As for my Aunt Millie, she said, “What did you marry an American for? Can she cook?”
Just then the door opened and in slouched the tallest man I ever saw; slouched past us without a word and threw himself moodily into a chair at the end of the supper table. His face had been carved—roughly carved—out of mahogany; it was gaunt, sun-beaten and lined with fret marks. He laid big, scarred hands on his plate. His shoulders drooped and yet were massive in strength. His eyes were like distant lights well back under the shadow of his bulging brows. A look of disgust seemed to have lingered on his thin, curled lips since his birth.
He was my cousin Martin who had arrived from England two years before.
When he rose up to reach out one of his great hands to me, there was a curious, unaccountable antagonism in his tone when he said, “Oh, this’s him, eh? He’s the lucky dog, is he?”
During the recital of my educational experiences which followed, I noticed that my most interested listener was Martin. When I came to those parts which had to do with self-support, he was alert in every muscle. His eyes blazed at me, devouring every word that I said.
When aunt and uncle left us alone, Martin said: “Priddy, do you think the world’s treated me—oh, right, just right?”
“What do you mean, Martin?” I asked. “You’ve got fight in your tone. What’s wrong?”
“Did you never ask that, too?” he retorted, hotly. “Did you ever kick against the goad? I think you did, once. Don’t forget it, Priddy, ever! You’re not the only chap that ever wanted to get ahead, don’t lose sight of that. If it comes to matching ambition, I’ve got enough and to spare. Here you are, not much over twenty, I take it, yet you’ve got polished by seven years of schooling. Seven years of it! Have you any more right to it than me? Here I am nearly thirty and what am I? Blest if I’m anything but a hod carrier! What have I ever been, Priddy? Did I ever have a chance? I went into the mill at eight and have been there till this winter set in. God knows it’s little I know in the way of schooling! I can write my name and read some; but I got it myself. You know what the mill can be to an ambitious chap. You never felt it pressing down and stifling you more than I did. I tell you that.” He actually spit on his hands and rubbed them, as if on the verge of striking me.
“The beginning of this winter I said I wouldn’t stand it no longer, and I won’t! No mill will get me again; not if I have to starve. I nearly have starved, this winter, trying to keep out. I’ve peddled shoes, run a baker’s cart, been janitor of a club-room and now I’m carrying bricks! Maybe you don’t think it’s hard! I wish you had it to go through. Perhaps you have, only your hands arn’t spoiled like mine with the frost. Even my feet are lame, this very minute, through frost. I’m earning a dollar seventy-five a day: good pay, but I shouldn’t last more than a few years at it and then——. Besides, I want to get married. She’s waiting. I’ve just got fifty dollars in the bank. Do you wonder I feel so?”
On Christmas Sunday a blackboard in front of the church announced that the “Rev. Albert Priddy, formerly of this church, will preach in the morning and evening. Everybody Welcome!”