IV.
It was hot and brilliant again the next morning as Douglass Radbourndrove up the road with Lily Graham, the teacher of the school in thelittle white school-house. It was blazing hot, even though not yet nineo'clock, and the young farmers plowing beside the fence looked longinglyand somewhat bitterly at Radbourn seated in a fine top-buggy beside abeautiful creature in lace and cambric.
Very beautiful the town-bred "school-ma'am" looked to those grimy,sweaty fellows, superb fellows, too, physically, with bare red arms andleather-colored faces. She was as if builded of the pink and whiteclouds soaring far up there in the morning sky. So cool, and sweet, anddainty.
As she came in sight, their dusty and sweaty shirts grew biting as thepoisoned shirt of the Norse myth, their bare feet in the brown dirt grewdistressingly flat and hoof-like, and their huge, dirty, brown, chappedand swollen hands grew so repulsive that the mere remote possibility ofsome time in the far future standing a chance of having an introductionto her caused them to wipe their palms on their trousers' legsstealthily.
Lycurgus Banks swore when he saw Radbourn. "That cuss thinks he's ol'hell this morning. He don't earn his living. But he's just the kind ofcuss to get holt of all the purty girls."
Others gazed with simple, sad wistfulness upon the slender figure, pale,sweet face, and dark eyes of the young girl, feeling that to have talkwith such a fairy-like creature was a happiness too great to ever betheir lot. And when she had passed they went back to work with a sighand feeling of loss.
As for Lily, she felt a pang of pity for these people. She looked atthis peculiar form of poverty and hardship much as the fragile, tendergirl of the city looks upon the men laying a gas-main in the streets.She felt, sympathetically, the heat and grime, and, though but thefaintest idea of what it meant to wear such clothing came to her, sheshuddered. Her eyes had been opened to these things by Radbourn, aclass-mate at the Seminary.
The young fellow knew that Lily was in love with him, and he madedistinct effort to keep the talk upon impersonal subjects. He liked hervery much, probably because she listened so well.
"Poor fellows," sighed Lily, almost unconsciously. "I hate to see themworking there in the dirt and hot sun. It seems a hopeless sort of life,doesn't it?"
"Oh, but this is the most beautiful part of the year," said Radbourn."Think of them in the mud, in the sleet; think of them husking corn inthe snow, a bitter wind blowing; think of them a month later in theharvest; think of them imprisoned here in winter!"
"Yes, it's dreadful! But I never felt it so keenly before. You haveopened my eyes to it. Of course, I've been on a farm, but not to livethere."
"Writers and orators have lied so long about 'the idyllic' in farm life,and said so much about the 'independent American farmer,' that hehimself has remained blind to the fact that he's one of thehardest-working and poorest-paid men in America. See the houses theylive in--hovels."
"Yes, yes, I know," said Lily; a look of deeper pain swept over herface. "And the fate of the poor women; oh, the fate of the women!"
"Yes, it's a matter of statistics," went on Radbourn, pitilessly, "thatthe wives of the American farmers fill our insane asylums. See what alife they lead, most of them; no music, no books. Seventeen hours a dayin a couple of small rooms--dens. Now, there is Sim Burns! What atravesty of a home! Yet there are a dozen just as bad in sight. He workslike a fiend--so does his wife--and what is their reward? Simply a holeto hibernate in and to sleep and eat in in summer. A dreary present anda well-nigh hopeless future. No, they have a future, if they knew it,and we must tell them."
"I know Mrs. Burns," Lily said, after a pause; "she sends severalchildren to my school. Poor, pathetic little things, half-clad andwistful-eyed. They make my heart ache; they are so hungry for love, andso quick to learn."
As they passed the Burns farm, they looked for the wife, but she was notto be seen. The children had evidently gone up to the little whiteschool-house at the head of the lane. Radbourn let the reins fall slackas he talked on. He did not look at the girl; his eyebrows were drawninto a look of gloomy pain.
"It ain't so much the grime that I abhor, nor the labor that crookstheir backs and makes their hands bludgeons. It's the horrible waste oflife involved in it all. I don't believe God intended a man to be bentto plow-handles like that, but that ain't the worst of it. The worst ofit is, these people live lives approaching automata. They becomemachines to serve others more lucky or more unscrupulous thanthemselves. What is the world of art, of music, of literature, to thesepoor devils--to Sim Burns and his wife there, for example? Or even tothe best of these farmers?"
The girl looked away over the shimmering lake of yellow-green corn. Achoking came into her throat. Her gloved hand trembled.
"What is such a life worth? It's all very comfortable for us to say,'They don't feel it.' How do we know what they feel? What do we know oftheir capacity for enjoyment of art and music? They never have leisureor opportunity. The master is very glad to be taught by preacher, andlawyer, and novelist, that his slaves are contented and never feel anylongings for a higher life. These people live lives but little higherthan their cattle--are _forced_ to live so. Their hopes and aspirationsare crushed out, their souls are twisted and deformed just as toiltwists and deforms their bodies. They are on the same level as the citylaborer. The very religion they hear is a soporific. They are taught tobe content here that they may be happy hereafter. Suppose there isn'tany hereafter?"
"Oh, don't say that, please!" Lily cried.
"But I don't _know_ that there is," he went on remorselessly, "and I doknow that these people are being robbed of something more than money, ofall that makes life worth living. The promise of milk and honey inCanaan is all very well, but I prefer to have mine here; then I'm sureof it."
"What can we do?" murmured the girl.
"Do? Rouse these people for one thing; preach _discontent_, a noblediscontent."
"It will only make them unhappy."
"No, it won't; not if you show them the way out. If it does, it's betterto be unhappy striving for higher things, like a man, than to be contentin a wallow like swine."
"But what _is_ the way out?"
This was sufficient to set Radbourn upon his hobby-horse. He outlinedhis plan of action--the abolition of all indirect taxes; the Statecontrol of all privileges the private ownership of which interfered withthe equal rights of all. He would utterly destroy speculative holdingsof the earth. He would have land everywhere brought to its best use, byappropriating all ground rents to the use of the State, etc., etc., towhich the girl listened with eager interest, but with only partialcomprehension.
As they neared the little school-house, a swarm of midgets in pinkdresses, pink sun-bonnets, and brown legs, came rushing to meet theirteacher, with that peculiar devotion the children in the country developfor a refined teacher.
Radbourn helped Lily out into the midst of the eager little scholars,who swarmed upon her like bees on a lump of sugar, till even Radbourn'sgravity gave way, and he smiled into her lifted eyes--an unusual smile,that strangely enough stopped the smile on her own lips, filling herface with a wistful shadow, and her breath came hard for a moment, andshe trembled.
She loved that cold, stern face, oh, so much! and to have him smile wasa pleasure that made her heart leap till she suffered a smothering pain.She turned to him to say:
"I am very thankful, Mr. Radbourn, for another pleasant ride," adding ina lower tone: "It was a very great pleasure; you always give me so much.I feel stronger and more hopeful."
"I'm glad you feel so. I was afraid I was prosy with my land-doctrine."
"Oh, no! Indeed no! You have given me a new hope; I am exalted with thethought; I shall try to think it all out and apply it."
And so they parted, the children looking on and slyly whispering amongthemselves. Radbourn looked back after awhile, but the bare little hivehad absorbed its little group, and was standing bleak as a tombstone andhot as a furnace on the naked plain in the blazing sun.<
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"America's pitiful boast!" said the young radical, looking back at it."Only a miserable hint of what it might be."
All that forenoon, as Lily faced her little group of barefootedchildren, she was thinking of Radbourn, of his almost fierce sympathyfor these poor, supine farmers, hopeless and in some cases content intheir narrow lives. The children almost worshiped the beautiful girlwho came to them as a revelation of exquisite neatness and taste,--whosevery voice and intonation awed them.
They noted, unconsciously, of course, every detail. Snowy linen, touchesof soft color, graceful lines of bust and side--the slender fingers thatcould almost speak, so beautifully flexile were they. Lily herselfsometimes, when she shook the calloused, knotted, stiffened hands of thewomen, shuddered with sympathetic pain, to think that the crowningwonder and beauty of God's world should be so maimed and distorted fromits true purpose.
Even in the children before her she could see the inherited results offruitless labor--and, more pitiful yet, in the bent shoulders of theolder ones she could see the beginnings of deformity that would soon bepermanent. And as these things came to her, she clasped the poorwondering things to her side with a convulsive wish to make life alittle brighter for them.
"How is your mother to-day?" she asked of Sadie Burns, as she was eatingher luncheon on the drab-colored table near the open window.
"Purty well," said Sadie, in a hesitating way.
Lily was looking out, and listening to the gophers whistling as theyraced to and fro. She could see Bob Burns lying at length on the grassin the pasture over the fence, his heels waving in the air, his handsholding a string which formed a snare. It was like fishing to youngIzaak Walton.
It was very still and hot, and the cheep and trill of the gophers andthe chatter of the kingbirds alone broke the silence. A cloud ofbutterflies were fluttering about a pool near; a couple of big fliesbuzzed and mumbled on the pane.
"What ails your mother?" Lily asked, recovering herself and looking atSadie, who was distinctly ill at ease.
"Oh, I dunno," Sadie replied, putting one bare foot across the other.
Lily insisted. "She 'n' pa's had an awful row"----
"Sadie!" said the teacher warningly, "what language!"
"I mean they quarreled, an' she don't speak to him any more."
"Why, how dreadful!"
"An' pa he's awful cross; and she won't eat when he does, an' I haf towait on table."
"I believe I'll go down and see her this noon," said Lily to herself, asshe divined a little of the state of affairs in the Burns family.