by Willa Cather
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 poorly, 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 downstairs, 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 poorly,” 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 kitchen, 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 around 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 wit
h 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 play-room. 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.
It was hard for a little boy to keep still. “Would you like me to read Joe’s Luck12 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,13 which she had read aloud to the children so many times; the passage where Christiana and her band come to the arbor 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.
“What’s the matter, Mandy? Where is everybody?”
“You know your papa’s away, Miss Vickie; an’ your mama’s got a headache, an’ Miz’ Harris has had a bad spell. Maybe I’ll just fix supper for you an’ the boys in the kitchen, so you won’t all have to be runnin’ through her room.”
“Oh, very well,” said Vickie bitterly, and she went upstairs. Wasn’t it just like them all to go and get sick, when she had now only two weeks to get ready for school, and no trunk and no clothes or anything? Nobody but Mr. Rosen seemed to take the least interest, “when my whole life hangs by a thread,” she told herself fiercely. What were families for, anyway?
After supper Vickie went to her father’s office to read; she told Mandy to leave the kitchen door open, and when she got home she would go to bed without disturbing anybody. The twins ran out to play under the electric light with the neighbour boys for a little while, then slipped softly up the back stairs to their room. Mandy came to Mrs. Harris after the house was still.
“Kin I rub your legs fur you, Miz’ Harris?”
“Thank you, Mandy. And you might get me a clean nightcap out of the press.”
Mandy returned with it.
“Lawsie me! But your legs is cold, ma’am!”
“I expect it’s about time, Mandy,” murmured the old lady. Mandy knelt on the floor and set to work with a will. It brought the sweat out on her, and at last she sat up and wiped her face with the back of her hand.
“I can’t seem to git no heat into ’em, Miz’ Harris. I got a hot flat-iron on the stove; I’ll wrap it in a piece of old blanket and put it to your feet. Why didn’t you have the boys tell me you was cold, poor soul?”
Mrs. Harris did not answer. She thought it was probably a cold that neither Mandy nor the flat-iron could do much with. She hadn’t nursed so many people back in Tennessee without coming to know certain signs.
After Mandy was gone, she fell to thinking of her blessings. Every night for years, when she said her prayers, she had prayed that she might never have a long sickness or be a burden. She dreaded the heartache and humiliation of being helpless on the hands of people who would be impatient under such a care. And now she felt certain that she was going to die tonight, without troubling anybody.
She was glad Mrs. Rosen was in Chicago. Had she been at home, she would certainly have come in, would have seen that her old neighbour was very sick, and bustled about. Her quick eye would have found out all Grandmother’s little secrets: how hard her bed was, that she had no proper place to wash, and kept her comb in her pocket; that her nightgowns were patched and darned. Mrs. Rosen would have been indignant, and that would have made Victoria cross. She didn’t have to see Mrs. Rosen again to know that Mrs. Rosen thought highly of her and admired her—yes, admired her. Those funny little pats and arch pleasantries had meant a great deal to Mrs. Harris.
It was a blessing that Mr. Templeton was away, too. Appearances had to be kept up when there was a man in the house; and he might have taken it into his head to send for the doctor, and stir everybody up. Now everything would be so peaceful. “The Lord is my shepherd,” she whispered gratefully. “Yes, Lord, I always spoiled Victoria. She was so much the prettiest. But nobody won’t ever be the worse for it: Mr. Templeton will always humour her, and the children love her more than most. They’ll always be good to her; she has that
way with her.”
Grandma fell to remembering the old place at home: what a dashing, high-spirited girl Victoria was, and how proud she had always been of her; how she used to hear her laughing and teasing out in the lilac arbour when Hillary Templeton was courting her. Toward morning all these pleasant reflections faded out. Mrs. Harris felt that she and her bed were softly sinking, through the darkness to a deeper darkness.
Old Mrs. Harris did not really die that night, but she believed she did. Mandy found her unconscious in the morning. Then there was a great stir and bustle; Victoria, and even Vickie, were startled out of their intense self-absorption. Mrs. Harris was hastily carried out of the play-room and laid in Victoria’s bed, put into one of Victoria’s best nightgowns. Mr. Templeton was sent for, and the doctor was sent for. The inquisitive Mrs. Jackson from next door got into the house at last,—installed herself as nurse, and no one had the courage to say her nay. But Grandmother was out of it all, never knew that she was the object of so much attention and excitement. She died a little while after Mr. Templeton got home.
Thus Mrs. Harris slipped out of the Templetons’ story; but Victoria and Vickie had still to go on, to follow the long road that leads through things unguessed at and unforeseeable. When they are old, they will come closer and closer to Grandma Harris. They will think a great deal about her, and remember things they never noticed; and their lot will be more or less like hers. They will regret that they heeded her so little; but they, too, will look into the eager, unseeing eyes of young people and feel themselves alone. They will say to themselves: “I was heartless, because I was young and strong and wanted things so much. But now I know.”
New Brunswick, 1931
EXPLANATORY NOTES
Bibliographical references in the notes are to “Suggestions for Further Reading,” pp. xxix-xxxi.
1. The epigraph is from “Goblin Market” (1862), a poem by Christina Rossetti (1830-1894). In Cather’s earlier story collection, The Troll Garden (1905), the Rossetti epigraph was preceded by another quotation, from Charles Kingsley (quoted in the Introduction, p. xxi).