Wayside Courtships

H >> Hamlin Garland >> Wayside Courtships

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He returned soon with a German teamster, who helped him unload his
lumber and erect his stagings. When noon came he was working away on the
roof, tearing the old shingles off with a spade.

He was a little uncertain about his dinner. It was the custom to board
carpenters when they were working on a farm, but this farm was so near
town, possibly Mrs. Miner would not think it necessary. He decided,
however, to wait till one o'clock, to be sure. At half past twelve, a
man came in out of the field with a team--a short man, with curly hair,
curly chin beard, and mustache. He walked with a little swagger, and his
legs were slightly bowed. Morris called him "a little feller," and
catalogued him by the slant on his hat.

"Say," called Morris suddenly, "won't you come up here and help me raise
my staging?"

The man looked up with a muttered curse of surprise. "Who the hell y'
take me for? Hired man?" he asked, and then, after a moment, continued,
in a tone which was an insult: "You don't want to rip off the whole
broad side of that roof. Ain't y' got any sense? Come a rain, it'll
raise hell with my hay."

"It ain't going to rain," Morris replied. He wanted to give him a sharp
reply, but concluded not to do so. This was evidently the husband. His
romance was very short.

"Tom, won't you call the man in?" asked Mrs. Miner, as her husband came
up to the kitchen door.

"No, call 'im yourself. You've got a gullet."

Mrs. Miner's face clouded a little, but she composed herself. "Morty,
run out and tell the carpenter to come to dinner."

"Boss is in a temper," Morris thought, as he listened to Miner's reply.
He came up to the well, where Morty brought him a clean towel, and
waited to show him into the kitchen.

Miner was just sitting down to the table when Morris entered. His
sleeves were rolled up. He had his old white hat on his head. He lounged
upon one elbow on the table. His whole bearing was swinish.

"What do I care?" he growled, as if in reply to some low-voiced warning
his wife had uttered. "If he don't like it, he can lump it, and if you
don't like my ways," he said, turning upon her, "all you've got to do is
to say so, and I git out."

Morris was amazed at all this. He could not persuade himself that he had
rightly understood what had been said. There was something beneath the
man's words which puzzled him and forbade his inquiry. He sat down near
the oldest child and opposite Mrs. Miner. Miner began to eat, and Morris
was speaking pleasantly to the child nearest him, when he heard an oath
and a slap. He looked up to see Miner's hat falling from Mrs. Miner's
cheek.

She had begun a silent grace, and her husband had thrown his hat in her
face. She kept her eyes upon her plate, and her lips moved as if in
prayer, though a flush of red streamed up her neck and covered her
cheek.

Morris leaped up, his eyes burning into Miner's face. "H'yere!" he
shouted, "what's all this? Did you strike her?"

"Set down!" roared Miner. "You're too fresh."

"I'll let you know how fresh I am," said the young fellow, shaking his
brawny fist in Miner's face.

Mrs. Miner rose, with a ghastly smile on her face, which was now as pale
as it had been flushed. "Please don't mind him; he's only fooling."
Morris looked at her and understood a little of her feeling as a wife
and mother. He sat down. "Well, I'll let him know the weight of my fist,
if he does anything more of that business when I'm around," he said,
looking at her, and then at her husband. "I didn't grow up in a family
where things like that go on. If you'll just say the word, I--I'll----"

"Please don't do anything," she said, and he saw that he had better not,
if he wished to shield her from further suffering. The meal proceeded in
silence. Miner apparently gloried in what he had done.

The children were trembling with fear and could scarcely go on with
their dinners. They dared not cry. Their eyes were fixed upon their
father's face, like the eyes of kittens accustomed to violence. The wife
tried to conceal her shame and indignation. She thought she succeeded
very well, but the big tears rolling down from her wide unseeing eyes,
were pitiful to witness.

Morris ate his dinner in silence, not seeing anything further to do or
say. His food choked him, and he found it necessary to drink great
draughts of water.

At last she contrived to say, "How did you find the roof?" It was a
pitiful attempt to cover the dreadful silence.

"It was almost as good as no roof at all," he replied, with the desire
to aid her. "Those shingles, I suppose, have been on there for thirty
years. I suppose those shingles must have been rived out by just such a
machine as Old Man Means used, in the 'Hoosier Schoolmaster.'" From
this, he went on to tell about some of the comical parts of the story,
and so managed to end the meal in a fairly presentable way.

"She's found another sympathizer," sneered the husband, returning to his
habit of addressing his wife in the third person.

After eating his dinner, Miner lit his pipe and swaggered out, as if he
had done an admirable thing. Morris remained at the table, talking with
the children. After Miner had passed out of earshot, he looked up at
Mrs. Miner, as if expecting her to say something in explanation of what
had occurred. But she had again forgotten him, and sat biting her lips
and looking out of the window. Her bosom heaved like that of one about
to weep. Her wide-open eyes had unutterable sorrow in their beautiful
depths.

Morris got up and went out, in order to prevent himself from weeping
too. He hammered away on the roof like mad for an hour, and wished that
every blow fell on that little villain's curly pate.

He did not see Mrs. Miner to speak to her again till the next forenoon,
when she came out to see how the work was getting on. He came down from
the roof to meet her, and they stood side by side, talking the job over
and planning other work. She spoke, at last, in a low, hesitating voice,
and without looking at him:

"You mustn't mind what Mr. Miner does. He's very peculiar, and you're
likely--that is, I mean----"

She could not finish her lie. The young man looked down on her
resolutely. "I'd like to lick him, and I'd do it for a leather cent."

She put out her hand with a gesture of dismay. "Oh, don't make trouble;
please don't!"

"I won't if you don't want me to, but that man needs a licking the worst
of any one I ever saw. Mrs. Miner," he said, after a little pause, "I
wish you'd tell me why he acts that way. Now, there must be some reason
for it. No sane man is going to do a thing like that."

She looked away, a hot flush rising upon her face. She felt a distinct
longing for sympathy. There was something very engaging in this young
man's candid manner.

"I do not know who is to blame," she said at last, as if in answer to a
question. "I've tried to be a good wife to him for the children's sake.
I've tried to be patient. I suppose if I'd made the property all over to
him, as most wives do, at first, it would have avoided all trouble." She
paused to think a moment.

"But, you see" she went on suddenly, "father never liked him at all, and
he made me promise never to let the mill or the farm go out of my hands,
and then I didn't think it necessary. It belonged to us both, just as
much as if I'd signed it over. I considered he was my partner as well as
my husband. I knew how father felt, especially about the mill, and I
couldn't go against his wish."

She had the impulse to tell it all now, and she sat down on a bunch of
shingles, as if to be able to state it better. Her eyes were turned
away, her hands pressed upon each other like timid, living things
seeking aid, and, looking at her trembling lips, the young man felt a
lump rise in his throat.

"It began all at once, you see. I mean the worst of it did. Of course,
we'd had sharp words, as all people who live together are apt to have, I
suppose, but they didn't last long. You see, everything was mine, and he
had nothing at all when he came home with me. He'd had bad luck, and
he--he never was a good business man."

The tears were on her face again. She was retrospectively approaching
that miserable time when her suffering began. The droop of her head
appealed to the young man with immense power. He had an impulse to take
her in his arms and comfort her, as if she were his sister.

She mastered herself at last, and went on in low, hesitating voice, more
touching than downright sobbing: "One day, the same summer the mill
burned, one of the horses kicked at little Morty, and I said I'd sell
it, and he said it was all nonsense; the horse wasn't to blame. And I
told him I wouldn't have a horse around that would kick. And when he
said I shouldn't sell it, I said a dreadful thing. I knew it would cut
him, but I said it. I said: 'The horse is mine; the farm is mine; I can
do what I please with my own, for all of you.'"

She fell silent here, and Morris was forced to ask, "What did he do
then?"

"He looked at me, a queer, long look that made me shiver, and then he
walked off, and he never spoke to me again directly for six months. And
from that day he almost never speaks to me except through the children.
He calls me names through them. He cuts me every time he can. He does
everything he can to hurt me. He never dresses up, and he wears his hat
in the house at all times, and rolls up his sleeves at the table, just
because he knows it makes me suffer. Sometimes I think he is crazy, and
yet----"

"Oh, no, he ain't crazy. He's devilish," Morris blurted out. "Great
guns! I'd like to lay my hands on him."

She seemed to feel that a complete statement was demanded. "I can't
invite anybody to the house, for there's no knowing what he'll do. He
may stay in the fields all day and never come in at all, or he may come
in and curse and swear at me or do something--I never can tell what he
is goin' to do."

"Haven't you any relatives here?" Morris asked.

"Yes, but I'm ashamed to let them know about it, because they all said
I'd repent; and then he's my husband, and he's the father of my
children."

"A mighty poor excuse of one I call him," said the young man with
decision.

"I tried to give him the farm, when I found it was going to make
trouble, but he wouldn't take it _then_. He won't listen to me at all.
He keeps throwing it up to me that he's earning his living, and if I
don't think he is he will go any minute. He works in the field, but
that's all. He won't advise with me at all. He says it's none of his
business. He won't do a thing around the house or garden. I tried to get
him to oversee the mill for me, but, after our trouble, he refused to do
anything about it. I hired a man to run it, but it didn't pay that way,
and then it was idle for a while, and at last it got afire some way and
burned up--tramps, I suppose.

"Oh, dear!" she sighed, rising, "I don't see how it's going to end; it
must end some time. Sometimes it seems as if I couldn't stand it another
day, and then I think of my duty as a mother and wife, and I think
perhaps God intended this to be my cross."

The young fellow was silent. It was a great problem. The question of
divorce had never before been borne in upon him in this personal way. It
seemed to him a clear case. The man ought to be driven off and the woman
left in peace. He thought of the pleasure it would give her to hear the
sound of the mill again.

They stood there side by side, nearly the same age, and yet the woman's
face was already lined with suffering, and her eyes were full of shadow.
There seemed no future for her, and yet she was young.

"Please don't let him know I've said anything to you, will you?"

"I'll try not to," he said, but he did not consider himself bound to any
definite concealment.

They ate dinner together without Miner, who had a fit of work on hand
which made him stubbornly unmindful of any call to eat. Moreover, he was
sure it would worry his wife.

The meal was a pleasant one on the whole, and they found many things in
common to talk about. Morris wanted to ask her a few more questions
about her life, but she begged him not to do so, and started him off on
the story of his college life. He was an enthusiastic talker and told
her his plans with boyish frankness. He forgot his fatigue, and she lost
for a time her premature cares and despairs. They were laughing together
over some of his college pranks when Miner came in at the door.

"Oh, I see!" he said, with an insulting, insinuating inflection. "Now I
understand the early dinner."

Morris sprang up and, walking over to the sneering husband, glared down
at him with a look of ferocity that sat singularly upon his round, fresh
face. "Now you _shut up_! If you open your mouth to me again I'll lick
you till your hide won't hold pumpkins!"

Miner shrank back, turned on his heel, and went off to the barn. He did
not return for his dinner.

Morris insisted on helping Mrs. Miner clear up the yard and uncover the
grapevine. He liked her very much. She appealed to the protector in him,
and she interested him besides, because of the melancholy which was
lined on her delicate face, and voiced in her low, soft utterances.

He appealed to her, because of his delicacy as well as strength. He had
something of the modern man's love for flowers, and did not attempt to
conceal his delight in thus tinkering about at woman's work. He ate
supper with her and worked on until it was quite dark, tired as he was,
and then shook hands and said "Good night."

Morris came back to his work the next day with a great deal of pleasure.
He had spent considerable thought upon the matter. He had almost
determined on a course of action. He had thought of going directly to
Miner and saying:

"Now look here, Miner, if you was _half_ a man, you'd pull out and leave
this woman in peace. How you can stand around here and occupy the
position you do, I don't see."

But when he remembered Mrs. Miner's words about the children, another
consideration came in. Suppose he should take the children with
him--that was the point; that was the uncertain part of the problem. It
did not require any thought to remember that the law took very little
consideration of the woman's feelings. He said to himself that if he
ever became judge, he would certainly give decisions that would send
such a man as Miner simply whirling out into space.

Miner was in the barn when Morris clambered up the ladder with a bunch
of shingles on his shoulder, about seven o'clock. He came out and said:

"Say, you want to fix that window up there."

"Get away from there!" shouted Morris, in uncontrollable rage, "or I'll
smash this bunch of shingles on your cursed head. Don't you open that
ugly p'tater trap at me, you bow-legged little skunk! I'm goin' to lick
you like a sock before I'm done with you."

He would have done so then had he been on the ground, but he disdained
taking the trouble to climb down. He planned to catch him when he came
up to dinner. The more he thought of it the more his indignation waxed.
As he grew to hate the man more, he began to entertain the suspicions,
which Wilber confessed to in confidence, concerning the burning of the
mill.

They had a cheerful meal together again, for Miner did not come in until
one o'clock. During the nooning Morris finished spading the flower
beds, in spite of Mrs. Miner's entreaties that he should rest. It gave
him great pleasure to work there with her and the children.

"You see, I'm lonesome here," he explained. "Just out of school, and I
miss the boys and girls. I don't know anybody except a few of the
carpenters here, and so--well, I kind of like it. I always helped around
the house at home. It's all fun for me, so don't you say a word. I've
got lots o' muscle to spare, and you're welcome to it."

He spaded away without many words. The warm sun shone down upon them
all, and they made a pretty group. Mrs. Miner, rake in hand, was
pulverizing the beds as fast as he spaded, her face flushed and almost
happy. The children were wrist-deep in the fresh earth, planting twigs
and pebbles, their babble of talk some way akin to the cry of the
woodpecker, the laugh of the robin, the twitter of the sparrow, the
smell of spring, and the merry downpour of sunshine.

Mrs. Miner was silent. She was thinking how different her life would
have been if her husband had only taken an interest in her affairs. She
did not think of any one else as her husband, but only Miner in a
different mood.

Morris went back to work. As the work neared the end, his determination
to punish the scoundrel husband grew. His inclination to charge him with
burning the mill grew stronger. He wondered if it wouldn't serve as a
club. "Now, sir," he said, meeting Miner as he came out of the barn that
night, "I'm done on the barn, but I'm not done on you. I'm goin' to
whale you till you won't know yourself. I ought 'o 'a done it that first
day at dinner." He advanced upon Miner, who backed away, scared at
something he saw in the young man's eyes and something he heard in his
inflexible tone of voice.

He thrust out his palm in a wild gesture. "Keep away from me! I'll split
your heart if you touch me!"

Morris advanced another step, his eyes looking straight into Miner's
with the level look of a tiger's. "No, y' won't! You're too much of an
infernal, sneaky little _whelp_!"

At the word whelp, he cuffed him with his hammerlike fist, and Miner
went down in a heap. He was so abject that the young man could only
strike him with his open hand.

He took him by the shirt collar with his left hand and began to cuff him
leisurely and terribly with his right. His blows punctuated his
sentences. "You're a little [whack] villain. I'll thrash you till you
won't see out of your blasted eyes for a month! I can't stand a man
[here he jounced him up and down with his left hand, apparently with
infinite satisfaction] who bullies his wife and children as you do [here
he cuffed him again], and I'll make it my business to even things
up----"

The prostrate man began to scream for help. He was livid with fear. He
fancied murder in the blaze of his assailant's eye.

"Help! help! Minnie!"

"Call her by her first name now, will yeh? will yeh? Call her out to
help yeh! Do you think she will? I want to tell you, besides, I know
something about that mill burning. It's just like your contemptible
mustard-seed of a soul to burn that mill!"

Mrs. Miner came flying out. She could not recognize her husband in the
bleeding, dirty, abject thing squirming under the young man's knee.

"Why, Mr. Morris, who--why--why, it's Tom!" she gasped, her eyes
distended with surprise and horror.

Morris looked up at her coolly. "Yes, it's Tom." He then gave his
attention to the writhing figure under him. "Crawl, you infernal whelp!
Lick the dust, confound you! Quick!" he commanded, growing each moment
more savage.

Mrs. Miner clung to his arm. "Please don't," she pleaded. "You're
killing him."

Morris did not look up. "Oh, no, I ain't. I'm giving him a little taste
of his own medicine." He flopped Miner over on his face and dragged him
around in the dust like an old sack. "Beg her pardon, or I'll thrash the
ground with yeh!"

"Please don't," pleaded the wife, using her whole strength to stop him
in his circuit with the almost insensible Miner.

"Beg!" he said again, "beg, or I'll cave your backbone in." There was a
terrible upward inflection in his voice now, a half-jocular tone that
was more terrible than the muffled snarl in which he had previously been
speaking.

"I beg! I beg!" cried Miner.

Morris released him, and he crawled to a sitting posture. Mrs. Miner
fell on her knees by his side, and began wiping the blood from his face.
She was breathless with sobbing and the children were screaming. The
tears streamed down her face, which was white and drawn into ghastly
wrinkles.

"You've killed him!" she gasped.

Morris put his hands in his pockets and looked down on them both, with a
curious feeling of having done something which he might repent of. He
felt in a way cut off from the satisfactory ending of the thing he had
planned.

"Oh, you've killed him!"

"Oh, no, I haven't. He's all right." He looked at them a moment longer
to see if there were any rage remaining in the face of the husband, and
then at the wife to discover her feeling concerning his action. Then he
looked back at the husband again, and apparently justified himself for
what he had done by the memory of the ineffable shame to which the wife
had been subjected.

"Now, if I hear another word of your abuse," he said, as he shook the
dust from his own clothes and prepared to go, "I'll give you another
that will make you think that this is all fooling. More than that," he
said, turning again, "I know something that will put you where the crows
won't eat you!--If I can be of any service to you, Mrs. Miner, at any
time while I'm here, I hope you'll let me know. Good-by."

Mrs. Miner did not reply, and when Morris reached the gate and looked
back she was still kneeling by the side of her husband, the sunlight
shining down upon her graceful head. Some way the problem had increased
in complexity. He felt a disgust of her weakness, mingled with a feeling
that he was losing something very fine and tender which had but just
come into his life.

He went back to his work on the other side of the river, where his crew
was working. He was called home a few weeks later, and he never saw
husband or wife again. He learned from Wilber, however, in a short
letter that things were going much the same as ever.

"Dear Sir: I don't know much about Miner. Hees purty quiet I guess.
Dock Moss thinks hees a little off his nut. I don't. I think its pur
cussidness."

OF THOSE WHO SEEK.

I. THE PRISONED SOUL.

The Capitol swarmed with people.

Groups of legislators tramped noisily along the corridors, laughing
loudly, gesticulating with pointed fingers or closed fists.

Squads of ragged, wondering, and wistful-eyed negroes, splashed with
orange-colored mud from the fields, moved timidly on from magnificence
to magnificence, keeping close to each other, solemn and silent. When
they spoke they whispered. Others from the city streets laughed loudly
and swaggered along to show their contempt for the place and their
knowledge of its public character; but their insolence was half assumed.

Lean and lank Southerners, with the imperial cut on their pale, brown
whiskers, alternated with stalwart, slouch-hatted Westerners.
Clean-shaven, pale clerks hurried to and fro; groups of sightseers
infested every nook, and wore the look of those determined to see it
all. They were accompanied often by one whose certainty of accent gave
evidence of his fitness to be their guide. The sound of his voice
proclaimed his judgments as he pushed his dazed wordless victims about.

In a group in the center of the checkered marble floor of the rotunda, a
powerful Indian, dressed in semi-civilized fashion, was standing,
looking wonderingly down into the upturned face of a little girl. The
circle of bystanders silently studied both man and maid.

She was about eleven years of age and was tastefully dressed, and seemed
a healthy child. Her face was solemn, sweet, and inquisitive. She held
one half-opened hand in the air; with the other she touched the Indian's
dark, strongly molded cheek, and pressed his long hair which streamed
from beneath his broad white hat.

No one smiled. She was deaf and dumb and blind.

In her raised rosy little palm, with lightning-swift motion, fluttered
the hand of her teacher. By the teacher's side stood an Indian
interpreter, dressed in hunting shirt and broad hat.

"I am Umatilla," said the chief, in answer to a question from the
teacher. His deep voice was like the mutter of a lion; he stood with
gentle dignity still looking wonderingly down into the girl's sweet,
solemn, and eager face.

A bystander said, "Poor child!" in a low, tremulous tone, followed by a
sigh.

The little one's hand, light, swift, and seeking, touched the Indian's
ringed ears and pressed again his long hair, while her teacher's swift
fingers said, "This strange man comes from a far-off land, from vast
mountains and forests away toward the western sea. The wind and sun have
made his face dark, and the long hair is a protection from the cold. He
is a chief."

Under her broad hat the child's exquisite mouth, with its dimpled
corners, remained calm but touchingly wistful. Her eyes were in shadow.
Her chin was a perfect oval, delicately beautiful, like the curving
lines of a peach, with the clear transparency of color of a flower's
chalice.

But the bystander said again, "Poor child!" as if a shudder of awe, of
wordless compassion and bitterness, shook him.

She was so beautiful, so gifted in spirit, to be thus shut in! Her
inclosing flesh was so fine and sweet, it seemed impossible it could be
an impassable, almost impenetrable wall.

He thought: She will soon be a woman, with all the vague, unutterable
longings and passions of the woman. Her lithe body will be as beautiful
as her soul, and the warm oval of her face will flash and flame with her
expanding, struggling life. Her caged soul will struggle for light and
companionship, blindly, vainly.

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