E. Haldeman-Julius

“ It was for the next generation to patronize clothiers who kept each suit on its separate hanger. A moving-picture of the tall, broad-shouldered fellow, as, with creaking steps, he walked from the house, might bring a laugh from the young farmers of this more fastidious day, but Martin was dressed no worse than any of his neighbors and far better than many. Health, vigor, sturdiness, self-reliance shone from him, and once his make-up had ceased to obtrude its clumsiness, he struck one as handsome. His was a commanding physique, hard as the grim plains from which he wrested his living. ”

“ Martin felt embarrassed. He was not looking for happiness but merely for more of the physical comforts, and an escape from loneliness. He was practical; he fancied he knew about what could be expected from marriage, just as he knew exactly how many steers and hogs his farm could support. This was a new idea—happiness. It had never entered into his calculations. Life as he knew it was hard. There was no happiness in those fields when burned by the hot August winds, the soil breaking into cakes that left crevices which seemed to groan for water. ”

“ Why is one time any better than another?”
There had been a wistfulness, so rarely in Martin's voice, that Rose had detected it instantly. After all, why should she keep him waiting when he needed her so much, she had thought tenderly, all the sweet womanliness in her astir with yearnings to lift the cloud of loneliness from his life.
Rose had always believed love a breath of beauty that would hold its purity even in a hovel, but she had not been prepared for the sordidness that seemed to envelop her as she crossed the threshold of the first home of her married life. ”

“ He could see her still as she looked that morning in the barn crying: “You'll be punished for this some day—you will—you will. You don't love me, but some time you will love some one. Then you'll understand what it is to be treated like this—” It gave him the creeps now to remember it. It was like one of those old incantations; almost like a curse. What if some day his Rose should grow to be as indifferent, feel as little tenderness toward him as he had felt toward his wife at that moment. The pain of it made him break out into a fine sweat. ”

“ Martin stood back a few feet and with loving eyes watched his animals enjoy their food. Here were the creatures he loved. The fine herd of Holstein cows—their big eyes looked at him with such trust! And their black and white markings—so spick and span with shininess because he threw salt on them that each cow might lick the other clean—their heavy milk veins, great udders, and backs as straight as a die—all appealed to his sense of the beautiful. “God Almighty!” he thought, “but they're wonders! There's none like them west of Chicago.” The mule colts, so huge and handsome, and oh, so knowing! ”

“ She was thoroughly ashamed of herself for it—it was really too absurd!—but she felt jealousy, an emotion that had never bothered her since they had been married. And this bit of chattering femininity had caused it. Mrs. Wade worked faster.
The kiss was like the touch of silk against Martin's cheek. He felt inexplicably sad as he put the child down again among her playthings. There was, he realized with a shock, much that he was missing, things he was letting work supplant. He wished that boy of theirs could have lived. All might have been different. ”

“ At twelve, Bill was plowing behind four heavy horses. He could run a mower, and clean a pasture of weeds in a day. He could cultivate and handle the manure spreader. In the hot, blazing sun, he could shock wheat behind Martin, who sat on the binder and cut the beautiful swaying gold. There wasn't a thing he could not do, but there was not one that he did with a willing heart. His dreams were all of escape from this grinding, harsh farm. ”

“ For, yielding as Rose was in all other matters, where Billy was concerned she was simply imperturbable. At times, as she held the chubby little fellow to her breast or caught and kissed a waving pink foot, she would feel a sense of physical weakness come over her—it seemed as if her breath would leave her. Martin could be what he might; life, at last, was worth its price. With the courage of her mother-love she could resist anything and everyone. ”

“ Her ears caught a rumble, fainter than thunder, and the splash of horses' hoofs—“it's too muddy for the motor ambulance,” she thought, mechanically. “They're using the old one,” and her heart contracting, twisting, a queer dryness in her throat, she opened the door as they stopped, her hand shading the lamp against the sudden inrush of wind and rain. “In there, through the parlor,” she said dully, indicating the new room and thinking, bitterly, as she followed them, that now, when it could mean nothing to Billy, Martin would offer no objections to its being given over to him. ”

“ When was anything ever convenient for Martin Wade unless he were to derive a direct, personal satisfaction from it! Then it became a horse of quite another color. He could even become lavish; everything must be of the best; nothing else would do; no expense, as long as full value was received, was too great. Mrs. Wade found herself searching her memory. She was positive that not since those occasions upon which he had brought home the sacks of candy for the sheer sunshine of watching little Rose's glee had anyone's pleasure been of enough importance to him to become his own. ”

“ The old brick store-building which housed The First State Bank was like a cool cavern. He brought out the check quietly but with a full consciousness that with one gesture he was shoving enough over that scratched and worn walnut counter to buy out half the bank.
James Osborne, the youthful cashier, feigned complete paralysis.
“Why don't you give a poor fellow some warning?” he beamed good-naturedly, “or maybe you think you've strayed into Wall Street. This is Fallon. Fallon, Kansas. So you've had your merry little session with Robinson? Put it here!” and he extended a cordial hand. ”

“ Wade, but her rich humanity transcended all her training. She wondered if there could be anything in the belief that there was waiting somewhere for each soul just one other. There were people, she knew, who thought that. Rose had drawn out all that was finest in Martin—she had transformed him into a lover, and if she wanted the man, himself, she could have him. But, decided his wife, he could not take with him the things which her sweat and blood had helped to create. ”

“ And he was escaping a lot of anguish, not by praying for Bill's soul or his own forgiveness, but by the simple process of harnessing a team and dragging a car through the mud. It was a great game, work was—the one weapon with which to meet life. This was not a cut and dried philosophy with him, but a glimmer that, though always suggesting itself but dimly, never failed when put to the test. Martin felt better. ”

“ Wade felt an inexplicable hurt at the decidedness of little Rose's preference for Martin. She could not understand it. She took exquisite care of her, cooked the things she liked best, let her mess to her heart's content in the kitchen, made her dolls pretty frocks, cuddled her, told her stories and stopped her work to play with her on rainy days—but she could not win the same affection the little girl bestowed so lavishly on Martin. If left to herself she was always to be found with the big, silent man. ”

“ Martin's mind was made up. He would drop into the Independent ostensibly to extend his subscription, but really to get on more intimate terms with the woman whom he had now firmly determined should become his wife. He drew a deep breath of relaxation and finished the glass of sweetness with that sense of self-conscious sheepishness which most men feel when they surrender to the sticky charms of an ice-cream soda. A few minutes later he stood beside Rose's worn desk.
“How-do-you-do, once more, Miss Rose of Sharon. You're not the Bible's Rose of Sharon, are you?” ”

“ Martin, bothered by an odd feeling of strangeness in the midst of his own familiar surroundings, smoked his pipe in silence and studied Rose soberly. Why, he asked himself, was he unmoved by a woman who was so attractive? He liked the deftness with which her hands worked the pie dough, the quick way she moved between stove and table, yet mingled with this admiration was a slight but distinct hostility. How can one like and have an aversion to a person at the same time? ”

“ It was an elemental materialism, difficult to understand, but it was a language very clear to Martin. Marriage with the men and women of his world was a practical business, arranged and conducted by practical people, who lived practical lives, and died practical deaths. The women who might pass his way could deny their lust for concrete possessions, but their actions, however concealed their motives, would give the lie to any ineffectual glamour of romance they might attempt to fling over their carefully measured adventures of the heart. ”

“ Cows, horses, sheep, pigs, chickens, turkeys, dogs, barn cats—all do not remain patient while the man who owns them lies in bed dreaming dreams. They wait a while and then get nervous. The many messages for food which they sent to Martin forced him to spring out of bed and hurry to them, for nothing is as unbearably insistent as a barn and yard full of living things clamoring their determination to have something to eat. As Martin ran to stop the bedlam, he saw the world as an enormous, empty stomach, at the opening of which he stood, hurling in the feed as fast as his muscles would permit. ”

“ He went about his chores in a grave, automatic way, absorbed in anything but agriculture. Hardly ever did he pass through his barn without paying homage to his own progressiveness and oozing approval of the mechanical milker, driven by his own electrical dynamo, the James Way stanchions with electric lights above, the individual drinking fountains at the head of each cow, the cork-brick floors, the scrupulously white-washed walls, and the absence of odor, with the one exception of sweet, fermented silage. But, tonight, he was not seeing these symbols of material superiority. ”

“ No. Not a person; not even any longer that lovely Rose of Sharon who had flowered in his dust for a brief hour. His wife? God Almighty, no. Then who? Himself? No, his very selfishness had other springs than that. He was one of those men, not so uncommon either, he surmised, who loved no one on the whole wide earth.
When he re-entered the house, he found his wife still seated in the rocker, softly weeping, the tears flowing down her cheeks and dropping unheeded into her lap. He pitied her.
“I feel as though he didn't die tonight,” she mourned, looking at Martin through full eyes. ”

“ Her mother's death, the particular enterprise in which her father's little capital had been invested, Martin's peculiar temperament—these had moulded and were moulding Rose Wade. At the time she came to Martin's shack, she was potentially any one of a half dozen women. It was inevitable that the particular one into which she would evolve should be determined by the type of man she might happen to marry, inevitable that she would become, to a large degree, what he wished and expected, that her thoughts would take on the complexion of his. ”

“ Why should you—even if you do for a few years you'll have to leave it sometime, and there's nothing that goes to rack and ruin as quickly as a farm—even one like this.”
“Oh, Martin, don't think such thoughts,” she begged. “Your fever is coming up; I can see it.”
“What has it all been about, that's what I want to know,” he went on with quiet cynicism. “What have I been sweating about—nothing. What is anyone's life? No more than mine. We're all like a lot of hens in a backyard, scratching so many hours a day. Some scratch a little deeper than those who aren't so skilled or so strong. ”

“ Rose was troubled with nausea, but Martin pooh-poohed, as childish, the notion of dropping some of her responsibilities. Didn't his mares work almost to the day of foaling? It was good for them, keeping them in shape. And the cows—didn't they go about placidly until within a few hours of bringing their calves? Even the sows—did they droop as they neared farrowing? Why should a woman be so different? Her child would be healthier and she able to bring it into the world with less discomfort to herself if she went about her ordinary duties in her usual way. Thus Martin, impersonally, logically. ”

“ Bill fidgeted uneasily. “You mean you want me to go on with it?” he demanded. “You want me to come back to it, settle down to be a farmer—like father?”
The tone in which he asked this question made Rose choose her words carefully.
“What are your plans, son? What do you want to be—not just now, but finally?”
“I can't see what difference it makes what a fellow is—except that in one business a man makes more than in another. And I can't see either that it does a person a bit of good to have money. I'm having more fun right now than father or you ever had—more fun than anybody I know. ”