The First Willa Cather Megapack

by Willa Cather

  So Martin spoke the truth when he said that everything that had ever affected his life one way or the other was of the river. To him the river stood for Providence, for fate.

  Some of the saddest fables of ancient myth are of the fates of the devotees of the River Gods. And the worship of the River Gods is by no means dead. Martin had been a constant worshipper and a most faithful one, and here he was at forty, not so well off as when he began the world for himself at sixteen. But let no one dream that because the wages of the River God cannot be counted in coin or numbered in herds of cattle, that they are never paid. Its real wages are of the soul alone, and not visible to any man. To all who follow it faithfully, and not for gain but from inclination, the river gives a certain simpleness of life and freshness of feeling and receptiveness of mind not to be found among the money changers of the market place. It feeds his imagination and trains his eye, and gives him strength and courage. And it gives him something better than these, if aught can be better. It gives him, no matter how unlettered he may be, something of that intimate sympathy with inanimate nature that is the base of all poetry, something of that which the high-faced rocks of the gleaming Sicilian shore gave Theocritus.

  Martin had come back to Brownville to live down the memory of his disgrace. He might have found a much easier task without going so far. Every day for six years he had met the reproachful eyes of his neighbors unflinchingly, and he knew that his mistake was neither condoned nor forgotten. Brownville people have nothing to do but to keep such memories perenially green. If he had been a coward he would have run away from this perpetual condemnation. But he had the quiet courage of all men who have wrestled hand to hand with the elements, and who have found out how big and terrible nature is. So he stayed.

  Miss Margie left the church with a stinging sense of shame at what she had said, and wondered if she were losing her mind. For the women who are cast in that tragic mould are always trying to be like their milder sisters, and are always flattering themselves that they have succeeded. And when some fine day the fire flames out they are more astonished and confounded than anyone else can be. Miss Margie walked rapidly through the dusty road, called by courtesy a street, and crossed the vacant building lots unmindful that her skirts were switching among the stalks of last year’s golden rods and sunflowers. As she reached the door a little boy in much abbreviated trousers ran around the house from the back yard and threw his arms about her. She kissed him passionately and felt better. The child seemed to justify her in her own eyes. Then she led him in and began to get supper.

  “Don’t make my tea as strong as you did last night, Margie. It seems like you ought to know how to make it by this time,” said the querrelous invalid from the corner.

  “All right, mother. Why mother, you worked my buttonholes in black silk instead of blue!”

  “How was I to tell, with my eyes so bad? You ought to have laid it out for me. But there is always something wrong about everything I do,” complained the old lady in an injured tone.

  “No, there isn’t, it was all my fault. You can work a better buttonhole than I can, any day.”

  “Well, in my time they used to say so,” said Mrs. Pierson somewhat mollified.

  Margie was practically burdened with the care of two children. Her mother was crippled with rheumatism, and only at rare intervals could “help about the house.” She insisted on doing a little sewing for her daughter, but usually it had to come out and be done over again after she went to bed. With the housework and the monotonous grind of her work at school, Miss Margie had little time to think about her misfortunes, and so perhaps did not feel them as keenly as she would otherwise have done. It was a perplexing matter, too, to meet even the modest expenses of their household with the salary paid a country teacher. She had never touched a penny of the money Martin paid for the child’s board, but put it in the bank for the boy’s own use when he should need it.

  After supper she put her mother to bed and then put on the red wrapper that she always wore in the evening hour that she had alone with Bobbie. The woman in one dies hard, and after she had ceased to dress for men the old persistent instinct made her wish to be attractive to the boy. She heard him say his “piece” that he was to recite at the Easter service tomorrow, and then sat down in the big rocking chair before the fire and Bobbie climbed up into her lap.

  “Bobbie, I want to tell you a secret that we mustn’t tell grandma yet. Your father is talking about taking you away.”

  “Away on the ferry boat?” his eyes glistened with excitement.

  “No dear, away down the river; away from grandma and me for good.”

  “But I won’t go away from you and grandma, Miss Margie. Don’t you remember how I cried all night the time you were away?”

  “Yes, Bobbie, I know, but you must always do what your father says. But you wouldn’t like to go, would you?”

  “Of course I wouldn’t. There wouldn’t be anybody to pick up chips, or go to the store, or take care of you and grandma, ’cause I’m the only boy you’ve got.”

  “Yes Bobbie, that’s just it, dear heart, you’re the only boy I’ve got!” And Miss Margie gathered him up in her arms and laid her hot cheek on his and fell to sobbing, holding him closer and closer.

  Bobbie lay very still, not even complaining about the tears that wetted his face. But he wondered very much why any one should cry who had not cut a finger or been stung by a wasp or trodden on a sand-burr. Poor little Bobbie, he had so much to learn! And while he was wondering he fell asleep, and Miss Margie undressed him and put him to bed.

  During the five years since that night when Marjorie Pierson and her mother, in the very face of the village gossips, had gone to the train to meet Martin Dempster when he came back to Brownville, worn and weak with fever, and had taken his wailing little baby from his arms, giving it the first touch of womanly tenderness it had ever known, the two lonely women had grown to love it better than anything else in the world, better even than they loved each other. Marjorie had felt every ambition of her girlhood die out before the strength of the vital instinct which this child awakened and satisfied within her. She had told Martin in the church that afternoon that “a woman must have something.” Of women of her kind this is certainly true. You can find them everywhere slaving for and loving other women’s children. In this sorry haphazard world such women are often cut off from the natural outlet of what is within them; but they always make one. Sometimes it is an aged relative, sometimes an invalid sister, sometimes a waif from the streets no one else wants, sometimes it is only a dog. But there is something, always.

  When the child was in his bed Miss Margie took up a bunch of examination papers and began looking through them. As she worked she heard a slow rapping at the door, a rap she knew well indeed, that had sent the blood to her cheeks one day. Now it only left them white.

  She started and hesitated, but as the rap was repeated she rose and went to the door, setting her lips firmly.

  “Good evening, Martin, come in,” she said quietly. “Bobbie is in bed. I’m sorry.”

  Martin stood by the door and shook his head at the proffered chair. “I didn’t come to see Bobbie, Margie. I came to finish what I began to say this afternoon when you cut me off. I know I’m slow spoken. It’s always been like it was at school, when the teacher asked a question I knew as well as I knew my own name, but some other fellow’d get the answer out before me. I started to say this afternoon that if I took Bobbie to St. Louis I couldn’t take him alone. There is somebody else I couldn’t bear to be apart from, and I guess you’ve known who that is this many a year.”

  A painful blush overspread Miss Margie’s face and she turned away and rested her arm on the mantel. “It is not like you to take advantage of what I said this afternoon when I was angry. I wouldn’t have believed it of you. You have given me pain enough in years gone by without this�
�this that makes me sick and ashamed.”

  “Sick and ashamed? Why Margie, you must have known what I’ve been waiting in Brownville for all these years. Don’t tell me I’ve waited too long. I’ve done my best to live it down. I haven’t bothered you nor pestered you so folks could talk. I’ve just stayed and stuck it out till I could feel I was worthy. Not that I think I’m worthy now, Margie, but the time has come for me to go and I can’t go alone.”

  He paused, but there was no answer. He took a step nearer. “Why Margie, you don’t mean that you haven’t known I’ve been loving you all the time till my heart’s near burst in me? Many a night down on the old ferry I’ve told it over and over again to the river till even it seemed to understand. Why Margie, I’ve”—the note of fear caught in his throat and his voice broke and he stood looking helplessly at his boots.

  Miss Margie still stood leaning on her elbow, her face from him. “You’d better have been telling it to me, Martin,” she said bitterly.

  “Why Margie, I couldn’t till I got my place. I couldn’t have married you here and had folks always throwing that other woman in your face.”

  “But if you had loved me you would have told me, Martin, you couldn’t have helped that.”

  He caught her hand and bent over it, lifting it tenderly to his lips. “O Margie, I was ashamed, bitter ashamed! I couldn’t forget that letter I had to write you once. And you might have had a hundred better men than me. I never was good enough for you to think of one minute. I wasn’t clever nor ready spoken like you, just a tramp of a river rat who could somehow believe better in God because of you.”

  Margie felt herself going and made one last desperate stand. “Perhaps you’ve forgotten all you said in that letter, perhaps you’ve forgotten the shame it would bring to any woman. Would you like to see it? I have always kept it.”

  He dropped her hand.

  “No, I don’t want to see it and I’ve not forgot. I only know I’d rather have signed my soul away than written it. Maybe you’re right and there are things a man can’t live down,—not in this world. Of course you can keep the boy. As you say he is more yours than mine, a thousand times more. I’ve never had anything I could call my own. It’s always been like this and I ought to be used to it by this time. Some men are made that way. Good night, dear.”

  “O Martin, don’t talk like that, you could have had me any day for the asking. But why didn’t you speak before? I’m too old now!” Margie leaned closer to the mantel and the sobs shook her.

  He looked at her for a moment in wonder, and, just as she turned to look for him, caught her in his arms. “I’ve always been slow spoken, Margie,—I was ashamed,—you were too good for me,” he muttered between his kisses.

  “Don’t Martin, don’t! That’s all asleep in me and it must not come, it shan’t come back! Let me go!” cried Margie breathlessly.

  “O I’m not near through yet! I’m just showing you how young you are,—its the quickest way,” came Martin’s answer muffled by the trimmings of her gown.

  “O Martin, you may be slow spoken, but you’re quick enough at some things,” laughed Margie as she retreated to the window, struggling hard against the throb of reckless elation that arose in her. She felt as though some great force had been unlocked within her, great and terrible enough to rend her asunder, as when a brake snaps or a band slips and some ponderous machine grinds itself in pieces. It is not an easy thing, after a woman has shut the great natural hope out of her life, to open the flood gates and let the riotous, aching current come throbbing again through the shrunken channels, waking a thousand undreamed-of possibilities of pleasure and pain.

  Martin followed her to the window and they stood together leaning against the deep casing while the spring wind blew in their faces, bearing with it the yearning groans of the river.

  “We can kind of say goodbye to the old place tonight. We’ll be going in a week or two now,” he said nervously.

  “I’ve wanted to get away from Brownville all my life, but now I’m someway afraid to think of going.”

  “How did that piece end we used to read at school, ‘My chains and I—’ Go on, you always remember such things.”

  “My very chains and I grew friends,

  So much a long communion tends

  To make us what we are. Even I

  Regained my freedom with a sigh,”

  quoted Margie softly.

  “Yes, that’s it. I’m counting on you taking some singing lessons again when we get down to St. Louis.”

  “Why I’m too old to take singing lessons now. I’m too old for everything. O Martin, I don’t believe we’ve done right. I’m afraid of all this! It hurts me.”

  He put his arm about her tenderly and whispered: “Of course it does, darling. Don’t you suppose it hurts the old river down there tonight when the spring floods are stirring up the old bottom and tearing a new channel through the sand? Don’t you suppose it hurts the trees tonight when the sap is climbing up and up till it breaks through the bark and runs down their sides like blood? Of course it hurts.”

  “Oh Martin, when you talk like that it don’t hurt any more,” whispered Margie.

  Truly the service of the river has its wages and its recompense, though they are not seen of men. Just then the door opened and Bobbie came stumbling sleepily across the floor, trailing his little night gown after him.

  “It was so dark in there, and I’m scared of the river when it sounds so loud,” he said, hiding his face in Margie’s skirts.

  Martin lifted him gently in his arms and said, “The water won’t hurt you, my lad. My boy must never be afraid of the river.”

  And as he stood there listening to the angry grumble of the swollen waters, Martin asked their benediction on his happiness. For he knew that a river man may be happy only as the river wills.

  THE PRODIGIES

  “I am ready at last, Nelson. Have I kept you very long?” asked Mrs. Nelson Mackenzie as she came hurriedly down the stairs. “I’m sorry, but I just had one misfortune after another in dressing.”

  “You don’t look it,” replied her husband, as he glanced up at her admiringly.

  “Do you like it? O, thank you! I am never quite sure about this shade of green, it’s so treacherous. I have had such a time. The children would not stay in the nursery and poor Elsie has lost her Alice in Wonderland and wails without ceasing because nurse cannot repeat ‘The Walrus and the Carpenter’ off hand.”

  “I should think every one about this house could do that. I know the whole fool book like the catechism,” said Mackenzie as he drew on his coat.

  “Is the carriage there?”

  Mackenzie didn’t answer. He knew that Harriet knew perfectly well that the carriage had been waiting for half an hour.

  “I hope we shant be late,” remarked Harriet as they drove away. “But it’s just like Kate to select the most difficult hour in the day and recognize no obstacles to our appearing. She admits of no obstacles either for herself or other people. You’ve never met her except formally, have you? We saw a great deal of each other years ago. I took a few vocal lessons from her father and was for a time the object of her superabundant enthusiasm. If there is anything in the world that has not at some time been its object I don’t know it. One must always take her with a grain of allowance. But even her characteristic impracticability does not excuse her for inviting busy people at four o’clock in the afternoon.”

  “I suppose it’s the only hour at which the prodigies exhibit.”

  “Now don’t speak disrespectfully, Nelson. They really are very wonderful children. I fancy Kate is working them to death, that’s her way. But I don’t think I ever heard two young voices of such promise. They sang at Christ Church that Sunday you didn’t go, and I was quite overcome with astonishment. They have had the best instruction. It’s wo
nderful to think of mere children having such method. As a rule juvenile exhibitions merely appeal to the maternal element in one, but when I heard them I quite forgot that they were children. I assure you they quite deserve to be taken seriously.”

  “All the same I shouldn’t like to be exhibiting my children about like freaks.”

  “Poor Nelson! There’s not much danger of your ever being tempted. It’s extremely unlikely that poor Billy or Elsie will ever startle the world. Really, do you know when I heard those Massey children and thought of all they have done, of all they may do, I envied them myself? To youth everything is possible—when anything at all is possible.”

  Harriet sighed and Mackenzie fancied he detected a note of disappointment in her voice. He had suspected before that Harriet was disappointed in her children. They suited him well enough, but Harriet was different.

  If Harriet Norton had taken up missionary work in the Cannibal Islands her friends could not have been more surprised than when she married Nelson Mackenzie. They had slated her for a very different career. As a girl she had possessed unusual talent. After taking sundry honors at the New England Conservatory, she had studied music abroad. It had been rumored that Leschetizky was about to launch her on a concert tour as a piano virtuoso, when she had suddenly returned to America and married the one among all her admirers who seemed particularly unsuited to her. Mackenzie was a young physician, a thoroughly practical, methodical Scotchman, rather stout, with a tendency to baldness, and with a propensity for playing the cornet. This latter fact alone was certainly enough to disqualify him for becoming the husband of a pianiste. When it reached Leschetizky’s ears that Miss Norton had married a cornet-playing doctor, he “recorded one lost soul more,” and her name never passed his lips again. Even her former rivals felt that they could now afford to be generous, and with one accord sent their congratulations to herself and husband “whom they had heard was also a musician.”