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Page 82
As I drew near home that morning, I saw Mrs. Harling out in her yard,
digging round her mountain-ash tree. It was a dry summer, and she had now
no boy to help her. Charley was off in his battleship, cruising somewhere
on the Caribbean sea. I turned in at the gate it was with a feeling of
pleasure that I opened and shut that gate in those days; I liked the feel
of it under my hand. I took the spade away from Mrs. Harling, and while I
loosened the earth around the tree, she sat down on the steps and talked
about the oriole family that had a nest in its branches.
`Mrs. Harling,' I said presently, `I wish I could find out exactly how
Antonia's marriage fell through.'
`Why don't you go out and see your grandfather's tenant, the Widow
Steavens? She knows more about it than anybody else. She helped Antonia
get ready to be married, and she was there when Antonia came back. She
took care of her when the baby was born. She could tell you everything.
Besides, the Widow Steavens is a good talker, and she has a remarkable
memory.'
III
ON THE FIRST OR second day of August I got a horse and cart and set out for
the high country, to visit the Widow Steavens. The wheat harvest was over,
and here and there along the horizon I could see black puffs of smoke from
the steam threshing-machines. The old pasture land was now being broken up
into wheatfields and cornfields, the red grass was disappearing, and the
whole face of the country was changing. There were wooden houses where the
old sod dwellings used to be, and little orchards, and big red barns; all
this meant happy children, contented women, and men who saw their lives
coming to a fortunate issue. The windy springs and the blazing summers,
one after another, had enriched and mellowed that flat tableland; all the
human effort that had gone into it was coming back in long, sweeping lines
of fertility. The changes seemed beautiful and harmonious to me; it was
like watching the growth of a great man or of a great idea. I recognized
every tree and sandbank and rugged draw. I found that I remembered the
conformation of the land as one remembers the modelling of human faces.
When I drew up to our old windmill, the Widow Steavens came out to meet me.
She was brown as an Indian woman, tall, and very strong. When I was
little, her massive head had always seemed to me like a Roman senator's. I
told her at once why I had come.
`You'll stay the night with us, Jimmy? I'll talk to you after supper. I
can take more interest when my work is off my mind. You've no prejudice
against hot biscuit for supper? Some have, these days.'
While I was putting my horse away, I heard a rooster squawking. I looked
at my watch and sighed; it was three o'clock, and I knew that I must eat
him at six.
After supper Mrs. Steavens and I went upstairs to the old sitting-room,
while her grave, silent brother remained in the basement to read his farm
papers. All the windows were open. The white summer moon was shining
outside, the windmill was pumping lazily in the light breeze. My hostess
put the lamp on a stand in the corner, and turned it low because of the
heat. She sat down in her favourite rocking-chair and settled a little
stool comfortably under her tired feet. `I'm troubled with calluses, Jim;
getting old,' she sighed cheerfully. She crossed her hands in her lap and
sat as if she were at a meeting of some kind.
`Now, it's about that dear Antonia you want to know? Well, you've come to
the right person. I've watched her like she'd been my own daughter.
`When she came home to do her sewing that summer before she was to be
married, she was over here about every day. They've never had a
sewing-machine at the Shimerdas', and she made all her things here. I
taught her hemstitching, and I helped her to cut and fit. She used to sit
there at that machine by the window, pedalling the life out of it-- she was
so strong--and always singing them queer Bohemian songs, like she was the
happiest thing in the world.
`"Antonia," I used to say, "don't run that machine so fast. You won't
hasten the day none that way."
`Then she'd laugh and slow down for a little, but she'd soon forget and
begin to pedal and sing again. I never saw a girl work harder to go to
housekeeping right and well-prepared. Lovely table-linen the Harlings had
given her, and Lena Lingard had sent her nice things from Lincoln. We
hemstitched all the tablecloths and pillow-cases, and some of the sheets.
Old Mrs. Shimerda knit yards and yards of lace for her underclothes. Tony
told me just how she meant to have everything in her house. She'd even
bought silver spoons and forks, and kept them in her trunk. She was always
coaxing brother to go to the post-office. Her young man did write her real
often, from the different towns along his run.
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