THE CHOICE OF TOM THE DRUDGE.
By Joseph Hathaway
TOM rose wearily from milking the last of his seventeen cows, and carried his foaming bucket to the row of large tin cans. The milking-stool, strapped around his body, sagged ludicrously as he walked. His clothes were stiff with grime and grease and odorous with the smell of soured milk. He emptied his bucket, lifted the heavy cans into the cart, and wheeled them to the dairy, while his Chinese co-worker, chanting a shrill, weird paean of thanksgiving at labors finished, closed up the barn and trotted away to his cabin. The dairy was very sweet and clean. It required much washing to keep it so. Outside a pot was sending up clouds of steam over a fire of logs. In the small anteroom Tom exchanged his soiled garments for a clean suit of jeans. The change was superficial. He felt hot and damp and wearied to the bone. His hands were stiff and sore. Mornings they were worse. He had to soak them in hot water before he could open them. He strained the milk into rows of shining pans and set them up on shelves. Some of the shelves were higher than his head, and his arms trembled. As he lifted up the last full vessel a shadow darkened the doorway. He half turned. The milk splashed turbulently, and then with a clash the pan fell from his grasp and emptied its contents on the floor. Tom lifted his head to confront his father’s angry face. “Hi!” Walters did not look as if he would be blamed. His beard trembled with rage and impatience. He was a hard-featured man, of a type common among farmers who have earned their substance by dogged faithfulness to the one maxim—save. He was gaunt and muscular. His shaggy brows beetled out over deep-set eyes. A wart served to locate the starting-point of a nose that was sharp and prominent. If his smile was ever tender, no one ever knew it. It was hidden in a thick growth of beard beginning to turn gray. He was wealthy, as wealth went in that community, but the sight of the spilled milk seemed to infuriate him. “Of all the fool carelessness, I’ll be blamed! A whole pan of milk, and no tellin’ how many more! Spilled every drop of it! The place would go for taxes, for all your savin’! A boy that’s that fool careless ain’t worth his salt! Well, why don’t you get the mop? Goin’ to leave it there to spoil the rest, I s’pose!” His anger flared higher at the sound of his own voice. “Hi!” Walters was not a man of extensive vocabulary, but, like the rest of him, it was hard-worked. At times like these he was likely to throw his words together in combinations which he had not planned. “That’s right, go at it hobbledehoy, and spill the other pans! Ain’t you got sense enough to use a mop? Land’s sake, it’s time you had begun to earn your salt!” He turned abruptly and made his way out of the dairy with the slight limp that had marked his gait ever since he had stopped that terrible runaway, years before, when Tom was a baby just big enough to climb up into the buggy and shake the lines. Tom went on with his work. Washing cans was to him a tedious and irksome task. He scalded them carefully at last and set them out in the air to drain. Supper was over when he reached the house. There was to be company that night. His sister Flossy, who had been known as Florence before she went away to school, appeared in a calico wrapper, with hair elaborately curled. She set out cold beans and bread and lukewarm tea. She forgot the butter, and Tom did without. He was not in a humor to talk. “Tom, you’ll freeze the ice-cream? That’s a darling!” Tom grunted. Terms of endearment were imported articles in the Walters household, and he regarded them with suspicion and disrelish. They embarrassed him; they seemed so superfluous and insincere. “And you’ll put on your nice clothes? And your lawn tie? That’s a good boy! These clothes are—ah!” She sniffed delicately and smiled. The action was to indicate that dairy perfumes might be pastoral and poetic, but were scarcely in harmony with lawn ties. “I shan’’t come down.” Tom filled his mouth with beans to preclude explanation, but the measure was hardly necessary. Flossy smiled amiably even sympathetically, and adjusted her hair-pins. “You must be frightfully tired with those awful cows! Dreadfully sorry you won’t be down! But we’ll save you some ice-cream—that is, if you’ll freeze it? That’s a dear!” Tom scowled and pushed back his chair. His heavy boots scraped across the floor as he stalked out to the kitchen. He was willing enough to freeze the cream—he did everything that fell to his lot, as a matter of course—but his sister’s flourishes annoyed him. He was unable to respond in kind, and he did not like to feel a churl. When he came back, the beans and tea were removed, and the table was resplendent in shining linen and embroidered centerpiece. He felt no regret in absenting himself from the festivities—he would study his geology up-stairs. He felt gingerly along the shelf where he always kept it. The place was loaded down with pink and white gift-books, which no one ever read. Ordinarily they were stored away in trunks. His geology was not there. It would look like an elephant among white rabbits on that dainty shelf, he realized. His sisters must have put it away. He would hunt them up. At the half-open doorway of their room he paused. Inside he caught a glimpse of airy white curtains, and a white bed with pictures behind it, and a strip of bright matting pearl-colored and green. His sisters were talking. “O, no, honey, not that—wear the other ribbon!” “Yes; that’s lovely!” It was Flossy’s ecstatic voice. “You’ll match the pink in the parlor—how charming! And the ice-cream and berries—they’re pink, too! What do you think? Tom said he wasn’t coming down.” “Aren’t boys the queerest? I didn’t urge him. He’s such a—a, well, you know, all elbows and hands—and so glum! I try my best to jolly him up, but he just sits and glowers—at his beans.” “Flossy, why isn’t he coming down?” “There, see my sweet-peas—um! Why isn’t he coming down? I really—don’t—know. If I had time, I’d try to find out, but he baffles me. He’s different from the boys at school. They’re dears! I suppose milking makes his hands bigger—smilax or maiden-hair, which goes best? Pin them, won’t you? That’s a dar—” Tom stumbled up-stairs out of hearing of the rippling voice, and shut himself into his own room. It wasn’t a pleasant place to spend an evening in even for a boy like Tom, and Tom was not sensitive to environment. It had been made a sort of junk-shop for all the pieces of stray and broken furniture in the house. There is a popular persuasion that boys delight in such things. The chair he sat in had no back, and one of its legs was fractured. Flossy, whose decorative instinct transcended everything, had mended it one day with a knot of scarlet ribbon. A bit of wire might have held it more securely, but ordinarily it did not matter. A room to Tom meant a place to sleep in. He did not remember ever having examined the furnishings of his chamber before. His bed was narrow and hard, and covered with a somber patchwork quilt. The varnish was cracked into sections, like the surface of alligator-skins. The floor was carpeted with threadbare Brussels that might have had a pattern some time—exactly what, it was impossible to speculate. It was faded to a sad and unambitious gray. The old-fashioned mahogany bureau would have delighted a collector. In the eyes of the family it was simply dingy, discolored, and out of date. Above it was a cracked mirror in an oval frame. Tom pulled down the window-shade and lit his lamp. There was absolutely nothing to do. If he only had his beloved geology! But it was heavy and cumbersome, like himself. The girls had put it out of sight. He fell to studying his own image in the looking-glass. Tom was not a bad-looking lad, although awkward and loose-jointed, from too rapid growing. His eyes were good, and his forehead broad and intelligent. He had the framework of a powerful man and a breadth of shoulders that would have been the envy of many a college athlete. But he saw only the high cheek-bones, the muscular jaw, the patient bovine cast of cheeks and nostrils—and a great abhorrence of himself seized him. He was getting to look like the cows he worked with! There are times when the handsomest person feels a disgust of his own countenance. His features seem to sag in stupid masses, his eyes sink back into dull inertness. Sometimes he sees in them a sluggish resemblance to some familiar beast—a horse or a sheep, perhaps. Oftentimes the disgust sinks deeper and encompasses his whole ego. It was so with Tom. It is a morbid distemper, bred of too much introspection. The cure for Tom would have been to put on his best clothes, go down and mingle with the gay company whose laughter broke so harshly into his solitude, and forget himself. Instead he sat down sullenly in the broken chair, and told himself he would think his situation out. He had been misunderstood, mistreated, and ignored. He had been his sister’s cat’s-paw and his father’s drudge. And what was his reward? A junk-man’s chair tied with a milliner’s bow and the assurance that he was not worth his salt! A sound of laughter, louder than the rest, struck discordantly upon his ear. He got up with a sudden resolution. He was sick to the heart with it all—why should he stay? He would leave—no one wanted him. He would get out of the stifling atmosphere and get out of himself. He would shape a new career of his own, be it for better or for worse. Tom was not a person who made many resolutions, nor did he fail in many he had made. He had that simple, direct force of character which knows not vacillation. He began without delay his preparations for leaving. The gloom of self-loathing cleared away from his mind. Here was a time for action, not for thinking. On the bed was his Sunday suit and fresh linen Flossy had laid out in tacit announcement that none but the finest would do for her party. He brushed them aside with a grim smile. He did not expect to tread the flowery path of dalliance. In his top bureau drawer his hand struck suddenly against his geology, and he crowded it in joyfully, with working-clothes.11He was glad to think he would not have to give it up. Mary must have brought the volume to his room. At the thought of her he felt a little pang. She was the elder of the sisters, and she understood him in a way. She never troubled him with “dears” and “darlings,” but talked with him sensibly and was kind. His mother had been like that. He remembered her, too, and her picture down-stairs in the back parlor—a big, cold-looking crayon in a wide gilt frame. They had bought it from a traveling artist one year when the rhubarb crop was good, and to Tom it was a wonderful piece of art. Her lips seemed almost to speak to him at times. He thought he should like to see it once more. He would wait till the guests were gone and then slip down. He would spare himself the ordeal of seeing his father. It stood to reason he would be glad enough to have him go, but something in Tom’s heart shrank from having him tell him so. Country visitors did not stay long evenings. Most of them lived on dairy-farms, where people are forced to observe early hours. After awhile he heard a pushing back of chairs and opening of doors and merry good-nights, and finally the rumble of wheels. He waited a little while longer and then started down—not on tiptoes, as he had meant to at first. It seemed too much like sneaking, and Tom was not a sneak. The back parlor was yet faintly illumined. Some one must still be up. He need meet no one. He could pass right thru, to the little hop-vine arbor beyond the side porch, and out—out into the world. He paused in the secluded room before his mother’s picture—a patient, care-worn face another might have failed to see the beauty in, but which stood with him for the type of all that was lovely. A feeling he had not counted on took possession of him. For the first time he understood the seriousness of the step he was to take. He was about to break into a habit of living—and the Walters were quiet people, into whose habits of living little short of death had ever broken. His father had lived here all his life, and his father’s father; and he himself had looked forward with unconscious pleasure to a life here, under the blue sky that he loved. What would she have said to him, this sweet, submissive woman whose face looked down at him? Something very much like tears burned in Tom’s eyes as he picked up his satchel and turned away. Some one called his name. It was Mary. She touched his shoulder and looked up anxiously into his face. His mother’s gesture! “Tom, what are you going to do?” “Clear out, I guess.” Tom laughed harshly. “Pull stakes and skedaddle.” His slangy speech and his laugh did not mislead her. She saw the quiver of his eyelids, and her hand slipped down into his. Again his mother’s gesture! “No. He’ll be glad enough, you bet.” “O Tom, if you only knew—Tom, listen!” She drew him hastily into the shadow beside the outer door. Voices approaching thru the arbor sounded outside and paused at the threshold. One was his father’s, the other Tom recognized as that of his Uncle Crandell, his mother’s brother, a kindly, gray-haired bachelor who had always been his friend. He was the one man in the community more prosperous than his father, but he had lately sold his farm and was about to move into the city, where he had large commercial interests. It was his voice that was speaking. “Well, it’s just as I’ve told you. It’s been in my mind ever since Nancy died that I’d like to do something for one of her children. There’ll be the position in the shipping-house that some one will have to fill, and all I’d ask would be that I’d be allowed to treat him the same as if he were my own.” “Tom ain’t any hand to like to be under roofs.” “I know he’s not the kind that takes by nature to ledgers and bill-books, but he’s got ability.” “That’s the great thing, to get some one that would be faithful. Tom’s the kind that’s bound to make a success of whatever he undertakes. Half the young men to-day expect to ring the bell and go up in an elevator. If they find they’re ex- agitating something or other in a labor union. Tom, now—if you set Tom to a task he’ll do it, and he won’t expect an increase of salary for doing it his best, either. Any boy with his brains that’ll milk seventeen cows morning and night all season, and fill in the time between as he does, without complaining, is worth helping, say I. Why, he doesn’t even know you’ve been laying by his wages all this time, does he?” “No. He ain’t any hand to spend money, and I calculated he’d like it best to go to school on by and by. He’s set on science—never seen such a lot of books as he’s picked up.” “Of course I shall want to send him thru college. The more a business man knows of science and mathematics, the better. I’ve been writing ‘for value received’ on my notes too long to go into anything now for pure sentiment. I expect to get my profit out of this deal, and I will. Tom’s a good investment for any one. But aside from that I want the boy. He’s Nancy’s child, and I want him. Well, what do you say?” There was a silence for some moments, and when his father spoke at last it was so low Tom could scarcely hear his words. “It would be like losing Nancy over again.” “Of course; I understand that.” His uncle’s kind voice was lowered, too, and there was something in it which helped Tom to realize that there were parts of his father’s inner life of which he had never dreamed. “A father’s claims are first. I do want the boy, and I would do my best by him, but it is for you to decide.” “No, I dunno as I have any right to say. You’ll have to see the boy. If he wants to go, I sha’n't say a word. I s’pose it would be the best thing for him. I—I never thought about his leavin’ home.” There was another interim, and Tom heard his father twisting the door-knob back and forth. He half started forward, but Mary held his hand tight in mute entreaty of silence. Then his father went on speaking. “I dunno. He hasn’t had an easy time, and I haven’t tried to make it any easier. ’Tain’t my way. I ain’t encouraged him as much as I might, and I’ve been stricter than there was any call for, I s’pose. He’s been a faithful boy, as you say, and an uncomplainin’ boy, but it’s a little late in the day to tell him so. Don’t s’pose I could do it if I tried. I don’t know how I’ll do along without him, but I sha’n't stand in his way. Well—” Once more there was a pause, and then the door was pushed slowly open. “So long as you want your answer to-night, I’ll wake him up. He was clean petered out, milking them seventeen cows. Reckon he’ll be glad enough to stop. If he wants to go, I won’t hinder him. He’s old enough to choose for himself.” Mr. Walters limped into the lamp-light—his limp was always worse when he had been standing still—and Tom could not but see how troubled his harsh face seemed, and how old. A sudden sense of his own strength and youth pulsed thru him with his quickened heart-beats—he on the verge of manhood, his father in the decline. Mary’s hand was on his arm. He stepped forward without the least hesitancy or indirection, and his voice was strong and unwavering. “Father, I do choose for myself, and I choose to stay!” “Hi!” Walters was not a man of theatrical attainments. For a moment a look trembled on his sharp face, and then he passed on across the space of the room unceremoniously, as he would have passed at any other time, with the only difference that the limp was gone out of his walk. “Get to bed, then!” he said, gruffly. “Breakfast at half-past five!” But Mary kept her hand in his, and went with him up the stairs, and made him let her unpack his satchel, and turned back the covers of his bed for him motherwise. And then she put both arms around his neck and looked quietly into his eyes. It was the one time he had ever heard her call him “dear.” “Dear,” she said, “I am glad you are going to stay. I never thought about your leaving, either. None of us did, I think. And, Tom—” The sentence was not finished. There was no need.—Joseph Hathaway.