My Ántonia by Willa Cather (e books free to read TXT) 📖

`It must have been a trial for our mothers,’ said Lena, `coming out here and having to do everything different. My mother had always lived in town. She says she started behind in farm-work, and never has caught up.’

`Yes, a new country’s hard on the old ones, sometimes,’ said Anna thoughtfully. `My grandmother’s getting feeble now, and her mind wanders. She’s forgot about this country, and thinks she’s at home in Norway. She keeps asking mother to take her down to the waterside and the fish market. She craves fish all the time. Whenever I go home I take her canned salmon and mackerel.’

`Mercy, it’s hot!’ Lena yawned. She was supine under a little oak, resting after the fury of her elder-hunting, and had taken off the high-heeled slippers she had been silly enough to wear. `Come here, Jim. You never got the sand out of your hair.’ She began to draw her fingers slowly through my hair.

Antonia pushed her away. `You’ll never get it out like that,’ she said sharply. She gave my head a rough touzling and finished me off with something like a box on the ear. `Lena, you oughtn’t to try to wear those slippers any more. They’re too small for your feet. You’d better give them to me for Yulka.’

`All right,’ said Lena good-naturedly, tucking her white stockings under her skirt. `You get all Yulka’s things, don’t you? I wish father didn’t have such bad luck with his farm machinery; then I could buy more things for my sisters. I’m going to get Mary a new coat this fall, if the sulky plough’s never paid for!’

Tiny asked her why she didn’t wait until after Christmas, when coats would be cheaper. `What do you think of poor me?’ she added; `with six at home, younger than I am? And they all think I’m rich, because when I go back to the country I’m dressed so fine!’ She shrugged her shoulders. `But, you know, my weakness is playthings. I like to buy them playthings better than what they need.’

`I know how that is,’ said Anna. `When we first came here, and I was little, we were too poor to buy toys. I never got over the loss of a doll somebody gave me before we left Norway. A boy on the boat broke her and I still hate him for it.’

`I guess after you got here you had plenty of live dolls to nurse, like me!’ Lena remarked cynically.

`Yes, the babies came along pretty fast, to be sure. But I never minded. I was fond of them all. The youngest one, that we didn’t any of us want, is the one we love best now.’

Lena sighed. `Oh, the babies are all right; if only they don’t come in winter. Ours nearly always did. I don’t see how mother stood it. I tell you what, girls’—she sat up with sudden energy—‘I’m going to get my mother out of that old sod house where she’s lived so many years. The men will never do it. Johnnie, that’s my oldest brother, he’s wanting to get married now, and build a house for his girl instead of his mother. Mrs. Thomas says she thinks I can move to some other town pretty soon, and go into business for myself. If I don’t get into business, I’ll maybe marry a rich gambler.’

`That would be a poor way to get on,’ said Anna sarcastically. `I wish I could teach school, like Selma Kronn. Just think! She’ll be the first Scandinavian girl to get a position in the high school. We ought to be proud of her.’

Selma was a studious girl, who had not much tolerance for giddy things like Tiny and Lena; but they always spoke of her with admiration.

Tiny moved about restlessly, fanning herself with her straw hat. `If I was smart like her, I’d be at my books day and night. But she was born smart—and look how her father’s trained her! He was something high up in the old country.’

`So was my mother’s father,’ murmured Lena, `but that’s all the good it does us! My father’s father was smart, too, but he was wild. He married a Lapp. I guess that’s what’s the matter with me; they say Lapp blood will out.’

`A real Lapp, Lena?’ I exclaimed. `The kind that wear skins?’

`I don’t know if she wore skins, but she was a Lapps all right, and his folks felt dreadful about it. He was sent up North on some government job he had, and fell in with her. He would marry her.’

`But I thought Lapland women were fat and ugly, and had squint eyes, like Chinese?’ I objected.

`I don’t know, maybe. There must be something mighty taking about the Lapp girls, though; mother says the Norwegians up North are always afraid their boys will run after them.’

In the afternoon, when the heat was less oppressive, we had a lively game of `Pussy Wants a Corner,’ on the flat bluff-top, with the little trees for bases. Lena was Pussy so often that she finally said she wouldn’t play any more. We threw ourselves down on the grass, out of breath.

`Jim,’ Antonia said dreamily, `I want you to tell the girls about how the Spanish first came here, like you and Charley Harling used to talk about. I’ve tried to tell them, but I leave out so much.’

They sat under a little oak, Tony resting against the trunk and the other girls leaning against her and each other, and listened to the little I was able to tell them about Coronado and his search for the Seven Golden Cities. At school we were taught that he had not got so far north as Nebraska, but had given up his quest and turned back somewhere in Kansas. But Charley Harling and I had a strong belief that he had been along this very river. A farmer in the county north of ours, when he was breaking sod, had turned up a metal stirrup of fine workmanship, and a sword with a Spanish inscription on the blade. He lent these relics to Mr. Harling, who brought them home with him. Charley and I scoured them, and they were on exhibition in the Harling office all summer. Father Kelly, the priest, had found the name of the Spanish maker on the sword and an abbreviation that stood for the city of Cordova.

`And that I saw with my own eyes,’ Antonia put in triumphantly. `So Jim and Charley were right, and the teachers were wrong!’

The girls began to wonder among themselves. Why had the Spaniards come so far? What must this country have been like, then? Why had Coronado never gone back to Spain, to his riches and his castles and his king? I couldn’t tell them. I only knew the schoolbooks said he `died in the wilderness, of a broken heart.’

`More than him has done that,’ said Antonia sadly, and the girls murmured assent.

We sat looking off across the country, watching the sun go down. The curly grass about us was on fire now. The bark of the oaks turned red as copper. There was a shimmer of gold on the brown river. Out in the stream the sandbars glittered like glass, and the light trembled in the willow thickets as if little flames were leaping among them. The breeze sank to stillness. In the ravine a ringdove mourned plaintively, and somewhere off in the bushes an owl hooted. The girls sat listless, leaning against each other. The long fingers of the sun touched their foreheads.

Presently we saw a curious thing: There were no clouds, the sun was going down in a limpid, gold-washed sky. Just as the lower edge of the red disk rested on the high fields against the horizon, a great black figure suddenly appeared on the face of the sun. We sprang to our feet, straining our eyes toward it. In a moment we realized what it was. On some upland farm, a plough had been left standing in the field. The sun was sinking just behind it. Magnified across the distance by the horizontal light, it stood out against the sun, was exactly contained within the circle of the disk; the handles, the tongue, the share—black against the molten red. There it was, heroic in size, a picture writing on the sun.

Even while we whispered about it, our vision disappeared; the ball dropped and dropped until the red tip went beneath the earth. The fields below us were dark, the sky was growing pale, and that forgotten plough had sunk back to its own littleness somewhere on the prairie.

LATE IN AUGUST the Cutters went to Omaha for a few days, leaving Antonia in charge of the house. Since the scandal about the Swedish girl, Wick Cutter could never get his wife to stir out of Black Hawk without him.

The day after the Cutters left, Antonia came over to see us. Grandmother noticed that she seemed troubled and distracted. `You’ve got something on your mind, Antonia,’ she said anxiously.

`Yes, Mrs. Burden. I couldn’t sleep much last night.’ She hesitated, and then told us how strangely Mr. Cutter had behaved before he went away. He put all the silver in a basket and placed it under her bed, and with it a box of papers which he told her were valuable. He made her promise that she would not sleep away from the house, or be out late in the evening, while he was gone. He strictly forbade her to ask any of the girls she knew to stay with her at night. She would be perfectly safe, he said, as he had just put a new Yale lock on the front door.

Cutter had been so insistent in regard to these details that now she felt uncomfortable about staying there alone. She hadn’t liked the way he kept coming into the kitchen to instruct her, or the way he looked at her. `I feel as if he is up to some of his tricks again, and is going to try to scare me, somehow.’

Grandmother was apprehensive at once. `I don’t think it’s right for you to stay there, feeling that way. I suppose it wouldn’t be right for you to leave the place alone, either, after giving your word. Maybe Jim would be willing to go over there and sleep, and you could come here nights. I’d feel safer, knowing you were under my own roof. I guess Jim could take care of their silver and old usury notes as well as you could.’

Antonia turned to me eagerly. `Oh, would you, Jim? I’d make up my bed nice and fresh for you. It’s a real cool room, and the bed’s right next the window. I was afraid to leave the window open last night.’

I liked my own room, and I didn’t like the Cutters’ house under any circumstances; but Tony looked so troubled that I consented to try this arrangement. I found that I slept there as well as anywhere, and when I got home in the morning, Tony had a good breakfast waiting for me. After prayers she sat down at the table with us, and it was like old times in the country.

The third night I spent at the Cutters’, I awoke suddenly with the impression that I had heard a door open and shut. Everything was still, however, and I must have gone to sleep again immediately.

The next thing I knew, I felt someone sit down on the edge of the bed. I was only half awake, but I decided that he might take the Cutters’ silver, whoever he was. Perhaps if I did not move, he would find it and get out without troubling me. I held my