OLD Aaron Pettit, who
had tried to live for ten years with half of his body dead from paralysis, had
given up at last. He was altogether dead now, and laid away out of sight in the
three- cornered lot where the Pettits had been buried since colonial days. The
graveyard was a triangle cut out of the wheat field by a certain Osee Pettit in
1695. Many a time had Aaron, while ploughing, stopped to lean over the fence
and calculate how many bushels of grain the land thus given up to the dead men
would have yielded.
"They can keep it.
I'll not plough it up," he would mumble to himself with conscious virtue.
"But land was to be hed for the fencin' then, evidently, or no Pettit
would have put corpses in it that might as well have lain in the
churchyard."
Now Aaron himself was
in the wasted triangle, and as his daughter Jane saw his coffin lowered into it
she felt a wrench of pity for him, because he never again could see the wheat
grow in the lot around him, nor count how many dollars profit it would yield
that year to pay the interest on the mortgage. It was natural that she should
feel that he was really dead in just that way, for the wheat lot was the only
field owned by the Pettits, and that mortgage their only active interest in
life.
When the funeral was
over, the neighbors, as is the custom in South Leedom, came back to the house,
and sat in silence for half an hour in the little parlor. The undertaker had
given the silver plate from the coffin lid to Jane, as the oldest child, and
she hung it up now with a sad pride over the mantel-shelf. There were six other
coffin plates there, the only decorations on the parlor wall.
Her younger brother,
who had left "the mourners" and was in the kitchen, called her out
impatiently. "Are you going to leave that horrible thing up there,
Jenny?" he said.
"Horrible!"
said Jane, aghast. "It is very handsome, Bowles. It cost three dollars and
sixty-three cents. And why should I show disrespect to father?"
"Oh, if it is
counted disrespect!--Jane, can't we give these people a cup of tea? There are
the Waces, they have come ten miles, and they have to go back without any
dinner. And the Fords. Some tea and dough-nuts." He looked anxiously into
her face.
The heat rose into
Jane's cheeks, and her eyes shone. There was something delightful to her in
this bold proposal, for she had, unknown to herself, a hospitable soul. She had
never seen a stranger break bread under their roof. But on such an occasion as
this--
"What would mother
say?" she whispered. "Oh, no, no, Bowles! I can't do it. There are
ten of them"--peering into the parlor-- "ten. It would take a quarter
of a pound of tea; and then the sugar. Oh no, we couldn't afford it!" and
she went back and sat down again with the mourners, comforting herself that
nobody would expect to be fed. In North Leedom the folks did not eat in each
others' houses. It would have been thought a wicked waste to "treat to
victuals," as, it was reported, was the common custom in larger towns.
This was no time, Jane
felt, for her to appear eccentric or extravagant; and it would have been extravagant.
Tea and cakes for ten would have made a big break in the money to be saved for
the fall payment on the mortgage.
The Pettits during the
next week took up the thread of their daily life unbroken. The little
four-roomed house had, of course, a thorough cleaning. Undertakers and
neighbors had left dust behind them. Mrs. Pettit had prayed for grace to help
her bear the pains which death had left; but dirt she would not put up with.
The furniture was all taken out in the yard to be sunned; the stair carpet,
with its hundred neat patches was washed, dried, and tacked down again. The
furniture in the house was of the cheapest kind, but it had belonged to Mrs.
Pettit's grandmother, and had always been cared for with a tender reverence,
not because of its associations, but for its money value. Indeed, so much of
the lives of the Pettit women for generations had gone into the care of these
speckless chairs and tables that one might suspect a likeness between the
condition of their souls and that of the filthy Feejeean who worships the
string of bones which he polishes incessantly.
Bowles despised the
tables and chairs. But the mortgage! That was another thing--a thing so serious
that it seemed to overshadow, to choke his whole life. John Pettit, his grandfather,
in some great emergency, had put the house under a mortgage, had worked for
thirty years to clear it off, and died, leaving the task to Aaron. Aaron had
accepted it as a sacred trust; every penny he could save had gone to it. Now he
was dead, and there was still a thousand dollars due on it.
Mrs. Pettit was too
nearly blind to work. Jane sewed on men's seersucker coats for a factory in
Boston. She was paid sixty cents a dozen for them. This paid the taxes and
bought their clothes.
Bowles knew that his
mother and sister and all of the village expected him to take up the payment of
this mortgage as the work of his life.
The minister, old Mr.
Himms, had said as much to him after the funeral.
"It is a noble
ambition, my boy," he said, "for a man to own the home of his fathers
free of debt. In our New England towns there are thousands of men and women
struggling in dire poverty all their lives with this aim before them."
"This aim!"
What aim?
Bowles, sitting one
Sunday evening under the old elm-tree as the sun was going down, looked at the
ugly, bare little house and hated it. Had life nothing more for him than that?
He looked about him.
North Leedom was made up of just such ugly, clean, bare houses. There were no
trees on the sidewalks, no flowers in the yards. The people were poor, and they
had reduced economy to an art so hard and cruel that it dominated them now in
body and soul. To save was no longer a disagreeable necessity for them; it had
become the highest of duties.
The Pettits had always
crept along in the same rut with their neighbors. They would not buy food
sufficient to satisfy their craving stomachs. With each generation they grew
leaner and weaker; the sallow skin clung more tightly to their bones; the men
became victims of dyspepsia, the women of nervous prostration.
Each generation, too,
carried the niggard economy a little farther. They "could not afford
time" for flowers nor for music; they could not afford to buy books nor
newspapers. They came at last in their fierce zeal for saving to begrudge
smiles and welcomes to each other or kisses and hugs to their children. They
stripped their lives of all the little kindly amenities, the generosities of
feeling and word which make life elsewhere cheerful and tender.
Bowles Pettit, thinking
over the lives of his neighbors and family, tried to judge fairly of his own.
But he was ashamed to find that he could scarcely think at all, he was so
hungry. He was a big, raw-boned, growing boy; the nervous strain of the last week
had been severe on him. He needed food, and he knew he would not have enough
to-day. He could not remember the day when he had had enough. He knew how it
would be. Presently the cracked tea bell would ring, and he would go in to eat
a small slice of cold, soggy pie, washed down with a glass of cold water.
To-morrow morning for breakfast more cold pie and a dough-nut. For dinner,
potatoes and cold milk only. On Mondays, when Jane had to make a fire for the
washing, a pound of cheap meat was boiled, which furnished dinner for three
days.
Bowles had no trade. He
was what was called in North Leedom "a helper." He could do a bit of
carpenter or mason work, or paint a door, or plough a field when called upon,
for which he received a few pennies. There was no opening in the dead village
for any regular business. It was out of these occasional few pennies that he
must support the family and save the thousand dollars for the mortgage.
There was a slight
quiver on the boy's cleft chin as he sat staring at the mortgaged house. He had
the eager brain and fine instincts of the New-Englander. It was not a dull
beast of burden on whom this yoke for life was to be laid, but a nervous,
high-bred animal, fit for the race-course.
"Ah-ha, Bowles, my
son!" a subdued voice whispered over the fence.
He started up. It was
Mr. Rameaux, an agent for some orange planters in Louisiana, who had found
boarding for his little daughter in North Leedom that summer, while he
travelled about the country. He was so short and stout that his fat smiling
face barely reached to the top of the fence. He thrust his chubby ringed
fingers through the rails and wrung the lad's hands.
"My dear boy, I
came down from Boston this afternoon, and Lola met me with this terrible news.
What can I say? Your worthy father! Il est chez le bon Dieu! But you--poor
child! It is thirty years since my own father left me, and still-- I--" He
choked, and real tears stood in the twinkling black eyes.
Bowles pulled him
through the gate. The boy said nothing. He had not shed a tear when his father
died. He had never learned how to talk or to shed tears. But this little man's
volubility, his gestures, his juicy rich voice, with its kindly and sweet
inflections, affected Bowles as the sudden sight of tropical plants might a
half-frozen Laplander. He had hung about Rameaux all summer whenever he was in
the village.
"I came to make my
condolences to madame votre mere. And Lola--she also"--dragging after him
a child in a white gown and huge red sash, of the age when girls are
principally made up of eyes, legs, and curiosity.
Together they entered
the kitchen, where Mrs. Pettit and Jane sat knitting, one on either side of the
cold black stove. The little man poured forth his "condolences" to
the widow. Aaron's virtues, her own grief, the joys of heaven, the love of le
bon Dieu, were all jumbled en masse, and hurled at her with affectionate zeal.
Jane dropped her knitting in her lap; a red head rose in her thin cheeks as she
listened. But Mrs. Pettit's large gray eyes scanned the pursy little agent with
cold disapproval. What did the man mean? None of Aaron's neighbors, not she
herself, had wept for him, or talked much of his virtues, or his entrance into
heaven. Why should this play-acting fellow be sorry for her? She resented his
affectionate tone, his fat body, his red necktie, the unnecessary width of brim
of his felt hat. It was all unnecessary, redundant--a waste.
She waited until he
stopped for breath, then nodded without a word, and taking up her knitting,
began to count the stitches. Rameaux, shocked and discomfited, stood pulling at
his mustache and shuffling uneasily from one foot to the other. Lola, in the
mean time, had crept to Jane's side, and put her arm around her waist.
The Rameaux were not of
good caste in Louisiana; they were not well-bred people. The agent's oaths and
jokes, when alone with men, were not always of the cleanest. But they came from
a community where men carried the kindness and pity of their hearts ready for
constant use in their eyes and lips. Even the ungainly child now was giving to
Jane eager caresses such as she had never in her life received from father or
mother.
"Your father is
dead," Lola whispered. "My mamma died two-- two years--" and
then she burst into sobs, and dropped her head on the woman's lap. Jane, with a
scared glance at her mother, patted her gently.
"Poor lonely
little thing!" she thought. Then she noticed that the child's gaudy sash
was spotted with grease, and that the holes in her black stockings were drawn
up with white thread. "Tut! tut! poor dear child!" she whispered, a
motherly throb rising in her own flat breast.
Mr. Rameaux, bewildered
at his rebuff, was turning to the door, but Bowles stopped him.
"You promised to
speak to her," he whispered excitedly.
"Not now, my
boy."
"Yes, now!
Now!"
The little man dropped
into a chair, fanning himself with his ridiculous hat. He too was excited. He
spoke to Mrs. Pettit, but his eyes wandered to Jane. "Madam, there is a
subject-- Your son, Mr. Bowles here, and I have talked of it. If I may intrude
upon your grief-- But I must first tell you something of my home."
"Indeed? Your
home, Mr. Rammy," said Mrs. Pettit, in her dry, shrill tone, "is the
least of my concerns." Then she turned her back on him. "Light the
candle, Jane."
Rameaux rose, red and
angry.
"Mother,"
said Bowles, sharply, "I wish you to listen to this man."
There was a meaning in
his voice new to her. She stared at him, and at the agent, who, after a
moment's hesitation, went on, growing fluent as an auctioneer as he proceeded.
"There was a
reason for speaking of Lamonte to you, madam. It is a village near the gulf.
That is a rich country--the ground, fat, black; the trees, giants; the woods
full of birds, and the waters of fish. A man has but to set his traps and drop
his lines and lie down to sleep, and nature feeds him. And the air--so warm and
sweet!" He took a step nearer to Jane, who was listening. His eyes were on
hers. They were kind eyes, he thought--mother's eyes. Miss Jane had a soft
voice too. Her cheeks were lean, but there was a pretty color coming and going
in them, and the lips were red and kissable. He and Lola had a lonely life of
it. "The air," he repeated, awkward and bewildered, "is sweet
with flowers. You would like my house, Miss Jane, on the beach. At night the
wind in the magnolias and the waves plashing on the shore make a very pleasant
sound--a--very pleasant sound." He quite broke down here, but his little
black eyes held hers, and it seemed to her that he was still talking rapidly,
passionately saying something that she never had listened to before.
"You told me about
the place before, Mr. Rammy," she stammered. "You said that the
flowers--"
"Hola! chut! I had
forgotten!" he exclaimed, tugging at his pocket. "I sent for these.
They came to-day. You said you never had seen any." He pulled out a small
paper box. When she opened it, a strange and wonderful fragrance startled the
chill New England air.
"Orange
blossoms!" explained Rameaux, with a significant chuckle.
Jane said nothing. She
took her box to the window. The blood grew cold in all of her gaunt body. What
did it mean?
She had scarcely ever
thought of love. She had known but two women of her age in the village who had
been courted and married. The others had all grown into old maids like herself.
She never had thought that she-- He had paid thirty cents postage on that box!
And for her!
That wonderful life
down there--little work, and plenty to eat!--the warm, sweet air! the plashing
waves! In the mean time, the strange, creamy flowers, with their heavy
fragrance, seemed actually to talk to her of this life and this man.
What was that he was
saying? Urging her mother to sell the house and go to Lamonte, where there was
a fine chance for Bowles!
"There is no
opening for the boy here, madam," he persisted. "I speak as a
business man. Lamonte is a live place. I go to start a cypress-wood mill, a
cotton-seed-oil factory. It is a boom. A young man with Northern energy shall
make money fast. Or, if she would not sell the homestead, why not rent it?
Bowles, once settled in Lamonte, in two years--in two months perhaps, if this
boom lasted--could clear off the mortgage." Rameaux spoke as he did when
driving a bargain--clearly, and to the point. "I will give you this to
consider," he said. "I will state the matter now to Miss Jane from
another point of the view." He strode quickly across to her, and led her
authoritatively out of the kitchen.
"Mother, do you
understand?" said Bowles, in a high, sharp tone. "I can make money
there hand over hand. I will clear off the mortgage dretful fast. I won't have
to drudge here like a nigger slave till I'm as old as father."
The face which Mrs.
Pettit turned on him was set and strained as it had not been when she looked at
her husband dead.
"You want
to--go?" she said.
"Yes, I want to
go. I must get out of here. I want enough to do; I want enough to eat!"
She looked at the
hunger-bitten face and starving eyes of the boy, a tragic sight enough if she
had understood it. But she was simply bewildered. Most of the people in North
Leedom had that clayey color and the restless look which result from ill-fed
body and strong brain condemned for life to work upon trifles. But they did not
know what ailed them. Nor did Mrs. Pettit.
"Want to leave
North Leedom?" she repeated, with a contemptuous laugh. "Sech
fancies! You always was ridickelous, Bowles, but I didn't think you was quite
sech a fool. Draw some water, child. It's high time we was lockin' up an'
makin' ready for bed," looking at Lola, who was coiled up on a chair, her
big black eyes curiously turning from one to the other.
The door into the yard
opened, and Jane came hurrying in. Her mother stared at her. She had never seen
her face burn nor her eyes shine in that way, except when she had the typhoid
fever twelve years ago.
"Lola," she
said, going up to the girl and catching her by the shoulders--"Lola!"
"Yes," said
Lola, standing up.
Miss Jane pulled the
child toward her as if to kiss her. Her thin face worked; she panted for
breath. She caught sight of her mother's amazed face, and pushed Lola away.
"Your--your papa
wants you, dear," she said, in a low whisper, every tone of which was a
caress. "I'll take you to him."
"You stop right
here, Jane. Bowles can take his daater to the play-actor," snapped Mrs.
Pettit.
Miss Jane dared not
disobey. She was thirty, but she was as submissive and timid as when she was
six. But she did follow Lola out on to the porch. The girl stopped her there
peremptorily, and stretching up on her tiptoes, threw her arms around her neck.
"You're coming
home with us? Papa said so. Yes? Oh, goody! You'll come?"
"Hush-h!"
Miss Jane dropped on
her knees in the dark, and strained the child tight to her breast. The blood
burned hotly through her whole body as she pressed a light shamed kiss upon her
lips, and then springing up, ran back into the kitchen.
Bowles walked sulkily
with Lola down to the road where her father was waiting. She thrust her arm in
his and hung on it; she rolled her beautiful eyes coquettishly; she spoke to
him with profound awe and timidity. Lola, like many Southern girls of her
class, had given much of her short life to thoughts of "the boys,"
and of how to manage them. She managed Bowles now completely. Her homage
thrilled him with triumph and self-conceit, which her father's eager talk
increased. His mother treated him as a child. These people appreciated him,
recognized him as the shrewd Northern man who would make money hand over hand
in the South. He laughed loudly with Rameaux, even tried to joke a little.
His sister, through the
kitchen window, saw them standing by the gate. The moon had risen. Lola leaned
sleepily against the fence. Rameaux's sultry black eyes, while he talked to
Bowles, searched every window in the house.
"For me?"
Miss Jane's knees shook
under her. She hurried to her mother, who was beginning to grope her way up the
stairs, and took the candle from her, trembling so that she could scarcely
speak. It seemed as if she must cry and laugh out loud.
"Mr. Rameaux tells
me that his house is all on one floor. You will have no stairs to climb if you
go there, mother," she said.
Mrs. Pettit stared at
her. "I go? Bowles's brain is addled enough, but he's not so mad as
that."
She had reached her
room by this time. Jane hurried in after her.
"Mother, it's not
Bowles; it's me. If there was a chance for me to go down yonder and give you a
comfortable providin', would you go?"
Mrs. Pettit paid no
attention to her. She was unbuttoning her shoes, and had found a thin place in
one of them. She rubbed it with alarm, held it close to her purblind eyes, set
it down with a groan. "It ought to hev lasted two year more," she
muttered.
"Would you
go?" said Jane, speaking with a breathless gasp. "You should have as
many shoes as you chose, and the hot air even in winter, and full and plenty to
eat and wear."
Mrs. Pettit turned her
dull calm face on her. "Why, Jane Pettit! You've been listenin' to that
Rammy's crazy talk too! For a fool, give me an old maid!" She took up the
worn shoe anxiously again. "Think of me goin' outside of North
Leedom!" she said, with a hoarse, rasping laugh.
Miss Jane, as she
looked at her, could not think of it. It was an impossibility; as impossible as
to make the dead alive.
"Tut! tut! It's
worn near through to the counter."
"Give it to me.
I'll mend it," said Miss Jane.
"Your hands are
like ice," said her mother, as she took the shoe. "You'd better get
to bed. There's that lot of coats to begin on in the morning. You'll have to be
up by four."
"Yes," said
Jane. She carried the shoe down stairs. The coats lay in heaps in the corner,
tied together by twine. Their raw edges stuck out. Jane thought they would not
have been so hateful if it had not been for those raw edges.
Bowles was waiting for
her. His eyes shone; he looked bigger and stouter than before; the very down on
his lip seemed coarser and browner.
"You are going
too," he said. "Rameaux told me. Lord! such luck to come to us!"
"Mother will never
go, Bowles."
"Then leave her.
Other sons and daughters marry and go away. Cousin Sarah can take care of her.
We'll pay the mortgage, and pay Sarah for tendin' her. Mother's rugged. She may
live twenty year yet. 'Tisn't fair you should slave forever."
He said much more, but
Jane scarcely heard him. She sat in the kitchen without moving long after he
had gone to bed. Somehow the raw-edged seersucker coats seemed to fill up her
mind, and to bulk down, down, through her whole life. Rameaux had pointed to
them angrily last night, and said, "Send that trash back to- morrow."
He wanted her to marry
him to-morrow; to pack up their things, and start for Louisiana next Monday. He
would stop in New York to buy her some gowns to please his own taste. "A
red silk gown and a black-plumed hat."
"Think of me in
red silk and plumes!" thought Miss Jane, tears of sheer delight standing
in her eyes.
Her mother coughed
hard, and called to her several times, while she sat there, to bring her
medicine. She always needed care in the night. Cousin Sarah was a high-tempered
woman and slept heavily.
When Bowles came down
in the morning, he found his slice of leaden pie and greasy dough-nut, as
usual, on a plate on the bare table. Jane was at the machine, a heap of
finished seersucker coats beside her.
"I guess you were
at work all night?" he said.
"I couldn't
sleep," she answered.
"Are you goin' to
finish all them things?"
She nodded, turning her
wheel faster.
He looked at her face
for a minute or two, and then, for some reason, walked behind her, where he
could not see it. "Jane," he said, "are you always goin' on
makin' coats?"
The wheel stopped, the
thread broke. Bowles waited, silent.
"Yes," she
said, in a low voice. Then she threaded her needle again.
"What else should
she do?" said Mrs. Pettit, coming into the kitchen.
Neither of her children
answered her; but presently Jane got up suddenly, and going to her, gave her a
fond hug and kiss.
Mrs. Pettit started,
amazed. It was a new thing in her life; but, on the whole, she liked it.
Ten days later Bowles
left North Leedom for Louisiana. His hopes were more than answered there.
Lamonte did have the promised boom, and he made money fast. In a few years he
married Lola. But long before that time he paid off the mortgage. He did it for
Jane's sake. Had not his life been successful, while her's* was a miserable
failure? His heart ached with pity for her.
But we are not sure
that her life was at all miserable. From that night in which she made her
choice, a singular change came over her. For thirty years she had done her dull
duty faithfully, because, in fact, there was nothing else to do.
Then, as it seemed to
her, the gates were opened, the kingdoms of the world were laid at her feet.
Of her own will she had
given them up.
God only knew what the
sacrifice cost her, but after it she was a different and a live creature. She
was like a woman who has given birth to a child. She had struck her note in
life, and it was not a mean one. She now looked out on the world with
authoritative, understanding eyes; even her step became firm and decided.
When one climbs a
height, the pure air expands the lungs ever after. We always carry with us down
in the valley the wide outlook which we have seen but once.
Jane had now a life
quite outside of North Leedom and the raw- edged coats. When the pain and soreness
had passed, her struggle began to exert pleasant and tender influences on her.
Stout, jolly Rameaux, with his twinkling black eyes and black mustache, began
to take on the graces and charms of all the heroes of romance. When she read in
the magazines a poem or love story, her eyes would fill with a tender light,
and she would whisper, "I, too; I, too!" When she saw mothers caress
their children, she fancied she felt Lola's head again on her breast, and her
heart throbbed with happiness.
After her mother died,
she tried to bring into her life some of the things of which Bowles had told
her of his home in Lamonte. She planted roses in the yard; she covered her
table with a white cloth; and sometimes a bit of savory meat found its way
there. She visited her neighbors; she read novels; she joked in a scared way.
On the occasion of her
one visit to New Bedford she went alone to a retail shop, and, blushing, asked
to be shown some crimson silk and black-plumed hats. She fingered them
wistfully.
"Are they for a
young lady?" asked the shop-woman.
"Yes--for a young
lady," said Jane, in a low voice. She held them a moment longer, and then,
with a sigh, went out.
Soon after this,
Bowles, who was a bad correspondent, suddenly appeared one day, bringing one of
his girls, Jenny, with him. "Yes, she looks peaked," he said that
night as they sat on the porch, after Jane had lovingly put the child to sleep
in her own bed. "The doctor said she ought to have bracing air for a year
or two. I told him I'd bring her to you. We've got four, and she's your
name-sake. She does not look like the Pettits, though."
"Her eyes are like
Lola's father's," said Jane, hesitating. "Is Mr. Rameaux well?"
"God bless me!
Didn't I tell you the old gentleman was gone? Died in Cuba last spring."
"Died--last
spring?"
Bowles, who was about
to add that too much bad whiskey had hastened his end, caught sight of her
face, and with a sudden remembrance stopped short, and softly whistled to
himself.
"Yes, in
Cuba," he said, awkwardly. "Well, Jane, I was all right in bringing
Jenny to you? You'll take care of the chick?"
"As if she were my
own," she said. "I thank you, Bowles."
Soon afterward she went
to her own room, and kneeling by the bed, kissed the child's face and hands
passionately.
"She is very like
him," she thought, opening, as she did every night, a little box in which
were some yellow flowers. She fancied there was still a faint fragrance
breathing from them. "We will know each other in heaven," she said,
with a sigh, as she closed the box.
But it may be as well,
perhaps, that in this too she will be disappointed.