Part 6 (1/2)
”From what my driver has told me about the Briskow farm,” he ran on, ”you won't have to work at anything, unless you care to.”
Allie continued to weigh this new thought in her mind; that it intrigued her was plain, but she made no audible comment.
CHAPTER V
For perhaps half an hour the women tried on one piece of jewelry after another, exclaiming, admiring, arguing, then the mother realized with a start that meal time was near and that the menfolks would soon be home.
Leaving Allie to entertain their guest, she hurried out, and the sound of splitting kindling, the clatter of stove lids, the rattle of utensils came from the kitchen.
Gray retired to the patent rocker, Miss Briskow settled herself upon a straight-backed chair and folded her capable hands in her lap; an oppressive silence fell upon the room. Evidently the duties of hostess lay with crus.h.i.+ng weight upon the girl, for her face became stony, her cheeks paled, her eyes glazed; the power of speech completely failed her and she answered Gray with nods or shakes of her head. The most that he could elicit from her were brief ”yeps” and ”nopes.” It was not unlike a ”spirit reading,” or a ouija-board seance. He told himself, in terms of the oil fields, that here was a dry well--that the girl was a ”duster.” Having exhausted the usual commonplace topics in the course of a monologue that induced no reaction whatever, he voiced a perfectly natural remark about the wonder of sudden riches. He was, in a way, thinking aloud of the changes wrought in drab lives like the Briskows'
by the discovery of oil. He was surprised when Allegheny responded:
”Ma and me stand it all right, but it's an awful strain on Pa,” said she.
”Indeed?”
The girl nodded. ”He's got _more_ nutty notions.”
Gray endeavored to learn the nature of Pa's recently acquired eccentricities, but Allie was flus.h.i.+ng and paling as a result of her sudden excursion into the audible. Eventually she trembled upon the verge of speech once more, then she took another desperate plunge.
”He says folks are going to laugh _at_ us or _with_ us, and--and rich people have got to _act rich_. They got to be elegant.” She laughed loudly, abruptly, and the explosive nature of the sound startled her as greatly as it did her hearer. ”He's going to get somebody to teach Buddy and me how to behave.”
”I think he's right,” Gray said, quietly.
”Why, he's sent to Fort Worth for a piano, already, and for a lady to come out for a coupla days and show me how to play it!” There was another black hiatus in the conversation. ”We haven't got a spare room, but--I'm quick at learnin' tunes. She could bunk in with me for a night or two.”
Gray eyed the speaker suspiciously, but it was evident that she was in sober earnest, and the tragedy of such profound ignorance smote the man sharply. Here was a girl of at least average intelligence and of sensitive makeup; a girl with looks, too, in spite of her size, and no doubt a full share of common sense--perhaps even talents of some sort--yet with the knowledge of a child. For the first time he realized what playthings of Fate are men and women, how completely circ.u.mstance can make or mar them, and what utter paralysis results from the strangling grip of poverty.
History hints that during the Middle Ages there flourished an a.s.sociation known as Comprachicos--”child-buyers”--which traded in children. The Comprachicos bought little human beings and disfigured their features, distorted their bodies, fas.h.i.+oned them into ludicrous, grotesque, or hideous monstrosities for king and populace to laugh at, and then resold them. Soft, immature faces were made into animal likenesses; tender, unformed bodies were put into wicker forms or porcelain vases and allowed to grow; then when they had become things of compressed flesh and twisted bone, the wicker was cut, the vase was broken, leaving a man in the shape of a bottle or a mug.
That is precisely what environment does.
In the case of Allegheny Briskow, poverty, the drought, the grinding hards.h.i.+ps of these hard-scrabble Texas counties, had dwarfed the intellect, the very soul of a splendid young animal. Or so, at least, Gray told himself. It was a thought that evoked profound consideration.
Now that the girl was beginning to lose her painful embarra.s.sment, she showed to somewhat better advantage and no longer impressed him, as bovine, stolid, almost stupid; he could not but note again her full young figure, her well-shaped, well-poised head, and her regular features, and the pity of it seemed all the greater by reason thereof.
He tried to visualize her perfectly groomed, clad in a smart gown molded over a well-fitting corset, with her feet properly shod and her hair dressed--but the task was beyond him. Probably she had never worn a corset, never seen a pair of silk stockings. He thought, too, of what was in store for her and wondered how she would fit into the new world she was about to enter. Not very well, he feared. Might not this prove to be the happiest period of all her new life, he asked himself. As yet the wonder and the glory of the new estate left room in her imagination for little else; the mold was broken, but the child was not conscious of its bottle shape. Nevertheless the shape was there. When that child learned the truth, when it heard the laughter and felt the ridicule, what then? He could not bring himself to envy Allegheny Briskow.
”First off, Ma and me are goin' over to Dallas to do some tradin',” the girl was saying. ”After that we're goin' to the mountains.”
”Your mother mentioned mountains.”
”Yep. Her and Pa have allus been crazy about mountains, but they never seen 'em. That's the first thing Ma said when Number One blowed in.
When we saw that oil go over the crown block, and when they told us that black stuff was really oil, Ma busted out cryin' and said she'd see the mountains, after all--then she wouldn't mind if she died. Pa he cried, too, we'd allus been so pore--You see, Ma's kind of marked about mountains--been that way since she was a girl. She cuts out stories and pictures of 'em. And that's how me and Buddy came to be named Allegheny and Ozark. But we never expected to _see_ 'em. The drought burned us out too often.”
Allegheny and Ozark. Quaint names. ”Times must have been hard.” The remark was intended only as a spur.
”_Hard!_” There was a pause; slowly the girl's eyes began to smolder, and as she went on in her deliberate way, memory set a tragic shadow over her face. ”I'll say they was hard! n.o.body but us nesters knows what hard times is. Out west of here they went three years without rain, and all around here people was starvin'. Grown folks was thin and tired, and children was sickly--they was too peaked to play. Why, we took in a hull family--wagon-folks. Their hosses died and they couldn't go on, so we kep' 'em--'til _we_ burned out. I don't know how we managed to get by except that Pa and Buddy are rustlers and I can do more 'n a hired man. We _never_ had enough to eat. Stuff just wouldn't grow. The stock got bonier and bonier and finally died, 'count of no gra.s.s and the tanks dryin' out. And all the time the sun was a-blazin'
and the dust was a-blowin and the clouds would roll up and then drift away and the sun would come out hotter 'n ever. Day after day, month after month, we waited--eighteen, I think it was. People got so they wouldn't pray no more, and the preachers moved away. I guess we was as bad off as them pore folks in Beljum. Why, even the rattlesnakes pulled out of the country! Somehow the papers got hold of it and bime-by some grub was s.h.i.+pped in and give around, but--us Briskows didn't get none.