My Ántonia
big snowstorm. By the time we saw grandfather coming home from church,
we had told them pretty much all we knew of the Shimerdas.
‘The girl will be happy here, and she’ll forget those things,’ said
Mrs. Harling confidently, as we rose to take our leave.
III
On Saturday Ambrosch drove up to the back gate, and Ántonia jumped down
from the wagon and ran into our kitchen just as she used to do. She was
wearing shoes and stockings, and was breathless and excited. She gave
me a playful shake by the shoulders. ‘You ain’t forget about me, Jim?’
Grandmother kissed her. ‘God bless you, child! Now you’ve come, you
must try to do right and be a credit to us.’
Ántonia looked eagerly about the house and admired everything. ‘Maybe I
be the kind of girl you like better; now I come to town,’ she suggested
hopefully.
How good it was to have Ántonia near us again; to see her every day and
almost every night! Her greatest fault, Mrs. Harling found, was that
she so often stopped her work and fell to playing with the children.
She would race about the orchard with us, or take sides in our
hay-fights in the barn, or be the old bear that came down from the
mountain and carried off Nina. Tony learned English so quickly that by
the time school began she could speak as well as any of us.
I was jealous of Tony’s admiration for Charley Harling. Because he was
always first in his classes at school, and could mend the water-pipes
or the doorbell and take the clock to pieces, she seemed to think him a
sort of prince. Nothing that Charley wanted was too much trouble for
her. She loved to put up lunches for him when he went hunting, to mend
his ball-gloves and sew buttons on his shooting-coat, baked the kind of
nut-cake he liked, and fed his setter dog when he was away on trips
with his father. Ántonia had made herself cloth working-slippers out of
Mr. Harling’s old coats, and in these she went padding about after
Charley, fairly panting with eagerness to please him.
Next to Charley, I think she loved Nina best. Nina was only six, and
she was rather more complex than the other children. She was fanciful,
had all sorts of unspoken preferences, and was easily offended. At the
slightest disappointment or displeasure, her velvety brown eyes filled
with tears, and she would lift her chin and walk silently away. If we
ran after her and tried to appease her, it did no good. She walked on
unmollified. I used to think that no eyes in the world could grow so
large or hold so many tears as Nina’s. Mrs. Harling and Ántonia
invariably took her part. We were never given a chance to explain. The
charge was simply: ‘You have made Nina cry. Now, Jimmy can go home, and
Sally must get her arithmetic.’ I liked Nina, too; she was so quaint
and unexpected, and her eyes were lovely; but I often wanted to shake
her.
We had jolly evenings at the Harlings’ when the father was away. If he
was at home, the children had to go to bed early, or they came over to
my house to play. Mr. Harling not only demanded a quiet house, he
demanded all his wife’s attention. He used to take her away to their
room in the west ell, and talk over his business with her all evening.
Though we did not realize it then, Mrs. Harling was our audience when
we played, and we always looked to her for suggestions. Nothing
flattered one like her quick laugh.
Mr. Harling had a desk in his bedroom, and his own easy-chair by the
window, in which no one else ever sat. On the nights when he was at
home, I could see his shadow on the blind, and it seemed to me an
arrogant shadow. Mrs. Harling paid no heed to anyone else if he was
there. Before he went to bed she always got him a lunch of smoked
salmon or anchovies and beer. He kept an alcohol lamp in his room, and
a French coffee-pot, and his wife made coffee for him at any hour of
the night he happened to want it.
Most Black Hawk fathers had no personal habits outside their domestic
ones; they paid the bills, pushed the baby-carriage after office hours,
moved the sprinkler about over the lawn, and took the family driving on
Sunday. Mr. Harling, therefore, seemed to me autocratic and imperial in
his ways. He walked, talked, put on his gloves, shook hands, like a man
who felt that he had power. He was not tall, but he carried his head so
haughtily that he looked a commanding figure, and there was something
daring and challenging in his eyes. I used to imagine that the ‘nobles’
of whom Ántonia was always talking probably looked very much like
Christian Harling, wore caped overcoats like his, and just such a
glittering diamond upon the little finger.
Except when the father was at home, the Harling house was never quiet.
Mrs. Harling and Nina and Ántonia made as much noise as a houseful of
children, and there was usually somebody at the piano. Julia was the
only one who was held down to regular hours of practising, but they all
played. When Frances came home at noon, she played until dinner was
ready. When Sally got back from school, she sat down in her hat and
coat and drummed the plantation melodies that Negro minstrel troupes
brought to town. Even Nina played the Swedish Wedding March.
Mrs. Harling had studied the piano under a good teacher, and somehow
she managed to practise every day. I soon learned that if I were sent
over on an errand and found Mrs. Harling at the piano, I must sit down
and wait quietly until she turned to me. I can see her at this moment:
her short, square person planted firmly on the stool, her little fat
hands moving quickly and neatly over the keys, her eyes fixed on the
music with intelligent concentration.
IV
‘I won’t have none of your weevily wheat,
and I won’t have none of your barley,
But I’ll take a measure of fine white
flour, to make a cake for Charley.’
We were singing rhymes to tease Ántonia while she was beating up one of
Charley’s favourite cakes in her big mixing-bowl.
It was a crisp autumn evening, just cold enough to make one glad to
quit playing tag in the yard, and retreat into the kitchen. We had
begun to roll popcorn balls with syrup when we heard a knock at the
back door, and Tony dropped her spoon and went to open it.
A plump, fair-skinned girl was standing in the doorway. She looked
demure and pretty, and made a graceful picture in her blue cashmere
dress and little blue hat, with a plaid shawl drawn neatly about her
shoulders and a clumsy pocket-book in her hand.
‘Hello, Tony. Don’t you know me?’ she asked in a smooth, low voice,
looking in at us archly.
Ántonia gasped and stepped back.
‘Why, it’s Lena! Of course I didn’t know you, so dressed up!’
Lena Lingard laughed, as if this pleased her. I had not recognized her
for a moment, either. I had never seen her before with a hat on her
head—or with shoes and stockings on her feet, for that matter. And here
she was, brushed and smoothed and dressed like a town girl, smiling at
us with perfect composure.
‘Hello, Jim,’ she said carelessly as she walked into the kitchen and
looked about her. ‘I’ve come to town to work, too, Tony.’
‘Have you, now? Well, ain’t that funny!’ Ántonia stood ill at ease, and
didn’t seem to know just what to do with her visitor.
The door was open into the dining-room, where Mrs. Harling sat
crocheting and Frances was reading. Frances asked Lena to come in and
join them.
‘You are Lena Lingard, aren’t you? I’ve been to see your mother, but
you were off herding cattle that day. Mama, this is Chris Lingard’s
oldest girl.’
Mrs. Harling dropped her worsted and examined the visitor with quick,
keen eyes. Lena was not at all disconcerted. She sat down in the chair
Frances pointed out, carefully arranging her pocket-book and grey
cotton gloves on her lap. We followed with our popcorn, but Ántonia
hung back—said she had to get her cake into the oven.
‘So you have come to town,’ said Mrs. Harling, her eyes still fixed on
Lena. ‘Where are you working?’
‘For Mrs. Thomas, the dressmaker. She is going to teach me to sew. She
says I have quite a knack. I’m through with the farm. There ain’t any
end to the work on a farm, and always so much trouble happens. I’m
going to be a dressmaker.’
‘Well, there have to be dressmakers. It’s a good trade. But I wouldn’t
run down the farm, if I were you,’ said Mrs. Harling rather severely.
‘How is your mother?’
‘Oh, mother’s never very well; she has too much to do. She’d get away
from the farm, too, if she could. She was willing for me to come. After
I learn to do sewing, I can make money and help her.’
‘See that you don’t forget to,’ said Mrs. Harling sceptically, as she
took up her crocheting again and sent the hook in and out with nimble
fingers.
‘No, ‘m, I won’t,’ said Lena blandly. She took a few grains of the
popcorn we pressed upon her, eating them discreetly and taking care not
to get her fingers sticky.
Frances drew her chair up nearer to the visitor. ‘I thought you were
going to be married, Lena,’ she said teasingly. ‘Didn’t I hear that
Nick Svendsen was rushing you pretty hard?’
Lena looked up with her curiously innocent smile. ‘He did go with me
quite a while. But his father made a fuss about it and said he wouldn’t
give Nick any land if he married me, so he’s going to marry Annie
Iverson. I wouldn’t like to be her; Nick’s awful sullen, and he’ll take
it out on her. He ain’t spoke to his father since he promised.’
Frances laughed. ‘And how do you feel about it?’
‘I don’t want to marry Nick, or any other man,’ Lena murmured. ‘I’ve
seen a good deal of married life, and I don’t care for it. I want to be
so I can help my mother and the children at home, and not have to ask
lief of anybody.’
‘That’s right,’ said Frances. ‘And Mrs. Thomas thinks you can learn
dressmaking?’
‘Yes, ‘m. I’ve always liked to sew, but I never had much to do with.
Mrs. Thomas makes lovely things for all the town ladies. Did you know
Mrs. Gardener is having a purple velvet made? The velvet came from
Omaha. My, but it’s lovely!’ Lena sighed softly and stroked her
cashmere folds. ‘Tony knows I never did like out-of-door work,’ she
added.
Mrs. Harling glanced at her. ‘I expect you’ll learn to sew all right,
Lena, if you’ll only keep your head and not go gadding about to dances
all the time and neglect your work, the way some country girls do.’
‘Yes, ‘m. Tiny Soderball is coming to town, too. She’s going to work at
the Boys’ Home Hotel. She’ll see lots of strangers,’ Lena added
wistfully.
‘Too many, like enough,’ said Mrs. Harling. ‘I don’t think a hotel is a
good place for a girl; though I guess Mrs. Gardener keeps an eye on her
waitresses.’
Lena’s candid eyes, that always looked a little sleepy under their long
lashes, kept straying about the cheerful rooms with naive admiration.
Presently she drew on her cotton gloves. ‘I guess I must be leaving,’
she said irresolutely.
Frances told her to come again, whenever she was lonesome or wanted
advice about anything. Lena replied that she didn’t believe she would
ever get lonesome in Black Hawk.
She lingered at the kitchen door and begged Ántonia to come and see her
often. ‘I’ve got a room of my own at Mrs. Thomas’s, with a carpet.’
Tony shuffled uneasily in her cloth slippers. ‘I’ll come sometime, but
Mrs. Harling don’t like to have me run much,’ she said evasively.
‘You can do what you please when you go out, can’t you?’ Lena asked in
a guarded whisper. ‘Ain’t you crazy about town, Tony? I don’t care what
anybody says, I’m done with the farm!’ She glanced back over her
shoulder toward the dining-room, where Mrs. Harling sat.
When Lena was gone, Frances asked Ántonia why she hadn’t been a little
more cordial to her.
‘I didn’t know if your mother would like her coming here,’ said
Ántonia, looking troubled. ‘She was kind of talked about, out there.’