2
Stud Brailsford paced the house like a caged bear. The family was snowbound, and the enforced idleness made the big man restless and moody.
For three days the snow had fallen burdening the trees, drifting three feet deep against the parlor windows, making it necessary to light the lamps at two each afternoon. Day and night the wind and snow poured in torrents down the Rock River valley, lifted in hissing spirals to strike against the house.
Stud had tried reading. He had mended and oiled harness, shucked corn, shoveled snow for hours every day. He had played a dozen games of checkers with the hired man. Still he was restless.
Coming upon Early Ann in the back pantry he pulled her roughly to him and kissed her full on the mouth. She broke away but she did not cry out. She looked at him bewildered, hurt, and tearful.
Stud was ashamed. He hung his head and went through into the kitchen where Sarah helped him off with his boots and put on his slippers. He knew now what was troubling him. He lay on the sofa with his eyes closed, pretending to sleep, but in reality thinking of Early Ann.
What a picture the girl was, her eyes bright and cheeks glowing! Stud liked to watch her churning the cream (which they could not deliver because of the blizzard). He liked to watch her poring over the geography book to learn the state capitals and the principal rivers of the United States. Her fingers flew deftly as she tatted a yoke for a fancy nightgown. Stud wished he were still in his twenties.
As Stud lay brooding on the sofa, Gus burst in with the exciting news that the mailman had broken through and had brought the new mail-order catalogue. Nothing short of this miracle could have brightened the sad day for Stanley.
The new Sears Roebuck catalogue! It was a gala event. Let the snow drift, stars fall, or nations vanish. The Brailsfords did not care. They gathered around Stud who hastily tore the wrapping from "The Farmer's Bible" and opened it on the kitchen table.
Stanley, as always, turned to the buggies, wagons and harnesses. He had a Ford, it was true, but his first love had been the buggy. He sighed deeply as he viewed the spanking new surreys, phaëtons, runabouts, Concords and buckboards. He especially coveted buggy number 11R720, a veritable dream in buggy manufacture illustrated in full color. This swank creation, which the catalogue disclosed had been especially designed for eastern customers, had drop axles, green cloth cushions, triple-braced shaft, and flashing red wheels. Even as steamboat captains must sometimes dream of smart clipper ships, so Stud Brailsford, owner of a Ford, exclaimed aloud over this beautiful mail order buggy—1914 model.
He decided that his stallion, who had recently had a touch of colic, needed more exercise, and within ten minutes had filled out an order for a skeleton road cart of sturdy design. He lingered over the new cream separators, bright red gasoline engines, ornamental fences, milk cans, lanterns, and one of the most inspiring manure spreaders which ever spread manure. The 1914 catalogue was epochal in the life of this big farmer.
When Sarah and Early Ann were given a chance to look between the covers they devoured the sections on clothes, jewelry, silverware and kitchen equipment. With dreaming eyes they caressed the lavallières engraved with roses, doves, and hearts; the real diamond rings flashing blue fire; the Parisian toilet sets elaborately hand-painted, monogrammed, and including two sizes of what were politely known as combinets. Perfumes, soaps, conch shells, and "high-class, hand-painted pictures inset with mother-of-pearl" transported them to fairy land.
Their senses starved with drab reality, they viewed with hungry eyes hats dangling red cherries, grapes, stuffed birds and ostrich plumes. They lusted for the dainty nightgowns, embroidered underwear, stylish coats and dresses, rococo silver, and exotic wall paper they might never own.
"I sure do wish I had one of them blue enamel coal-oil stoves," said Sarah. "It'd be a real blessing in hot weather."
"I'll make out the order right now," Stanley said, remembering guiltily how he had kissed Early Ann in the back pantry.
"You're too good to me, Stanley, I don't deserve it."
Early Ann said she was going to buy herself a pair of navy blue high-button velvet shoes with flexible cushion soles. They could be had for two dollars and twenty-five cents, only a quarter more than it would cost to buy a sensible pair.
"And I'm going to get the family a sugarbowl-with-teaspoon-rack for the center of the table, and some new sheet music for the organ."
"You save your money, young lady," Stanley warned.
Personally Gus wished he had a bulldog so that he might buy dog collar 6R6268, ablaze with brass and imitation topaz. Then with a college-shaped meerschaum pipe, a cane, a green suit and yellow gloves he would go calling upon the new school teacher. If that didn't impress her he didn't know what would.
When no one else was around he hastily turned to the section displaying corsets and women's underwear. He had never seen anything like it. Montgomery Ward's didn't have half as many big, blooming girls in lace-trimmed drawers, union suits, princess slips, corsets, and corset covers. He had never seen so many stylish stouts with blossoming cheeks and magnificent buttocks. The moment he dared he would carefully cut out whole pages of those colorful girls, particularly the smiling matron whose union suit was described as "snug fitting with flaring umbrella bottom."
"Gee," said Gus, "I'd like to have one of everything in this catalogue."
Life could be lived in those days, as it can now, without stepping off the farm for so much as a length of ribbon. You could "laugh yourself to death" for fourteen cents by perusing "On a Slow Train Through Arkansas," "Through New Hampshire on a Buckboard," or "I'm From Texas, You Can't Steer Me." You could buy—and still can—hay forks, Wilton carpets adorned with large red roses, slide trombones, butter paddles, post card albums, cylinder records, or magic lanterns for a relatively trifling sum.
And never before in the history of civilization was seen such a display of hammocks, guns, cuckoo clocks, home remedies, feather dusters, folding tubs, bust forms, pacifiers, bed pans, trusses, windmills, lard presses, hornless talking machines and morris chairs. Ben Hur's famous chariot race enlivened a full page in color, while the devout could purchase the Bible for as little as sixty-three cents.
They did not care if the storm was raging outside. They did not care that they were snowbound. They were living in the romantic world of the mail order catalogue where they were all as rich as kings, where every woman wore a beautiful new dress and every man was handsome and stylish, where there were bonbons and books and beautiful buggies.
"Well, now that we've got the new catalogue, we know where we can put the old one," said Gus, winking at Stud.
Sarah blushed and Early Ann giggled.
On the stairs that night, Stanley again caught Early Ann and kissed her. The girl fought silently but furiously to free herself, and it was during the struggle that Sarah came upon them.
Stud's wife was suddenly overborne with her age, her fragility, and her helplessness. For a moment she was jealous, angry with them both, and bitter. The following moment she was thinking of Stanley and wondering if he weren't entitled to be faithless just once in his life. Sarah felt that she would be the last person in the world to keep another from happiness. Then she remembered Early Ann, and she was afraid for the girl as though she had been her own daughter. Heartsick, frightened, but determined to face the issue; lost, bewildered, so in love with Stanley that it hurt her in the pit of her stomach,—Sarah, in that long moment before she spoke experienced half a life-time of sorrow, and the despair of millions of women of her age, standing in lamplight on the worn stairs, looking a little older.
"You might at least think of Early Ann," she said.