveling cap, his whiskers blowing back in the
breeze. If there were any boys about, Cutter would offer one of them a
quarter to hold the stop-watch, and then drive off, saying he had no
change and would fix it up next time. No one could cut
his lawn or wash his buggy to suit him. He was so fastidious and prim
about his place that a boy would go to a good deal of trouble to throw
a dead cat into his back yard, or to dump a sackful of tin cans in his
alley. It was a peculiar combination of old-maidishness and
licentiousness that made Cutter seem so despicable.
He had certainly met his match when he married
Mrs. Cutter. She was a terrifying-looking person; almost
a giantess in height, raw-boned, with iron-gray hair, a face always
flushed, and prominent, hysterical eyes. When she meant to be
entertaining and agreeable, she nodded her head incessantly and
snapped her eyes at one. Her teeth were long and
curved, like a horse s; people said babies always cried if she
smiled at them. Her face had a kind of fascination for me; it was the
very color and shape of anger. There was a gleam of something akin to
insanity in her full, intense eyes. She was formal in manner, and made
calls in rustling, steel-gray brocades and a tall bonnet with
bristling aigrettes.
Mrs. Cutter painted china so assiduously
that even her washbowls and pitchers, and her husbands
shaving-mug, were covered with violets and lilies. Once when Cutter
was exhibiting some of his wifes china to a caller, he dropped
a piece. Mrs. Cutter put her handkerchief to her lips as
if she were going to faint and said grandly: Mr.
Cutter, you have broken all the Commandmentsspare the
finger-bowls!
They quarreled from the moment Cutter came into the
house until they went to bed at night, and their hired girls reported
these scenes to the town at large. Mrs. Cutter had
several times cut paragraphs about unfaithful husbands out of the
newspapers and mailed them to Cutter in a disguised handwriting.
Cutter would come home at noon, find the mutilated journal in the
paper-rack, and
triumphantly fit the clipping into the space from which it had been
cut. Those two could quarrel all morning about whether he ought to put
on his heavy or his light underwear, and all evening about whether he
had taken cold or not.
The Cutters had major as well as minor subjects for
dispute. The chief of these was the question of inheritance:
Mrs. Cutter told her husband it was plainly his fault
they had no children. He insisted that Mrs. Cutter had
purposely remained childless, with the determination to outlive him
and to share his property with her people, whom he
detested. To this she would reply that unless he changed his mode of
life, she would certainly outlive him. After listening to her
insinuations about his physical soundness, Cutter would resume his
dumb-bell practice for a month, or rise daily at the hour when his
wife most liked to sleep, dress noisily, and drive out to the track
with his trotting-horse.
Once when they had quarreled about household
expenses, Mrs. Cutter put on her brocade and went among
their friends soliciting orders for painted china, saying that
Mr. Cutter had compelled her to live by her
brush. Cutter
was nt shamed as she had expected; he was delighted!
Cutter often threatened to chop down the cedar trees
which half-buried the house. His wife declared she would leave him if
she were stripped of the privacy which she felt these
trees afforded her. That was his opportunity, surely; but he never cut
down the trees. The Cutters seemed to find their relations to each
other interesting and stimulating, and certainly the rest of us found
them so. Wick Cutter was different from any other rascal I have ever
known, but I have found Mrs. Cutters all over the world;
sometimes founding new religions, sometimes being forcibly fedeasily recognizable, even when superficially tamed.
XII
After
Ántonia went to live with the Cutters, she seemed to care about
nothing but picnics and parties and having a good time. When she was
not going to a dance, she sewed until midnight. Her new clothes were
the subject of caustic comment. Under Lenas direction she
copied Mrs. Gardeners new party dress and
Mrs. Smiths street costume so ingeniously in cheap
materials that those ladies were greatly annoyed, and
Mrs. Cutter, who was jealous of them, was secretly
pleased.
Tony wore gloves now, and high-heeled shoes and
feathered bonnets, and she went downtown nearly every afternoon with
Tiny and Lena and the Marshalls Norwegian Anna. We High-School
boys used to linger on the playground at the afternoon recess to watch
them as they came tripping down the hill along the board sidewalk, two
and two. They were growing prettier every day, but as they passed us,
I used to think with pride that Ántonia, like Snow-White in the
fairy tale, was still fairest of them all.
Being a Senior now, I got away from school early.
Sometimes I overtook the girls downtown and coaxed them into the
ice-cream parlor, where they would sit chattering and laughing,
telling me all the news from the country. I remember how angry Tiny
Soderball made me one afternoon. She declared she had heard
grandmother was going to make a Baptist preacher of me. I guess
you ll have to stop dancing and wear a white necktie then.
Won t he look funny, girls?
Lena laughed. You ll have to hurry up,
Jim. If you re going to be a preacher, I want you to marry me.
You must promise to marry us all, and then baptize the
babies.
Norwegian Anna, always dignified, looked at her
reprovingly.
Baptists don t believe in christening
babies, do they, Jim?
I told her I did nt know what they believed,
and did nt care, and that I certainly was nt going to be
a preacher.
Thats too bad, Tiny simpered.
She was in a teasing mood. You d make such a good one.
You re so studious. Maybe you d like to be a professor.
You used to teach Tony, did nt you?
Ántonia broke in. I ve set my
heart on Jim being a doctor. You d be good with sick people,
Jim. Your grandmothers trained you up so nice. My papa always
said you were an awful smart boy.
I said I was going to be whatever I pleased.
Won t you be surprised, Miss Tiny, if I turn out to be a
regular devil of a fellow?
They laughed until a glance from Norwegian Anna
checked them; the High-School Principal had just come into the front
part of the shop to buy bread for supper. Anna knew the whisper was
going about that I was a sly one. People said there must be something
queer about a boy who showed no interest in girls of his own age, but
who could be lively enough when he was with Tony and Lena or the three
Marys.
The enthusiasm for the dance, which the Vannis had
kindled, did not at once die out. After the tent left town, the Euchre
Club became the Owl Club, and gave dances in the Masonic Hall once a
week. I was invited to join, but declined. I was moody and restless
that winter, and tired of the people I saw every day. Charley Harling
was already at
Annapolis, while I was still sitting in Black Hawk, answering to my
name at roll-call every morning, rising from my desk at the sound of a
bell and marching out like the grammar-school children.
Mrs. Harling was a little cool toward me, because I
continued to champion Ántonia. What was there for me to do
after supper? Usually I had learned next days lessons by the
time I left the school building, and I could nt sit still and
read forever.
In the evening I used to prowl about, hunting for
diversion. There lay the familiar streets, frozen with snow or liquid
with mud. They led to the houses of good people who were putting the
babies to bed, or simply sitting still before the parlor stove,
digesting their supper. Black Hawk had two saloons. One of them was
admitted, even by the church people, to be as respectable as a saloon
could be. Handsome Anton Jelinek, who had rented his homestead and
come to town, was the proprietor. In his saloon there were long tables
where the Bohemian and German farmers could eat the lunches they
brought from home while they drank their beer. Jelinek kept rye bread
on hand, and smoked fish and strong imported cheeses to please the
foreign
palate. I liked to drop into his bar-room and listen to the talk. But
one day he overtook me on the street and clapped me on the
shoulder.
Jim, he said, I am good friends
with you and I always like to see you. But you know how the church
people think about saloons. Your grandpa has always treated me fine,
and I don t like to have you come into my place, because I know
he don t like it, and it puts me in bad with him.
So I was shut out of that.
One could hang about the drug-store, and listen to
the old men who sat there every evening, talking politics and telling
raw stories. One could go to the cigar factory and chat with the old
German who raised canaries for sale, and look at his stuffed birds.
But whatever you began with him, the talk went back to taxidermy.
There was the depot, of course; I often went down to see the night
train come in, and afterward sat awhile with the disconsolate
telegrapher who was always hoping to be transferred to Omaha or
Denver, where there was some life. He was sure to bring
out his pictures of actresses and dancers. He got them with cigarette
coupons,
and nearly smoked himself to death to possess these desired forms and
faces. For a change, one could talk to the station agent; but he was
another malcontent; spent all his spare time writing letters to
officials requesting a transfer. He wanted to get back to Wyoming
where he could go trout-fishing on Sundays. He used to say
there was nothing in life for him but trout streams, ever since
he d lost his twins.
These were the distractions I had to choose from.
There were no other lights burning downtown after nine o clock.
On starlight nights I used to pace up and down those long, cold
streets, scowling at the little, sleeping houses on either side, with
their storm-windows and covered back porches. They were flimsy
shelters, most of them poorly built of light wood, with spindle
porch-posts horribly mutilated by the turning-lathe. Yet for all their
frailness, how much jealousy and envy and unhappiness some of them
managed to contain! The life that went on in them seemed to me made up
of evasions and negations; shifts to save cooking, to save washing and
cleaning, devices to propitiate the tongue of gossip. This guarded
mode of existence was
like living under a tyranny. Peoples speech, their voices,
their very glances, became furtive and repressed. Every individual
taste, every natural appetite, was bridled by caution. The people
asleep in those houses, I thought, tried to live like the mice in
their own kitchens; to make no noise, to leave no trace, to slip over
the surface of things in the dark. The growing piles of ashes and
cinders in the back yards were the only evidence that the wasteful,
consuming process of life went on at all. On Tuesday nights the Owl
Club danced; then there was a little stir in the streets, and here and
there one could see a lighted window until midnight. But the next
night all was dark again.
After I refused to join the Owls, as
they were called, I made a bold resolve to go to the Saturday night
dances at Firemens Hall. I knew it would be useless to acquaint
my elders with any such plan. Grandfather did nt approve of
dancing anyway; he would only say that if I wanted to dance I could go
to the Masonic Hall, among the people we knew. It was
just my point that I saw altogether too much of the people we knew.
My bedroom was on the ground floor, and as
I studied there, I had a stove in it. I used to retire to my room
early on Saturday night, change my shirt and collar and put on my
Sunday coat. I waited until all was quiet and the old people were
asleep, then raised my window, climbed out, and went softly through
the yard. The first time I deceived my grandparents I felt rather
shabby, perhaps even the second time, but I soon ceased to think about
it.
The dance at the Firemens Hall was the one
thing I looked forward to all the week. There I met the same people I
used to see at the Vannis tent. Sometimes there were Bohemians
from Wilber, or German boys who came down on the afternoon freight
from Bismarck. Tony and Lena and Tiny were always there, and the three
Bohemian Marys, and the Danish laundry girls.
The four Danish girls lived with the laundryman and
his wife in their house behind the laundry, with a big garden where
the clothes were hung out to dry. The laundryman was a kind, wise old
fellow, who paid his girls well, looked out for them, and gave them a
good home. He told me once that his own daughter died just as she was
getting old enough to
help her mother, and that he had been trying to make up for it
ever since. On summer afternoons he used to sit for hours on
the sidewalk in front of his laundry, his newspaper lying on his knee,
watching his girls through the big open window while they ironed and
talked in Danish. The clouds of white dust that blew up the street,
the gusts of hot wind that withered his vegetable garden, never
disturbed his calm. His droll expression seemed to say that he had
found the secret of contentment. Morning and evening he drove about in
his spring wagon, distributing freshly ironed clothes, and collecting
bags of linen that cried out for his suds and sunny drying-lines. His
girls never looked so pretty at the dances as they did standing by the
ironing-board, or over the tubs, washing the fine pieces, their white
arms and throats bare, their cheeks bright as the brightest wild
roses, their gold hair moist with the steam or the heat and curling in
little damp spirals about their ears. They had not learned much
English, and were not so ambitious as Tony or Lena; but they were
kind, simple girls and they were always happy. When one danced with
them, one smelled their clean, freshly ironed clothes that
had been put away with rosemary leaves from Mr.
Jensens garden.
There were never girls enough to go round at those
dances, but every one wanted a turn with Tony and Lena. Lena moved
without exertion, rather indolently, and her hand often accented the
rhythm softly on her partners shoulder. She smiled if one spoke
to her, but seldom answered. The music seemed to put her into a soft,
waking dream, and her violet-colored eyes looked sleepily and
confidingly at one from under her long lashes. When she sighed she
exhaled a heavy perfume of sachet powder. To dance Home, Sweet
Home, with Lena was like coming in with the tide. She danced
every dance like a waltz, and it was always the same waltzthe
waltz of coming home to something, of inevitable, fated return. After
a while one got restless under it, as one does under the heat of a
soft, sultry summer day.
When you spun out into the floor with Tony, you did
nt return to anything. You set out every time upon a new
adventure. I liked to schottische with her; she had so much spring and
variety, and was always putting in new steps and slides. She taught me
to
dance against and around the hard-and-fast beat of the music. If,
instead of going to the end of the railroad, old Mr.
Shimerda had stayed in New York and picked up a living with his
fiddle, how different Ántonias life might have been!
Ántonia often went to the dances with Larry
Donovan, a passenger conductor who was a kind of professional
ladies man, as we said. I remember how admiringly all the boys
looked at her the night she first wore her velveteen dress, made like
Mrs. Gardeners black velvet. She was lovely to
see, with her eyes shining, and her lips always a little parted when
she danced. That constant, dark color in her cheeks never changed.
One evening when Donovan was out on his run,
Ántonia came to the hall with Norwegian Anna and her young man,
and that night I took her home. When we were in the
Cutters
yard, sheltered by the evergreens, I told her she must kiss me
good-night.
Why, sure, Jim. A moment later she drew
her face away and whispered indignantly, Why, Jim! You know you
ain t right to kiss me like that. I ll tell your
grandmother on you!
Lena Lingard lets me kiss her, I
retorted, and Im not half as fond of her as I am of
you.
Lena does? Tony gasped. If
shes up to any of her nonsense with you, I ll scratch her
eyes out! She took my arm again and we walked out of the gate
and up and down the sidewalk. Now, don t you go and be a
fool like some of these town boys. You re not going to sit
around here and whittle store-boxes and tell stories all your life.
You are going away to school and make something of yourself. I m
just awful proud of you. You won t go and get mixed up with the
Swedes, will you?
I don t care anything about any of them
but you, I said. And you ll always treat me like a
kid, I suppose.
She laughed and threw her arms around me. I
expect I will, but you re a kid Im awful fond of, anyhow!
You can like me all you want to, but if I see you hanging round with
Lena much, I ll go to your grandmother, as sure as your
names Jim Burden! Lenas all right, onlywell,
you know yourself shes soft that way. She can t help it.
Its natural to her.
If she was proud of me, I was so proud of her
that I carried my head high as I emerged from the dark cedars and shut
the Cutters gate softly behind me. Her warm, sweet face, her
kind arms, and the true heart in her; she was, oh, she was still my
Ántonia! I looked with contempt at the dark, silent little
houses about me as I walked home, and thought of the stupid young men
who were asleep in some of them. I knew where the real women were,
though I was only a boy; and I would not be afraid of them, either!
I hated to enter the still house when I went home
from the dances, and it was long before I could get to sleep. Toward
morning I used to have pleasant dreams: sometimes Tony and I were out
in the country, sliding down straw-stacks as we used to do; climbing
up the yellow mountains over and over, and slipping down the smooth
sides into soft piles of chaff.
One dream I dreamed a great many times, and it was
always the same. I was in a harvest-field full of shocks, and I was
lying against one of them. Lena Lingard came across the stubble
barefoot, in a short skirt, with a curved reaping-hook in her hand,
and she was flushed like the dawn, with a kind of luminous rosiness
all about her. She sat down beside me, turned to
me with a soft sigh and said, Now they are all gone, and I can
kiss you as much as I like.
I used to wish I could have this flattering dream
about Ántonia, but I never did.
XIII
I noticed one
afternoon that grandmother had been crying. Her feet seemed to drag as
she moved about the house, and I got up from the table where I was
studying and went to her, asking if she did nt feel well, and
if I could nt help her with her work.
No, thank you, Jim. Im troubled, but I
guess Im well enough. Getting a little rusty in the bones,
maybe, she added bitterly.
I stood hesitating. What are you fretting
about, grandmother? Has grandfather lost any money?
No, it ain t money. I wish it was. But
I ve heard things. You must a known it would come
back to me sometime. She dropped into a chair, and covering her
face with her apron, began to cry. Jim, she said,
I was never one that claimed old folks could bring up their
grandchildren. But it came about so; there was nt any other way
for you, it seemed like.
I put my arms around her. I could nt bear to
see her cry.
What is it, grandmother? Is it the
Firemens dances?
She nodded.
Im sorry I sneaked off like that. But
theres nothing wrong about the dances, and I have nt
done anything wrong. I like all those country girls, and I like to
dance with them. Thats all there is to it.
But it ain t right to deceive us, son,
and it brings blame on us. People say you are growing up to be a bad
boy, and that ain t just to us.
I don t care what they say about me, but
if it hurts you, that settles it. I won t go to the
Firemens Hall again.
I kept my promise, of course, but I found the spring
months dull enough. I sat at home with the old people in the evenings
now, reading Latin that was not in our High-School course. I had made
up my mind to do a lot of college requirement work in the summer, and
to enter the freshman class at the University without conditions in
the fall. I wanted to get away as soon as possible.
Disapprobation hurt me, I found,even that of
people whom I did not admire. As the spring came on, I grew more and
more lonely,
and fell back on the telegrapher and the cigar-maker and his canaries
for companionship. I remember I took a melancholy pleasure in hanging
a May-basket for Nina Harling that spring. I bought the flowers from
an old German woman who always had more window plants than any one
else, and spent an afternoon trimming a little work-basket. When dusk
came on, and the new moon hung in the sky, I went quietly to the
Harlings front door with my offering, rang the bell, and then
ran away as was the custom. Through the willow hedge I could hear
Ninas cries of delight, and I felt comforted.
On those warm, soft spring evenings I often lingered
downtown to walk home with Frances, and talked to her about my plans
and about the reading I was doing. One evening she said she thought
Mrs. Harling was not seriously offended with me.
Mama is as broad-minded as mothers ever are, I
guess. But you know she was hurt about Ántonia, and she
can t understand why you like to be with Tiny and Lena better
than with the girls of your own set.
Can you? I asked bluntly.
Frances laughed. Yes, I think I can. You
knew them in the country, and you like to take sides. In some ways
you re older than boys of your age. It will be all right with
mama after you pass your college examinations and she sees
you re in earnest.
If you were a boy, I persisted,
you would nt belong to the Owl Club, either. You d
be just like me.
She shook her head. I would and I would
nt. I expect I know the country girls better than you do. You
always put a kind of glamour over them. The trouble with you, Jim, is
that you re romantic. Mamas going to your Commencement.
She asked me the other day if I knew what your oration is to be about.
She wants you to do well.
I thought my oration very good. It stated with fervor
a great many things I had lately discovered. Mrs. Harling
came to the Opera House to hear the Commencement exercises, and I
looked at her most of the time while I made my speech. Her keen,
intelligent eyes never left my face. Afterward she came back to the
dressing-room where we stood, with our diplomas in our hands, walked
up to me, and said heartily: You surprised me, Jim. I did
nt believe you could do as well as that.
You did nt get that speech out of books. Among my
graduation presents there was a silk umbrella from Mrs.
Harling, with my name on the handle.
I walked home from the Opera House alone. As I passed
the Methodist Church, I saw three white figures ahead of me, pacing up
and down under the arching maple trees, where the moonlight filtered
through the lush June foliage. They hurried toward me; they were
waiting for meLena and Tony and Anna Hansen.
Oh, Jim, it was splendid! Tony was
breathing hard, as she always did when her feelings outran her
language. There ain t a lawyer in Black Hawk could make a
speech like that. I just stopped your grandpa and said so to him. He
won t tell you, but he told us he was awful surprised himself,
did nt he, girls?
Lena sidled up to me and said teasingly: What
made you so solemn? I thought you were scared. I was sure you d
forget.
Anna spoke wistfully. It must make you happy,
Jim, to have fine thoughts like that in your mind all the time, and to
have words to put them in. I always wanted to go to school, you
know.
Oh, I just sat there and wished my papa could
hear you! Jim,Ántonia took hold of my coat
lapels, there was something in your speech that made me
think so about my papa!
I thought about your papa when I wrote my
speech, Tony, I said. I dedicated it to him.
She threw her arms around me, and her dear face was
all wet with tears.
I stood watching their white dresses glimmer smaller
and smaller down the sidewalk as they went away. I have had no other
success that pulled at my heartstrings like that one.
XIV
The day after
Commencement I moved my books and desk upstairs, to an empty room
where I should be undisturbed, and I fell to studying in earnest. I
worked off a years trigonometry that summer, and began Virgil
alone. Morning after morning I used to pace up and down my sunny
little room, looking off at the distant river bluffs and the roll of
the blond pastures between, scanning the Aneid aloud and
committing long passages to memory. Sometimes in the evening
Mrs. Harling called to me as I passed her gate, and asked
me to come in and let her play for me. She was lonely for Charley, she
said, and liked to have a boy about. Whenever my grandparents had
misgivings, and began to wonder whether I was not too young to go off
to college alone, Mrs. Harling took up my cause
vigorously. Grandfather had such respect for her judgment that I knew
he would not go against her.
I had only one holiday that summer. It was in July. I
met Ántonia downtown on
Saturday afternoon, and learned that she and Tiny and Lena were going
to the river next day with Anna Hansenthe elder was all in
bloom now, and Anna wanted to make elder-blow wine.
Annas to drive us down in the
Marshalls delivery wagon, and we ll take a nice lunch and
have a picnic. Just us; nobody else. Could nt you happen along,
Jim? It would be like old times.
I considered a moment. Maybe I can, if I
won t be in the way.
On Sunday morning I rose early and got out of Black
Hawk while the dew was still heavy on the long meadow grasses. It was
the high season for summer flowers. The pink bee-bush stood tall along
the sandy roadsides, and the cone-flowers and rose mallow grew
everywhere. Across the wire fence, in the long grass, I saw a clump of
flaming orange-colored milkweed, rare in that part of the State. I
left the road and went around through a stretch of pasture that was
always cropped short in summer, where the gaillardia came up year
after year and matted over the ground with the deep, velvety red that
is in Bokhara carpets. The country was empty and solitary except for
the
larks that Sunday morning, and it seemed to lift itself up to me and
to come very close.
The river was running strong for midsummer; heavy
rains to the west of us had kept it full. I crossed the bridge and
went upstream along the wooded shore to a pleasant dressing-room I
knew among the dogwood bushes, all overgrown with wild grapevines. I
began to undress for a swim. The girls would not be along yet. For the
first time it occurred to me that I would be homesick for that river
after I left it. The sandbars, with their clean white beaches and
their little groves of willows and cottonwood seedlings, were a sort
of No Mans Land, little newly-created worlds that belonged to
the Black Hawk boys. Charley Harling and I had hunted through these
woods, fished from the fallen logs, until I knew every inch of the
river shores and had a friendly feeling for every bar and shallow.
After my swim, while I was playing about indolently
in the water, I heard the sound of hoofs and wheels on the bridge. I
struck downstream and shouted, as the open spring wagon came into view
on the middle span. They stopped the horse, and the two girls in the
bottom of the cart stood up, steadying
themselves by the shoulders of the two in front, so that they could
see me better. They were charming up there, huddled together in the
cart and peering down at me like curious deer when they come out of
the thicket to drink. I found bottom near the bridge and stood up,
waving to them.
How pretty you look! I called.
So do you! they shouted altogether, and
broke into peals of laughter. Anna Hansen shook the reins and they
drove on, while I zigzagged back to my inlet and clambered up behind
an overhanging elm. I dried myself in the sun, and dressed slowly,
reluctant to leave that green enclosure where the sunlight flickered
so bright through the grapevine leaves and the woodpecker hammered
away in the crooked elm that trailed out over the water. As I went
along the road back to the bridge I kept picking off little pieces of
scaly chalk from the dried water gullies, and breaking them up in my
hands.
When I came upon the Marshalls delivery horse,
tied in the shade, the girls had already taken their baskets and gone
down the east road which wound through the sand and scrub. I could
hear them calling to each other. The
elder bushes did not grow back in the shady ravines between the
bluffs, but in the hot, sandy bottoms along the stream, where their
roots were always in moisture and their tops in the sun. The blossoms
were unusually luxuriant and beautiful that summer.
I followed a cattle path through the thick underbrush
until I came to a slope that fell away abruptly to the waters
edge. A great chunk of the shore had been bitten out by some spring
freshet, and the scar was masked by elder bushes, growing down to the
water in flowery terraces. I did not touch them. I was overcome by
content and drowsiness and by the warm silence about me. There was no
sound but the high, sing-song buzz of wild bees and the sunny gurgle
of the water underneath. I peeped over the edge of the bank to see the
little stream that made the noise; it flowed along perfectly clear
over the sand and gravel, cut off from the muddy main current by a
long sandbar. Down there, on the lower shelf of the bank, I saw
Ántonia, seated alone under the pagoda-like elders. She looked
up when she heard me, and smiled, but I saw that she had been crying.
I slid down into the soft sand beside her and asked her what was the
matter.
It makes me homesick, Jimmy, this flower, this
smell, she said softly. We have this flower very much at
home, in the old country. It always grew in our yard and my papa had a
green bench and a table under the bushes. In summer, when they were in
bloom, he used to sit there with his friend that played the trombone.
When I was little I used to go down there to hear them talkbeautiful talk, like what I never hear in this country.
What did they talk about? I asked
her.
She sighed and shook her head. Oh, I
don t know! About music, and the woods, and about God, and when
they were young. She turned to me suddenly and looked into my
eyes. You think, Jimmy, that maybe my fathers spirit can
go back to those old places?
I told her about the feeling of her fathers
presence I had on that winter day when my grandparents had gone over
to see his dead body and I was left alone in the house. I said I felt
sure then that he was on his way back to his own country, and that
even now, when I passed his grave, I always thought of him as being
among the woods and fields that were so dear to him.
Ántonia had the most trusting, responsive
eyes in the world; love and credulousness seemed to look out of them
with open faces. Why did nt you ever tell me that
before? It makes me feel more sure for him. After a while she
said: You know, Jim, my father was different from my mother. He
did not have to marry my mother, and all his brothers quarreled with
him because he did. I used to hear the old people at home whisper
about it. They said he could have paid my mother money, and not
married her. But he was older than she was, and he was too kind to
treat her like that. He lived in his mothers house, and she was
a poor girl come in to do the work. After my father married her, my
grandmother never let my mother come into her house again. When I went
to my grandmothers funeral was the only time I was ever in my
grandmothers house. Don t that seem strange?
While she talked, I lay back in the hot sand and
looked up at the blue sky between the flat bouquets of elder. I could
hear the bees humming and singing, but they stayed up in the sun above
the flowers and did not come down into the shadow of the leaves.
Ántonia seemed to me that day exactly like the
little girl who used to come to our house with Mr.
Shimerda.
Some day, Tony, I am going over to your
country, and I am going to the little town where you lived. Do you
remember all about it?
Jim, she said earnestly, if I
was put down there in the middle of the night, I could find my way all
over that little town; and along the river to the next town, where my
grandmother lived. My feet remember all the little paths through the
woods, and where the big roots stick out to trip you. I ain t
never forgot my own country.
There was a crackling in the branches above us, and
Lena Lingard peered down over the edge of the bank.
You lazy things! she cried. All
this elder, and you two lying there! Did nt you hear us calling
you? Almost as flushed as she had been in my dream, she leaned
over the edge of the bank and began to demolish our flowery pagoda. I
had never seen her so energetic; she was panting with zeal, and the
perspiration stood in drops on her short, yielding upper lip. I sprang
to my feet and ran up the bank.
It was noon now, and so hot that the dogwoods and
scrub-oaks began to turn up the silvery under-side of their leaves,
and all the foliage looked soft and wilted. I carried the lunch-basket
to the top of one of the chalk bluffs, where even on the calmest days
there was always a breeze. The flat-topped, twisted little oaks threw
light shadows on the grass. Below us we could see the windings of the
river, and Black Hawk, grouped among its trees, and, beyond, the
rolling country, swelling gently until it met the sky. We could
recognize familiar farmhouses and windmills. Each of the girls pointed
out to me the direction in which her fathers farm lay, and told
me how many acres were in wheat that year and how many in corn.
My old folks, said Tiny Soderball,
have put in twenty acres of rye. They get it ground at the
mill, and it makes nice bread. It seems like my mother ain t
been so homesick, ever since fathers raised rye flour for
her.
It must have been a trial for our
mothers, said Lena, coming out here and having to do
everything different. My mother had always lived in town. She says she
started behind in farm-work, and never has caught up.
Yes, a new countrys hard on the old
ones, sometimes, said Anna thoughtfully. My
grandmothers getting feeble now, and her mind wanders.
Shes forgot about this country, and thinks shes at home
in Norway. She keeps asking mother to take her down to the waterside
and the fish market. She craves fish all the time. Whenever I go home
I take her canned salmon and mackerel.
Mercy, its hot! Lena yawned. She
was supine under a little oak, resting after the fury of her
elder-hunting, and had taken off the high-heeled slippers she had been
silly enough to wear. Come here, Jim. You never got the sand
out of your hair. She began to draw her fingers slowly through
my hair.
Ántonia pushed her away. You ll
never get it out like that, she said sharply. She gave my head
a rough touzling and finished me off with something like a box on the
ear. Lena, you ought nt to try to wear those slippers
any more. They re too small for your feet. You d better
give them to me for Yulka.
All right, said Lena good-naturedly,
tucking her white stockings under her skirt. You get all
Yulkas things, don t you? I
wish father did nt have such bad luck with his farm machinery;
then I could buy more things for my sisters. Im going to get
Mary a new coat this fall, if the sulky ploughs never paid
for!
Tiny asked her why she did nt wait until after
Christmas, when coats would be cheaper. What do you think of
poor me? she added; with six at home, younger than I am?
And they all think Im rich, because when I go back to the
country Im dressed so fine! She shrugged her shoulders.
But, you know, my weakness is playthings. I like to buy them
playthings better than what they need.
I know how that is, said Anna.
When we first came here, and I was little, we were too poor to
buy toys. I never got over the loss of a doll somebody gave me before
we left Norway. A boy on the boat broke her, and I still hate him for
it.
I guess after you got here you had plenty of
live dolls to nurse, like me! Lena remarked cynically.
Yes, the babies came along pretty fast, to be
sure. But I never minded. I was fond of them all. The youngest one,
that we did nt any of us want, is the one we love best
now.
Lena sighed. Oh, the babies are all right; if
only they don t come in winter. Ours nearly always did. I
don t see how mother stood it. I tell you
what
girls, she sat up with sudden energy; Im going to
get my mother out of that old sod house where shes lived so
many years. The men will never do it. Johnnie, thats my oldest
brother, hes wanting to get married now, and build a house for
his girl instead of his mother. Mrs. Thomas says she
thinks I can move to some other town pretty soon, and go into business
for myself. If I don t get into business, I ll maybe marry
a rich gambler.
That would be a poor way to get on,
said Anna sarcastically. I wish I could teach school, like
Selma Kronn. Just think! She ll be the first Scandinavian girl
to get a position in the High School. We ought to be proud of
her.
Selma was a studious girl, who had not much tolerance
for giddy things like Tiny and Lena; but they always spoke of her with
admiration.
Tiny moved about restlessly, fanning herself with her
straw hat. If I was smart like her, I d be at my books
day and night. But
she was born smartand look how her fathers trained
her! He was something high up in the old country.
So was my mothers father,
murmured Lena, but thats all the good it does us! My
fathers father was smart, too, but he was wild. He married a
Lapp. I guess thats whats the matter with me; they say
Lapp blood will out.
A real Lapp, Lena? I exclaimed.
The kind that wear skins?
I don t know if she wore skins, but she
was a Lapp all right, and his folks felt dreadful about it. He was
sent up north on some Government job he had, and fell in with her. He
would marry her.
But I thought Lapland women were fat and ugly,
and had squint eyes, like Chinese? I objected.
I don t know, maybe. There must be
something mighty taking about the Lapp girls, though; mother says the
Norwegians up north are always afraid their boys will run after
them.
In the afternoon, when the heat was less oppressive,
we had a lively game of Pussy Wants a Corner, on the
flat bluff-top, with
the little trees for bases. Lena was Pussy so often that she finally
said she would nt play any more. We threw ourselves down on the
grass, out of breath.
Jim, Ántonia said dreamily,
I want you to tell the girls about how the Spanish first came
here, like you and Charley Harling used to talk about. I ve
tried to tell them, but I leave out so much.
They sat under a little oak, Tony resting against the
trunk and the other girls leaning against her and each other, and
listened to the little I was able to tell them about Coronado and his
search for the Seven Golden Cities. At school we were taught that he
had not got so far north as Nebraska, but had given up his quest and
turned back somewhere in Kansas. But Charley Harling and I had a
strong belief that he had been along this very river. A farmer in the
county north of ours, when he was breaking sod, had turned up a metal
stirrup of fine workmanship, and a sword with a Spanish inscription on
the blade. He lent these relics to Mr. Harling, who
brought them home with him. Charley and I scoured them, and they were
on exhibition in the Harling office all summer. Father Kelly, the
priest, had found the name of the Spanish maker on the sword, and an
abbreviation that stood for the city of Cordova.
And that I saw with my own eyes,
Ántonia put in triumphantly. So Jim and Charley were
right, and the teachers were wrong!
The girls began to wonder among themselves. Why had
the Spaniards come so far? What must this country have been like,
then? Why had Coronado never gone back to Spain, to his riches and his
castles and his king? I could nt tell them. I only knew the
school books said he died in the wilderness, of a broken
heart.
More than him has done that, said
Ántonia sadly, and the girls murmured assent.
We sat looking off across the country, watching the
sun go down. The curly grass about us was on fire now. The bark of the
oaks turned red as copper. There was a shimmer of gold on the brown
river. Out in the stream the sandbars glittered like glass, and the
light trembled in the willow thickets as if little flames were leaping
among them. The breeze sank to stillness. In the ravine a ringdove
mourned plaintively, and somewhere
off in the bushes an owl hooted. The girls sat listless, leaning
against each other. The long fingers of the sun touched their
foreheads.
Presently we saw a curious thing: There were no
clouds, the sun was going down in a limpid, gold-washed sky. Just as
the lower edge of the red disc rested on the high fields against the
horizon, a great black figure suddenly appeared on the face of the
sun. We sprang to our feet, straining our eyes toward it. In a moment
we realized what it was. On some upland farm, a plough had been left
standing in the field. The sun was sinking just behind it. Magnified
across the distance by the horizontal light, it stood out against the
sun, was exactly contained within the circle of the disc; the handles,
the tongue, the shareblack against the molten red. There it
was, heroic in size, a picture writing on the sun.
Even while we whispered about it, our vision
disappeared; the ball dropped and dropped until the red tip went
beneath the earth. The fields below us were dark, the sky was growing
pale, and that forgotten plough had sunk back to its own littleness
somewhere on the prairie.
XV
Late in August the
Cutters went to Omaha for a few days, leaving Ántonia in charge
of the house. Since the scandal about the Swedish girl, Wick Cutter
could never get his wife to stir out of Black Hawk without him.
The day after the Cutters left, Ántonia came
over to see us. Grandmother noticed that she seemed troubled and
distracted. You ve got something on your mind,
Ántonia, she said anxiously.
Yes, Mrs. Burden. I could
nt sleep much last night. She hesitated, and then told
us how strangely Mr. Cutter had behaved before he went
away. He put all the silver in a basket and placed it under her bed,
and with it a box of papers which he told her were valuable. He made
her promise that she would not sleep away from the house, or be out
late in the evening, while he was gone. He strictly forbade her to ask
any of the girls she knew to stay with her at night. She would be
perfectly safe, he said, as he had just put a new Yale lock on the
front door.
Cutter had been so insistent in regard to these
details that now she felt uncomfortable about staying there alone. She
had nt liked the way he kept coming into the kitchen to
instruct her, or the way he looked at her. I feel as if he is
up to some of his tricks again, and is going to try to scare me,
somehow.
Grandmother was apprehensive at once. I
don t think its right for you to stay there, feeling that
way. I suppose it would nt be right for you to leave the place
alone, either, after giving your word. Maybe Jim would be willing to
go over there and sleep, and you could come here nights. I d
feel safer, knowing you were under my own roof. I guess Jim could take
care of their silver and old usury notes as well as you
could.
Ántonia turned to me eagerly. Oh, would
you, Jim? I d make up my bed nice and fresh for you. Its
a real cool room, and the beds right next the window. I was
afraid to leave the window open last night.
I liked my own room, and I did nt like the
Cutters house under any circumstances; but Tony looked so
troubled that I consented to try this arrangement. I found that I
slept there as well as anywhere, and when I got
home in the morning, Tony had a good breakfast waiting for me. After
prayers she sat down at the table with us, and it was like old times
in the country.
The third night I spent at the Cutters, I
awoke suddenly with the impression that I had heard a door open and
shut. Everything was still, however, and I must have gone to sleep
again immediately.
The next thing I knew, I felt some one sit down on
the edge of the bed. I was only half awake, but I decided that he
might take the Cutters silver, whoever he was. Perhaps if I did
not move, he would find it and get out without troubling me. I held my
breath and lay absolutely still. A hand closed softly on my shoulder,
and at the same moment I felt something hairy and cologne-scented
brushing my face. If the room had suddenly been flooded with electric
light, I could nt have seen more clearly the detestable bearded
countenance that I knew was bending over me. I caught a handful of
whiskers and pulled, shouting something. The hand that held my
shoulder was instantly at my throat. The man became insane; he stood
over me, choking me with one fist and beating me in
the face with the other, hissing and chuckling and letting out a flood
of abuse.
So this is what shes up to when
Im away, is it? Where is she, you nasty whelp, where is she?
Under the bed, are you, hussy? I know your tricks! Wait till I get at
you! I ll fix this rat you ve got in here. Hes
caught, all right!
So long as Cutter had me by the throat, there was no
chance for me at all. I got hold of his thumb and bent it back, until
he let go with a yell. In a bound, I was on my feet, and easily sent
him sprawling to the floor. Then I made a dive for the open window,
struck the wire screen, knocked it out, and tumbled after it into the
yard.
Suddenly I found myself running across the north end
of Black Hawk in my nightshirt, just as one sometimes finds
ones self behaving in bad dreams. When I got home I climbed in
at the kitchen window. I was covered with blood from my nose and lip,
but I was too sick to do anything about it. I found a shawl and an
overcoat on the hatrack, lay down on the parlor sofa, and in spite of
my hurts, went to sleep.
Grandmother found me there in the
morning. Her cry of fright awakened me. Truly, I was a battered
object. As she helped me to my room, I caught a glimpse of myself in
the mirror. My lip was cut and stood out like a snout. My nose looked
like a big blue plum, and one eye was swollen shut and hideously
discolored. Grandmother said we must have the doctor at once, but I
implored her, as I had never begged for anything before, not to send
for him. I could stand anything, I told her, so long as nobody saw me
or knew what had happened to me. I entreated her not to let
grandfather, even, come into my room. She seemed to understand, though
I was too faint and miserable to go into explanations. When she took
off my nightshirt, she found such bruises on my chest and shoulders
that she began to cry. She spent the whole morning bathing and
poulticing me, and rubbing me with arnica. I heard Ántonia
sobbing outside my door, but I asked grandmother to send her away. I
felt that I never wanted to see her again. I hated her almost as much
as I hated Cutter. She had let me in for all this disgustingness.
Grandmother kept saying how thankful we ought to be that I had been
there instead of Ántonia. But I lay with my
disfigured face to the wall and felt no particular gratitude. My one
concern was that grandmother should keep every one away from me. If
the story once got abroad, I would never hear the last of it. I could
well imagine what the old men down at the drug-store would do with
such a theme.
While grandmother was trying to make me comfortable,
grandfather went to the depot and learned that Wick Cutter had come
home on the night express from the east, and had left again on the six
o clock train for Denver that morning. The agent said his face
was striped with court-plaster, and he carried his left hand in a
sling. He looked so used up, that the agent asked him what had
happened to him since ten o clock the night before; whereat
Cutter began to swear at him and said he would have him discharged for
incivility.
That afternoon, while I was asleep, Ántonia
took grandmother with her, and went over to the Cutters to pack
her trunk. They found the place locked up, and they had to break the
window to get into Ántonias bedroom. There everything
was in shocking disorder. Her clothes had been taken out of her
closet, thrown into the middle of the room, and
trampled and torn. My own garments had been treated so badly that I
never saw them again; grandmother burned them in the Cutters
kitchen range.
While Ántonia was packing her trunk and
putting her room in order, to leave it, the front-door bell rang
violently. There stood Mrs. Cutter,locked out,
for she had no key to the new lockher head trembling with
rage. I advised her to control herself, or she would have a
stroke, grandmother said afterwards.
Grandmother would not let her see Ántonia at
all, but made her sit down in the parlor while she related to her just
what had occurred the night before. Ántonia was frightened, and
was going home to stay for a while, she told Mrs. Cutter;
it would be useless to interrogate the girl, for she knew nothing of
what had happened.
Then Mrs. Cutter told her story. She and
her husband had started home from Omaha together the morning before.
They had to stop over several hours at Waymore Junction to catch the
Black Hawk train. During the wait, Cutter left her at the depot and
went to the Waymore bank to attend to some business. When he returned,
he told her that he
would have to stay overnight there, but she could go on home. He
bought her ticket and put her on the train. She saw him slip a
twenty-dollar bill into her handbag with her ticket. That bill, she
said, should have aroused her suspicions at oncebut did
not.
The trains are never called at little junction towns;
everybody knows when they come in. Mr. Cutter showed his
wifes ticket to the conductor, and settled her in her seat
before the train moved off. It was not until nearly nightfall that she
discovered she was on the express bound for Kansas City, that her
ticket was made out to that point, and that Cutter must have planned
it so. The conductor told her the Black Hawk train was due at Waymore
twelve minutes after the Kansas City train left. She saw at once that
her husband had played this trick in order to get back to Black Hawk
without her. She had no choice but to go on to Kansas City and take
the first fast train for home.
Cutter could have got home a day earlier than his
wife by any one of a dozen simpler devices; he could have left her in
the Omaha hotel, and said he was going on to Chicago for
a few days. But apparently it was part of his fun to outrage her
feelings as much as possible.
Mr. Cutter will pay for this,
Mrs. Burden. He will pay! Mrs. Cutter
avouched, nodding her horselike head and rolling her eyes.
Grandmother said she had nt a doubt of it.
Certainly Cutter liked to have his wife think him a
devil. In some way he depended upon the excitement he could arouse in
her hysterical nature. Perhaps he got the feeling of being a rake more
from his wifes rage and amazement than from any experiences of
his own. His zest in debauchery might wane, but never
Mrs. Cutters belief in it. The reckoning with his
wife at the end of an escapade was something he counted onlike the last powerful liqueur after a long dinner. The one excitement
he really could nt do without was quarreling with
Mrs. Cutter!
Book IIILena Lingard
I
At the University
I had the good fortune to come immediately under the influence of a
brilliant and inspiring young scholar. Gaston Cleric had arrived in
Lincoln only a few weeks earlier than I, to begin his work as head of
the Latin Department. He came West at the suggestion of his
physicians, his health having been enfeebled by a long illness in
Italy. When I took my entrance examinations he was my examiner, and my
course was arranged under his supervision.
I did not go home for my first summer vacation, but
stayed in Lincoln, working off a years Greek, which had been my
only condition on entering the Freshman class. Clerics doctor
advised against his going back to New England, and except for a few
weeks in Colorado, he, too, was in Lincoln all that summer. We played
tennis, read, and took long walks together. I shall always look back
on that
time of mental awakening as one of the happiest in my life. Gaston
Cleric introduced me to the world of ideas; when one first enters that
world everything else fades for a time, and all that went before is as
if it had not been. Yet I found curious survivals; some of the figures
of my old life seemed to be waiting for me in the new.
In those days there were many serious young men among
the students who had come up to the University from the farms and the
little towns scattered over the thinly settled State. Some of those
boys came straight from the cornfields with only a summers
wages in their pockets, hung on through the four years, shabby and
underfed, and completed the course by really heroic self-sacrifice.
Our instructors were oddly assorted; wandering pioneer
school-teachers, stranded ministers of the Gospel, a few enthusiastic
young men just out of graduate schools. There was an atmosphere of
endeavor, of expectancy and bright hopefulness about the young college
that had lifted its head from the prairie only a few years before.
Our personal life was as free as that of our
instructors. There were no college dormitories;
we lived where we could and as we could. I took rooms with an old
couple, early settlers in Lincoln, who had married off their children
and now lived quietly in their house at the edge of town, near the
open country. The house was inconveniently situated for students, and
on that account I got two rooms for the price of one. My bedroom,
originally a linen closet, was unheated and was barely large enough to
contain my cot bed, but it enabled me to call the other room my study.
The dresser, and the great walnut wardrobe which held all my clothes,
even my hats and shoes, I had pushed out of the way, and I considered
them non-existent, as children eliminate incongruous objects when they
are playing house. I worked at a commodious green-topped table placed
directly in front of the west window which looked out over the
prairie. In the corner at my right were all my books, in shelves I had
made and painted myself. On the blank wall at my left the dark,
old-fashioned wall-paper was covered by a large map of ancient Rome,
the work of some German scholar. Cleric had ordered it for me when he
was sending for books from abroad. Over the bookcase hung a
photograph of the Tragic Theater at Pompeii, which he had given me
from his collection.
When I sat at work I half faced a deep, upholstered
chair which stood at the end of my table, its high back against the
wall. I had bought it with great care. My instructor sometimes looked
in upon me when he was out for an evening tramp, and I noticed that he
was more likely to linger and become talkative if I had a comfortable
chair for him to sit in, and if he found a bottle of
Benedictine and plenty of the kind of cigarettes he
liked, at his elbow. He was, I had discovered, parsimonious about
small expendituresa trait absolutely inconsistent with his
general character. Sometimes when he came he was silent and moody, and
after a few sarcastic remarks went away again, to tramp the streets of
Lincoln, which were almost as quiet and oppressively domestic as those
of Black Hawk. Again, he would sit until nearly midnight, talking
about Latin and English poetry, or telling me about his long stay in
Italy.
I can give no idea of the peculiar charm and
vividness of his talk. In a crowd he was nearly always silent. Even
for his classroom he had no platitudes, no stock of professorial
anecdotes. When he was tired his lectures were clouded, obscure,
elliptical; but when he was interested they were wonderful. I believe
that Gaston Cleric narrowly missed being a great poet, and I have
sometimes thought that his bursts of imaginative talk were fatal to
his poetic gift. He squandered too much in the heat of personal
communication. How often I have seen him draw his dark brows together,
fix his eyes upon some object on the wall or a figure in the carpet,
and then flash into the lamplight the very image that was in his
brain. He could bring the drama of antique life before one out of the
shadowswhite figures against blue backgrounds. I shall never
forget his face as it looked one night when he told me about the
solitary day he spent among the sea temples at Paestum: the soft wind
blowing through the roofless columns, the birds flying low over the
flowering marsh grasses, the changing lights on the silver, cloud-hung
mountains. He had willfully stayed the short summer night there,
wrapped in his coat and rug, watching the constellations on their path
down the sky until the bride of old Tithonus rose out of
the sea, and the mountains stood sharp in the dawn. It
was there he caught the fever which held him back on the eve of his
departure for Greece and of which he lay ill so long in Naples. He was
still, indeed, doing penance for it.
I remember vividly another evening, when something
led us to talk of Dantes veneration for Virgil. Cleric went
through canto after canto of the Commedia, repeating the
discourse between Dante and his sweet teacher, while his
cigarette burned itself out unheeded between his long fingers. I can
hear him now, speaking the lines of the poet Statius, who spoke for
Dante: I was famous on earth with the name
which endures longest and honors most. The seeds of my ardor were the
sparks from that divine flame whereby more than a thousand have
kindled; I speak of the Aneid, mother to me and nurse to me in
poetry.
Although I admired scholarship so much in Cleric, I
was not deceived about myself; I knew that I should never be a
scholar. I could never lose myself for long among impersonal things.
Mental excitement was apt to send me with a rush back to my own naked
land and the figures scattered upon it. While I was in the very act of
yearning toward the new forms that Cleric brought up before me, my
mind plunged away from me, and I suddenly found myself thinking of the
places and people of my own infinitesimal past. They stood out
strengthened and simplified now, like the image of the plough against
the sun. They were all I had for an answer to the new appeal. I
begrudged the room that Jake and Otto and Russian Peter took up in my
memory, which I wanted to crowd with other things. But whenever my
consciousness was quickened, all those early friends were quickened
within it, and in some strange way they accompanied me through all my
new experiences. They were so much alive in me that I scarcely stopped
to wonder whether they were alive anywhere else, or how.
II
One March evening
in my Sophomore year I was sitting alone in my room after supper.
There had been a warm thaw all day, with mushy yards and little
streams of dark water gurgling cheerfully into the streets out of old
snow-banks. My window was open, and the earthy wind blowing through
made me indolent. On the edge of the prairie, where the sun had gone
down, the sky was turquoise blue, like a lake, with gold light
throbbing in it. Higher up, in the utter clarity of the western slope,
the evening star hung like a lamp suspended by silver chainslike the lamp engraved upon the title-page of old Latin texts, which
is always appearing in new heavens, and waking new desires in men. It
reminded me, at any rate, to shut my window and light my wick in
answer. I did so regretfully, and the dim objects in the room emerged
from the shadows and took their place about me with the helpfulness
which custom breeds.
I propped my book open and stared listlessly at the
page of the Georgics where
to-morrows lesson began. It opened with the melancholy
reflection that, in the lives of mortals, the best days are the first
to flee. Optima dies...
prima fugit. I turned back to the beginning of the third
book, which we had read in class that morning. Primus ego in patriam mecum...
deducam Musas; for I shall be the first, if I live,
to bring the Muse into my country. Cleric had explained to us
that patria
here meant, not a nation or even a province, but the little rural
neighborhood on the Mincio where the poet was born. This was not a
boast, but a hope, at once bold and devoutly humble, that he might
bring the Muse (but lately come to Italy from her cloudy Grecian
mountains), not to the capital, the
palatia Romana, but to his own
little country; to his fathers fields,
sloping down to the river and to the old beech trees with
broken tops.
Cleric said he thought Virgil, when he was dying at
Brindisi, must have remembered that passage. After he had faced the
bitter fact that he was to leave the Aneid unfinished, and had
decreed that the great canvas, crowded with figures of gods and men,
should be burned rather than survive him unperfected, then his
mind must have gone back to the perfect utterance of
the Georgics, where the pen was fitted to the matter as the plough is
to the furrow; and he must have said to himself with the thankfulness
of a good man, I was the first to bring the Muse into my
country.
We left the classroom quietly, conscious that we had
been brushed by the wing of a great feeling, though perhaps I alone
knew Cleric intimately enough to guess what that feeling was. In the
evening, as I sat staring at my book, the fervor of his voice stirred
through the quantities on the page before me. I was wondering whether
that particular rocky strip of New England coast about which he had so
often told me was Clerics
patria. Before I had got far
with my reading I was disturbed by a knock. I hurried to the door and
when I opened it saw a woman standing in the dark hall.
I expect you hardly know me, Jim.
The voice seemed familiar, but I did not recognize
her until she stepped into the light of my doorway and I beheldLena Lingard! She was so quietly conventionalized by city
clothes that I might have passed her on the street without seeing her.
Her black suit fitted
her figure smoothly, and a black lace hat, with pale-blue
forget-me-nots, sat demurely on her yellow hair.
I led her toward Clerics chair, the only
comfortable one I had, questioning her confusedly.
She was not disconcerted by my embarrassment. She
looked about her with the naive curiosity I remembered so well.
You are quite comfortable here, are nt you? I live in
Lincoln now, too, Jim. Im in business for myself. I have a
dressmaking shop in the Raleigh Block, out on O Street. I ve
made a real good start.
But, Lena, when did you come?
Oh, I ve been here all winter. Did
nt your grandmother ever write you? I ve thought about
looking you up lots of times. But we ve all heard what a
studious young man you ve got to be, and I felt bashful. I did
nt know whether you d be glad to see me. She
laughed her mellow, easy laugh, that was either very artless or very
comprehending, one never quite knew which. You seem the same,
though,except you re a young man, now, of course. Do
you think I ve changed?
Maybe you re prettierthough you
were always pretty enough. Perhaps its your clothes that make a
difference.
You like my new suit? I have to dress pretty
well in my business. She took off her jacket and sat more at
ease in her blouse, of some soft, flimsy silk. She was already at home
in my place, had slipped quietly into it, as she did into everything.
She told me her business was going well, and she had saved a little
money.
This summer Im going to build the house
for mother I ve talked about so long. I won t be able to
pay up on it at first, but I want her to have it before she is too old
to enjoy it. Next summer I ll take her down new furniture and
carpets, so she ll have something to look forward to all
winter.
I watched Lena sitting there so smooth and sunny and
well cared-for, and thought of how she used to run barefoot over the
prairie until after the snow began to fly, and how Crazy Mary chased
her round and round the cornfields. It seemed to me wonderful that she
should have got on so well in the world. Certainly she had no one but
herself to thank for it.
You must feel proud of yourself, Lena,
I said heartily. Look at me; I ve never earned a dollar,
and I don t know that I ll ever be able to.
Tony says you re going to be richer than
Mr. Harling some day. Shes always bragging about
you, you know.
Tell me, how is
Tony?
Shes fine. She works for
Mrs. Gardener at the hotel now. Shes housekeeper.
Mrs. Gardeners health is nt what it was,
and she can t see after everything like she used to. She has
great confidence in Tony. Tonys made it up with the Harlings,
too. Little Nina is so fond of her that Mrs. Harling kind
of overlooked things.
Is she still going with Larry
Donovan?
Oh, thats on, worse than ever! I guess
they re engaged. Tony talks about him like he was president of
the railroad. Everybody laughs about it, because she was never a girl
to be soft. She won t hear a word against him. Shes so
sort of innocent.
I said I did nt like Larry, and never
would.
Lenas face dimpled. Some of us could
tell her things, but it would nt do any good. She d
always believe him. Thats Ántonias
failing, you know; if she once likes people, she won t hear
anything against them.
I think I d better go home and look
after Ántonia, I said.
I think you had. Lena looked up at me
in frank amusement. Its a good thing the Harlings are
friendly with her again. Larrys afraid of them. They ship so
much grain, they have influence with the railroad people. What are you
studying? She leaned her elbows on the table and drew my book
toward her. I caught a faint odor of violet sachet. So
thats Latin, is it? It looks hard. You do go to the theater
sometimes, though, for I ve seen you there. Don t you just
love a good play, Jim? I can t stay at home in the evening if
theres one in town. I d be willing to work like a slave,
it seems to me, to live in a place where there are theaters.
Lets go to a show together sometime.
You are going to let me come to see you, are nt you?
Would you like to? I d be ever so
pleased. Im never busy after six o clock, and I let my
sewing girls go at half-past five. I board, to save time, but
sometimes I cook a chop for myself, and I d be glad to cook one
for you.
Well,she began to put on her white gloves, its been awful good to see you, Jim.
You need nt hurry, need you?
You ve hardly told me anything yet.
We can talk when you come to see me. I expect
you don t often have lady visitors. The old woman downstairs did
nt want to let me come up very much. I told her I was from your
home town, and had promised your grandmother to come and see you. How
surprised Mrs. Burden would be! Lena laughed
softly as she rose.
When I caught up my hat she shook her head.
No, I don t want you to go with me. Im to meet
some Swedes at the drug-store. You would nt care for them. I
wanted to see your room so I could write Tony all about it, but I must
tell her how I left you right here with your books. Shes always
so afraid some one will run off with you! Lena slipped her silk
sleeves into the jacket I held for her, smoothed it over her person,
and buttoned it slowly. I walked with her to the door. Come and
see me sometimes when you re lonesome. But maybe you have all
the friends you want. Have you? She turned her soft cheek to
me. Have you? she whispered
teasingly in my ear. In a moment I watched her fade down the dusky
stairway.
When I turned back to my room the place seemed much
pleasanter than before. Lena had left something warm and friendly in
the lamplight. How I loved to hear her laugh again! It was so soft and
unexcited and appreciativegave a favorable interpretation to
everything. When I closed my eyes I could hear them all laughingthe Danish laundry girls and the three Bohemian Marys. Lena
had brought them all back to me. It came over me, as it had never done
before, the relation between girls like those and the poetry of
Virgil. If there were no girls like them in the world, there would be
no poetry. I understood that clearly, for the first time. This
revelation seemed to me inestimably precious. I clung to it as if it
might suddenly vanish.
As I sat down to my book at last, my old dream about
Lena coming across the harvest field in her short skirt seemed to me
like the memory of an actual experience. It floated before me on the
page like a picture, and underneath it stood the mournful line: Optima dies... prima
fugit.
III
In Lincoln the
best part of the theatrical season came late, when the good companies
stopped off there for one-night stands, after their long runs in New
York and Chicago. That spring Lena went with me to see Joseph
Jefferson in Rip Van Winkle, and to a war play called
Shenandoah. She was inflexible about paying for her own
seat; said she was in business now, and she would nt have a
schoolboy spending his money on her. I liked to watch a play with
Lena; everything was wonderful to her, and everything was true. It was
like going to revival meetings with some one who was always being
converted. She handed her feelings over to the actors with a kind of
fatalistic resignation. Accessories of costume and scene meant much
more to her than to me. She sat entranced through Robin
Hood and hung upon the lips of the contralto who sang,
Oh, Promise Me!
Toward the end of April, the billboards, which I
watched anxiously in those days,
bloomed out one morning with gleaming white posters on which two names
were impressively printed in blue Gothic letters: the name of an
actress of whom I had often heard, and the name
Camille.
I called at the Raleigh Block for Lena on Saturday
evening, and we walked down to the theater. The weather was warm and
sultry and put us both in a holiday humor. We arrived early, because
Lena liked to watch the people come in. There was a note on the
programme, saying that the incidental music would be
from the opera Traviata, which was made from the same
story as the play. We had neither of us read the play, and we did not
know what it was aboutthough I seemed to remember having
heard it was a piece in which great actresses shone. The Count
of Monte Cristo, which I had seen James O Neill play that
winter, was by the only Alexandre Dumas I knew. This play, I saw, was
by his son, and I expected a family resemblance. A couple of
jack-rabbits, run in off the prairie, could not have been more
innocent of what awaited them than were Lena and I.
Our excitement began with the rise of the
curtain, when the moody Varville, seated before the fire, interrogated
Nanine. Decidedly, there was a new tang about this dialogue. I had
never heard in the theater lines that were alive, that presupposed and
took for granted, like those which passed between Varville and
Marguerite in the brief encounter before her friends entered. This
introduced the most brilliant, worldly, the most enchantingly gay
scene I had ever looked upon. I had never seen champagne bottles
opened on the stage beforeindeed, I had never seen them
opened anywhere. The memory of that supper makes me hungry now; the
sight of it then, when I had only a students boarding-house
dinner behind me, was delicate torment. I seem to remember gilded
chairs and tables (arranged hurriedly by footmen in white gloves and
stockings), linen of dazzling whiteness, glittering glass, silver
dishes, a great bowl of fruit, and the reddest of roses. The room was
invaded by beautiful women and dashing young men, laughing and talking
together. The men were dressed more or less after the period in which
the play was written; the women were not. I saw no inconsistency.
Their talk seemed
to open to one the brilliant world in which they lived; every sentence
made one older and wiser, every pleasantry enlarged ones
horizon. One could experience excess and satiety without the
inconvenience of learning what to do with ones hands in a
drawing-room! When the characters all spoke at once and I missed some
of the phrases they flashed at each other, I was in misery. I strained
my ears and eyes to catch every exclamation.
The actress who played Marguerite was even then
old-fashioned, though historic. She had been a member of Dalys
famous New York company, and afterward a star under his
direction. She was a woman who could not be taught, it is said, though
she had a crude natural force which carried with people whose feelings
were accessible and whose taste was not squeamish. She was already
old, with a ravaged countenance and a physique curiously hard and
stiff. She moved with difficultyI think she was lameI seem to remember some story about a malady of the spine. Her Armand
was disproportionately young and slight, a handsome youth, perplexed
in the extreme. But what did it matter? I believed devoutly in her
power to
fascinate him, in her dazzling loveliness. I believed her young,
ardent, reckless, disillusioned, under sentence, feverish, avid of
pleasure. I wanted to cross the footlights and help the slim-waisted
Armand in the frilled shirt to convince her that there was still
loyalty and devotion in the world. Her sudden illness, when the gayety
was at its height, her pallor, the handkerchief she crushed against
her lips, the cough she smothered under the laughter while Gaston kept
playing the piano lightlyit all wrung my heart. But not so
much as her cynicism in the long dialogue with her lover which
followed. How far was I from questioning her unbelief! While the
charmingly sincere young man pleaded with heraccompanied by
the orchestra in the old Traviata duet,
misterioso, misterioso!she maintained her bitter skepticism, and the curtain fell on
her dancing recklessly with the others, after Armand had been sent
away with his flower.
Between the acts we had no time to forget. The
orchestra kept sawing away at the Traviata music, so
joyous and sad, so thin and far-away, so clap-trap and yet so
heart-breaking. After the second act I left Lena in
tearful contemplation of the ceiling, and went out into the lobby to
smoke. As I walked about there I congratulated myself that I had not
brought some Lincoln girl who would talk during the waits about the
Junior dances, or whether the cadets would camp at Plattsmouth. Lena
was at least a woman, and I was a man.
Through the scene between Marguerite and the elder
Duval, Lena wept unceasingly, and I sat helpless to prevent the
closing of that chapter of idyllic love, dreading the return of the
young man whose ineffable happiness was only to be the measure of his
fall.
I suppose no woman could have been further in person,
voice, and temperament from Dumas appealing heroine than the
veteran actress who first acquainted me with her. Her conception of
the character was as heavy and uncompromising as her diction; she bore
hard on the idea and on the consonants. At all times she was highly
tragic, devoured by remorse. Lightness of stress or behavior was far
from her. Her voice was heavy and deep: Ar-r-r-mond! she
would begin, as if she were summoning him to the bar of Judgment. But
the lines were enough. She had
only to utter them. They created the character in spite of her.
The heartless world which Marguerite re-entered with
Varville had never been so glittering and reckless as on the night
when it gathered in Olympes salon for the fourth act. There
were chandeliers hung from the ceiling, I remember, many servants in
livery, gaming-tables where the men played with piles of gold, and a
staircase down which the guests made their entrance. After all the
others had gathered round the card tables, and young Duval had been
warned by Prudence, Marguerite descended the staircase with Varville;
such a cloak, such a fan, such jewelsand her face! One knew
at a glance how it was with her. When Armand, with the terrible words,
Look, all of you, I owe this woman nothing! flung the
gold and
bank-notes
at the half-swooning Marguerite, Lena cowered beside me and covered
her face with her hands.
The curtain rose on the bedroom scene. By this time
there was nt a nerve in me that had nt been twisted.
Nanine alone could have made me cry. I loved Nanine tenderly; and
Gaston, how one clung to that good
fellow! The New Years presents were not too much; nothing could
be too much now. I wept unrestrainedly. Even the handkerchief in my
breast-pocket, worn for elegance and not at all for use, was wet
through by the time that moribund woman sank for the last time into
the arms of her lover.
When we reached the door of the theater, the streets
were shining with rain. I had prudently brought along
Mrs. Harlings useful Commencement present, and I
took Lena home under its shelter. After leaving her, I walked slowly
out into the country part of the town where I lived. The lilacs were
all blooming in the yards, and the smell of them after the rain, of
the new leaves and the blossoms together, blew into my face with a
sort of bitter sweetness. I tramped through the puddles and under the
showery trees, mourning for Marguerite
Gauthier
as if she had died only yesterday, sighing with the spirit of 1840,
which had sighed so much, and which had reached me only that night,
across long years and several languages, through the person of an
infirm old actress. The idea is one that no circumstances can
frustrate. Wherever and whenever that piece is put on, it is April.
IV
How well I
remember the stiff little parlor where I used to wait for Lena: the
hard horsehair furniture, bought at some auction sale, the long
mirror, the fashion-plates on the wall. If I sat down even for a
moment I was sure to find threads and bits of colored silk clinging to
my clothes after I went away. Lenas success puzzled me. She was
so easy-going; had none of the push and self-assertiveness that get
people ahead in business. She had come to Lincoln, a country girl,
with no introductions except to some cousins of Mrs.
Thomas who lived there, and she was already making clothes for the
women of the young married set. She evidently had great
natural aptitude for her work. She knew, as she said, what
people looked well in. She never tired of poring over fashion
books. Sometimes in the evening I would find her alone in her
work-room, draping folds of satin on a wire figure, with a quite
blissful expression of countenance. I could nt help thinking
that the years when Lena literally
had nt enough clothes to cover herself might have something to
do with her untiring interest in dressing the human figure. Her
clients said that Lena had style, and overlooked her
habitual inaccuracies. She never, I discovered, finished anything by
the time she had promised, and she frequently spent more money on
materials than her customer had authorized. Once, when I arrived at
six o clock, Lena was ushering out a fidgety mother and her
awkward, overgrown daughter. The woman detained Lena at the door to
say apologetically:
You ll try to keep it under fifty for
me, won t you, Miss Lingard? You see, shes really too
young to come to an expensive dressmaker, but I knew you could do more
with her than anybody else.
Oh, that will be all right, Mrs.
Herron. I think we ll manage to get a good effect, Lena
replied blandly.
I thought her manner with her customers very good,
and wondered where she had learned such self-possession.
Sometimes after my morning classes were over, I used
to encounter Lena downtown, in her velvet suit and a little black hat,
with
a veil tied smoothly over her face, looking as fresh as the spring
morning. Maybe she would be carrying home a bunch of jonquils or a
hyacinth plant. When we passed a candy store her footsteps would
hesitate and linger. Don t let me go in, she would
murmur. Get me by if you can. She was very fond of
sweets, and was afraid of growing too plump.
We had delightful Sunday breakfasts together at
Lenas. At the back of her long work-room was a bay-window,
large enough to hold a box-couch and a reading-table. We breakfasted
in this recess, after drawing the curtains that shut out the long
room, with cutting-tables and wire women and sheet-draped garments on
the walls. The sunlight poured in, making everything on the table
shine and glitter and the flame of the alcohol lamp disappear
altogether. Lenas curly black water-spaniel, Prince,
breakfasted with us. He sat beside her on the couch and behaved very
well until the Polish violin-teacher across the hall began to
practice, when Prince would growl and sniff the air with disgust.
Lenas landlord, old Colonel Raleigh, had given her the dog, and
at first she was not at all pleased.
She had spent too much of her life taking care of animals to have much
sentiment about them. But Prince was a knowing little beast, and she
grew fond of him. After breakfast I made him do his lessons; play dead
dog, shake hands, stand up like a soldier. We used to put my cadet cap
on his headI had to take military drill at the Universityand give him a yard-measure to hold with his front leg. His
gravity made us laugh immoderately.
Lenas talk always amused me. Ántonia
had never talked like the people about her. Even after she learned to
speak English readily there was always something impulsive and foreign
in her speech. But Lena had picked up all the conventional expressions
she heard at Mrs. Thomass dressmaking shop. Those
formal phrases, the very flower of small-town proprieties, and the
flat commonplaces, nearly all hypocritical in their origin, became
very funny, very engaging, when they were uttered in Lenas soft
voice, with her caressing intonation and arch naivete.
Nothing could be more diverting than to hear Lena, who was almost as
candid as Nature, call a leg a limb or a house a
home.
We used to linger a long while over our coffee in
that sunny corner. Lena was never so pretty as in the morning; she
wakened fresh with the world every day, and her eyes had a deeper
color then, like the blue flowers that are never so blue as when they
first open. I could sit idle all through a Sunday morning and look at
her. Ole Bensons behavior was now no mystery to me.
There was never any harm in Ole, she
said once. People need nt have troubled themselves. He
just liked to come over and sit on the draw-side and forget about his
bad luck. I liked to have him. Any companys welcome when
you re off with cattle all the time.
But was nt he always glum? I
asked. People said he never talked at all.
Sure he talked, in Norwegian. He d been
a sailor on an English boat and had seen lots of queer places. He had
wonderful tattoos. We used to sit and look at them for hours; there
was nt much to look at out there. He was like a picture book.
He had a ship and a strawberry girl on one arm, and on the other a
girl standing before a little house, with a fence and gate and all,
waiting for
her sweetheart. Farther up his arm, her sailor had come back and was
kissing her. The Sailors Return, he called
it.
I admitted it was no wonder Ole liked to look at a
pretty girl once in a while, with such a fright at home.
You know, Lena said confidentially,
he married Mary because he thought she was strong-minded and
would keep him straight. He never could keep straight on shore. The
last time he landed in Liverpool he d been out on a two
years voyage. He was paid off one morning, and by the next he
had nt a cent left, and his watch and compass were gone.
He d got with some women, and they d taken everything. He
worked his way to this country on a little passenger boat. Mary was a
stewardess, and she tried to convert him on the way over. He thought
she was just the one to keep him steady. Poor Ole! He used to bring me
candy from town, hidden in his feed-bag. He could nt refuse
anything to a girl. He d have given away his tattoos long ago,
if he could. Hes one of the people Im sorriest
for.
If I happened to spend an evening with Lena and
stayed late, the Polish violin-teacher
across the hall used to come out and watch me descend the stairs,
muttering so threateningly that it would have been easy to fall into a
quarrel with him. Lena had told him once that she liked to hear him
practice, so he always left his door open, and watched who came and
went.
There was a coolness between the Pole and
Lenas landlord on her account. Old Colonel Raleigh had come to
Lincoln from Kentucky and invested an inherited fortune in real
estate, at the time of inflated prices. Now he sat day after day in
his office in the Raleigh Block, trying to discover where his money
had gone and how he could get some of it back. He was a widower, and
found very little congenial companionship in this casual Western city.
Lenas good looks and gentle manners appealed to him. He said
her voice reminded him of Southern voices, and he found as many
opportunities of hearing it as possible. He painted and papered her
rooms for her that spring, and put in a porcelain bathtub in place of
the tin one that had satisfied the former tenant. While these repairs
were being made, the old gentleman often dropped in to consult
Lenas preferences.
She told me with amusement how Ordinsky, the Pole, had presented
himself at her door one evening, and said that if the landlord was
annoying her by his attentions, he would promptly put a stop to it.
I don t exactly know what to do about
him, she said, shaking her head, hes so sort of
wild all the time. I would nt like to have him say anything
rough to that nice old man. The Colonel is long-winded, but then I
expect hes lonesome. I don t think he cares much for
Ordinsky, either. He said once that if I had any complaints to make of
my neighbors, I must nt hesitate.
One Saturday evening when I was having supper with
Lena we heard a knock at her parlor door, and there stood the Pole,
coatless, in a dress shirt and collar. Prince dropped on his paws and
began to growl like a mastiff, while the visitor apologized, saying
that he could not possibly come in thus attired, but he begged Lena to
lend him some safety pins.
Oh, you ll have to come in,
Mr. Ordinsky, and let me see whats the
matter. She closed the door behind him. Jim, won t
you make Prince behave?
I rapped Prince on the nose, while
Ordinsky explained that he had not had his dress clothes on for a long
time, and to-night, when he was going to play for a concert, his
waistcoat had split down the back. He thought he could pin it together
until he got it to a tailor.
Lena took him by the elbow and turned him round. She
laughed when she saw the long gap in the satin. You could never
pin that, Mr. Ordinsky. You ve kept it folded too
long, and the goods is all gone along the crease. Take it off. I can
put a new piece of lining-silk in there for you in ten minutes.
She disappeared into her work-room with the vest, leaving me to
confront the Pole, who stood against the door like a wooden figure. He
folded his arms and glared at me with his excitable, slanting brown
eyes. His head was the shape of a chocolate drop, and was covered with
dry, straw-colored hair that fuzzed up about his pointed crown. He had
never done more than mutter at me as I passed him, and I was surprised
when he now addressed me.
Miss Lingard, he said haughtily,
is a young woman for whom I have the utmost, the utmost
respect.
So have I, I said coldly.
He paid no heed to my remark, but began to do rapid
finger-exercises on his shirt-sleeves, as he stood with tightly folded
arms.
Kindness of heart, he went on, staring
at the ceiling, sentiment, are not understood in a place like
this. The noblest qualities are ridiculed. Grinning college boys,
ignorant and conceited, what do they know of delicacy!
I controlled my features and tried to speak
seriously.
If you mean me, Mr. Ordinsky, I
have known Miss Lingard a long time, and I think I appreciate her
kindness. We come from the same town, and we grew up
together.
His gaze traveled slowly down from the ceiling and
rested on me. Am I to understand that you have this young
womans interests at heart? That you do not wish to compromise
her?
Thats a word we don t use much
here, Mr. Ordinsky. A girl who makes her own living can
ask a college boy to supper without being talked about. We take some
things for granted.
Then I have misjudged you, and I ask
your pardon,he bowed gravely. Miss
Lingard, he went on, is an absolutely trustful heart.
She has not learned the hard lessons of life. As for you and me, noblesse oblige,he
watched me narrowly.
Lena returned with the vest. Come in and let
us look at you as you go out, Mr. Ordinsky. I ve
never seen you in your dress suit, she said as she opened the
door for him.
A few moments later he reappeared with his violin
casea heavy muffler about his neck and thick woolen gloves on
his bony hands. Lena spoke encouragingly to him, and he went off with
such an important, professional air, that we fell to laughing as soon
as we had shut the door. Poor fellow, Lena said
indulgently, he takes everything so hard.
After that Ordinsky was friendly to me, and behaved
as if there were some deep understanding between us. He wrote a
furious article, attacking the musical taste of the town, and asked me
to do him a great service by taking it to the editor of the morning
paper. If the editor refused to print it, I was to tell him that he
would be answerable to Ordinsky in person. He declared
that he would
never retract one word, and that he was quite prepared to lose all his
pupils. In spite of the fact that nobody ever mentioned his article to
him after it appearedfull of typographical errors which he
thought intentionalhe got a certain satisfaction from
believing that the citizens of Lincoln had meekly accepted the epithet
coarse barbarians. You see how it is, he
said to me, where there is no chivalry, there is no
amour propre. When I met
him on his rounds now, I thought he carried his head more disdainfully
than ever, and strode up the steps of front porches and rang doorbells
with more assurance. He told Lena he would never forget how I had
stood by him when he was under fire.
All this time, of course, I was drifting. Lena had
broken up my serious mood. I was nt interested in my classes. I
played with Lena and Prince, I played with the Pole, I went
buggy-riding with the old Colonel, who had taken a fancy to me and
used to talk to me about Lena and the great beauties he
had known in his youth. We were all three in love with Lena.
Before the first of June, Gaston Cleric was offered
an instructorship at Harvard College,
and accepted it. He suggested that I should follow him in the fall,
and complete my course at Harvard. He had found out about Lenanot from meand he talked to me seriously.
You won t do anything here now. You
should either quit school and go to work, or change your college and
begin again in earnest. You won t recover yourself while you are
playing about with this handsome Norwegian. Yes, I ve seen her
with you at the theater. Shes very pretty, and perfectly
irresponsible, I should judge.
Cleric wrote my grandfather that he would like to
take me East with him. To my astonishment, grandfather replied that I
might go if I wished. I was both glad and sorry on the day when the
letter came. I stayed in my room all evening and thought things over;
I even tried to persuade myself that I was standing in Lenas
wayit is so necessary to be a little noble!and that
if she had not me to play with, she would probably marry and secure
her future.
The next evening I went to call on Lena. I found her
propped up on the couch in her bay window, with her foot in a big
slipper. An
awkward little Russian girl whom she had taken into her work-room had
dropped a flat-iron on Lenas toe. On the table beside her there
was a basket of early summer flowers which the Pole had left after he
heard of the accident. He always managed to know what went on in
Lenas apartment.
Lena was telling me some amusing piece of gossip
about one of her clients, when I interrupted her and picked up the
flower basket.
This old chap will be proposing to you some
day, Lena.
Oh, he hasoften! she
murmured.
What! After you ve refused
him?
He does nt mind that. It seems to cheer
him to mention the subject. Old men are like that, you know. It makes
them feel important to think they re in love with
somebody.
The Colonel would marry you in a minute. I
hope you won t marry some old fellow; not even a rich
one.
Lena shifted her pillows and looked up at me in
surprise. Why, Im not going to marry anybody. Did
nt you know that?
Nonsense, Lena. Thats what girls say,
but you know better. Every handsome girl like you marries, of
course.
She shook her head. Not me.
But why not? What makes you say that? I
persisted.
Lena laughed. Well, its mainly because
I don t want a husband. Men are all right for friends, but as
soon as you marry them they turn into cranky old fathers, even the
wild ones. They begin to tell you whats sensible and
whats foolish, and want you to stick at home all the time. I
prefer to be foolish when I feel like it, and be accountable to
nobody.
But you ll be lonesome. You ll get
tired of this sort of life, and you ll want a family.
Not me. I like to be lonesome. When I went to
work for Mrs. Thomas I was nineteen years old, and I had
never slept a night in my life when there were nt three in the
bed. I never had a minute to myself except when I was off with the
cattle.
Usually, when Lena referred to her life in the
country at all, she dismissed it with a single remark, humorous or
mildly cynical. But to-night her mind seemed to dwell on those early
years. She told me she could nt remember a time when she was so
little that she was nt lugging a heavy baby about, helping to
wash for babies, trying to keep their
little chapped hands and faces clean. She remembered home as a place
where there were always too many children, a cross man, and work
piling up around a sick woman.
It was nt mothers fault. She
would have made us comfortable if she could. But that was no life for
a girl! After I began to herd and milk I could never get the smell of
the cattle off me. The few underclothes I had I kept in a cracker box.
On Saturday nights, after everybody was in bed, then I could take a
bath if I was nt too tired. I could make two trips to the
windmill to carry water, and heat it in the wash-boiler on the stove.
While the water was heating, I could bring in a washtub out of the
cave, and take my bath in the kitchen. Then I could put on a clean
nightgown and get into bed with two others, who likely had nt
had a bath unless I d given it to them. You can t tell me
anything about family life. I ve had plenty to last
me.
But its not all like that, I
objected.
Near enough. Its all being under
somebodys thumb. Whats on your mind, Jim? Are you afraid
I ll want you to marry me some day?
Then I told her I was going away.
What makes you want to go away, Jim? Have
nt I been nice to you?
You ve been just awfully good to me,
Lena, I blurted. I don t think about much else. I
never shall think about much else while Im with you. I ll
never settle down and grind if I stay here. You know that. I
dropped down beside her and sat looking at the floor. I seemed to have
forgotten all my reasonable explanations.
Lena drew close to me, and the little hesitation in
her voice that had hurt me was not there when she spoke again.
I ought nt to have begun it, ought
I? she murmured. I ought nt to have gone to see
you that first time. But I did want to. I guess I ve always been
a little foolish about you. I don t know what first put it into
my head, unless it was Ántonia, always telling me I must
nt be up to any of my nonsense with you. I let you alone for a
long while, though, did nt I?
She was a sweet creature to those she loved, that
Lena Lingard!
At last she sent me away with her soft, slow,
renunciatory kiss. You are nt sorry
I came to see you that time? she whispered. It seemed so
natural. I used to think I d like to be your first sweetheart.
You were such a funny kid! She always kissed one as if she were
sadly and wisely sending one away forever.
We said many good-byes before I left Lincoln, but she
never tried to hinder me or hold me back. You are going, but
you have nt gone yet, have you? she used to say.
My Lincoln chapter closed abruptly. I went home to my
grandparents for a few weeks, and afterward visited my relatives in
Virginia until I joined Cleric in Boston. I was then nineteen years
old.
Book IVThe Pioneer Womans Story
I
Two years after I
left Lincoln I completed my academic course at Harvard. Before I
entered the Law School I went home for the summer vacation. On the
night of my arrival Mrs. Harling and Frances and Sally
came over to greet me. Everything seemed just as it used to be. My
grandparents looked very little older. Frances Harling was married
now, and she and her husband managed the Harling interests in Black
Hawk. When we gathered in grandmothers parlor, I could hardly
believe that I had been away at all. One subject, however, we avoided
all evening.
When I was walking home with Frances, after we had
left Mrs. Harling at her gate, she said simply,
You know, of course, about poor Ántonia.
Poor Ántonia! Every one would be saying that
now, I thought bitterly. I replied that
grandmother had written me how Ántonia went away to marry Larry
Donovan at some place where he was working; that he had deserted her,
and that there was now a baby. This was all I knew.
He never married her, Frances said.
I have nt seen her since she came back. She lives at
home, on the farm, and almost never comes to town. She brought the
baby in to show it to mama once. Im afraid shes settled
down to be Ambroschs drudge for good.
I tried to shut Ántonia out of my mind. I was
bitterly disappointed in her. I could not forgive her for becoming an
object of pity, while Lena Lingard, for whom people had always
foretold trouble, was now the leading dressmaker of Lincoln, much
respected in Black Hawk. Lena gave her heart away when she felt like
it, but she kept her head for her business and had got on in the
world.
Just then it was the fashion to speak indulgently of
Lena and severely of Tiny Soderball, who had quietly gone West to try
her fortune the year before. A Black Hawk boy, just back from Seattle,
brought the news that Tiny had not gone to the coast on a venture, as
she had allowed people to think, but with
very definite plans. One of the roving promoters that used to stop at
Mrs. Gardeners hotel owned idle property along the
water-front
in Seattle, and he had offered to set Tiny up in business in one of
his empty buildings. She was now conducting a sailors
lodging-house. This, every one said, would be the end of Tiny. Even if
she had begun by running a decent place, she could nt keep it
up; all sailors boarding-houses were alike.
When I thought about it, I discovered that I had
never known Tiny as well as I knew the other girls. I remembered her
tripping briskly about the dining-room on her high heels, carrying a
big tray full of dishes, glancing rather pertly at the spruce
traveling men, and contemptuously at the scrubby oneswho were
so afraid of her that they did nt dare to ask for two kinds of
pie. Now it occurred to me that perhaps the sailors, too, might be
afraid of Tiny. How astonished we would have been, as we sat talking
about her on Frances Harlings front porch, if we could have
known what her future was really to be! Of all the girls and boys who
grew up together in Black Hawk, Tiny Soderball was
to lead the most adventurous life and to achieve the most solid
worldly success.
This is what actually happened to Tiny: While she was
running her lodging-house in Seattle, gold was discovered in Alaska.
Miners and sailors came back from the North with wonderful stories and
pouches of gold. Tiny saw it and weighed it in her hands. That daring
which nobody had ever suspected in her, awoke. She sold her business
and set out for Circle City, in company with a carpenter and his wife
whom she had persuaded to go along with her. They reached Skaguay in a
snowstorm, went in dog sledges over the Chilkoot Pass, and shot the
Yukon in flatboats. They reached Circle City on the very day when some
Siwash Indians came into the settlement with the report that there had
been a rich gold strike farther up the river, on a certain Klondike
Creek. Two days later Tiny and her friends, and nearly every one else
in Circle City, started for the Klondike fields on the last steamer
that went up the Yukon before it froze for the winter. That boatload
of people founded Dawson City. Within a few weeks there were fifteen
hundred homeless men in camp. Tiny and the
carpenters wife began to cook for them, in a tent. The miners
gave her a lot, and the carpenter put up a log hotel for her. There
she sometimes fed a hundred and fifty men a day. Miners came in on
snowshoes from their placer claims twenty miles away to buy fresh
bread from her, and paid for it in gold.
That winter Tiny kept in her hotel a Swede whose legs
had been frozen one night in a storm when he was trying to find his
way back to his cabin. The poor fellow thought it great good fortune
to be cared for by a woman, and a woman who spoke his own tongue. When
he was told that his feet must be amputated, he said he hoped he would
not get well; what could a working-man do in this hard world without
feet? He did, in fact, die from the operation, but not before he had
deeded Tiny Soderball his claim on Hunker Creek. Tiny sold her hotel,
invested half her money in Dawson building lots, and with the rest she
developed her claim. She went off into the wilds and lived on it. She
bought other claims from discouraged miners, traded or sold them on
percentages.
After nearly ten years in the Klondike, Tiny
returned, with a considerable fortune,
to live in San Francisco. I met her in Salt Lake City in 1908. She was
a thin, hard-faced woman, very well-dressed, very reserved in manner.
Curiously enough, she reminded me of Mrs. Gardener, for
whom she had worked in Black Hawk so long ago. She told me about some
of the desperate chances she had taken in the gold country, but the
thrill of them was quite gone. She said frankly that nothing
interested her much now but making money. The only two human beings of
whom she spoke with any feeling were the Swede, Johnson, who had given
her his claim, and Lena Lingard. She had persuaded Lena to come to San
Francisco and go into business there.
Lincoln was never any place for her,
Tiny remarked. In a town of that size Lena would always be
gossiped about. Friscos the right field for her. She has a fine
class of trade. Oh, shes just the same as she always was!
Shes careless, but shes level-headed. Shes the
only person I know who never gets any older. Its fine for me to
have her there; somebody who enjoys things like that. She keeps an eye
on me and won t let me be shabby. When she thinks I need a new
dress,
she makes it and sends it homewith a bill thats long
enough, I can tell you!
Tiny limped slightly when she walked. The claim on
Hunker Creek took toll from its possessors. Tiny had been caught in a
sudden turn of weather, like poor Johnson. She lost three toes from
one of those pretty little feet that used to trip about Black Hawk in
pointed slippers and striped stockings. Tiny mentioned this mutilation
quite casuallydid nt seem sensitive about it. She was
satisfied with her success, but not elated. She was like some one in
whom the faculty of becoming interested is worn out.
II
Soon after I got
home that summer I persuaded my grandparents to have their photographs
taken, and one morning I went into the photographers shop to
arrange for sittings. While I was waiting for him to come out of his
developing-room, I walked about trying to recognize the likenesses on
his walls: girls in Commencement dresses, country brides and grooms
holding hands, family groups of three generations. I noticed, in a
heavy frame, one of those depressing crayon enlargements
often seen in farmhouse parlors, the subject being a round-eyed baby
in short dresses. The photographer came out and gave a constrained,
apologetic laugh.
Thats Tony Shimerdas baby. You
remember her; she used to be the
Harlings
Tony. Too bad! She seems proud of the baby, though; would nt
hear to a cheap frame for the picture. I expect her brother will be in
for it Saturday.
I went away feeling that I must see Ántonia
again. Another girl would have kept
her baby out of sight, but Tony, of course, must have its picture on
exhibition at the town photographers, in a great gilt frame.
How like her! I could forgive her, I told myself, if she had nt
thrown herself away on such a cheap sort of fellow.
Larry Donovan was a passenger conductor, one of those
train-crew aristocrats who are always afraid that some one may ask
them to put up a car-window, and who, if requested to perform such a
menial service, silently point to the button that calls the porter.
Larry wore this air of official aloofness even on the street, where
there were no car-windows to compromise his dignity. At the end of his
run he stepped indifferently from the train along with the passengers,
his street hat on his head and his conductors cap in an
alligator-skin bag, went directly into the station and changed his
clothes. It was a matter of the utmost importance to him never to be
seen in his blue trousers away from his train. He was usually cold and
distant with men, but with all women he had a silent, grave
familiarity, a special handshake, accompanied by a significant,
deliberate look. He took women, married or single, into his
confidence; walked them up and down in the moonlight, telling them
what a mistake he had made by not entering the office branch of the
service, and how much better fitted he was to fill the post of General
Passenger Agent in Denver than the roughshod man who then bore that
title. His unappreciated worth was the tender secret Larry shared with
his sweethearts, and he was always able to make some foolish heart
ache over it.
As I drew near home that morning, I saw
Mrs. Harling out in her yard, digging round her
mountain-ash tree. It was a dry summer, and she had now no boy to help
her. Charley was off in his battleship, cruising somewhere on the
Caribbean sea. I turned in at the gateit was with a feeling
of pleasure that I opened and shut that gate in those days; I liked
the feel of it under my hand. I took the spade away from
Mrs. Harling, and while I loosened the earth around the
tree, she sat down on the steps and talked about the oriole family
that had a nest in its branches.
Mrs. Harling, I said
presently, I wish I could find out exactly how
Ántonias marriage fell through.
Why don t you go out and see your
grandfathers tenant, the Widow Steavens? She knows more about
it than anybody else. She helped Ántonia get ready to be
married, and she was there when Ántonia came back. She took
care of her when the baby was born. She could tell you everything.
Besides, the Widow Steavens is a good talker, and she has a remarkable
memory.
III
On the first or
second day of August I got a horse and cart and set out for the high
country, to visit the Widow Steavens. The wheat harvest was over, and
here and there along the horizon I could see black puffs of smoke from
the steam thrashing-machines. The old pasture land was now being
broken up into wheatfields and cornfields, the red grass was
disappearing, and the whole face of the country was changing. There
were wooden houses where the old sod dwellings used to be, and little
orchards, and big red barns; all this meant happy children, contented
women, and men who saw their lives coming to a fortunate issue. The
windy springs and the blazing summers, one after another, had enriched
and mellowed that flat tableland; all the human effort that had gone
into it was coming back in long, sweeping lines of fertility. The
changes seemed beautiful and harmonious to me; it was like watching
the growth of a great man or of a great idea. I recognized every tree
and sandbank and
rugged draw. I found that I remembered the conformation of the land as
one remembers the modeling of human faces.
When I drew up to our old windmill, the Widow
Steavens came out to meet me. She was brown as an Indian woman, tall,
and very strong. When I was little, her massive head had always seemed
to me like a Roman senators. I told her at once why I had
come.
You ll stay the night with us, Jimmy?
I ll talk to you after supper. I can take more interest when my
work is off my mind. You ve no prejudice against hot biscuit for
supper? Some have, these days.
While I was putting my horse away I heard a rooster
squawking. I looked at my watch and sighed; it was three
o clock, and I knew that I must eat him at six.
After supper Mrs. Steavens and I went
upstairs to the old sitting-room, while her grave, silent brother
remained in the basement to read his farm papers. All the windows were
open. The white summer moon was shining outside, the windmill was
pumping lazily in the light breeze. My hostess put the lamp on a stand
in the corner, and turned it low because of the heat. She sat
down in her favorite rocking-chair and settled a little stool
comfortably under her tired feet. Im troubled with
callouses, Jim; getting old, she sighed cheerfully. She crossed
her hands in her lap and sat as if she were at a meeting of some
kind.
Now, its about that dear Ántonia
you want to know? Well, you ve come to the right person.
I ve watched her like she d been my own daughter.
When she came home to do her sewing that
summer before she was to be married, she was over here about every
day. They ve never had a sewing machine at the Shimerdas,
and she made all her things here. I taught her hemstitching, and I
helped her to cut and fit. She used to sit there at that machine by
the window, pedaling the life out of itshe was so strongand always singing them queer Bohemian songs, like she was the
happiest thing in the world.
Ántonia, I used to say,
don t run that machine so fast. You won t hasten
the day none that way.
Then she d laugh and slow down for a
little, but she d soon forget and begin to pedal and sing again.
I never saw a girl
work harder to go to housekeeping right and well-prepared. Lovely
table linen the Harlings had given her, and Lena Lingard had sent her
nice things from Lincoln. We hemstitched all the tablecloths and
pillow-cases, and some of the sheets. Old Mrs. Shimerda
knit yards and yards of lace for her underclothes. Tony told me just
how she meant to have everything in her house. She d even bought
silver spoons and forks, and kept them in her trunk. She was always
coaxing brother to go to the post-office. Her young man did write her
real often, from the different towns along his run.
The first thing that troubled her was when he
wrote that his run had been changed, and they would likely have to
live in Denver. Im a country girl, she said,
and I doubt if I ll be able to manage so well for him in
a city. I was counting on keeping chickens, and maybe a cow.
She soon cheered up, though.
At last she got the letter telling her when to
come. She was shaken by it; she broke the seal and read it in this
room. I suspected then that she d begun to get faint-hearted,
waiting; though she d never let me see it.
Then there was a great time of packing. It
was in March, if I remember rightly, and a terrible muddy, raw spell,
with the roads bad for hauling her things to town. And here let me
say, Ambrosch did the right thing. He went to Black Hawk and bought
her a set of plated silver in a purple velvet box, good enough for her
station. He gave her three hundred dollars in money; I saw the check.
He d collected her wages all those first years she worked out,
and it was but right. I shook him by the hand in this room.
You re behaving like a man, Ambrosch, I said,
and Im glad to see it, son.
T was a cold, raw day he drove her and
her three trunks into Black Hawk to take the night train for Denverthe boxes had been shipped before. He stopped the wagon here,
and she ran in to tell me good-bye. She threw her arms around me and
kissed me, and thanked me for all I d done for her. She was so
happy she was crying and laughing at the same time, and her red cheeks
was all wet with rain.
You re surely handsome enough for
any man, I said, looking her over.
She laughed kind of flighty like, and
whispered, Good-bye, dear house! and then
ran out to the wagon. I expect she meant that for you and your
grandmother, as much as for me, so Im particular to tell you.
This house had always been a refuge to her.
Well, in a few days we had a letter saying she
got to Denver safe, and he was there to meet her. They were to be
married in a few days. He was trying to get his promotion before he
married, she said. I did nt like that, but I said nothing. The
next week Yulka got a postal card, saying she was well and
happy. After that we heard nothing. A month went by, and old
Mrs. Shimerda began to get fretful. Ambrosch was as sulky
with me as if I d picked out the man and arranged the match.
One night brother William came in and said
that on his way back from the fields he had passed a livery team from
town, driving fast out the west road. There was a trunk on the front
seat with the driver, and another behind. In the back seat there was a
woman all bundled up; but for all her veils, he thought t was
Ántonia Shimerda, or Ántonia Donovan, as her name ought
now to be.
The next morning I got brother to drive me
over. I can walk still, but my feet ain t
what they used to be, and I try to save myself. The lines outside the
Shimerdas house was full of washing, though it was the middle
of the week. As we got nearer I saw a sight that made my heart sinkall those underclothes we d put so much work on, out
there swinging in the wind. Yulka came bringing a dishpanful of wrung
clothes, but she darted back into the house like she was loath to see
us. When I went in, Ántonia was standing over the tubs, just
finishing up a big washing. Mrs. Shimerda was going about
her work, talking and scolding to herself. She did nt so much
as raise her eyes. Tony wiped her hand on her apron and held it out to
me, looking at me steady but mournful. When I took her in my arms she
drew away. Don t, Mrs. Steavens, she
says, you ll make me cry, and I don t want
to.
I whispered and asked her to come out of doors
with me. I knew she could nt talk free before her mother. She
went out with me, bareheaded, and we walked up toward the garden.
Im not married,
Mrs. Steavens, she says to me very quiet and
natural-like, and I ought to be.
Oh, my child, says I,
whats happened to you? Don t be afraid to tell
me!
She sat down on the draw-side, out of sight of
the house. Hes run away from me, she said.
I don t know if he ever meant to marry me.
You mean hes thrown up his job
and quit the country? says I.
He did nt have any job.
He d been fired; blacklisted for knocking down fares. I did
nt know. I thought he had nt been treated right. He was
sick when I got there. He d just come out of the hospital. He
lived with me till my money gave out, and afterwards I found he had
nt really been hunting work at all. Then he just did nt
come back. One nice fellow at the station told me, when I kept going
to look for him, to give it up. He said he was afraid Larry d
gone bad and would nt come back any more. I guess hes
gone to Old Mexico. The conductors get rich down there, collecting
half-fares off the natives and robbing the company. He was always
talking about fellows who had got ahead that way.
I asked her, of course, why she did nt
insist on a civil marriage at oncethat would
have given her some hold on him. She leaned her head on her hands,
poor child, and said, I just don t know,
Mrs. Steavens. I guess my patience was wore out, waiting
so long. I thought if he saw how well I could do for him, he d
want to stay with me.
Jimmy, I sat right down on that bank beside
her and made lament. I cried like a young thing. I could nt
help it. I was just about heart-broke. It was one of them lovely warm
May days, and the wind was blowing and the colts jumping around in the
pastures; but I felt bowed with despair. My Ántonia, that had
so much good in her, had come home disgraced. And that Lena Lingard,
that was always a bad one, say what you will, had turned out so well,
and was coming home here every summer in her silks and her satins, and
doing so much for her mother. I give credit where credit is due, but
you know well enough, Jim Burden, there is a great difference in the
principles of those two girls. And here it was the good one that had
come to grief! I was poor comfort to her. I marveled at her calm. As
we went back to the house, she stopped to feel of her clothes to see
if they was drying well, and seemed
to take pride in their whitenessshe said she d been
living in a brick block, where she did nt have proper
conveniences to wash them.
The next time I saw Ántonia, she was
out in the fields ploughing corn. All that spring and summer she did
the work of a man on the farm; it seemed to be an understood thing.
Ambrosch did nt get any other hand to help him. Poor Marek had
got violent and been sent away to an institution a good while back. We
never even saw any of Tonys pretty dresses. She did nt
take them out of her trunks. She was quiet and steady. Folks respected
her industry and tried to treat her as if nothing had happened. They
talked, to be sure; but not like they would if she d put on
airs. She was so crushed and quiet that nobody seemed to want to
humble her. She never went anywhere. All that summer she never once
came to see me. At first I was hurt, but I got to feel that it was
because this house reminded her of too much. I went over there when I
could, but the times when she was in from the fields were the times
when I was busiest here. She talked about the grain and the weather as
if she d
never had another interest, and if I went over at night she always
looked dead weary. She was afflicted with toothache; one tooth after
another ulcerated, and she went about with her face swollen half the
time. She would nt go to Black Hawk to a dentist for fear of
meeting people she knew. Ambrosch had got over his good spell long
ago, and was always surly. Once I told him he ought not to let
Ántonia work so hard and pull herself down. He said, If
you put that in her head, you better stay home. And after that
I did.
Ántonia worked on through harvest and
thrashing, though she was too modest to go out thrashing for the
neighbors, like when she was young and free. I did nt see much
of her until late that fall when she begun to herd Ambroschs
cattle in the open ground north of here, up toward the big
dog town.
Sometimes she used to bring them over the west hill, there, and I
would run to meet her and walk north a piece with her. She had thirty
cattle in her bunch; it had been dry, and the pasture was short, or
she would nt have brought them so far.
It was a fine open fall, and she liked to be
alone. While the steers grazed, she used to
sit on them grassy banks along the draws and sun herself for hours.
Sometimes I slipped up to visit with her, when she had nt gone
too far.
It does seem like I ought to make lace,
or knit like Lena used to, she said one day, but if I
start to work, I look around and forget to go on. It seems such a
little while ago when Jim Burden and I was playing all over this
country. Up here I can pick out the very places where my father used
to stand. Sometimes I feel like Im not going to live very long,
so Im just enjoying every day of this fall.
After the winter begun she wore a mans
long overcoat and boots, and a mans felt hat with a wide brim.
I used to watch her coming and going, and I could see that her steps
were getting heavier. One day in December, the snow began to fall.
Late in the afternoon I saw Ántonia driving her cattle homeward
across the hill. The snow was flying round her and she bent to face
it, looking more lonesome-like to me than usual. Deary
me, I says to myself, the girls stayed out too
late. It ll be dark before she gets them cattle put into the
corral. I seemed to sense
she d been feeling too miserable to get up and drive them.
That very night, it happened. She got her
cattle home, turned them into the corral, and went into the house,
into her room behind the kitchen, and shut the door. There, without
calling to anybody, without a groan, she lay down on the bed and bore
her child.
I was lifting supper when old
Mrs. Shimerda came running down the basement stairs, out
of breath and screeching:
Baby come, baby come! she says.
Ambrosch much like devil!
Brother William is surely a patient man. He
was just ready to sit down to a hot supper after a long day in the
fields. Without a word he rose and went down to the barn and hooked up
his team. He got us over there as quick as it was humanly possible. I
went right in, and began to do for Ántonia; but she laid there
with her eyes shut and took no account of me. The old woman got a
tubful of warm water to wash the baby. I overlooked what she was doing
and I said out loud:
Mrs. Shimerda, don t
you put that strong yellow soap near that baby. You ll blister
its little skin. I was indignant.
Mrs. Steavens,
Ántonia said from the bed, if you ll look in the
top tray of my trunk, you ll see some fine soap. That was
the first word she spoke.
After I d dressed the baby, I took it
out to show it to Ambrosch. He was muttering behind the stove and
would nt look at it.
You d better put it out in the
rain barrel, he says.
Now, see here, Ambrosch, says I,
theres a law in this land, don t forget that. I
stand here a witness that this baby has come into the world sound and
strong, and I intend to keep an eye on what befalls it. I pride
myself I cowed him.
Well, I expect you re not much
interested in babies, but Ántonias got on fine. She
loved it from the first as dearly as if she d had a ring on her
finger, and was never ashamed of it. Its a year and eight
months old now, and no baby was ever better cared-for. Ántonia
is a natural-born mother. I wish she could marry and raise a family,
but I don t know as theres much chance now.
I slept that night in the room I used to have when I
was a little boy, with the
summer wind blowing in at the windows, bringing the smell of the ripe
fields. I lay awake and watched the moonlight shining over the barn
and the stacks and the pond, and the windmill making its old dark
shadow against the blue sky.
IV
The next afternoon
I walked over to the Shimerdas. Yulka showed me the baby and
told me that Ántonia was shocking wheat on the southwest
quarter. I went down across the fields, and Tony saw me from a long
way off. She stood still by her shocks, leaning on her pitchfork,
watching me as I came. We met like the people in the old song, in
silence, if not in tears. Her warm hand clasped mine.
I thought you d come, Jim. I heard you
were at Mrs. Steavenss last night. I ve been
looking for you all day.
She was thinner than I had ever seen her, and looked,
as Mrs. Steavens said, worked down, but
there was a new kind of strength in the gravity of her face, and her
color still gave her that look of deep-seated health and ardor. Still?
Why, it flashed across me that though so much had happened in her life
and in mine, she was barely twenty-four years old.
Ántonia stuck her fork in the ground, and
instinctively we walked toward that
unploughed patch at the crossing of the roads as the fittest place to
talk to each other. We sat down outside the sagging wire fence that
shut Mr. Shimerdas plot off from the rest of the
world. The tall red grass had never been cut there. It had died down
in winter and come up again in the spring until it was as thick and
shrubby as some tropical garden-grass. I found myself telling her
everything: why I had decided to study law and to go into the law
office of one of my mothers relatives in New York City; about
Gaston Clerics death from pneumonia last winter, and the
difference it had made in my life. She wanted to know about my friends
and my way of living, and my dearest hopes.
Of course it means you are going away from us
for good, she said with a sigh. But that don t
mean I ll lose you. Look at my papa here; hes been dead
all these years, and yet he is more real to me than almost anybody
else. He never goes out of my life. I talk to him and consult him all
the time. The older I grow, the better I know him and the more I
understand him.
She asked me whether I had learned to like big
cities. I d always be miserable in a
city. I d die of lonesomeness. I like to be where I know every
stack and tree, and where all the ground is friendly. I want to live
and die here. Father Kelly says everybodys put into this world
for something, and I know what I ve got to do. Im going
to see that my little girl has a better chance than ever I had.
Im going to take care of that girl, Jim.
I told her I knew she would. Do you know,
Ántonia, since I ve been away, I think of you more often
than of any one else in this part of the world. I d have liked
to have you for a sweetheart, or a wife, or my mother or my sisteranything that a woman can be to a man. The idea of you is a
part of my mind; you influence my likes and dislikes, all my tastes,
hundreds of times when I don t realize it. You really are a part
of me.
She turned her bright, believing eyes to me, and the
tears came up in them slowly. How can it be like that, when you
know so many people, and when I ve disappointed you so?
Ain t it wonderful, Jim, how much people can mean to each other?
Im so glad we had each other when we were little. I can t
wait till my little girls old enough to
tell her about all the things we used to do. You ll always
remember me when you think about old times, won t you? And I
guess everybody thinks about old times, even the happiest
people.
As we walked homeward across the fields, the sun
dropped and lay like a great golden globe in the low west. While it
hung there, the moon rose in the east, as big as a cartwheel, pale
silver and streaked with rose color, thin as a bubble or a ghost-moon.
For five, perhaps ten minutes, the two luminaries confronted each
other across the level land, resting on opposite edges of the world.
In that singular light every little tree and shock of wheat, every
sunflower stalk and clump of snow-on-the-mountain, drew itself up high
and pointed; the very clods and furrows in the fields seemed to stand
up sharply. I felt the old pull of the earth, the solemn magic that
comes out of those fields at nightfall. I wished I could be a little
boy again, and that my way could end there.
We reached the edge of the field, where our ways
parted. I took her hands and held them against my breast, feeling once
more how strong and warm and good they were, those
brown hands, and remembering how many kind things they had done for
me. I held them now a long while, over my heart. About us it was
growing darker and darker, and I had to look hard to see her face,
which I meant always to carry with me; the closest, realest face,
under all the shadows of womens faces, at the very bottom of my
memory.
I ll come back, I said earnestly,
through the soft, intrusive darkness.
Perhaps you willI felt rather
than saw her smile. But even if you don t, you re
here, like my father. So I won t be lonesome.
As I went back alone over that familiar road, I could
almost believe that a boy and girl ran along beside me, as our shadows
used to do, laughing and whispering to each other in the grass.
Book VCuzaks Boys
I
I told
Ántonia I would come back, but life intervened, and it was
twenty years before I kept my promise. I heard of her from time to
time; that she married, very soon after I last saw her, a young
Bohemian, a cousin of Anton Jelinek; that they were poor, and had a
large family. Once when I was abroad I went into Bohemia, and from
Prague I sent Ántonia some photographs of her native village.
Months afterward came a letter from her, telling me the names and ages
of her many children, but little else; signed, Your old friend,
Ántonia Cuzak. When I met Tiny Soderball in Salt Lake,
she told me that Ántonia had not done very well;
that her husband was not a man of much force, and she had had a hard
life. Perhaps it was cowardice that kept me away so long. My business
took me West several times every year, and it was always in the
back of my mind that I would stop in Nebraska some day and go to see
Ántonia. But I kept putting it off until the next trip. I did
not want to find her aged and broken; I really dreaded it. In the
course of twenty crowded years one parts with many illusions. I did
not wish to lose the early ones. Some memories are realities, and are
better than anything that can ever happen to one again.
I owe it to Lena Lingard that I went to see
Ántonia at last. I was in San Francisco two summers ago when
both Lena and Tiny Soderball were in town. Tiny lives in a house of
her own, and Lenas shop is in an apartment house just around
the corner. It interested me, after so many years, to see the two
women together. Tiny audits Lenas accounts occasionally, and
invests her money for her; and Lena, apparently, takes care that Tiny
does nt grow too miserly. If theres anything I
can t stand, she said to me in Tinys presence,
its a shabby rich woman. Tiny smiled grimly and
assured me that Lena would never be either shabby or rich. And
I don t want to be, the other agreed complacently.
Lena gave me a cheerful account of Ántonia and
urged me to make her a visit.
You really ought to go, Jim. It would be such
a satisfaction to her. Never mind what Tiny says. Theres
nothing the matter with Cuzak. You d like him. He is nt a
hustler, but a rough man would never have suited Tony. Tony has nice
childrenten or eleven of them by this time, I guess. I should
nt care for a family of that size myself, but somehow
its just right for Tony. She d love to show them to
you.
On my way East I broke my journey at Hastings, in
Nebraska, and set off with an open buggy and a fairly good livery team
to find the Cuzak farm. At a little past midday, I knew I must be
nearing my destination. Set back on a swell of land at my right, I saw
a wide farmhouse, with a red barn and an ash grove, and cattle yards
in front that sloped down to the high road. I drew up my horses and
was wondering whether I should drive in here, when I heard low voices.
Ahead of me, in a plum thicket beside the road, I saw two boys bending
over a dead dog. The little one, not more than four or five, was on
his knees, his hands folded, and his close-clipped, bare head drooping
forward in deep dejection. The other stood beside him, a hand on his
shoulder, and was comforting him in a language I had not heard for a
long while. When I stopped my horses opposite them, the older boy took
his brother by the hand and came toward me. He, too, looked grave.
This was evidently a sad afternoon for them.
Are you Mrs. Cuzaks
boys? I asked.
The younger one did not look up; he was submerged in
his own feelings, but his brother met me with intelligent gray eyes.
Yes, sir.
Does she live up there on the hill? I am going
to see her. Get in and ride up with me.
He glanced at his reluctant little brother. I
guess we d better walk. But we ll open the gate for
you.
I drove along the side-road and they followed slowly
behind. When I pulled up at the windmill, another boy, barefooted and
curly-headed, ran out of the barn to tie my team for me. He was a
handsome one, this chap, fair-skinned and freckled, with red cheeks
and a ruddy pelt as thick as a lambs wool, growing down on his
neck in little tufts. He tied my team with two flourishes of his
hands, and nodded when I asked him if his mother was at home. As he
glanced at me, his
face dimpled with a seizure of irrelevant merriment, and he shot up
the windmill tower with a lightness that struck me as disdainful. I
knew he was peering down at me as I walked toward the house.
Ducks and geese ran quacking across my path. White
cats were sunning themselves among yellow pumpkins on the porch steps.
I looked through the wire screen into a big, light kitchen with a
white floor. I saw a long table, rows of wooden chairs against the
wall, and a shining range in one corner. Two girls were washing dishes
at the sink, laughing and chattering, and a little one, in a short
pinafore, sat on a stool playing with a rag baby. When I asked for
their mother, one of the girls dropped her towel, ran across the floor
with noiseless bare feet, and disappeared. The older one, who wore
shoes and stockings, came to the door to admit me. She was a buxom
girl with dark hair and eyes, calm and self-possessed.
Won t you come in? Mother will be here
in a minute.
Before I could sit down in the chair she offered me,
the miracle happened; one of those quiet moments that clutch the heart,
and take more courage than the noisy, excited passages in life.
Ántonia came in and stood before me; a stalwart, brown woman,
flat-chested, her curly brown hair a little grizzled. It was a shock,
of course. It always is, to meet people after long years, especially
if they have lived as much and as hard as this woman had. We stood
looking at each other. The eyes that peered anxiously at me weresimply Ántonias eyes. I had seen no others like
them since I looked into them last, though I had looked at so many
thousands of human faces. As I confronted her, the changes grew less
apparent to me, her identity stronger. She was there, in the full
vigor of her personality, battered but not diminished, looking at me,
speaking to me in the husky, breathy voice I remembered so well.
My husbands not at home, sir. Can I do
anything?
Don t you remember me, Ántonia?
Have I changed so much?
She frowned into the slanting sunlight that made her
brown hair look redder than it was. Suddenly her eyes widened, her
whole face seemed to grow broader. She caught her breath and put out
two hard-worked hands.
Why, its Jim! Anna, Yulka, its
Jim Burden! She had no sooner caught my hands than she looked
alarmed. Whats happened? Is anybody dead?
I patted her arm. No. I did nt come to
a funeral this time. I got off the train at Hastings and drove down to
see you and your family.
She dropped my hand and began rushing about.
Anton, Yulka, Nina, where are you all? Run, Anna, and hunt for
the boys. They re off looking for that dog, somewhere. And call
Leo. Where is that Leo! She pulled them out of corners and came
bringing them like a mother cat bringing in her kittens. You
don t have to go right off, Jim? My oldest boys not here.
Hes gone with papa to the street fair at Wilber. I won t
let you go! You ve got to stay and see Rudolph and our
papa. She looked at me imploringly, panting with excitement.
While I reassured her and told her there would be
plenty of time, the barefooted boys from outside were slipping into
the kitchen and gathering about her.
Now, tell me their names, and how old they
are.
As she told them off in turn, she made several
mistakes about ages, and they roared with laughter. When she came to
my light-footed friend of the windmill, she said, This is Leo,
and hes old enough to be better than he is.
He ran up to her and butted her playfully with his
curly head, like a little ram, but his voice was quite desperate.
You ve forgot! You always forget mine. Its mean!
Please tell him, mother! He clenched his fists in vexation and
looked up at her impetuously.
She wound her forefinger in his yellow fleece and
pulled it, watching him. Well, how old are you?
Im twelve, he panted, looking
not at me but at her; Im twelve years old, and I was
born on Easter day!
She nodded to me. Its true. He was an
Easter baby.
The children all looked at me, as if they expected me
to exhibit astonishment or delight at this information. Clearly, they
were proud of each other, and of being so many. When they had all been
introduced, Anna, the eldest daughter, who had met me at the
door, scattered them gently, and came bringing a white apron which she
tied round her mothers waist.
Now, mother, sit down and talk to
Mr. Burden. We ll finish the dishes quietly and not
disturb you.
Ántonia looked about, quite distracted.
Yes, child, but why don t we take him into the parlor,
now that we ve got a nice parlor for company?
The daughter laughed indulgently, and took my hat
from me. Well, you re here, now, mother, and if you talk
here, Yulka and I can listen, too. You can show him the parlor after
while. She smiled at me, and went back to the dishes, with her
sister. The little girl with the rag doll found a place on the bottom
step of an enclosed back stairway, and sat with her toes curled up,
looking out at us expectantly.
Shes Nina, after Nina Harling,
Ántonia explained. Ain t her eyes like
Nina s? I declare, Jim, I loved you children almost as much as I
love my own. These children know all about you and Charley and Sally,
like as if they d grown up with you. I can t think of what
I want to say, you ve got me
so stirred up. And then, I ve forgot my English so. I
don t often talk it any more. I tell the children I used to
speak real well. She said they always spoke Bohemian at home.
The little ones could not speak English at alldid nt
learn it until they went to school.
I can t believe its you, sitting
here, in my own kitchen. You would nt have known me, would you,
Jim? You ve kept so young, yourself. But its easier for a
man. I can t see how my Anton looks any older than the day I
married him. His teeth have kept so nice. I have nt got many
left. But I feel just as young as I used to, and I can do as much
work. Oh, we don t have to work so hard now! We ve got
plenty to help us, papa and me. And how many have you got,
Jim?
When I told her I had no children she seemed
embarrassed. Oh, ain t that too bad! Maybe you could take
one of my bad ones, now? That Leo; hes the worst of all.
She leaned toward me with a smile. And I love him the
best, she whispered.
Mother! the two girls murmured
reproachfully from the dishes.
Ántonia threw up her head and laughed.
I can t help it. You know I do. Maybe
its because he came on Easter day, I don t know. And
hes never out of mischief one minute!
I was thinking, as I watched her, how little it
matteredabout her teeth, for instance. I know so many women
who have kept all the things that she had lost, but whose inner glow
has faded. Whatever else was gone, Ántonia had not lost the
fire of life. Her skin, so brown and hardened, had not that look of
flabbiness, as if the sap beneath it had been secretly drawn away.
While we were talking, the little boy whom they
called Jan came in and sat down on the step beside Nina, under the
hood of the stairway. He wore a funny long gingham apron, like a
smock, over his trousers, and his hair was clipped so short that his
head looked white and naked. He watched us out of his big, sorrowful
gray eyes.
He wants to tell you about the dog, mother.
They found it dead, Anna said, as she passed us on her way to
the cupboard.
Ántonia beckoned the boy to her. He stood by
her chair, leaning his elbows on her knees and twisting her apron
strings in his slender fingers, while he told her his story softly in
Bohemian, and the tears brimmed over and hung on his long lashes. His
mother listened, spoke soothingly to him, and in a whisper promised
him something that made him give her a quick, teary smile. He slipped
away and whispered his secret to Nina, sitting close to her and
talking behind his hand.
When Anna finished her work and had washed her hands,
she came and stood behind her mothers chair. Why
don t we show Mr. Burden our new fruit cave?
she asked.
We started off across the yard with the children at
our heels. The boys were standing by the windmill, talking about the
dog; some of them ran ahead to open the cellar door. When we
descended, they all came down after us, and seemed quite as proud of
the cave as the girls were. Ambrosch, the thoughtful-looking one who
had directed me down by the plum bushes, called my attention to the
stout brick walls and the cement floor. Yes, it is a good way
from the house, he admitted. But, you see, in winter
there are nearly always some of us around to come out and get
things.
Anna and Yulka showed me three small barrels; one
full of dill pickles, one full of
chopped pickles, and one full of pickled watermelon rinds.
You would nt believe, Jim, what it
takes to feed them all! their mother exclaimed. You
ought to see the bread we bake on Wednesdays and Saturdays! Its
no wonder their poor papa can t get rich, he has to buy so much
sugar for us to preserve with. We have our own wheat ground for flour,but then theres that much less to sell.
Nina and Jan, and a little girl named Lucie, kept
shyly pointing out to me the shelves of glass jars. They said nothing,
but glancing at me, traced on the glass with their finger-tips the
outline of the cherries and strawberries and crab-apples within,
trying by a blissful expression of countenance to give me some idea of
their deliciousness.
Show him the spiced plums, mother. Americans
don t have those, said one of the older boys.
Mother uses them to make
kolaches, he added.
Leo, in a low voice, tossed off some scornful remark
in Bohemian.
I turned to him. You think I don t know
what kolaches are, eh?
You re mistaken, young man. I ve eaten your mothers
kolaches long before that
Easter day when you were born.
Always too fresh, Leo, Ambrosch
remarked with a shrug.
Leo dived behind his mother and grinned out at me.
We turned to leave the cave; Ántonia and I
went up the stairs first, and the children waited. We were standing
outside talking, when they all came running up the steps together, big
and little, tow heads and gold heads and brown, and flashing little
naked legs; a veritable explosion of life out of the dark cave into
the sunlight. It made me dizzy for a moment.
The boys escorted us to the front of the house, which
I had nt yet seen; in farmhouses, somehow, life comes and goes
by the back door. The roof was so steep that the eaves were not much
above the forest of tall hollyhocks, now brown and in seed. Through
July, Ántonia said, the house was buried in them; the
Bohemians, I remembered, always planted hollyhocks. The front yard was
enclosed by a thorny locust hedge, and at the gate grew two silvery,
moth-like trees of the mimosa family. From here one looked down over
the
cattle yards, with their two long ponds, and over a wide stretch of
stubble which they told me was a rye-field in summer.
At some distance behind the house were an ash grove
and two orchards; a cherry orchard, with gooseberry and currant bushes
between the rows, and an apple orchard, sheltered by a high hedge from
the hot winds. The older children turned back when we reached the
hedge, but Jan and Nina and Lucie crept through it by a hole known
only to themselves and hid under the low-branching mulberry bushes.
As we walked through the apple orchard, grown up in
tall bluegrass, Ántonia kept stopping to tell me about one tree
and another. I love them as if they were people, she
said, rubbing her hand over the bark. There was nt a
tree here when we first came. We planted every one, and used to carry
water for them, tooafter we d been working in the
fields all day. Anton, he was a city man, and he used to get
discouraged. But I could nt feel so tired that I would
nt fret about these trees when there was a dry time. They were
on my mind like children. Many a night after he was asleep I ve
got up and come out and carried water to the poor things. And now, you
see,
we have the good of them. My man worked in the orange groves in
Florida, and he knows all about grafting. There ain t one of our
neighbors has an orchard that bears like ours.
In the middle of the orchard we came upon a
grape-arbor, with seats built along the sides and a warped plank
table. The three children were waiting for us there. They looked up at
me bashfully and made some request of their mother.
They want me to tell you how the teacher has
the school picnic here every year. These don t go to school yet,
so they think its all like the picnic.
After I had admired the arbor sufficiently, the
youngsters ran away to an open place where there was a rough jungle of
French pinks, and squatted down among them, crawling about and
measuring with a string. Jan wants to bury his dog
there, Ántonia explained. I had to tell him he
could. Hes kind of like Nina Harling; you remember how hard she
used to take little things? He has funny notions, like her.
We sat down and watched them. Ántonia leaned
her elbows on the table. There was the
deepest peace in that orchard. It was surrounded by a triple
enclosure; the wire fence, then the hedge of thorny locusts, then the
mulberry hedge which kept out the hot winds of summer and held fast to
the protecting snows of winter. The hedges were so tall that we could
see nothing but the blue sky above them, neither the barn roof nor the
windmill. The afternoon sun poured down on us through the drying grape
leaves. The orchard seemed full of sun, like a cup, and we could smell
the ripe apples on the trees. The crabs hung on the branches as thick
as beads on a string, purple-red, with a thin silvery glaze over them.
Some hens and ducks had crept through the hedge and were pecking at
the fallen apples. The drakes were handsome fellows, with pinkish gray
bodies, their heads and necks covered with iridescent green feathers
which grew close and full, changing to blue like a peacocks
neck. Ántonia said they always reminded her of soldierssome uniform she had seen in the old country, when she was a child.
Are there any quail left now? I asked.
I reminded her how she used to go hunting with me the last summer
before we moved to town. You were nt a bad shot, Tony. Do
you remember how you used to want to run away and go for ducks with
Charley Harling and me?
I know, but Im afraid to look at a gun
now. She picked up one of the drakes and ruffled his green
capote with her fingers. Ever since I ve had children, I
don t like to kill anything. It makes me kind of faint to wring
an old gooses neck. Ain t that strange, Jim?
I don t know. The young Queen of Italy
said the same thing once, to a friend of mine. She used to be a great
huntswoman, but now she feels as you do, and only shoots clay
pigeons.
Then Im sure shes a good
mother, Ántonia said warmly.
She told me how she and her husband had come out to
this new country when the farm land was cheap and could be had on easy
payments. The first ten years were a hard struggle. Her husband knew
very little about farming and often grew discouraged.
We d never have got through if I had nt been so
strong. I ve always had good health, thank God, and I was able
to help him in the fields until right up to the time before my babies
came. Our children were good about taking care of each other. Martha,
the one you saw when she was a baby, was such a help to me, and she
trained Anna to be just like her. My Marthas married now, and
has a baby of her own. Think of that, Jim!
No, I never got down-hearted. Antons a
good man, and I loved my children and always believed they would turn
out well. I belong on a farm. Im never lonesome here like I
used to be in town. You remember what sad spells I used to have, when
I did nt know what was the matter with me? I ve never had
them out here. And I don t mind work a bit, if I don t
have to put up with sadness. She leaned her chin on her hand
and looked down through the orchard, where the sunlight was growing
more and more golden.
You ought never to have gone to town,
Tony, I said, wondering at her.
She turned to me eagerly. Oh, Im glad I
went! I d never have known anything about cooking or
housekeeping if I had n t. I learned nice ways at the
Harlings, and I ve been able to bring my children up so
much better. Don t you think they are pretty well-behaved for
country children? If it had nt been for
what Mrs. Harling taught me, I expect I d have
brought them up like wild rabbits. No, Im glad I had a chance
to learn; but Im thankful none of my daughters will ever have
to work out. The trouble with me was, Jim, I never could believe harm
of anybody I loved.
While we were talking, Ántonia assured me that
she could keep me for the night. We ve plenty of room.
Two of the boys sleep in the haymow till cold weather comes, but
theres no need for it. Leo always begs to sleep there, and
Ambrosch goes along to look after him.
I told her I would like to sleep in the haymow, with
the boys.
You can do just as you want to. The chest is
full of clean blankets, put away for winter. Now I must go, or my
girls will be doing all the work, and I want to cook your supper
myself.
As we went toward the house, we met Ambrosch and
Anton, starting off with their milking-pails to hunt the cows. I
joined them, and Leo accompanied us at some distance, running ahead
and starting up at us out of clumps of ironweed, calling,
Im a jack rabbit, or, Im a big
bull-snake.
I walked between the two older boysstraight,
well-made fellows, with good heads and clear eyes. They talked about
their school and the new teacher, told me about the crops and the
harvest, and how many steers they would feed that winter. They were
easy and confidential with me, as if I were an old friend of the
familyand not too old. I felt like a boy in their company,
and all manner of forgotten interests revived in me. It seemed, after
all, so natural to be walking along a barbed-wire fence beside the
sunset, toward a red pond, and to see my shadow moving along at my
right, over the close-cropped grass.
Has mother shown you the pictures you sent her
from the old country? Ambrosch asked. We ve had
them framed and they re hung up in the parlor. She was so glad
to get them. I don t believe I ever saw her so pleased about
anything. There was a note of simple gratitude in his voice
that made me wish I had given more occasion for it.
I put my hand on his shoulder. Your mother,
you know, was very much loved by all of us. She was a beautiful
girl.
Oh, we know! They both spoke
together; seemed a little surprised that I should think it necessary
to mention this. Everybody liked her, did nt they? The
Harlings and your grandmother, and all the town people.
Sometimes, I ventured, it does
nt occur to boys that their mother was ever young and
pretty.
Oh, we know! they said again, warmly.
Shes not very old now, Ambrosch added. Not
much older than you.
Well, I said, if you were
nt nice to her, I think I d take a club and go for the
whole lot of you. I could nt stand it if you boys were
inconsiderate, or thought of her as if she were just somebody who
looked after you. You see I was very much in love with your mother
once, and I know theres nobody like her.
The boys laughed and seemed pleased and embarrassed.
She never told us that, said Anton. But
shes always talked lots about you, and about what good times
you used to have. She has a picture of you that she cut out of the
Chicago paper once, and Leo says he recognized you when you drove up
to the windmill. You can t tell about Leo, though; sometimes he
likes to be smart.
We brought the cows home to the corner nearest the
barn, and the boys milked them while night came on. Everything was as
it should be: the strong smell of sunflowers and ironweed in the dew,
the clear blue and gold of the sky, the evening star, the purr of the
milk into the pails, the grunts and squeals of the pigs fighting over
their supper. I began to feel the loneliness of the farm-boy at
evening, when the chores seem everlastingly the same, and the world so
far away.
What a tableful we were at supper; two long rows of
restless heads in the lamplight, and so many eyes fastened excitedly
upon Ántonia as she sat at the head of the table, filling the
plates and starting the dishes on their way. The children were seated
according to a system; a little one next an older one, who was to
watch over his behavior and to see that he got his food. Anna and
Yulka left their chairs from time to time to bring fresh plates of kolaches and pitchers of milk.
After supper we went into the parlor, so that Yulka
and Leo could play for me. Ántonia went first, carrying the
lamp. There were not nearly chairs enough to go round, so the younger
children sat down on the bare
floor. Little Lucie whispered to me that they were going to have a
parlor carpet if they got ninety cents for their wheat. Leo, with a
good deal of fussing, got out his violin. It was old Mr.
Shimerdas instrument, which Ántonia had always kept, and
it was too big for him. But he played very well for a self-taught boy.
Poor Yulkas efforts were not so successful. While they were
playing, little Nina got up from her corner, came out into the middle
of the floor, and began to do a pretty little dance on the boards with
her bare feet. No one paid the least attention to her, and when she
was through she stole back and sat down by her brother.
Ántonia spoke to Leo in Bohemian. He frowned
and wrinkled up his face. He seemed to be trying to pout, but his
attempt only brought out dimples in unusual places. After twisting and
screwing the keys, he played some Bohemian airs, without the organ to
hold him back, and that went better. The boy was so restless that I
had not had a chance to look at his face before. My first impression
was right; he really was faun-like. He had nt much head behind
his ears, and his tawny fleece grew down thick to the back of his
neck. His eyes were not frank and wide apart like those of the other
boys, but were deep-set, gold-green in color, and seemed sensitive to
the light. His mother said he got hurt oftener than all the others put
together. He was always trying to ride the colts before they were
broken, teasing the turkey gobbler, seeing just how much red the bull
would stand for, or how sharp the new axe was.
After the concert was over Ántonia brought out
a big boxful of photographs; she and Anton in their wedding clothes,
holding hands; her brother Ambrosch and his very fat wife, who had a
farm of her own, and who bossed her husband, I was delighted to hear;
the three Bohemian Marys and their large families.
You would nt believe how steady those
girls have turned out, Ántonia remarked. Mary
Svobodas the best butter-maker in all this country, and a fine
manager. Her children will have a grand chance.
As Ántonia turned over the pictures the young
Cuzaks stood behind her chair, looking over her shoulder with
interested faces. Nina and Jan, after trying to see round the taller
ones, quietly brought a chair, climbed up on it, and stood close
together, looking. The
little boy forgot his shyness and grinned delightedly when familiar
faces came into view. In the group about Ántonia I was
conscious of a kind of physical harmony. They leaned this way and
that, and were not afraid to touch each other. They contemplated the
photographs with pleased recognition; looked at some admiringly, as if
these characters in their mothers girlhood had been remarkable
people. The little children, who could not speak English, murmured
comments to each other in their rich old language.
Ántonia held out a photograph of Lena that had
come from San Francisco last Christmas. Does she still look
like that? She has nt been home for six years now. Yes,
it was exactly like Lena, I told her; a comely woman, a trifle too
plump, in a hat a trifle too large, but with the old lazy eyes, and
the old dimpled ingenuousness still lurking at the corners of her
mouth.
There was a picture of Frances Harling in a
be-frogged riding costume that I remembered well. Is nt
she fine! the girls murmured. They all assented. One could see
that Frances had come down as a heroine in the family legend. Only Leo
was unmoved.
And theres Mr. Harling, in
his grand fur coat. He was awfully rich, was nt he,
mother?
He was nt any Rockefeller, put
in Master Leo, in a very low tone, which reminded me of the way in
which Mrs. Shimerda had once said that my grandfather
was nt Jesus. His habitual skepticism was like a
direct inheritance from that old woman.
None of your smart speeches, said
Ambrosch severely.
Leo poked out a supple red tongue at him, but a
moment later broke into a giggle at a tintype of two men,
uncomfortably seated, with an awkward-looking boy in baggy clothes
standing between them; Jake and Otto and I! We had it taken, I
remembered, when we went to Black Hawk on the first Fourth of July I
spent in Nebraska. I was glad to see Jakes grin again, and
Ottos ferocious mustaches. The young Cuzaks knew all about
them.
He made grandfathers coffin, did
nt he? Anton asked.
Was nt they good fellows, Jim?
Ántonias eyes filled. To this day I m
ashamed because I quarreled with Jake that way. I was saucy and
impertinent to him, Leo, like you
are with people sometimes, and I wish somebody had made me
behave.
We are nt through with you, yet,
they warned me. They produced a photograph taken just before I went
away to college; a tall youth in striped trousers and a straw hat,
trying to look easy and jaunty.
Tell us, Mr. Burden, said
Charley, about the rattler you killed at the
dog town.
How long was he? Sometimes mother says six feet and sometimes she says
five.
These children seemed to be upon very much the same
terms with Ántonia as the Harling children had been so many
years before. They seemed to feel the same pride in her, and to look
to her for stories and entertainment as we used to do.
It was eleven o clock when I at last took my
bag and some blankets and started for the barn with the boys. Their
mother came to the door with us, and we tarried for a moment to look
out at the white slope of the corral and the two ponds asleep in the
moonlight, and the long sweep of the pasture under the star-sprinkled
sky.
The boys told me to choose my own place in the
haymow, and I lay down before a big
window, left open in warm weather, that looked out into the stars.
Ambrosch and Leo cuddled up in a hay-cave, back under the eaves, and
lay giggling and whispering. They tickled each other and tossed and
tumbled in the hay; and then, all at once, as if they had been shot,
they were still. There was hardly a minute between giggles and bland
slumber.
I lay awake for a long while, until the slow-moving
moon passed my window on its way up the heavens. I was thinking about
Ántonia and her children; about Annas solicitude for
her, Ambroschs grave affection, Leos jealous, animal
little love. That moment, when they all came tumbling out of the cave
into the light, was a sight any man might have come far to see.
Ántonia had always been one to leave images in the mind that
did not fadethat grew stronger with time. In my memory there
was a succession of such pictures, fixed there like the old woodcuts
of ones first primer: Ántonia kicking her bare legs
against the sides of my pony when we came home in triumph with our
snake; Ántonia in her black shawl and fur cap, as she stood by
her fathers grave in the snowstorm; Ántonia coming in
with her work-team along the
evening sky-line. She lent herself to immemorial human attitudes which
we recognize by instinct as universal and true. I had not been
mistaken. She was a battered woman now, not a lovely girl; but she
still had that something which fires the imagination, could still stop
ones breath for a moment by a look or gesture that somehow
revealed the meaning in common things. She had only to stand in the
orchard, to put her hand on a little crab tree and look up at the
apples, to make you feel the goodness of planting and tending and
harvesting at last. All the strong things of her heart came out in her
body, that had been so tireless in serving generous emotions.
It was no wonder that her sons stood tall and
straight. She was a rich mine of life, like the founders of early
races.
II
When I awoke in
the morning long bands of sunshine were coming in at the window and
reaching back under the eaves where the two boys lay. Leo was wide
awake and was tickling his brothers leg with a dried
cone-flower he had pulled out of the hay. Ambrosch kicked at him and
turned over. I closed my eyes and pretended to be asleep. Leo lay on
his back, elevated one foot, and began exercising his toes. He picked
up dried flowers with his toes and brandished them in the belt of
sunlight. After he had amused himself thus for some time, he rose on
one elbow and began to look at me, cautiously, then critically,
blinking his eyes in the light. His expression was droll; it dismissed
me lightly. This old fellow is no different from other people.
He does nt know my secret. He seemed conscious of
possessing a keener power of enjoyment than other people; his quick
recognitions made him frantically impatient of deliberate judgments.
He always knew what he wanted without thinking.
After dressing in the hay, I washed my face in cold
water at the windmill. Breakfast was ready when I entered the kitchen,
and Yulka was baking griddle-cakes. The three older boys set off for
the fields early. Leo and Yulka were to drive to town to meet their
father, who would return from Wilber on the noon train.
We ll only have a lunch at noon,
Ántonia said, and cook the geese for supper, when our
papa will be here. I wish my Martha could come down to see you. They
have a Ford car now, and she don t seem so far away from me as
she used to. But her husbands crazy about his farm and about
having everything just right, and they almost never get away except on
Sundays. Hes a handsome boy, and he ll be rich some day.
Everything he takes hold of turns out well. When they bring that baby
in here, and unwrap him, he looks like a little prince; Martha takes
care of him so beautiful. Im reconciled to her being away from
me now, but at first I cried like I was putting her into her
coffin.
We were alone in the kitchen, except for Anna, who
was pouring cream into the churn. She looked up at me. Yes, she
did. We were just ashamed of mother. She went round
crying, when Martha was so happy, and the rest of us were all glad.
Joe certainly was patient with you, mother.
Ántonia nodded and smiled at herself. I
know it was silly, but I could nt help it. I wanted her right
here. She d never been away from me a night since she was born.
If Anton had made trouble about her when she was a baby, or wanted me
to leave her with my mother, I would nt have married him. I
could n t. But he always loved her like she was his
own.
I did nt even know Martha was nt
my full sister until after she was engaged to Joe, Anna told
me.
Toward the middle of the afternoon the wagon drove
in, with the father and the eldest son. I was smoking in the orchard,
and as I went out to meet them, Ántonia came running down from
the house and hugged the two men as if they had been away for
months.
Papa interested me, from my first
glimpse of him. He was shorter than his older sons; a crumpled little
man, with run-over boot heels, and he carried one shoulder higher than
the other. But he moved very quickly, and there was an air of jaunty
liveliness about him. He
had a strong, ruddy color, thick black hair, a little grizzled, a
curly mustache, and red lips. His smile showed the strong teeth of
which his wife was so proud, and as he saw me his lively, quizzical
eyes told me that he knew all about me. He looked like a humorous
philosopher who had hitched up one shoulder under the burdens of life,
and gone on his way having a good time when he could. He advanced to
meet me and gave me a hard hand, burned red on the back and heavily
coated with hair. He wore his Sunday clothes, very thick and hot for
the weather, an unstarched white shirt, and a blue necktie with big
white dots, like a little boys, tied in a flowing bow. Cuzak
began at once to talk about his holidayfrom politeness he
spoke in English.
Mama, I wish you had see the lady dance on the
slack-wire in the street at night. They throw a bright light on her
and she float through the air something beautiful, like a bird! They
have a dancing bear, like in the old country, and two three
merry-go-around, and people in balloons, and what you call the big
wheel, Rudolph?
A Ferris wheel, Rudolph entered the
conversation in a deep baritone voice. He was six foot two, and had a
chest like a young blacksmith. We went to the big dance in the
hall behind the saloon last night, mother, and I danced with all the
girls, and so did father. I never saw so many pretty girls. It was a
Bohunk crowd, for sure. We did nt hear a word of English on the
street, except from the show people, did we, papa?
Cuzak nodded. And very many send word to you,
Ántonia. You will excuseturning to me if I tell her. While we walked toward the house he
related incidents and delivered messages in the tongue he spoke
fluently, and I dropped a little behind, curious to know what their
relations had becomeor remained. The two seemed to be on
terms of easy friendliness, touched with humor. Clearly, she was the
impulse, and he the corrective. As they went up the hill he kept
glancing at her sidewise, to see whether she got his point, or how she
received it. I noticed later that he always looked at people sidewise,
as a work-horse does at its yoke-mate. Even when he sat opposite me in
the kitchen, talking, he would turn his head a little toward the clock
or the stove and look at me from
the side, but with frankness and good-nature. This trick did not
suggest duplicity or secretiveness, but merely long habit, as with the
horse.
He had brought a tintype of himself and Rudolph for
Ántonias collection, and several paper bags of candy for
the children. He looked a little disappointed when his wife showed him
a big box of candy I had got in Denvershe had nt let
the children touch it the night before. He put his candy away in the
cupboard, for when she rains, and glanced at the box,
chuckling. I guess you must have hear about how my family
ain t so small, he said.
Cuzak sat down behind the stove and watched his
women-folk and the little children with equal amusement. He thought
they were nice, and he thought they were funny, evidently. He had been
off dancing with the girls and forgetting that he was an old fellow,
and now his family rather surprised him; he seemed to think it a joke
that all these children should belong to him. As the younger ones
slipped up to him in his retreat, he kept taking things out of his
pockets; penny dolls, a wooden clown, a balloon pig that was
inflated by a whistle. He beckoned to the little boy they called Jan,
whispered to him, and presented him with a paper snake, gently, so as
not to startle him. Looking over the boys head he said to me,
This one is bashful. He gets left.
Cuzak had brought home with him a roll of illustrated
Bohemian papers. He opened them and began to tell his wife the news,
much of which seemed to relate to one person. I heard the name
Vasakova, Vasakova, repeated several times with lively interest, and
presently I asked him whether he were talking about the singer, Maria
Vasak.
You know? You have heard, maybe? he
asked incredulously. When I assured him that I had heard her, he
pointed out her picture and told me that Vasak had broken her leg,
climbing in the Austrian Alps, and would not be able to fill her
engagements. He seemed delighted to find that I had heard her sing in
London and in Vienna; got out his pipe and lit it to enjoy our talk
the better. She came from his part of Prague. His father used to mend
her shoes for her when she was a student. Cuzak questioned me about
her looks,
her popularity, her voice; but he particularly wanted to know whether
I had noticed her tiny feet, and whether I thought she had saved much
money. She was extravagant, of course, but he hoped she would
nt squander everything, and have nothing left when she was old.
As a young man, working in
Wienn,
he had seen a good many artists who were old and poor, making one
glass of beer last all evening, and it was not very nice,
that.
When the boys came in from milking and feeding, the
long table was laid, and two brown geese, stuffed with apples, were
put down sizzling before Ántonia. She began to carve, and
Rudolph, who sat next his mother, started the plates on their way.
When everybody was served, he looked across the table at me.
Have you been to Black Hawk lately,
Mr. Burden? Then I wonder if you ve heard about the
Cutters?
No, I had heard nothing at all about them.
Then you must tell him, son, though its
a terrible thing to talk about at supper. Now, all you children be
quiet, Rudolph is going to tell about the murder.
Hurrah! The murder! the children
murmured, looking pleased and interested.
Rudolph told his story in great detail, with
occasional promptings from his mother or father.
Wick Cutter and his wife had gone on living in the
house that Ántonia and I knew so well, and in the way we knew
so well. They grew to be very old people. He shriveled up,
Ántonia said, until he looked like a little old yellow monkey,
for his beard and his fringe of hair never changed color.
Mrs. Cutter remained flushed and wild-eyed as we had
known her, but as the years passed she became afflicted with a shaking
palsy which made her nervous nod continuous instead of occasional. Her
hands were so uncertain that she could no longer disfigure china, poor
woman! As the couple grew older, they quarreled more and more about
the ultimate disposition of their property. A new law
was passed in the State, securing the surviving wife a third of her
husbands estate under all conditions. Cutter was tormented by
the fear that Mrs. Cutter would live longer than he, and
that eventually her people, whom he had always hated so
violently, would inherit. Their quarrels on this subject passed the
boundary of the close-growing cedars, and were heard in the street by
whoever wished to loiter and listen.
One morning, two years ago, Cutter went into the
hardware store and bought a pistol, saying he was going to shoot a
dog, and adding that he thought he would take a shot at an old
cat while he was about it. (Here the children interrupted
Rudolphs narrative by smothered giggles.)
Cutter went out behind the hardware store, put up a
target, practiced for an hour or so, and then went home. At six
o clock that evening, when several men were passing the Cutter
house on their way home to supper, they heard a pistol shot. They
paused and were looking doubtfully at one another, when another shot
came crashing through an upstairs window. They ran into the house and
found Wick Cutter lying on a sofa in his upstairs bedroom, with his
throat torn open, bleeding on a roll of sheets he had placed beside
his head.
Walk in, gentlemen, he said weakly.
I am alive, you see, and competent. You are witnesses that I
have survived my wife. You will find her in her own room. Please make
your examination at once, so that there will be no mistake.
One of the neighbors telephoned for a
doctor, while the others went into Mrs. Cutters
room. She was lying on her bed, in her nightgown and wrapper, shot
through the heart. Her husband must have come in while she was taking
her afternoon nap and shot her, holding the revolver near her breast.
Her nightgown was burned from the powder.
The horrified neighbors rushed back to Cutter. He
opened his eyes and said distinctly, Mrs. Cutter
is quite dead, gentlemen, and I am conscious. My affairs are in
order. Then, Rudolph said, he let go and died.
On his desk the coroner found a letter, dated at five
o clock that afternoon. It stated that he had just shot his
wife; that any will she might secretly have made would be invalid, as
he survived her. He meant to shoot himself at six o clock and
would, if he had strength, fire a shot through the window in the hope
that passers-by might come in and see him before life was
extinct, as he wrote.
Now, would you have thought that man had such
a cruel heart? Ántonia turned to me after the story was
told. To go and do that poor woman out of any comfort she might
have from his money after he was gone!
Did you ever hear of anybody else that
killed himself for spite, Mr. Burden? asked
Rudolph.
I admitted that I had n t. Every lawyer learns
over and over how strong a motive hate can be, but in my collection of
legal anecdotes I had nothing to match this one. When I asked how much
the estate amounted to, Rudolph said it was a little over a hundred
thousand dollars.
Cuzak gave me a twinkling, sidelong glance.
The lawyers, they got a good deal of it, sure, he said
merrily.
A hundred thousand dollars; so that was the fortune
that had been scraped together by such hard dealing, and that Cutter
himself had died for in the end!
After supper Cuzak and I took a stroll in the orchard
and sat down by the windmill to smoke. He told me his story as if it
were my business to know it.
His father was a shoemaker, his uncle a furrier, and
he, being a younger son, was apprenticed to the latters trade.
You never got anywhere working for your relatives, he said, so when he
was a journeyman he went to Vienna and worked in a big fur shop,
earning good money. But a young fellow who liked a
good time did nt save anything in Vienna; there were too many
pleasant ways of spending every night what he d made in the day.
After three years there, he came to New York. He was badly advised and
went to work on furs during a strike, when the factories were offering
big wages. The strikers won, and Cuzak was blacklisted. As he had a
few hundred dollars ahead, he decided to go to Florida and raise
oranges. He had always thought he would like to raise oranges! The
second year a hard frost killed his young grove, and he fell ill with
malaria. He came to Nebraska to visit his cousin, Anton Jelinek, and
to look about. When he began to look about, he saw Ántonia, and
she was exactly the kind of girl he had always been hunting for. They
were married at once, though he had to borrow money from his cousin to
buy the wedding-ring.
It was a pretty hard job, breaking up this
place and making the first crops grow, he said, pushing back
his hat and scratching his grizzled hair. Sometimes I git awful
sore on this place and want to quit, but my wife she always say we
better stick it out. The babies come along pretty fast, so it look
like it be hard to move, anyhow. I guess she was
right, all right. We got this place clear now. We pay only twenty
dollars an acre then, and I been offered a hundred. We bought another
quarter ten years ago, and we got it most paid for. We got plenty
boys; we can work a lot of land. Yes, she is a good wife for a poor
man. She ain t always so strict with me, neither. Sometimes
maybe I drink a little too much beer in town, and when I come home she
don t say nothing. She don t ask me no questions. We
always get along fine, her and me, like at first. The children
don t make trouble between us, like sometimes happens. He
lit another pipe and pulled on it contentedly.
I found Cuzak a most companionable fellow. He asked
me a great many questions about my trip through Bohemia, about Vienna
and the Ringstrasse and the theaters.
Gee! I like to go back there once, when the
boys is big enough to farm the place. Sometimes when I read the papers
from the old country, I pretty near run away, he confessed with
a little laugh. I never did think how I would be a settled man
like this.
He was still, as Ántonia said, a city man. He
liked theaters and lighted streets and music and a game of dominoes
after the days
work was over. His sociability was stronger than his acquisitive
instinct. He liked to live day by day and night by night, sharing in
the excitement of the crowd.Yet his wife had managed to hold
him here on a farm, in one of the loneliest countries in the world.
I could see the little chap, sitting here every
evening by the windmill, nursing his pipe and listening to the
silence; the wheeze of the pump, the grunting of the pigs, an
occasional squawking when the hens were disturbed by a rat. It did
rather seem to me that Cuzak had been made the instrument of
Ántonias special mission. This was a fine life,
certainly, but it was nt the kind of life he had wanted to
live. I wondered whether the life that was right for one was ever
right for two!
I asked Cuzak if he did nt find it hard to do
without the gay company he had always been used to. He knocked out his
pipe against an upright, sighed, and dropped it into his pocket.
At first I near go crazy with
lonesomeness, he said frankly, but my woman is got such
a warm heart. She always make it as good for me as she could. Now it
ain t so bad; I can begin to have some fun with my boys,
already!
As we walked toward the house, Cuzak cocked his hat
jauntily over one ear and looked up at the moon. Gee! he
said in a hushed voice, as if he had just wakened up, it
don t seem like I am away from there twenty-six year!
III
After dinner the
next day I said good-bye and drove back to Hastings to take the train
for Black Hawk. Ántonia and her children gathered round my
buggy before I started, and even the little ones looked up at me with
friendly faces. Leo and Ambrosch ran ahead to open the lane gate. When
I reached the bottom of the hill, I glanced back. The group was still
there by the windmill. Ántonia was waving her apron.
At the gate Ambrosch lingered beside my buggy,
resting his arm on the wheel-rim. Leo slipped through the fence and
ran off into the pasture.
Thats like him, his brother said
with a shrug. Hes a crazy kid. Maybe hes sorry to
have you go, and maybe hes jealous. Hes jealous of
anybody mother makes a fuss over, even the priest.
I found I hated to leave this boy, with his pleasant
voice and his fine head and eyes. He looked very manly as he stood
there without
a hat, the wind rippling his shirt about his brown neck and
shoulders.
Don t forget that you and Rudolph are
going hunting with me up on the Niobrara next summer, I said.
Your fathers agreed to let you off after
harvest.
He smiled. I won t likely forget.
I ve never had such a nice thing offered to me before. I
don t know what makes you so nice to us boys, he added,
blushing.
Oh, yes you do! I said, gathering up my
reins.
He made no answer to this, except to smile at me with
unabashed pleasure and affection as I drove away.
My day in Black Hawk was disappointing. Most of my
old friends were dead or had moved away. Strange children, who meant
nothing to me, were playing in the Harlings big yard when I
passed; the mountain ash had been cut down, and only a sprouting stump
was left of the tall Lombardy poplar that used to guard the gate. I
hurried on. The rest of the morning I spent with Anton Jelinek, under
a shady cottonwood tree in the yard behind his saloon. While I was
having my mid-day
dinner at the hotel, I met one of the old lawyers who was still in
practice, and he took me up to his office and talked over the Cutter
case with me. After that, I scarcely knew how to put in the time until
the night express was due.
I took a long walk north of the town, out into the
pastures where the land was so rough that it had never been ploughed
up, and the long red grass of early times still grew shaggy over the
draws and hillocks. Out there I felt at home again. Overhead the sky
was that indescribable blue of autumn; bright and shadowless, hard as
enamel. To the south I could see the dun-shaded river bluffs that used
to look so big to me, and all about stretched drying cornfields, of
the pale-gold color I remembered so well. Russian thistles were
blowing across the uplands and piling against the wire fences like
barricades. Along the cattle paths the plumes of golden-rod were
already fading into sun-warmed velvet, gray with gold threads in it. I
had escaped from the curious depression that hangs over little towns,
and my mind was full of pleasant things; trips I meant to take with
the Cuzak boys, in the Bad Lands and up on the Stinking Water. There
were enough Cuzaks to play with for
a long while yet. Even after the boys grew up, there would always be
Cuzak himself! I meant to tramp along a few miles of lighted streets
with Cuzak.
As I wandered over those rough pastures, I had the
good luck to stumble upon a bit of the first road that went from Black
Hawk out to the north country; to my grandfathers farm, then on
to the Shimerdas and to the Norwegian settlement. Everywhere
else it had been ploughed under when the highways were surveyed; this
half-mile or so within the pasture fence was all that was left of that
old road which used to run like a wild thing across the open prairie,
clinging to the high places and circling and doubling like a rabbit
before the hounds. On the level land the tracks had almost disappearedwere mere shadings in the grass, and a stranger would not have
noticed them. But wherever the road had crossed a draw, it was easy to
find. The rains had made channels of the wheel-ruts and washed them so
deep that the sod had never healed over them. They looked like gashes
torn by a grizzlys claws, on the slopes where the farm wagons
used to lurch up out of the hollows with a pull that brought curling
muscles on the smooth hips of the horses. I sat down and watched the
haystacks turn rosy in the slanting sunlight.
This was the road over which Ántonia and I
came on that night when we got off the train at Black Hawk and were
bedded down in the straw, wondering children, being taken we knew not
whither. I had only to close my eyes to hear the rumbling of the
wagons in the dark, and to be again overcome by that obliterating
strangeness. The feelings of that night were so near that I could
reach out and touch them with my hand. I had the sense of coming home
to myself, and of having found out what a little circle mans
experience is. For Ántonia and for me, this had been the road
of Destiny; had taken us to those early accidents of fortune which
predetermined for us all that we can ever be. Now I understood that
the same road was to bring us together again. Whatever we had missed,
we possessed together the precious, the incommunicable past.
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