Book: Autumn

R >> Robert Nathan >> Autumn




"Be wise and honest farmers.

"School is over. You may go."

The children ran away, laughing; the boys hurried off together to the
swimming hole, their casual shouts stealing after them down the road.
Mr. Jeminy, lying on his back in the grass, listened to them sadly. As
the voices grew fainter and fainter, it seemed to him as if they were
saying: "School is over, school is over." And he thought: "They are
counting the seasons. But to the old, the year is never done."

Mr. Frye, who had been sitting quietly by the road during Mr. Jeminy's
little speech to the children, now got up, and went back to the
village, shaking his head solemnly with every step.




III

THE BARLYS

The two hired men on Barly's farm rose in the dark and crept
downstairs. By sun-up, Farmer Barly was after them, in his brown
overalls; he came clumping into the barn, dusty with last year's hay,
and peered about him in the yellow light. He opened the harness room,
and took out harness for the farm wagons; he went to ask if the horses
had been watered.

The cows were in pasture; in the wagon shed the two men, before a tin
basin, plunged their arms into water, flung it on their faces, and
puffed and sighed. The shed was cold, and redolent of earth. Outside,
the odor of coffee, drifting from the house, mingled in the early
morning air with clover and hay, cut in the fields, but not yet stored.

Anna Barly, from her room, heard her mother moving in the kitchen, and
sat up in bed. The patch-work quilt was fallen on the floor, where it
lay as sleepy as its mistress. She tossed her hair back from her face;
it spread broad and gold across her shoulders, and the wide sleeves of
her nightdress, falling down her arms, bared her round, brown elbows as
she caught it up again.

In the kitchen, the two hired men, their faces wet and clean, poured
sugar over their lettuce, and talked with their mouths full.

"I hear tell of a borer, like an ear-worm, spoiling the corn. . . .
But there's none in our corn, so far as I can see."

"Never been so much rain since I was born."

"A bad year."

"Well," said Mrs. Barly, "that's no wonder, either, with prices what
they are, and you two eating your heads off, for all the work you do."

"Now, then," said her husband hastily, "that's all right, too, mother."

Anna stood at the sink, and washed the dishes. Her hands floated
through the warm, soapy water like lazy fish, curled around plates,
swam out of pots; while her thoughts, drowsy, sunny in her head,
passed, like her hands, from what was hardly seen to what was hardly
felt.

"Look after the milk, Anna," said her mother, "while I go for some
kindlings." She went out, thin, stooped, her long, lean fingers
fumbling with her apron; and she came back more bent than before. She
put the wood down with a sigh. "A body's never done," she said.

Anna looked after the milk, all in a gentle phlegm. Her mother cooked,
cleaned, scrubbed, carried water, fetched wood, set the house to
rights; in order to keep Anna fresh and plump until she was married.
Anna, plump and wealthy, was a good match for any one: old Mr. Frye
used to smile when he saw her. "Smooth and sweet," he used to say:
"molasses . . . hm . . ."

Now she stood dreaming by the stove, until her mother, climbing from
the cellar, woke her with a clatter of coal. "Why, you big, awkward
girl," cried Mrs. Barly, "whatever are you dreaming about?"

Anna thought to herself: "I was dreaming of a thousand things. But
when I went to look at them . . . there was nothing left."

"Nothing," she said aloud.

"Then," said her mother doubtfully, "you might help me shell peas."

The two women sat down together, a wooden bowl between them. The pods
split under their fingers, click, cluck; the peas fell into the bowl
like shot at first, dull as the bowl grew full. Click, cluck, click,
cluck . . . Anna began to dream again. "Oh, do wake up," said her
mother; "one would think . . ."

Anna's hands went startled into the peas. "I must be in love," she
said with half a smile.

Mrs. Barly sighed. "Ak," she said.

Anna began to laugh. After a while she asked, "Do you think I'm in
love?"

"Like as not," said her mother.

"Well, then," Anna cried, "I'm not in love at all--not now."

Mrs. Barly let her fingers rest idly along the rim of the bowl. "When
I was a girl . . ." she began. Then it was Anna's turn to sigh.

"It seems like yesterday," remarked Mrs. Barly, who wanted to say, "I
am still a young woman."

Anna split pods gravely, her eyes bent on her task. The tone of her
mother's voice, tart and dry, filled her mind with the sulky thoughts
of youth. "There's fewer alive to-day," she said, "than when you were
a girl."

Mrs. Barly knew very well what her daughter meant. "Be glad there's
any left," she replied, as she turned again to her shelling.

Anna's round, brown finger moved in circles through the peas. "I'm too
young to marry," she said, at last.

"No younger than what I was."

But it seemed to Anna as though life had changed since those days. For
every one was reaching for more. And Anna, too, wanted more . . . more
than her mother had had. "If I wait," she said in a low voice,
"to . . . see a bit of life . . . what's the harm?"

The pod in Mrs. Barly's hand cracked with a pop, and trembled in the
air, split open like the covers of a book. "I declare," she exclaimed,
"I don't know what to think . . . well . . . wait . . . I suppose you
want to be like Mrs. Wicket?"

"No, I don't," said Anna.

"Yes," said Mrs. Barly, in a shaking voice, "yes . . . wait . . .
you'll see a bit of something . . . a taste of the broom,
perhaps. . . ."

While the two women looked after the house, the hired men worked in the
fields, under the hot sun, their wet, cotton shirts open at the neck,
their faces shaded with wide straw hats. Farmer Barly leaned against
one side of a tumbled-down wooden fence, and old Mr. Crabbe against the
other.

"This year," said Farmer Barly, "I'm going to put up a silo in my barn.
And instead of straw to cover it, I'm going to plant oats on top."

"Go along," said Mr. Crabbe.

"Well, it's a fact," said Mr. Barly. "I'm building now, back of the
cows."

"Digging, you might say," corrected Mr. Crabbe.

"Building, by God," said Mr. Barly.

Mr. Crabbe tilted back his head and cast a look of wonder at the sky.
"A hole is a hole," he said finally.

"So it is," agreed Mr. Barly, "so it is. It takes a Republican to find
that out." And, greatly amused at his own wit, Mr. Barly, who was a
Democrat, slapped his knee and burst out laughing.

"Yes, sir," said Mr. Crabbe solemnly, with pious joy, "I'm a
Republican . . . a good Republican, Mr. Barly, like my father before
me." He smote his fist into his open palm. "I'll vote the Democrats
blue in the face. If a man can't vote for his own advantage, what's
the ballot for? I say let's mind our own business. And let me get my
hands on what I want."

"Get what you can," said Mr. Barly.

"And the devil take the hindmost."

"It's all the same to me," quoth Mr. Barly, "folks being mostly alike
as two peas."

Mr. Crabbe spat into the stubble. "The way I look at it," he said,
"it's like this: first, there's me; and then there's you. That's the
way I look at it, Mr. B."

And he went home to repeat to his wife what he had said to Farmer
Barly. "I gave it to him," he declared.

In another field, Abner and John Henry, who had been to war, also
discussed politics. They agreed that the pay they received for their
work was inadequate. It seemed to them to be the fault of the
government, which was run for the benefit of others besides themselves.

That afternoon, Mr. Jeminy, with Boethius under his arm, came into
Frye's General Store, to buy a box of matches for Mrs. Grumble. As he
paid for them, he said to Thomas Frye, who had been his pupil in
school: "These little sticks of wood need only a good scratch to
confuse me, for a moment, with the God of Genesis. But they also
encourage Mrs. Grumble to burn, before I come down in the morning, the
bits of paper on which I like to scribble my notes."

At that moment, old Mrs. Ploughman entered the store to buy a paper of
pins. "Well," she cried, "don't keep me waiting all day." But when Mr.
Jeminy was gone, she said to Thomas Frye, "I guess I don't want any
pins. What was it I wanted?"

Presently she went home again, without having bought anything. "It's
all the fault of that old man," she said to herself; "he mixes a body
up so."

On his way home Mr. Jeminy passed, at the edge of the village, the
little cottage where the widow Wicket lived with her daughter. Seeing
Mrs. Wicket in the garden, he stopped to wave his hand. Under her
bonnet, the young woman looked up at him, her plain, thin face flushed
with her efforts in the garden patch. "I've never seen such weeds,"
she cried. "You'd think . . . I don't know what you'd think. They
grow and grow . . ."

Mr. Jeminy went up the hill toward his house, carrying the box of
matches. As he walked, the little white butterflies, which danced
above the road, kept him company; and all about him, in the meadows,
among the daisies, the beetles, wasps, bees, and crickets, with fifes,
flutes, drums, and triangles, were singing joyously together the
Canticle of the Sun:

"Praised be the Lord God with all his creatures, but especially our
brother, the sun . . . fair he is, and shines, with a very great
splendor . . .

"Praised be the Lord for our sister, the moon, and for the stars, which
he has set clear and lovely in heaven.

". . . (and) for our brother, the wind, and for air and cloud, calm and
all weather . . .

". . . (and) for our mother, the earth, which does sustain us and keep
us . . .

"Praised be the Lord for all those who pardon one another . . . and who
endure weakness and tribulation; blessed are they who peaceably shall
endure . . ."

Slowly, to the tonkle of herds in pasture, the crowing of cocks, and
the thin, clear clang of the smithy, the full sun sank in the west.
For a time all was quiet, as night, the shadow of the earth, crept
between man and God.

After supper Thomas Frye, in his father's wagon, went to call on Anna
Barly.

From her porch where she sat hidden by vines which gave forth an odor
sweeter than honey, the night was visible, pale and full of shadows.
To the boy beside her, timid and ardent, the silence of her parents
seemed, like the night, to be full of opinions.

"Well . . . shall we go for a ride?"

Anna called in to her mother, "I'm going for a ride with Tom."

"Don't be late," said her mother.

The two went down the path, and climbed into the buggy; soon the yellow
lantern, swung between its wheels, rolled like a star down the road to
Milford.

"Why so quiet, Tom?"

"Am I, Ann?"

"Angry?"

"Just thinking . . . so to say."

"Oh." And she began to hum under her breath.

"I was just thinking," he said again.

Then, solemnly, he added, "about things."

"About you and me," he wound up finally.

When she offered him a penny for his thoughts, he said, "Well . . .
nothing."

"Dear me."

At his hard cluck the wagon swept forward. "You know what I was
thinking," he said.

"Do I?" asked Anna innocently.

"Don't you?"

"Perhaps."

So they went on through the dark, under the trees, to Milford. When
their little world, smelling of harness, came to a halt in front of the
drug store, they descended to quench their thirst with syrup, gas,
milk, and lard. Then, with dreamy faces, they made their way to the
movies.

Now their hands are clasped, but they do not notice each other. For
they do not know where they are; they imagine they are acting upon the
screen. It is a mistake which charms and consoles them both. "How
beautiful I am," thinks Anna drowsily, watching Miss Gish. "And how
elegant to be in love."

Later Anna will say to herself: "Other people's lives are like that."

On the way home she sat smiling and dreaming. The horse ran briskly
through the night mist; and the wheels, rumbling over the ground,
turned up the thoughts of simple Thomas Frye, only to plow them under
again.

"Ann," he said when they were more than half-way home, "don't you care
for me . . . any more?" As he spoke, he cut at the black trees with
his long whip.

"Yes, I do, Tom."

"As much as you did?"

"Just as much."

"More, Ann?"

"Maybe."

"Then . . . will you? Say, will you, Ann?"

"I don't know, Tom. Don't ask me. Please."

"But I've got to ask you," he cried.

"Oh, what's the good." And she looked away, to where the faint light
of the lantern fled along beside them, over the trees.

"Is it," he said slowly, "is it no?"

"Well, then--no."

Thomas was silent. At last he asked, "Is it a living man, Ann?"

"No," said Anna.

"Is it a dead man, now?"

Anna moved uneasily. "No, it isn't," she said. "'Tisn't anybody."

But Thomas persisted. "Would it be Noel, if he warn't dead in France?"

"Maybe."

"You're not going to keep on thinking of him, are you?"

"I don't plan to."

"Then--" and Thomas came back to the old question once more, "why not?"

"Why not what?"

"Take me, then?"

"Well," she said vaguely, "I'm too young."

"I'd wait."

"'Twouldn't help any. I want so much, Tom . . . you couldn't give me
all I want."

He said, "What is it I couldn't give you?"

"I don't know, Tom . . . I want what other people have . . .
experiences . . ."

At his bitter laugh, she was filled with pity for herself. "Is it so
funny?" she asked. "I don't care."

"Whatever's got into you, Ann?"

"I don't know there's anything got into me beyond I don't want to grow
old--and dry. . . ."

"I don't see as you can help it any."

But Anna was tipsy with youth: she swore she'd be dead before she was
old.

"Hush, Ann."

"Why should I hush?" she asked. "It's the truth."

"It's a lie, that's what it is," said Thomas.

"Do you hate me, Tom?" she said. And she sat looking steadily before
her.

"I don't know what's got into you. You act so queer."

"I want to be happy," she whispered.

"Then . . . you can do as you like for all of me."

But as they rode along in silence, wrapped in mist, she drew closer to
him, all her reckless spirit gone. "There . . . you've made me cry,"
she said, and put her hand, cold and moist, into his.

"Aren't you going to kiss me, Tom?"

He slapped the reins bitterly across his horse's back. "What's the
good of that?" he asked, in turn.

"Perhaps," she said faintly, "there isn't any. Oh, I don't know . . .
what's the difference?"

And so they rode on in silence, with pale cheeks and strange thoughts.




IV

MR. JEMINY BUILDS A HOUSE OUT OF BOXES

Mr. Jeminy liked to call on Mrs. Wicket, whose little cottage, at the
edge of the village, on the way to Milford, had belonged to Eben Wicket
for nearly fifty years. Now it belonged to the widow of Eben's son,
John. Mr. Jeminy remembered John Wicket as a boy in school. He was a
rogue; his head was already so full of mischief, that it was impossible
to teach him anything. So he was not much wiser when he left school,
than when he entered it. However, Mr. Jeminy was satisfied with his
instruction. "With more knowledge," the old schoolmaster thought to
himself, "he might do a great deal of harm in the world. So perhaps it
is just as well for him to be ignorant." And he consoled himself with
this reflection.

A year later John Wicket ran away from home, taking with him the money
which his father kept in a stone jug in the kitchen. Old Mr. Wicket
refused to send after him. "I didn't need the money," he said, "and I
don't need him. Well, they're both gone."

But after a while, since his son was no longer there to plague him, he
began to feel proud of him. "An out and out scamp," he said, with
relish. "Never seen the like."

John Wicket was gone for three years, no one knew where. At last Eben
received news of him again. His son, who had been living all this time
in a nearby village, fell from a ladder and broke his neck. "Just,"
said Eben Wicket, "as I expected."

No one, however, expected to see his widow come to live with her
father-in-law. The old man himself went to fetch her and her year-old
child. She proved to be a small, plain body, with an air of fright
about her, as though life had surprised her. Out of respect for Eben,
as they put it, the gossips went to call. They found her shy, and
inclined to be silent; they drank their tea, and examined her with
curiosity, while she, for her part, seemed to want to hide away.

"As who wouldn't, in her place," said Mrs. Ploughman.

It was agreed that, having married an out-and-out rascal, she ought to
be willing to spend the remainder of her life quietly. So she was left
to herself, which seemed, on the face of it, to be about what she
wanted. She tended Eben's house, drove the one cow to pasture, and
sang to little Juliet from morning till night the songs she remembered
from her own childhood.

During that time no one had any fault to find with her, excepting old
Mrs. Crabbe, who thought she should have called her child Mary instead
of Juliet. "It's not a proper name," she said to Mrs. Tomkins. "It
isn't in the Bible, Mrs. Tomkins. You'd do as well to call the child
Salomy. Salomy's in the Bible."

When Eben Wicket died, early in 1917, he left his house and about an
acre of land to his daughter-in-law. She was poor; still, she had
enough to get along on. She was young, but every one thought of her as
a woman whose life was over. So when Noel Ploughman took to keeping
company with her, the gossips were all aflitter. It was June; the
regulars were on their way to France; and what with the war, and Mrs.
Wicket, the village had plenty to talk about. Old Mrs. Ploughman said
nothing, but regarded her friends with a gloomy and thoughtful air. On
the other hand, Miss Beal, the dressmaker, saw no reason to keep her
opinions to herself. "It's a scandal," she said to her friend Mrs.
Grumble; "what with Eben Wicket scarcely cold in his grave, and John a
thief, with his neck broke and heaven only knows what else besides."

Nevertheless, that summer Noel Ploughman's sober, honest face was often
to be seen in Mrs. Wicket's garden patch, among the beans and the
lettuces. Who can say what they found in one another to admire? In
his company she was both happy and regretful, while he, seeing her by
turns quiet and gay, could not determine which he found more charming.
They talked over the weather together, and discussed the crops. Love
comes slowly in the north; there is time for every one to take a hand
in it. August passed without either having mentioned what was in their
hearts. Then Mrs. Ploughman made up her mind to put an end to it. One
day, when Noel was in Milford, she came to call on Mrs. Wicket. One
can imagine what she said to the young woman, who was already a mother
and a widow. The next day Mrs. Wicket appeared in her garden, pale and
composed. Those who had occasion to pass the little cottage at the
edge of the village, remarked that she no longer hummed under her
breath the gay tunes of her childhood.

"Her sin has found her out," said Miss Beal. "She's fallen by the way."

"You'd think," said Mrs. Crabbe, "she'd behave herself a speck, after
the life she's had."

Mrs. Grumble also was of the opinion that Mrs. Wicket had done wrong in
allowing herself to care for Noel Ploughman. For it seemed to the
gossips that Mrs. Wicket's life was, by rights, no longer her own to do
with. She was the earthly remains of a sinner; she had no right to
enjoy herself.

Two days later Noel Ploughman enlisted, "for the duration of the war."
His grandmother accepted the congratulations of Mrs. Crabbe and the
sympathy of Mrs. Barly with equal satisfaction. It seemed to her that
she had done her duty as she saw it. But when Noel was killed in
France a year later, she felt that Mrs. Wicket had killed him. "Now,"
she croaked to Mrs. Crabbe, "I hope she's satisfied."

She seemed to be; she took the news of Noel's death with curious calm.
It was almost as if she had been expecting it, looking for it . . . one
might have thought she had been waiting for it. . . . After a while,
she began to sing again. Her voice, as she crooned to Juliet, was
musical, but quavery. It provoked the good women of the village, who
began to think that perhaps, after all, she had "had her way."
"There's this much about it," said Miss Beal; "no one else will have
him now."

Mrs. Grumble agreed with her. She disliked Mrs. Wicket because Mr.
Jeminy liked her. He pitied the young woman who had had the misfortune
to marry a thief, and he forgave her for wanting to be happy, because
it did not seem to him that to have been the wife of a good-for-nothing
was much to settle down on. In his opinion, life owed her more than
she had got.

"She is simple and kind," he said to Mrs. Grumble. "She has had very
little to give thanks for."

"She'll have more, then, if she can," replied Mrs. Grumble with a toss
of her head as though to say, "it's you who are simple."

And she looked the other way, when they met on the road. Mr. Jeminy,
on the other hand, often went to call at the little house at the edge
of the village. The young widow, who had no other callers, felt that
one friend was enough when he talked as much as Mr. Jeminy. While he
laid open before her the great books of the past, illuminating their
pages with his knowledge and reflections, she listened with an air of
tranquil pleasure. She counted the stitches on her sewing, and
answered "sakes alive," in the pauses.

One day in April she put on her best dress, and took the stage to
Milford. When she came home again, in the evening, she brought with
her a decorated shell for her friend. But it happened that Thomas Frye
also came home from Milford, by the same stage. That was what Mrs.
Grumble was waiting for. "Now she's at it again," said Mrs. Grumble.
"She's bound to have some one," she declared; "one or another, it's all
the same." And she gazed meaningly at Mr. Jeminy, who started at once
for his den, as though he were looking for something.

Then she was delighted with herself, and retired to the kitchen.

It was useless for Mr. Jeminy to retreat to his den. For sooner or
later, Mrs. Grumble always found something to do there. She would come
in with her broom and her mop, and look around. Then Mr. Jeminy would
walk hastily out of the house and descend to the village. There, it
would occur to him to call on Mrs. Wicket, because he happened to have
with him a book he thought she would like to look at, or a flower for
Juliet. Mrs. Wicket received each book with gratitude, and looked to
see if there were any pictures in it, before giving it back again.
Juliet, on the other hand, wished to know the names of all the flowers.
When Mr. Jeminy repeated their names in Latin, from the text-book on
botany, she clapped her hands, and jumped up and down, because it was
so comical.

Now, in August, Mr. Jeminy was building her a doll's house in Mrs.
Wicket's tumbledown barn. It was the sort of work he liked to engage
in; no one expected him to be accurate, it was only necessary to use
his imagination. But Juliet, swinging her legs on top of the feed bin,
regarded him with round and serious eyes. For in Juliet's opinion, Mr.
Jeminy was involved in a difficult task; and she was afraid he might
not be able to go through with it.

"How many rooms," she said, "is my doll's house going to have?"

"I had counted," said Mr. Jeminy, "on two." And he went over the
plans, using his hammer as a pointer. "Here is the bedroom," he said,
"and there is the kitchen. There's where the stove is going to be."

Juliet followed him without interest. It was apparent that she was
disappointed.

"Where's the parlor?" she demanded.

"Must there be a parlor?" asked Mr. Jeminy, in surprise.

"What do you think?" said Juliet. "I have to have a place for Anna to
keep company in."

Anna was the youngest of her three dolls; that is to say, Anna was
smaller than either Sara or Margaret. It seemed to Juliet that to be
without a parlor was to lack elegance. Mr. Jeminy rubbed his chin.
"Isn't Anna very young," he asked, "to keep company in the parlor?"

"No, she isn't," said Juliet.

Then, as Mr. Jeminy made no reply, she added, "She's six, going on
seven."

Mr. Jeminy sighed. "Is she indeed?" he remarked absently. "It is a
charming age. I wish I were able to see the world again through the
eyes of six, going on seven. What a noble world it would seem, full of
pleasant people."

"So," declared Juliet, "we have to have a parlor."

However, she could not sit still very long.

Presently she hopped down from the feed bin. "Look," she said, "this
is the way to fly." She began to dance about, waving her arms.
"This," she declared, "is the way the bees go." And she ran up and
down, crying "buzz, buzz."

She decided to play house, by herself. Arranging her three dolls, made
of rags and sawdust, on top of the bin, she stood before them, with her
fingers in her mouth. Then all at once she began to play.

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