Prairie Folks Part 17

"An' pa he's awful cross; and she won't eat when he does, an' I haf to wait on table."

"I believe I'll go down and see her this noon," said Lily to herself, as she divined a little of the state of affairs in the Burns family.

V.

Sim was mending the pasture fence as Lily came down the road toward him.

He had delayed going to dinner to finish his task and was just about ready to go when Lily spoke to him.

"Good morning, Mr. Burns. I am just going down to see Mrs. Burns. It must be time to go to dinner--aren't you ready to go? I want to talk with you."

Ordinarily he would have been delighted with the idea of walking down the road with the school-ma'am, but there was something in her look which seemed to tell him that she knew all about his trouble, and, besides, he was not in good humor.

"Yes, in a minnit--soon's I fix up this hole. Them shoats, I b'lieve, would go through a key-hole, if they could once get their snoots in."

He expanded on this idea as he nailed away, anxious to gain time. He foresaw trouble for himself. He couldn't be rude to this sweet and fragile girl. If a _man_ had dared to attack him on his domestic shortcomings, he could have fought. The girl stood waiting for him, her large, steady eyes full of thought, gazing down at him from the shadow of her broad-brimmed hat.

"The world is so full of misery anyway, that we ought to do the best we can to make it less," she said at last, in a musing tone, as if her thoughts had unconsciously taken on speech. She had always appealed to him strongly, and never more so than in this softly-uttered abstraction--that it was an abstraction added to its power with him.

He could find no words for reply, but picked up his hammer and nail-box, and slouched along the road by her side, listening without a word to her talk.

"Christ was patient, and bore with his enemies. Surely we ought to bear with our--friends," she went on, adapting her steps to his. He took off his torn straw hat and wiped his face on his sleeve, being much embarra.s.sed and ashamed. Not knowing how to meet such argument, he kept silent.

"How _is_ Mrs. Burns?" said Lily at length, determined to make him speak. The delicate meaning in the emphasis laid on _is_ did not escape him.

"Oh, she's all right--I mean she's done her work jest the same as ever.

I don't see her much"----

"I didn't know--I was afraid she was sick. Sadie said she was acting strangely."

"No, she's well enough--but"----

"But what is the trouble? Won't you let me help you, _won't_ you?" she pleaded.

"Can't anybody help us. We've got 'o fight it out, I s'pose," he replied, a gloomy note of resentment creeping into his voice. "She's ben in a devil of a temper f'r a week."

"Haven't you been in the same kind of a temper too?" demanded Lily, firmly, but kindly. "I think most troubles of this kind come from bad temper on both sides. Don't you? Have you done your share at being kind and patient?"

They had reached the gate now, and she laid her hand on his arm to stop him. He looked down at the slender gloved hand on his arm, feeling as if a giant had grasped him; then he raised his eyes to her face, flushing a purplish red as he remembered his grossness. It seemed monstrous in the presence of this girl-advocate. Her face was like silver; her eyes seemed pools of tears.

"I don't s'pose I have," he said at last, pushing by her. He could not have faced her glance another moment. His whole air conveyed the impression of destructive admission. Lily did not comprehend the extent of her advantage or she would have pursued it further. As it was she felt a little hurt as she entered the house. The table was set, but Mrs.

Burns was nowhere to be seen. Calling her softly, the young girl pa.s.sed through the shabby little living-room to the oven-like bedroom which opened off it, but no one was about. She stood for a moment shuddering at the wretchedness of the room.

Going back to the kitchen, she found Sim about beginning on his dinner.

Little Pet was with him; the rest of the children were at the school-house.

"Where is she?"

"I d' know. Out in the garden, I expect. She don't eat with me now. I never see her. She don't come near _me_. I ain't seen her since Sat.u.r.day."

Lily was shocked inexpressibly and began to see more clearly the magnitude of the task she had set herself to do. But it must be done; she felt that a tragedy was not far off. It must be averted.

"Mr. Burns, what have you done? What _have_ you done?" she asked in terror and horror.

"Don't lay it all to _me_! She hain't done nawthin' but complain f'r ten years. I couldn't do nothin' to suit her. She was always naggin' me."

"I don't think Lucretia Burns would nag anybody. I don't say you're _all_ to blame, but I'm afraid you haven't acknowledged you were _any_ to blame. I'm afraid you've not been patient with her. I'm going out to bring her in. If she comes, will you _say_ you were _part_ to blame? You needn't beg her pardon--just say you'll try to be better. Will you do it? Think how much she has done for you! Will you?"

He remained silent, and looked discouragingly rude. His sweaty, dirty shirt was open at the neck, his arms were bare, his scraggly teeth were yellow with tobacco, and his uncombed hair lay tumbled about on his high, narrow head. His clumsy, unsteady hands played with the dishes on the table. His pride was struggling with his sense of justice; he knew he ought to consent, and yet it was so hard to acknowledge himself to blame. The girl went on in a voice piercingly sweet, trembling with pity and pleading.

"What word can I carry to her from you? I'm going to go and see her. If I could take a word from _you_, I know she would come back to the table.

Shall I tell her you feel to blame?"

The answer was a long time coming; at last the man nodded an a.s.sent, the sweat pouring from his purple face. She had set him thinking; her victory was sure.

Lily almost ran out into the garden and to the strawberry patch, where she found Lucretia in her familiar, colorless, shapeless dress, picking berries in the hot sun, the mosquitoes biting her neck and hands.

"Poor, pathetic, dumb sufferer!" the girl thought as she ran up to her.

She dropped her dish as she heard Lily coming, and gazed up into the tender, pitying face. Not a word was spoken, but something she saw there made her eyes fill with tears, and her throat swell. It was pure sympathy. She put her arms around the girl's neck and sobbed for the first time since Friday night. Then they sat down on the gra.s.s under the hedge, and she told her story, interspersed with Lily's horrified comments.

When it was all told, the girl still sat listening. She heard Radbourn's calm, slow voice again. It helped her not to hate Burns; it helped her to pity and understand him:

"You must remember that such toil brutalizes a man; it makes him callous, selfish, unfeeling, necessarily. A fine nature must either adapt itself to its hard surroundings or die. Men who toil terribly in filthy garments day after day and year after year cannot easily keep gentle; the frost and grime, the heat and cold will soon or late enter into their souls. The case is not all in favor of the suffering wives, and against the brutal husbands. If the farmer's wife is dulled and crazed by her routine, the farmer himself is degraded and brutalized."

As well as she could Lily explained all this to the woman, who lay with her face buried in the girl's lap. Lily's arms were about her thin shoulders in an agony of pity.

"It's hard, Lucretia, I know--more than you can bear--but you mustn't forget what Sim endures too. He goes out in the storms and in the heat and dust. His boots are hard, and see how his hands are all bruised and broken by his work! He was tired and hungry when he said that--he didn't really mean it."

The wife remained silent.

"Mr. Radbourn says work, as things go now, _does_ degrade a man in spite of himself. He says men get coa.r.s.e and violent in spite of themselves, just as women do when everything goes wrong in the house--when the flies are thick, and the fire won't burn, and the irons stick to the clothes.

You see, you both suffer. Don't lay up this fit of temper against Sim--will you?"

The wife lifted her head and looked away. Her face was full of hopeless weariness.

"It ain't this once. It ain't that 't all. It's having no let-up. Just doin' the same thing right over 'n' over--no hope of anything better."

"If you had a hope of another world"----

"Don't talk that. I don't want that kind o' comfert. I want a decent chance here. I want 'o rest an' be happy _now_." Lily's big eyes were streaming with tears. What should she say to the desperate woman?

"What's the use? We might jest as well die--all of us."

The woman's livid face appalled the girl. She was gaunt, heavy-eyed, nerveless. Her faded dress settled down over her limbs, showing the swollen knees and thin calves; her hands, with distorted joints, protruded painfully from her sleeves. And all about was the ever-recurring wealth and cheer of nature that knows no fear or favor--the bees and flies buzzing in the sun, the jay and kingbird in the poplars, the smell of strawberries, the motion of lush gra.s.s, the shimmer of corn-blades tossed gayly as banners in a conquering army.