Читать книгу Katy Gaumer - Elsie Singmaster - Страница 8

Table of Contents

In the Hartman house on Christmas Day there was feasting, but no rejoicing. Cassie Hartman was fully as able a cook as Grandmother Gaumer, and she roasted as large a turkey and prepared almost as many delicacies as Grandmother Gaumer and Bevy Schnepp prepared for their great party. On the kitchen settle were gifts, a gold breastpin set with a handsome diamond, a heavy gold watch-chain, a boy's suit, a gun, and a five-dollar gold-piece. There were on them no affectionate inscriptions, no good wishes. The breastpin was for Cassie, the watch-chain for John Hartman, the other articles for David. There were no gifts from outsiders—few Millerstonians would have ventured to offer gifts to the rich Hartmans. In the parlor windows hung holly wreaths, the only bought wreaths in Millerstown.

The Hartmans had asked no guests to their feast. John had long since separated himself from the friends of his youth; as for Cassie, the thought of the footprints of Christmas guests on her flag walk and her carefully scrubbed porches would have made the day even more uncomfortable than it was. Moreover, one could not entertain Christmas company in the kitchen, however fine that kitchen might be, and in this wintry weather fires would have to be made in the parlor and the dining-room.

"Company would track dust so for me," Cassie would have said if any one had suggested that some companions of his own age might do David good and might not be a bad thing for his elders. "When you have fires, you have ashes, and I would then have to clean my house in the middle of winter when you cannot clean the carpets right."

Cassie Hartman was a beautiful woman, how beautiful Millerstown, which set a higher value upon mere prettiness than upon beauty, did not know. Her figure was tall and full and she bore herself with grace and dignity. Her face with its even features and its full gray eyes was the face of an austere saint, although her eyes, lifting when you addressed her, seemed rather to hide her real character than reveal it. But her character was austere and reserved, of that you were sure.

If Cassie's soul was a consecrated one, the gods to whom one would have assigned her worship were Cleanliness and Order. The very progress of her husband and son about the house annoyed her because it was masculine and untidy. David knew better than to enter the kitchen with muddy shoes, but his father was not so careful; therefore both trod upon an upper layer of slightly worn rag carpet, superimposed upon the bright and immaculate lower layer. In all other details but one of the management of her house Cassie had her way. Her husband refused stubbornly to leave the great walnut bed and the large room in which he slept for a smaller room at the back of the house, as Cassie wished, so that the great best bedrooms might be garnished day and night with their proper spreads and counterpanes and shams.

Each of Cassie's days and hours had its appointed task. She could have told how her time would be spent from now on until the last hour before her passing, when the preacher would come in the proper Lutheran fashion to give her the communion. The Church required no such ceremony, but Cassie was a formalist in religion and required it for herself.

So the three Hartmans ate alone in their broad kitchen, John Hartman at one end of the table, Cassie far away at the other, and David midway between them. John Hartman's eyes were hardly lifted above his food; he was an intolerably silent person. Cassie's eyes roved everywhere, from her stove, which she could scarcely wait to blacken, toward her husband who ate carelessly, and toward her son, who devoured his drumstick with due regard for the clean cloth. The cloth was spotless and would probably remain spotless, for an extra white cover had been laid beneath the plates of John and David. But to-morrow it would go into the tub, none the less. It was too good to be used every day, and it could not be put away bearing even the slight wrinkles produced by unfolding. Cassie had no more to say than her husband. There was really nothing for Cassie to say. Her mental processes involved herself and her house, they responded to no inspiration from without.

As for little David, he said nothing either. Katy Gaumer had been right when she said that David was a cross boy. David was cross and sullen. To-day, however, he was only solemn. David was deeply concerned about his sins. He was not only a sinner in general, but he had sinned in a very particular way, and he was unhappy. The turkey did not taste as a Christmas turkey should, and his second slice of mince-pie was bitter.

When John Hartman had eaten all he could, he rose and put on his coat and went out to his great barn to feed his stock. He went silently, as was his wont.

When David had finished the last morsel of pie which he was able to swallow, he, too, put on his hat and went toward the door, moving silently and slouchingly. There he stood and nervously kicked the sill. His eyes, gray like his mother's, looked out from under frowning, knitted brows; he thrust his hands deep into his pockets and looked down at the floor. This was Christmas Day; his parents had treated him generously; he was convinced that he ought to confess to them his great wickedness. He felt as though he might cry, and as though crying, if he had a shoulder to lean on, would be a soothing and healing operation. The assault of Katy Gaumer had sunk deep into his heart, as was natural since he thought of Katy night and day, since he saw her wherever she went in her red dress, now scolding, now laughing, and perpetually in motion. He had fled to the attic of the schoolroom yesterday because she had not spoken to him or looked at him, had even passed him with her weight planted for an instant heavily on his foot without even acknowledging his presence. And to the attic she had followed him and had there taunted and insulted him! She had no business to say that he was cross and ugly; he would be nice enough to her if she would return the compliment. As for Grandmother Gaumer's cakes, he had better cakes at home than Grandmother Gaumer could bake!

David's heart was sore, and David was inexpressibly lonely and miserable. He was now certain that he would be happy if he could confess his sins to his mother.

He forgot the last occasion of his appeal to her. Then his finger had been cut, and he had been dizzy and had seized hold of her, and the blood had fallen down on her new silk dress. He forgot her reproof; he remembered only that he needed some sort of human tenderness. His father did not often speak to him, but women were made, or should be made, of different stuff from men. He had seen Susannah Kuhns sit with her great Ollie upon her lap, and Ollie was older than he was by a year. He had heard Katy Gaumer, who had been so outrageously cruel to him, cry over a sick kitten, and Katy was herself often rocked like a baby on Grandmother Gaumer's knee.

David forgot now not only the cut finger, but other repulses. He had no claim on Grandmother Gaumer's embrace, and he would have hated to have to sit on Susannah Kuhns's knee, but upon this tall, beautiful person sitting by the table, he had a claim. Moreover, her embraces would have been pleasant.

"Mom!" said David.

Cassie's eyes were now on the dishes before her. She liked to plan her mode of attack upon a piece of work, and then proceed swiftly, keeping her mind a blank to everything but the pleasure of seeing order grow where disorder had been. Thus she liked to go through her fine house, sweeping the rich carpets, polishing the carved furniture, letting the sunlight in only long enough to show each infamous dust mote. Cassie was in the midst of such planning now; she saw the dishes neatly piled, the hot suds in the pan, her sleeves rolled above her elbows. She did not answer David, did not even hear him.

"Mom!" said David again. He did not know now exactly what he had meant to say. The necessity for confession had dwindled to a necessity for the sound of his mother's voice. It was dismal to live in a house with companions who seemed deaf and blind to one's existence. She must speak to him!

At the second call, Cassie looked at her son. Cassie recognized dirt and disorder, but she did not recognize any need of the human soul. The needs of her own soul had been, Cassie thought, cruelly denied. At any rate, its power of perception had failed.

"You stamp on that sill again and I'll have to scrub it, David! To spoil things on Christmas!"

Cassie's voice contained no threat of punishment; it was merely mildly exclamatory. The tone of it was not vibrant but wooden. It might have been rich and beautiful in youth; now it expressed no emotion; it was flat, empty. She did not ask David what he wanted, or why he addressed her; she did not even wonder why he stopped in the doorway and stared at her. She only frowned at him, until he closed the door, himself outside. David had all the clothes he could wear, all the food he could eat; he had the finest house, the richest father and the most capable mother in Millerstown; what more could he wish to make him happy? His mother did not speculate as to whether he was happy or not.

David crossed the yard in the freshly fallen snow and slammed the gate behind him. Then he went toward the mountain road, and started to climb, passing the house of the Koehlers, where William sat on one side of the stove and Alvin on the other, the one muttering to himself, the other half asleep. David kicked the snow as he walked, his head bent lower and lower on his breast. He could see Katy Gaumer like a sprite in her red dress with her flashing eyes and her pointing finger; he could see her smiling at Alvin Koehler, whom he hated without dreaming that in that son of a demented and dishonest father Katy Gaumer could have any possible interest.

As he started up the steepest part of the hill, he began to talk aloud.

"I want her!" said poor little David. "I want Katy! I want Katy!"

Presently David left the road, and climbing over the worm fence into the woodland, struck off diagonally among the trees. Still far above him, at the summit of the little mountain, there was a rough pile of rocks which formed a tiny cairn or cave. Before it was a small platform, parapeted by a great boulder. Generations past had named the spot, without any apparent reason, the "Sheep Stable." It was a favorite resort of David Hartman. Here, in secret, far above Millerstown, he carried on the wicked practices which he had meant to confess to his mother. From the little plateau one could look for miles and miles over a wide, rich, beautiful plain, could see the church spires of a dozen villages, the smoke curling upward from three or four great blast furnaces, set in the midst of wide fields, and could look far beyond the range of hills which bounded the view of William Koehler on his lower level, to another range. The Pennsylvania German made his home only in fertile spots. When other settlers passed the thickly forested lands because of the great labor of felling the trees and preparing the soil, he selected the sections bearing the tallest trees and had as his own the fertile land forever.

David did not look out over the wide, pure expanse upon which a few flakes were still falling and beyond which the sun would soon sink gorgeously, nor did he see the purple shadows under the pine trees, nor observe the glancing motions of a squirrel, watching him from a bough near by. He determined, desperately, firmly, that he would repent no more; he would now return to his evil ways and get from them what satisfaction he could.

He crept on hands and knees into the little cave and felt round under a mass of dried leaves until his hands encountered the instruments of his evil practices. Then David drew them forth, a stubby pipe, which he had smoked once and which had made him deathly ill, and a pack of cards, about whose mysterious and delightful use he knew nothing. He sat with them in his hands on the sloping rock, wishing, poor little David, that he knew how to be wickeder than he was!

Having fed his stock, John Hartman tramped for a little while round his fields in the snow, then he returned to the kitchen and sat down by the window with a newspaper. Cassie lay asleep on the settle. Custom forbade her working on Christmas Day, and she never read, even the almanac. At her, her husband looked once or twice inscrutably, then he laid his head on the back of his tall chair and slept also. It was a scene at which Katy Gaumer would have pointed as proof of the unutterable stupidity of Millerstown.

When her husband slept, Cassie opened her eyes and looked at him with as steady a gaze as that which he had bent upon her. Her mouth set itself in a firm, straight line, her eyes deepened and darkened, her hands, folded upon her breast, grasped her flesh. Surely between these two was some great barrier of offense, given or suffered, of strange, wounded pride, or insufferable humiliation! Presently Cassie's lids fell; she turned her cheek against the hard back of the old settle and so fell asleep also.

John Hartman owned four farms and a great stretch of woodland and a granite quarry on the far side of the mountain and two farms and two peach orchards and an apple orchard on this. A generation ago a large deposit of fine iron ore had been discovered upon a tract of land owned by his father. The deposit was not confined to his fields, but extended to the lands of his neighbors. But while they sold ore and spent their money, John Hartman's father, as shrewd a business man as his son, sold and saved, and laid the foundation of his fortune. In a few years the discovery of richer, more easily mined deposits in the West and the cheap importation of foreign ores made the Millerstown ore for the time not worth the mining. Hartman the elder then covered his mine breaches and planted timber, and the growth set above the treasure underground was now thick and valuable. John Hartman was also a director in a county bank; he owned the finest, largest house in Millerstown; he had a handsome and a capable wife, and a son who was strong in body and who had a good mind. Apparently his position in life was secure, his comfort certain.

John Hartman, however, was neither comfortable nor secure. The long-past accusations of a poor, half-crazed workingman filled his waking hours with apprehension and his nights with remorse. Of William Koehler and his accusation John Hartman was afraid, for William's accusation was, at least in part, true.

John Hartman had been walking away from the church on that bright November day years ago, when his own David and Alvin Koehler were little children and Katy Gaumer not much more than a baby. He had upon him, as William had said, an air of guilt; he had refused to reply to William's shouted greeting; he was at that moment rapidly becoming, if he was not already, what William called him, a thief.