My Ántonia
face but a red nose sticking out between a frosted beard and a long
plush cap. The young men capered along with their hands in their
pockets, and sometimes tried a slide on the icy sidewalk. The children,
in their bright hoods and comforters, never walked, but always ran from
the moment they left their door, beating their mittens against their
sides. When I got as far as the Methodist Church, I was about halfway
home. I can remember how glad I was when there happened to be a light
in the church, and the painted glass window shone out at us as we came
along the frozen street. In the winter bleakness a hunger for colour
came over people, like the Laplander’s craving for fats and sugar.
Without knowing why, we used to linger on the sidewalk outside the
church when the lamps were lighted early for choir practice or
prayer-meeting, shivering and talking until our feet were like lumps of
ice. The crude reds and greens and blues of that coloured glass held us
there.
On winter nights, the lights in the Harlings’ windows drew me like the
painted glass. Inside that warm, roomy house there was colour, too.
After supper I used to catch up my cap, stick my hands in my pockets,
and dive through the willow hedge as if witches were after me. Of
course, if Mr. Harling was at home, if his shadow stood out on the
blind of the west room, I did not go in, but turned and walked home by
the long way, through the street, wondering what book I should read as
I sat down with the two old people.
Such disappointments only gave greater zest to the nights when we acted
charades, or had a costume ball in the back parlour, with Sally always
dressed like a boy. Frances taught us to dance that winter, and she
said, from the first lesson, that Ántonia would make the best dancer
among us. On Saturday nights, Mrs. Harling used to play the old operas
for us—‘Martha,’ ‘Norma,’ ‘Rigoletto’—telling us the story while she
played. Every Saturday night was like a party. The parlour, the back
parlour, and the dining-room were warm and brightly lighted, with
comfortable chairs and sofas, and gay pictures on the walls. One always
felt at ease there. Ántonia brought her sewing and sat with us—she was
already beginning to make pretty clothes for herself. After the long
winter evenings on the prairie, with Ambrosch’s sullen silences and her
mother’s complaints, the Harlings’ house seemed, as she said, ‘like
Heaven’ to her. She was never too tired to make taffy or chocolate
cookies for us. If Sally whispered in her ear, or Charley gave her
three winks, Tony would rush into the kitchen and build a fire in the
range on which she had already cooked three meals that day.
While we sat in the kitchen waiting for the cookies to bake or the
taffy to cool, Nina used to coax Ántonia to tell her stories—about the
calf that broke its leg, or how Yulka saved her little turkeys from
drowning in the freshet, or about old Christmases and weddings in
Bohemia. Nina interpreted the stories about the creche fancifully, and
in spite of our derision she cherished a belief that Christ was born in
Bohemia a short time before the Shimerdas left that country. We all
liked Tony’s stories. Her voice had a peculiarly engaging quality; it
was deep, a little husky, and one always heard the breath vibrating
behind it. Everything she said seemed to come right out of her heart.
One evening when we were picking out kernels for walnut taffy, Tony
told us a new story.
‘Mrs. Harling, did you ever hear about what happened up in the
Norwegian settlement last summer, when I was threshing there? We were
at Iversons’, and I was driving one of the grain-wagons.’
Mrs. Harling came out and sat down among us. ‘Could you throw the wheat
into the bin yourself, Tony?’ She knew what heavy work it was.
‘Yes, ma’m, I did. I could shovel just as fast as that fat Andern boy
that drove the other wagon. One day it was just awful hot. When we got
back to the field from dinner, we took things kind of easy. The men put
in the horses and got the machine going, and Ole Iverson was up on the
deck, cutting bands. I was sitting against a straw-stack, trying to get
some shade. My wagon wasn’t going out first, and somehow I felt the
heat awful that day. The sun was so hot like it was going to burn the
world up. After a while I see a man coming across the stubble, and when
he got close I see it was a tramp. His toes stuck out of his shoes, and
he hadn’t shaved for a long while, and his eyes was awful red and wild,
like he had some sickness. He comes right up and begins to talk like he
knows me already. He says: ‘The ponds in this country is done got so
low a man couldn’t drownd himself in one of ‘em.’
‘I told him nobody wanted to drownd themselves, but if we didn’t have
rain soon we’d have to pump water for the cattle.
‘“Oh, cattle,” he says, “you’ll all take care of your cattle! Ain’t you
got no beer here?” I told him he’d have to go to the Bohemians for
beer; the Norwegians didn’t have none when they threshed. “My God!” he
says, “so it’s Norwegians now, is it? I thought this was Americy.”
‘Then he goes up to the machine and yells out to Ole Iverson, “Hello,
partner, let me up there. I can cut bands, and I’m tired of trampin’. I
won’t go no farther.”
‘I tried to make signs to Ole, ‘cause I thought that man was crazy and
might get the machine stopped up. But Ole, he was glad to get down out
of the sun and chaff—it gets down your neck and sticks to you something
awful when it’s hot like that. So Ole jumped down and crawled under one
of the wagons for shade, and the tramp got on the machine. He cut bands
all right for a few minutes, and then, Mrs. Harling, he waved his hand
to me and jumped head-first right into the threshing machine after the
wheat.
‘I begun to scream, and the men run to stop the horses, but the belt
had sucked him down, and by the time they got her stopped, he was all
beat and cut to pieces. He was wedged in so tight it was a hard job to
get him out, and the machine ain’t never worked right since.’
‘Was he clear dead, Tony?’ we cried.
‘Was he dead? Well, I guess so! There, now, Nina’s all upset. We won’t
talk about it. Don’t you cry, Nina. No old tramp won’t get you while
Tony’s here.’
Mrs. Harling spoke up sternly. ‘Stop crying, Nina, or I’ll always send
you upstairs when Ántonia tells us about the country. Did they never
find out where he came from, Ántonia?’
‘Never, ma’m. He hadn’t been seen nowhere except in a little town they
call Conway. He tried to get beer there, but there wasn’t any saloon.
Maybe he came in on a freight, but the brakeman hadn’t seen him. They
couldn’t find no letters nor nothing on him; nothing but an old
penknife in his pocket and the wishbone of a chicken wrapped up in a
piece of paper, and some poetry.’
‘Some poetry?’ we exclaimed.
‘I remember,’ said Frances. ‘It was “The Old Oaken Bucket,” cut out of
a newspaper and nearly worn out. Ole Iverson brought it into the office
and showed it to me.’
‘Now, wasn’t that strange, Miss Frances?’ Tony asked thoughtfully.
‘What would anybody want to kill themselves in summer for? In threshing
time, too! It’s nice everywhere then.’
‘So it is, Ántonia,’ said Mrs. Harling heartily. ‘Maybe I’ll go home
and help you thresh next summer. Isn’t that taffy nearly ready to eat?
I’ve been smelling it a long while.’
There was a basic harmony between Ántonia and her mistress. They had
strong, independent natures, both of them. They knew what they liked,
and were not always trying to imitate other people. They loved children
and animals and music, and rough play and digging in the earth. They
liked to prepare rich, hearty food and to see people eat it; to make up
soft white beds and to see youngsters asleep in them. They ridiculed
conceited people and were quick to help unfortunate ones. Deep down in
each of them there was a kind of hearty joviality, a relish of life,
not over-delicate, but very invigorating. I never tried to define it,
but I was distinctly conscious of it. I could not imagine Ántonia’s
living for a week in any other house in Black Hawk than the Harlings’.
VII
Winter lies too long in country towns; hangs on until it is stale and
shabby, old and sullen. On the farm the weather was the great fact, and
men’s affairs went on underneath it, as the streams creep under the
ice. But in Black Hawk the scene of human life was spread out shrunken
and pinched, frozen down to the bare stalk.
Through January and February I went to the river with the Harlings on
clear nights, and we skated up to the big island and made bonfires on
the frozen sand. But by March the ice was rough and choppy, and the
snow on the river bluffs was grey and mournful-looking. I was tired of
school, tired of winter clothes, of the rutted streets, of the dirty
drifts and the piles of cinders that had lain in the yards so long.
There was only one break in the dreary monotony of that month: when
Blind d’Arnault, the Negro pianist, came to town. He gave a concert at
the Opera House on Monday night, and he and his manager spent Saturday
and Sunday at our comfortable hotel. Mrs. Harling had known d’Arnault
for years. She told Ántonia she had better go to see Tiny that Saturday
evening, as there would certainly be music at the Boys’ Home.
Saturday night after supper I ran downtown to the hotel and slipped
quietly into the parlour. The chairs and sofas were already occupied,
and the air smelled pleasantly of cigar smoke. The parlour had once
been two rooms, and the floor was swaybacked where the partition had
been cut away. The wind from without made waves in the long carpet. A
coal stove glowed at either end of the room, and the grand piano in the
middle stood open.
There was an atmosphere of unusual freedom about the house that night,
for Mrs. Gardener had gone to Omaha for a week. Johnnie had been having
drinks with the guests until he was rather absent-minded. It was Mrs.
Gardener who ran the business and looked after everything. Her husband
stood at the desk and welcomed incoming travellers. He was a popular
fellow, but no manager.
Mrs. Gardener was admittedly the best-dressed woman in Black Hawk,
drove the best horse, and had a smart trap and a little white-and-gold
sleigh. She seemed indifferent to her possessions, was not half so
solicitous about them as her friends were. She was tall, dark, severe,
with something Indian-like in the rigid immobility of her face. Her
manner was cold, and she talked little. Guests felt that they were
receiving, not conferring, a favour when they stayed at her house. Even
the smartest travelling men were flattered when Mrs. Gardener stopped
to chat with them for a moment. The patrons of the hotel were divided
into two classes: those who had seen Mrs. Gardener’s diamonds, and
those who had not.
When I stole into the parlour, Anson Kirkpatrick, Marshall Field’s man,
was at the piano, playing airs from a musical comedy then running in
Chicago. He was a dapper little Irishman, very vain, homely as a
monkey, with friends everywhere, and a sweetheart in every port, like a
sailor. I did not know all the men who were sitting about, but I
recognized a furniture salesman from Kansas City, a drug man, and Willy
O’Reilly, who travelled for a jewellery house and sold musical
instruments. The talk was all about good and bad hotels, actors and
actresses and musical prodigies. I learned that Mrs. Gardener had gone
to Omaha to hear Booth and Barrett, who were to play there next week,
and that Mary Anderson was having a great success in ‘A Winter’s Tale,’
in London.
The door from the office opened, and Johnnie Gardener came in,
directing Blind d’Arnault—he would never consent to be led. He was a
heavy, bulky mulatto, on short legs, and he came tapping the floor in