Rose of Dutcher's Coolly Part 20

"You can do anything you want to," John said.

Josie got at the picturesque qualities of the people. They all interested her and amused her like the cattle without horns, and the guinea-hens which clacked like clocks, and the tadpoles in the marsh.

She had no personal relations--no responsibilities toward them such as Rose felt were inescapably hers. Josie had no responsibilities at all, none under heaven!

She laughed at the ill-made dresses, and winked over the heads of the old wives when they talked in dialect, and made fun of the boys who came courting her, and sang "Where did they get those hats?" after coming out of the church.

Rose laughed and yet suffered, as one might whose blood relatives were ridiculed. It was a new experience to John Dutcher to have one about who cried out at everything as if it were the seventh wonder. The summer visitor had never before penetrated to his farm and all the women he had ever known could talk about cattle and drainage and wool-washing almost like men. In his interest and desire to do the part of entertainer, he pushed on into subjects which the girl listened to with wonder-wide eyes and a flushed face.

He talked to her as he would with Rose, about "farrer cows" and other commonplaces of stock-raising to which Rose would have listened abstractedly or with a slight feeling of disgust. To Josie it was deeply fascinating, and just a little bit like reading a forbidden book. It affected her a little unwholesomely, just as it would have made Ed, the hand, spasmodically guffaw to stand before the Venus de Milo--use and custom do much.

She sometimes asked questions which she would not have dared to ask her uncle, for John Dutcher was beyond s.e.x; indeed, he had always been a man of pure heart and plain speech. He was even in youth perfectly free from any sensuality, and now in his later middle life s.e.x was a fact like the color of a horse or a squash, and all that pertained to it he talked of, on the same plane. It did not occur to him that he was going beyond the lines of propriety in explaining to this delicate little woman various vital facts of stock-raising.

Josie sometimes went back to Rose smilingly, and told her what had taken place.

"Why didn't you ask me--you little goose? I never thought you didn't know those things. We farm girls know all that when we are toddlers. We can't help it."

All this should have been tonic, thoroughly wholesome to the dainty over-bred girl, and so it ultimately became, though it disturbed her at the time.

The two girls went out into the meadows and upon the hills almost daily.

They sought wild strawberries in the sunny spots amid the hazel brush.

They buried themselves in the hay in the field and climbed on the huge loads with John and rode to the barn. They drank water out of the spring lying flat on the ground; Rose showed how it was done. They went up on the hillsides under the edges of great ledges of water-washed sandstone where Rose had made her playhouse in her childhood, and she drew forth from the crevices in the rocks the queer little worn pieces of rock which she had called horses and cows and soldiers.

Rose had not been so girlish since her first vacation from school in Madison. She romped and laughed with the ever-joyous Josie, and together they grew brown and strong. But there came into the l.u.s.ty splendid joy of these days hours of almost sombre silence and dreaming. It all ended in nothing, this attempt at amus.e.m.e.nt.

Here in the riant and overflowing opulence of July, time without love's companionship was time wasted. Of what avail these soft winds, the song of birds, the gleam and lift and shimmer of leaves, if love were not there to share it?

Josie frankly confessed the name of the one she wished to share it with, but Rose looked into the sky and remained silent. Her soul was still seeking, restless, avid, yet evermore discerning, evermore difficult to satisfy.

They fell into long talks on marriage, and Rose confided to her some of her deepest thoughts, though she felt each time that this little twittering sparrow was hardly capable of understanding her.

"I want to know the men who think the great thoughts of the world," she said once as they lay under the beeches on the hillside, far above the haying field. "I don't want to marry--I only want to know men who can lift me up by their great plans. I want to forget myself in work of some kind--I don't know what kind--any kind that will make me big and grand in my life. I can't stand these little petty things here in this valley; these women drive me crazy with their talk of b.u.t.ter and eggs and made-over bonnets."

"I think they're funny," said Josie. "They talk so loud and they get so interested in such queer things."

Rose fell silent again. She knew Josie was of this type, only her affairs happened to be of a different sort, not larger, only different, pettinesses of dress and teas.

"O, for a nice man!" sighed Josie. "Why didn't you tell me there weren't any nice men up here?"

Meanwhile the lack of men was not apparent. Hardly a day but some young fellow from Tyre or the Siding made bold to hitch his horses to the fence before Dutcher's place. Rose was annoyed and gave most of them scant courtesy. Josie, however, always saw them and managed to have great amus.e.m.e.nt out of their embarra.s.sment.

Like summer girls in general she thought any man better than no man at all. Rose, however, could not endure a love-glance from any of them. She found her household duties pressing when they called, and Josie entertained them, and afterward entertained her by mimicking their looks and tones. It was very funny to see Josie screw her little face into shapes to represent her suitors' bashful grins and side-glances.

They were not always bashful, it must be said. Sometimes they were distressingly bold, and they came to the point of offensive warfare with a readiness and a.s.surance which scared Josie. She had never seen anything like it.

Rose found Josie entertaining in any mood.

CHAPTER XIV

AGAIN THE QUESTION OF HOME-LEAVING

But the day came at last when Josie must say good-bye, and then Rose's essential loneliness swept back upon her in a bitter flood. That night she walked her room in her naked feet, with her handkerchief stifling her sobs, so that John might not hear. She fought it out there (she supposed) and ended at last by determining to sacrifice herself to her father.

He could not be deserted, he needed her so, now that he was growing old and a little weaker. She must put away her vague, ambitious dreams of success, and apply herself to making him happy.

And yet to what end was all her study, she thought, during these later years? Could it be applied to doing him good? Her indifferent talent as a musician seemed the only talent which gave him joy. He cared nothing--knew nothing, of the things she loved and thought about!

Was her life, like his, to come down to the raising of cattle and the breeding of sheep? Was not his office served in educating her? Should not the old be sacrificed to the young?

All these devilish questions came into her mind like flashes of lurid light, but they all paled and faded before this one unchangeable radiance; he was her father, tender, loving, simple, laborious and old.

She fell asleep after hours of writhing agony, worn out, yet triumphant--she imagined.

But she was not. Day followed day, each one seemingly more hopeless than the other. This consideration beat like a knell into her brain, love could never come to her. Marriage with these young men was no longer possible. Love was out there, somewhere in the great world, in the city among artists and music-lovers, and men of great thought and great deeds. Her powerful physical, mental and emotional womanhood rebelled at this thought of lovelessness; like the prisoner of old bound in a sunless cavern where the drip-drop of icy water fell upon his brain, she writhed and seemed like to go mad.

This was the age of cities. The world's thought went on in the great cities. The life in these valleys was mere stagnant water, the great stream of life swept by far out and down there, where men and women met in millions. To live here was to be a cow, a tad-pole! Gra.s.s grew here, yes--but she could not live on gra.s.s. The birds sang here, yes--but there were Patti, and Duse, and Bernhardt out there in the world.

Here you could arise at five o'clock to cook breakfast and wash dishes, and get dinner, and sweep and mend, and get supper, and so on, till you rotted, like a post stuck in the mud. Your soul would rot. She felt change going on all the time. She was slipping back into shiftlessness, into minute untidiness--into actual slovenliness. There was no stimulus in these surroundings, she told herself; everything was against her higher self.

Once she had read a sentence from Lowell which flamed upon her mind now each time she mused upon her lot.

"The wilderness is all right for a vacation, but all wrong for a life-time."

She considered the coule a wilderness. It had nothing for her but nature, and nature palls upon a girl of twenty, with red blood in her veins, and splendid dreams in her heart.

Out there was her ideal. "Out there is the man who is to fill out my life," she uttered to herself softly, so that only her inner ear heard.

So she argued, fought, wept, surrendered, and went to battle again.

While all about her, John and his sister, moved tranquilly to their daily duties, calm as the cattle in the meadows. To the discerning eye it was a wonderful sight to see that dark, gloomy, restless girl seated opposite those serene, almost stolid faces, to whom "the world" was a breeze blowing in the tree-tops. She had the bearing of a rebellious royal captive--a d.u.c.h.ess in exile. Mrs. Diehl and the hired man were the peasants who waited upon her, but ate with her--and her father was the secure free-holder, to whom kings were obscure, world-distant diseases.

Then the equinoctial storms came on, and days of dull, cold, unremitting rain confined her to the house. The birds fell silent, the landscape, blurred with gray mist, looked grim and threatening, and there was prophecy of winter in the air. The season seemed to have rushed into darkness, cold and decay, in one enormous bound. The hills no longer lifted buoyant crests to heaven; they grew cheerless and dank as prison walls.

One night Rose spoke. She had always been chary of caresses; even when a child she sat erect upon her father's knee, with a sober little face, and when she grew sleepy she seldom put hands to his neck, but merely laid her head on his breast and went to sleep. John understood her in all this, for was he not of the same feeling? Love that babbled spent itself, his had no expression.

His heart was big with pride and affection when his splendid girl came over and put her arms about his neck, and put her forehead down on his shoulder.

"O pappa John, you're so good to me--I'm ashamed--I don't deserve this new house!"

"O yes y' do, daughter." His voice when he said "daughter" always made her cry, it was deep and tender like the music of water. It stood for him in the place of "dear" and "darling," and he very, very seldom spoke it. All this made it harder for her to go on.

"No, I don't, father--O, father, I can't stay here--I can't bear to stay here now!"

"Why not, Rosie?"

"O because it's so lonesome for me. There is n.o.body for me to talk to"

(she had to use phrases he could understand) "and I want to go on with my studies."