by Willa Cather
II
WHEN I awoke in the morning long bands of sunshine were coming in at thewindow and reaching back under the eaves where the two boys lay. Leo waswide awake and was tickling his brother's leg with a dried cone-flower hehad pulled out of the hay. Ambrosch kicked at him and turned over. Iclosed my eyes and pretended to be asleep. Leo lay on his back, elevatedone foot, and began exercising his toes. He picked up dried flowers withhis toes and brandished them in the belt of sunlight. After he had amusedhimself thus for some time, he rose on one elbow and began to look at me,cautiously, then critically, blinking his eyes in the light. Hisexpression was droll; it dismissed me lightly. "This old fellow is nodifferent from other people. He does n't know my secret." He seemedconscious of possessing a keener power of enjoyment than other people; hisquick recognitions made him frantically impatient of deliberate judgments.He always knew what he wanted without thinking.
After dressing in the hay, I washed my face in cold water at the windmill.Breakfast was ready when I entered the kitchen, and Yulka was bakinggriddle-cakes. The three older boys set off for the fields early. Leo andYulka were to drive to town to meet their father, who would return fromWilber on the noon train.
"We'll only have a lunch at noon," Antonia said, "and cook the geese forsupper, when our papa will be here. I wish my Martha could come down tosee you. They have a Ford car now, and she don't seem so far away from meas she used to. But her husband's crazy about his farm and about havingeverything just right, and they almost never get away except on Sundays.He's a handsome boy, and he'll be rich some day. Everything he takes holdof turns out well. When they bring that baby in here, and unwrap him, helooks like a little prince; Martha takes care of him so beautiful. I'mreconciled to her being away from me now, but at first I cried like I wasputting her into her coffin."
We were alone in the kitchen, except for Anna, who was pouring cream intothe churn. She looked up at me. "Yes, she did. We were just ashamed ofmother. She went round crying, when Martha was so happy, and the rest ofus were all glad. Joe certainly was patient with you, mother."
Antonia nodded and smiled at herself. "I know it was silly, but I couldn't help it. I wanted her right here. She'd never been away from me anight since she was born. If Anton had made trouble about her when she wasa baby, or wanted me to leave her with my mother, I would n't have marriedhim. I could n't. But he always loved her like she was his own."
"I did n't even know Martha was n't my full sister until after she wasengaged to Joe," Anna told me.
Toward the middle of the afternoon the wagon drove in, with the father andthe eldest son. I was smoking in the orchard, and as I went out to meetthem, Antonia came running down from the house and hugged the two men asif they had been away for months.
"Papa" interested me, from my first glimpse of him. He was shorter thanhis older sons; a crumpled little man, with run-over boot heels, and hecarried one shoulder higher than the other. But he moved very quickly, andthere was an air of jaunty liveliness about him. He had a strong, ruddycolor, thick black hair, a little grizzled, a curly mustache, and redlips. His smile showed the strong teeth of which his wife was so proud,and as he saw me his lively, quizzical eyes told me that he knew all aboutme. He looked like a humorous philosopher who had hitched up one shoulderunder the burdens of life, and gone on his way having a good time when hecould. He advanced to meet me and gave me a hard hand, burned red on theback and heavily coated with hair. He wore his Sunday clothes, very thickand hot for the weather, an unstarched white shirt, and a blue necktiewith big white dots, like a little boy's, tied in a flowing bow. Cuzakbegan at once to talk about his holiday--from politeness he spoke inEnglish.
"Mama, I wish you had see the lady dance on the slack-wire in the streetat night. They throw a bright light on her and she float through the airsomething beautiful, like a bird! They have a dancing bear, like in theold country, and two three merry-go-around, and people in balloons, andwhat you call the big wheel, Rudolph?"
"A Ferris wheel," Rudolph entered the conversation in a deep baritonevoice. He was six foot two, and had a chest like a young blacksmith. "Wewent to the big dance in the hall behind the saloon last night, mother,and I danced with all the girls, and so did father. I never saw so manypretty girls. It was a Bohunk crowd, for sure. We did n't hear a word ofEnglish on the street, except from the show people, did we, papa?"
Cuzak nodded. "And very many send word to you, Antonia. You willexcuse"--turning to me--"if I tell her." While we walked toward the house herelated incidents and delivered messages in the tongue he spoke fluently,and I dropped a little behind, curious to know what their relations hadbecome--or remained. The two seemed to be on terms of easy friendliness,touched with humor. Clearly, she was the impulse, and he the corrective.As they went up the hill he kept glancing at her sidewise, to see whethershe got his point, or how she received it. I noticed later that he alwayslooked at people sidewise, as a work-horse does at its yoke-mate. Evenwhen he sat opposite me in the kitchen, talking, he would turn his head alittle toward the clock or the stove and look at me from the side, butwith frankness and good-nature. This trick did not suggest duplicity orsecretiveness, 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 littledisappointed when his wife showed him a big box of candy I had got inDenver--she had n't let the children touch it the night before. He put hiscandy 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 sosmall," he said.
Cuzak sat down behind the stove and watched his women-folk and the littlechildren with equal amusement. He thought they were nice, and he thoughtthey were funny, evidently. He had been off dancing with the girls andforgetting that he was an old fellow, and now his family rather surprisedhim; he seemed to think it a joke that all these children should belong tohim. As the younger ones slipped up to him in his retreat, he kept takingthings out of his pockets; penny dolls, a wooden clown, a balloon pig thatwas 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 notto startle him. Looking over the boy's head he said to me, "This one isbashful. He gets left."
Cuzak had brought home with him a roll of illustrated Bohemian papers. Heopened them and began to tell his wife the news, much of which seemed torelate to one person. I heard the name Vasakova, Vasakova, repeatedseveral times with lively interest, and presently I asked him whether hewere talking about the singer, Maria Vasak.
"You know? You have heard, maybe?" he asked incredulously. When I assuredhim that I had heard her, he pointed out her picture and told me thatVasak had broken her leg, climbing in the Austrian Alps, and would not beable to fill her engagements. He seemed delighted to find that I had heardher sing in London and in Vienna; got out his pipe and lit it to enjoy ourtalk the better. She came from his part of Prague. His father used to mendher shoes for her when she was a student. Cuzak questioned me about herlooks, her popularity, her voice; but he particularly wanted to knowwhether I had noticed her tiny feet, and whether I thought she had savedmuch money. She was extravagant, of course, but he hoped she would n'tsquander everything, and have nothing left when she was old. As a youngman, working in Wienn, he had seen a good many artists who were old andpoor, making one glass of beer last all evening, and "it was not verynice, 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 beforeAntonia. She began to carve, and Rudolph, who sat next his mother, startedthe plates on their way. When everybody was served, he looked across thetable at me.
"Have you been to Black Hawk lately, Mr. Burden? Then I wonder if you'veheard 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 aboutat supper. Now, all you ch
ildren be quiet, Rudolph is going to tell aboutthe murder."
"Hurrah! The murder!" the children murmured, looking pleased andinterested.
Rudolph told his story in great detail, with occasional promptings fromhis mother or father.
Wick Cutter and his wife had gone on living in the house that Antonia andI knew so well, and in the way we knew so well. They grew to be very oldpeople. He shriveled up, Antonia said, until he looked like a little oldyellow monkey, for his beard and his fringe of hair never changed color.Mrs. Cutter remained flushed and wild-eyed as we had known her, but as theyears passed she became afflicted with a shaking palsy which made hernervous nod continuous instead of occasional. Her hands were so uncertainthat she could no longer disfigure china, poor woman! As the couple grewolder, they quarreled more and more about the ultimate disposition oftheir "property." A new law was passed in the State, securing thesurviving wife a third of her husband's estate under all conditions.Cutter was tormented by the fear that Mrs. Cutter would live longer thanhe, and that eventually her "people," whom he had always hated soviolently, would inherit. Their quarrels on this subject passed theboundary of the close-growing cedars, and were heard in the street bywhoever wished to loiter and listen.
One morning, two years ago, Cutter went into the hardware store and boughta pistol, saying he was going to shoot a dog, and adding that he "thoughthe would take a shot at an old cat while he was about it." (Here thechildren interrupted Rudolph's narrative by smothered giggles.)
Cutter went out behind the hardware store, put up a target, practiced foran hour or so, and then went home. At six o'clock that evening, whenseveral men were passing the Cutter house on their way home to supper,they heard a pistol shot. They paused and were looking doubtfully at oneanother, when another shot came crashing through an upstairs window. Theyran into the house and found Wick Cutter lying on a sofa in his upstairsbedroom, with his throat torn open, bleeding on a roll of sheets he hadplaced beside his head.
"Walk in, gentlemen," he said weakly. "I am alive, you see, and competent.You are witnesses that I have survived my wife. You will find her in herown room. Please make your examination at once, so that there will be nomistake."
One of the neighbors telephoned for a doctor, while the others went intoMrs. Cutter's room. She was lying on her bed, in her nightgown andwrapper, shot through the heart. Her husband must have come in while shewas taking her afternoon nap and shot her, holding the revolver near herbreast. Her nightgown was burned from the powder.
The horrified neighbors rushed back to Cutter. He opened his eyes and saiddistinctly, "Mrs. Cutter is quite dead, gentlemen, and I am conscious. Myaffairs are in order." Then, Rudolph said, "he let go and died."
On his desk the coroner found a letter, dated at five o'clock thatafternoon. It stated that he had just shot his wife; that any will shemight secretly have made would be invalid, as he survived her. He meant toshoot himself at six o'clock and would, if he had strength, fire a shotthrough the window in the hope that passers-by might come in and see him"before life was extinct," as he wrote.
"Now, would you have thought that man had such a cruel heart?" Antoniaturned to me after the story was told. "To go and do that poor woman outof any comfort she might have from his money after he was gone!"
"Did you ever hear of anybody else that killed himself for spite, Mr.Burden?" asked Rudolph.
I admitted that I had n't. Every lawyer learns over and over how strong amotive hate can be, but in my collection of legal anecdotes I had nothingto match this one. When I asked how much the estate amounted to, Rudolphsaid it was a little over a hundred thousand dollars.
Cuzak gave me a twinkling, sidelong glance. "The lawyers, they got a gooddeal of it, sure," he said merrily.
A hundred thousand dollars; so that was the fortune that had been scrapedtogether by such hard dealing, and that Cutter himself had died for in theend!
After supper Cuzak and I took a stroll in the orchard and sat down by thewindmill to smoke. He told me his story as if it were my business to knowit.
His father was a shoemaker, his uncle a furrier, and he, being a youngerson, was apprenticed to the latter's trade. You never got anywhere workingfor your relatives, he said, so when he was a journeyman he went to Viennaand worked in a big fur shop, earning good money. But a young fellow wholiked a good time did n't save anything in Vienna; there were too manypleasant ways of spending every night what he'd made in the day. Afterthree years there, he came to New York. He was badly advised and went towork on furs during a strike, when the factories were offering big wages.The strikers won, and Cuzak was blacklisted. As he had a few hundreddollars ahead, he decided to go to Florida and raise oranges. He hadalways thought he would like to raise oranges! The second year a hardfrost killed his young grove, and he fell ill with malaria. He came toNebraska to visit his cousin, Anton Jelinek, and to look about. When hebegan to look about, he saw Antonia, and she was exactly the kind of girlhe had always been hunting for. They were married at once, though he hadto borrow money from his cousin to buy the wedding-ring.
"It was a pretty hard job, breaking up this place and making the firstcrops grow," he said, pushing back his hat and scratching his grizzledhair. "Sometimes I git awful sore on this place and want to quit, but mywife she always say we better stick it out. The babies come along prettyfast, so it look like it be hard to move, anyhow. I guess she was right,all right. We got this place clear now. We pay only twenty dollars an acrethen, and I been offered a hundred. We bought another quarter ten yearsago, and we got it most paid for. We got plenty boys; we can work a lot ofland. Yes, she is a good wife for a poor man. She ain't always so strictwith me, neither. Sometimes maybe I drink a little too much beer in town,and when I come home she don't say nothing. She don't ask me no questions.We always get along fine, her and me, like at first. The children don'tmake trouble between us, like sometimes happens." He lit another pipe andpulled on it contentedly.
I found Cuzak a most companionable fellow. He asked me a great manyquestions about my trip through Bohemia, about Vienna and the Ringstrasseand the theaters.
"Gee! I like to go back there once, when the boys is big enough to farmthe place. Sometimes when I read the papers from the old country, I prettynear run away," he confessed with a little laugh. "I never did think how Iwould be a settled man like this."
He was still, as Antonia said, a city man. He liked theaters and lightedstreets and music and a game of dominoes after the day's work was over.His sociability was stronger than his acquisitive instinct. He liked tolive day by day and night by night, sharing in the excitement of thecrowd.--Yet his wife had managed to hold him here on a farm, in one of theloneliest countries in the world.
I could see the little chap, sitting here every evening by the windmill,nursing his pipe and listening to the silence; the wheeze of the pump, thegrunting of the pigs, an occasional squawking when the hens were disturbedby a rat. It did rather seem to me that Cuzak had been made the instrumentof Antonia's special mission. This was a fine life, certainly, but it wasn't the kind of life he had wanted to live. I wondered whether the lifethat was right for one was ever right for two!
I asked Cuzak if he did n't find it hard to do without the gay company hehad always been used to. He knocked out his pipe against an upright,sighed, and dropped it into his pocket.
"At first I near go crazy with lonesomeness," he said frankly, "but mywoman is got such a warm heart. She always make it as good for me as shecould. Now it ain't so bad; I can begin to have some fun with my boys,already!"
As we walked toward the house, Cuzak cocked his hat jauntily over one earand looked up at the moon. "Gee!" he said in a hushed voice, as if he hadjust wakened up, "it don't seem like I am away from there twenty-sixyear!"