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 Luck 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, which she had
read aloud to the children so many times; the passage where
Christiana and her band come to the arbour 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 playroom,--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, pore 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
heart-ache 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.
r />
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
TWO FRIENDS
I
Even in early youth, when the mind is so eager for the new and
untried, while it is still a stranger to faltering and fear, we yet
like to think that there are certain unalterable realities,
somewhere at the bottom of things. These anchors may be ideas; but
more often they are merely pictures, vivid memories, which in some
unaccountable and very personal way give us courage. The sea-
gulls, that seem so much creatures of the free wind and waves, that
are as homeless as the sea (able to rest upon the tides and ride
the storm, needing nothing but water and sky), at certain seasons
even they go back to something they have known before; to remote
islands and lonely ledges that are their breeding-grounds. The
restlessness of youth has such retreats, even though it may be
ashamed of them.
Long ago, before the invention of the motorcar (which has made more
changes in the world than the War, which indeed produced the
particular kind of war that happened just a hundred years after
Waterloo), in a little wooden town in a shallow Kansas river
valley, there lived two friends. They were "business men," the two
most prosperous and influential men in our community, the two men
whose affairs took them out into the world to big cities, who had
"connections" in St. Joseph and Chicago. In my childhood they
represented to me success and power.
R. E. Dillon was of Irish extraction, one of the dark Irish, with
glistening jet-black hair and moustache, and thick eyebrows. His
skin was very white, bluish on his shaven cheeks and chin. Shaving
must have been a difficult process for him, because there were no
smooth expanses for the razor to glide over. The bony structure of
his face was prominent and unusual; high cheek-bones, a bold Roman
nose, a chin cut by deep lines, with a hard dimple at the tip, a
jutting ridge over his eyes where his curly black eyebrows grew and
met. It was a face in many planes, as if the carver had whittled
and modelled and indented to see how far he could go. Yet on
meeting him what you saw was an imperious head on a rather small,
wiry man, a head held conspicuously and proudly erect, with a
carriage unmistakably arrogant and consciously superior. Dillon
had a musical, vibrating voice, and the changeable grey eye that is
peculiarly Irish. His full name, which he never used, was Robert
Emmet Dillon, so there must have been a certain feeling somewhere
back in his family.
He was the principal banker in our town, and proprietor of the
large general store next the bank; he owned farms up in the grass
country, and a fine ranch in the green timbered valley of the Caw.
He was, according to our standards, a rich man.
His friend, J. H. Trueman, was what we called a big cattleman.
Trueman was from Buffalo; his family were old residents there, and
he had come West as a young man because he was restless and
unconventional in his tastes. He was fully ten years older than
Dillon,--in his early fifties, when I knew him; large, heavy, very
slow in his movements, not given to exercise. His countenance was
as unmistakably American as Dillon's was not,--but American of that
period, not of this. He did not belong to the time of efficiency
and advertising and progressive methods. For any form of pushing
or boosting he had a cold, unqualified contempt. All this was in
his face,--heavy, immobile, rather melancholy, not remarkable in
any particular. But the moment one looked at him one felt
solidity, an entire absence of anything mean or small, easy
carelessness, courage, a high sense of honour.
These two men had been friends for ten years before I knew them,
and I knew them from the time I was ten until I was thirteen. I
saw them as often as I could, because they led more varied lives
than the other men in our town; one could look up to them. Dillon,
I believe, was the more intelligent. Trueman had, perhaps, a
better tradition, more background.
Dillon's bank and general store stood at the corner of Main Street
and a cross-street, and on this cross-street, two short blocks
away, my family lived. On my way to and from school, and going on
the countless errands that I was sent upon day and night, I always
passed Dillon's store. Its long, red brick wall, with no windows
except high overh
ead, ran possibly a hundred feet along the
sidewalk of the cross-street. The front door and show windows were
on Main Street, and the bank was next door. The board sidewalk
along that red brick wall was wider than any other piece of walk in
town, smoother, better laid, kept in perfect repair; very good to
walk on in a community where most things were flimsy. I liked the
store and the brick wall and the sidewalk because they were solid
and well built, and possibly I admired Dillon and Trueman for much
the same reason. They were secure and established. So many of our
citizens were nervous little hopper men, trying to get on. Dillon
and Trueman had got on; they stood with easy assurance on a deck
that was their own.
In the daytime one did not often see them together--each went about
his own affairs. But every evening they were both to be found at
Dillon's store. The bank, of course, was locked and dark before
the sun went down, but the store was always open until ten o'clock;
the clerks put in a long day. So did Dillon. He and his store
were one. He never acted as salesman, and he kept a cashier in the
wire-screened office at the back end of the store; but he was there
to be called on. The thrifty Swedes to the north, who were his
best customers, usually came to town and did their shopping after
dark--they didn't squander daylight hours in farming season. In
these evening visits with his customers, and on his drives in his
buckboard among the farms, Dillon learned all he needed to know
about how much money it was safe to advance a farmer who wanted to
feed cattle, or to buy a steam thrasher or build a new barn.
Every evening in winter, when I went to the post-office after
supper, I passed through Dillon's store instead of going round it,--
for the warmth and cheerfulness, and to catch sight of Mr. Dillon
and Mr. Trueman playing checkers in the office behind the wire
screening; both seated on high accountant's stools, with the
checker-board on the cashier's desk before them. I knew all
Dillon's clerks, and if they were not busy, I often lingered about
to talk to them; sat on one of the grocery counters and watched the
checker-players from a distance. I remember Mr. Dillon's hand used
to linger in the air above the board before he made a move; a well-
kept hand, white, marked with blue veins and streaks of strong
black hair. Trueman's hands rested on his knees under the desk
while he considered; he took a checker, set it down, then dropped
his hand on his knee again. He seldom made an unnecessary movement
with his hands or feet. Each of the men wore a ring on his little
finger. Mr. Dillon's was a large diamond solitaire set in a gold
claw, Trueman's the head of a Roman soldier cut in onyx and set in
pale twisted gold; it had been his father's, I believe.
Exactly at ten o'clock the store closed. Mr. Dillon went home to
his wife and family, to his roomy, comfortable house with a garden
and orchard and big stables. Mr. Trueman, who had long been a
widower, went to his office to begin the day over. He led a double
life, and until one or two o'clock in the morning entertained the
poker-players of our town. After everything was shut for the
night, a queer crowd drifted into Trueman's back office. The
company was seldom the same on two successive evenings, but there
were three tireless poker-players who always came: the billiard-
hall proprietor, with green-gold moustache and eyebrows, and big
white teeth; the horse-trader, who smelled of horses; the dandified
cashier of the bank that rivalled Dillon's. The gamblers met in
Trueman's place because a game that went on there was respectable,
was a social game, no matter how much money changed hands. If the
horse-trader or the crooked money-lender got over-heated and broke
loose a little, a look or a remark from Mr. Trueman would freeze
them up. And his remark was always the same: