on until they met that sky. The horses worked here in summer; the
neighbours passed on their way to town; and over yonder, in the
cornfield, Rosicky's own cattle would be eating fodder as winter
came on. Nothing could be more un-deathlike than this place;
nothing could be more right for a man who had helped to do the work
of great cities and had always longed for the open country and had
got to it at last. Rosicky's life seemed to him complete and
beautiful.
New York, 1928
OLD MRS. HARRIS
I
Mrs. David Rosen, cross-stitch in hand, sat looking out of the
window across her own green lawn to the ragged, sunburned back yard
of her neighbours on the right. Occasionally she glanced anxiously
over her shoulder toward her shining kitchen, with a black and
white linoleum floor in big squares, like a marble pavement.
"Will dat woman never go?" she muttered impatiently, just under her
breath. She spoke with a slight accent--it affected only her th's,
and, occasionally, the letter v. But people in Skyline thought
this unfortunate, in a woman whose superiority they recognized.
Mrs. Rosen ran out to move the sprinkler to another spot on the
lawn, and in doing so she saw what she had been waiting to see.
From the house next door a tall, handsome woman emerged, dressed in
white broadcloth and a hat with white lilacs; she carried a
sunshade and walked with a free, energetic step, as if she were
going out on a pleasant errand.
Mrs. Rosen darted quickly back into the house, lest her neighbour
should hail her and stop to talk. She herself was in her kitchen
housework dress, a crisp blue chambray which fitted smoothly over
her tightly corseted figure, and her lustrous black hair was done
in two smooth braids, wound flat at the back of her head, like a
braided rug. She did not stop for a hat--her dark, ruddy, salmon-
tinted skin had little to fear from the sun. She opened the half-
closed oven door and took out a symmetrically plaited coffee-cake,
beautifully browned, delicately peppered over with poppy seeds,
with sugary margins about the twists. On the kitchen table a tray
stood ready with cups and saucers. She wrapped the cake in a
napkin, snatched up a little French coffee-pot with a black wooden
handle, and ran across her green lawn, through the alley-way and
the sandy, unkept yard next door, and entered her neighbour's house
by the kitchen.
The kitchen was hot and empty, full of the untempered afternoon
sun. A door stood open into the next room; a cluttered, hideous
room, yet somehow homely. There, beside a goods-box covered with
figured oilcloth, stood an old woman in a brown calico dress,
washing her hot face and neck at a tin basin. She stood with her
feet wide apart, in an attitude of profound weariness. She started
guiltily as the visitor entered.
"Don't let me disturb you, Grandma," called Mrs. Rosen. "I always
have my coffee at dis hour in the afternoon. I was just about to
sit down to it when I thought: 'I will run over and see if Grandma
Harris won't take a cup with me.' I hate to drink my coffee
alone."
Grandma looked troubled,--at a loss. She folded her towel and
concealed it behind a curtain hung across the corner of the room to
make a poor sort of closet. The old lady was always composed in
manner, but it was clear that she felt embarrassment.
"Thank you, Mrs. Rosen. What a pity Victoria just this minute went
down town!"
"But dis time I came to see you yourself, Grandma. Don't let me
disturb you. Sit down there in your own rocker, and I will put my
tray on this little chair between us, so!"
Mrs. Harris sat down in her black wooden rocking-chair with curved
arms and a faded cretonne pillow on the wooden seat. It stood in
the corner beside a narrow spindle-frame lounge. She looked on
silently while Mrs. Rosen uncovered the cake and delicately broke
it with her plump, smooth, dusky-red hands. The old lady did not
seem pleased,--seemed uncertain and apprehensive, indeed. But she
was not fussy or fidgety. She had the kind of quiet, intensely
quiet, dignity that comes from complete resignation to the chances
of life. She watched Mrs. Rosen's deft hands out of grave, steady
brown eyes.
"Dis is Mr. Rosen's favourite coffee-cake, Grandma, and I want you
to try it. You are such a good cook yourself, I would like your
opinion of my cake."
"It's very nice, ma'am," said Mrs. Harris politely, but without
enthusiasm.
"And you aren't drinking your coffee; do you like more cream in
it?"
"No, thank you. I'm letting it cool a little. I generally drink
it that way."
"Of course she does," thought Mrs. Rosen, "since she never has her
coffee until all the family are done breakfast!"
Mrs. Rosen had brought Grandma Harris coffee-cake time and again,
but she knew that Grandma merely tasted it and saved it for her
daughter Victoria, who was as fond of sweets as her own children,
and jealous about them, moreover,--couldn't bear that special
dainties should come into the house for anyone but herself. Mrs.
Rosen, vexed at her failures, had determined that just once she
would take a cake to "de old lady Harris," and with her own eyes
see her eat it. The result was not all she had hoped. Receiving a
visitor alone, unsupervised by her daughter, having cake and coffee
that should properly be saved for Victoria, was all so irregular
that Mrs. Harris could not enjoy it. Mrs. Rosen doubted if she
tasted the cake as she swallowed it,--certainly she ate it without
relish, as a hollow form. But Mrs. Rosen enjoyed her own cake, at
any rate, and she was glad of an opportunity to sit quietly and
look at Grandmother, who was more interesting to her than the
handsome Victoria.
It was a queer place to be having coffee, when Mrs. Rosen liked
order and comeliness so much: a hideous, cluttered room, furnished
with a rocking-horse, a sewing-machine, an empty baby-buggy. A
walnut table stood against a blind window, piled high with old
magazines and tattered books, and children's caps and coats. There
was a wash-stand (two wash-stands, if you counted the oilcloth-
covered box as one). A corner of the room was curtained off with
some black-and-red-striped cotton goods, for a clothes closet. In
another corner was the wooden lounge with a thin mattress and a red
calico spread which was Grandma's bed. Beside it was her wooden
rocking-chair, and the little splint-bottom chair with the legs
sawed short on which her darning-basket usually stood, but which
Mrs. Rosen was now using for a tea-table.
The old lady was always impressive, Mrs. Rosen was thinking,--one
could not say why. Perhaps it was the way she held her head,--so
simply, unprotesting and unprotected; or the gravity of her large,
deep-set brown eyes, a warm, reddish brown, though their look,
always direct, seemed to ask nothi
ng and hope for nothing. They
were not cold, but inscrutable, with no kindling gleam of
intercourse in them. There was the kind of nobility about her head
that there is about an old lion's: an absence of self-consciousness,
vanity, preoccupation--something absolute. Her grey hair was parted
in the middle, wound in two little horns over her ears, and done in
a little flat knot behind. Her mouth was large and composed,--
resigned, the corners drooping. Mrs. Rosen had very seldom heard
her laugh (and then it was a gentle, polite laugh which meant only
politeness). But she had observed that whenever Mrs. Harris's
grandchildren were about, tumbling all over her, asking for cookies,
teasing her to read to them, the old lady looked happy.
As she drank her coffee, Mrs. Rosen tried one subject after another
to engage Mrs. Harris's attention.
"Do you feel this hot weather, Grandma? I am afraid you are over
the stove too much. Let those naughty children have a cold lunch
occasionally."
"No'm, I don't mind the heat. It's apt to come on like this for a
spell in May. I don't feel the stove. I'm accustomed to it."
"Oh, so am I! But I get very impatient with my cooking in hot
weather. Do you miss your old home in Tennessee very much,
Grandma?"
"No'm, I can't say I do. Mr. Templeton thought Colorado was a
better place to bring up the children."
"But you had things much more comfortable down there, I'm sure.
These little wooden houses are too hot in summer."
"Yes'm, we were more comfortable. We had more room."
"And a flower-garden, and beautiful old trees, Mrs. Templeton told
me."
"Yes'm, we had a great deal of shade."
Mrs. Rosen felt that she was not getting anywhere. She almost
believed that Grandma thought she had come on an equivocal errand,
to spy out something in Victoria's absence. Well, perhaps she had!
Just for once she would like to get past the others to the real
grandmother,--and the real grandmother was on her guard, as always.
At this moment she heard a faint miaow. Mrs. Harris rose, lifting
herself by the wooden arms of her chair, said: "Excuse me," went
into the kitchen, and opened the screen door.
In walked a large, handsome, thickly furred Maltese cat, with long
whiskers and yellow eyes and a white star on his breast. He
preceded Grandmother, waited until she sat down. Then he sprang up
into her lap and settled himself comfortably in the folds of her
full-gathered calico skirt. He rested his chin in his deep bluish
fur and regarded Mrs. Rosen. It struck her that he held his head
in just the way Grandmother held hers. And Grandmother now became
more alive, as if some missing part of herself were restored.
"This is Blue Boy," she said, stroking him. "In winter, when the
screen door ain't on, he lets himself in. He stands up on his hind
legs and presses the thumb-latch with his paw, and just walks in
like anybody."
"He's your cat, isn't he, Grandma?" Mrs. Rosen couldn't help
prying just a little; if she could find but a single thing that was
Grandma's own!
"He's our cat," replied Mrs. Harris. "We're all very fond of him.
I expect he's Vickie's more'n anybody's."
"Of course!" groaned Mrs. Rosen to herself. "Dat Vickie is her
mother over again."
Here Mrs. Harris made her first unsolicited remark. "If you was to
be troubled with mice at any time, Mrs. Rosen, ask one of the boys
to bring Blue Boy over to you, and he'll clear them out. He's a
master mouser." She scratched the thick blue fur at the back of
his neck, and he began a deep purring. Mrs. Harris smiled. "We
call that spinning, back with us. Our children still say: 'Listen
to Blue Boy spin,' though none of 'em is ever heard a spinning-
wheel--except maybe Vickie remembers."
"Did you have a spinning-wheel in your own house, Grandma Harris?"
"Yes'm. Miss Sadie Crummer used to come and spin for us. She was
left with no home of her own, and it was to give her something to
do, as much as anything, that we had her. I spun a good deal
myself, in my young days." Grandmother stopped and put her hands
on the arms of her chair, as if to rise. "Did you hear a door
open? It might be Victoria."
"No, it was the wind shaking the screen door. Mrs. Templeton won't
be home yet. She is probably in my husband's store this minute,
ordering him about. All the merchants down town will take anything
from your daughter. She is very popular wid de gentlemen,
Grandma."
Mrs. Harris smiled complacently. "Yes'm. Victoria was always much
admired."
At this moment a chorus of laughter broke in upon the warm silence,
and a host of children, as it seemed to Mrs. Rosen, ran through the
yard. The hand-pump on the back porch, outside the kitchen door,
began to scrape and gurgle.
"It's the children, back from school," said Grandma. "They are
getting a cool drink."
"But where is the baby, Grandma?"
"Vickie took Hughie in his cart over to Mr. Holliday's yard, where
she studies. She's right good about minding him."
Mrs. Rosen was glad to hear that Vickie was good for something.
Three little boys came running in through the kitchen; the twins,
aged ten, and Ronald, aged six, who went to kindergarten. They
snatched off their caps and threw their jackets and school bags on
the table, the sewing-machine, the rocking-horse.
"Howdy do, Mrs. Rosen." They spoke to her nicely. They had nice
voices, nice faces, and were always courteous, like their father.
"We are going to play in our back yard with some of the boys,
Gram'ma," said one of the twins respectfully, and they ran out to
join a troop of schoolmates who were already shouting and racing
over that poor trampled back yard, strewn with velocipedes and
croquet mallets and toy wagons, which was such an eyesore to Mrs.
Rosen.
Mrs. Rosen got up and took her tray.
"Can't you stay a little, ma'am? Victoria will be here any
minute."
But her tone let Mrs. Rosen know that Grandma really wished her to
leave before Victoria returned.
A few moments after Mrs. Rosen had put the tray down in her own
kitchen, Victoria Templeton came up the wooden sidewalk, attended
by Mr. Rosen, who had quitted his store half an hour earlier than
usual for the pleasure of walking home with her. Mrs. Templeton
stopped by the picket fence to smile at the children playing in the
back yard,--and it was a real smile, she was glad to see them.
She called Ronald over to the fence to give him a kiss. He was hot
and sticky.
"Was your teacher nice today? Now run in and ask Grandma to wash
your face and put a clean waist on you."
II
That night Mrs. Harris got supper with an effort--had to drive
herself harder than usual. Mandy, the bound girl they had brought
with them from the South, noticed that the old lady was uncertain
; and short of breath. The hours from two to four, when Mrs. Harris
usually rested, had not been at all restful this afternoon. There
was an understood rule that Grandmother was not to receive visitors
alone. Mrs. Rosen's call, and her cake and coffee, were too much
out of the accepted order. Nervousness had prevented the old lady
from getting any repose during her visit.
After the rest of the family had left the supper table, she went
into the dining-room and took her place, but she ate very little.
She put away the food that was left, and then, while Mandy washed
the dishes, Grandma sat down in her rocking-chair in the dark and
dozed.
The three little boys came in from playing under the electric light
(arc lights had been but lately installed in Skyline) and began
begging Mrs. Harris to read Tom Sawyer to them. Grandmother loved
to read, anything at all, the Bible or the continued story in the
Chicago weekly paper. She roused herself, lit her brass "safety
lamp," and pulled her black rocker out of its corner to the wash-
stand (the table was too far away from her corner, and anyhow it
was completely covered with coats and school satchels). She put on
her old-fashioned silver-rimmed spectacles and began to read.
Ronald lay down on Grandmother's lounge bed, and the twins, Albert
and Adelbert, called Bert and Del, sat down against the wall, one
on a low box covered with felt, and the other on the little sawed-
off chair upon which Mrs. Rosen had served coffee. They looked
intently at Mrs. Harris, and she looked intently at the book.
Presently Vickie, the oldest grandchild, came in. She was fifteen.
Her mother was entertaining callers in the parlour, callers who
didn't interest Vickie, so she was on her way up to her own room by
the kitchen stairway.
Mrs. Harris looked up over her glasses. "Vickie, maybe you'd take
the book awhile, and I can do my darning."
"All right," said Vickie. Reading aloud was one of the things she
would always do toward the general comfort. She sat down by the
wash-stand and went on with the story. Grandmother got her
darning-basket and began to drive her needle across great knee-
holes in the boys' stockings. Sometimes she nodded for a moment,
and her hands fell into her lap. After a while the little boy on
the lounge went to sleep. But the twins sat upright, their hands
on their knees, their round brown eyes fastened upon Vickie, and
when there was anything funny, they giggled. They were chubby,
dark-skinned little boys, with round jolly faces, white teeth, and
yellow-brown eyes that were always bubbling with fun unless they
were sad,--even then their eyes never got red or weepy. Their
tears sparkled and fell; left no trace but a streak on the cheeks,
perhaps.
Presently old Mrs. Harris gave out a long snore of utter defeat.
She had been overcome at last. Vickie put down the book. "That's
enough for tonight. Grandmother's sleepy, and Ronald's fast
asleep. What'll we do with him?"
"Bert and me'll get him undressed," said Adelbert. The twins
roused the sleepy little boy and prodded him up the back stairway
to the bare room without window blinds, where he was put into his
cot beside their double bed. Vickie's room was across the narrow
hallway; not much bigger than a closet, but, anyway, it was her
own. She had a chair and an old dresser, and beside her bed was a
high stool which she used as a lamp-table,--she always read in bed.
After Vickie went upstairs, the house was quiet. Hughie, the baby,
was asleep in his mother's room, and Victoria herself, who still
treated her husband as if he were her "beau," had persuaded him to
take her down town to the ice-cream parlour. Grandmother's room,
between the kitchen and the dining-room, was rather like a passage-
way; but now that the children were upstairs and Victoria was off