If there was only some way to better it all! But there was no chance. His father had been a failure at everything he touched in early life, and now he was a hopeless invalid. Tom was an idiot—or almost—and himself a cripple. And Nat! Well, Nat “wa’n’t willin”—not that one should blame him. Times like these, a lump like a roc’s egg would rise in the boy’s throat. He had to spit—and spit hard—to conquer it.
“If we hain’t the gosh-awfulest lot!” he would gulp.
To-day, as he came up the lane, June was in the land. She’d done her best to be kind to the farm. All the old heterogeneous rosebushes in the wood-yard and front “lawn” were piled with fragrant bloom. Usually Luke would have lingered to sniff it all, but he saw only one thing now with a sudden skipping at his heart—an automobile standing beside the front porch.
It was not the type of car to cause cardiac disturbance in a connoisseur. It was, in fact, of an early vintage, high-set, chunky, brassily æsthetic, and given to asthmatic choking on occasion; but Luke did not know this. He knew only that it spelled luxury beyond all dreams. It belonged, in short, to his Uncle Clem Cheesman, the rich butcher who lived in the village twelve miles away; and its presence here signaled the fact that Uncle Clem and Aunt Mollie had come to pay one of their detestable quarterly visits to their poor relations. They had come while he was out, and Maw was in there now, bearing it all alone.
Luke limped into the house hastily. He was not mistaken. There was a company air in the room, a stiff hostile-polite taint in the atmosphere. Three visitors sat in the kitchen, and a large hamper, its contents partly disgorged, stood on the table. Luke knew that it contained gifts—the hateful, merciful, nauseating charity of the better-off.
Aunt Mollie was speaking as he entered—a large, high-colored, pouter-pigeon-chested woman, with a great many rings with bright stones, and a nodding pink plume in her hat. She was holding up a bifurcated crimson garment, and greeted Luke absently.
“Three pair o’ them underdrawers, Delia—an’ not a break in one of ’em! I sez, as soon as I see Clem layin’ ’em aside this spring, ‘Them things’ll be jest right fur Delia’s Jere, layin’ there with the rheumatiz.’ They may come a little loose; but, of course, you can’t be choicey. I’ve b’en at Clem fur five years to buy him union suits; but he’s always b’en so stuck on red flannen. But now he’s got two aut’mobiles, countin’ the new delivery, I guess he’s gotta be more tony; so he made out to spare ’em. And now that hat, Delia—it ain’t a mite wore out, an’ fur all you’ll need one it’s plenty good enough. I only had it two years and I guess folks won’t remember; an’ what if they do—they all know you get my things. Same way with that collarette. It’s a little moth-eaten, but it won’t matter fur you.... The gray suit you can easy cut down fur Luke, there—”
She droned on, the other woman making dry automatic sounds of assent. She looked cool—Maw—Luke thought; but she wasn’t. Not by a darn sight! There was a spot of pink in each cheek and she stared hard every little bit at Grampaw Peel’s funeral plate on the mantel. Luke knew what she was thinking of—poor Maw! She was burning in a fire of her own lighting. She had brought it all on herself—on the whole lot of them.
Years ago she had been just like Aunt Mollie. The daughters of a prosperous village carpenter, they had shared beads, beaux and bangles until Maw, in a moment’s madness, had chucked it all away to marry poor Paw. Now she had made her bed, she must lie in it. Must sit and say “Thank you!” for Aunt Mollie’s leavings, precious scraps she dared not refuse—Maw, who had a pride as fierce and keen as any! It was devilish! Oh, it was kind of Aunt Mollie to give; it was the taking that came so bitter hard. And then they weren’t genteel about their giving. There was always that air of superiority, that conscious patronage, as now, when Uncle Clem, breaking off his conversation with the invalid in the next room about the price of mutton on the hoof and the chances of the Democrats’ getting in again, stopped fiddling with his thick plated watch chain and grinned across at big Tom to fling his undeviating flower of wit:
“Runnin’ all to beef, hain’t ye, Tom, boy? Come on down to the market an’ we’ll git some A 1 sirloins outen ye, anyway. Do your folks that much good.”