Unconsciously his shoulders straightened again. Again they sagged.
And so they parted, the two.
He must have walked almost all the long way home, through miles and miles of city streets. He must have lost his way, too, for when he looked up at a corner street sign it was an unfamiliar one.
So he floundered about, asked his way, was misdirected. He took the right streetcar at last and got off at his own corner at seven o"clock, or later. He was in for a scolding, he knew.
But when he came to his own doorway he knew that even his tardiness could not justify the bedlam of sound that came from within.
High-pitched voices. Bella"s above all the rest, of course, but there was Minnie"s too, and Gus"s growl, and Pearlie"s treble, and the boy Ed"s and----
At the other voice his hand trembled so that the k.n.o.b rattled in the door, and he could not turn it. But finally he did turn it, and stumbled in, breathing hard. And that other voice was Dike"s.
He must have just arrived. The flurry of explanation was still in progress. Dike"s knapsack was still on his back, and his canteen at his hip, his helmet slung over his shoulder. A brown, hard, glowing Dike, strangely tall and handsome and older, too. Older.
All this Ben saw in less than one electric second. Then he had the boy"s two shoulders in his hands, and Dike was saying, "h.e.l.lo, Pop."
Of the roomful, Dike and old Ben were the only quiet ones. The others were taking up the explanation and going over it again and again, and marveling, and asking questions.
"He come in to--what"s that place, Dike?--Hoboken--yesterday only. An"
he sent a dispatch to the farm. Can"t you read our letters, Dike, that you didn"t know we was here now? And then he"s only got an hour more.
They got to go to Camp Grant to be, now, demobilized. He came out to Minnie"s on a chance. Ain"t he big!"
But Dike and his father were looking at each other quietly. Then Dike spoke. His speech was not phlegmatic, as of old. He had a new clipped way of uttering his words:
"Say, Pop, you ought to see the way the Frenchies farm! They got about an acre each, and, say, they use every inch of it. If they"s a little dirt blows into the crotch of a tree, they plant a crop in there. I never seen nothin" like it. Say, we waste enough stuff over here to keep that whole country in food for a hundred years. Yessir. And tools! Outta the ark, believe me. If they ever saw our tractor, they"d think it was the Germans comin" back. But they"re smart at that. I picked up a lot of new ideas over there. And you ought to see the old birds--womenfolks and men about eighty years old--runnin" everything on the farm. They had to. I learned somethin" off them about farmin"."
"Forget the farm," said Minnie.
"Yeh," echoed Gus, "forget the farm stuff. I can get you a job here out at the works for four-fifty a day, and six when you learn it right."
Dike looked from one to the other, alarm and unbelief on his face.
"What d"you mean, a job? Who wants a job! What you all----"
Bella laughed jovially. "F"r heaven"s sakes, Dike, wake up! We"re livin" here. This is our place. We ain"t rubes no more."
Dike turned to his father. A little stunned look crept into his face.
A stricken, pitiful look. There was something about it that suddenly made old Ben think of Pearlie when she had been slapped by her quick-tempered mother.
"But I been countin" on the farm," he said miserably. "I just been livin" on the idea of comin" back to it. Why, I---- The streets here, they"re all narrow and choked up. I been countin" on the farm. I want to go back and be a farmer. I want----"
And then Ben Westerveld spoke. A new Ben Westerveld--the old Ben Westerveld. Ben Westerveld, the farmer, the monarch over six hundred acres of bounteous bottomland.
"That"s all right, Dike," he said. "You"re going back. So"m I. I"ve got another twenty years of work in me. We"re going back to the farm."
Bella turned on him, a wildcat. "We ain"t! Not me! We ain"t! I"m not agoin" back to the farm."
But Ben Westerveld was master again in his own house. "You"re goin"
back, Bella," he said quietly, "an" things are goin" to be different.
You"re goin" to run the house the way I say, or I"ll know why. If you can"t do it, I"ll get them in that can. An" me and Dike, we"re goin"
back to our wheat and our apples and our hogs. Yessir! There ain"t a bigger man-size job in the world."
Un Morso doo Pang [1919]
When you are twenty you do not patronize sunsets unless you are unhappy, in love, or both. Tessie Golden was both. Six months ago a sunset had wrung from her only a casual tribute, such as: "My! Look how red the sky is!" delivered as unemotionally as a weather bulletin.
Tessie Golden sat on the top step of the back porch now, a slim, inert heap in a cotton house coat and scuffed slippers. Her head was propped wearily against the porch post. Her hands were limp in her lap. Her face was turned toward the west, where shone that mingling of orange and rose known as salmon pink. But no answering radiance in the girl"s face met the glow in the Wisconsin sky.
Sat.u.r.day night, after supper in Chippewa, Wisconsin, Tessie Golden of the presunset era would have been calling from her bedroom to the kitchen: "Ma, what"d you do with my pink blouse?"
And from the kitchen: "It"s in your second bureau drawer. The collar was kind of mussed from Wednesday night, and I give it a little pressing while my iron was on."
At seven-thirty Tessie would have emerged from her bedroom in the pink blouse that might have been considered alarmingly frank as to texture and precariously low as to neck had Tessie herself not been so rea.s.suringly unopulent; a black taffeta skirt, very brief; a hat with a good deal of French blue about it; fragile high-heeled pumps with bows.
As she pa.s.sed through the sitting room on her way out, her mother would appear in the doorway, dishtowel in hand. Her pride in this slim young thing and her love of her she concealed with a thin layer of carping criticism.
"Runnin" downtown again, I s"pose." A keen eye on the swishing skirt hem.
Tessie, the quick-tongued, would toss the wave of shining hair that lay against either glowing cheek. "Oh, my, no! I just thought I"d dress up in case Angie Hatton drove past in her auto and picked me up for a little ride. So"s not to keep her waiting."
Angie Hatton was Old Man Hatton"s daughter. Anyone in the Fox River Valley could have told you who Old Man Hatton was. You saw his name at the top of every letterhead of any importance in Chippewa, from the Pulp and Paper Mill to the First National Bank, and including the watch factory, the canning works, and the Mid-Western Land Company. Knowing this, you were able to appreciate Tessie"s sarcasm. Angie Hatton was as unaware of Tessie"s existence as only a young woman could be whose family residence was in Chippewa, Wisconsin, but who wintered in Italy, summered in the mountains, and bought (so the town said) her very hairpins in New York. When Angie Hatton came home from the East the town used to stroll past on Mondays to view the washing on the Hatton line. Angie"s underwear, flirting so audaciously with the sunshine and zephyrs, was of silk and crepe de Chine and satin--materials that we had always thought of heretofore as intended exclusively for party dresses and wedding gowns. Of course, two years later they were showing practically the same thing at Megan"s dry-goods store. But that was always the way with Angie Hatton. Even those of us who went to Chicago to shop never quite caught up with her.
Delivered of this ironic thrust, Tessie would walk toward the screen door with a little flaunting sway of the hips. Her mother"s eyes, following the slim figure, had a sort of grudging love in them. A spare, caustic, wiry little woman, Tessie"s mother. Tessie resembled her as a water color may resemble a blurred charcoal sketch. Tessie"s wide mouth curved into humor lines. She was the cutup of the escapement department at the watch factory; the older woman"s lips sagged at the corners. Tessie was buoyant and colorful with youth. The other was shrunken and faded with years and labor. As the girl minced across the room in her absurdly high-heeled shoes, the older woman thought: My, but she"s pretty! But she said aloud: "I should think you"d stay home once in a while and not be runnin" the streets every night."
"Time enough to be sittin" home when I"m old like you."
And yet between these two there was love, and even understanding.
But in families such as Tessie"s, demonstration is a thing to be ashamed of; affection a thing to conceal. Tessie"s father was janitor of the Chippewa High School. A powerful man, slightly crippled by rheumatism, loquacious, lively, fond of his family, proud of his neat gray frame house and his new cement sidewalk and his carefully tended yard and garden patch. In all her life Tessie had never seen a caress exchanged between her parents.
Nowadays Ma Golden had little occasion for finding fault with Tessie"s evening diversion. She no longer had cause to say, "Always gaddin"
downtown, or over to Cora"s or somewhere, like you didn"t have a home to stay in. You ain"t been in a evening this week, only when you washed your hair."
Tessie had developed a fondness for sunsets viewed from the back porch--she who had thought nothing of dancing until three and rising at half-past six to go to work.
Stepping about in the kitchen after supper, her mother would eye the limp, relaxed figure on the back porch with a little pang at her heart.
She would come to the screen door, or even out to the porch on some errand or other--to empty the coffee grounds, to turn the row of half-ripe tomatoes reddening on the porch railing, to flap and hang up a damp tea towel.
"Ain"t you goin" out, Tess?"
"No."
"What you want to lop around here for? Such a grant evening. Why don"t you put on your things and run downtown, or over to Cora"s or somewhere, hm?"
"What for?"--listlessly.