"Thank you. Now, come and sit down, please."
We fixed the flowers. Then Joe brought a basket of beautiful peaches, and we took what we wanted. The man took one, and sat touching it with the tips of his fingers, and he looked over at me with a nice smile.
"And now, my child," he says, "tell me your name."
I always hate to tell folks my name. In the village they've always made fun of it.
"What do you want to bother with that for?" I says. "Ain't I good enough without a tag?"
He spoke almost sharp. "I want you to tell me your name," he says.
So I told him. "Cosma Wakely," I says.
He looked funny. "Really?" he says. "Cosma?"
"But everybody calls me 'Cossy,'" I says quick. "I know what a funny name it is. My grandmother named me. She was queer."
"Cossy!" he says over. "Why, Cosma is perfect."
"You're kiddin' me," I says. "Don't you think I don't know it."
He didn't say he wasn't.
"Ain't you going to tell me your name?" I says. "Not that I s'pose you'll tell me the right one. They never do."
"My name," he says, "is John Ember."
"On the square?" I asked him.
"Yes," he says. He was a funny man. He didn't have a bit of come-back. He took you just plain. He reminded me of the way I acted with Luke. But usually I could jolly like the dickens.
"You travel, I guess," I says. "What do you travel for?"
He laughed. "If I understand you," he said, "you are asking me what my line is?"
I nodded. I'd just put the pit in my mouth, so I couldn't guess something sassy, like pickles.
"I have no line," he says. "It's an area."
"Huh?" I says – on account of the pit.
"I travel," says he, "for the human race. But they don't know it."
"Sure," I says, when I had it swallowed, "you got to sell to everybody, I know that. But what do you sell 'em?"
He shook his head.
"I don't sell it," he says. "They won't buy it. I shall always be a philanthropist. The commodity," says he, "is books."
"Oh!" I says. "A book agent! I'd have taken you for a regular salesman."
"I tell you I don't sell 'em," he says. "Nobody will buy. I just write 'em."
I put down my other peach and looked at him.
"An author?" I says. "You?"
"Thank you," says he, "for believing me. Nobody else will. Now don't let's talk about that. Do you mind telling me something about yourself?"
"Oh," I says, "I've got a book all made out of wrapping paper. It ain't wrote yet, it's in the bottom drawer. But I'm going to write one."
"Good!" he says. "Tell me about that, too."
I don't know what made me, except the surprise of finding that he was what he was, instead of a traveling man. But the first thing I knew I was telling him about me; how I'd stopped school when I was fourteen, and had worked out for a little while in town; and then when the boys got the job in the blast furnace, I came home to help Ma. I told him how the only place I'd ever been, besides the village, was to the city, twice. Only two things I didn't tell him at first – about what home was like, and about Luke. But he got them both out of me. Because I wound up what I was telling him with something I thought was the thing to say. Lena Curtsy always said it.
"I've just been living at home for four years now," I said. "I s'pose it's the place for a girl."
I remember how calm and slow he was when he answered.
"Why no," he says. "Your home is about the last place in the world a girl of your age ought to be."
"What do you know about my home?" I asked him quick.
"I don't mean your home," he says. "I mean any home, if it's your parents' home. If you can't be in school, why aren't you out by this time doing some useful work of your own?"
"Work," I says. "I do work. I work like a dog."
"I don't mean doing your family's work," he said. "I mean doing your own work. Of course you're not going to tell me you're happy?"
"No," I says, "I ain't happy. I hate my work. I hate the kind of a home I live in. It's Bedlam, the whole time. I'm going to get married to get out of it."
"So you are going to be married," he says. "What's the man like – do you mind telling me that?"
I told him about Luke, just the way he is. While I talked he was eating his peaches. I'd been through with mine quite a while now, so I noticed him eat his. He done it kind of with the tips of his fingers. I liked to watch him. He sort of broke the peach. The juice didn't run down. I remembered how I must have et mine, and I felt ashamed.
Before I was all through about Luke, Joe come in with the trout, and some thin, crispy potatoes on the platter, and the toast and the marmalade; and Mr. Ember went to see about the coffee. He brought it out himself, and poured it himself – and it smelled like something I'd never smelled before. And now, when he begun to eat, I watched him. I broke my toast, like he done. I used my fork on the trout, like him, and I noticed he took his spoon out of his cup, and I done that, too, though I'd got so I could drink from a cup without a handle and hold the spoon with my finger, like the boys done. I kept tasting the coffee, too, instead of drinking it off at once, even when it was hot, like I'd learned the trick of. I didn't know but his way just happened to be his way, but I wanted to make sure. Anyway, I never smack my lips, and Luke and the boys do that.
"Now," he said, "while we enjoy this very excellent breakfast, will you do me the honor to let me tell you a little something about me?"
I don't see what honor that would be, and I said so. And then he told me things.
I'm sorry that I can't put them down. It was wonderful. It was just like a story the teacher tells you when you're little and not too old for stories. It turned out he'd been to Europe and to Asia. He'd done things that I never knew there was such things. But he didn't talk about him, he just talked about the things and the places. I forgot to eat. It seemed so funny that I, Cossy Wakely, should be listening to somebody that had done them things. He said something about a volcano.
"A volcano!" I says. "Do they have them now? I thought that was only when the geography was."
"But the geography is, you know," he says. "It is now."
"Did that big flat book all mean now?" I says. "I thought it meant long ago. I had a picture of the Ark and the flood and the Temple, and when the stars fell – "
"Oh, the fools!" he says to himself; but I didn't know who he meant, and I was pretty sure he must mean me.
All the while we were having breakfast, he talked with me. When it was over, and he'd paid the bill – I tried my best to see how much it was, so as to tell Lena Curtsy, but I couldn't – he turned around to me and he says:
"The grass is not wet this morning. It's high summer. Will you walk with me up to the top of that hill over there in the field? I want to show you the whole world."
"Sure," I says. "But you can't see much past Twiney's pasture from that little runt of a hill."
We climbed the fence. He put his hand on a post and vaulted the wire as good as the boys could have done. When he turned to help me, I was just doing the same thing. Then it come over me that maybe an author wouldn't think that was ladylike.
"I always do them that way," I says, kind of to explain.
"Is there any other way?" says he.
"No!" says I, and we both laughed. It was nice to laugh with him, and it was the first time we'd done it together.
The field was soft and shiny. There was pretty cobwebs. Everything looked new and glossy.
"Great guns!" I says. "Ain't it nice out here?"
"That's exactly what I've been thinking," says he.
We went along still for a little ways. It come to me that maybe, if I could only say some of the things that moved around on the outside of my head, he might like them. But I couldn't get them together enough.
"It makes you want to think nice thoughts," I says, by and by.
"Doesn't it?" he says, with his quick, straight look. "And when it does, then you do."
"I don't know enough," I says. "I wisht I did."
I'll never, never forget when we come to the top of the little hill. He stood there with nothing but the sky, blue as fury, behind him.
"Now look," he says. "There's New York, over there."
"You can't see New York from here!" I says. "Not with no specs that was ever invented."
He went right on. "Down there," he says, "are St. Louis and Cincinnati and New Orleans. Across there is Chicago. And away on there are two days of desert – two days, by express train! – and then mountains and a green coast, and San Francisco and the Pacific. And then all the things we talked about this morning: Japan and India and the Alps and London and Rome and the Nile."
I wondered what on earth he was driving at.
"Which do you want to do," says he, "go there, and try to find these places? You won't find them, you know. But at least, you'll know they're in the world. Or live down there in a little farm-house like that one and slave for Luke?"
"But I can't even try to find them places," I says. "How could I?"
"Maybe not," he says. "Maybe not. I don't say you could. All I mean is this, Why not think of your life as if you have really been born, and not as if you were waiting to be born?"
"Oh," I says, "don't you s'pose I've thought of that? But I can't get away."
"Yes, you can," he says, looking at me, earnest. "Yes, you can. If you just say the word."
I was as tall as he was, and I looked right at him, with all the strength I had.
"Do you think," I says, "that because I'm from the country I ain't on to all such talk as that? Do you think I don't know what them kind of hold-outs means? We ain't such fools as you think we are, not since Hattie Duffy thought she was going to Paris, and ended in the bottom of a pond. They's only one way any of us ever gets to see any of them things, and don't you think we're fooled unless we want to be. No, sir. We ain't that fresh."
He scared me the way he whirled round at me.
"You miserable little creature!" he said. "What are you talking about?"
"Well," I says, "don't you ever think I – "
Then he done a funny thing. He drew a deep breath, and took his hat off and looked up at the sky and off over the fields.
"After all," he said, "thank God this is the way you are beginning to take it! When a country girl can protect herself like that, it is growing safe for her to be born. Listen to me, child," he says.
He had me puzzled for fair by then. I just listened.
"Just now," he says, "I called you a miserable little creature. That was because you quite naturally mistook me for one of the wretched hunters whom women have been trying to evade since the beginning. Well, I was wrong to call you that. Instead, I applaud your magnificent ability to take care of yourself. I applaud even more in the incident – but I won't bother you with that."
I kept trying to see what he meant.
"Now you must," he said, "try to understand me. What I meant to say to you was that with the whole world to choose from, you are, in my opinion, quite wrong to settle down here to your farm and your Luke and the drudgery you say you loathe, without ever giving yourself a chance to choose at all. Perhaps you would come back and settle here because you wanted to… I hope you would do that, under somewhat different conditions. But don't settle here because you're trapped and can't get out."
"But I can't get out – " I was beginning, but he went on:
"I know perfectly well that a great part of the world would think that I ought not to be talking to you like that. They would say that you are 'safe' here. That you and Luke would have a quiet, contented life. But I care nothing at all for such safety. I think that unreasonable contentment leads to various kinds of damnation. If you were an ordinary girl I should not be talking to you like this. I should not have the courage – yet; not while life treats women as it treats them now. But in spite of your vulgarity, you are a remarkable woman."
"In spite of what?" I says.
"I mean it," he says, "and you must let me tell you, because you seem to be, in all but one thing, a fine straightforward creature. But in the way you treat men, you are vulgar, you know. Not hopelessly, just deplorably. Now tell me the truth. Why did you pretend to flirt with me? For that isn't your natural manner. You put it on. Why did you do that?"
I could tell him that well enough.
"Why," I says, "I guess it was the same as the singing. I wanted you to know I wasn't a stick. I wanted you to think I was lively and fun. It's the way the girls do. I can't do it as good as they do, I know that."
"Promise me," he says, "that if ever you do get out, you'll be the fine and straightforward one – not the other one."
"I shan't get out," I says. "I can't get out."
"'I can't get out,'" he says over. "'I can't get out.' It's a great mistake. If you feel it in you to get out, then you'll get out. That's the answer."
"I do," I says. "I always have. I wake up in the mornings…"
I'll never know what it was that come over me. But all of a sudden, the me that laid awake nights and thought, and the me that had come out in the sun that morning was the only me I had, and it could talk.
"Oh," I says, "don't you think I'm the way I seemed back there on the road. I'm different; but I'm the only one that knows that. I like nice things. I'd like to act nice. I'd like to be the way I could be. But there ain't enough of me to be that way. And I don't know what to do."
He took both my hands.
"And I don't know what you're to do," he said. "That is the part you must find for yourself. It's like dying – yet a while, till they get us going."
We stood still for a minute. And then I saw what I hadn't seen before – what a grand face he had. He wasn't like the handsome men on calendars or on cigar boxes, or on the signs. He was like somebody else I hadn't ever seen before. His face wasn't young at all, but it looked glad, and that made it seem young.
"I wish you wouldn't ever go way," I says.
"I ought to be miles from here at this moment," he says. "Now see here … I want to give you these."
He took two cards out of his pocket, and wrote on them.
"This one is mine," he says. "If you do come to the city, you are surely to let me know that you are there. And if you take this other card to this address here, this gentleman may be able to give you work. Now good-by. I'm going to cut through the meadow, and I suppose you'll be going back."
He put out his hand.
"Don't go," I says. "Don't go. I shan't ever find anybody to talk to again."
"That's part of your job, you know," he says. "Remember you have a job. Good-by, child."
He went off down the slope. At the foot of it he stopped.
"Cosma!" he shouts, "don't ever let them call you anything else, you know!"
"I won't," I says. "Honest, I won't, Mr. Ember."
I watched him just as far as I could see him. On the road he turned and waved his hand. When he was out of sight I started to go back home. But when I see things again, I'll never forget the lonesomeness. Things was like a sucked-out sack. I laid down in the grass – I haven't cried since the last time Pa whipped me, six years ago, but I thought I was going to cry now. Then I happened to think that was the way I'd have done before I met him; but it wasn't the way I must do now. Instead, I got up on to my feet and I started for home on the run. It was like something was starting somewheres, and I had to hurry.
CHAPTER III
Mother was scrubbing the well-house.
"Cossy Wakely," she says, "where you been?"
"Walking," I says.
"Walking!" says she; "with all I got to do. I should think you'd be ashamed of yourself. My land, what you got on your best clothes for?"
"Mother," I says, "you call me 'Cosma' after this, will you?"
She stared at me. "Such airs," she says. "And callin' me 'Mother.' Who you been with? What you rigged out like that for?"
"I didn't dress up for anybody," I says, "only because I wanted to."
"Such a young one as you've turned out," says she. "What's to become of you I don't know. Wait till your Pa comes in – I'll tell him."
"Mother," I says, "I'm twenty years old. You call me 'Cosma,' and let me call you 'Mother.' And don't feel you have to scold me all the time."
"I'll quit scolding you fast enough," she says, "when you quit deserving it. Go and get out of them togs, the dishes are waiting for you."
I went in the house. Mis' Bingy was not there, up-stairs or down. I went back to the door and asked about her.
"Why, she's gone home," says Mother. "You didn't s'pose she was going to live here, did you?"
"Home?" I says. "Where that man is?"
"We can't all pick out our homes," she says, scrubbing the boards.
Pa heard her. He was just coming in from the barn with the swill buckets to fill.
"That's you," he says, "finding fault with the hands that feeds you. Where'd you be, I'd like to know, if it wasn't for this home and me? In the poorhouse."
Mother straightened up on her knees by the well.
"Mean to say I don't pay my keep?" she says.
For a minute she seemed young and somebody, like when she was asleep.
"Not when you dish up such pickings as you done this morning," says Pa.
She screamed out something at him, and I ran across the yard toward Mis' Bingy's. They were going on so hard they forgot about me.
The grove was still. I wished he could have seen it. As soon as I got in it, I forgot about home, and the time before come back on me, like some of me singing. That was it – some of me singing. But I see right off the grove was different. It was almost as if he had been in it, and had showed me things about it. I begun looking out at it the way I thought he'd be looking at it. There seemed to be more of the grove than I thought there was. Then I thought how he'd never be there in it, and how I'd prob'ly never see him again, and something in me hurt, and I didn't want to go on. What was the use?.. What was the use?.. What was the use?..
Mis' Bingy's house lay all still in the sun. The sunflowers and hollyhocks by the back door and the chickens picking around looked all peaceful and like home. I thought Mr. Bingy must be sleeping off his drunk, and her keeping quiet not to disturb him.
The kitchen door was standing open and I stepped up on the porch. And then I heard a terrible cry, from right there in the room.
"Go back – back, Cossy!" Mis' Bingy said. "He'll kill you!"
All in an instant I took it in. She was sitting crouched on the bed, shielding the baby with a pillow. And he set close beside the door, sharpening his hatchet.
He jumped up when he see me. I remember his red eyes and his teeth, and his thin whiskers that showed his chin through. Then he sprang forward, right toward me and on to me, with his hatchet in his hand.
I donno how I done it. For no reason, I guess, only that I'm big and strong and he was little and pindling. I know I never stopped to think or decide nothing. I dodged his hatchet and I jumped at him. I threw my whole strength at him, with my hands on his face and his throat. He went down like a log, because I was so much bigger and so strong. But that wouldn't have saved us, only that, as he fell, he hit his head on the sharp corner of the cook stove. He rolled over on his back, and the hatchet flew out on the zinc.
"You killed him!" Mis' Bingy says. She sat up, but she didn't go to him.
"We ain't no time to think of that," I says. "Get your things and come."
She didn't ask anything. She took the baby and run right and got a bundle of things she'd got ready. I see then that she had on her best black dress, and the baby was all dressed clean and embroidered. I picked up the hatchet, and we went out the door, and shut it behind us. She never looked back, even when we got to the door; and I noticed that, because it wasn't like Mis' Bingy, that's soft and frightened.
"I don't mind what he done to me," she said, "but just now he took the baby – and touched her hand – to the hot griddle."
She showed me.
"I hope he's dead," I said.
"Where shall I go?" she says. "My God, where shall I go?"
"Ain't you no folks?" I asked her.
"Not near enough so's I've got the fare," she says. "Anyhow, I don't want to come on to them."
We was in the grove at the time. I donno as it would have come to me so quick if we hadn't been there.
"Mis' Bingy," I says, "let's us go to the city together, you and me. And find a job."
I thought she'd draw back. But she just stopped still in the path and looked at me round the baby's head.
"You couldn't do that, could you?" she says.
"Yes," I says. "I didn't know it before, but I know it now. I could do that."
She kep' on looking at me, with something coming in her face.
"You couldn't go to-day, could you?" she says.
I hadn't thought of to-day, but the thing was on me then.
"Why not to-day as good as any day?" I says.
"Your Ma – " she says.
"This is different," I says. "This is for me to do."
We come to the edge of the grove, and across the open lot I could see Mother. She was spreading out her scrubbing cloth on the grass to dry. I went up to her, and I wasn't scared nor I didn't dread anything because I was so sure.
"Mother," I says, "Mis' Bingy and I are going up to the city together to get some work. And we're goin' to-day. But first I've got to go and find somebody. I donno but I've killed Mr. Bingy."
I don't remember all the things she said. All of a sudden, my head was full of other things that stood out sharp, and I couldn't take in what was going on all around, not with what I had to think about. Mis' Bingy sat down by the well-house and went to nursing the baby, and Mother stood up before her asking her things. I left 'em so, and ran down the road to the Inn. That was the nearest place I could get anybody.
It was about ten o'clock in the morning by that time. All this had happened to me before it was time to get the potatoes ready for dinner. I remember thinking that as I run. There was the Inn – and Joe was out wiping off the tables in the yard, with the same dirty cloth, and straightening up the chairs.
"Joe," I says, "I ain't sure, but I think I've hurt Mr. Bingy pretty bad. Is there somebody can go up to their house and see?"
Joe stared, his thick, red, open lips and his red tongue looking more surprised than his little wolf eyes.
"What?" he says.
When I'd made him know, he got two men from the field and they run up the road toward Bingy's. On the Inn window-sill was the same kitten I'd played with while I was waiting for the coffee. I went and got it and sat down at the table where we'd been. It seemed a day since I was there. I seemed like somebody else. For the first time I wondered what would be if Keddie Bingy was dead. But it wasn't the being arrested or stood up in the court room or locked in jail that I thought of, and it wasn't Keddie at all. All I kept thinking was:
"If Keddie's dead, I won't never see him again."
I sat there going over that, and holding the kitten. It was a nice little kitten that looked up in my face more helpless than anything but a baby, or a bird, or a puppy. I felt kind of like some such helpless things. The world wasn't like what I thought it was. More things happened to you than I ever knew could happen. I always thought they happened just to other folks. The tables and the bare, swept dirt didn't look as if anything was happening anywheres near them, and yet down the road maybe was a dead man that I'd killed. And a mile and more away by now he was, and a little bit ago he'd been here, and the me that set there with him had been somebody else. And the me that had been awake before daybreak that morning probably wouldn't ever be me at all, any more. Everything was different forever. I saw something on the ground, down by the arbor. It was the pink phlox I had picked. They threw it away when they wanted to wash the glass. It seemed so helpless, laying there without any water. I went and got it and put it on my dress.
Pretty soon I heard them coming back, talking. Joe and one of the men come in sight, and Joe sung out:
"It's all right. He's groaning. Ben's gone for a doctor. What happened?"
I told 'em; but I wanted to get away.
"Well, shave my bones," Joe says, "if you ain't the worst I ever see. Why didn't you leave the woman knock down her own man?"
"Why didn't you leave her get him drunk?" I says. "If I'd have killed him, it'd been you that murdered him, Joe."
"Now, look here," says Joe, "I'm a-carrying on an honest business. If a man goes for to make a fool of himself, is that my lookout, or ain't it? Who do you think lets me keep this business, anyway? It's the U. S. Gover'ment, that's who it is. You better be careful what you sling at this business."
"Then it's the Gover'ment that's a big fool, instead of you and Keddie," I says, and started for home. I remember Joe shouted out something; but all I was thinking was that the day before I'd of thought it was wicked to say what I'd just said, and now I didn't; and I wondered why.
There wasn't a minute to lose now, because if Keddie was groaning he'd be up and out again and looking for both of us. Mother and Mis' Bingy and the baby was still out in the yard by the well-house, and Father was just starting down the road after me.
It's funny, but what, just the day before, would have been a thing so big I wouldn't have thought of doing it, chiefly on account of the row it'd make, was now just easy and natural. They must have said things, I remember how loud their voices were and how I wished they wouldn't. And I remember them saying over and over the same thing:
"You don't need to go. You don't need to go. Ain't you always had a roof over you and enough to eat? A girl had ought to be thankful for a good home."
But I went and got my things ready and got myself dressed. I wanted to tell them about the feeling I had that I had to go, but I couldn't tell about that, now that I was going, any more than I could tell when I thought I mustn't go.
I did say something to Mother when she come and stood in the bedroom door and told me I was an ungrateful girl.
"Ungrateful for what?" I says.
"For me bringing you up and working my head off for you," she says, "and your Pa the same."
"But, Mother," I says, "that was your job to do. And me – I ain't found my job – yet."
"Your job is to do as we tell you to," says Mother. "The idea!"
I tried, just that once, to make her see.
"Mother," I says, "I'm separate. I'm somebody else. I'm old enough to get a-hold of some life like you've had, and some work I want to do. And I can't do it if I stay here. I'm separate– don't you see that?"
Then it come over me, dim, how surprised she must feel, after all, to have to think that, that I was separate, instead of her and hers. I went over toward her – I wanted to tell her so. But she says:
"I don't know what you're coming to. And I'm glad I don't. When I'm dead and gone, you'll think of this."
And then I couldn't say what I'd tried to say. But I thought what she said was true, that I would think about it some day, and be sorry. If it hadn't been for Mis' Bingy, I s'pose I'd have given it up, even then. It's hard to make a thing that's been so for a long time stop being so. But Mis' Bingy needed me, and I was sorry for her; and I liked the feeling.
On the stairs Mother thought of something else.
"What about Luke?" she says.
I hadn't thought of Luke.
"He'd ought to be the one to set his foot down," says Mother, "seeing we can't do anything with you."
Set his foot down – Luke! Why? Because he'd tell me he loved me and I said I'd marry him! I went to the pail for a drink of water, and I stood there and laughed. Luke setting his foot down on me because I said he might!
"She'll come back when she's hungry," says Father. "Don't carry on so, Mate."
Mate was Mother's name. I hadn't heard Father call her that many times. It come to me that my going away was something that brought them nearer together for a minute. And Mate! It meant something, something that she was. She was Father's mate. They'd met once for the first time. They'd wanted their life to be nice. I ran up to them and kissed them both. And then for the first time in my life I saw Mother's lip tremble.
"I'll do up your clean underclothes," she says, "and send 'em after you. You tell me where."
"Mother, Mother!" I says, and took hold of her. If it hadn't been for Mis' Bingy I'd have given up going then and there, and married Luke whenever he said so.
It was Mis' Bingy's scared face that give me courage to go, and it was her face that kept my mind off myself all the way to the depot. I thought she was going to faint away when we went by the lane that led up to their house. But we never heard anything or saw anybody. We were going to the depot, and just set there until the first train come along for the city. And all the while we did set there, Mis' Bingy got paler and paler every time the door opened, or somebody shouted out on the platform. She wanted to take the first train that come in and get away anywheres, even if it took us out of our way. But I got her to wait the half hour till the city train come along; and as the time went by she begun to be less willing to go at all.
"Cossy," she says, when we heard the engine whistle, "I've been wrong. I'm being a bad wife. I'm going back."
"What kind of a wife you're being," I says, "that's got nothing to do with it. It's her."
She looked down at the baby. The baby had on her little best cloak, and a bonnet that the ruffle come down over her eyes. She wasn't a pretty baby, her face was spotted and she made a crooked mouth when she cried. But she was soft and helpless, and I didn't mind her being homely.
"I'm taking her away from a father's care," says Mis' Bingy, beginning to cry.
It seemed to me wicked the way she was stuffed full of words that didn't mean anything, like "bad wife" and "father's care." I didn't say anything, though. The baby's hand lay spread out on her cloak, with the burned part done up in a rag and some soda, the way Mother'd fixed it. I just picked up the little hand, and looked up at Mis' Bingy.
When the train come in, she went out and got on to it, without another word.