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Page 87
I owe it to Lena Lingard that I went to see Antonia at last. I was in San
Francisco two summers ago when both Lena and Tiny Soderball were in town.
Tiny lives in a house of her own, and Lena's shop is in an apartment house
just around the corner. It interested me, after so many years, to see the
two women together. Tiny audits Lena's accounts occasionally, and invests
her money for her; and Lena, apparently, takes care that Tiny doesn't grow
too miserly. `If there's anything I can't stand,' she said to me in Tiny's
presence, `it's a shabby rich woman.' Tiny smiled grimly and assured me
that Lena would never be either shabby or rich. `And I don't want to be,'
the other agreed complacently.
Lena gave me a cheerful account of Antonia and urged me to make her a
visit.
`You really ought to go, Jim. It would be such a satisfaction to her.
Never mind what Tiny says. There's nothing the matter with Cuzak. You'd
like him. He isn't a hustler, but a rough man would never have suited
Tony. Tony has nice children--ten or eleven of them by this time, I guess.
I shouldn't care for a family of that size myself, but somehow it's just
right for Tony. She'd love to show them to you.'
On my way East I broke my journey at Hastings, in Nebraska, and set off
with an open buggy and a fairly good livery team to find the Cuzak farm.
At a little past midday, I knew I must be nearing my destination. Set back
on a swell of land at my right, I saw a wide farm-house, with a red barn
and an ash grove, and cattle-yards in front that sloped down to the
highroad. I drew up my horses and was wondering whether I should drive in
here, when I heard low voices. Ahead of me, in a plum thicket beside the
road, I saw two boys bending over a dead dog. The little one, not more
than four or five, was on his knees, his hands folded, and his
close-clipped, bare head drooping forward in deep dejection. The other
stood beside him, a hand on his shoulder, and was comforting him in a
language I had not heard for a long while. When I stopped my horses
opposite them, the older boy took his brother by the hand and came toward
me. He, too, looked grave. This was evidently a sad afternoon for them.
`Are you Mrs. Cuzak's boys?' I asked.
The younger one did not look up; he was submerged in his own feelings, but
his brother met me with intelligent grey eyes. `Yes, sir.'
`Does she live up there on the hill? I am going to see her. Get in and
ride up with me.'
He glanced at his reluctant little brother. `I guess we'd better walk.
But we'll open the gate for you.'
I drove along the side-road and they followed slowly behind. When I pulled
up at the windmill, another boy, barefooted and curly-headed, ran out of
the barn to tie my team for me. He was a handsome one, this chap,
fair-skinned and freckled, with red cheeks and a ruddy pelt as thick as a
lamb's wool, growing down on his neck in little tufts. He tied my team
with two flourishes of his hands, and nodded when I asked him if his mother
was at home. As he glanced at me, his face dimpled with a seizure of
irrelevant merriment, and he shot up the windmill tower with a lightness
that struck me as disdainful. I knew he was peering down at me as I walked
toward the house.
Ducks and geese ran quacking across my path. White cats were sunning
themselves among yellow pumpkins on the porch steps. I looked through the
wire screen into a big, light kitchen with a white floor. I saw a long
table, rows of wooden chairs against the wall, and a shining range in one
corner. Two girls were washing dishes at the sink, laughing and
chattering, and a little one, in a short pinafore, sat on a stool playing
with a rag baby. When I asked for their mother, one of the girls dropped
her towel, ran across the floor with noiseless bare feet, and disappeared.
The older one, who wore shoes and stockings, came to the door to admit me.
She was a buxom girl with dark hair and eyes, calm and self-possessed.
`Won't you come in? Mother will be here in a minute.'
Before I could sit down in the chair she offered me, the miracle happened;
one of those quiet moments that clutch the heart, and take more courage
than the noisy, excited passages in life. Antonia came in and stood before
me; a stalwart, brown woman, flat-chested, her curly brown hair a little
grizzled. It was a shock, of course. It always is, to meet people after
long years, especially if they have lived as much and as hard as this woman
had. We stood looking at each other. The eyes that peered anxiously at me
were--simply Antonia's eyes. I had seen no others like them since I looked
into them last, though I had looked at so many thousands of human faces.
As I confronted her, the changes grew less apparent to me, her identity
stronger. She was there, in the full vigour of her personality, battered
but not diminished, looking at me, speaking to me in the husky, breathy
voice I remembered so well.
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