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Page 95
Cuzak nodded. `And very many send word to you, Antonia. You will
excuse'--turning to me--`if I tell her.' While we walked toward the house
he related incidents and delivered messages in the tongue he spoke
fluently, and I dropped a little behind, curious to know what their
relations had become--or remained. The two seemed to be on terms of easy
friendliness, touched with humour. Clearly, she was the impulse, and he
the corrective. As they went up the hill he kept glancing at her sidewise,
to see whether she got his point, or how she received it. I noticed later
that he always looked at people sidewise, as a work-horse does at its
yokemate. Even when he sat opposite me in the kitchen, talking, he would
turn his head a little toward the clock or the stove and look at me from
the side, but with frankness and good nature. This trick did not suggest
duplicity or secretiveness, but merely long habit, as with the horse.
He had brought a tintype of himself and Rudolph for Antonia's collection,
and several paper bags of candy for the children. He looked a little
disappointed when his wife showed him a big box of candy I had got in
Denver--she hadn't let the children touch it the night before. He put his
candy away in the cupboard, `for when she rains,' and glanced at the box,
chuckling. `I guess you must have hear about how my family ain't so
small,' he said.
Cuzak sat down behind the stove and watched his womenfolk and the little
children with equal amusement. He thought they were nice, and he thought
they were funny, evidently. He had been off dancing with the girls and
forgetting that he was an old fellow, and now his family rather surprised
him; he seemed to think it a joke that all these children should belong to
him. As the younger ones slipped up to him in his retreat, he kept taking
things out of his pockets; penny dolls, a wooden clown, a balloon pig that
was inflated by a whistle. He beckoned to the little boy they called Jan,
whispered to him, and presented him with a paper snake, gently, so as not
to startle him. Looking over the boy's head he said to me, `This one is
bashful. He gets left.'
Cuzak had brought home with him a roll of illustrated Bohemian papers. He
opened them and began to tell his wife the news, much of which seemed to
relate to one person. I heard the name Vasakova, Vasakova, repeated
several times with lively interest, and presently I asked him whether he
were talking about the singer, Maria Vasak.
`You know? You have heard, maybe?' he asked incredulously. When I assured
him that I had heard her, he pointed out her picture and told me that Vasak
had broken her leg, climbing in the Austrian Alps, and would not be able to
fill her engagements. He seemed delighted to find that I had heard her
sing in London and in Vienna; got out his pipe and lit it to enjoy our talk
the better. She came from his part of Prague. His father used to mend her
shoes for her when she was a student. Cuzak questioned me about her looks,
her popularity, her voice; but he particularly wanted to know whether I had
noticed her tiny feet, and whether I thought she had saved much money. She
was extravagant, of course, but he hoped she wouldn't squander everything,
and have nothing left when she was old. As a young man, working in Wienn,
he had seen a good many artists who were old and poor, making one glass of
beer last all evening, and `it was not very nice, that.'
When the boys came in from milking and feeding, the long table was laid,
and two brown geese, stuffed with apples, were put down sizzling before
Antonia. She began to carve, and Rudolph, who sat next his mother, started
the plates on their way. When everybody was served, he looked across the
table at me.
`Have you been to Black Hawk lately, Mr. Burden? Then I wonder if you've
heard about the Cutters?'
No, I had heard nothing at all about them.
`Then you must tell him, son, though it's a terrible thing to talk about at
supper. Now, all you children be quiet, Rudolph is going to tell about the
murder.'
`Hurrah! The murder!' the children murmured, looking pleased and
interested.
Rudolph told his story in great detail, with occasional promptings from his
mother or father.
Wick Cutter and his wife had gone on living in the house that Antonia and I
knew so well, and in the way we knew so well. They grew to be very old
people. He shrivelled up, Antonia said, until he looked like a little old
yellow monkey, for his beard and his fringe of hair never changed colour.
Mrs. Cutter remained flushed and wild-eyed as we had known her, but as the
years passed she became afflicted with a shaking palsy which made her
nervous nod continuous instead of occasional. Her hands were so uncertain
that she could no longer disfigure china, poor woman! As the couple grew
older, they quarrelled more and more often about the ultimate disposition
of their `property.' A new law was passed in the state, securing the
surviving wife a third of her husband's estate under all conditions.
Cutter was tormented by the fear that Mrs. Cutter would live longer than
he, and that eventually her `people,' whom he had always hated so
violently, would inherit. Their quarrels on this subject passed the
boundary of the close-growing cedars, and were heard in the street by
whoever wished to loiter and listen.
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