II.
When Sim Burns woke the next morning he felt a sharper twinge ofremorse. It was not a broad or well-defined feeling--just a sense thatho had been unduly irritable, not that on the whole he was not in theright. Little Pet lay with the warm June sunshine filling his baby eyes,curiously content in striking at flies that buzzed around his littlemouth.
The man thrust his dirty, naked feet into his huge boots, and, withoutwashing his face or combing his hair, went out to the barn to do hischores.
He was a type of the average prairie farmer, and his whole surroundingwas typical of the time. He had a quarter-section of fine level land,bought with incredible toil, but his house was a little box-likestructure, costing, perhaps, five hundred dollars. It had three roomsand the ever-present summer kitchen attached to the back. It wasunpainted and had no touch of beauty--a mere box.
His stable was built of slabs and banked and covered with straw. Itlooked like a den, was low and long, and had but one door in the end.The cow-yard held ten or fifteen cattle of various kinds, while a fewcalves were bawling from a pen near by. Behind the barn, on the west andnorth, was a fringe of willows forming a "wind-break." A few broken anddiscouraged fruit trees standing here and there among the weeds formedthe garden. In short, he was spoken of by his neighbors as "ahard-working cuss, and tol'ably well fixed."
No grace had come or ever could come into his life. Back of him weregenerations of men like himself, whose main business had been to workhard, live miserably, and beget children to take their places when theydied.
His courtship had been delayed so long on account of poverty that itbrought little of humanizing emotion into his life. He never mentionedhis love-life now, or if he did, it was only to sneer obscenely at it.He had long since ceased to kiss his wife or even speak kindly to her.There was no longer any sanctity to life or love. He chewed tobacco andtoiled on from year to year without any very clearly defined idea of thefuture. His life was mainly regulated from without.
He was tall, dark and strong, in a flat-chested, slouching sort of way,and had grown neglectful of even decency in his dress. He wore theAmerican farmer's customary outfit of rough brown pants, hickory shirtand greasy wool hat. It differed from his neighbors' mainly in being alittle dirtier and more ragged. His grimy hands were broad and strong asthe clutch of a bear, and he was a "terrible feller to turn off work,"as Councill said. "I 'druther have Sim Burns work for me one day thansome men three. He's a linger." He worked with unusual speed thismorning, and ended by milking all the cows himself as a sort of savagepenance for his misdeeds the previous evening, muttering inself-defense:
"Seems 's if ever' cussid thing piles on to me at once. That corn, theroad-tax, and hayin' comin' on, and now _she_ gits her back up"----
When he went back to the well he sloshed himself thoroughly in thehorse-trough and went to the house. He found breakfast ready, but hiswife was not in sight. The older children were clamoring around theuninviting breakfast table, spread with cheap ware and with boiledpotatoes and fried salt pork as the principal dishes.
"Where's y'r ma?" he asked, with a threatening note in his voice, as hesat down by the table.
"She's in the bedroom."
He rose and pushed open the door. The mother sat with the babe in herlap, looking out of the window down across the superb field of timothy,moving like a lake of purple water. She did not look around. She onlygrew rigid. Her thin neck throbbed with the pulsing of blood to herhead.
"What's got into you _now_?" he said, brutally. "Don't be a fool. Comeout and eat breakfast with me, an' take care o' y'r young ones."
She neither moved nor made a sound. With an oath he turned on his heeland went out to the table. Eating his breakfast in his usual wolfishfashion, he went out into the hot sun with his team and riding-plow, nota little disturbed by this new phase of his wife's "cantankerousness."He plowed steadily and sullenly all the forenoon, in the terrific heatand dust. The air was full of tempestuous threats, still and sultry, oneof those days when work is a punishment. When he came in at noon hefound things the same--dinner on the table, but his wife out in thegarden with the youngest child.
"I c'n stand it as long as _she_ can," he said to himself, in thehearing of the children, as he pushed back from the table and went backto work.
When he had finished the field of corn it was after sundown, and he cameup to the house, hot, dusty, his shirt wringing wet with sweat, and hisneck aching with the work of looking down all day at the corn-rows. Hismood was still stern. The multitudinous lift, and stir, and sheen of thewide, green field had been lost upon him.
"I wonder if she's milked them cows," he muttered to himself. He gave asigh of relief to find she had. But she had done so not for his sake,but for the sake of the poor, patient dumb brutes.
When he went to the bedroom after supper, he found that the cradle andhis wife's few little boxes and parcels--poor, pathetic properties!--hadbeen removed to the garret, which they called a chamber, and he knew hewas to sleep alone again.
"She'll git over it, I guess." He was very tired, but he didn't feelquite comfortable enough to sleep. The air was oppressive. His shirt,wet in places, and stiff with dust in other places, oppressed him morethan usual; so he rose and removed it, getting a clean one out of adrawer. This was an unusual thing for him, for he usually slept in thesame shirt which he wore in his day's work; but it was Saturday night,and he felt justified in the extravagance.
In the meanwhile poor Lucretia was brooding over her life in a mostdangerous fashion. All she had done and suffered for Simeon Burns cameback to her till she wondered how she had endured it all. All day longin the midst of the glorious summer landscape she brooded.
"I hate him," she thought, with a fierce blazing up through the murk ofher musing. "I hate t' live. But they ain't no hope. I'm tied down. Ican't leave the children, and I ain't got no money. I couldn't make aliving out in the world. I ain't never seen anything an' don't knowanything."
She was too simple and too unknowing to speculate on the loss of herbeauty, which would have brought her competency once--if sold in theright market. As she lay in her little attic bed, she was still sullenlythinking, wearily thinking of her life. She thought of a poor old horsewhich Sim had bought once, years before, and put to the plough when itwas too old and weak to work. She could see her again as in a vision,that poor old mare, with sad head drooping, toiling, toiling, till atlast she could no longer move, and lying down under the harness in thefurrow, groaned under the whip--and died.
Then she wondered if her own numbness and despair meant death, and sheheld her breath to think harder upon it. She concluded at last, grimly,that she didn't care--only for the children.
The air was frightfully close in the little attic, and she heard the lowmutter of the rising storm in the west. She forgot her troubles alittle, listening to the far-off gigantic footsteps of the tempest.
_Boom, boom, boom_, it broke nearer and nearer, as if a vast cordon ofcannon was being drawn around the horizon. Yet she was conscious only ofpleasure. She had no fear. At last came the sweep of cool, fragrantstorm-wind, a short and sudden dash of rain, and then, in the cool,sweet hush which followed, the worn and weary woman fell into a deepsleep.