The Fetters
The cool maples rustled temptingly before the open kitchen window, and seemed to mock the busy worker within. Flies buzzed at the screen, door, and at intervals found entrance through sundry gaps in the rusty screening. Inside there was the endless clatter of dishes, the hissing sound of frying meat, and occasionally a sharp exclamation in a nervous, high-pitched voice. The owner of the voice, a woman of about thirty-five, was walking busily around the kitchen. A soiled gingham apron nearly covered a worn gray skirt, and several large safety-pins held her waist together over her flat chest. Premature wrinkles hardened her eyes and mouth. Her hair drawn back over a high, bony forehead, was twisted into an untidy little knot at the back of her head. On each of her cheeks, just below the bone, came and went bright spots of color—the only color about her, for her hair had no glints of light and her apathetic blue eyes seemed absolutely devoid of luster.
As she hastened back and forth, opening the oven door, setting the table, inspecting the contents of various kettles steaming on the big stove, she still found time to throw a glance, now and then, out to the rickety porch, where a pale-faced little girl sat in an old red porch-chair. The child's big eyes, startlingly prominent in her wan face, followed the woman, and, when the latter looked at her, a sudden smile would curve the straight little lips. But at times she would look away from the kitchen out beyond to the wheat-fields, gleaming yellow in the August sun—and still farther to the cool green woods, with the hard blue sky above them. Then the child would sigh, and her face would grow wondering and anxious, as she turned back again and smiled at the woman in the kitchen—a curious, wistful, unchildlike smile. On the step beside her lay a worn little home-made crutch.
"Here come the men-folks, mother," the child exclaimed suddenly. Her mother came to the door, and shading her eyes with her apron, peered up the dusty lane. Then she went back to the house and hurriedly finished setting the table. The heavy plates and cups were hardly in place on the red-checked cloth before the men came clattering up the walk and up the porch. Most of them had a smile for the pale little girl in the chair, and one had brought her a bunch of red field-poppies, already half withered, in his big hand. The child took them eagerly, laying their vivid petals lovingly against her pale cheek. The rest of the men filed past with a grin or a roughly tender, word—all but the last. He came up the steps, his forehead wrinkled in a scowl evidently habitual, his mouth hard, his eyes deep-set and forbidding. He did not even notice the child, and she shrank back in her chair, her lip trembling, her eyes wide with fear.
"Dinner near ready, Jane?" he demanded in a gruff tone. Jane gave a brief little nod and hurried on with the rest of the preparations. Rough laughter, scraping of boots, loud clattering of knives on plates, and a continual demand for replenishment, followed the course of the dinner. Jane sat wearily, but her plateful of cabbage and pork lay untasted before her. Out on the porch the little girl sipped a glass of milk and watched the cool dimness of the distant woods.
The men pushed back their chairs, wiped their mouths with the backs of their brown hands, and hurried away to the fields. Jane's husband stopped for a moment to mend a rip in his boot. It was a difficult rip to mend and his temper was soon exhausted.
"Why don't ye learn that white-faced brat out there to work!" he stormed, "us short o' hands an' her less good than none at all—an' a nuisance to boot." Jane suddenly turned and let a saucer fall. Her lips were compressed for a moment, then she went down on one knee and carefully picked up the fragments of china.
"What a snap ye've got, next to what brother Dan's wife had," Jim went surlily on. "Dan made her go out an' tend his grapes, while all ye've got to do is cook a little and wash up—an' ye act as if ye was worked hard. Dan's wife never kicked—she'd be'n sorry if she had," and he gave a hard dry laugh in appreciation of his own humor.
But Jane did not hear this last remark; she was thinking of her brother-in-law's wife, a frail little woman whose life had been made up of pruning grapevines or cutting grapes, working side by side with the Italian women whom her husband hired, working harder than any of them did, too, and for far less recompense. She remembered how angry Dan had been because his wife had appeared one afternoon in a shirt-waist, instead of the usual wrapper. It was a clumsy, cheap, ill-made thing, but Margaret's eyes had danced when Jane came to see her that day. And she remembered how Dan had come in and declared he wanted no high-falutin' things around his house; that he had married to get some one to work for him, not for a parlor ornament. Poor little Margaret! How her thin cheeks had flushed and her timid eyes filled with tears! But she died not long after—Jane gave a half-envious sigh.
"Goin' to stand there all day lookin' at nothin'?" a gruff voice asked suddenly, and she started. The knife with which she had been peeling potatoes to fry for supper, slipped and cut her finger. She went over to the sink and wiped away the red streak, while her husband shufflingly made his exit, grumbling to himself over the foolishness of ever bothering with such a useless baggage as a woman. On the porch he stumbled over the little crutch and kicked it aside with an oath.