"So I have you at last," he whispered, and kissed her again.
"Oh, yes, yes, and it has been so long," she sighed.
"You couldn't have suffered any more than I have," he consoled.
"Every minute has been torture, waiting, waiting, waiting!"
"Let's not think of that now," she urged. "We have each other.
You are here."
"Yes, here I am," he laughed, "all the virtues done up in one
brown suit. Isn't it lovely—these great trees, that beautiful
lawn?"
He paused from kissing to look out of the window.
"I'm glad you like it," she replied joyously. "We think it's
nice, but this place is so old."
"I love it for that," he cried appreciatively. "Those bushes are
so nice—those roses. Oh, dear, you don't know how sweet it all
seems—and you—you are so nice."
He held her off at arm's length and surveyed her while she
blushed becomingly. His eager, direct, vigorous onslaught confused
her at times—caused her pulse to beat at a high rate.
They went out into the dooryard after a time and then Marietta
appeared again, and with her Mrs. Blue, a comfortable, round bodied
mother of sixty, who greeted Eugene cordially. He could feel in her
what he felt in his own mother—in every good mother—love of order
and peace, love of the well being of her children, love of public
respect and private honor and morality. All these things Eugene
heartily respected in others. He was glad to see them, believed
they had a place in society, but was uncertain whether they bore
any fixed or important relationship to him. He was always thinking
in his private conscience that life was somehow bigger and subtler
and darker than any given theory or order of living. It might well
be worth while for a man or woman to be honest and moral within a
given condition or quality of society, but it did not matter at all
in the ultimate substance and composition of the universe. Any form
or order of society which hoped to endure must have individuals
like Mrs. Blue, who would conform to the highest standards and
theories of that society, and when found they were admirable, but
they meant nothing in the shifting, subtle forces of nature. They
were just accidental harmonies blossoming out of something which
meant everything here to this order, nothing to the universe at
large. At twenty-two years of age he was thinking these things,
wondering whether it would be possible ever to express them;
wondering what people would think of him if they actually knew what
he did think; wondering if there was anything, anything, which was
really stable—a rock to cling to—and not mere shifting shadow and
unreality.
Mrs. Blue looked at her daughter's young lover with a kindly
eye. She had heard a great deal about him. Having raised her
children to be honest, moral and truthful she trusted them to
associate only with those who were equally so. She assumed that
Eugene was such a man, and his frank open countenance and smiling
eyes and mouth convinced her that he was basically good. Also, what
to her were his wonderful drawings, sent to Angela in the form of
proofs from time to time, particularly the one of the East Side
crowd, had been enough to prejudice her in his favor. No other
daughter of the family, and there were three married, had
approximated to this type of man in her choice. Eugene was looked
upon as a prospective son-in-law who would fulfill all the
conventional obligations joyfully and as a matter of course.
"It's very good of you to put me up, Mrs. Blue," Eugene said
pleasantly. "I've always wanted to come out here for a visit—I've
heard so much of the family from Angela."
"It's just a country home we have, not much to look at, but we
like it," replied his hostess. She smiled blandly, asked if he
wouldn't make himself comfortable in one of the hammocks, wanted to
know how he was getting along with his work in New York and then
returned to her cooking, for she was already preparing his first
meal. Eugene strolled with Angela to the big lawn under the trees
and sat down. He was experiencing the loftiest of human emotions on
earth—love in youth, accepted and requited, hope in youth,
justified in action by his success in New York; peace in youth, for
he had a well earned holiday in his grasp, was resting with the
means to do so and with love and beauty and admiration and joyous
summer weather to comfort him.
As he rocked to and fro in the hammock gazing at the charming
lawn and realizing all these things, his glance rested at last upon
Angela, and he thought, "Life can really hold no finer thing than
this."
Toward noon old Jotham Blue came in from a cornfield where he
had been turning the earth between the rows. Although sixty-five
and with snowy hair and beard he looked to be vigorous, and good to
live until ninety or a hundred. His eyes were blue and keen, his
color rosy. He had great broad shoulders set upon a spare waist,
for he had been a handsome figure of a man in his youth.
"How do you do, Mr. Witla," he inquired with easy grace as he
strolled up, the yellow mud of the fields on his boots. He had
pulled a big jackknife out of his pocket and begun whittling a fine
twig he had picked up. "I'm glad to see you. My daughter, Angela,
has been telling me one thing and another about you."
He smiled as he looked at Eugene. Angela, who was sitting beside
him, rose and strolled toward the house.
"I'm glad to see you," said Eugene. "I like your country around
here. It looks prosperous."
"It is prosperous," said the old patriarch, drawing up a chair
which stood at the foot of a tree and seating himself. Eugene sank
back into the hammock.
"It's a soil that's rich in lime and carbon and sodium—the
things which make plant life grow. We need very little fertilizer
here—very little. The principal thing is to keep the ground
thoroughly cultivated and to keep out the bugs and weeds."
He cut at his stick meditatively. Eugene noted the chemical and
physical knowledge relative to farming. It pleased him to find
brain coupled with crop cultivation.
"I noticed some splendid fields of wheat as I came over," he
observed.
"Yes, wheat does well here," Blue went on, "when the weather is
moderately favorable. Corn does well. We have a splendid apple crop
and grapes are generally successful in this state. I have always
thought that Wisconsin had a little the best of the other valley
states, for we are blessed with a moderate climate, plenty of
streams and rivers and a fine, broken landscape. There are good
mines up north and lots of lumber. We are a prosperous people, we
Wisconsiners, decidedly prosperous. This state has a great
future."
Eugene noted the wide space between his clear blue eyes as he
talked. He liked the bigness of his conception of his state and of
his country. No petty little ground-harnessed ploughman this, but a
farmer in the big sense of the word—a cultivator of the soil, with
an understanding of it—an American who loved his state and his
country.
"I have always thought of the Mississippi valley as the country
of the future," said Eugene. "We have had the Valley of the Nile
and the Valley of the Euphrates with big populations, but this is
something larger. I rather feel as though a great wave of
population were coming here in the future."
"It is the new paradise of the world," said Jotham Blue, pausing
in his whittling and holding up his right hand for emphasis. "We
haven't come to realize its possibilities. The fruit, the corn, the
wheat, to feed the nations of the world can be raised here. I
sometimes marvel at the productivity of the soil. It is so
generous. It is like a great mother. It only asks to be treated
kindly to give all that it has."
Eugene smiled. The bigness of his prospective father-in-law's
feelings lured him. He felt as though he could love this man.
They talked on about other things, the character of the
surrounding population, the growth of Chicago, the recent threat of
a war with Venezuela, the rise of a new leader in the Democratic
party, a man whom Jotham admired very much. As he was telling of
the latter's exploits—it appeared he had recently met him at
Blackwood—Mrs. Blue appeared in the front door.
"Jotham!" she called.
He rose. "My wife must want a bucket of water," he said, and
strolled away.
Eugene smiled. This was lovely. This was the way life should
be—compounded of health, strength, good nature, understanding,
simplicity. He wished he were a man like Jotham, as sound, as
hearty, as clean and strong. To think he had raised eight children.
No wonder Angela was lovely. They all were, no doubt.
While he was rocking, Marietta came back smiling, her blond hair
blowing about her face. Like her father she had blue eyes, like him
a sanguine temperament, warm and ruddy. Eugene felt drawn to her.
She reminded him a little of Ruby—a little of Margaret. She was
bursting with young health.
"You're stronger than Angela," he said, looking at her.
"Oh, yes, I can always outrun Angel-face," she exclaimed. "We
fight sometimes but I can get things away from her. She has to give
in. Sometimes I feel older—I always take the lead."
Eugene rejoiced in the sobriquet of Angel-face. It suited
Angela, he thought. She looked like pictures of Angels in the old
prints and in the stained glass windows he had seen. He wondered in
a vague way, however, whether Marietta did not have the sweeter
temperament—were not really more lovable and cosy. But he put the
thought forcefully out of his mind. He felt he must be loyal to
Angela here.
While they were talking the youngest boy, David, came up and sat
down on the grass. He was short and stocky for his
years—sixteen—with an intelligent face and an inquiring eye. Eugene
noted stability and quiet force in his character at once. He began
to see that these children had inherited character as well as
strength from their parents. This was a home in which successful
children were being reared. Benjamin came up after awhile, a tall,
overgrown, puritanical youth, with western modifications and then
Samuel, the oldest of the living boys and the most impressive. He
was big and serene like his father, of brown complexion and hickory
strength. Eugene learned in the conversation that he was a railroad
man in St. Paul—home for a brief vacation, after three years of
absence. He was with a road called the Great Northern, already a
Second Assistant Passenger Agent and with great prospects, so the
family thought. Eugene could see that all the boys and girls, like
Angela, were ruggedly and honestly truthful. They were written all
over with Christian precept—not church dogma—but Christian precept,
lightly and good naturedly applied. They obeyed the ten
commandments in so far as possible and lived within the limits of
what people considered sane and decent. Eugene wondered at this.
His own moral laxity was a puzzle to him. He wondered whether he
were not really all wrong and they all right. Yet the subtlety of
the universe was always with him—the mystery of its chemistry. For
a given order of society no doubt he was out of place—for life in
general, well, he could not say.
At 12.30 dinner was announced from the door by Mrs. Blue and
they all rose. It was one of those simple home feasts common to any
intelligent farming family. There was a generous supply of fresh
vegetables, green peas, new potatoes, new string beans. A steak had
been secured from the itinerant butcher who served these parts and
Mrs. Blue had made hot light biscuit. Eugene expressed a
predilection for fresh buttermilk and they brought him a
pitcherful, saying that as a rule it was given to the pigs; the
children did not care for it. They talked and jested and he heard
odd bits of information concerning people here and there—some
farmer who had lost a horse by colic; some other farmer who was
preparing to cut his wheat. There were frequent references to the
three oldest sisters, who lived in other Wisconsin towns. Their
children appeared to be numerous and fairly troublesome. They all
came home frequently, it appeared, and were bound up closely with
the interests of the family as a whole.
"The more you know about the Blue family," observed Samuel to
Eugene, who expressed surprise at the solidarity of interest, "the
more you realize that they're a clan not a family. They stick
together like glue."
"That's a rather nice trait, I should say," laughed Eugene, who
felt no such keen interest in his relatives.
"Well, if you want to find out how the Blue family stick
together just do something to one of them," observed Jake Doll, a
neighbor who had entered.
"That's sure true, isn't it, Sis," observed Samuel, who was
sitting next to Angela, putting his hand affectionately on his
sister's arm. Eugene noted the movement. She nodded her head
affectionately.
"Yes, we Blues all hang together."
Eugene almost begrudged him his sister's apparent affection.
Could such a girl be cut out of such an atmosphere—separated from
it completely, brought into a radically different world, he
wondered. Would she understand him; would he stick by her. He
smiled at Jotham and Mrs. Blue and thought he ought to, but life
was strange. You never could tell what might happen.
During the afternoon there were more lovely impressions. He and
Angela sat alone in the cool parlor for two hours after dinner
while he restated his impressions of her over and over. He told her
how charming he thought her home was, how nice her father and
mother, what interesting brothers she had. He made a genial sketch
of Jotham as he had strolled up to him at noon, which pleased
Angela and she kept it to show to her father. He made her pose in
the window and sketched her head and her halo of hair. He thought
of his double page illustration of the Bowery by night and went to
fetch it, looking for the first time at the sweet cool room at the
end of the house which he was to occupy. One window, a west one,
had hollyhocks looking in, and the door to the north gave out on
the cool, shady grass. He moved in beauty, he thought; was treading
on showered happiness. It hurt him to think that such joy might not
always be, as though beauty were not everywhere and forever
present.
When Angela saw the picture which
Truth
had reproduced,
she was beside herself with joy and pride and happiness. It was
such a testimony to her lover's ability. He had written almost
daily of the New York art world, so she was familiar with that in
exaggerated ideas, but these actual things, like reproduced
pictures, were different. The whole world would see this picture.
He must be famous already, she imagined.
That evening and the next and the next as they sat in the parlor
alone he drew nearer and nearer to that definite understanding
which comes between a man and woman when they love. Eugene could
never stop with mere kissing and caressing in a reserved way, if
not persistently restrained. It seemed natural to him that love
should go on. He had not been married. He did not know what its
responsibilities were. He had never given a thought to what his
parents had endured to make him worth while. There was no instinct
in him to tell him. He had no yearnings for parenthood, that normal
desire which gives visions of a home and the proper social
conditions for rearing a family. All he thought of was the love
making period—the billing and cooing and the transports of delight
which come with it. With Angela he felt that these would be
super-normal precisely because she was so slow in yielding—so on
the defensive against herself. He could look in her eyes at times
and see a swooning veil which foreshadowed a storm of emotion. He
would sit by her stroking her hands, touching her cheek, smoothing
her hair, or at other times holding her in his arms. It was hard
for her to resist those significant pressures he gave, to hold him
at arm's length, for she herself was eager for the delights of
love.
It was on the third night of his stay and in the face of his
growing respect for every member of this family, that he swept
Angela to the danger line—would have carried her across it had it
not been for a fortuitous wave of emotion, which was not of his
creation, but of hers.
They had been to the little lake, Okoonee, a little way from the
house during the afternoon for a swim.
Afterward he and Angela and David and Marietta had taken a
drive. It was one of those lovely afternoons that come sometimes in
summer and speak direct to the heart of love and beauty. It was so
fair and warm, the shadows of the trees so comforting that they
fairly made Eugene's heart ache. He was young now, life was
beautiful, but how would it be when he was old? A morbid
anticipation of disaster seemed to harrow his soul.
The sunset had already died away when they drew near home.
Insects hummed, a cow-bell tinkled now and then; breaths of cool
air, those harbingers of the approaching eve, swept their cheeks as
they passed occasional hollows. Approaching the house they saw the
blue smoke curls rising from the kitchen chimney, foretelling the
preparation of the evening meal. Eugene clasped Angela's hand in an
ecstasy of emotion.
He wanted to dream—sitting in the hammock with Angela as the
dusk fell, watching the pretty scene. Life was all around. Jotham
and Benjamin came in from the fields and the sound of their voices
and of the splashing water came from the kitchen door where they
were washing. There was an anticipatory stamping of horses' feet in
the barn, the lowing of a distant cow, the hungry grunt of pigs.
Eugene shook his head—it was so pastoral, so sweet.
At supper he scarcely touched what was put before him, the group
at the dining table holding his attention as a spectacle.
Afterwards he sat with the family on the lawn outside the door,
breathing the odor of flowers, watching the stars over the trees,
listening to Jotham and Mrs. Blue, to Samuel, Benjamin, David,
Marietta and occasionally Angela. Because of his mood, sad in the
face of exquisite beauty, she also was subdued. She said little,
listening to Eugene and her father, but when she did talk her voice
was sweet.
Jotham arose, after a time, and went to bed, and one by one the
others followed. David and Marietta went into the sitting room and
then Samuel and Benjamin left. They gave as an excuse hard work for
the morning. Samuel was going to try his hand again at thrashing.
Eugene took Angela by the hand and led her out where some
hydrangeas were blooming, white as snow by day, but pale and
silvery in the dark. He took her face in his hands, telling her
again of love.