A Lantern in Her Hand

by Bess Streeter Aldrich

  The letters came frequently. John was willing enough now to pour out his thoughts to his mother.

  “Our regiments commence where the numbers of the regiments of the Civil War ceased,—that is, the First National Guard (the regiment our company belongs to) is now the Forty-Ninth.”

  Why, how terrible! Abbie looked up from her letter. How terrible that the numbers should go right on. Would they always go on? Mack’s little boy, Stanley,—little Fred Baker, Jr.—four and six now,—In twenty or thirty years—The idea was unthinkable. O God, don’t let the numbers of the regiments go right on!

  “We found that we all had to submit to another physical examination by a regular army physician. This was bad news for me and I feared it on account of the scar on my ankle. A number were rejected and I was one. . . .” Abbie’s heart gave a bound of relief. John’s near-tragedy, then, had been a blessing in disguise . . . “but another examination before a board of regimental surgeons passed me. . . .”

  And so there was no relief and no blessing,—nothing but war.

  There were other boys of the neighborhood going, too. Fritz Reinmueller for one. “Ach! Wid plantin’ time come,” Christine said in her half-English. “Such a schlechte zeit . . . bad time.”

  How queer Christine was,—to think always of the land and the crops and the money.

  It had been in April that John’s first letter had come from the box-stall in the Des Moines speed stable.

  On a warm night in May, Isabelle came walking up the lane toad under the poplars. Abbie had not expected her home and she ran to the sitting-room door with cheery words of greeting. On the porch steps Isabelle stood and looked at her mother with wide tragic eyes. Did nothing,—said nothing,—but stood and looked with wide tragic eyes.

  “Isabelle!” Abbie’s heart was pounding tumultuously. “What is it?”

  “I’m married.” The girl’s voice was dull, without expression.

  “Married?” Abbie repeated in a voice equally as dull, and with equal lack of expression.

  Isabelle put out her hand. There was a wide gold band on her slender finger.

  “Last night. And he’s gone.”

  “You mean you’re married to . . . to? . . .”

  “He’s gone,” she repeated dully. There was only one man in the world, so why name him?

  “You married Harrison Rhodes . . . before he left?”

  “For San Francisco.”

  Abbie pulled Isabelle into the house and with shaking hands took off the girl’s hat.

  “They’ll be sent to the Philippines,” Isabelle said in that same expressionless way. Abbie was trembling in every limb. She had read about such things happening to other mothers. And now it was happening to her. She could not think it,—that her own little Isabelle Deal had married in that hasty manner. Why, she wasn’t even Isabelle Deal,—she was Isabelle Rhodes. Everything seemed tumbling about Abbie’s head,—all her plans for her musical girl. Why, Isabelle was only finishing her sophomore year. And then, suddenly, Abbie thought of the pearls lying in their velvet box in the old calf-skin-covered chest, waiting for Isabelle to be a bride. For a moment, a great disappointment overtopped all her other emotions. Oh, why had Isabelle done this hasty thing?

  “Oh, Isabelle . . . without a wedding! I’ve always wanted every one of my girls to have a wedding at home.”

  “Oh, what difference is a wedding?” And Isabelle began to cry, great wrenching sobs that shook her.

  Abbie put comforting arms around her. “There . . . there . . . dearie. That’s right . . . after all . . . what difference is a wedding?”

  “He cared for nothing in the world but me and music,” Isabelle said in her bitterness, “but he went to war.”

  Abbie held her close, rocked her as if she were a child.

  “Yes, yes, Isabelle. They care for nothing in the world but women and their work . . . and they go to war.”

  Isabelle would not go back to school for the remaining few weeks of the year. She would only sit at home and wait dully. And now Abbie had the new experience of attempting to keep another person courageous. It was more trying than to keep up her own spirits. Why must she always be strong for other people? How Isabelle sapped at her strength! She seemed to have no stamina. Sometimes Abbie thought the girl was selfish in it, and then she would say. “But I’m her mother. I’m the one for her to take her troubles to.” Abbie had John to think about also. She felt a little jealous that Isabelle was thinking of Harrison all the time, when John was in the same danger.

  By the middle of June, John, the lawyer, was sweltering at drill in Camp Libre in Florida; and Harrison, who cared for nothing in the world but Isabelle and music, was sweltering before Fort Malati, doing outpost duty.

  They came home in the summer of ’99. Harrison, who had been in much action, came home fairly well; John, who had done only camp and guard duty, came pale, emaciated and weak from typhoid contracted in Cuba. Harrison and Isabelle made plans to move immediately to Chicago. Abbie thought she could not stand it,—to have Isabelle live so far away. Why did children do that? It made her envy Christine, whose children were all settling down on the various eighties that Gus had bought,—Heinie here, Emil there, even Fritz, just home from the Philippines, had married and started into the field.

  Isabelle took the piano. “I hate to, Mother, with Grace eleven now. It seems selfish.”

  “No, you take it,” Abbie told her. “Grace can’t bear to practice. She just reads and reads. My,—how different you children all are.”

  And then it came about that Chicago seemed not far, almost neighborly, in comparison with John’s new location. After recuperating at home that summer, John left for Seattle and Nome. Abbie was stunned. Nome,—in Alaska,—from which there could be no return in the fall after the ice had frozen, from which there could come no word until late spring when the ice had gone out. In his characteristic way, John had told his plan casually only a few days before he left. There was a future in Alaska. It was the place for young fellows. Fortunes awaited their picking up. He would open a law office in Nome and keep his eyes open for anything presenting itself on the side. He was using his army money for the purpose. How queer, thought Abbie,—just as Will had taken his army money for the long-ago trip into Nebraska. Soldiers of fortune, both.

  Calm and dry-eyed, Abbie told her son good-by. But all winter, day and night, her thoughts were with him. Every night when she was ready for bed she would look over the snow-covered prairie to the northwest, toward the land to which no word could go,—toward the land from which no word could come.

  It was June before the first of the winter letters came. There were many. John had written her often. Many nights, then, as she had stood looking across the snow-wrapped prairie, John had been writing to her. After all, no distance could sever the tie that bound them,—nothing come between her and her silent boy. The letters were of an intense interest to home-keeping Abbie,—descriptive of the gold rush. Most important of all, John had been appointed U. S. Commissioner and was going up above the Arctic Circle.

  In the late fall of that year, when Mack’s and Emma’s boy, Stanley, was six, a second son was born to them. They named him Donald. And he immediately upset Abbie’s plans for Christmas by acquiring colic to such a noisy degree that the Mackenzie Deal family decided to stay in Omaha behind closed doors with their vociferous offspring.

  The annual Deal reunion did not prove so complete a success as usual with John and Mack’s family all absent. Abbie went through all the preparations for the event, as she always did,—the pop-corn balls and the taffy candy, the tree and the little hidden packages, but it was never the same for her when one child was missing. This was the fourth Christmas John had been away from them. More than ever, Abbie’s thoughts were with John in that far-off land of the midnight sun, now that he was so much farther away than Nome.

  What was there about John that seemed always to bring her thoughts of anxiety, Abbie wondered? From the time he was small, it seem
ed that she had always thought and prayed more about John than any of the others. His silence, his independence, his way of doing things without telling her, worried her. And now in Alaska, above the Arctic Circle, with no means of communication until the ice floe should go out,—what was he doing? What were his experiences? His pastimes? His temptations? What sort of women was he meeting? Abbie would stop in her work and utter a prayer for him,—and, sent as it were from the bow of a mother’s watchful care, bound by the cord of a mother’s love, the little winged arrow on its flight must have reached Some one,—Somewhere.

  The Dr. Fred Bakers were out at Christmas. Grace, twelve, and Fred Jr., eight, were the only children at the Christmas reunion that year.

  Isabelle and Harrison, though, came from Chicago, enthusiastic over their music. They were both studying and practicing hours every day, and singing in a suburban church choir. They each had a few music pupils. Isabelle looked stylish in her brown silk shirtwaist and wide brown serge skirt with fifteen gores, stiffened with buckram.

  The two stayed a day after the Fred Bakers had gone.

  “Don’t you get tired of all the extra noise and work, Mother?” Isabelle wanted to know when they were alone.

  “Oh, my! No, dear,” Abbie returned. “When you have children, Isabelle, you’ll understand what I mean.”

  “I might as well tell you now, Mother,—we’re not having children.”

  “Not . . . what, Isabelle?”

  “I’d really rather be honest with you than hear you talk that way. We’re not having a family.”

  “Why, Isabelle, you talk as though . . . as though . . .”

  “But I mean it. We’re really not well enough off. You know, yourself, Mother, that Harrison and I will never be rich and what’s more, neither one of us really cares. Mack has a good business head on him and is well on the way now to being well-to-do. Doctor and Margaret seem to have the ability to lay up treasures where moth can corrupt. No telling what John will do. He may be a big attorney some day. We don’t know Grace’s future when she’s only twelve. But all Harrison and I care for is our art. Music is our very life. Knowing that we’re going to be so devoted to it and perhaps never be well enough off, we’re just not having children.”

  “But, Isabelle, if people waited to be rich to have children. If we! . . . Oh, Isabelle! . . . You’d make me laugh if I didn’t feel so like crying. ‘Can’t afford it?’ How can you afford to miss it . . . little children . . . their soft warm bodies and their little clinging hands . . . their cunning ways . . . miss motherhood?”

  “Of course, I might have known you wouldn’t like it . . . but I want to devote all of my time to my voice. To have children you ought to have plenty of time and money for their development.”

  Abbie Deal looked out of the window, down through the long row of cedars. “To have plenty of time and money for their development.” Instead of the cedars, heavy with snow, she was looking into a sod-house where a little painted blackboard stood against the mud-plastered walls, seeing one shelf of books and a slate and some ironed pieces of brown wrapping-paper. The mother there was hearing reading lessons while she kneaded bread, was teaching songs while she scrubbed, was giving out spelling words while she mended, was instilling into childish minds, ideals of honesty and clean living with every humble task.

  For a long time Abbie Deal sat and looked out at the cedars bending under the snow, like so many mothers bending under their burdens. But she did not answer Isabelle. Maybe there was no answer. Perhaps there was no argument. She did not know.

  CHAPTER XXV

  John’s letters came again in the late spring, in them an echo of the breeze that blows over the Kotzebue Sound. “For Christmas dinner we had fish balls and egg sauce, baked white-fish, ptarmigan pot-roast, mashed potatoes, baked dressing, ice cream from condensed milk, and coffee. After the white people ate, the Eskimos took turn and made a thorough clean-up. When one of them found something that struck his palate, he proceeded to devour the entire contents of the dish. Eighty white people ate and twenty-five Eskimos. The miners came dressed in their parkas and mukluks. . . .

  “Thermometer has been down to 38 degrees all day, 46 below in the night. This morning about eleven the ice began moving on the Keewalik and kept coming all day. There is an ice jam at the bluffs below town, and a number of cabins are in danger of being carried away. . . .

  “Strike on Kugruh has been confirmed,—the whole river and benches have been staked.”

  Abbie, with the letters in her lap, would look out over the familiar fields, green in their spring wheat and their parallel rows of young corn, and wonder how a child of the prairie could have gone so far away.

  And now Nature began to seem less parsimonious with her rains. No longer was the sky a dry blue bowl turned over the dry brown earth. Heavy with moisture, the clouds gathered and fell in a blessing of light showers or heavy, soaking rains. Out of Nature’s benediction grew fine crops, better times, high land prices.

  A union of farmers to market their own crops was being formed in many localities. Abbie took two shares of stock in the Cedartown Elevator. “It’s the beginning of something pretty big, I believe,” she told Mack.

  In the fall, Henry Lutz died. And over in the house with the cupola and the wooden rosettes and the fancy grill-work, Sarah Lutz clung to Abbie constantly, so there was one more duty at hand for her. After her father’s death, Emma came into the possession of a large amount of land. Selling here, buying there with good business judgment, and aided by the upward swing of prices, Mack, who was now assistant cashier of the bank, placed the Mackenzie Deal family on the best of financial footing.

  One more year went by with John proving his ownership of the title “Judge Deal” in the land of the dog-team, and then he came back. In that characteristic way of suddenly doing something with no preliminary talk, he opened a law office in Cedartown. To Abbie, it seemed unbelievable and far too good to be true, that the wanderer of the family should settle down closer to her than any of the others.

  Margaret was painting many canvases every year now. Pencil and drawing-book with her, she often came out home to wander for hours in the vicinity, sketching the cottonwoods or the maples or a rolling bit of pasture land. “When the day comes, Mother,” she would say, “that I can get the light that lies over the prairie at evening, to suit me, I believe I’ll be satisfied.”

  Isabelle, in Chicago for three years, was forging ahead in her career, singing at some of the select musical affairs. Abbie’s natural garment of modesty showed large perforations in it, when it came to anything concerning her children’s accomplishments. More than once she hitched up the old white mare and drove into the Headlight office to proffer some item about one of her offspring’s achievements.

  “The Deals all seem to do things,” Abbie heard a visitor to the community say to Oscar Lutz once. The two men were sitting on a bench under her kitchen window, before one of the many neighborhood suppers. Abbie, paring potatoes, could hear every word of Oscar’s reply.

  “The children do. Will, himself, was a good man but not much of a manager. Was always planning some wild scheme for the whole community. You can’t get anywhere if you spread your plans all out over the whole country. At all the school meetings he talked about the day when the country school would be graded like the town. Talked about the day when the roads would be fixed. Had some fool plan about hauling little stones from the quarry at Louisville . . . loads of little stones and gravel and running a roller over ’em. Heard him say once right after a long drought that Nebraska was the best state in the Union . . . had the best soil . . . that the day would come that the climate conditions would change and it would be the most productive of them all. Talked about trees . . . trees . . . trees. Was as loony as old J. Sterling Morton himself about setting out timber. Would go after saplings and cuttings and help haul ’em in for the careless ones if they’d set ’em out. No, he wasn’t lazy . . . lord, no. . . . Just plannin’ fer the whole kit ’n’
bilin’ of ’em instead of himself. Carried the whole precinct on his shoulders. Didn’t leave Abbie anything very much besides this one half-section, but the five children and the good name o’ Deal.”

  Abbie, bending over the potatoes, with the neighbor women bustling around her, said softly to one they could not see, “Will, I’m glad,—glad that you left me the children and the good name of Deal.”

  John was not much more than settled in his new Cedartown office when his thirtieth birthday arrived, via the 1902 calendar. Thirty having been the meridian between youth and old bachelorhood in Abbie’s young day, she concluded quite definitely that he was never going to marry. And as has happened since the time Naomi’s sons appeared before her with Ruth and Orpha, Abbie was suddenly astounded by John writing her, while on a business trip, that he was bringing home a bride. She was Eloise Wentworth, a teacher he had met in Iowa, and they would arrive on the four o’clock, Saturday.

  Abbie sat with the letter in her lap, the world tumbling grotesquely about her. This bolt from the blue, so characteristic of John, was hard to realize. A peculiar form of jealousy tore at her. “I’ll bet she did the courting herself,” Abbie said grimly, and was too wrought up to laugh at herself. Why hadn’t he picked out some one she knew? Emma Lutz, Dr. Fred Baker, Harrison Rhodes,—she had met and known them all before they came into the family. Why had he done this, anyway? Did he know the girl well? What was she like? Of all the children, John was the one who had to be handled with gloves. Would she know how to get along with him? Why hadn’t he married one of the home girls? Why hadn’t he ever mentioned the girl? All at once Abbie began to laugh aloud, almost hysterically. “I’m talking for all the world like Grandma,” she said. “Oh, I mustn’t let myself get like Grandma Deal.”

  She never dreaded anything so much in her life as the prospects of that meeting on Saturday. It took all of her will-power to get herself in hand to welcome them. She was glad that Grace was home with her. Grace was fourteen now and in the Cedartown High School. No longer did children of the community have to go from home and board at the old Weeping Water Academy, for the Cedartown High School was now accredited to the University. Grace was a nice girl and a good student,—efficient, neat, a little prim. Looking at her sometimes, critically, Abbie wondered why a keen sense of humor had been omitted from Grace’s makeup. She laughed at a joke when it was in a column duly labeled as one, and warranted to tickle the risibilities. But humor, that vague, elusive thing which had pulled Abbie through many a monotonous day and over many a harsh experience, seemed a missing ingredient.