Chapter 7

She dropped her dish as she heard Lily coming, and gazed up into the tender, pitying face. Not a word was spoken, but something she saw there made her eyes fill with tears, and her throat swell. It was pure sympathy. She put her arms around the girl's neck and sobbed for the first time since Friday night. Then they sat down on the grass under the hedge, and she told her story, interspersed with Lily's horrified comments.

When it was all told, the girl still sat listening. She heard Radbourn's calm, slow voice again. It helped her not to hate Burns; it helped her to pity and understand him.

"You must remember that such toil brutalizes a man; it makes him callous, selfish, unfeeling, necessarily. A fine nature must either adapt itself to its hard surroundings or die. Men who toil terribly in filthy garments day after day and year after year cannot easily keep gentle; the frost and grime, the heat and cold, will soon or late enter into their souls. The case is not all in favor of the suffering wives and against the brutal husbands. If the farmer's wife is dulled and crazed by her routine, the farmer himself is degraded and brutalized."

As well as she could Lily explained all this to the woman, who lay with her face buried in the girl's lap. Lily's arms were about her thin shoulders in an agony of pity.

"It's hard, Lucretia, I know,--more than you can bear,--but you mustn't forget what Sim endures too. He goes out in the storms and in the heat and dust. His boots are hard, and see how his hands are all bruised and broken by his work! He was tired and hungry when he said that--he didn't really mean it."

The wife remained silent.

"Mr. Radbourn says work, as things go now, _does_ degrade a man in spite of himself. He says men get coarse and violent in spite of themselves, just as women do when everything goes wrong in the house,--when the flies are thick, and the fire won't burn, and the irons stick to the clothes. You see, you both suffer. Don't lay up this fit of temper against Sim--will you?"

The wife lifted her head and looked away. Her face was full of hopeless weariness.

"It ain't this once. It ain't that 't all. It's having no let-up. Just goin' the same thing right over 'n' over--no hope of anything better."

"If you had hope of another world--"

"Don't talk that. I don't want that kind o' comfert. I want a decent chance here. I want 'o rest an' be happy _now_." Lily's big eyes were streaming with tears. What should she say to the desperate woman? "What's the use? We might jest as well die--all of us."

The woman's livid face appalled the girl. She was gaunt, heavy-eyed, nerveless. Her faded dress settled down over her limbs, showing the swollen knees and thin calves; her hands, with distorted joints, protruded painfully from her sleeves. All about her was the ever recurring wealth and cheer of nature that knows no favor,--the bees and flies buzzing in the sun, the jay and the kingbird in the poplars, the smell of strawberries, the motion of lush grass, the shimmer of corn-blades tossed gayly as banners in a conquering army.

Like a flash of keener light, a sentence shot across the girl's mind: "Nature knows no title-deed. The bounty of her mighty hands falls as the sunlight falls, copious, impartial; her seas carry all ships; her air is for all lips, her lands for all feet."

"Poverty and suffering such as yours will not last." There was something in the girl's voice that roused the woman. She turned her dull eyes upon the youthful face.

Lily took her hand in both hers as if by a caress she could impart her own faith.

"Look up, dear. When nature is so good and generous, man must come to be better, surely. Come, go in the house again. Sim is there; he expects you; he told me to tell you he was sorry." Lucretia's face twitched a little at that, but her head was bent. "Come; you can't live this way. There isn't any other place to go to."

No, that was the bitterest truth. Where on this wide earth, with its forth-shooting fruits and grains, its fragrant lands and shining seas, could this dwarfed, bent, broken, middle-aged woman go? Nobody wanted her, nobody cared for her. But the wind kissed her drawn lips as readily as those of the girl, and the blooms of clover nodded to her as if to a queen.

Lily had said all she could. Her heart ached with unspeakable pity and a sort of terror.

"Don't give up, Lucretia. This may be the worst hour of your life. Live and bear with it all for Christ's sake,--for your children's sake. Sim told me to tell you he was to blame. If you will only see that you are both to blame and yet neither to blame, then you can rise above it. Try, dear!"

Something that was in the girl imparted itself to the wife, electrically. She pulled herself together, rose silently, and started toward the house. Her face was rigid, but no longer sullen. Lily followed her slowly, wonderingly.

As she neared the kitchen door, she saw Sim still sitting at the table; his face was unusually grave and soft. She saw him start and shove back his chair, saw Lucretia go to the stove and lift the tea-pot, and heard her say, as she took her seat beside the baby:--

"Want some more tea?"

She had become a wife and mother again, but in what spirit the puzzled girl could not say.

DADDY DEERING

I

They were threshing on Farmer Jennings's place when Daddy made his very characteristic appearance. Milton, a boy of thirteen, was gloomily holding sacks for the measurer, and the glory of the October day was dimmed by the suffocating dust, and poisoned by the smarting beards and chaff which had worked their way down his neck. The bitterness of the dreaded task was deepened also by contrast with the gambols of his cousin Billy, who was hunting rats with Growler amid the last sheaves of the stack bottom. The piercing shrieks of Billy, as he clapped his hands in murderous glee, mingled now and again with the barking of the dog.

The machine seemed to fill the world with its snarling boom, which became a deafening yell when the cylinder ran empty for a moment. It was nearly noon, and the men were working silently, with occasional glances toward the sun to see how near dinner-time it was. The horses, dripping with sweat, and with patches of foam under their harness, moved round and round steadily to the cheery whistle of the driver.

The wild, imperious song of the bell-metal cog-wheel had sung into Milton's ears till it had become a torture, and every time he lifted his eyes to the beautiful far-off sky, where the clouds floated like ships, a lump of rebellious anger rose in his throat. Why should he work in this choking dust and deafening noise while the hawks could sail and sweep from hill to hill with nothing to do but play?

Occasionally his uncle, the feeder, smiled down upon him, his face black as a negro, great goggles of glass and wire-cloth covering his merry eyes. His great good-nature shone out in the flash of his white teeth, behind his dusky beard, and he tried to encourage Milton with his smile. He seemed tireless to the other hands. He was so big and strong. He had always been Milton's boyish hero. So Milton crowded back the tears that came into his eyes, and would not let his uncle see how childish he was.

A spectator riding along the road would have remarked upon the lovely setting for this picturesque scene--the low swells of prairie, shrouded with faint, misty light from the unclouded sky, the flaming colors of the trees, the faint sound of cow-bells, and the cheery sound of the machine. But to be a tourist and to be a toiler in a scene like this are quite different things.

They were anxious to finish the setting by noon, and so the feeder was crowding the cylinder to its limit, rolling the grain in with slow and apparently effortless swaying from side to side, half buried in the loose yellow straw. But about eleven o'clock the machine came to a stand, to wait while a broken tooth was being replaced, and Milton fled from the terrible dust beside the measuring spout, and was shaking the chaff out of his clothing, when he heard a high, snappy, nasal voice call down from the straw-pile. A tall man, with a face completely masked in dust, was speaking to Mr. Jennings:--

"Say, young man, I guess you'll haf to send another man up here. It's poorty stiff work f'r two; yes, sir, poorty stiff."

"There, there! I thought you'd cry 'cavy,'" laughed Mr. Jennings. "I told you it wasn't the place for an old man."

"Old man," snarled the figure in the straw. "I ain't so old but I can daown you, sir,--yessir, condemmit, yessir!"

"I'm your man," replied Jennings, smiling up at him.

The man rolled down the side of the stack, disappearing in a cloud of dust and chaff. When he came to light, Milton saw a tall, gaunt old man of sixty years of age, or older. Nothing could be seen but a dusty expanse of face, ragged beard, and twinkling, sharp little eyes. His color was lost, his eyes half hid. Without waiting for ceremony, the men clenched. The crowd roared with laughter, for though Jennings was the younger, the older man was a giant still, and the struggle lasted for some time. He made a gallant fight, but his breath gave out, and he lay at last flat on his back.

"I wish I was your age, young man," he said ruefully, as he rose. "I'd knock the heads o' these young scamps t'gether,--yessir!--I could do it, too!"

"Talk's a good dog, uncle," said a young man.

The old man turned on him so ferociously that he fled.

"Run, condemn yeh! I own y' can beat me at that."

His face was not unpleasant, though his teeth were mainly gone, and his skin the color of leather and wrinkled as a pan of cream. His eyes had a certain sparkle of fun that belied his rasping voice, which seemed to have the power to lift a boy clean off his feet. His frame was bent and thin, but of great height and breadth, bony and tough as hickory. At some far time vast muscles must have rolled on those giant limbs, but toil had bent and stiffened him.

"Never been sick a day 'n my life; no, sir!" he said, in his rapid, rasping, emphatic way, as they were riding across the stubble to dinner. "And, by gol! I c'n stand as long at the tail of a stacker as any man, sir. Dummed if I turn my hand for any man in the state; no, sir; no, sir! But if I do two men's works, I am goin' to have two men's pay--that's all, sir!"

Jennings laughed and said: "All right, uncle. I'll send another man up there this afternoon."

The old man seemed to take a morbid delight in the hard and dirty places, and his endurance was marvellous. He could stand all day at the tail of a stacker, tirelessly pushing the straw away with an indifferent air, as if it were all mere play.

He measured the grain the next day, because it promised to be a noisier and dustier job than working in the straw, and it was in this capacity that Milton came to know and to hate him, and to associate him with that most hated of all tasks, the holding of sacks. To a twelve-year-old boy it seems to be the worst job in the world.

All day, while the hawks wheel and dip in the glorious air, and the trees glow like banks of roses; all day, while the younger boys are tumbling about the sunlit straw, to be forced to stand holding sacks, like a convict, was maddening. Daddy, whose rugged features, bent shoulders, and ragged cap loomed through the suffocating, blinding dust, necessarily came to seem like the jailer who held the door to freedom.

And when the dust and noise and monotony seemed the very hardest to bear, the old man's cackling laugh was sure to rise above the howl of the cylinder.

"Nem mind, sonny! Chaff ain't pizen; dust won't hurt ye a mite." And when Milton was unable to laugh, the old man tweaked his ear with his leathery thumb and finger.

Then he shouted long, disconnected yarns, to which Milton could make neither head nor tail, and which grew at last to be inaudible to him, just as the steady boom and snarl of the great machine did. Then he fell to studying the old man's clothes, which were a wonder to him. He spent a good deal of time trying to discover which were the original sections of the coat, and especially of the vest, which was ragged and yellow with age, with the cotton batting working out; and yet Daddy took the greatest care of it, folding it carefully and putting it away during the heat of the day out of reach of the crickets.

One of his peculiarities, as Mrs. Jennings learned on the second day, was his habit of coming to breakfast. But he always earned all he got, and more too; and, as it was probable that his living at home was frugal, Mrs. Jennings smiled at his thrift, and quietly gave him his breakfast if he arrived late, which was not often.

He had bought a little farm not far away, and settled down into a mode of life which he never afterward changed. As he was leaving at the end of the third day, he said:--

"Now, sir, if you want any bootcherin' done, I'm y'r man. I don't turn m' hand over f'r any man in the state; no, sir! I c'n git a hawg on the gambrils jest a leetle quicker'n any other man I ever see; yes, sir; by gum!"

"All right, uncle; I'll send for you when I'm ready to kill."

II

Hog-killing was one of the events of a boy's life on a Western farm, and Daddy was destined to be associated in the minds of Shep and Milton with another disagreeable job, that of building the fire and carrying water.

It was very early on a keen, biting morning in November when Daddy came driving into the yard with his rude, long-runnered sled, one horse half his length behind the other in spite of the driver's clucking. He was delighted to catch the boys behind in the preparation.

"A-a-h-h-r-r-h-h!" he rasped out, "you lazy vagabon's? Why ain't you got that fire blazin'? What the devil do y' mean, you rascals! Here it is broad daylight, and that fire not built. I vum, sir, you need a thrashin', the whole kit an bilun' of ye; yessir! Come, come, come! hustle now, stir your boots! hustle y'r boots--ha! ha! ha!"

It was of no use to plead cold weather and damp chips.

"What has that got to do with it, sir? I vum, sir, when I was your age, I could make a fire of green red-oak; yessir! Don't talk to me of colds! Stir your stumps and get warm, sir!"

The old man put up his horses (and fed them generously with oats), and then went to the house to ask for "a leetle something hot--mince pie or sassidge." His request was very modest, but, as a matter of fact, he sat down and ate a very hearty breakfast, while the boys worked away at the fire under the big kettle.

The hired man, under Daddy's direction, drew the bob-sleighs into position on the sunny side of the corn-crib, and arranged the barrel at the proper slant, while the old man ground his knives, Milton turning the grindstone--another hateful task, which Daddy's stories could not alleviate.

Daddy never finished a story. If he started in to tell about a horse trade, it infallibly reminded him of a cattle trade, and talking of cattle switched him off upon logging, and logging reminded him of some heavy snow-storm he had known. Each parenthesis outgrew its proper limits, till he forgot what should have been the main story. His stories had some compensation, for when he stopped to try to recollect where he was, the pressure on the grindstone was released.

At last the water was hot, and the time came to seize the hogs. This was the old man's great moment. He stood in the pen and shrieked with laughter while the hired men went rolling, one after the other, upon the ground, or were bruised against the fence by the rush of the burly swine.

"You're a fine lot," he laughed. "Now, then, sir, _grab 'im_! Why don't ye nail 'im? I vum, sir, if I couldn't do better'n that, sir, I'd sell out; I would, sir, by gol! Get out o' the way!"

With a lofty scorn he waved aside all help and stalked like a gladiator toward the pigs huddled in one corner of the pen. And when the selected victim was rushing by him, his long arm and great bony hand swept out, caught him by the ear, and flung him upon his side, squealing with deafening shrillness. But in spite of his smiling concealment of effort, Daddy had to lean against the fence and catch his breath even while he boasted:--

"I'm an old codger, sir, but I'm worth--a dozen o' you--spindle-legged chaps; dum me if I ain't, sir!"

His pride in his ability to catch and properly kill a hog was as genuine as the old knight-errant's pride in his ability to stick a knife into another steel-clothed brigand like himself. When the slain shote was swung upon the planking on the sled before the barrel, Daddy rested, while the boys filled the barrel with water from the kettle.

There was always a weird charm about this stage of the work to the boys. The sun shone warm and bright in the lee of the corn-crib; the steam rose up, white and voluminous, from the barrel; the eaves dropped steadily; the hens ventured near, nervously, but full of curiosity, while the men laughed and joked with Daddy, starting him off on long stories, and winking at each other when his back was turned.

At last he mounted his planking, selecting Mr. Jennings to pull upon the other handle of the hog-hook. He considered he conferred a distinct honor in this selection.

"The time's been, sir, when I wouldn't thank any man for his help. No, sir, wouldn't thank 'im."

"What do you do with these things?" asked one of the men, kicking two iron candlesticks which the old man laid conveniently near.

"Scrape a hawg with them, sir. What do y' s'pose, you numskull?"

"Well, I never saw anything--"

"You'll have a chance mighty quick, sir. Grab ahold, sir! Swing 'im around--there! Now easy, easy! Now then, one, two; one, two--that's right."

While he dipped the porker in the water, pulling with his companion rhythmically upon the hook, he talked incessantly, mixing up scraps of stories and boastings of what he could do, with commands of what he wanted the other man to do.

"The best man I ever worked with. _Now turn 'im, turn 'im!_" he yelled, reaching over Jennings's wrist. "Grab under my wrist. There! won't ye never learn how to turn a hawg? _Now out with 'im!_" was his next wild yell, as the steaming hog was jerked out of the water upon the planking. "Now try the hair on them ears! Beautiful scald," he said, clutching his hand full of bristles and beaming with pride. "Never see anything finer. Here, Bub, a pail of hot water, quick! Try one of them candlesticks! They ain't no better scraper than the bottom of an old iron candlestick; no, sir! Dum your new-fangled scrapers! I made a bet once with old Jake Ridgeway that I could scrape the hair off'n two hawgs, by gum, quicker'n he could one. Jake was blowin' about a new scraper he had....

"Yes, yes, yes, dump it right into the barrel. Condemmit! Ain't you got no gumption?... So Sim Smith, he held the watch. Sim was a mighty good hand t' work with; he was about the only man I ever sawed with who didn't ride the saw. He could jerk a crosscut saw.... Now let him in again, now, _he-ho_, once again! _Rool him over now_; that foreleg needs a tech o' water. Now out with him again; that's right, that's right! By gol, a beautiful scald as ever I see!"

Milton, standing near, caught his eye again. "Clean that ear, sir! What the devil you standin' there for?" He returned to his story after a pause. "A--n--d Jake, he scraped away--_hyare_!" he shouted suddenly, "don't ruggle the skin like that! Can't you see the way I do it? Leave it smooth as a baby, sir--yessir!"

He worked on in this way all day, talking unceasingly, never shirking a hard job, and scarcely showing fatigue at any moment.

"I'm short o' breath a leetle, that's all; never git tired, but my wind gives out. Dum cold got on me, too."

He ate a huge supper of liver and potatoes, still working away hard at an ancient horse trade, and when he drove off at night, he had not yet finished a single one of the dozen stories he had begun.

III

But pitching grain and hog-killing were on the lower levels of his art, for above all else Daddy loved to be called upon to play the fiddle for dances. He "officiated" for the first time at a dance given by one of the younger McTurgs. They were all fiddlers themselves,--had been for three generations,--but they seized the opportunity of helping Daddy and at the same time of relieving themselves of the trouble of furnishing the music while the rest danced.

Milton attended this dance, and saw Daddy for the first time earning his money pleasantly. From that time on the associations around his personality were less severe, and they came to like him better. He came early, with his old fiddle in a time-worn white-pine box. His hair was neatly combed to the top of his long, narrow head, and his face was very clean. The boys all greeted him with great pleasure, and asked him where he would sit.

"Right on that table, sir; put a chair up there."

He took his chair on the kitchen-table as if it were a throne. He wore huge moccasins of moose-hide on his feet, and for special occasions like this added a paper collar to his red woollen shirt. He took off his coat and laid it across his chair for a cushion. It was all very funny to the young people, but they obeyed him laughingly, and while they "formed on," he sawed his violin and coaxed it up to concert pitch, and twanged it and banged it into proper tunefulness.

"A-a-a-ll ready there!" he rasped out, with prodigious force. "Everybody git into his place!" Then, lifting one huge foot, he put the fiddle under his chin, and, raising his bow till his knuckles touched the strings, he yelled, "Already, G'LANG!" and brought his foot down with a startling bang on the first note. _Rye doodle duo, doodle doo_.

As he went on and the dancers fell into rhythm, the clatter of heavy boots seemed to thrill him with old-time memories, and he kept boisterous time with his foot, while his high, rasping nasal rang high above the confusion of tongues and heels and swaying forms.

"_Ladies_' gran' change! Four hands round! _Balance_ all! _Elly_-man left! Back to play-cis."

His eyes closed in a sort of intoxication of pleasure, but he saw all that went on in some miraculous way.

"_First_ lady lead to the right--_toodle rum rum!_ _Gent_ foller after (step along thar)! Four hands round--"

The boys were immensely pleased with him. They delighted in his antics rather than in his tunes, which were exceedingly few and simple. They seemed never to be able to get enough of one tune which he called "Honest John," and which he played in his own way, accompanied by a chant which he meant, without a doubt, to be musical.

"HON-ers tew your pardners--_tee teedle deedle dee dee dee dee_! Stand up straight an' put on your style! _Right_ an' left four--"

The hat was passed by the floor-manager during the evening, and Daddy got nearly three dollars, which delighted Milton very much.

At supper he insisted on his prerogative, which was to take the prettiest girl out to supper.

"Look-a-here, Daddy, ain't that crowdin' the mourners?" objected the others.

"What do you mean by that, sir? No, sir! Always done it, in Michigan and Yark State both; yes, sir."

He put on his coat ceremoniously, while the tittering girls stood about the room waiting. He did not delay. His keen eyes had made selection long before, and, approaching Rose Watson with old-fashioned, elaborate gallantry, he said: "_May_ I have the pleasure?" and marched out triumphantly, amidst shouts of laughter.

His shrill laugh rang high above the rest at the table, as he said: "I'm the youngest man in this crowd, sir! Demmit, I bet a hat I c'n dance down any man in this crowd; yes, sir. The old man can do it yet."

They all took sides in order to please him.

"I'll bet he can," said Hugh McTurg; "I'll bet a dollar on Daddy."

"I'll take the bet," said Joe Randall, and with great noise the match was arranged to come the first thing after supper.