Autumn Part 3

"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 ap.r.o.n; 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: "mola.s.ses . . . 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 sh.e.l.l 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 sh.e.l.ling.

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 s.h.i.+rts 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 G.o.d," 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 G.o.d 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 pa.s.sed, 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 b.u.t.terflies, 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 G.o.d with all his creatures, but especially our brother, the sun . . . fair he is, and s.h.i.+nes, 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 . . ."