by Willa Cather
“Don’t you say nothin’, Mandy,” she warned the girl. But Mandy knew enough for that.
Mrs. Harris scarcely noticed how her strength was failing, because she had so much on her mind. She was very proud, and she wanted to do something that was hard for her to do. The difficulty was to catch Mrs. Rosen alone.
On the afternoon when Victoria went to her weekly euchre, the old lady beckoned Mandy and told her to run across the alley and fetch Mrs. Rosen for a minute.
Mrs. Rosen was packing her trunk, but she came at once. Grandmother awaited her in her chair in the play-room.
“I take it very kindly of you to come, Mrs. Rosen. I’m afraid it’s warm in here. Won’t you have a fan?” She extended the palm leaf she was holding.
“Keep it yourself, Grandma. You are not looking very well. Do you feel badly, Grandma Harris?” She took the old lady’s hand and looked at her anxiously.
“Oh, no, ma’am! I’m as well as usual. The heat wears on me a little, maybe. Have you seen Vickie lately, Mrs. Rosen?”
“Vickie? No. She hasn’t run in for several days. These young people are full of their own affairs, you know.”
“I expect she’s backward about seeing you, now that she’s so discouraged.”
“Discouraged? Why, didn’t the child get her scholarship after all?”
“Yes’m, she did. But they write her she has to bring more money to help her out; three hundred dollars. Mr. Templeton can’t raise it just now. We had so much sickness in that mountain town before we moved up here, he got behind. Pore Vickie’s downhearted.”
“Oh, that is too bad! I expect you’ve been fretting over it, and that is why you don’t look like yourself. Now what can we do about it?”
Mrs. Harris sighed and shook her head. “Vickie’s trying to muster courage to go around to her father’s friends and borrow from one and another. But we ain’t been here long,—it ain’t like we had old friends here. I hate to have the child do it.”
Mrs. Rosen looked perplexed. “I’m sure Mr. Rosen would help her. He takes a great interest in Vickie.”
“I thought maybe he could see his way to. That’s why I sent Mandy to fetch you.”
“That was right, Grandma. Now let me think.” Mrs. Rosen put up her plump red-brown hand and leaned her chin upon it. “Day after tomorrow I am going to run on to Chicago for my niece’s wedding.” She saw her old friend’s face fall. “Oh, I shan’t be gone long; ten days, perhaps. I will speak to Mr. Rosen tonight, and if Vickie goes to him after I am off his hands, I’m sure he will help her.”
Mrs. Harris looked up at her with solemn gratitude. “Vickie ain’t the kind of girl would forget anything like that, Mrs. Rosen. Nor I wouldn’t forget it.”
Mrs. Rosen patted her arm. “Grandma Harris,” she exclaimed, “I will just ask Mr. Rosen to do it for you! You know I care more about the old folks than the young. If I take this worry off your mind, I shall go away to the wedding with a light heart. Now dismiss it. I am sure Mr. Rosen can arrange this himself for you, and Vickie won’t have to go about to these people here, and our gossipy neighbours will never be the wiser.” Mrs. Rosen poured this out in her quick, authoritative tone, converting her th’s into d’s, as she did when she was excited.
Mrs. Harris’s red-brown eyes slowly filled with tears,—Mrs. Rosen had never seen that happen before. But she simply said, with quiet dignity: “Thank you, ma’am. I wouldn’t have turned to nobody else.”
“That means I am an old friend already, doesn’t it, Grandma? And that’s what I want to be. I am very jealous where Grandma Harris is concerned!” She lightly kissed the back of the purple-veined hand she had been holding, and ran home to her packing. Grandma sat looking down at her hand. How easy it was for these foreigners to say what they felt!
XII
Mrs. Harris knew she was failing. She was glad to be able to conceal it from Mrs. Rosen when that kind neighbour dashed in to kiss her good-bye on the morning of her departure for Chicago. Mrs. Templeton was, of course, present, and secrets could not be discussed. Mrs. Rosen, in her stiff little brown travelling-hat, her hands tightly gloved in brown kid, could only wink and nod to Grandmother to tell her all was well. Then she went out and climbed into the “hack” bound for the depot, which had stopped for a moment at the Templetons’ gate.
Mrs. Harris was thankful that her excitable friend hadn’t noticed anything unusual about her looks, and, above all, that she had made no comment. She got through the day, and that evening, thank goodness, Mr. Templeton took his wife to hear a company of strolling players sing The Chimes of Normandy at the Opera House. He loved music, and just now he was very eager to distract and amuse Victoria. Grandma sent the twins out to play and went to bed early.
Next morning, when she joined Mandy in the kitchen, Mandy noticed something wrong.
“You set right down, Miz’ Harris, an’ let me git you some whisky. Deed, ma’am, you look awful porely. You ought to tell Miss Victoria an’ let her send for the doctor.”
“No, Mandy, I don’t want no doctor. I’ve seen more sickness than ever he has. Doctors can’t do no more than linger you out, an’ I’ve always prayed I wouldn’t last to be a burden. You git me some whisky in hot water, and pour it on a piece of toast. I feel real empty.”
That afternoon when Mrs. Harris was taking her rest, for once she lay down upon her lounge. Vickie came in, tense and excited, and stopped for a moment.
“It’s all right, Grandma. Mr. Rosen is going to lend me the money. I won’t have to go to anybody else. He won’t ask Father to endorse my note, either. He’ll just take my name.” Vickie rather shouted this news at Mrs. Harris, as if the old lady were deaf, or slow of understanding. She didn’t thank her; she didn’t know her grandmother was in any way responsible for Mr. Rosen’s offer, though at the close of their interview he had said: “We won’t speak of our arrangement to anyone but your father. And I want you to mention it to the old lady Harris. I know she has been worrying about you.”
Having brusquely announced her news, Vickie hurried away. There was so much to do about getting ready, she didn’t know where to begin. She had no trunk and no clothes. Her winter coat, bought two years ago, was so outgrown that she couldn’t get into it. All her shoes were run over at the heel and must go to the cobbler. And she had only two weeks in which to do everything! She dashed off.
Mrs. Harris sighed and closed her eyes happily. She thought with modest pride that with people like the Rosens she had always “got along nicely.” It was only with the ill-bred and unclassified, like this Mrs. Jackson next door, that she had disagreeable experiences. Such folks, she told herself, had come out of nothing and knew no better. She was afraid this inquisitive woman might find her ailing and come prying round with unwelcome suggestions.
Mrs. Jackson did, indeed, call that very afternoon, with a miserable contribution of veal-loaf as an excuse (all the Templetons hated veal), but Mandy had been forewarned, and she was resourceful. She met Mrs. Jackson at the kitchen door and blocked the way.
“Sh-h-h, ma’am, Miz’ Harris is asleep, havin’ her nap. No’m, she ain’t porely, she’s as usual. But Hughie had the colic last night when Miss Victoria was at the show, an’ kep’ Miz’ Harris awake.”
Mrs. Jackson was loath to turn back. She had really come to find out why Mrs. Rosen drove away in the depot hack yesterday morning. Except at church socials, Mrs. Jackson did not meet people in Mrs. Rosen’s set.
The next day, when Mrs. Harris got up and sat on the edge of her bed, her head began to swim, and she lay down again. Mandy peeped into the play-room as soon as she came down-stairs, and found the old lady still in bed. She leaned over her and whispered:
“Ain’t you feelin’ well, Miz’ Harris?”
“No, Mandy, I’m right porely,” Mrs. Harris admitted.
“You stay where you air, ma’am. I’ll git the breakfast fur the chillun, an’ take the other breakfast in fur Miss Victoria an’ Mr. Templeton.” She hurried back to the kit
chen, and Mrs. Harris went to sleep.
Immediately after breakfast Vickie dashed off about her own concerns, and the twins went to cut grass while the dew was still on it. When Mandy was taking the other breakfast into the dining-room, Mrs. Templeton came through the play-room.
“What’s the matter, Ma? Are you sick?” she asked in an accusing tone.
“No, Victoria, I ain’t sick. I had a little giddy spell, and I thought I’d lay still.”
“You ought to be more careful what you eat, Ma. If you’re going to have another bilious spell, when everything is so upset anyhow, I don’t know what I’ll do!” Victoria’s voice broke. She hurried back into her bedroom, feeling bitterly that there was no place in that house to cry in, no spot where one could be alone, even with misery; that the house and the people in it were choking her to death.
Mrs. Harris sighed and closed her eyes. Things did seem to be upset, though she didn’t know just why. Mandy, however, had her suspicions. While she waited on Mr. and Mrs. Templeton at breakfast, narrowly observing their manner toward each other and Victoria’s swollen eyes and desperate expression, her suspicions grew stronger.
Instead of going to his office, Mr. Templeton went to the barn and ran out the buggy. Soon he brought out Cleveland, the black horse, with his harness on. Mandy watched from the back window. After he had hitched the horse to the buggy, he came into the kitchen to wash his hands. While he dried them on the roller towel, he said in his most business-like tone:
“I likely won’t be back tonight, Mandy. I have to go out to my farm, and I’ll hardly get through my business there in time to come home.”
Then Mandy was sure. She had been through these times before, and at such a crisis poor Mr. Templeton was always called away on important business. When he had driven out through the alley and up the street past Mrs. Rosen’s, Mandy left her dishes and went in to Mrs. Harris. She bent over and whispered low:
“Miz’ Harris, I ’spect Miss Victoria’s done found out she’s goin’ to have another baby! It looks that way. She’s gone back to bed.”
Mrs. Harris lifted a warning finger. “Sh-h-h!”
“Oh yes’m, I won’t say nothin’. I never do.”
Mrs. Harris tried to face this possibility, but her mind didn’t seem strong enough—she dropped off into another doze.
All that morning Mrs. Templeton lay on her bed alone, the room darkened and a handkerchief soaked in camphor tied round her forehead. The twins had taken Ronald off to watch them cut grass, and Hughie played in the kitchen under Mandy’s eye.
Now and then Victoria sat upright on the edge of the bed, beat her hands together softly and looked desperately at the ceiling, then about at those frail, confining walls. If only she could meet the situation with violence, fight it, conquer it! But there was nothing for it but stupid animal patience. She would have to go through all that again, and nobody, not even Hillary, wanted another baby,—poor as they were, and in this overcrowded house. Anyhow, she told herself, she was ashamed to have another baby, when she had a daughter old enough to go to college! She was sick of it all; sick of dragging this chain of life that never let her rest and periodically knotted and overpowered her; made her ill and hideous for months, and then dropped another baby into her arms. She had had babies enough; and there ought to be an end to such apprehensions some time before you were old and ugly.
She wanted to run away, back to Tennessee, and lead a free, gay life, as she had when she was first married. She could do a great deal more with freedom than ever Vickie could. She was still young, and she was still handsome; why must she be for ever shut up in a little cluttered house with children and fresh babies and an old woman and a stupid bound girl and a husband who wasn’t very successful? Life hadn’t brought her what she expected when she married Hillary Templeton; life hadn’t used her right. She had tried to keep up appearances, to dress well with very little to do it on, to keep young for her husband and children. She had tried, she had tried! Mrs. Templeton buried her face in the pillow and smothered the sobs that shook the bed.
Hillary Templeton, on his drive out through the sage-brush, up into the farming country that was irrigated from the North Platte, did not feel altogether cheerful, though he whistled and sang to himself on the way. He was sorry Victoria would have to go through another time. It was awkward just now, too, when he was so short of money. But he was naturally a cheerful man, modest in his demands upon fortune, and easily diverted from unpleasant thoughts. Before Cleveland had travelled half the eighteen miles to the farm, his master was already looking forward to a visit with his tenants, an old German couple who were fond of him because he never pushed them in a hard year—so far, all the years had been hard—and he sometimes brought them bananas and such delicacies from town.
Mrs. Heyse would open her best preserves for him, he knew, and kill a chicken, and tonight he would have a clean bed in her spare room. She always put a vase of flowers in his room when he stayed overnight with them, and that pleased him very much. He felt like a youth out there, and forgot all the bills he had somehow to meet, and the loans he had made and couldn’t collect. The Heyses kept bees and raised turkeys, and had honeysuckle vines running over the front porch. He loved all those things. Mr. Templeton touched Cleveland with the whip, and as they sped along into the grass country, sang softly:
“Old Jesse was a gem’man
Way down in Tennessee.”
XIII
Mandy had to manage the house herself that day, and she was not at all sorry. There wasn’t a great deal of variety in her life, and she felt very important taking Mrs. Harris’s place, giving the children their dinner, and carrying a plate of milk toast to Mrs. Templeton. She was worried about Mrs. Harris, however, and remarked to the children at noon that she thought somebody ought to “set” with their grandma. Vickie wasn’t home for dinner. She had her father’s office to herself for the day and was making the most of it, writing a long letter to Professor Chalmers. Mr. Rosen had invited her to have dinner with him at the hotel (he boarded there when his wife was away), and that was a great honour.
When Mandy said someone ought to be with the old lady, Bert and Del offered to take turns. Adelbert went off to rake up the grass they had been cutting all morning, and Albert sat down in the playroom. It seemed to him his grandmother looked pretty sick. He watched her while Mandy gave her toast-water with whisky in it, and thought he would like to make the room look a little nicer. While Mrs. Harris lay with her eyes closed, he hung up the caps and coats lying about, and moved away the big rocking-chair that stood by the head of Grandma’s bed. There ought to be a table there, he believed, but the small tables in the house all had something on them. Upstairs, in the room where he and Adelbert and Ronald slept, there was a nice clean wooden cracker-box, on which they sat in the morning to put on their shoes and stockings. He brought this down and stood it on end at the head of Grandma’s lounge, and put a clean napkin over the top of it.
She opened her eyes and smiled at him. “Could you git me a tin of fresh water, honey?”
He went to the back porch and pumped till the water ran cold. He gave it to her in a tin cup as she had asked, but he didn’t think that was the right way. After she dropped back on the pillow, he fetched a glass tumbler from the cupboard, filled it, and set it on the table he had just manufactured. When Grandmother drew a red cotton handkerchief from under her pillow and wiped the moisture from her face, he ran upstairs again and got one of his Sunday-school handkerchiefs, linen ones, that Mrs. Rosen had given him and Del for Christmas. Having put this in Grandmother’s hand and taken away the crumpled red one, he could think of nothing else to do—except to darken the room a little. The windows had no blinds, but flimsy cretonne curtains tied back,—not really tied, but caught back over nails driven into the sill. He loosened them and let them hang down over the bright afternoon sunlight. Then he sat down on the low sawed-off chair and gazed about, thinking that now it looked quite like a sick-room.
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p; It was hard for a little boy to keep still. “Would you like me to read Joe’s Luck to you, Gram’ma?” he said presently.
“You might, Bertie.”
He got the “boy’s book” she had been reading aloud to them, and began where she had left off. Mrs. Harris liked to hear his voice, and she liked to look at him when she opened her eyes from time to time. She did not follow the story. In her mind she was repeating a passage from the second part of Pilgrim’s Progress, which she had read aloud to the children so many times; the passage where Christiana and her band come to the arbour on the Hill of Difficulty: “Then said Mercy, how sweet is rest to them that labour.”
At about four o’clock Adelbert came home, hot and sweaty from raking. He said he had got in the grass and taken it to their cow, and if Bert was reading, he guessed he’d like to listen. He dragged the wooden rocking-chair up close to Grandma’s bed and curled up in it.
Grandmother was perfectly happy. She and the twins were about the same age; they had in common all the realest and truest things. The years between them and her, it seemed to Mrs. Harris, were full of trouble and unimportant. The twins and Ronald and Hughie were important. She opened her eyes.
“Where is Hughie?” she asked.
“I guess he’s asleep. Mother took him into her bed.”
“And Ronald?”
“He’s upstairs with Mandy. There ain’t nobody in the kitchen now.”
“Then you might git me a fresh drink, Del.”
“Yes’m, Gram’ma.” He tiptoed out to the pump in his brown canvas sneakers.
When Vickie came home at five o’clock, she went to her mother’s room, but the door was locked—a thing she couldn’t remember ever happening before. She went into the play-room,—old Mrs. Harris was asleep, with one of the twins on guard, and he held up a warning finger. She went into the kitchen. Mandy was making biscuits, and Ronald was helping her to cut them out.