Part 21 (1/2)
Somebody is going to get the life crowded out of him at every turn, and it isn't always the work hand in the factory. The money kings eat each other for breakfast every day. As for work, we always thought we worked. You should take a peep into the shops and factories I've seen this week. Work? Why, we don't know what work is, and we waste enough food every day to keep a workman's family, and we're dressed liked queens, in comparison with them right now.”
”Do you mean to say if he asks you--?” It was a small explosion.
”I mean to say if he asks me, 'buy me that two hundred acres of land where I want it, build me the house and barns I want, and guarantee that I may live there as I please, and I'll marry you to-morrow.' If it's Chicago--Never! I haven't stolen, murdered, or betrayed, who should I be imprisoned?”
”Why, you hopeless anarchist!” said Nancy Ellen, ”I am going to tell John Jardine on you.”
”Do!” urged Kate. ”Sound him on the land question. It's our only hope of a common foundation. Have you send Agatha word that we will be out this afternoon?”
”I have,” said Nancy Ellen. ”And I don't doubt that now, even now, she is in the kitchen--how would she put it?”
”'Compounding a cake,'” said Kate, ”while Adam is in the cellar 'freezing a custard.' Adam, 3d, will be raking the yard afresh and Susan will be sweeping the walks steadily from now until they sight us coming down the road. What you bet Agatha asked John his intentions?
I almost wish she would,” she added. ”He has some, but there is a string to them in some way, and I can't just make out where, or why it is.”
”Not even a guess?” asked Nancy Ellen.
”Not even a guess, with any sense to it. I've thought it was coming repeatedly; but I've got a stubborn Bates streak, and I won't lift a finger to help him. He'll speak up, loud and plain, or there will be no 'connubial bliss' for us, as Agatha says. I think he has ideas about other things than freight train gear. According to his programme we must have so much time to become acquainted, I must see his home and people, he must see mine. If there's more after that, I'm not informed. Like as not there is. It may come after we get back to-night, I can't say.”
”Have you told him--?” asked Nancy Ellen.
”Not the details, but the essentials. He knows that I can't go home.
It came up one day in talking about land. I guess they had thought before, that my people were poor as church mice. I happened to mention how much land I had helped earn for my brothers, and they seemed so interested I finished the job. Well, after they had heard about the Land King, it made a noticeable difference in their treatment of me.
Not that they weren't always fine, but it made, I scarcely know how to put it, it was so intangible--but it was a difference, an added respect. You bet money is a power! I can see why Father hangs on to those deeds, when I get out in the world. They are his compensation for his years of hard work, the material evidence that he has succeeded in what he undertook. He'd show them to John Jardine with the same feeling John showed me improved car couplers, brakes, and air cus.h.i.+ons.
They stand for successes that win the deference of men. Out in the little bit of world I've seen, I notice that men fight, bleed, and die for even a tiny fraction of deference. Aren't they funny? What would I care--?”
”Well, I'D care a lot!” said Nancy Ellen.
Kate surveyed her slowly. ”Yes, I guess you would.”
They finished the dishes and went to church, because Robert was accustomed to going. They made a remarkable group. Then they went to the hotel for dinner, so that the girls would not have to prepare it, and then in a double carriage Robert had secured for the occasion, they drove to Bates Corners and as Kate said, ”Viewed the landscape o'er.”
Those eight pieces of land, none under two hundred acres, some slightly over, all in the very highest state of cultivation, with modern houses, barns, outbuildings, and fine stock grazing in the pastures, made an impressive picture. It was probably the first time that any of the Bates girls had seen it all at once, and looked on it merely as a spectacle. They stopped at Adam's last, and while Robert was busy with the team and John had alighted to help him, Nancy Ellen, revealing tight lips and unnaturally red cheeks, leaned back to Kate.
”This is about as mean a trick, and as big a shame as I've ever seen,”
she said, hotly. ”You know I was brought up with this, and I never looked at it with the eyes of a stranger before. If ever I get my fingers on those deeds, I'll make short work of them!”
”And a good job, too!” a.s.sented Kate, instantly. ”Look out! There comes Adam.”
”I'd just as soon tell him so as not!” whispered Nancy Ellen.
”Which would result in the deeds being recorded to-morrow and spoiling our trip to-day, and what good would it do you?” said Kate.
”None, of course! Nothing ever does a Bates girl any good, unless she gets out and does it for herself,” retorted Nancy Ellen spitefully.
”There, there,” said Robert as he came to help Nancy Ellen protect her skirts in alighting. ”I was afraid this trip would breed discontent.”
”What's the trouble?” asked John, as he performed the same service for Kate.
”Oh, the girls are grouching a little because they helped earn all this, and are to be left out of it,” explained Robert in a low voice.