Poor White: A Novel Page 17

  CHAPTER XVII

  As in most older American homes, the kitchen at the rear of theButterworth farmhouse was large and comfortable. Much of the life ofthe house had been led there. Clara sat in a deep window that looked outacross a little gully where in the spring a small stream ran down alongthe edge of the barnyard. She was then a quiet child and loved to sitfor hours unobserved and undisturbed. At her back was the kitchen withthe warm, rich smells and the soft, quick, persistent footsteps of hermother. Her eyes closed and she slept. Then she awoke. Before her lay aworld into which her fancy could creep out. Across the stream before hereyes went a small, wooden bridge and over this in the spring horses wentaway to the fields or to sheds where they were hitched to milk or icewagons. The sound of the hoofs of the horses pounding on the bridge waslike thunder, harnesses rattled, voices shouted. Beyond the bridge was apath leading off to the left and along the path were three small houseswhere hams were smoked. Men came from the wagon sheds bearing the meaton their shoulders and went into the little houses. Fires were lightedand smoke crawled lazily up through the roofs. In a field that laybeyond the smoke houses a man came to plow. The child, curled into alittle, warm ball in the window seat, was happy. When she closed hereyes fancies came like flocks of white sheep running out of a greenwood. Although she was later to become a tomboy and run wild over thefarm and through the barns, and although all her life she loved thesoil and the sense of things growing and of food for hungry mouths beingprepared, there was in her, even as a child, a hunger for the life ofthe spirit. In her dreams women, beautifully gowned and with rings ontheir hands, came to brush the wet, matted hair back from her forehead.Across the little wooden bridge before her eyes came wonderful men,women, and children. The children ran forward. They cried out to her.She thought of them as brothers and sisters who were to come to live inthe farmhouse and who were to make the old house ring with laughter. Thechildren ran toward her with outstretched hands, but never arrived atthe house. The bridge extended itself. It stretched out under their feetso that they ran forward forever on the bridge.

  And behind the children came men and women, sometimes together,sometimes walking alone. They did not seem like the children to belongto her. Like the women who came to touch her hot forehead, they werebeautifully gowned and walked with stately dignity.

  The child climbed out of the window and stood on the kitchen floor. Hermother hurried about. She was feverishly active and often did not hearwhen the child spoke. "I want to know about my brothers and sisters:where are they, why don't they come here?" she asked, but the mother didnot hear, and if she did, had nothing to say. Sometimes she stopped tokiss the child and tears came to her eyes. Then something cooking on thekitchen stove demanded attention. "You run outside," she said hurriedly,and turned again to her work.

  * * * * *

  From the chair where Clara sat at the wedding feast provided by theenergy of her father and the enthusiasm of Jim Priest, she could seeover her father's shoulder into the farm house kitchen. As when she wasa child, she closed her eyes and dreamed of another kind of feast.With a growing sense of bitterness she realized that all her life, allthrough her girlhood and young womanhood, she had been waiting for this,her wedding night, and that now, having come, the occasion for which shehad waited so long and concerning which she had dreamed so many dreams,had aborted into an occasion for the display of ugliness and vulgarity.Her father, the only other person in the room in any way related toher, sat at the other end of the long table. Her aunt had gone away ona visit, and in the crowded, noisy room there was no woman to whom shecould turn for understanding. She looked past her father's shoulder anddirectly into the wide window seat where she had spent so many hours ofher childhood. Again she wanted brothers and sisters. "The beautiful menand women of the dreams were meant to come at this time, that's whatthe dreams were about; but, like the unborn children that ran withoutstretched hands, they cannot get over the bridge and into the house,"she thought vaguely. "I wish Mother had lived, or that Kate Chancellerwere here," she whispered to herself as, raising her eyes, she looked ather father.

  Clara felt like an animal driven into a corner and surrounded by foes.Her father sat at the feast between two women, Mrs. Steve Hunter who wasinclined to corpulency, and a thin woman named Bowles, the wife of anundertaker of Bidwell. They continually whispered, smiled, and noddedtheir heads. Hugh sat on the opposite side of the same table, and whenhe raised his eyes from the plate of food before him, could see past thehead of a large, masculine-looking woman into the farmhouse parlor wherethere was another table, also filled with guests. Clara turned fromlooking at her father to look at her husband. He was merely a tall manwith a long face, who could not raise his eyes. His long neck stuckitself out of a stiff white collar. To Clara he was, at the moment, abeing without personality, one that the crowd at the table had swallowedup as it so busily swallowed food and wine. When she looked at him heseemed to be drinking a good deal. His glass was always being filled andemptied. At the suggestion of the woman who sat beside him, he performedthe task of emptying it, without raising his eyes, and Steve Hunter,who sat on the other side of the table, leaned over and filled it again.Steve like her father whispered and winked. "On the night of my weddingI was piped, you bet, as piped as a hatter. It's a good thing. It givesa man nerve," he explained to the masculine-looking woman to whom he wastelling, with a good deal of attention to details, the tale of his ownmarriage night.

  Clara did not look at Hugh again. What he did seemed no concern of hers.Bowles the Bidwell undertaker had surrendered to the influence of thewine that had been flowing freely since the guests arrived and now gotto his feet and began to talk. His wife tugged at his coat and tried toforce him back into his seat, but Tom Butterworth jerked her arm away."Ah, let him alone. He's got a story to tell," he said to the woman,who blushed and put her handkerchief over her face. "Well, it's a fact,that's how it happened," the undertaker declared in a loud voice. "Yousee the sleeves of her nightgown were tied in hard knots by her rascallybrothers. When I tried to unfasten them with my teeth I bit big holes inthe sleeves."

  Clara gripped the arm of her chair. "If I can let the night pass withoutshowing these people how much I hate them I'll do well enough," shethought grimly. She looked at the dishes laden with food and wished shecould break them one by one over the heads of her father's guests. As arelief to her mind, she again looked past her father's head and througha doorway into the kitchen.

  In the big room three or four cooks were busily engaged in thepreparation of food, and waitresses continually brought steaming dishesand put them on the tables. She thought of her mother's life, the lifeled in that room, married to the man who was her own father and who nodoubt, but for the fact that circumstances had made him a man of wealth,would have been satisfied to see his daughter led into just such anotherlife.

  "Kate was right about men. They want something from women, but what dothey care what kind of lives we lead after they get what they want?" shethought grimly.

  The more to separate herself from the feasting, laughing crowd, Claratried to think out the details of her mother's life. "It was the lifeof a beast," she thought. Like herself, her mother had come to thehouse with her husband on the night of her marriage. There was just suchanother feast. The country was new then and the people for the most partdesperately poor. Still there was drinking. She had heard her father andJim Priest speak of the drinking bouts of their youth. The men cameas they had come now, and with them came women, women who had beencoarsened by the life they led. Pigs were killed and game brought fromthe forests. The men drank, shouted, fought, and played practical jokes.Clara wondered if any of the men and women in the room would dare goupstairs into her sleeping room and tie knots in her night clothes. Theyhad done that when her mother came to the house as a bride. Then theyhad all gone away and her father had taken his bride upstairs. He wasdrunk, and her own husband Hugh was now getting drunk. Her mother hadsubmitted. Her life had been a story of s
ubmission. Kate Chanceller hadsaid it was so married women lived, and her mother's life had proventhe truth of the statement. In the farmhouse kitchen, where now three orfour cooks worked so busily, she had worked her life out alone. From thekitchen she had gone directly upstairs and to bed with her husband. Oncea week on Saturday afternoons she went into town and stayed long enoughto buy supplies for another week of cooking. "She must have been keptgoing until she dropped down dead," Clara thought, and her mind takinganother turn, added, "and many others, both men and women, must havebeen forced by circumstances to serve my father in the same blind way.It was all done in order that prosperity and money with which to dovulgar things might be his."

  Clara's mother had brought but one child into the world. She wonderedwhy. Then she wondered if she would become the mother of a child. Herhands no longer gripped the arms of her chair, but lay on the tablebefore her. She looked at them and they were strong. She was herselfa strong woman. After the feast was over and the guests had gone away,Hugh, given courage by the drinks he continued to consume, would comeupstairs to her. Some twist of her mind made her forget her husband,and in fancy she felt herself about to be attacked by a strange man ona dark road at the edge of a forest. The man had tried to take herinto his arms and kiss her and she had managed to get her hands on histhroat. Her hands lying on the table twitched convulsively.

  In the big farmhouse dining-room and in the parlor where the secondtable of guests sat, the wedding feast went on. Afterward when shethought of it, Clara always remembered her wedding feast as a horseyaffair. Something in the natures of Tom Butterworth and Jim Priest, shethought, expressed itself that night. The jokes that went up and downthe table were horsey, and Clara thought the women who sat at the tablesheavy and mare-like.

  Jim did not come to the table to sit with the others, was in fact notinvited, but all evening he kept appearing and reappearing and had theair of a master of ceremonies. Coming into the dining room he stood bythe door, scratching his head. Then he went out. It was as though he hadsaid to himself, "Well, it's all right, everything is going all right,everything is lively, you see." All his life Jim had been a drinker ofwhisky and knew his limitations. His system as a drinking man had alwaysbeen quite simple. On Saturday afternoons, when the work about the barnswas done for the day and the other employees had gone away, he wentto sit on the steps of a corncrib with the bottle in his hand. In thewinter he went to sit by the kitchen fire in a little house below theapple orchard where he and the other employees slept. He took a longdrink from the bottle and then holding it in his hand sat for atime thinking of the events of his life. Whisky made him somewhatsentimental. After one long drink he thought of his youth in a town inPennsylvania. He had been one of six children, all boys, and at an earlyage his mother had died. Jim thought of her and then of his father. Whenhe had himself come west into Ohio, and later when he was a soldier inthe Civil War, he despised his father and reverenced the memory of hismother. In the war he had found himself physically unable to stand upbefore the enemy during a battle. When the report of guns was heardand the other men of his company got grimly into line and went forward,something happened to his legs and he wanted to run away. So greatwas the desire in him that craftiness grew in his brain. Watching hischance, he pretended to have been shot and fell to the ground, and whenthe others had gone on crept away and hid himself. He found it was notimpossible to disappear altogether and reappear in another place. Thedraft went into effect and many men not liking the notion of war werewilling to pay large sums to the men who would go in their places. Jimwent into the business of enlisting and deserting. All about him weremen talking of the necessity of saving the country, and for four yearshe thought only of saving his own hide. Then suddenly the war was overand he became a farm hand. As he worked all week in the fields, and inthe evening sometimes, as he lay in his bed and the moon came up, hethought of his mother and of the nobility and sacrifice of her life. Hewished to be such another. After having two or three drinks out of thebottle, he admired his father, who in the Pennsylvania town had bornethe reputation of being a liar and a rascal. After his mother's deathhis father had managed to marry a widow who owned a farm. "The oldman was a slick one," he said aloud, tipping up the bottle andtaking another long drink. "If I had stayed at home until I got moreunderstanding, the old man and I together might have done something."He finished the bottle and went away to sleep on the hay, or if itwere winter, threw himself into one of the bunks in the bunk house.He dreamed of becoming one who went through life beating people out ofmoney, living by his wits, getting the best of every one.

  Until the night of Clara's wedding Jim had never tasted wine, and asit did not bring on a desire for sleep, he thought himself unaffected."It's like sweetened water," he said, going into the darkness of thebarnyard and emptying another half bottle down his throat. "The stuffhas no kick. Drinking it is like drinking sweet cider."

  Jim got into a frolicsome mood and went through the crowded kitchen andinto the dining room where the guests were assembled. At the moment therather riotous laughter and story telling had ceased and everythingwas quiet. He was worried. "Things aren't going well. Clara's partyis becoming a frost," he thought resentfully. He began to dance aheavy-footed jig on a little open place by the kitchen door and theguests stopped talking to watch. They shouted and clapped their hands. Athunder of applause arose. The guests who were seated in the parlor andwho could not see the performance got up and crowded into the doorwaythat connected the two rooms. Jim became extraordinarily bold, and asone of the young women Tom had hired as waitresses at that moment wentpast bearing a large dish of food, he swung himself quickly about andtook her into his arms. The dish flew across the floor and broke againsta table leg and the young woman screamed. A farm dog that had foundits way into the kitchen rushed into the room and barked loudly. HenryHeller's orchestra, concealed under a stairway that led to the upperpart of the house, began to play furiously. A strange animal fervorswept over Jim. His legs flew rapidly about and his heavy feet made agreat clatter on the floor. The young woman in his arms screamed andlaughed. Jim closed his eyes and shouted. He felt that the wedding partyhad until that moment been a failure and that he was transforming itinto a success. Rising to their feet the men shouted, clapped theirhands and beat with their fists on the table. When the orchestra cameto the end of the dance, Jim stood flushed and triumphant before theguests, holding the woman in his arms. In spite of her struggles he heldher tightly against his breast and kissed her eyes, cheeks, and mouth.Then releasing her he winked and made a gesture for silence. "Ona wedding night some one's got to have the nerve to do a littlelove-making," he said, looking pointedly toward the place where Hugh satwith head bent and with his eyes staring at a glass of wine that sat athis elbow.

  * * * * *

  It was past two o'clock when the feast came to an end. When the guestsbegan to depart, Clara stood for a moment alone and tried to get herselfin hand. Something inside her felt cold and old. If she had oftenthought she wanted a man, and that life as a married woman would put anend to her problems, she did not think so at that moment. "What I wantabove everything else is a woman," she thought. All the evening her mindhad been trying to clutch and hold the almost forgotten figure of hermother, but it was too vague and shadowy. With her mother she had neverwalked and talked late at night through streets of towns when the worldwas asleep and when thoughts were born in herself. "After all," shethought, "Mother may also have belonged to all this." She looked at thepeople preparing to depart. Several men had gathered in a group by thedoor. One of them told a story at which the others laughed loudly. Thewomen standing about had flushed and, Clara thought, coarse faces."They have gone into marriage like cattle," she told herself. Her mind,running out of the room, began to caress the memory of her one womanfriend, Kate Chanceller. Often on late spring afternoons as she and Katehad walked together something very like love-making had happened betweenthem. They went along quietly and evening came on. Suddenly
they stoppedin the street and Kate had put her arms about Clara's shoulders. Fora moment they stood thus close together and a strange gentle and yethungry look came into Kate's eyes. It only lasted a moment and when ithappened both women were somewhat embarrassed. Kate laughed and takinghold of Clara's arm pulled her along the sidewalk. "Let's walk like thedevil," she said, "come on, let's get up some speed."

  Clara put her hands to her eyes as though to shut out the scene in theroom. "If I could have been with Kate this evening I could have come toa man believing in the possible sweetness of marriage," she thought.