“We had the Lutzes out for supper, Will.”
That was pleasant, Abbie.
She knew that she made her own answers, but paradoxically, they seemed not to be. She had known Will’s opinions so thoroughly that, almost without her volition, the answers sprang to her mind.
“The Reinmuellers were quarreling to-day, Will. You know, Will, sometimes I think you and I are nearer even now than Gus and Christine.”
That’s true, Abbie.
“I shall never tell any one,” she said to herself. “I know just how they would feel. They would look at me queerly and think I was ‘touched.’ You do talk to me, Will, don’t you?”
Why, of course, Abbie-girl.
And so, like an unseen presence, it came to give her a sense of comfort, until the day on which there would come a reaction, and she would plunge into a dark state of depression during which she would turn upon herself with accusations of a childish belief in her own fragile imagination. And then, in time,—something would quiet her again. Something,—she did not know what,—the wind in the Lombardy poplars,—the spirit of the deepening prairie twilight,—the stillness of the star-filled summer night,—or the memory of a voice saying, “I would go on with you . . . remembering . . .”
The greatest antidote in the world for grief is work, and the necessity of work. And Abbie had more to do than she had ever done in her busy life.
John was the one upon whom she most depended. All the winter, after his father’s death, he had looked after the stock and all spring he had worked faithfully putting in the new crop. Many times one of the Reinmuellers had helped out, but John had shouldered the greater share of the field work. His presence was the only solution now to the problem of making a living on the place. He was only eighteen, but in the years to come, if he wanted to marry, Abbie told herself that he could have a small house built near by,—or perhaps it would be better the other way around,—she and Isabelle and Grace could live in the small cottage and let John have the bigger house. John was so much like his father, quiet, faithful, uncomplaining. He had none of Mack’s friendliness toward every one, but a reserve which was close to dignity. Every night, all winter, after the chores were done, he had cleaned up and with no explanation, mounted the enclosed stairs to his own room. What did he do there, Abbie wondered, as she built up the fire, so that the room above, heated by a “drum” on the stove-pipe, would be warm enough.
It was when she was cleaning the room in the spring that she found the Blackstone tucked away between a homemade bookshelf and the wall.
“John,” Abbie said to him, “something is on your mind. What is it? Won’t you tell Mother?”
She had to work to get it out of him. And then, like one whose resistance had snapped, he turned on her, “It’s working on this darned farm all my life. I hate it, I tell you.” He had the fury of a reserved person who stores up his grievances until one exploding moment. It reminded Abbie of the few outbursts of Will during their years together.
Abbie put her hand on the back of a chair to steady herself. “What do you want to do?”
“Study law.” And Will had said that the Deals were always for the land. “I think of it all day and then dream it. And I’m going to, some day.”
That was like Will, too, Abbie thought,—to think a thing over for a long time and then come to an irrevocable decision.
“But I know what you’ll say to that.” He spoke almost sullenly.
It hurt Abbie so, to have him turn on her that way.
“I’m not unsympathetic, John. We’ll have to plan some way it can be done if you feel that way.”
“Yes, and have you mad and disappointed about it.” Why, oh why, did children say things to hurt one?
“No, I’ll not be mad,” she controlled her trembling lips, “and I’m not disappointed. I’m proud of your desire, John. For just a few minutes I was . . . was confused.”
“Then promise me you’ll sell the place and take the two girls and move into town.”
“No, John,” Abbie said with dignity. “I’ll not sell. Land is low, . . . and last year’s crops so poor . . . No, it’s my place and I’m going to stay on it. We’ll manage, somehow.”
“Then that settles it. I’ll stay too.”
For long weeks Abbie labored with him. He was such a good boy, so clean and energetic, and so stubborn. Then, when Abbie had argued over and over again how she could manage by renting part of the acreage to Oscar Lutz on shares, and hiring Pete Reinmueller for the part of the work she could not do herself, John went away to the University in the fall, with his one suit, a few dollars in his pocket, and the promise of two jobs,—caring for a professor’s fires and a doctor’s horses.
Isabelle entered Weeping Water Academy that fall, doing part-time work in the minister’s family for her board. And not once did either she or John ever realize how many times their mother put on an old coat and felt hat of their father’s and went out to some of the heavy work herself. Isabelle began immediately to make splendid progress in music under a good teacher from the East. “It’s her voice, though, that’s going to count,” the instructor said. “We must watch it and guard it.”
In the summer, almost the first minute that John came home, he put on his old clothes and went out to the field to work. But his course was to be long and Isabelle’s must contain all the music she could get, so Abbie began figuring in what ways she could help the two more. After several weeks of thinking it over and consulting the boys, she took Oscar Lutz’s offer for eighty acres or half the farm. Oscar paid her one thousand dollars in cash and gave his note for the other three thousand.
“It’s not good business to sell for that,” Abbie said. “I think land’s going to be higher some day, but it’s now that the children need a little help. I can get along. With the chickens and eggs and butter and my pension money, I can keep things going.”
The crops were poor again, the drought of the year before almost repeated. In spite of the general depression Henry end Sarah Lutz went away on a trip back to the World’s Fair at Chicago. Henry had many irons in the fire, a blacksmith shop, his store, the farms. He and Oscar seemed to get along. They always “came out of the big end of the horn,” people said. Sarah looked dressy when she started away. She had a flaring black skirt and white shirt-waist and a stiff black hat which she told Abbie was a genuine Knox sailor.
“So’s mine,” said Abbie, good-naturedly. She took off her own shabby old hat and twirled it on her hand. “Hard knocks.”
When Sarah came back, she had some little garnet earrings and a half-dozen spoons with the Fair buildings engraved on them and pictures of the Infanta Eulalie from Spain and Mrs. Potter Palmer.
In September, Abbie left Grace, nearly five now, with Sarah and went up to Lincoln to be with Margaret. She drove the team and took along the feed for it to save the two-dollar train fare that would pay for four music lessons for Isabelle.
She got up at three and had started at four. Hours later, at Stevens Creek bridge, she rested the team under some cottonwoods and ate breakfast out of a shoe box. It showered during the last three miles and the wheels threw mud and the buggy almost mired.
The Bakers had moved into a house with a yard and a stable. Dr. Baker’s practice was picking up, although fees were hard to collect. The hard times permeated into all businesses.
Abbie walked the floor in an agony of sympathy for Margaret. “I went through this six times,” she thought, “but this is harder than any of them.” Sometimes she slipped into the bedroom. “Mother’s here, Margaret,” she said, cheerfully, “keep up your courage.”
And then the Bakers had a son,—Fred, Jr., they called him.
At home again, Abbie found everything all right. Christine had milked the two cows and had taken care of the pigs and chickens. The farm activities, thanks to the Reinmuellers, had gone right on. Only the clock had stopped.
Abbie wound the works behind the door with the little brown church painted on the glass. She sto
od for a few minutes and looked at the homely painted face of the old Seth Thomas time-piece and listened to its sturdy faithful ticking. “A grandmother!” she said to it. “I’m a grandmother. And it’s not quite believable.”
“You—can’t—stop—time—you—can’t—stop—time—you—can’t—”
“Yes, you’re right,” Abbie admitted. “We won’t argue it.” She put the key behind the little brown church painted on the glass and shut the front.
“Well, Will,” she said to that comrade who was only spirit and memory, “you have a grandson.”
I’m pretty proud of that, Abbie.
And then, the next spring, the whole community knew that Mack was going to marry Emma Lutz,—Emma, with her mother’s beady black eyes and her rosy cheeks and a merry come-hither in her eyes. And apparently the whole community was pleased, for good-natured Emma Lutz was the village belle.
Mack was twenty-five, and having been promoted to a window in the Omaha bank with the mystic word, “Teller” on it, he was by way of being something of a capitalist in the eyes of his old neighbors.
They were married at the Lutz house over in Cedartown on an October evening of 1893. The Lutzes had a new house with a squatty cupola on the southwest corner that looked like a shingled bee-hive. The ceilings were high and there were wooden rosettes over all the doors and windows and some new-fashioned spindles on the stairway, through which little Grace fed wedding-cake to the monkeys, actively impersonated by the Oscar Lutz grandchildren. Mack and Emma left for Omaha at once, where Mack had rented a little cottage on Dodge Street.
Abbie was forty-six now. The gray streaks in the red-brown hair were prominent. There was a noticeable slumping of the lithe shoulders, a thickening of hips. The peasant body of the O’Conners was coming into its own. In all these years Abbie Deal had not done anything with her voice, and she had not painted. But as every good mother lives again in her children, her personal disappointments were assuaged by Isabelle giving great promise in her music, and Margaret improving in every canvas she did. So Abbie felt that the children were doing the things she had so deeply wanted to do. She realized that the time was long past for her to build any more hopes on developing either of those two talents for herself, but she still cherished a secret ambition to write something.
“If I could just get down life as I have seen it,” she would think, “. . . and people as I have known them. . . . Old Grandpa Deal with his shaggy head and the twinkle in his eyes, and his wit and his patience with Grandma . . . the story of my mother with her head-shawl and her Irish eyes, pulling a rose for my father . . . Isabelle Anders-Mackenzie, trying to make a lady of her little Irish peasant daughter-in-law . . . the journey out from Illinois with the stolid old oxen and the smell of the burning maple boughs in one’s nostrils . . . the first lonely nights of camping in Nebraska with the silence of the stars and the sky and the shivering of the prairie grass.” It was something she could do. She vaguely sensed her power to construct the scenes in writing, knew that she possessed the emotions which one must feel before he can transfer those feelings to another.
It gave her a delightful sense of anticipation on this October day. With the half-crop husked and in the crib, she could begin to write down some of the things she desired. It gave her a feeling of buoyancy that all her hard work could not down,—a renewal of youthful desires. By careful management she could plan her time, so that there would be moments each day in which she could forget everything else and carry out this dream that was as old as herself. If the results seemed clever—the thought gave her a warm sensation of pleasure—she would show them to the children. And then,—if they were good enough,—there were several ladies’ magazines now, which printed such things. How proud the older children would be of her—Mack and Margaret, John and Isabelle.
“Do you think I could, Will?”
I’m sure you could, Abbie-girl. Yes, that was the answer Will would have made. Always kind, always encouraging, he would have said just that.
In the sheer pleasure which the vision gave her, she pulled little Grace up to her and hugged her. “Maybe Mother can find time now to do something she’s always wanted to, darling.”
Grace, looking over her mother’s shoulder, pulled away.
“Look, Mother,—who’s that coming?”
Gus Reinmueller was driving away from the front gate, and a tiny little figure in black, with huge old-fashioned bonnet, was hobbling up the path between the cedars, half-carrying and half-dragging an old black valise.
Amazed, and uncertain who her visitor might be, Abbie went out to meet her. It was Grandma,—Grandma Deal,—eighty years old, with a thousand wrinkles in her little shriveled brown face.
“Why, Grandma Deal!”
“Well, Abbie, I’ve come to live with you. I’d rather live with you than any of my own blood. It won’t be long, though. I shan’t last long. Why didn’t I die when Pa did? What makes old folks hang on when they ain’t no good any more to their relatives? What makes my daughters so hard to get along with?”
Abbie could scarcely believe it,—that Grandma Deal had packed up and come alone out to her. What could she do with her? How could she take care of her? In kaleidoscopic fashion her thoughts tumbled about. Why, it was all she could do to help Isabelle at the Academy, to give John assistance sometimes, look after the house and farm-work, and take care of little Grace. And this last plan,—this new thing of writing she was just planning to do. Why, it would take time to do it! How could she add Grandma Deal to her burdens?
Grandma stood in the pathway, the old valise by her side.
“Maybe you don’t want me?” her voice rose thin and querulous. “Maybe you’re like all the rest of ’em. Maybe I’d better go back. I won’t go back to Regina’s though, that’s sure.”
“Oh, Will, how can I ever take care of her, too?”
She’s my mother, Abbie-girl.
Abbie put warm, tender arms around the little old black figure.
“Why, Grandma, how can you think it? You’re Will’s own mother. Of course I’ll take care of you.”
Grandma Deal pulled away and looked around her. “Whatever did you set out them cottonwoods for? I can’t bear that white fuzz blowin’ around. What did you face the house south for?” A thousand wrinkles in her little thin, brown face, a thousand worries under the old, rusty, black bonnet.
One arm around the bent, wiry figure, the black valise in the other hand, Abbie piloted the arrival into the sitting-room, where Grace was crying silently for fear of the queer little old woman.
“Why, Grace, this is your own Grandma,—Father’s mother, and she’s come to live with us. We’ll give you our bedroom, Grandma, and Grace and I’ll go upstairs to sleep.”
“What you goin’ to put me in a bedroom on the east side for? Sun’s hot there in summer and east winds blow on it in the winter.”
“Well, you try it a while, Grandma, and we’ll change the bed if you’re not comfortable. Now, you rest and I’ll go out and get supper.” Oh, where would she get the strength to be patient with Grandma?
Out in the kitchen, she stepped to the side porch and looked up at the sky beyond the Lombardy poplars. How could she do any more than she was doing now? Where did a person get help for all the trials of life? Why must she always be doing something for some one else? Why had Will been taken away? How could she assume this added burden without him?
Whether it was of the spirit world, a touch of the supernatural, the wind in the Lombardys, or only a memory,—she did not know. But quite distinctly she heard it:
I would go on with you . . . remembering. . . .
CHAPTER XXIII
Grandma Deal lived with Abbie for two years, the last thirteen months of which she was bedridden, and during which she was consistent in only one thing,—regularly spending a portion of each day in wishing she had not come. Abbie washed for her and ironed for her and cooked as well as she could with a frugal larder, to satisfy her childish cravings. Sometimes she
picked up the frail little body and carried her to a couch near the window. And in the two years, she did not leave Grandma with any one else a half-dozen times. Margaret and Mack and John all scolded about it. “It seems as though Mother always has some big extra job on her hands,” they would tell each other. Regina, fat and easy-going, came out once to help with the care, but the arrangement was not a particularly happy one, inasmuch as Abbie had two to wait on then, rather than one.
Strangely enough, of the whole family, Grandma took the greatest liking to the one who did the least for her,—Isabelle. Dreamy-eyed, thinking of nothing but music, Isabelle seldom did anything for Grandma but sing for her. Home from the academy that summer, the girl was expressing her desire constantly for a piano instead of the old reed organ.
“What you alwa’s wishin’ for a pianny for when you know you can’t have it?” Grandma wanted to know.
“I might just as well have some fun wishing for it,” she announced pleasantly,—Isabelle was always pleasant,—“when I know it’s as far away as the moon.” And she sat down at the old reed organ and played a windy accompaniment to her thrush-like singing of “Home to Our Mountains.”
Grandma lifted her little wizened face from the clean white pillow. “Come here,” she said suddenly. “Bring me the black bag out o’ my valise, and mind you don’t look in it, either.”
When Isabelle had brought the bag, Grandma took out a smaller pouch, and with Isabelle’s eyes almost starting from her head, counted out fifteen great gold double-eagles.
A Lantern in Her Hand Page 16