A Lantern in Her Hand

by Bess Streeter Aldrich

  How queer that Gus used so much better English than Christine, Abbie was thinking. It seemed that Christine didn’t even try to talk right.

  She found Christine alone in the square, box-like house which had replaced the dug-out. The girls had gone over to Lutz’s store, Christine said. Rosie was going to work at Dr. Hornby’s.

  The two women talked for some time about trivial neighborhood things, beyond which they had little in common. Neighborliness, caused by the proximity of their houses and the fact that they had come into the new country at the same time, held them together. Christine was paradoxically rough and kind, penurious and unselfish. After a time, Abbie rose laboriously and said she must go. At the door she and Christine stood for a few minutes in parting. The northern sky was the color of dark gray ashes. It was very quiet,—the hushed quiet of a waiting storm god who gloats a little over the peace of Nature before he assaults. Suddenly Abbie felt half frightened and did not know why.

  The great gray clouds were now coming in from the northwest, rolling low over the land like billows of thick smoke from a thousand factories of the storm gods located somewhere beyond on the prairie. A single snarling blast came out of the clouds and needles of snow struck Abbie in the face.

  Even while she hurried out of the yard, the wind was whipping her shawl about her and a great smother of snow was engulfing her.

  “Come back, you,” Christine was at Abbie’s side.

  “No, Christine, I must get home.” She had to say it close to Christine’s ear in the roaring of the storm.

  Christine ran her arm through Abbie’s, “With you I go.” Abbie made a single feeble protest and then clung to Christine.

  In the welter of snow they reached the far side of the road opposite the Reinmuellers’, and Christine with her left arm hooked through Abbie’s, ran her right hand along the top of the wire fence for guidance. The wind lashed them until they cowered from it. The snow, in great swirling masses, drove its stinging clods into their eyes and nostrils. Irregular drifts formed at their feet in a moment’s time. When there came one terrific blast of wind more infuriated than others, Christine clung harder to the wire, the ugly barbs digging the flesh until the blood came. And then the composition of the snow seemed to change. It was no longer even slightly pliable, but a cruel, hard, dry substance which cut at them like bullets and nails and knives.

  Abbie’s strength in her present physical condition was going. She stopped and moaned at the necessity of pushing her cumbersome self into the jaws of the storm. Christine, with her more wiry robustness, half dragged the lagging body.

  Suddenly, the barbedwire gave place to picket and Christine knew that the Deals’ yard-fence was reached.

  “Now, not so far,” she shouted into Abbie’s ear. They wallowed, slackened, stopped altogether, crouched before the fury, and then gathered themselves together and plunged on again. Abbie, with her waning strength, had ceased to think, except to obey Christine.

  And then the pickets ended abruptly in a post, with space beyond, and Christine realized that it was the open lane-gate and that she had unknowingly passed the small front gate.

  “Vait,” she shouted. But she had no reason to encourage Abbie in waiting. For Abbie had sunk into the icy bed of a huge drift with the pangs of childbirth upon her.

  CHAPTER XX

  And now Christine had to pull Abbie out of the drift and put forth all her effort to get the suffering woman to retrace her steps to the little front gate. She did not dare turn into the wide open gateway and run the risk of losing her bearings in the uncharted wilderness of the lane road.

  In the added fear of her childbirth warnings, Abbie clung to Christine with all her strength. “Oh, . . . Christine . . . I can’t go any farther . . .” The storm god took the words and threw them back into her face.

  “Come . . . you!” Christine hurled savagely into Abbie’s ear. “Of your man t’ink. Of your kinder t’ink. You’re verrückt . . . crazy!”

  Christine kept her freezing right arm through Abbie’s, and plunging slowly ahead, grasped every picket with her left. Pausing, cowering, plunging, pulling Abbie’s half-prostrate body, she came to the welcome cross-pieces of the small gate. “By de cedars ve tell,” she called in Abbie’s ear. They turned blindly, for all directions seemed lost in the mad whirl of snow, crawled through the gateway, and grasped the first cedar. “How many?” Christine was calling.

  “Nine,” Abbie moaned. She held onto the last far-reaching branch of the first cedar while Christine felt for the second.

  “Zwei!”

  Pushing on, cowering before the white smother, they crawled. The storm tore Abbie’s shawl from her and the frozen icicles of her wet hair beat her face like tiny razor blades.

  “Drei.”

  As she felt Christine pulling her forward, the hideous agonizing childbirth pains shook her freezing body again and she sank in a wildly whirling drift.

  “Du narr!” Christine snarled at her ear. “Come . . . du narr . . . fool!”

  She set her teeth and plunged ahead while the icy needles drew something moist and trickling from her face.

  “Vier.”

  And now her breath was going. One could not struggle on when there was no air to breathe. Christine was pulling her. Because she had no breath, Christine was pulling her.

  “Fünf.”

  Abbie sank to her knees in pain. Christine jerked at her fiercely. “Get you up.” In her ear Christine was yelling. “You die . . . you like dat dyin’ maybe . . . nein? Your baby . . . you keel heem . . . you like dat keelin’ your baby maybe?” No, she must not kill her baby, so she must do as Christine said. But it was so painful——

  “Sechs.”

  Abbie began to be too numb to feel the cold. What was the use of obeying Christine? Christine had no right to boss so.

  “Sieben.”

  The white suffocating smother was turning dark. There seemed no use fighting the hideous black thing that was closing her breath.

  “Acht!”

  Christine was pushing and dragging her. She ought to help Christine push and drag . . .

  “Nein!”

  Together they plunged to the wall of the house. By the loyal cedars they had found their way. In a war of snow, when the whole world was fighting it in mortal combat, only the cedars seemed not to have lost their heads. Only Abbie’s cedars and Christine seemed faithful to her. Abbie knew that Christine was dragging her now into the warm shelter of the house. She heard Christine say something about: “Heis vater, qvick!” and then she tumbled into a sea of suffering to which there seemed no shore and in which time was not measured. It was hard to breathe. Sometimes she saw faces dimly which came and went. Sometimes she vaguely heard whisperings. Sometimes she smelled steamy woolens and moist hot flannels. Most of the time she was sinking under cold smothering water. Only one thing brought her back,—a light,—a lantern shining down into the icy waters. It shone to light the way back up for her. Each time she sank, she kept her eyes on the light and said, “Will . . . Mack . . . Margaret . . . John . . . Isabelle . . .” And the saying of the names bore her back to the surface and the light.

  And then, in some queer intuitive way, she knew her life was going out with the tide. The light grew fainter and farther away.

  She did not care especially, except for one thing. The light! She ought not lose sight of its faint gleam. Some tiny spark of memory kept reminding her that she must never take her eyes away from the far-off glow of the lantern. So that, sinking, she kept pulling herself feebly back toward its faint gleam with “Will . . . Mack . . . Margaret . . . John . . . Isabelle.” She told the words over as a nun touches her beads.

  Her mind was not lucid enough to understand that through constant utterance, she was trying to pray that she might come back to her responsibility,—that she had so much to do yet for the family,—that they could not get along without her. Over and over, she said them, “Will . . . Mack . . . Margaret . . . John . . . Isabelle.” Each name a bead
—each bead a prayer. And when her mind cleared a little, and she heard a strange new wail, she remembered a new responsibility and said them over again, “Will . . . Mack . . . Margaret . . . John . . . Isabelle . . . the baby.” Each name a bead,—each bead a prayer. Fighting the icy waters feebly, with only the thought of the light to keep them from closing over her, she came back at times to the consciousness of the homely red face of Christine by her bed, nodding, jerking up, nodding——

  And when the light grew clearer and more steady and the cold water seemed gone, Will told her that the baby was a girl.

  “We’ll name her Grace,” Abbie said feebly, “Grace of God. She’ll be a comfort. She’ll stay with us longer . . . maybe . . . than a boy. Where’s Christine, Will?”

  Christine Reinmueller came in to stand by the bed, her short shapeless body in a blue calico dress, her greasy little tight braids of hair wound flat from ear to ear, her fat red face scarred with scratches.

  Abbie reached up and pulled her down. Arms close around her, she kissed her rough cheek. “Christine . . . my friend . . . my friend for all my life.”

  Christine writhed in embarrassment, “Ach! Du sans garrich . . . voolish.” She pulled away. “Es ist nix . . . nossing.”

  It seemed odd to Abbie to have a baby again after ten years. Sometimes she said she was afraid she had forgotten how to care for one. But when she grew strong, it all came back to her. The Abbie Deals do not forget.

  Margaret graduated from the academy in the spring of that year. Fred Baker, the minister’s nephew, who was to be a full-fledged doctor in one more year, arrived in time for the graduating exercises, and brought her a stereoscope with views of “Niagara Falls,” “Hudson Bay by Moonlight,” “The Wedding Party,” and several others with subtle suggestions of a romantic nature. Margaret rode home in the lumber-wagon with the stereoscopic views in her lap and her head somewhere beyond the prairie clouds.

  John went back to the academy in the fall, but Margaret was at home with Abbie for the year. And that year was to seem very short to Abbie, for Margaret was getting ready to marry the embryonic doctor. And as all the estate, real or personal, which the two owned, consisted of the stereoscope and the twelve picturesquely romantic views, the year was crowded with the making of quilts, the hemming of sheets, and the sewing of carpet-rags.

  The next spring, Abbie’s dream of a parlor came into the world of reality. They built it on the south side of the old part, protruding toward the road. They wanted it done before Margaret’s wedding, and the wedding was already set for June. Old Asy Drumm, a little more stooped and silent and tobacco-stained, finished the last door-latch and the last piece of mop-board several weeks before the momentous occasion. John and Will painted the pine exterior and Abbie and Margaret varnished the pine interior. There were two modish details about that parlor of which Abbie was inordinately proud,—the fan-shaped colored-glass window toward the road and the double doors that slipped mysteriously into the wall when pushed backward. To be sure, in looking through the fan-shaped glass one saw a bilious green sky, sickly yellow cedars, a wavering blue picket fence and a nightmarish red lawn, but this was a mere bagatene beside the touch of distinction it gave. Also the doors, after mysteriously disappearing into the walls, could not always be coaxed readily out of their hiding places, so that the women folk would have to call “John . . .” or “Father . . . come help us, will you?” Abbie was proud of them, though, and all her life made loyal excuses for “the doors sticking just a little to-day.”

  Abbie and Margaret rode up to Lincoln on the branch line, with its small engine, its one coach and baggage car, and bought a red and green sale carpet for the new parlor, Nottingham curtains, an oak patent-swinging rocker, and a marble-topped stand with a blue plush album. It seemed too much grandeur at one time for a single family to acquire. Abbie’s rather critical conscience reminded her constantly that Rome was at the height of its glory just before the fall. She sewed the strips of carpet together and then the united family put it down over a layer of newspapers and fresh oat straw. Will, Abbie and John crawled along one side of the room on their hands and knees, pulling and stretching and tacking, while Margaret kept the straw pushed down as level as she could, so the result would not be Rocky-Mountain-like, and Isabelle kept little Grace, a year and a half old now, from putting the tacks into her mouth. When these two stupendous tasks were accomplished, and the carpet was taut and springy over its oat field, they put up the curtains, moved in the organ and the what-not, Abbie’s old painting of the prairie, the new chair and the stand, the blue plush album and the stereopticon views, which, luckily, were to remain in the parlor through the wedding. Surveying the finished product, Abbie wondered if any of the Astors or Vanderbilts about whom she had read, ever had anything quite so stylish.

  And then Margaret’s dress was to be made and all the wedding to be planned. Margaret said she had her heart set on a navy blue silk with white ruching and—

  Her mother stopped her. “Don’t you . . .” Abbie was wistful. “Don’t you wish we could afford a white satin dress and white slippers and a veil?”

  “No, Mother . . . the navy blue silk is just what I want. As long as Fred and I are going right to the rooms over the drug store, I want my clothes to be suitable and I might never have use for a white satin again. Besides, now that I’m going to live in Lincoln, I want to save every penny toward painting supplies. I’m never happier than when I’m opening up the paint-box and getting at the oil and brushes. You know, Mother, my housework won’t be much . . . just think . . . those few tiny rooms to keep and not any of the work there is here on the farm . . . and I’m going into my painting for all it’s worth. I can’t explain it to you, Mother, but there’s something in me . . . that if I could just get down on canvas the way the cottonwoods look against the sky, or the way the prairie looks at sunset with the pink light . . .” she broke off. “Oh, I suppose you think I’m daffy . . . you wouldn’t understand.”

  Abbie, at the east kitchen window, looked over the low rolling hills where the last of the May sunshine lay in yellow-pink pools on the prairie. Her lips trembled a little. “Yes, I would,” she said simply. “I’d understand.”

  And then, quite suddenly, it was the night of the wedding. The moon slipped up from a fleecy cloud-bed and with silvery congratulations swung low over the farmhouse behind the cedars. The whole countryside was there. In a community where there have been few lines drawn, one does not begin to draw them at wedding times. The lane road held all manner of vehicles,—lumber-wagons, buggies, phaetons, carts, surreys, hayracks. The Lutzes were all there and all of the Reinmuellers but Emil, who sat on a milk stool in the barn at home all evening and sulked. Sarah Lutz looked stylish in her tight-fitting black dress of stiff silk, with jet earrings against her rosy cheeks. Christine had a new blue calico gathered on full at the waistline.

  Mack surprised them all by driving up the lane road in a shining black buggy with canary yellow wheels, yellow lines over the horse’s black back, and a yellow whip. He drove over to the Lutz’s and came back with Emma Lutz, who was trying her best not to look important.

  The presents were all in the sitting-room, the small things on tables. There were two red plush chairs, a stylish castor, a green glass pitcher with frosted glasses, three lamps with snow scenes on the globes, several hand-made splashers and tidies, and enough cold meat and pickle forks to supply a garrison of soldiers with fighting equipment. Gus and Christine, out of deference to the literary tastes of the family, had bought a huge volume, their decision over the purchase having been based upon weight rather than content, and which now, upon inspection, proved to be Twenty Lessons in Etiquette.

  Some time before the ceremony Abbie climbed the uncarpeted pine stairs with the little calf-skin-covered chest under her arm. Just as her mother had climbed the sapling ladder in the old log cabin, she was thinking. Wasn’t life queer? Such a little while ago, it seemed. Where had the time gone? Blown away by the winds you could not stop
,—ticked off by the clock hands you could not stay.

  Margaret was nearly dressed. Her blue silk, with its fifteen yards of goods, was looped back modishly over a bustle, the train dragging behind her with stylish abandon. Abbie sat down on the edge of her daughter’s bed, the chest in her lap. “You know, Margaret, it was always a kind-of dream of mine that by the time you were married, we’d be well enough off to do a lot of things for you. I always saw you in my mind dressed in white with a veil and slippers,—not just that I wanted you dressed that one way,—but I mean as a sort of symbol,—that we’d be able to do all the things for you that should rightfully go with the pearls. But,” Abbie’s voice broke a little and she stopped to steady it, “things don’t always turn out just as we dream,—and we’re not able to do much for you. But anyway, you shall wear the pearls to-night if you want to.”

  Margaret, holding up her long dress, crossed the rag-carpeted floor in little swift happy steps, and threw young arms around her mother.

  “I know all you’ve done for me, Mother.” She took Abbie’s rough hands in her own firm ones and held them to her lips. “And it’s everything,—just everything that you could do. Never as long as I live can I ever repay it.” There were tears in the young girl’s eyes and to keep them back, she said lightly, “No, thanks, Mother, dear. I’m all right with my lovely blue silk and the white silk ruching at my neck. Keep them for Isabelle or baby Grace. You and father will be well-fixed in a few years. The land will be higher. You’re having good crops now and by the time Isabelle is married, your dream can come true. And besides, Mother, dear,” she put her young cheek against Abbie’s, “you know that when you marry the man you love, you don’t need jewels to make you happy.”

  Yes, yes,—how the words came back, borne on the breeze of memories! How swiftly the clock hands had gone around! Abbie could not speak. She must shed no tears on her little girl’s wedding day. So, she only patted her and kissed her, smiling at her through a thousand unshed tears. And you, who have seen your mother smile when you left her,—or have smiled at your daughter’s leaving,—know it is the most courageous smile of all.