Chapter 5

"To be frank, Johnnie ... you're old enough to learn the truth ... he thinks you're taken down with consumption."

"That's what my mother died of."

My father shuddered and put his face down in his hands. I felt a little sorry for him, then.

"Well you've got to go West now ... and work on a farm ... or something."

* * * * *

I began to get ready for my trip West. Surely enough, I had consumption, if symptoms counted ... pains under the shoulder blades ... spitting of blood ... night-sweats....

But my mind was quickened: I read Morley's _History of English Literature_ ... Chaucer all through ... Spenser ... even Gower's _Confessio Amantis_ and Lydgate's ballads ... my recent discovery of Chatterton having made me Old English-mad.

As I read the life of young Chatterton I envied him, his fame and his early death and more than ever, I too desired to die young.

* * * * *

The week before I was to set out my father calmly discovered to me that he intended I should work on a farm as a hand for the next four years, when I reached Ohio ... was even willing to pay the farmer something to employ me. This is what the doctor had prescribed as the only thing that would save my life--work in the open air. My father had written Uncle Beck to see that this program was inaugurated.

"I won't become a clod-hopper," I exclaimed, seeing the dreary, endless monotony of such a life.

"But it will do you good. It will be a fine experience for you."

"If it's such a fine experience why don't you go and do it?"

"I won't stand any nonsense."

"I'd rather die.... I'm going to die anyhow."

"Yes, if you don't do what I tell you."

"I won't."

"We'll see."

"Very well, father, we _will_ see."

"If you weren't such a sick kid I'd trounce you."

* * * * *

You could approach Antonville by surrey, buggy or foot ... along a winding length of dusty road ... or muddy ... according to rain or shine.

My Uncle Beck drove me out in a buggy.

Aunt Alice, so patient-faced and pretty and sweet-eyed in her neat poverty--greeted me with a warm kiss.

"Well, you'll soon be well now."

"But I won't work on a farm."

"Never mind, dear ... don't worry about that just yet."

* * * * *

That afternoon I sat with Aunt Alice in the kitchen, watching her make bread. Everyone else was out: Uncle Beck, on a case ... Cousin Anders, over helping with the harvest on a neighbouring farm ... Cousin Anna was also with the harvesters, helping cook for the hands ... for the Doctor's family needed all the outside money they could earn.

For Uncle Beck was a dreamer. He thought more of his variorum Shakespeare than he did of his medical practice. And he was slow-going and slow-speaking and so conscientious that he told patients the truth ... all which did not help him toward success and solid emolument. He would take eggs in payment for his visits ... or jars of preserves ... or fresh meat, if the farmer happened to be slaughtering.

* * * * *

"Where's Granma?" I asked Aunt Alice, as she shoved a batch of bread in the oven.

"She's out Halton way ... she'll go crazy with joy when she gets word you're back home. She'll start for here right off as soon as she hears the news. She's visiting with Lan and his folks."

When I heard Lan mentioned I couldn't help giving a savage look.

Aunt Alice misinterpreted.

"What, Johnnie--won't you be glad to see her!... you ought to ... she's said over and over again that she loved you more than she did any of her own children."

"It isn't that--I hate Landon. I wish he was dead or someone would kill him for me."

"Johnnie, you ought to forgive and forget. It ain't Christian."

"I don't care. I'm not a Christian."

"O Johnnie!" shocked ... then, after a pause of reproach which I enjoyed--"your Uncle Lan's toned down a lot since then ... married ... has four children ... one every year." And Alice laughed whimsically.

"--and he's stopped gambling and drinking, and he's got a good job as master-mechanic in a factory....

"He was young ... he was only a boy in the days when he whipped you."

"Yes, and I suppose I was old?... I tell you, Aunt Alice, it's something I can't forget ... the dirty coward," and I swore violently, forgetting myself.

At that moment Uncle Beck appeared suddenly at the door, back from a case.

"Here, here, that won't do! I don't allow that kind of language in my household." And he gave me a severe and admonishing look before going off on another and more urgent call that waited him.

* * * * *

"And how's Granma been getting on?"

"--aging rapidly ... " a pause, " ... hasn't got either of the two houses on Mansion Avenue now ... sold them and divided the money among her children ... gave us some ... and Millie ... and Lan ... wouldn't hear of 'no' ... " parenthetically, "Uncle Joe didn't need any; he's always prospered since the early days, you know."

"And what's Granma up to these days?" For she was always doing sweet, ignorant, childish, impractical things.

"--spirit-rapping is it? or palmistry? or magnetic healing? or what?"

"You'll laugh!"

"Tell me!"

"She's got a beau."

"What? a beau? and she eighty if a day!"

"Yes, we--all her children--think it's absurd. And we're all trying to advise her against it ... but she vows she's going to get married to him anyhow."

"And who is her 'fellow'"?

"--a one-legged Civil War veteran ... a Pennsylvania Dutchman named Snyder ... owns a house near Beaver Falls ... draws a pension ... he's a jolly old apple-cheeked fellow ... there's no doubt they love each other ... only--only it seems rather horrible for two people as old as they are to go and get married like two young things ... and really fall in love, too!"

I was silent ... amused ... interested ... then--"well, Granma'll tell me all about it when she comes ... and I can judge for myself, and," I added whimsically, "I suppose if they love each other it ought to be all right."

And we both laughed.

* * * * *

When Granma heard I was West she couldn't reach Antonville fast enough. She was the same dear childlike woman, only incredibly older-looking. Age seemed to have fallen on her like an invading army, all at once. Her hair was, every shred of it, not only grey, but almost white. There shone the same patient, sweet, ignorant, too-trusting eyes ... there was the blue burst of vein on her lower lip.

After she had kissed and kissed me, stroked and stroked my head and face in speechless love, I looked at her intently and lied to please her:

"Why, Granma, you don't look a day older."

"But I am, Johnnie, I am. I've been working hard since you left." As if she had not worked hard _before_ I left ... she informed me that, giving away to her children what she had received for the sale of her two houses (that never brought her anything because of her simplicity, while they were in her possession) she had grown tired of "being a burden to them," as she phrased it, and had hired herself out here and there as scrubwoman, washerwoman, housekeeper, and what not....

Later I learned that nothing could be done with her, she was so obstinate. She had broken away despite the solicitude of all her children--who all loved her and wanted her to stay with them.

At last she had answered an advertisement for a housekeeper ... that appeared in a farm journal ... and so she had met her old cork-legged veteran, whom she now had her mind set on marrying.

"But Granma, to get married at your age?"

"I'd like to ask why not?" she answered sweetly, "I feel as young as ever when it comes to men ... and the man ... you wait till you see him ... you'll like him ... he's such a good provider, Johnnie; he draws a steady pension of sixty dollars a month from the Government, and he'll give me a good home."

"But any of my aunts and uncles would do the same."

"Yes, Johnnie, but it ain't the same as having a man of your own around ... there's nothing like that, Johnnie, for a woman."

"But your own children welcome you and treat you well?"

"Oh, yes, Johnnie, my little boy, but in spite of that, I feel in the way. And, no matter how much they love me, it's better for me to have a home of my own and a man of my own."

"Besides, Billy loves me so much," she continued, wistfully, "and even though he's seventy whereas I'm eighty past, he says his being younger don't make no difference ... and he's always so jolly ... always laughing and joking."

* * * * *

"We must begin to allow for Granma," Aunt Alice told me, "she's coming into her second childhood."

* * * * *

Granma believed thoroughly in my aspirations to become a poet. With great delight she retailed incidents of my childhood, reminding me of a thousand youthful escapades of which she constituted me the hero, drawing therefrom auguries of my future greatness.

One of the incidents which alone sticks in my memory:

"Do you 'mind,'" she would say, "how you used to follow Millie about when she papered the pantry shelves with newspapers with scalloped edges? and how you would turn the papers and read them, right after her, as she laid them down, and make her frantic?"

"Yes," I would respond, highly gratified with the anecdote, "and you would say, Oh, Millie, don't get mad at the little codger, some day he might turn out to be a great man!'"

* * * * *

Uncle Beck had a fine collection of American Letters. I found a complete set of Hawthorne and straightway became a moody and sombre Puritan ... and I wrote in Hawthornian prose, quaint essays and stories. And I lived in a world of old lace and lavender, of crinoline and brocade.

And then I discovered my uncle's books on gynecology and obstetrics ... full of guilty fevers I waited until he had gone out on a call and then slunk into his office to read....

One afternoon my doctor-uncle came suddenly upon me, taking me unaware.

* * * * *

"Johnnie, what are you up to?"

"--was just reading your medical books."

"Come over here," already seated at his desk, on his swivel-chair, he motioned me to a seat.

"Sit down!"

I obeyed him in humiliated silence.

He rose and closed the door, hanging the sign "Busy" outside.

* * * * *

At last I learned about myself and about life.

* * * * *

The harvesting over, Anders began to chum with me. We took long walks together, talking of many things ... but, chiefly, of course, of those things that take up the minds of adolescents ... of the mysteries of creation, of life at its source ... of why men and women are so ... and I took it for granted, after he confessed that he had fallen into the same mistakes as I, suffering similar agonies, that he had been set right by his father, the doctor, as I just had. I was surprised to find he had not. So I shared with him the recent knowledge I had acquired.

* * * * *

"And you mean to tell me that Uncle Beck has said nothing to you?"

"Not a single word ... never."

"But why didn't you ask him then ... him being a doctor?"

"How can a fellow talk with his father about such things?"

"It's funny to me he didn't inform you, anyhow."

"I was his son, you see!"

* * * * *

Anders had a girl, he told me, confidingly. She was off on a visit to Mornington, at present ... a mighty pretty little girl and the best there was....

* * * * *

"By the way, Anders, do you know second cousin Phoebe at all?"

"Sure thing I know her ... the last time I heard of her ... which was almost a year ago--she was wilder than ever."

"How do you mean, Anders?"

"Her folks couldn't keep her in of nights ... a gang of boys and girls would come and whistle for her, and she'd get out, sooner or later, and join them."

"I tell you what," I began, in an unpremeditated burst of invention, which I straightway believed, it so appealed to my imagination, "I've never told anybody before, but all these years I've been desperately in love with Phoebe."

Anders scrutinised me quizzically, then the enthusiasm of the actor in my face made him believe me....

"Well, no matter how bad she is, she certainly was a beaut, the last time I saw her."

"I'm going," I continued "(you mustn't tell anybody), I'm going down to Aunt Rachel's, after I leave here, and _get_ Phoebe." And eagerly and naïvely we discussed the possibilities as we walked homeward....

* * * * *

After my talk with Uncle Beck all my morbidity began to melt away, and, growing better in mind, my body grew stronger ... he wrote to my father that it was not consumption ... so now I was turning my coming West into a passing visit, instead of a long enforced sojourn there for the good of my health.

* * * * *

I found different household arrangements on revisiting Aunt Rachel and her household.

For one thing, the family had moved into town ... Newcastle ... and they had a fine house to live in, neat and comfortable. Gone was that atmosphere of picturesque, pioneer poverty. Though, to be sure, there sat Josh close up against the kitchen stove, as of old. For the first sharp days of fall were come ... he was spitting streams of tobacco, as usual.

"I hate cities," was his first greeting to me. He squirted a brown parabola of tobacco juice, parenthetically, into the wood-box behind the stove, right on top of the cat that had some kittens in there.

Aunt Rachel caught him at it.

"Josh, how often have I told you you mustn't spit on that cat."

"'Scuse me, Ma, I'm kind o' absint-minded."

The incident seemed to me so funny that I laughed hard. Aunt Rachel gave me a quiet smile.

"Drat the boy, he's allus findin' somethin' funny about things!"

This made me laugh more. But I had brought Uncle Josh a big plug of tobacco, and he was placated, ripping off a huge chew as soon as he held it in his hands.

The great change I have just spoken of came over the family because Phoebe's two sisters, Jessie and Mona--who had been off studying to be nurses, now had come back, and, taking cases in town, they were making a good living both for themselves and the two old folks....

I had learned from Uncle Beck, as he drove me in to Mornington, that, the last he heard of Phoebe, she was working out as a maid to "some swells," in that city.

* * * * *

"Damme, ef I don't hate cities an' big towns," ejaculated Uncle Josh, breaking out of a long, meditative silence, "you kain't keep no dogs there ... onless they're muzzled ... and no ferrets, neither ... and what 'ud be the use if you could?... there ain't nothin' to hunt anyhow ... wisht we lived back on thet old muddy hilltop agin."

* * * * *

Supper almost ready ... the appetizing smell of frying ham--there's nothing, being cooked, smells better....

Paul came in from work ... was working steady in the mills now, Aunt Rachel had informed me.

Paul came in without a word, his face a mask of such empty hopelessness that I was moved by it deeply.

"Paul, you mustn't take on so. It ain't right nor religious," said Uncle Josh, knocking the ashes out of his pipe ... he smoked and chewed in relays. Paul replied nothing.

"Come on, folks," put in Rachel, "supper's ready ... draw your chairs up to the table."

We ate our supper under a quiet, grey mood. An air of tragedy seemed to hang over us ... for the life of me I couldn't understand what had become of Paul's good-natured, rude jocosity. Why he had grown into a silent, sorrowful man....

* * * * *

"You kin bunk up with Paul to-night, Johnnie," announced Rachel, when it came bedtime.

Paul had already slunk off to bed right after supper. It was dark in the room when I got there.

"Paul, where's the light?"

"--put it out ... like to lie in the dark an' think," answered a deep, sepulchral voice.

"Whatever _is_ the matter with you, Paul?"

"Ain't you heered? Ain't Ma told you?"

"No!"

Paul struck a match and lit the lamp. I sat on the side of the bed and talked with him.

"Ain't you heered how I been married?" he began.

"So that's it, is it?" I anticipated prematurely, "and you weren't happy ... and she went off and left you!"

"Yes, she's left me all right, Johnnie, but not that way ... she's dead!"

And Paul stopped with a sob in his throat. I didn't know what to say to his sudden declaration, so I just repeated foolishly, "why, I never knew you got married!" twice.

"Christ, Johnnie, she was the best little woman in the world--such a little creature, Johnnie ... her head didn't more'n come up to under my armpits."

There followed a long silence, to me an awkward one; I didn't know what to do or say. Then I perceived the best thing was to let him ease his hurt by just talking on ... and he talked ... on and on ... in his slow, drawling monotone ... and ever so often came the refrain, "Christ, but she was a good woman, Johnnie ... I wish you'd 'a' knowed her."

At last I ventured, "and how--how did she come to die?"

"--baby killed her, she was that small ... she was like a little girl ... she oughtn't to of had no baby at all, doctor said...."

"I killed her, Johnnie," he cried in agony, "and that's the God's truth of it."

Another long silence.

The lamp guttered but didn't go out. A moth had flown down its chimney, was sizzling, charring, inside ... Paul lifted off the globe. Burnt his hands, but said nothing ... flicked the wingless, blackened body to the floor....

"But the baby?--it lived?"

"Yes, it lived ... a girl ... if it hadn't of lived ... if it had gone, too, I wouldn't of wanted to live, either!..."

"That's why I'm workin' so hard, these days, with no lay-offs fer huntin' or fishin' or anything."

* * * * *

The next day I learned more from Rachel of how Paul had agonized over the death of his tiny wife ... "'she was that small you had a'most to shake out the sheets to find her,' as Josh useter say," said Rachel gravely and unhumorously ... and she told how the bereaved husband savagely fought off all his womenfolk and insisted on mothering, for a year, the baby whose birth had killed its mother.

"At last he's gittin' a little cheer in his face. But every so often the gloomy fit comes over him like it did last night at supper. I keep tellin' him it ain't Christian, with her dead two years a'ready--but he won't listen ... he's got to have his fit out each time."

* * * * *

As if this had not been enough of the tragic, the next day when I asked about Phoebe, Aunt Rachel started crying.

"Phoebe's gone, too," she sobbed.

"O, Aunt Rachel, I'm so sorry ... but I didn't know ... nobody told me."

"That's all right, Johnnie. Somehow it relieves me to talk about Phoebe." She rose from her rocker, laid down her darning, and went to a dresser in the next room. She came out again, holding forth to me a picture ... Phoebe's picture....

A shy, small, oval, half-wild face like that of a dryad's. Her chin lifted as if she were some wood-creature listening to the approaching tread of the hunter and ready on the instant to spring forth and run along the wind....

An outdoor picture, a mere snapshot, but an accidental work of art.

Voluminous leafage blew behind and above her head, splashed with the white of sunlight and the gloom of swaying shadow.

"Why, she's--she's beautiful!"

"Yes--got prettier and prettier every time you looked at her...."

"But," and Aunt Rachel sighed, "I couldn't do nothin' with her at all. An' scoldin' an' whippin' done no good, neither. Josh useter whip her till he was blue in the face, an' she wouldn't budge. Only made her more sot and stubborner....

"--guess she was born the way she was ... she never could stay still a minute ... always fidgettin' ... when she was a little girl, even--I used to say, 'Now, look here, Phoebe,' I'd say, 'your ma 'ull give you a whole dime all at once if you'll set still jest for five minutes in that chair.' An' she'd try ... and, before sixty seconds was ticked off she'd be on her feet, sayin', 'Ma, I guess you kin keep that dime.'

"When she took to runnin' out at nights," my great-aunt continued, in a low voice, "yes, an' swearin' back at her pa when he gave her a bit of his mind, it nigh broke my heart ... and sometimes she'd see me cryin', and that would make her feel bad an' she'd quiet down fer a few days ... an' she'd say, 'Ma, I'm goin' to be a good girl now,' an' fer maybe two or three nights she'd help clean up the supper-things--an' then--" with a breaking voice, "an' then all at once she'd scare me by clappin' both hands to that pretty brown head o' hers, in sech a crazy way, an' sayin', 'Honest, Ma, I can't stand it any longer ... this life's too slow.... I've gotta go out where there's some life n' fun!'

"It was only toward the last that she took to sneakin' out after she pretended to go to bed.. gangs of boys an' girls, mixed, would come an' whistle soft fer her, under the window ... an' strange men would sometimes hang aroun' the house ... till Josh went out an' licked a couple.

"It drove Josh nigh crazy.

"One evenin', after this had gone on a long time, Josh ups an' says, 'Ma, Phoebe's run complete out o' hand ... she'll hafta be broke o' this right now ... when she comes back to-night I'm going to give her the lickin' of her life.'

"'Josh, you mustn't whip her. Let's both have a long talk with her. (I knowed Josh 'ud hurt her bad if he whipped her. He has a bad temper when he is het up.) Maybe goin' down on our knees with her an' prayin' might do some good.'"

"'No, Ma, talkin' nor prayin' won't do no good ... the only thing left's a good whippin' to straighten her out.'"

"O Aunt Rachel," I cried, all my desire of Phoebe breaking but into tenderness. I looked at the lovely face, crossed with sunlight, full of such quick intelligence, such mischievousness....

You can catch a wild animal in a trap, but to whip it would be sacrilege ... that might do for domesticated animals.

"Josh never laid a hand on her, though, that night ... she never came home ... men are so awful in their pride, Johnnie ... don't you be like that when you grow to be a man...."

Then Aunt Rachel said no more, as Paul came in at that moment. Nor did she resume the subject.

* * * * *

Next morning I packed away to visit Uncle Lan. I might as well go, even if I hated him. It would be too noticeable, not to go.

He was at the train, waiting for me. He proffered me his hand. To my surprise, I took it. He seized my grip from me, put his other hand affectionately on my shoulder.

"I've often wondered whether you'd ever forgive me for the way I beat you.... I've learned better since."

Before I knew it my voice played me the trick of saying yes, I forgave him.

"That's a good boy!" and Lan gave my hand such a squeeze that it almost made me cry out with the pain of it.

* * * * *

"Lan," as we walked along, "can you tell me more about Phoebe.... Aunt Rachel told me some, but--"

"Oh, she ended up by running away with a drummer ... she hadn't been gone long when her ma got word from her asking her to forgive her ... that she'd run off with a man she loved, and was to be married to him pretty soon.... Phoebe gave no address, but the letter had a Pittsburgh postmark....

"A month ... six months went by. Then a letter came in a strange hand. The girl that wrote it said that she was Phoebe's 'Roommate.'" Lan paused here, and gave me a significant look, then resumed:

"Paul went down to bring the body home, and found she'd been buried already. They were too poor to have it dug up and brought home."

"It seems that the man that took Phoebe off was nothing but a pimp!"

* * * * *