by Willa Cather
VIII
In August Vickie went down to Denver to take her examinations. Mr. Holliday, the Roadmaster, got her a pass, and arranged that she should stay with the family of one of his passenger conductors.
For three days she wrote examination papers along with other contestants, in one of the Denver high schools, proctored by a teacher. Her father had given her five dollars for incidental expenses, and she came home with a box of mineral specimens for the twins, a singing top for Ronald, and a toy burro for Hughie.
Then began days of suspense that stretched into weeks. Vickie went to the post-office every morning, opened her father’s combination box, and looked over the letters, long before he got down town,—always hoping there might be a letter from Ann Arbor. The night mail came in at six, and after supper she hurried to the post-office and waited about until the shutter at the general-delivery window was drawn back, a signal that the mail had all been “distributed.” While the tedious process of distribution was going on, she usually withdrew from the office, full of joking men and cigar smoke, and walked up and down under the big cottonwood trees that overhung the side street. When the crowd of men began to come out, then she knew the mail-bags were empty, and she went in to get whatever letters were in the Templeton box and take them home.
After two weeks went by, she grew downhearted. Her young professor, she knew, was in England for his vacation. There would be no one at the University of Michigan who was interested in her fate. Perhaps the fortunate contestant had already been notified of her success. She never asked herself, as she walked up and down under the cottonwoods on those summer nights, what she would do if she didn’t get the scholarship. There was no alternative. If she didn’t get it, then everything was over.
During the weeks when she lived only to go to the post-office, she managed to cut her finger and get ink into the cut. As a result, she had a badly infected hand and had to carry it in a sling. When she walked her nightly beat under the cottonwoods, it was a kind of comfort to feel that finger throb; it was companionship, made her case more complete.
The strange thing was that one morning a letter came, addressed to Miss Victoria Templeton; in a long envelope such as her father called “legal size,” with “University of Michigan” in the upper lefthand corner. When Vickie took it from the box, such a wave of fright and weakness went through her that she could scarcely get out of the post-office. She hid the letter under her striped blazer and went a weak, uncertain trail down the sidewalk under the big trees. Without seeing anything or knowing what road she took, she got to the Roadmaster’s green yard and her hammock, where she always felt not on the earth, yet of it.
Three hours later, when Mrs. Rosen was just tasting one of those clear soups upon which the Templetons thought she wasted so much pains and good meat, Vickie walked in at the kitchen door and said in a low but somewhat unnatural voice:
“Mrs. Rosen, I got the scholarship.”
Mrs. Rosen looked up at her sharply, then pushed the soup back to a cooler part of the stove.
“What is dis you say, Vickie? You have heard from de University?”
“Yes’m. I got the letter this morning.” She produced it from under her blazer.
Mrs. Rosen had been cutting noodles. She took Vickie’s face in two hot, plump hands that were still floury, and looked at her intently. “Is dat true, Vickie? No mistake? I am delighted—and surprised! Yes, surprised. Den you will be something, you won’t just sit on de front porch.” She squeezed the girl’s round, good-natured cheeks, as if she could mould them into something definite then and there. “Now you must stay for lunch and tell us all about it. Go in and announce yourself to Mr. Rosen.”
Mr. Rosen had come home for lunch and was sitting, a book in his hand, in a corner of the darkened front parlour where a flood of yellow sun streamed in under the dark green blind. He smiled his friendly smile at Vickie and waved her to a seat, making her understand that he wanted to finish his paragraph. The dark engraving of the pointed cypresses and the Roman tomb was on the wall just behind him.
Mrs. Rosen came into the back parlour, which was the dining-room, and began taking things out of the silver-drawer to lay a place for their visitor. She spoke to her husband rapidly in German.
He put down his book, came over, and took Vickie’s hand.
“Is it true, Vickie? Did you really win the scholarship?”
“Yes, sir.”
He stood looking down at her through his kind, remote smile, —a smile in the eyes, that seemed to come up through layers and layers of something—gentle doubts, kindly reservations.
“Why do you want to go to college, Vickie?” he asked playfully.
“To learn,” she said with surprise.
“But why do you want to learn? What do you want to do with it?”
“I don’t know. Nothing, I guess.”
“Then what do you want it for?”
“I don’t know. I just want it.”
For some reason Vickie’s voice broke there. She had been terribly strung up all morning, lying in the hammock with her eyes tight shut. She had not been home at all, she had wanted to take her letter to the Rosens first. And now one of the gentlest men she knew made her choke by something strange and presageful in his voice.
“Then if you want it without any purpose at all, you will not be disappointed.” Mr. Rosen wished to distract her and help her to keep back the tears. “Listen: a great man once said: ‘Le but n’est rien; le chemin, c’est tout.’ That means: The end is nothing, the road is all.9 Let me write it down for you and give you your first French lesson.”
He went to the desk with its big silver inkwell, where he and his wife wrote so many letters in several languages, and inscribed the sentence on a sheet of purple paper, in his delicately shaded foreign script, signing under it a name: J. Michelet.10 He brought it back and shook it before Vickie’s eyes. “There, keep it to remember me by. Slip it into the envelope with your college credentials,—that is a good place for it.” From his deliberate smile and the twitch of one eyebrow, Vickie knew he meant her to take it along as an antidote, a corrective for whatever colleges might do to her. But she had always known that Mr. Rosen was wiser than professors.
Mrs. Rosen was frowning, she thought that sentence a bad precept to give any Templeton. Moreover, she always promptly called her husband back to earth when he soared a little; though it was exactly for this transcendental quality of mind that she reverenced him in her heart, and thought him so much finer than any of his successful brothers.
“Luncheon is served,” she said in the crisp tone that put people in their places. “And Miss Vickie, you are to eat your tomatoes with an oil dressing, as we do. If you are going off into the world, it is quite time you learn to like things that are everywhere accepted.”
Vickie said: “Yes’m,” and slipped into the chair Mr. Rosen had placed for her. Today she didn’t care what she ate, though ordinarily she thought a French dressing tasted a good deal like castor oil.
IX
Vickie was to discover that nothing comes easily in this world. Next day she got a letter from one of the jolly students of Professor Chalmers’s party, who was watching over her case in his chief’s absence. He told her the scholarship meant admission to the freshman class without further examinations, and two hundred dollars toward her expenses; she would have to bring along about three hundred more to put her through the year.
She took this letter to her father’s office. Seated in his revolving desk-chair, Mr. Templeton read it over several times and looked embarrassed.
“I’m sorry, daughter,” he said at last, “but really, just now, I couldn’t spare that much. Not this year. I expect next year will be better for us.”
“But the scholarship is for this year, Father. It wouldn’t count next year. I just have to go in September.”
“I really ain’t got it, daughter.” He spoke, oh so kindly! He had lovely manners with his daughter and his wife. “It’s just all I
can do to keep the store bills paid up. I’m away behind with Mr. Rosen’s bill. Couldn’t you study here this winter and get along about as fast? It isn’t that I wouldn’t like to let you have the money if I had it. And with young children, I can’t let my life insurance go.”
Vickie didn’t say anything more. She took her letter and wandered down Main Street with it, leaving young Mr. Templeton to a very bad half-hour.
At dinner Vickie was silent, but everyone could see she had been crying. Mr. Templeton told Uncle Remus stories to keep up the family morale and make the giggly twins laugh. Mrs. Templeton glanced covertly at her daughter from time to time. She was sometimes a little afraid of Vickie, who seemed to her to have a hard streak. If it were a love-affair that the girl was crying about, that would be so much more natural—and more hopeful!
At two o’clock Mrs. Templeton went to the Afternoon Euchre Club, the twins were to have another ride with the Roadmaster on his velocipede, the little boys took their nap on their mother’s bed. The house was empty and quiet. Vickie felt an aversion for the hammock under the cottonwoods where she had been betrayed into such bright hopes. She lay down on her grandmother’s lounge in the cluttered play-room and turned her face to the wall.
When Mrs. Harris came in for her rest and began to wash her face at the tin basin, Vickie got up. She wanted to be alone. Mrs. Harris came over to her while she was still sitting on the edge of the lounge.
“What’s the matter, Vickie child?” She put her hand on her grand-daughter’s shoulder, but Vickie shrank away. Young misery is like that, sometimes.
“Nothing. Except that I can’t go to college after all. Papa can’t let me have the money.”
Mrs. Harris settled herself on the faded cushions of her rocker. “How much is it? Tell me about it, Vickie. Nobody’s around.”
Vickie told her what the conditions were, briefly and dryly, as if she were talking to an enemy. Everyone was an enemy; all society was against her. She told her grandmother the facts and then went upstairs, refusing to be comforted.
Mrs. Harris saw her disappear through the kitchen door, and then sat looking at the door, her face grave, her eyes stern and sad. A poor factory-made piece of joiner’s work seldom has to bear a look of such intense, accusing sorrow; as if that flimsy pretence of “grained” yellow pine were the door shut against all young aspiration.
X
Mrs. Harris had decided to speak to Mr. Templeton, but opportunities for seeing him alone were not frequent. She watched out of the kitchen window, and when she next saw him go into the barn to fork down hay for his horse, she threw an apron over her head and followed him. She waylaid him as he came down from the hayloft.
“Hillary, I want to see you about Vickie. I was wondering if you could lay hand on any of the money you got for the sale of my house back home.”
Mr. Templeton was nervous. He began brushing his trousers with a little whisk-broom he kept there, hanging on a nail.
“Why, no’m, Mrs. Harris. I couldn’t just conveniently call in any of it right now. You know we had to use part of it to get moved up here from the mines.”
“I know. But I thought if there was any left you could get at, we could let Vickie have it. A body’d like to help the child.”
“I’d like to, powerful well, Mrs. Harris. I would, indeedy. But I’m afraid I can’t manage it right now. The fellers I’ve loaned to can’t pay up this year. Maybe next year—” He was like a little boy trying to escape a scolding, though he had never had a nagging word from Mrs. Harris.
She looked downcast, but said nothing.
“It’s all right, Mrs. Harris,” he took on his brisk business tone and hung up the brush. “The money’s perfectly safe. It’s well invested.”
Invested; that was a word men always held over women, Mrs. Harris thought, and it always meant they could have none of their own money. She sighed deeply.
“Well, if that’s the way it is—” She turned away and went back to the house on her flat heelless slippers, just in time; Victoria was at that moment coming out to the kitchen with Hughie.
“Ma,” she said, “can the little boy play out here, while I go down town?”
XI
For the next few days Mrs. Harris was very sombre, and she was not well. Several times in the kitchen she was seized with what she called giddy spells, and Mandy had to help her to a chair and give her a little brandy.
“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 con
cerned!” 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 Normandy11 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 poorly. 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.”