II.
When Sim Burns woke the next morning he felt a sharper twinge of remorse. It was not a broad or well-defined feeling, just a sense that he’d been unduly irritable, not that on the whole he was not in the right. Little Pet lay with the warm June sunshine filling his baby eyes, curiously content in striking at flies that buzzed around his little mouth.
The man thrust his dirty naked feet into his huge boots, and, without washing his face or combing his hair, went out to the barn to do his chores.
He was a type of the prairie farmer and his whole surrounding was typical. He had a quarter-section of fine level land, mortgaged, of course, but his house was a little box-like structure, costing, perhaps, five hundred dollars. It had three rooms and the ever-present “summer kitchen” attached to the back. It was unpainted and had no touch of beauty, a mere box.
His stable was built of slabs and banked and covered with straw. It looked like a den, was low and long, and had but one door in the end. The cow-yard held ten or fifteen cattle of various kinds, while a few calves were bawling from a pen near by. Behind the barn on the west and north was a fringe of willows forming a “wind-break.” A few broken and discouraged fruit trees standing here and there among the weeds formed the garden. In short, he was spoken of by his neighbors as “a hard-working cuss, and tollably well fixed.”
No grace had come or ever could come into his life. Back of him were generations of men like himself, whose main’ business had been to work hard, live miserably, and beget children to take their places after they died. He was a product.
His courtship had been delayed so long on account of poverty that it brought little of humanizing emotion into his life. He never mentioned it now, or if he did, it was only to sneer obscenely at it. He had long since ceased to kiss his wife or even speak kindly to her. There was no longer any sanctity to life or love. He chewed tobacco and toiled on from year to year without any very clearly defined idea of the future.
He was tall, dark, and strong, in a flat-chested, slouching sort of way, and had grown neglectful of even decency in his dress. He wore the American farmer’s customary outfit of rough brown pants, hickory shirt, and greasy white hat. It differed from his neighbors, mainly in being a little dirtier and more ragged. His grimy hands were broad and strong as the clutch of a bear, and he “was a turrible feller to turn off work,” as Council said. “I druther have Sim Burns work for me one day than some men three. He’s a linger.” He worked with unusual speed this morning, and ended by milking all the cows himself as a sort of savage penance for his misdeeds the previous evening, muttering in self-defence:—
“Seems ‘s if ever’ cussid thing piles on to me at once. That corn, the road-tax, and hayin’ comin’ on, and now she gits her back up—”
When he went back to the well he sloshed himself thoroughly in the horse-trough and went to the house. He found breakfast ready but his wife was not in sight. The older children were clamoring around the uninviting breakfast table, spread with cheap plates and with boiled potatoes and fried salt pork as the principal dish.
“Where’s y’r ma?” he asked, with a threatening note in his voice, as he sat down by the table.
“She’s in the bedroom.”
He rose and pushed open the door. The mother sat with the babe in her lap, looking out of the window down across the superb field of timothy, moving like a lake. She did not look round. She only grew rigid. Her thin neck throbbed with the pulsing of blood to her head.
“What’s got into you, now?” he said brutally; “don’t be a fool. Come out and eat breakfast with me, an’ take care o’ y’r young ones.”
She neither moved nor made a sound. With an oath he turned on his heel and went out to the table. Eating his breakfast in his usual wolfish fashion, he went out into the hot sun with his team and ridding plow, not a little disturbed by this new phase of his wife’s “cantankerousness.” He plowed steadily and sullenly all the forenoon, in the terrific heat and dust. The air was full of tempestuous threats, still and sultry, one of those days when work is a punishment. When he came in at noon he found things the same,—dinner on the table, but his wife out in the garden with the youngest child.
“I c’n stand it as long as she can,” he said to himself, in the hearing of the children. When he finished the field of corn it was after sundown, and he came up to the house, hot, dusty, his shirt wringing wet with sweat, and his neck aching with the work of looking down all day at the cornrows. His mood was still stern. The multitudinous lift, and stir, and sheen of the wide green field had been lost upon him.
“I wonder if she’s milked them cows,” he muttered to himself. He gave a sigh of relief to find she had. But she had done so not for his sake, but for the sake of the poor, patient, dumb brutes.
When he went to the bedroom after supper, he found that the cradle and his wife’s few little boxes and parcels—poor pathetic properties—had been removed to the garret which they called a chamber, and he knew he was to sleep alone again.
“She’ll git over it, I guess.” He was very tired but he didn’t feel quite comfortable enough to sleep. The air was oppressive. His shirt wet in places, and stiff with dust in other places, oppressed him more than usual, so he rose and removed it, getting a clean one out of a drawer. This was an unusual thing for him, for he usually slept in the same shirt which he wore in his day’s work, but it was Saturday night, and he felt justified in the extravagance.
In the meanwhile poor Lucretia was brooding over her life in a most dangerous fashion. All she had done and suffered for Simeon Burns came back to her till she wondered how she had endured it all. All day long in the midst of the glorious summer landscape she brooded.
“I hate him,” she thought with a fierce blazing up through the murk of her musing, “I hate t’ live. But they aint no hope. I’m tied down. I can’t leave the children, and I aint got no money. I couldn’t make a living out in the world. I aint never seen anything an’ don’t know anything.”
She was too simple and too unknowing to speculate on the loss of her beauty, which would have brought her competency once,—if sold in the right market. As she lay in her little attic bed, she was still sullenly thinking, wearily thinking of her life. She thought of a poor old horse which Sim had bought once, years before, and put to the plough when it was too old and weak to work. She could see her again as in a vision, that poor old mare, with sad head drooping, toiling, toiling, till at last she could no longer move, and lying down under the harness in the furrow, groaned under the whip—and died.
Then she wondered if her own numbness and despair meant death, and she held her breath to think harder upon it. She concluded at last, grimly, that she didn’t care—only for the children.
The air was frightfully close in the little attic, and she heard the low mutter of the rising storm in the west. She forgot her troubles a little, listening to the far-off gigantic footsteps of the tempest.
Boom, boom, boom, it broke nearer and nearer as if a vast cordon of cannon was being drawn around the horizon. Yet she was conscious only of pleasure. She had no fear. At last came the sweep of cool, fragrant storm-wind, a short and sudden dash of rain, and then in the cool, sweet hush which followed, the worn and weary woman fell into a deep sleep.
When she woke the younger children were playing about on the floor in their night-clothes, and little Pet was sitting in a square of sunshine intent on one of his shoes. He was too young to know how poor and squalid his surroundings were, the patch of sunshine flung on the floor glorified it all. He (little animal) was happy.
The poor of the western prairies lie almost as unhealthily close together as do the poor of the city tenements. In the small hut of the peasant there is as little chance to escape close and tainting contact as in the coops and dens of the North End of proud Boston. In the midst of oceans of land, floods of sunshine and gulfs of verdure, the farmer lives in two or three small rooms. Poverty’s eternal cordon is ever round the poor.
“Ma, why didn’t you sleep with pap last night?” asked Bob, the seven-year old, when he saw she was awake at last. She flushed a dull red.
“Sh! Because—I—it was too warm—and there was a storm comin’. You never mind askin’ such questions. Is he gone out?”
“Yup. I heerd him callin’ the pigs. It’s Sunday, aint it, ma?”
“Why, yes, so it is! Wal! Now Sadie, you jump up an’ dress quick’s y’ can, an’ Bob an’ Sile, you run down an’ bring s’m water,” she commanded, in nervous haste beginning to dress. In the middle of the room there was scarce space to stand beneath the rafters.
When Sim came in for his breakfast he found it on the table but his wife was absent.
“Where’s y’r ma?” he asked with a little less of the growl in his voice.
“She’s upstairs with Pet.”
The man ate his breakfast in dead silence, till at last Bob ventured to say,
“What makes ma ac’ so?”
“Shut up!” was the brutal reply. The children began to take sides with the mother—all but the oldest girl who was ten years old. To her the father turned now for certain things to be done, treating her in his rough fashion as a housekeeper, and the girl felt flattered and docile accordingly.
They were pitiably clad; like most farm-children, indeed, they could hardly be said to be clad at all. Sadie had on but two garments, a sort of undershirt of cotton and a faded calico dress, out of which her bare, yellow little legs protruded, lamentably dirty and covered with scratches.
The boys also had two garments, a hickory shirt and a pair of pants like their father’s, made out of brown denims by the mother’s never-resting hands,—hands that in sleep still sewed, and skimmed, and baked, and churned. The boys had gone to bed without washing their feet, which now looked like toads, calloused, brown, and chapped.
Part of this the mother saw with her dull eyes as she came down, after seeing the departure of Sim up the road with the cows. It was a beautiful Sunday morning, and the woman might have sung like a bird if men were only as kind to her as Nature. But she looked dully on the seas of ripe grasses, tangled and flashing with dew, out of which the bobolinks and larks sprang. The glorious winds brought her no melody, no perfume, no respite from toil and care.
She thought of the children she saw in the town. Children of the merchant and banker, clean as little dolls, the boys in knickerbocker suits, the girls in dainty white dresses, and a bitterness sprang into her heart. She soon put the dishes away, but felt too tired and listless to do more.
“Taw-bay-wies! Pet want ta-aw-bay-wies!” cried the little one, tugging at her dress.
Listlessly, mechanically she took him in her arms, and went out into the garden which was fragrant and sweet with dew and sun. After picking some berries for him, she sat down on the grass under the row of cotton-woods, and sank into a kind of lethargy. A kingbird chattered and shrieked overhead, the grasshoppers buzzed in the grasses, strange insects with ventriloquistic voices sang all about her,—she could not tell where.
“Ma, can’t I put on my clean dress?” insisted Sadie.
“I don’t care,” said the brooding woman darkly. “Leave me alone.”
Oh, if she could only lie here forever, escaping all pain and weariness! The wind sang in her ears, the great clouds, beautiful as heavenly ships, floated far above in the vast dazzling deeps of blue sky, the birds rustled and chirped around her, leaping-insects buzzed and clattered in the grass and in the vines and bushes. The goodness and glory of God was in the very air, the bitterness and oppression of man in every line of her face.
But her quiet was broken by Sadie who came leaping like a fawn down through the grass.
“O ma, Aunt Maria and Uncle William are coming. They’ve jest turned in.”
“I don’t care if they be!” she answered in the same dully-irritated way. “What’re they comin’ here to-day for, I wan’ to know.” She stayed there immovably, till Mrs. Council came down to see her, piloted by two or three of the children. Mrs. Council, a jolly, large-framed woman, smiled brightly, and greeted her in a loud, jovial voice. She made the mistake of taking the whole matter lightly; her tone amounted to ridicule.
“Sim says you’ve been having a tantrum, Creeshy. Don’t know what for, he says.”
“He don’t,” said the wife with a sullen flash in the eyes. “He don’t know why! Well, then, you just tell him what I say. I’ve lived in hell long enough. I’m done. I’ve slaved here day in and day out f’r twelve years without pay—not even a decent word. I’ve worked like no nigger ever worked ‘r could work and live. I’ve given him all I had, ‘r ever expect to have. I’m wore out. My strength is gone, my patience is gone. I’m done with it—that’s a part of what’s the matter.”
“My sakes, Lucreeshy! You mustn’t talk that way.”
“But I will,” said the woman, as she supported herself on one palm and raised the other. “I’ve got to talk that way.” She was ripe for an explosion like this. She seized upon it with eagerness. “They aint no use o’ livin’ this way, anyway. I’d take poison if it want f’r the young ones.”
“Lucreeshy Burns!”
“Oh, I mean it.”
“Land sakes alive, I b’leeve you’re goin’ crazy!”
“I shouldn’t wonder if I was. I’ve had enough t’ drive an Indian crazy. Now you jest go off an’ leave me ‘lone. I aint in mind to visit—they aint no way out of it, an’ I’m tired o’ tryin’ to find a way. Go off an’ let me be.”
Her tone was so bitterly hopeless that the great jolly face of Mrs. Council stiffened into a look of horror such as she had not worn for years. The children, in two separate groups, could be heard rioting. Bees were humming around the clover in the grass, and the kingbird chattered ceaselessly from the Lombardy poplar-tip. Both women felt all this peace and beauty of the morning, dimly, and it disturbed Mrs. Council because the other was so impassive under it all. At last, after a long and thoughtful pause, Mrs. Council asked a question whose answer she knew would decide it all,—asked it very kindly and softly,—
“Creeshy, are you comin’ in?”
“No,” was the short and sullenly decisive answer. Mrs. Council knew that was the end, and so rose with a sigh and went away.
“Wal, good by,” she said simply.
Looking back she saw Lucretia lying at length with closed eyes and hollow cheeks. She seemed to be sleeping, half-buried in the grass. She did not look up nor reply to her sister-in-law. Her life also was one of toil and trouble, but not so hard and hapless as Lucretia’s. By contrast with most of her neighbors she seemed comfortable.
“Sim Burns, what you ben doin’ to that woman?” she burst out as she waddled up to where the two men were sitting under a cotton-wood tree, talking and whittling after the manner of farmers.
“Nawthin’ ‘s fur ‘s I know,” answered Burns, not quite honestly, and looking uneasy.
“You needn’t try t’ git out of it like that, Sim Burns,” replied his sister. “That woman never got into that fit f’r nawthin’.”
“Wal, if you know more about it than I do, whadgy ask me fur,” he replied angrily.
“Tut, tut!” put in Council, always a peacemaker, “hold y’r horses! Don’t git on y’r ear, childern! Keep cool, and don’t spile y’r shirts. Most likely yer all t’ blame. Keep cool an’ swear less.”
“Wal, I’ll bet Sim’s more to blame than she is. Why they aint a harder-workin’ woman in the hull State of Ioway than she is—”
“Except Marm Council.”
“Except nobody. Look at her, jest skin and bones.”
Council chuckled in his vast way. “That’s so, mother, measured in that way she leads over you. You git fat on it.”
She smiled a little, her indignation oozing away; she never “could stay mad,” her children were accustomed to tell her. Burns refused to talk any more about the matter, and the visitors gave it up, and got out their team and started for home, Mrs. Council firing this parting shot:—
“The best thing you can do to-day is t’ let her alone. Mebbe the childern ‘ll bring her round again. If she does come round, you see ‘t you treat her a little more ‘s y’ did when you was a-courtin’ her.”
“This way,” roared Council, putting his arm around his wife’s waist. She boxed his ears while he guffawed and clucked at his team.
Burns took a measure of salt and went out into the pasture to salt the cows. On the sunlit slope of the field, where the cattle came running and bawling to meet him, he threw down the salt in handfuls, and then lay down to watch them as they eagerly licked it up, even gnawing a bare spot in the sod in their eagerness to get it all.
Burns was not a drinking man; was hard-working, frugal, in fact, he had no extravagances except his tobacco. His clothes he wore until they all but dropped from him; and he worked in rain and mud, as well as dust and sun. It was this suffering and toiling all to no purpose that made him sour and irritable. He didn’t see why he should have so little after so much hard work.
He was puzzled to account for it all. His mind (the average mind) was weary with trying to solve an insoluble problem. His neighbors, who had got along a little better than himself, were free with advice and suggestion as to the cause of his persistent poverty.
Old man Bacon, the hardest-working man in the county, laid it to Burns’ lack of management. Jim Butler, who owned a dozen farms (which he had taken on mortgages), and who had got rich by buying land at government price and holding for a rise, laid all such cases as Burns to “lack of enterprise, foresight.”
But the larger number feeling themselves “in the same boat” with Burns, said:—
“I’d know. Seems as if things got worse an’ worse. Corn an’ wheat gittin’ cheaper ‘n’ cheaper. Machinery eatin’ up profits—got to have machinery to harvest the cheap grain, an’ then the machinery eats up profits. Taxes goin’ up. Devil to pay all round; I’d know what ‘n thunder is the matter.”
The democrats said protection was killing the farmers, the republicans said no. The grangers growled about the middle-men, the green-backers said there wasn’t circulating medium enough, and in the midst of it all, hard-working discouraged farmers, like Simeon Burns, worked on, unable to find out what really was the matter.
And there on this beautiful Sabbath morning, Sim sat and thought and thought, till he rose with an oath, and gave it up.