Читать книгу Our Daily Bread - Frederick Philip Grove - Страница 9

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On the afternoon of the following day the three girls were in the kitchen of the grey house, two of them washing the dishes used in an early cup of tea.

Henrietta would not allow Cathleen to do any part of the house work. She insisted on her being treated as a guest. During the last four years Cathleen had repeatedly sent home not inconsiderable sums of money which must have more than repaid her parents for the expense of sending her to high school and to normal. Henrietta felt, therefore, that it was her and Isabel's privilege to do the work in the house--in order, as she sometimes expressed it, to "pay for their keep."

Thus it was only natural that Cathleen, in her long, starched dress of white batiste, should be sitting on a chair by the window. On her round, pretty face lay a smile. She knew that her secret had somehow betrayed itself to Isabel; but Henrietta was still ignorant of it.

Between Henrietta and her younger sisters and brothers a peculiar relation had defined itself during the last few years. By right of her age she claimed an authority little short of maternal; and they denied and resented it, sometimes laughingly, sometimes in bitter quarrels. But only Cathleen, being absent from home for ten months of the year, had succeeded in withdrawing herself from its influence.

Isabel was waiting for Cathleen to say something. Living at home, she suffered most from Henrietta's domineering temper. Repeatedly she threw Cathleen an encouraging look; but Cathleen bided her time. Isabel, wild and, in matters of deportment, younger than her years--her mother called her the "humble-bee"--was singularly free of envy. Both she and Henrietta had been impressed with Mr. Ormond's manners, with his courtesy, yes, with his clothes. Cathleen had not failed to awe them with mentioning what she thought was his income; and Henrietta had sneered. Isabel, however, knew that Henrietta would feel "left behind" on hearing the definite news which Cathleen had in store. Though speculation had been rife before Mr. Ormond's arrival, his actual appearance had almost stopped it. He was from a different social plane. Cathleen's engagement to him would "take Henrietta down a notch or two."

The mute play between Cathleen and Isabel became so obvious that Henrietta could not but take notice of it. Her mouth set itself in a straight line. She tried hard not to betray that she was aware of what was going on; but her very air of unconcern, a little too pronounced to be natural, gave her away.

At last Isabel burst into a merry laugh.

Henrietta veered. "What's the matter with you?"

"With me?" Isabel asked indignantly.

Henrietta turned and went to the pantry. Her very step--with the steeply sloping line of her instep--seemed to assert a claim of defeated authority. When she returned, she stopped in the middle of the kitchen, holding her head high and looking down on the offenders. Her hard, blue-grey eyes glinted.

"You've something up your sleeve. Out with it!"

"We?" Isabel asked innocently.

"Yes. You or your sister."

Cathleen sat smiling. But, lacking Isabel's provocation, she also lacked her cruelty. She rose.

"I don't know," she said, "whether you would call it having something up my sleeve. I did come in here to tell you something which concerns you only as my sister. Isabel knows; though I might say I did not tell her."

Comprehension burst upon Henrietta; much as she tried to disguise it, its effect was obvious.

All her sisters, so it seemed, were finding husbands. She alone remained an old maid. Margaret was still single, it is true; but Margaret, a mere chit of a girl, had had offers and declined them; she had professed her intention never to marry. Margaret, undoubtedly the best-looking one of the Elliot girls, was strangely cool, possessed of curious ideas of independence, filled with an ambition to carve a career for herself: a reader of the most modern literature of Europe: Ibsen, Maeterlinck, Ellen Key, Lagerloeff, Tolstoi, Hamsun. A girl with ideas so perverse had offers, and no despicable ones. Hers, Henrietta's, had all come from the same man, a man who did not measure up to her preconceived ideas of a husband!

That the impending announcement of Cathleen's engagement hit her so hard--when she had just arrived at the conclusion that, after all, nothing of the kind was to be expected--was owing to the very fact that Mr. Ormond represented the type with whom she herself imagined that she could have fallen in love. To him she would have bowed as a slave; his very mannerisms she would have copied; his views and ways she would have adopted as her own. Innately, she was a climber; and she felt that Cathleen was not; the externals left Cathleen indifferent. Seeing, therefore, her sister grasp the prize, she turned around to disparage it, to find fault with the man, in order to destroy the younger girl's triumph. There was even something like scorn of her sister: never would Cathleen fully appreciate her good fortune; the man was making a mistake; it was she, Henrietta, whom he should have asked!

"You don't need to say a word," she said haughtily. "I know you have accepted him. You are a fool."

Cathleen's soft and radiant features hardened. "A nice way to wish me joy," she said.

"Joy?" Henrietta repeated steelily. "You are marrying out of your sphere. I have never known any good to come from such a match. Wait till you have seen more of life. Besides, he is too old for you."

"Too old?" Cathleen asked with icy mockery. "He is no more than nine years older than I am. And, you may not know yet, he has just been appointed to an important position in the provincial government."

That moment a knock sounded at the kitchen door.

Henrietta, on the point of flinging back a sneering remark, turned with a shrug of her shoulders and opened the door.

A grimy young fellow from town stood on the flag-stone.

"What is it?"

"There's a gentleman in the car," he said, "who asks Miss Henrietta Elliot whether she'd step down to the road for a second." With a grin on his grease-smeared face he looked from one to the other, apparently at a loss for whom the message was meant.

"Miss Henrietta?" she repeated.

"Yes, ma'am."

Blank astonishment on three faces.

Henrietta was the first to recover. With a few quick movements she divested herself of her apron, touched up her hair, and fronted the door.

"Where?"

The young man donned his cap and led the way. The door closed behind them.

Isabel led in the rush upstairs, to the landing between the rooms. Cathleen followed somewhat more slowly.

Carefully Isabel raised the curtain which closed the entrance to the parents' bed-room. Mrs. Elliot was lying down, asleep. They tiptoed to the window. On the road, trembling with the running engine, stood a motor car, headed north; its top was folded down, its wind-shield up. The front seat was empty; in the back seat, a stranger sat, too far away to be recognised.

As the young man reached the road, he promptly climbed in and took his seat behind the wheel.

Henrietta, her head still high with indignation at her sisters, followed through the open gate.

The stranger raised his cap, leaned over, and spoke. Then he opened the door of the tonneau; and Henrietta, hatless, clad in her slightly faded blue-and-white house dress, climbed in by his side.

The engine roared; the young man threw the clutch in; the car shot away, up the steep, winding trail between the hills which hid the town.

Isabel and Cathleen looked at each other, shrugged their shoulders with an expressive gesture, and tiptoed back into the hall and down the stairs.

When Henrietta reached the road, she recognised, with a quickening of her pulse, Pete Harrington, her decade-long suitor. He looked aged, matured. He must be thirty-three years old. He was not handsome. In a peculiarly long, clean-shaven, deep-lined face his short, thin nose stood awry, giving his features something chaotic, earthy, as of nature in disarray. But he was every inch a man.

"Hennie," he said, "I must speak to you. No, not here nor at the house. Somewhere on top of a hill. I have hired this car for the afternoon. Get in and come along. As soon as I have had my say, I shall take you back. Nobody here needs to know who I am unless you tell them. Your father and John are in the fields. Your younger sisters don't know me."

Henrietta, in a state of trembling agitation, nodded mutely.

She entered the car; and they were climbing the hill. They had neither shaken hands nor touched. Pete sat in his corner; Henrietta in hers.

Her father's line-fence was left behind. To the right, a section of wild land stretched over the hill; to the left, Fred Sately's preemption.

Henrietta's mind was working fast, thoughts ticking off like heart-beats.

Two miles from the farms, halfway to town, Pete Harrington touched the driver on his back.

"Pull out of the road and stop."

The driver obeyed, manipulating pedals and levers.

Pete opened the door of the tonneau; and, with a short, breathless laugh, Henrietta alighted.

"It may be a few minutes; it may be an hour," Pete said to the driver. "I leave my suitcase in the car."

Then he took the lead, crossing the prairie at right angles to the trail, going east, up the flank of a hill covered with sparse tufts of short, wiry grass interspersed here and there with snowberry brush and mats of prickly cactus. Arrived at the top, where huge boulders were embedded in the parched clay, he stopped. They could see the elevators of the town from here; and to the south, the roof of John Elliot's barn.

"Might as well sit down, Hennie," Pete said.

She did so, choosing a flat stone for her seat.

"I've come to ask once more," he went on. "I know it must seem laughable to you. It is the last time. The point is this. I have reached a stage, on the farm, where I can't remain single. I have made up my mind to marry in any case. If you won't have me, I must ask another woman. I could not bring myself to do so without making a last attempt."

Henrietta smiled cryptically. "You have chosen the moment well," she said.

He looked down. "What do you mean?"

"Never mind. Nothing that concerns you. Listen, Pete. On certain conditions I'll marry you at once."

He was so surprised that he could but stammer, "What has happened?"

"Never mind," she repeated. "As I said, if you still want me, you can have me; provided you can pay the price."

"If I still want you? Should I be here?"

"Pete," she said softly. "I am no longer the child of ten years ago. I am twenty-nine. I have a goitre. At home they think I am a termagant, a sort of dragon. And yet, Pete, I long to be fondled and caressed."

Pete laughed and looked about. "That driver's watching us. Come down into the hollow. I'll show you whether I can kiss."

Henrietta smiled up at him.

He looked sober again. "You speak of a price."

"Yes," she said bitterly. "Pete, I am not a silly girl. I have seen something of life. If I marry, I shall consider the arrangements as a matter of business. I want to make sure of certain comforts and luxuries before I take the plunge."

"What are the conditions?"

"I want a car."

"I am buying a threshing outfit. I like machinery. Within a few years . . ."

Henrietta shook her head. "No. If you want me, you will have to take me at once, before harvest. I do not intend to stay here through the fall."

"All the better. I need you in harvest."

"Yes. But within two weeks of my arrival at your place I want to drive to town in that car."

Pete was sobered. "What else?"

"I am not going to be without money. I am a good housekeeper. I have practically run father's house for the last eight or ten years. I know how; and at little expense. But over and above my household allowance I want twenty-five dollars a month for myself, to spend on clothes, luxuries, what-not."

"Sounds," Pete said, "as if you were hiring out for wages."

She nodded. "Exactly what I am doing, Pete. This is partly a business deal. I might say that I had almost made up my mind to leave home. I can make a living. I could conduct a boarding house. That is what I was thinking of. I want to be independent. If you hired a housekeeper, you would not dream of leaving the question of wages in suspense. If you marry me, you do hire a housekeeper; and you get a wife into the bargain. You may think it would have been nicer if I had sunk into your arms. It seems mercenary to you."

"No," said Pete. "Perhaps there is something to be said for your way of looking at it."

"Well," Henrietta said encouragingly, "at least I am never going to come to you begging for money. I shall have my own funds."

Pete laughed. It sounded a trifle forced. "Yes. But, Hennie, you know, a farmer does not always have the cash."

"He can if he sees to it. You are buying a threshing outfit. No doubt you have promised definite yearly payments. Well, I ask you to promise me three hundred dollars a year, the money to be mine, never to be asked for, never to be enquired about, how it is spent and what for. Put it aside in the fall, when you thresh."

Pete brooded. "Hennie," he said, "all this somehow does not seem quite right. Marriage is a partnership."

"Marriage," Henrietta objected, "is mostly slavery."

"I'd promise almost anything--seeing you so near--within my grasp. The farm is almost bound to be a success."

She leaned back, supporting herself on one hand, and smiled up at him. Her face was flushed. The hard red of her cheeks was lost in that suffusion. "Pete, if you want me to, I'll go down with you into that hollow . . ."

"Come," he cried, his huge body shaken as by an earthquake. "Have it your way. As for the car, I'll pay for it out of the wood I saw in winter."

Half hidden by the snowberry brush which grew densely in the draw, she lay in his arms; and kisses rained down on her face, hard, eager kisses; and great, calloused hands played havoc with her hair, so that it came undone, falling about her head and shoulders.

"Pete," she whispered, "Pete!"

She looked almost pretty in her disarray; and he, flushed and victorious, looked almost handsome to her suddenly enamoured eyes; he was strong and manly.

"Pete," she cried, "am I an old maid?"

"A maid," he said brusquely. "But old? Who says so?"

An hour went by; the sun was sinking to the west.

On top of the hill a slim figure appeared, spying curiously down into the hollow.

"Pete!" Henrietta sprang up in dismay. "That fellow sees us."

"Let him!" Pete laughed. "Let the world see us!"

"Listen," she said as they went to the road. "We'll drive back to within half a mile of home. Then I get out and walk. It's time to get supper. You turn west this side of John's. Go to his shack across the field. When I ring the gong, you come over with John. I won't say a word. We'll surprise them."

"Sure," he agreed. "Anything you say."

The driver received them with an open grin. "The two kids came by," he said to Henrietta. "Your brothers, miss. They crawled all over and under the car and asked all kinds of questions."

"You did not tell them, I hope?"

"You bet I didn't."

Henrietta entered the kitchen and, ignoring her mother's astonished and questioning look, at once proceeded with the preparations for supper.

Cathleen and Mr. Ormond were in the small "music room" which was accessible only from the dining room and which owed its name to the fact that it held an organ.

A few minutes after Henrietta's return, Isabel burst into the kitchen and stood arrested.

"Where have you been all this while?" she asked, less reluctant to plunge into words than her mother.

"I?" Henrietta replied frigidly. "Out for a walk."

"Whereto?"

"Over the hills."

"Who was that stranger in the car?"

"None of your concern," Henrietta said; but, catching her mother's reproachful look, she added tantalisingly, "All things come to him who waits."

While, in the half-dusk of the kitchen from which the steep slope of the hill-side excluded much light, the preparations for supper went on, John Elliot senior was seen to appear in the yard, leading his six-horse team. He had been disking his summer-fallow on the preemption, east of the homestead.

At the barn, Norman joined him shortly to take the horses from him and to lead them down to the well at the deepest point of the hollow between the two farms.

Then Mr. Ormond was seen to stride over and to greet him pleasantly. The guest was dressed in a pair of light-grey trousers, well fitting, sharply creased; his upper body was coatless; his white, blue-striped shirt as always immaculate. On his square, heavy head a sailor hat was tilted at an angle.

John Elliot, grey, dusty from the field, sat down on the tongue of a wagon where his guest joined him. The two conversed.

When Norman returned with the horses, John Elliot rose and gave him a few instructions, pointing. The boy proceeded to undo the lines. The two men came to the house.

Contrary to his custom, John Elliot went to the front; a moment later he looked through the door which connected kitchen and dining room, nodding to his wife who still sat on the chair in the corner.

"Martha," he said and offered his arm.

The door closed behind them.

"I believe," Isabel whispered, "he is going to ask them."

"Very likely." Henrietta was unconcerned.

Feeling repulsed, Isabel could not deny herself the satisfaction of what, in the family jargon, was known as a "dig." "There will be two weddings from this house in fall," she said.

"No. There will be three, at least."

Isabel looked up.

"Provided," Henrietta went on, "that, against the wish of your family, you marry the blacksmith."

That silenced Isabel.

It was her usual task to set the table. But, when she prepared to do so, Henrietta, who was lighting a lamp, turned and said, "You watch the potatoes. Slice that ham. When you hear the first gong, break these eggs into the pan. I am going to set the table myself."

"All right," Isabel drawled as if she were not hurt in the least. "You are the doctor."

Henrietta went into the dining room, taking note of the fact that the door to the music room was closed. Her parents were closeted with Cathleen and Mr. Ormond.

She pulled the extension table out to its full length, spread the cloth, and laid it for eleven.

The first gong had sounded.

John Elliot went into the kitchen to wash; Cathleen and Mr. Ormond slipped upstairs. Henry, Norman, and Arthur filed into the dining room. Mrs. Elliot was still sitting in the music room, solemnity on her pain-drawn face.

Henrietta entered, carrying a platter heaped with date-filled biscuits.

"Arthur," she said to her youngest brother, "I want you for once to behave and not to be greedy. Don't you dare to take any cookies unless I give you one."

Arthur grinned and looked at Norman who, unable to suppress his vitality, was humming a tune and dancing a jig.

"John isn't here yet?"

"No," Norman said. "I'll get him, shall I?" And with exaggerated obsequence he jumped toward the door.

"You stay where you are!" Henrietta commanded.

The second gong was sounded.

The dining room filled. Cathleen came on Mr. Ormond's arm. John Elliot took his place behind the chair at the upper end of the table; his wife, hers at the lower end. Henrietta assumed command and assigned a seat to each of the others. Three seats remained vacant; she took the central one.

"Who set the table?" Mrs. Elliot asked.

"I," Henrietta replied casually. "We won't wait for John."

"There is one cover to spare."

"John is bringing a friend."

John Elliot cleared his throat. All voices ceased while he asked the blessing. Then he reached for the Bible and read a passage from Mark iv. Chairs scraped over the floor; and all sat down.

During the momentary confusion which followed, John's entrance escaped observation. Behind him, Pete's tall figure loomed, half lost in shadows.

"Hello," John said. "I don't know whether this gentleman is known to the company?"

All heads turned. Pete bowed awkwardly.

Nobody except Henrietta had seen him within ten years. The younger generation of the Elliot children had never known him except by sight. The light of the lamp hanging over the centre of the table gave his embarrassed smile and crooked nose something almost Satanic.

Again Henrietta took command. One would have thought that she was angry when she attended to the formalities of introduction.

"Certainly, Pete," John Elliot said. "I remember you perfectly. How are the parents?"

"Pete Harrington of the Arkwright Harringtons?" Mrs. Elliot asked, shaking hands.

The girls and the two youngest boys bowed. Henry stared. But Mr. Ormond, with a quick look from man to girl, extended his hand and shook that of the new guest with hearty pressure.

"You sit here, Pete." Henrietta drew out the chair at her left.

Isabel, bending forward, sought Cathleen's eye with a significant wink.

Then the meat was passed, relieving the tension. Mrs. Elliot, further to put Pete and Henrietta at ease--she divined what had happened--addressed a question to the young man; and small talk started.

Henrietta, satisfied with the sensation she had caused, ruled the table, keeping an eye on the boys.

At last Isabel rose to fetch the tea. The conversation broke up into smaller groups. Cake and biscuits were passed around.

Arthur, horror in his eye, followed the platters on their circuit. He was inordinately fond of date biscuits; but so, it seemed, was everybody else; they dwindled; he squirmed in his seat. At last, when the platter reached Henrietta, he could not contain himself.

"Hennie," he cried, a dead silence falling around the table, "a cookie, quick! Before they're all gone."

Henrietta's look was charged to annihilate. But, fortunately for the boy, Mr. Ormond grasped the meaning of the situation and burst out laughing.

That laughter enlightened the rest; and, John Elliot senior joining in it, it became general.

Arthur laughed more boisterously than any one else, casting a grateful look on Mr. Ormond who bent over and whispered to him, "You better clear out after supper, young man; or you'll get it!"

When the company settled down to the dessert, John Elliot senior cleared his throat once more and tinkled his spoon gently against the rim of his cup.

Silence fell.

"My dear children," he said, "there will perhaps not be many meals at which such a number of you will assemble around this board. Another one of your sisters is going to leave us and to follow her chosen husband. I ask you all to welcome Woodrow Ormond as a brother-in-law. He and Cathleen are to be married before the end of the month of August."

Another silence. Then, with a renewed scraping of chairs over the floor, everybody rose, glass in hand, to file past the couple and to congratulate.

Henrietta frowned. She was thinking fast. Her mother was failing. Should Isabel be the next to announce her betrothal, the odium of leaving that mother of theirs alone would fall on her. She threw Pete a quick look and took his arm.

"This," she said, dominating the standing assembly into attention, "is very irregular. Father and mother, I must ask your forgiveness. Pete and I have at last made up our minds. We, too, ask for your blessing. Harvest is coming. We cannot lose time. Let that excuse us."

She had succeeded in centering attention on herself.

Mrs. Elliot sat down, tears in her eyes. Her heart's desire was fulfilled. Henrietta, the tragic one of her children . . .

"Come here, my child," she said.

Her sight filled Henrietta with remorse. She had been intent only on breaking what appeared to her as the insolence of her sisters. With a few quick steps, drawing Pete along, she arrived in front of the mother whom perhaps she had wounded and who sat there, taking quick breaths and white as a sheet.

"Mother," she whispered, "I am sorry."

"No," Mrs. Elliot whispered back as she bent over her kneeling child and stroked her hair, "it is joy! I had been worried about you for years. Pete," she added, "look after her, will you? She needs it."

"Well-l-l," John junior trumpeted, "ladies and gentlemen, how would it be if we resumed the interrupted procession? I am reliably informed, by the way, that there will be another such party shortly." And he pinched Isabel's arm.

"John!" she whispered, "that is not fair! There is nobody left to get married but me!"

"What?" he whispered back. "Do only girls marry?"

John Elliot found his way to the side of his wife; and while all others clinked glasses, Norman and Arthur slipped out of the room, unobserved.

"Let's celebrate, too," Norman whispered.

"How?" Arthur asked.

"The cellar!"

They left the house through the front door. Arthur took his stand at the cellar window on the north side. Norman quickly and furtively reentered the house through the kitchen, picked up a small pail which he filled with water and a second one, empty, and tiptoed down the cellar steps.

There, he unscrewed two sealers filled with strawberry preserves, poured the syrup into the empty pail, replaced it with water from the other, and handed both through the window to his accomplice.

Then, listening at the cellar door, he slipped out again, with the agility of a cat, and joined his brother. They retired to the barn.

Arthur was first to have a taste of the stolen goods.

He curled his lips in disgust--a gesture lost on his brother in the darkness. But his exclamation was not. "Ex!"

"What's the matter?"

"Thin!"

"Eh?"

"Thin. I'll tell what you've done. You've got hold of a jar that had been emptied already!"

"Gosh!" Norman groaned. "That may be. It was dark."

At the house, Mrs. Elliot retired to her room.

John Elliot senior followed her. "Anything we can do?"

"No. I need rest, that is all. But, John . . ."

"Yes?"

"I want Gladys!"

"I'll go for her in the morning."

"Yes." She sank back on her bed. "And, John! Ask the children to sing."

"I will. You are sure there is nothing . . ."

"Nothing. I want to lie down. But I should like so much to hear them sing."

Without a further word John Elliot returned downstairs. He called his son John and took him aside.

A few minutes later John junior had reassembled the family in the dining room and was handing out hymn books.

They arranged themselves into two groups, the three girls in one, the men and the boys in the other. Henry sat apathetic in a chair between the two. John Elliot senior stood in the recess of the huge bay window at the south end of the room.

And, clear as crystal, their voices rang through the house as they sang their mother's favourite hymn, "Nearer, my God, to thee."

In the eye of the man at the threshold of old age who stood, unobserved, behind the curtains of the window trembled a tear. Never before had he felt so much of that dependence on a being outside of himself as now when he viewed in his mind the contrast of the youth that was singing here and the lonely woman who lay upstairs, composing herself to leave this earthly scene. In the strains of the hymn doubt seemed to dissolve; and certainty seemed to descend from above. If only he could hold on to that certainty, never to let go of it again! And yet, in town, there lived another girl, once part of this group, now divided from them by a gulf. And on a farm, some twenty miles north, there lived another. Would these, also, be divided ere long? Two more were going out on paths of their own. What was in store for them? Perhaps it was good that the woman upstairs was not going to view the things that were coming? But he?