by Willa Cather
Neither Mrs. Harris nor Mrs. Templeton understood just what was the matter; they were hurt and dazed, merely. Victoria knew that here she was censured and criticized, she who had always been so admired and envied! Grandmother knew that these meddlesome “Northerners” said things that made Victoria suspicious and unlike herself; made her unwilling that Mrs. Harris should receive visitors alone, or accept marks of attention that seemed offered in compassion for her state.
These women who belonged to clubs and Relief Corps lived differently, Mrs. Harris knew, but she herself didn’t like the way they lived. She believed that somebody ought to be in the parlour, and somebody in the kitchen. She wouldn’t for the world have had Victoria go about every morning in a short gingham dress, with bare arms, and a dust-cap on her head to hide the curling-kids, as these brisk housekeepers did. To Mrs. Harris that would have meant real poverty, coming down in the world so far that one could no longer keep up appearances. Her life was hard now, to be sure, since the family went on increasing and Mr. Templeton’s means went on decreasing; but she certainly valued respectability above personal comfort, and she could go on a good way yet if they always had a cool pleasant parlour, with Victoria properly dressed to receive visitors. To keep Victoria different from these “ordinary” women meant everything to Mrs. Harris. She realized that Mrs. Rosen managed to be mistress of any situation, either in kitchen or parlour, but that was because she was “foreign.” Grandmother perfectly understood that their neighbour had a superior cultivation which made everything she did an exercise of skill. She knew well enough that their own ways of cooking and cleaning were primitive beside Mrs. Rosen’s.
If only Mr. Templeton’s business affairs would look up, they could rent a larger house, and everything would be better. They might even get a German girl to come in and help,—but now there was no place to put her. Grandmother’s own lot could improve only with the family fortunes—any comfort for herself, aside from that of the family, was inconceivable to her; and on the other hand she could have no real unhappiness while the children were well, and good, and fond of her and their mother. That was why it was worth while to get up early in the morning and make her bed neat and draw the red spread smooth. The little boys loved to lie on her lounge and her pillows when they were tired. When they were sick, Ronald and Hughie wanted to be in her lap. They had no physical shrinking from her because she was old. And Victoria was never jealous of the children’s wanting to be with her so much; that was a mercy!
Sometimes, in the morning, if her feet ached more than usual, Mrs. Harris felt a little low. (Nobody did anything about broken arches in those days, and the common endurance test of old age was to keep going after every step cost something.) She would hang up her towel with a sigh and go into the kitchen, feeling that it was hard to make a start. But the moment she heard the children running down the uncarpeted back stairs, she forgot to be low. Indeed, she ceased to be an individual, an old woman with aching feet; she became part of a group, became a relationship. She was drunk up into their freshness when they burst in upon her, telling her about their dreams, explaining their troubles with buttons and shoe-laces and underwear shrunk too small. The tired, solitary old woman Grandmother had been at daybreak vanished; suddenly the morning seemed as important to her as it did to the children, and the mornings ahead stretched out sunshiny, important.
VI
The day after the Methodist social, Blue Boy didn’t come for his morning milk; he always had it in a clean saucer on the covered back porch, under the long bench where the tin wash-tubs stood ready for Mrs. Maude. After the children had finished breakfast, Mrs. Harris sent Mandy out to look for the cat.
The girl came back in a minute, her eyes big.
“Law me, Miz’ Harris, he’s awful sick. He’s a-layin’ in the straw in the barn. He’s swallered a bone, or havin’ a fit or somethin’.”
Grandmother threw an apron over her head and went out to see for herself. The children went with her. Blue Boy was retching and choking, and his yellow eyes were filled up with rhume.
“Oh, Gram’ma, what’s the matter?” the boys cried.
“It’s the distemper. How could he have got it?” Her voice was so harsh that Ronald began to cry. “Take Ronald back to the house, Del. He might get bit. I wish I’d kept my word and never had a cat again!”
“Why, Gram’ma!” Albert looked at her. “Won’t Blue Boy get well?”
“Not from the distemper, he won’t.”
“But Gram’ma, can’t I run for the veter’nary?”
“You gether up an armful of hay. We’ll take him into the coal-house, where I can watch him.”
Mrs. Harris waited until the spasm was over, then picked up the limp cat and carried him to the coal-shed that opened off the back porch. Albert piled the hay in one corner—the coal was low, since it was summer—and they spread a piece of old carpet on the hay and made a bed for Blue Boy. “Now you run along with Adelbert. There’ll be a lot of work to do on Mr. Holliday’s yard, cleaning up after the sociable. Mandy an’ me’ll watch Blue Boy. I expect he’ll sleep for a while.”
Albert went away regretfully, but the drayman and some of the Methodist ladies were in Mr. Holliday’s yard, packing chairs and tables and ice-cream freezers into the wagon, and the twins forgot the sick cat in their excitement. By noon they had picked up the last paper napkin, raked over the gravel walks where the salt from the freezers had left white patches, and hung the hammock in which Vickie did her studying back in its place. Mr. Holliday paid the boys a dollar a week for keeping up the yard, and they gave the money to their mother—it didn’t come amiss in a family where actual cash was so short. She let them keep half the sum Mrs. Rosen paid for her milk every Saturday, and that was more spending money than most boys had. They often made a few extra quarters by cutting grass for other people, or by distributing handbills. Even the disagreeable Mrs. Jackson next door had remarked over the fence to Mrs. Harris: “I do believe Bert and Del are going to be industrious. They must have got it from you, Grandma.”
The day came on very hot, and when the twins got back from the Roadmaster’s yard, they both lay down on Grandmother’s lounge and went to sleep. After dinner they had a rare opportunity; the Roadmaster himself appeared at the front door and invited them to go up to the next town with him on his railroad velocipede. That was great fun: the velocipede always whizzed along so fast on the bright rails, the gasoline engine puffing; and grasshoppers jumped up out of the sage-brush and hit you in the face like sling-shot bullets. Sometimes the wheels cut in two a lazy snake who was sunning himself on the track, and the twins always hoped it was a rattler and felt they had done a good work.
The boys got back from their trip with Mr. Holliday late in the afternoon. The house was cool and quiet. Their mother had taken Ronald and Hughie down town with her, and Vickie was off somewhere. Grandmother was not in her room, and the kitchen was empty. The boys went out to the back porch to pump a drink. The coal-shed door was open, and inside, on a low stool, sat Mrs. Harris beside her cat. Bert and Del didn’t stop to get a drink; they felt ashamed that they had gone off for a gay ride and forgotten Blue Boy. They sat down on a big lump of coal beside Mrs. Harris. They would never have known that this miserable rumpled animal was their proud tom. Presently he went off into a spasm and began to froth at the mouth.
“Oh, Gram’ma, can’t you do anything?” cried Albert, struggling with his tears. “Blue Boy was such a good cat,—why has he got to suffer?”
“Everything that’s alive has got to suffer,” said Mrs. Harris. Albert put out his hand and caught her skirt, looking up at her beseechingly, as if to make her unsay that saying, which he only half understood. She patted his hand. She had forgot she was speaking to a little boy.
“Where’s Vickie?” Adelbert asked aggrievedly. “Why don’t she do something? He’s part her cat.”
Mrs. Harris sighed. “Vickie’s got her head full of things lately; that makes people kind of heartless.”
/> The boys resolved they would never put anything into their heads, then!
Blue Boy’s fit passed, and the three sat watching their pet that no longer knew them. The twins had not seen much suffering; Grandmother had seen a great deal. Back in Tennessee, in her own neighbourhood, she was accounted a famous nurse. When any of the poor mountain people were in great distress, they always sent for Miz’ Harris. Many a time she had gone into a house where five or six children were all down with scarlet fever or diphtheria, and done what she could. Many a child and many a woman she had laid out and got ready for the grave. In her primitive community the undertaker made the coffin,—he did nothing more. She had seen so much misery that she wondered herself why it hurt so to see her tom-cat die. She had taken her leave of him, and she got up from her stool. She didn’t want the boys to be too much distressed.
“Now you boys must wash and put on clean shirts. Your mother will be home pretty soon. We’ll leave Blue Boy; he’ll likely be easier in the morning.” She knew the cat would die at sundown.
After supper, when Bert looked into the coal-shed and found the cat dead, all the family were sad. Ronald cried miserably, and Hughie cried because Ronald did. Mrs. Templeton herself went out and looked into the shed, and she was sorry, too. Though she didn’t like cats, she had been fond of this one.
“Hillary,” she told her husband, “when you go down town tonight, tell the Mexican to come and get that cat early in the morning, before the children are up.”
The Mexican had a cart and two mules, and he hauled away tin cans and refuse to a gully out in the sage-brush.
Mrs. Harris gave Victoria an indignant glance when she heard this, and turned back to the kitchen. All evening she was gloomy and silent. She refused to read aloud, and the twins took Ronald and went mournfully out to play under the electric light. Later, when they had said good-night to their parents in the parlour and were on their way upstairs, Mrs. Harris followed them into the kitchen, shut the door behind her, and said indignantly:
“Air you two boys going to let that Mexican take Blue Boy and throw him onto some trash-pile?”
The sleepy boys were frightened at the anger and bitterness in her tone. They stood still and looked up at her, while she went on:
“You git up early in the morning, and I’ll put him in a sack, and one of you take a spade and go to that crooked old willer tree that grows just where the sand creek turns off the road, and you dig a little grave for Blue Boy, an’ bury him right.”
They had seldom seen such resentment in their grandmother. Albert’s throat choked up, he rubbed the tears away with his fist.
“Yes’m, Gram’ma, we will, we will,” he gulped.
VII
Only Mrs. Harris saw the boys go out next morning. She slipped a bread-and-butter sandwich into the hand of each, but she said nothing, and they said nothing.
The boys did not get home until their parents were ready to leave the table. Mrs. Templeton made no fuss, but told them to sit down and eat their breakfast. When they had finished, she said commandingly:
“Now you march into my room.” That was where she heard explanations and administered punishment. When she whipped them, she did it thoroughly.
She followed them and shut the door.
“Now, what were you boys doing this morning?”
“We went off to bury Blue Boy.”
“Why didn’t you tell me you were going?”
They looked down at their toes, but said nothing. Their mother studied their mournful faces, and her overbearing expression softened.
“The next time you get up and go off anywhere, you come and tell me beforehand, do you understand?”
“Yes’m.”
She opened the door, motioned them out, and went with them into the parlour. “I’m sorry about your cat, boys,” she said. “That’s why I don’t like to have cats around; they’re always getting sick and dying. Now run along and play. Maybe you’d like to have a circus in the back yard this afternoon? And we’ll all come.”
The twins ran out in a joyful frame of mind. Their grandmother had been mistaken; their mother wasn’t indifferent about Blue Boy, she was sorry. Now everything was all right, and they could make a circus ring.
They knew their grandmother got put out about strange things, anyhow. A few months ago it was because their mother hadn’t asked one of the visiting preachers who came to the church conference to stay with them. There was no place for the preacher to sleep except on the folding lounge in the parlour, and no place for him to wash—he would have been very uncomfortable, and so would all the household. But Mrs. Harris was terribly upset that there should be a conference in the town, and they not keeping a preacher! She was quite bitter about it.
The twins called in the neighbour boys, and they made a ring in the back yard, around their turning-bar. Their mother came to the show and paid admission, bringing Mrs. Rosen and Grandma Harris. Mrs. Rosen thought if all the children in the neighbourhood were to be howling and running in a circle in the Templetons’ back yard, she might as well be there, too, for she would have no peace at home.
After the dog races and the Indian fight were over, Mrs. Templeton took Mrs. Rosen into the house to revive her with cake and lemonade. The parlour was cool and dusky. Mrs. Rosen was glad to get into it after sitting on a wooden bench in the sun. Grandmother stayed in the parlour with them, which was unusual. Mrs. Rosen sat waving a palm-leaf fan,—she felt the heat very much, because she wore her stays so tight—while Victoria went to make the lemonade.
“De circuses are not so good, widout Vickie to manage them, Grandma,” she said.
“No’m. The boys complain right smart about losing Vickie from their plays. She’s at her books all the time now. I don’t know what’s got into the child.”
“If she wants to go to college, she must prepare herself, Grandma. I am agreeably surprised in her. I didn’t think she’d stick to it.”
Mrs. Templeton came in with a tray of tumblers and the glass pitcher all frosted over. Mrs. Rosen wistfully admired her neighbour’s tall figure and good carriage; she was wearing no corsets at all today under her flowered organdie afternoon dress, Mrs. Rosen had noticed, and yet she could carry herself so smooth and straight,—after having had so many children, too! Mrs. Rosen was envious, but she gave credit where credit was due.
When Mrs. Templeton brought in the cake, Mrs. Rosen was still talking to Grandmother about Vickie’s studying. Mrs. Templeton shrugged carelessly.
“There’s such a thing as overdoing it, Mrs. Rosen,” she observed as she poured the lemonade. “Vickie’s very apt to run to extremes.”
“But, my dear lady, she can hardly be too extreme in dis matter. If she is to take a competitive examination with girls from much better schools than ours, she will have to do better than the others, or fail; no two ways about it. We must encourage her.”
Mrs. Templeton bridled a little. “I’m sure I don’t interfere with her studying, Mrs. Rosen. I don’t see where she got this notion, but I let her alone.”
Mrs. Rosen accepted a second piece of chocolate cake. “And what do you think about it, Grandma?”
Mrs. Harris smiled politely. “None of our people, or Mr. Templeton’s either, ever went to college. I expect it is all on account of the young gentleman who was here last summer.”
Mrs. Rosen laughed and lifted her eyebrows. “Something very personal in Vickie’s admiration for Professor Chalmers we think, Grandma? A very sudden interest in de sciences, I should say!”
Mrs. Templeton shrugged. “You’re mistaken, Mrs. Rosen. There ain’t a particle of romance in Vickie.”
“But there are several kinds of romance, Mrs. Templeton. She may not have your kind.”
“Yes’m, that’s so,” said Mrs. Harris in a low, grateful voice. She thought that a hard word Victoria had said of Vickie.
“I didn’t see a thing in that Professor Chalmers, myself,” Victoria remarked. “He was a gawky kind of fellow, and never had a th
ing to say in company. Did you think he amounted to much?”
“Oh, widout doubt Doctor Chalmers is a very scholarly man. A great many brilliant scholars are widout de social graces, you know.” When Mrs. Rosen, from a much wider experience, corrected her neighbour, she did so somewhat playfully, as if insisting upon something Victoria capriciously chose to ignore.
At this point old Mrs. Harris put her hands on the arms of the chair in preparation to rise. “If you ladies will excuse me, I think I will go and lie down a little before supper.” She rose and went heavily out on her felt soles. She never really lay down in the afternoon, but she dozed in her own black rocker. Mrs. Rosen and Victoria sat chatting about Professor Chalmers and his boys.
Last summer the young professor had come to Skyline with four of his students from the University of Michigan, and had stayed three months, digging for fossils out in the sand-hills. Vickie had spent a great many mornings at their camp. They lived at the town hotel, and drove out to their camp every day in a light spring-wagon. Vickie used to wait for them at the edge of the town, in front of the Roadmaster’s house, and when the spring-wagon came rattling along, the boys would call: “There’s our girl!” slow the horses, and give her a hand up. They said she was their mascot, and were very jolly with her. They had a splendid summer,—found a great bed of fossil elephant bones, where a whole herd must once have perished. Later on they came upon the bones of a new kind of elephant, scarcely larger than a pig. They were greatly excited about their finds, and so was Vickie. That was why they liked her. It was they who told her about a memorial scholarship at Ann Arbor, which was open to any girl from Colorado.