The Able McLaughlins

by Margaret Wilson

  He came to Chirstie’s. She was sitting there in the dusk, her head bowed in that despairing way. He gave his horse to Dod with a command, and strode over to where she sat. She needn’t try to resist him now. It was useless.

  “I know the whole thing!” he whispered. “I’ve got it all settled.” He took her in his arms. She needn’t struggle. “It’s all right. He’ll never frighten you again. You can’t get away. I’ve come for you!”

  Dawn found them sitting there together. Indeed, Wully had to urge his horse along to get home in time for breakfast.

  The McLaughlins were assembled for their unexciting morning cornmeal, all at the table together, when Wully announced, in a fine loud voice, among them:

  “I’m going to be married to-day, mother!”

  Her spoon was halfway to her mouth. It was some time before it reached its destination.

  “Wully!” she gasped.

  “Well, you needn’t be so surprised. I am.”

  “Is it Chirstie?”

  Could they ask that!

  “I’m that pleased!” she cried. Oh, she wouldn’t have liked anything else as well! She looked at him narrowly, with delight. “But you canna just be married to-day, and the harvesting coming on!”

  “You bet I can!” replied her American.

  Indeed, he never could! Not to Chirstie! They must do something for Jeannie’s Chirstie, make her some clothes. Wully scoffed at the idea. She had plenty of clothes, of course. They were going to drive to town and be married, and he would buy her whatever she needed. He refused to listen to them. Chirstie might decide not to have him, if he gave her time.

  “Havers!” exclaimed his mother. As if Chirstie didn’t know her own mind! That was no way to talk! Isobel couldn’t imagine, of course, that Wully had any real reason for such misgivings. Was it likely a girl would not have her Wully! If he would just listen to her a moment, and wait even till the morrow, they would call the friends in and have a wedding worthy of Chirstie’s mother. It occurred to him that under the circumstances a plan so respectable might have advantages for Chirstie, if only she would consent. And his father began planning how soon he could spare men and horses to begin hauling lumber for the house.

  CHAPTER VI

  THE McLaughlin house shone ready for the guests the next evening. The light that glimmered out through the dusk came from as many new kerosene lamps as could be borrowed from the neighbors. Inside the house beds had been removed to make room for dancing, though Isobel McLaughlin sighed to remember that there would be at best an indifferent fiddler, not one with a rhythmic dancing soul—like her Allen. Indoors mosquitoes hummed through the light and odor of the lamps, and out of doors they attacked whoever turned away from the series of smudges the boys had built, and were carefully guarding from flame, between the house and the barn. Wagonloads of well-wishers came driving up as it grew dark, and with each arrival the pile of pieced quilts on the chairs in the bedroom grew higher, and the collection of wedding presents in the dooryard grew noisier, and broke loose, and ran, and was pursued with shouts by the assembled half-grown boys. Some guests brought ducks, and some hens with small chickens. Some gave maudlin geese, and some bewildered and protesting young pigs. The Squire gave a heifer calf. The Keiths, poor distracted Aunt Libby and Uncle John Keith, brought two heavy chairs he had made the winter before from walnut.

  The bride was not visible. Wully had guarded her carefully, even from a minute alone with his mother, ever since he had arranged her wedding. He told his mother now that Chirstie had consented, she was worried about what her father would say when he heard about it. And because it was so soon after her mother’s death. Isobel McLaughlin reassured her. The wedding was the best possible solution of the situation. Let them just leave Chirstie’s father to her! She comforted the girl earnestly, being distressed by her face. She hoped in her heart that the marriage would put an end to the girl’s newly developed and stubborn depression. She couldn’t understand why now that the guests were arriving, the bride should still seem just terrified. No less word described her condition. Isobel McLaughlin could do nothing but leave her with Wully. In his room, where he sat holding her close against him, every time she said, “I can’t do this, Wully! I won’t!” he kissed her again, powerfully. She must go through with it now, he whispered to her. Even the minister was waiting for them now.

  He led her forth, at last, into the parlor. She was wearing the white dress her mother had made for her the summer before, which Mrs. McLaughlin had ironed that day, and freshened with her daughter Mary’s cherry-colored ribbons. Wully, harassed by the trivial necessity for respectable garments, was wearing the suit his mother had made for his brother John to wear to college in the fall. It didn’t fit Wully altogether, but then, it scarcely fitted John at all. In a space in the midst of their unsuspecting kinsmen they stood, the bride as pale as death, the groom nervously hiding his fear that at the critical minute his bride might altogether reject him.

  He kept watching her covertly as the minister tried the patience of man and God by the length of his prayer. He tried to stand near enough her to support her. When the invocations ceased, everyone in the room lifted his head—except the bride. The minister explained interminably the nature of holy matrimony. He exhorted the pair to mutual faithfulness. Wully felt her tremble.

  “Will you have this man to be your husband?” he asked at length.

  She kept silent. She couldn’t raise her head. Wully felt his heart beginning to beat furiously. She was going to refuse him, in spite of all he had done.

  There was an awful moment. The room seemed to be hushed and waiting. It was terrible, the length of that moment of silence. At last he spoke forth simply.

  “You wouldn’t think she would. But she will. Won’t you, Chirstie?”

  Those standing near heard his words, and as the outraged divine whispered sternly, “Answer!” he bent down and kissed her.

  She looked around like one in a nightmare. Her lips moved. The minister accepted the sign. He proceeded with the ceremony. The smile which Wully’s words had occasioned spread from those standing nearest even to those who were looking in at the windows—those who pretended to be leaving room for the rest, but were really thinking of their unsuitable bare feet.

  The minister had made them man and wife.

  The crowd gathered around them. The squire gave Chirstie a resounding smack on her cheek. Girls were pressing around her, the roomful was gathering near her. But she swayed, and fell against her husband, and fainted quite away.

  Of course that fainting was altogether the smartest feature of the hurried wedding. Not many hard-working prairie women had bodies which permitted such gentility. It was a distinguished thing to do. The women who saw it forgot for a while to comment on the strange appearance of the bride, which they understood more fully later. At the time it seemed no more than a proper honor to pay Jeannie McNair’s memory. When she was herself again, Wully found a place for her out of doors. Planks laid on boxes and chairs made seats for supper out there where the smoke defended them, and since there was no back for her to lean against, she having just fainted and all, it was only proper that Wully’s arm do its duty around her. And it was necessary that it give her little strengthening messages, while inside the more zealous young things danced to the fiddle that was not Allen’s. Out in the warm starlight and the smoke, the older guests talked to the bride and groom.

  Aunt Libby joined them again, when by chance they were for a moment alone.

  “Tell me again what it was Peter said, Wully!” she begged.

  He felt Chirstie shrinking against him.

  “He told me in the morning that he had decided to go this time for sure. I told him he was foolish. And I rode over again to give him some advice in the evening.”

  Chirstie’s hand stirred nervously within his, and he held it more firmly.

  “And did he not say where he was going?”

  “He only said west.”

  “That’s al
l he said in his note!” She sighed broken-heartedly. “It’s a strange thing he wouldn’t heed you, Wully!”

  Wully gritted his teeth. “He certainly heeded me that time!” he thought grimly to himself. He had already told his aunt those nicely dovetailing lies half a dozen times, and each time he had felt them crushing his wife. He wished his aunt would go away and leave them in peace. After all, her cursed Peter hadn’t got a taste of what he deserved!

  Finally the wedding was over. Time, however it drags, must eventually pass. They had driven away together, after he had changed John’s good clothes for a fresh hickory shirt and jeans, leaving Dod at the McLaughlins’. They had had twenty-four hours of the unfathomable luxury of unhindered intimacy. The baby sister was asleep. It was bedtime again.

  The new family sat down for prayers. Not that Wully was a man deeply religious. But, as far as he knew, daily family prayers was one of the things a decent man does for his family. They had read that morning, according to custom, the first chapter of Genesis, and that had been most satisfactory, even quite personally interesting now, all about male and female created He them. It had come over Wully with a chuckle that divine commands have seldom been as satisfactory to humans as that first one was. And now, in the evening, he had read the first chapter of the New Testament. He resented that. He wouldn’t have read it if he had remembered what was in it. That story of Mary’s humiliation might seem ever so slightly to reflect upon his wife. And that right he denied even to the Word of God.

  They were sitting together on the doorstep, and his lips were not far from her ear.

  “Yon was a strange man, now, Chirstie!” he began.

  “What man?”

  “That Joseph in Matthew. I fear he hadn’t very good sense.”

  “Why, Wully! And him a man in the Bible!”

  “I don’t care! He didn’t know much! He didn’t know enough to take his own lassie till an angel told him! A man like that! He was daft. Or else——”

  “I wonder at you, Wully! Or else what?”

  “I doubt the lassie wasn’t really bonnie. Not like mine!”

  A deeper embrace. More kisses.

  “Oh, Wully!”

  CHAPTER VII

  IT was growingly inevitable that the news, the determined news, must be broken. Wully, with his whole heart shrinking from the task, made light of it to Chirstie. Wasn’t having her better than anything he had ever imagined! He hadn’t really known at all at the time how greatly he was enriching himself. If he had been ready then to shoulder whatever blame there might be, he was ready now to do it a dozen times over. He didn’t mind in the least telling his parents about it. Accidents of the sort happen among even the most respectable people from time to time. It was in vain that he tried to reassure her. It might be all very well for him to talk so, but when everyone knew about her— Oh, what should she do then! Was it that she doubted him, then? Wasn’t he going to be with her? If by chance there should be one neighbor rash enough to see anything not perfect about his marriage, he would tell her for sure there would never be another! It was his mother she thought most about! What would his mother ever do when she heard it? That was nothing! Wully would go and explain it all to her, after his fashion—falsely, his wife insisted on saying wretchedly. His mother would be angry, of course, at first, and give him the scolding of his life. But she’d soon get over it, and come over bringing Chirstie a lot of baby clothes. Chirstie would see if she wouldn’t! Why hadn’t he explained it to her then, the last time he went over for that purpose, if it was so light a matter? The children happened to be all at home that day because the teacher was ill, and he had got no word alone with her. He didn’t add that he had been highly relieved to find them all there. He would go over at once, so that the burden would be off Chirstie’s mind.

  Having arrived at the scene of his humiliation the next morning, he saw his father coming from the cornfield with his hands and pockets full of chosen ears of seed corn. Wully met him in the path just behind the barn, and they greeted each other without a sign of affection. What did Wully think of these ears? Wully felt them critically, one after another, with his thumb, and found them good. His father started on towards the barn.

  “I want to tell you something, father.”

  He stopped without a word, and stood listening.

  “We’re going to have a baby.”

  “ ’Tis likely.”

  “I mean—in December.”

  “December? In December!”

  “Yes. That’s what I mean.”

  John McLaughlin’s long keen face, which changed expression only under great provocation, now surrendered to surprise. He stood still, looking at his son penetratingly a long time. Wully kicked an imaginary clod back and forth in the path. Presently the father said, with more bitterness than Wully had ever heard in his voice,

  “It seems we have brought the old country to the new!”

  Wully pondered this unexpected deliverance without looking up.

  After a little the older man added, sighing,

  “I prayed my sons might be men who could wait.”

  “A lot he knows about waiting!” thought Wully, half angrily. “Thirteen of us!”

  “You tell mother about it, father,” he pleaded, knowing his entreaty useless.

  “I will not!”

  “I wish you would. I can’t—very well!”

  “You’d best!”

  Wully stood watching him tie the yellow ears into clusters on the sheltered side of the barn. He was trying with all his might to gather courage to face his mother. He hadn’t felt such a nervous hesitancy since the first time he went into action. He remembered only too well the last time he had really stirred her displeasure. Allen and he had quarreled, and had nursed their anger, in spite of her remonstrances, for two days. He had growled out something to his brother across the supper table, and after that, she had put the little children to bed, and had set her two sons down before the fireplace—it was in the first house they were living then. She had drawn her chair near them, and had proceeded quietly and grimly to flay them with her tongue. She had continued with deliberateness till they were glad to escape half crying to bed. He remembered still how she had begun. It might be natural, she said, for brothers to quarrel. But she believed that it would never again be natural for her sons to quarrel in her presence. And she had been perfectly right about that. What she would say now, upon an occasion like this with her dismaying self-control, he couldn’t even imagine. It would be nothing common, he felt sure.

  On the bed which she had just finished spreading with a “drunkard’s path” quilt, they sat down together in a low room of the second story, where three beds full of boys were accustomed to sleep. She kissed him fondly when he came to her, saying it was a lonely house with him away so much. She wondered why they had not been at church. Was Chirstie not well again?

  “I have something to tell you, mother,” he stammered.

  “I’m listening,” she said encouragingly, her eyes studying him tenderly. How beautiful a head he had! How beautiful a man he was!

  “We’re going to have a baby! In December, mother!”

  Over her face there spread swiftly a smile of soft amusement. She had always looked that way when one of her children said something especially innocent and lovable.

  “You don’t mean December, Wully! Dinna ye ken that? The wee’uns can’na just hurry so!”

  He couldn’t look at her.

  “I know what I mean!” he said, doggedly. “I mean December. I understand.” The silence became so ominous that at length he had to steal a look at her. Her incredulous face was flushed red with shame and anger. He rose to defend his love from her.

  “You aren’t to say a word against her. It wasn’t her fault!”

  Then the storm broke.

  “Do you think I’m likely to say a word against the poor, greetin’ bairn!” she cried. “Her sitting there alone among the wolves and snakes, and a son of mine to bring her to shame!
I’ll never lift my head again!” Her rush of emotion quite choked her.

  “My fine, brave soldier of a son!” she burst out, recovering herself. “You did well, now, to choose a lassie alone, with neither father nor mother to defend her from you!”

  “Mother!” he cried.

  “Jeannie’s wee Chirstie!” she went on. “No one else could please you, I suppose! Oh, she did well to die when her son was but a laddie!”

  Wretchedly ashamed of his deceit as he was, he was not able to take more of her reproof without trying to defend himself.

  “I didn’t mean any harm!” he mumbled. “I didn’t think.” That was what Peter had said.

  “And why did you not think!” she demanded, furiously. “Have you no mind of your own! You didn’t know what you were doing, I suppose! Oh, that I should have a son who is a fool!”

  How terrible mothers are! Fool was a word she hated so greatly that she never allowed her children to pronounce it. It was her ultimate condemnation. He had never heard her use it before. And now she used it for him!

  “This is why you have been ailing all summer! You’d reason to be! Did you think you could do evil and prosper?”

  He wasn’t going to stand any more of that tone. He got up.

  “I’ll be going,” he exclaimed. “There’s no place for me here!” No sooner had he used those words than he regretted them. They might seem to appeal to her pity. That was what he had said once when he was a little lad, upon seeing a new baby in her arms, and afterwards, whenever she had shown him a new child, she had reminded him of it gayly.

  “Don’t go!” she answered, unrelenting. “There is always a place for you, whatever you elect to do. This is a sore stroke, Wully!” Then she added, wearily and passionately,

  “When I was a girl, I wanted to be some great person. And when you all were born, I wanted only to have you great men. And when you grew up, I prayed you might be at least honest. And I’m not to have even that, it seems.”