Coming, Aphrodite!

by Willa Cather

  By this time Mrs. Rosen had begun to like her neighbour, so she went in. To her surprise, the parlour was neat and comfortable—the children did not strew things about there, apparently. The hard-coal burner threw out a warm red glow. A faded, respectable Brussels carpet covered the floor, an old-fashioned wooden clock ticked on the walnut bookcase. There were a few easy chairs, and no hideous ornaments about. She rather liked the old oil-chromos on the wall: “Hagar and Ishmael in the Wilderness,” and “The Light of the World.” While Mrs. Rosen dried her feet on the nickel base of the stove, Mrs. Templeton excused herself and withdrew to the next room,—her bedroom,—took off her silk dress and corsets, and put on a white challis négligée. She reappeared with the baby, who was not crying, exactly, but making eager, passionate, gasping entreaties,—faster and faster, tenser and tenser, as he felt his dinner nearer and nearer and yet not his.

  Mrs. Templeton sat down in a low rocker by the stove and began to nurse him, holding him snugly but carelessly, still talking to Mrs. Rosen about the card party, and laughing about their wade home through the snow. Hughie, the baby, fell to work so fiercely that beads of sweat came out all over his flushed forehead. Mrs. Rosen could not help admiring him and his mother. They were so comfortable and complete. When he was changed to the other side, Hughie resented the interruption a little; but after a time he became soft and bland, as smooth as oil, indeed; began looking about him as he drew in his milk. He finally dropped the nipple from his lips altogether, turned on his mother’s arm, and looked inquiringly at Mrs. Rosen.

  “What a beautiful baby!” she exclaimed from her heart. And he was. A sort of golden baby. His hair was like sunshine, and his long lashes were gold over such gay blue eyes. There seemed to be a gold glow in his soft pink skin, and he had the smile of a cherub.

  “We think he’s a pretty boy,” said Mrs. Templeton. “He’s the prettiest of my babies. Though the twins were mighty cunning little fellows. I hated the idea of twins, but the minute I saw them, I couldn’t resist them.”

  Just then old Mrs. Harris came in, walking widely in her full-gathered skirt and felt-soled shoes, bearing a tray with two smoking goblets upon it.

  “This is my mother, Mrs. Harris, Mrs. Rosen,” said Mrs. Templeton.

  “I’m glad to know you, ma’am,” said Mrs. Harris. “Victoria, let me take the baby, while you two ladies have your toddy.”

  “Oh, don’t take him away, Mrs. Harris, please!” cried Mrs. Rosen.

  The old lady smiled. “I won’t. I’ll set right here. He never frets with his grandma.”

  When Mrs. Rosen had finished her excellent drink, she asked if she might hold the baby, and Mrs. Harris placed him on her lap. He made a few rapid boxing motions with his two fists, then braced himself on his heels and the back of his head, and lifted himself up in an arc. When he dropped back, he looked up at Mrs. Rosen with his most intimate smile. “See what a smart boy I am!”

  When Mrs. Rosen walked home, feeling her way through the snow by following the fence, she knew she could never stay away from a house where there was a baby like that one.

  IV

  Vickie did her studying in a hammock hung between two tall cottonwood trees over in the Roadmaster’s green yard. The Roadmaster had the finest yard in Skyline, on the edge of the town, just where the sandy plain and the sage-brush began. His family went back to Ohio every summer, and Bert and Del Templeton were paid to take care of his lawn, to turn the sprinkler on at the right hours and to cut the grass. They were really too little to run the heavy lawn-mower very well, but they were able to manage because they were twins. Each took one end of the handlebar, and they pushed together like a pair of fat Shetland ponies. They were very proud of being able to keep the lawn so nice, and worked hard on it. They cut Mrs. Rosen’s grass once a week, too, and did it so well that she wondered why in the world they never did anything about their own yard. They didn’t have city water, to be sure (it was expensive), but she thought they might pick up a few velocipedes and iron hoops, and dig up the messy “flower-bed,” that was even uglier than the naked gravel spots. She was particularly offended by a deep ragged ditch, a miniature arroyo, which ran across the back yard, serving no purpose and looking very dreary.

  One morning she said craftily to the twins, when she was paying them for cutting her grass:

  “And, boys, why don’t you just shovel the sand-pile by your fence into dat ditch, and make your back yard smooth?”

  “Oh, no, ma’am,” said Adelbert with feeling. “We like to have the ditch to build bridges over!”

  Ever since vacation began, the twins had been busy getting the Roadmaster’s yard ready for the Methodist lawn party. When Mrs. Holliday, the Roadmaster’s wife, went away for the summer, she always left a key with the Ladies’ Aid Society and invited them to give their ice-cream social at her place.

  This year the date set for the party was June fifteenth. The day was a particularly fine one, and as Mr. Holliday himself had been called to Cheyenne on railroad business, the twins felt personally responsible for everything. They got out to the Holliday place early in the morning, and stayed on guard all day. Before noon the drayman brought a wagonload of card-tables and folding chairs, which the boys placed in chosen spots under the cottonwood trees. In the afternoon the Methodist ladies arrived and opened up the kitchen to receive the freezers of homemade ice-cream, and the cakes which the congregation donated. Indeed, all the good cake-bakers in town were expected to send a cake. Grandma Harris baked a white cake, thickly iced and covered with freshly grated coconut, and Vickie took it over in the afternoon.

  Mr. and Mrs. Rosen, because they belonged to no church, contributed to the support of all, and usually went to the church suppers in winter and the socials in summer. On this warm June evening they set out early, in order to take a walk first. They strolled along the hard gravelled road that led out through the sage toward the sand-hills; tonight it led toward the moon, just rising over the sweep of dunes. The sky was almost as blue as at midday, and had that look of being very near and very soft which it has in desert countries. The moon, too, looked very near, soft and bland and innocent. Mrs. Rosen admitted that in the Adirondacks, for which she was always secretly homesick in summer, the moon had a much colder brilliance, seemed farther off and made of a harder metal. This moon gave the sage-brush plain and the drifted sand-hills the softness of velvet. All countries were beautiful to Mr. Rosen. He carried a country of his own in his mind, and was able to unfold it like a tent in any wilderness.

  When they at last turned back toward the town, they saw groups of people, women in white dresses, walking toward the dark spot where the paper lanterns made a yellow light underneath the cottonwoods. High above, the rustling tree-tops stirred free in the flood of moonlight.

  The lighted yard was surrounded by a low board fence, painted the dark red Burlington colour, and as the Rosens drew near, they noticed four children standing close together in the shadow of some tall elder bushes just outside the fence. They were the poor Maude children; their mother was the washwoman, the Rosens’ laundress and the Templetons’. People said that every one of those children had a different father. But good laundresses were few, and even the members of the Ladies’ Aid were glad to get Mrs. Maude’s services at a dollar a day, though they didn’t like their children to play with hers. Just as the Rosens approached, Mrs. Templeton came out from the lighted square, leaned over the fence, and addressed the little Maudes.

  “I expect you children forgot your dimes, now didn’t you? Never mind, here’s a dime for each of you, so come along and have your ice-cream.”

  The Maudes put out small hands and said: “Thank you,” but not one of them moved.

  “Come along, Francie” (the oldest girl was named Frances). “Climb right over the fence.” Mrs. Templeton reached over and gave her a hand, and the little boys quickly scrambled after their sister. Mrs. Templeton took them to a table which Vickie and the twins had just selected as being especially privat
e—they liked to do things together.

  “Here, Vickie, let the Maudes sit at your table, and take care they get plenty of cake.”

  The Rosens had followed close behind Mrs. Templeton, and Mr. Rosen now overtook her and said in his most courteous and friendly manner: “Good evening, Mrs. Templeton. Will you have ice-cream with us?” He always used the local idioms, though his voice and enunciation made them sound altogether different from Skyline speech.

  “Indeed I will, Mr. Rosen. Mr. Templeton will be late. He went out to his farm yesterday, and I don’t know just when to expect him.”

  Vickie and the twins were disappointed at not having their table to themselves, when they had come early and found a nice one; but they knew it was right to look out for the dreary little Maudes, so they moved close together and made room for them. The Maudes didn’t cramp them long. When the three boys had eaten the last crumb of cake and licked their spoons, Francie got up and led them to a green slope by the fence, just outside the lighted circle. “Now set down, and watch and see how folks do,” she told them. The boys looked to Francie for commands and support. She was really Amos Maude’s child, born before he ran away to the Klondike, and it had been rubbed into them that this made a difference.

  The Templeton children made their ice-cream linger out, and sat watching the crowd. They were glad to see their mother go to Mr. Rosen’s table, and noticed how nicely he placed a chair for her and insisted upon putting a scarf about her shoulders. Their mother was wearing her new dotted Swiss, with many ruffles, all edged with black ribbon, and wide ruffly sleeves. As the twins watched her over their spoons, they thought how much prettier their mother was than any of the other women, and how becoming her new dress was. The children got as much satisfaction as Mrs. Harris out of Victoria’s good looks.

  Mr. Rosen was well pleased with Mrs. Templeton and her new dress, and with her kindness to the little Maudes. He thought her manner with them just right,—warm, spontaneous, without anything patronizing. He always admired her way with her own children, though Mrs. Rosen thought it too casual. Being a good mother, he believed, was much more a matter of physical poise and richness than of sentimentalizing and reading doctor-books. Tonight he was more talkative than usual, and in his quiet way made Mrs. Templeton feel his real friendliness and admiration. Unfortunately, he made other people feel it, too.

  Mrs. Jackson, a neighbour who didn’t like the Templetons, had been keeping an eye on Mr. Rosen’s table. She was a stout square woman of imperturbable calm, effective in regulating the affairs of the community because she never lost her temper, and could say the most cutting things in calm, even kindly, tones. Her face was smooth and placid as a mask, rather good-humoured, and the fact that one eye had a cast and looked askance made it the more difficult to see through her intentions. When she had been lingering about the Rosens’ table for some time, studying Mr. Rosen’s pleasant attentions to Mrs. Templeton, she brought up a trayful of cake.

  “You folks are about ready for another helping,” she remarked affably.

  Mrs. Rosen spoke. “I want some of Grandma Harris’s cake. It’s a white coconut, Mrs. Jackson.”

  “How about you, Mrs. Templeton, would you like some of your own cake?”

  “Indeed I would,” said Mrs. Templeton heartily. “Ma said she had good luck with it. I didn’t see it. Vickie brought it over.”

  Mrs. Jackson deliberately separated the slices on her tray with two forks. “Well,” she remarked with a chuckle that really sounded amiable, “I don’t know but I’d like my cakes, if I kept somebody in the kitchen to bake them for me.”

  Mr. Rosen for once spoke quickly. “If I had a cook like Grandma Harris in my kitchen, I’d live in it!” he declared.

  Mrs. Jackson smiled. “I don’t know as we feel like that, Mrs. Templeton? I tell Mr. Jackson that my idea of coming up in the world would be to forget I had a cook-stove, like Mrs. Templeton. But we can’t all be lucky.”

  Mr. Rosen could not tell how much was malice and how much was stupidity. What he chiefly detected was self-satisfaction; the craftiness of the coarse-fibred country girl putting catch questions to the teacher. Yes, he decided, the woman was merely showing off,—she regarded it as an accomplishment to make people uncomfortable.

  Mrs. Templeton didn’t at once take it in. Her training was all to the end that you must give a guest everything you have, even if he happens to be your worst enemy, and that to cause anyone embarrassment is a frightful and humiliating blunder. She felt hurt without knowing just why, but all evening it kept growing clearer to her that this was another of those thrusts from the outside which she couldn’t understand. The neighbours were sure to take sides against her, apparently, if they came often to see her mother.

  Mr. Rosen tried to distract Mrs. Templeton, but he could feel the poison working. On the way home the children knew something had displeased or hurt their mother. When they went into the house, she told them to go upstairs at once, as she had a headache. She was severe and distant. When Mrs. Harris suggested making her some peppermint tea, Victoria threw up her chin.

  “I don’t want anybody waiting on me. I just want to be let alone.” And she withdrew without saying good-night, or “Are you all right, Ma?” as she usually did.

  Left alone, Mrs. Harris sighed and began to turn down her bed. She knew, as well as if she had been at the social, what kind of thing had happened. Some of those prying ladies of the Woman’s Relief Corps, or the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, had been intimating to Victoria that her mother was “put upon.” Nothing ever made Victoria cross but criticism. She was jealous of small attentions paid to Mrs. Harris, because she felt they were paid “behind her back” or “over her head,” in a way that implied reproach to her. Victoria had been a belle in their own town in Tennessee, but here she was not very popular, no matter how many pretty dresses she wore, and she couldn’t bear it. She felt as if her mother and Mr. Templeton must be somehow to blame; at least they ought to protect her from whatever was disagreeable—they always had!

  V

  Mrs. Harris wakened at about four o’clock, as usual, before the house was stirring, and lay thinking about their position in this new town. She didn’t know why the neighbours acted so; she was as much in the dark as Victoria. At home, back in Tennessee, her place in the family was not exceptional, but perfectly regular. Mrs. Harris had replied to Mrs. Rosen, when that lady asked why in the world she didn’t break Vickie in to help her in the kitchen: “We are only young once, and trouble comes soon enough.” Young girls, in the South, were supposed to be carefree and foolish; the fault Grandmother found in Vickie was that she wasn’t foolish enough. When the foolish girl married and began to have children, everything else must give way to that. She must be humoured and given the best of everything, because having children was hard on a woman, and it was the most important thing in the world. In Tennessee every young married woman in good circumstances had an older woman in the house, a mother or mother-in-law or an old aunt, who managed the household economies and directed the help.

  That was the great difference; in Tennessee there had been plenty of helpers. There was old Miss Sadie Crummer, who came to the house to spin and sew and mend; old Mrs. Smith, who always arrived to help at butchering- and preserving-time; Lizzie, the coloured girl, who did the washing and who ran in every day to help Mandy. There were plenty more, who came whenever one of Lizzie’s barefoot boys ran to fetch them. The hills were full of solitary old women, or women but slightly attached to some household, who were glad to come to Miz’ Harris’s for good food and a warm bed, and the little present that either Mrs. Harris or Victoria slipped into their carpet-sack when they went away.

  To be sure, Mrs. Harris, and the other women of her age who managed their daughter’s house, kept in the background; but it was their own background, and they ruled it jealously. They left the front porch and the parlour to the young married couple and their young friends; the old women spent most of their lives in the kit
chen and pantries and back dining-room. But there they ordered life to their own taste, entertained their friends, dispensed charity, and heard the troubles of the poor. Moreover, back there it was Grandmother’s own house they lived in. Mr. Templeton came of a superior family and had what Grandmother called “blood,” but no property. He never so much as mended one of the steps to the front porch without consulting Mrs. Harris. Even “back home,” in the aristocracy, there were old women who went on living like young ones,—gave parties and drove out in their carriage and “went North” in the summer. But among the middle-class people and the country-folk, when a woman was a widow and had married daughters, she considered herself an old woman and wore full-gathered black dresses and a black bonnet and became a housekeeper. She accepted this estate unprotestingly, almost gratefully.

  The Templetons’ troubles began when Mr. Templeton’s aunt died and left him a few thousand dollars, and he got the idea of bettering himself. The twins were little then, and he told Mrs. Harris his boys would have a better chance in Colorado—everybody was going West. He went alone first, and got a good position with a mining company in the mountains of southern Colorado. He had been book-keeper in the bank in his home town, had “grown up in the bank,” as they said. He was industrious and honourable, and the managers of the mining company liked him, even if they laughed at his polite, soft-spoken manners. He could have held his position indefinitely, and maybe got a promotion. But the altitude of that mountain town was too high for his family. All the children were sick there; Mrs. Templeton was ill most of the time and nearly died when Ronald was born. Hillary Templeton lost his courage and came north to the flat, sunny, semi-arid country between Wray and Cheyenne, to work for an irrigation project. So far, things had not gone well with him. The pinch told on everyone, but most on Grandmother. Here, in Skyline, she had all her accustomed responsibilities, and no helper but Mandy. Mrs. Harris was no longer living in a feudal society, where there were plenty of landless people glad to render service to the more fortunate, but in a snappy little Western democracy, where every man was as good as his neighbour and out to prove it.