Читать книгу The Story of a Country Town - E. W. Howe - Страница 13

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IT having been decided to begin the summer school a few weeks earlier than at first intended, it became necessary for me to go after the teacher; so it was arranged that I should drive over to Smoky Hill on Friday, and return any time the following day.

My mother shared the feeling that the neighborhood where Agnes lived was superior to ours—although none of us knew why we had this impression—and after taking unusual pains with my toilet, she asked Jo to cut my hair, which he kindly did just before I drove away in the wagon, from the high seat of which my short legs barely touched the floor.

I knew nothing of the settlement except the direction, which was north, and that the uncle with whom Agnes lived was named Biggs, but they said I could easily inquire the way. The distance was twenty miles, and by repeated inquiries I found that Mr. Biggs—who was called Little Biggs by those living near him—lived in the first white house after crossing the north fork of Bull River, and when I came in sight of the place I knew it as well as if I had lived within hailing distance all my life. It was just such a place as I expected to find; an aristocratic porch on two sides of a house evidently built after the plans of an architect—the first house of such pretensions I had ever seen—with a gravel walk leading down to the gate, and a wide and neglected yard in front. A broken and dismantled wind-mill stood in the barn-yard, and around it was piled a great collection of farm machinery in an equally advanced stage of decay, all rotting away for lack of care and use. There was a general air of neglect everywhere, and I thought Mr. Biggs was an indifferent farmer, or else an invalid. Boards were off the fences, and gates off the hinges, and pigs roamed in every place where they did not belong. A herd of them, attracted by the sound of my wheels, dashed out from under the porch, and went snorting into the vegetable garden through a broken fence. I noticed these things as I stopped at a large gate intended for wagons to drive through, and while wondering whether I had better drive in there, or tie the team and walk up to the house. While debating the question I saw that a large, boyish-looking young man was pitching hay near the barn, and, noticing that he had stopped his work and was looking at me, I motioned for him to come out. Impatiently throwing down his fork, he came out to the fence, and, resting his chin on the top board, he looked at me with great impudence.

“Does Mr. Biggs live here?” I civilly inquired.

“Yes, Mr. Biggs lives here,” he answered, drawling the first word as if to express disgust.

“Well, then,” I said, “if you will open the gate I’ll come in.”

He threw it open with a bang, as if to express an unfavorable opinion of me, and I drove through, and stopped down by the stables. He followed sullenly, after banging the gate again, and, picking up his fork without looking at me, went on with his pitching. I began to feel uncomfortable at this cool reception, and inquired quite respectfully:—

“Is Mr. Biggs at home?”

“No,” the fellow replied, “he’s not at home,” plunging his fork viciously into the hay as though he were wishing I was under it.

“Is Miss Agnes at home, then?”

“Yes, Miss Agnes is at home.” He looked up in better humor, as though the name of Agnes was not so disagreeable as that of Biggs.

“Well, I’m told to stay here to-night, and take Agnes to her school to-morrow. If you’ll show me where to stand the horses I’ll put them away.”

He laid down his fork at this and went to look through the stables. There seemed to be a spring somewhere near, for the stalls were oozy and wet, and unfit for use, and the fellow was debating in his mind which was the worst or the best one, I could not tell which. Finally he found a place, but the feed boxes were gone; and then another, but it had no place for the hay. I was following him around by this time, and said the last one would do very well, as it was the best one there.

He helped me to unhitch the horses, and while we were about it I looked up at the house and saw Agnes at one of the windows. She went away immediately, however, and I supposed she would be down to welcome me; but she didn’t come, and I began to feel very uncomfortable. I had consoled myself for the rudeness of the young man by the thought that he would be very much ashamed of his incivility when Agnes came running down to meet me; but she didn’t come, and kept away from the window, and I was uncertain whether I had better return home or seek shelter for the night at another house.

I noticed in the meantime that the fellow helping me was a giant in stature, and that he had a very little head, on which was perched a hat evidently bought for one of the children. The band and shape being gone, it looked very much like an inverted V.

“I suppose you are the preacher’s boy?” he said, after eying me a long while, as though that was a very good reason why he should dislike me.

On my replying that such was the case, he looked at me as if thinking I was larger or smaller than he had imagined, and continued apparently in better humor:—

“I have heard of you. I live here. I’m the hired man. My name is Big Adam; lazy Adam, she calls me.”

I had heard that little eyes denoted cunning, and little ears great curiosity, and Big Adam’s were so particularly small that I determined to be very wary of him during my stay.

“She owns the farm, though Biggs pretends to own it,” Big Adam went on, “but, while they do not agree in this, they agree that Big Adam hasn’t enough to do, and is very lazy, and between them I have a great deal of trouble. I do all the work that is done here, and though you may think from looking around that I am not kept very busy, I am. There are four hundred acres here, and they expect me to keep it in a high state of cultivation. You see how well I succeed; it’s the worst-looking place on earth.”

I began to understand him better, and said it looked very well when I drove up.

“May be it does—from the road, but I haven’t been out there for a year to see. I am kept too busy. But if you stay here long I’ll take you out into the field, and show you weeds higher than your head. Instead of spending the money to mend the stables and fences, they buy more land with it, to give Big Adam something to do; for they are always saying that I am fat from idleness. I am fat, but not from idleness. I haven’t had time this spring to comb my hair. Look at it.”

He took off the Λ-shaped hat, and held his head down for me to see. It reminded me of the brush heaps in which we found rabbits at home, and I wished Jo had come along; he would have been delighted to shingle it.

“But you go into the house,” he said, putting on his hat again, and, taking up the fork he had laid down to hunt a stall for my horses: “you’ll hear enough of lazy Adam in there. They’ll tell you I’m lazy and shiftless, because I can’t do the work of a dozen men; and they’ll tell you I am surly, because I can’t cheerfully go ahead and do all they ask me to. A fine opinion of Big Adam you’ll have when you go away; but I ask you to notice while you are here if Big Adam is not always at work: and Agnes will tell you—she is the only one among them who pretends to tell the truth—that she has never seen me idle. But go on into the house; I am not allowed to talk to strangers.”

Accepting this suggestion, I went through a gate which was torn off its hinges and lying flat in the path, and, walking up the steps, I knocked timidly at the front door. While waiting for some one to answer my rap, I noticed a door-plate hanging on one screw, and, careening my head around, read “Lytle Biggs.” I then understood why his neighbors called him Little Biggs—it was his name.

I hadn’t time to congratulate myself on this discovery, for just then the door-plate flew in, and Agnes stood before me. Although she was friendly to me as usual there was a constraint in her manner that I could not understand, and as she led the way in she looked as though she was expecting the house to blow up.

“My uncle is away,” she said, confusedly, after we were seated in a room opening off from the hall where I had entered, “but we expect him home to-night. My mother is not well, and demands a great deal of care, or I should have come down to the gate to meet you when you drove up.”

She was so ill at ease that I hurried to explain my errand, and I thought she was greatly relieved to know I had not come on a visit.

“I shall be ready in the morning at any time you are,” she said; and I wondered she could leave her mother, for I had been fearing that perhaps I should have to go back without her.

There was a great romp and noise in the room above the one in which we sat, and she looked out through the door leading into the hall as if half expecting to see somebody come tumbling down the stairs.

“My uncle’s children,” she said, seeing I wondered at the noise. “He has eight.”

I wondered she had not told of them before, and then I remembered that she seldom talked of her uncle’s family or of her mother.

“How are they all?” I inquired, thinking I must say something.

There was a great crash in the room overhead and a cry of pain, and Agnes went quickly to the door to listen. Being convinced that one of them had fallen over a chair, she came back, and replied to my question.

“Very noisy,” she said, half laughingly. “I fear they will annoy you; it is so quiet at your house, and there is so much confusion here.”