Read Obscure Destinies Page 3

Rosicky said nothing. He found a bib apron on a nail behind the

  kitchen door. He slipped it over his head and then took Polly by

  her two elbows and pushed her gently toward the door of her own

  room. "I washed up de kitchen many times for my wife, when de

  babies was sick or somethin'. You go an' make yourself look nice.

  I like you to look prettier'n any of dem town girls when you go in.

  De young folks must have some fun, an' I'm goin' to look out fur

  you, Polly."

  That kind, reassuring grip on her elbows, the old man's funny

  bright eyes, made Polly want to drop her head on his shoulder for a

  second. She restrained herself, but she lingered in his grasp at

  the door of her room, murmuring tearfully: "You always lived in

  the city when you were young, didn't you? Don't you ever get

  lonesome out here?"

  As she turned round to him, her hand fell naturally into his, and

  he stood holding it and smiling into her face with his peculiar,

  knowing, indulgent smile without a shadow of reproach in it. "Dem

  big cities is all right fur de rich, but dey is terrible hard fur

  de poor."

  "I don't know. Sometimes I think I'd like to take a chance. You

  lived in New York, didn't you?"

  "An' London. Da's bigger still. I learned my trade dere. Here's

  Rudolph comin', you better hurry."

  "Will you tell me about London some time?"

  "Maybe. Only I ain't no talker, Polly. Run an' dress yourself

  up."

  The bedroom door closed behind her, and Rudolph came in from the

  outside, looking anxious. He had seen the car and was sorry any of

  his family should come just then. Supper hadn't been a very

  pleasant occasion. Halting in the doorway, he saw his father in a

  kitchen apron, carrying dishes to the sink. He flushed crimson and

  something flashed in his eye. Rosicky held up a warning finger.

  "I brought de car over fur you an' Polly to go to de picture show,

  an' I made her let me finish here so you won't be late. You go put

  on a clean shirt, quick!"

  "But don't the boys want the car, Father?"

  "Not tonight dey don't." Rosicky fumbled under his apron and found

  his pants pocket. He took out a silver dollar and said in a

  hurried whisper: "You go an' buy dat girl some ice cream an' candy

  tonight, like you was courtin'. She's awful good friends wid me."

  Rudolph was very short of cash, but he took the money as if it hurt

  him. There had been a crop failure all over the county. He had

  more than once been sorry he'd married this year.

  In a few minutes the young people came out, looking clean and a

  little stiff. Rosicky hurried them off, and then he took his own

  time with the dishes. He scoured the pots and pans and put away

  the milk and swept the kitchen. He put some coal in the stove and

  shut off the draughts, so the place would be warm for them when

  they got home late at night. Then he sat down and had a pipe and

  listened to the clock tick.

  Generally speaking, marrying an American girl was certainly a risk.

  A Czech should marry a Czech. It was lucky that Polly was the

  daughter of a poor widow woman; Rudolph was proud, and if she had a

  prosperous family to throw up at him, they could never make it go.

  Polly was one of four sisters, and they all worked; one was book-

  keeper in the bank, one taught music, and Polly and her younger

  sister had been clerks, like Miss Pearl. All four of them were

  musical, had pretty voices, and sang in the Methodist choir, which

  the eldest sister directed.

  Polly missed the sociability of a store position. She missed the

  choir, and the company of her sisters. She didn't dislike

  housework, but she disliked so much of it. Rosicky was a little

  anxious about this pair. He was afraid Polly would grow so

  discontented that Rudy would quit the farm and take a factory job

  in Omaha. He had worked for a winter up there, two years ago, to

  get money to marry on. He had done very well, and they would

  always take him back at the stockyards. But to Rosicky that meant

  the end of everything for his son. To be a landless man was to be

  a wage-earner, a slave, all your life; to have nothing, to be

  nothing.

  Rosicky thought he would come over and do a little carpentering for

  Polly after the New Year. He guessed she needed jollying. Rudolph

  was a serious sort of chap, serious in love and serious about his

  work.

  Rosicky shook out his pipe and walked home across the fields.

  Ahead of him the lamplight shone from his kitchen windows. Suppose

  he were still in a tailor shop on Vesey Street, with a bunch of

  pale, narrow-chested sons working on machines, all coming home

  tired and sullen to eat supper in a kitchen that was a parlour

  also; with another crowded, angry family quarrelling just across

  the dumb-waiter shaft, and squeaking pulleys at the windows where

  dirty washings hung on dirty lines above a court full of old brooms

  and mops and ash-cans. . . .

  He stopped by the windmill to look up at the frosty winter stars

  and draw a long breath before he went inside. That kitchen with

  the shining windows was dear to him; but the sleeping fields and

  bright stars and the noble darkness were dearer still.

  V

  On the day before Christmas the weather set in very cold; no snow,

  but a bitter, biting wind that whistled and sang over the flat land

  and lashed one's face like fine wires. There was baking going on

  in the Rosicky kitchen all day, and Rosicky sat inside, making over

  a coat that Albert had outgrown into an overcoat for John. Mary

  had a big red geranium in bloom for Christmas, and a row of

  Jerusalem cherry trees, full of berries. It was the first year she

  had ever grown these; Doctor Ed brought her the seeds from Omaha

  when he went to some medical convention. They reminded Rosicky of

  plants he had seen in England; and all afternoon, as he stitched,

  he sat thinking about those two years in London, which his mind

  usually shrank from even after all this while.

  He was a lad of eighteen when he dropped down into London, with no

  money and no connexions except the address of a cousin who was

  supposed to be working at a confectioner's. When he went to the

  pastry shop, however, he found that the cousin had gone to America.

  Anton tramped the streets for several days, sleeping in doorways

  and on the Embankment, until he was in utter despair. He knew no

  English, and the sound of the strange language all about him

  confused him. By chance he met a poor German tailor who had

  learned his trade in Vienna, and could speak a little Czech. This

  tailor, Lifschnitz, kept a repair shop in a Cheapside basement,

  underneath a cobbler. He didn't much need an apprentice, but he

  was sorry for the boy and took him in for no wages but his keep and

  what he could pick up. The pickings were supposed to be coppers

  given you when you took work home to a customer. But most of the

  customers called for their clothes themselves, and the coppers that
r />   came Anton's way were very few. He had, however, a place to sleep.

  The tailor's family lived upstairs in three rooms; a kitchen, a

  bedroom, where Lifschnitz and his wife and five children slept, and

  a living-room. Two corners of this living-room were curtained off

  for lodgers; in one Rosicky slept on an old horsehair sofa, with a

  feather quilt to wrap himself in. The other corner was rented to a

  wretched, dirty boy, who was studying the violin. He actually

  practised there. Rosicky was dirty, too. There was no way to be

  anything else. Mrs. Lifschnitz got the water she cooked and washed

  with from a pump in a brick court, four flights down. There were

  bugs in the place, and multitudes of fleas, though the poor woman

  did the best she could. Rosicky knew she often went empty to give

  another potato or a spoonful of dripping to the two hungry, sad-

  eyed boys who lodged with her. He used to think he would never get

  out of there, never get a clean shirt to his back again. What

  would he do, he wondered, when his clothes actually dropped to

  pieces and the worn cloth wouldn't hold patches any longer?

  It was still early when the old farmer put aside his sewing and his

  recollections. The sky had been a dark grey all day, with not a

  gleam of sun, and the light failed at four o'clock. He went to

  shave and change his shirt while the turkey was roasting. Rudolph

  and Polly were coming over for supper.

  After supper they sat round in the kitchen, and the younger boys

  were saying how sorry they were it hadn't snowed. Everybody was

  sorry. They wanted a deep snow that would lie long and keep the

  wheat warm, and leave the ground soaked when it melted.

  "Yes, sir!" Rudolph broke out fiercely; "if we have another dry

  year like last year, there's going to be hard times in this

  country."

  Rosicky filled his pipe. "You boys don't know what hard times is.

  You don't owe nobody, you got plenty to eat an' keep warm, an'

  plenty water to keep clean. When you got them, you can't have it

  very hard."

  Rudolph frowned, opened and shut his big right hand, and dropped it

  clenched upon his knee. "I've got to have a good deal more than

  that, Father, or I'll quit this farming gamble. I can always make

  good wages railroading, or at the packing house, and be sure of my

  money."

  "Maybe so," his father answered dryly.

  Mary, who had just come in from the pantry and was wiping her hands

  on the roller towel, thought Rudy and his father were getting too

  serious. She brought her darning-basket and sat down in the middle

  of the group.

  "I ain't much afraid of hard times, Rudy," she said heartily.

  "We've had a plenty, but we've always come through. Your father

  wouldn't never take nothing very hard, not even hard times. I got

  a mind to tell you a story on him. Maybe you boys can't hardly

  remember the year we had that terrible hot wind, that burned

  everything up on the Fourth of July? All the corn an' the gardens.

  An' that was in the days when we didn't have alfalfa yet,--I guess

  it wasn't invented.

  "Well, that very day your father was out cultivatin' corn, and I

  was here in the kitchen makin' plum preserves. We had bushels of

  plums that year. I noticed it was terrible hot, but it's always

  hot in the kitchen when you're preservin', an' I was too busy with

  my plums to mind. Anton come in from the field about three

  o'clock, an' I asked him what was the matter.

  "'Nothin',' he says, 'but it's pretty hot, an' I think I won't work

  no more today.' He stood round for a few minutes, an' then he

  says: 'Ain't you near through? I want you should git up a nice

  supper for us tonight. It's Fourth of July.'

  "I told him to git along, that I was right in the middle of

  preservin', but the plums would taste good on hot biscuit. 'I'm

  goin' to have fried chicken, too,' he says, and he went off an'

  killed a couple. You three oldest boys was little fellers, playin'

  round outside, real hot an' sweaty, an' your father took you to the

  horse tank down by the windmill an' took off your clothes an' put

  you in. Them two box-elder trees was little then, but they made

  shade over the tank. Then he took off all his own clothes, an' got

  in with you. While he was playin' in the water with you, the

  Methodist preacher drove into our place to say how all the

  neighbours was goin' to meet at the schoolhouse that night, to pray

  for rain. He drove right to the windmill, of course, and there was

  your father and you three with no clothes on. I was in the kitchen

  door, an' I had to laugh, for the preacher acted like he ain't

  never seen a naked man before. He surely was embarrassed, an' your

  father couldn't git to his clothes; they was all hangin' up on the

  windmill to let the sweat dry out of 'em. So he laid in the tank

  where he was, an' put one of you boys on top of him to cover him up

  a little, an' talked to the preacher.

  "When you got through playin' in the water, he put clean clothes on

  you and a clean shirt on himself, an' by that time I'd begun to get

  supper. He says: 'It's too hot in here to eat comfortable. Let's

  have a picnic in the orchard. We'll eat our supper behind the

  mulberry hedge, under them linden trees.'

  "So he carried our supper down, an' a bottle of my wild-grape wine,

  an' everything tasted good, I can tell you. The wind got cooler as

  the sun was goin' down, and it turned out pleasant, only I noticed

  how the leaves was curled up on the linden trees. That made me

  think, an' I asked your father if that hot wind all day hadn't been

  terrible hard on the gardens an' the corn.

  "'Corn,' he says, 'there ain't no corn.'

  "'What you talkin' about?' I said. 'Ain't we got forty acres?'

  "'We ain't got an ear,' he says, 'nor nobody else ain't got none.

  All the corn in this country was cooked by three o'clock today,

  like you'd roasted it in an oven.'

  "'You mean you won't get no crop at all?' I asked him. I couldn't

  believe it, after he'd worked so hard.

  "'No crop this year,' he says. 'That's why we're havin' a picnic.

  We might as well enjoy what we got.'

  "An' that's how your father behaved, when all the neighbours was so

  discouraged they couldn't look you in the face. An' we enjoyed

  ourselves that year, poor as we was, an' our neighbours wasn't a

  bit better off for bein' miserable. Some of 'em grieved till they

  got poor digestions and couldn't relish what they did have."

  The younger boys said they thought their father had the best of it.

  But Rudolf was thinking that, all the same, the neighbours had

  managed to get ahead more, in the fifteen years since that time.

  There must be something wrong about his father's way of doing

  things. He wished he knew what was going on in the back of Polly's

  mind. He knew she liked his father, but he knew, too, that she was

  afraid of something. When his mother sent over coffee-cake or

  prune tarts or a loaf of fresh bread, Polly seemed to regard the
m

  with a certain suspicion. When she observed to him that his

  brothers had nice manners, her tone implied that it was remarkable

  they should have. With his mother she was stiff and on her guard.

  Mary's hearty frankness and gusts of good humour irritated her.

  Polly was afraid of being unusual or conspicuous in any way, of

  being "ordinary," as she said!

  When Mary had finished her story, Rosicky laid aside his pipe.

  "You boys like me to tell you about some of dem hard times I been

  through in London? Warmly encouraged, he sat rubbing his forehead

  along the deep creases. It was bothersome to tell a long story in

  English (he nearly always talked to the boys in Czech), but he

  wanted Polly to hear this one.

  "Well, you know about dat tailor shop I worked in in London? I had

  one Christmas dere I ain't never forgot. Times was awful bad

  before Christmas; de boss ain't got much work, an' have it awful

  hard to pay his rent. It ain't so much fun, bein' poor in a big

  city like London, I'll say! All de windows is full of good t'ings

  to eat, an' all de pushcarts in de streets is full, an' you smell

  'em all de time, an' you ain't got no money,--not a damn bit. I

  didn't mind de cold so much, though I didn't have no overcoat,

  chust a short jacket I'd outgrowed so it wouldn't meet on me, an'

  my hands was chapped raw. But I always had a good appetite, like

  you all know, an' de sight of dem pork pies in de windows was awful

  fur me!

  "Day before Christmas was terrible foggy dat year, an' dat fog gits

  into your bones and makes you all damp like. Mrs. Lifschnitz

  didn't give us nothin' but a little bread an' drippin' for supper,

  because she was savin' to try for to give us a good dinner on

  Christmas Day. After supper de boss say I can go an' enjoy myself,

  so I went into de streets to listen to de Christmas singers. Dey

  sing old songs an' make very nice music, an' I run round after dem

  a good ways, till I got awful hungry. I t'ink maybe if I go home,

  I can sleep till morning an' forgit my belly.

  "I went into my corner real quiet, and roll up in my fedder quilt.

  But I ain't got my head down, till I smell somet'ing good. Seem

  like it git stronger an' stronger, an' I can't git to sleep noway.

  I can't understand dat smell. Dere was a gas light in a hall

  across de court, dat always shine in at my window a little. I got

  up an' look round. I got a little wooden box in my corner fur a

  stool, 'cause I ain't got no chair. I picks up dat box, and under

  it dere is a roast goose on a platter! I can't believe my eyes. I

  carry it to de window where de light comes in, an' touch it and

  smell it to find out, an' den I taste it to be sure. I say, I will

  eat chust one little bite of dat goose, so I can go to sleep, and

  tomorrow I won't eat none at all. But I tell you, boys, when I

  stop, one half of dat goose was gone!"

  The narrator bowed his head, and the boys shouted. But little

  Josephine slipped behind his chair and kissed him on the neck

  beneath his ear.

  "Poor little Papa, I don't want him to be hungry!"

  "Da's long ago, child. I ain't never been hungry since I had your

  mudder to cook fur me."

  "Go on and tell us the rest, please," said Polly.

  "Well, when I come to realize what I done, of course, I felt

  terrible. I felt better in de stomach, but very bad in de heart.

  I set on my bed wid dat platter on my knees, an' it all come to me;

  how hard dat poor woman save to buy dat goose, and how she get some

  neighbour to cook it dat got more fire, an' how she put it in my

  corner to keep it away from dem hungry children. Dey was a old

  carpet hung up to shut my corner off, an' de children wasn't

  allowed to go in dere. An' I know she put it in my corner because

  she trust me more'n she did de violin boy. I can't stand it to

  face her after I spoil de Christmas. So I put on my shoes and go

  out into de city. I tell myself I better throw myself in de river;