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The Innocents: A Story for Lovers, a novel by Sinclair Lewis |
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Chapter 13 |
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_ CHAPTER XIII The Applebys didn't start for Japan on Christmas Eve. Also, they didn't go defiantly with pack on back through the streets of New York, like immigrants to youth. It took Mother Appleby two days to recover from gas and two more to recover from lifelong respectability, to the end that she should become a merry beggar, gathering pennies while Father piped upon that antic instrument, the mouth-organ. Father labored with her, and cooked beans for her. She made him agree to get as far from New York as their nine dollars would take them before they should begin to be vagrants. It's always easier to be a bold adventurer in some town other than the one in which you are. The train took them about eighty miles into New Jersey. They debouched rather shyly, and stood on the station platform in a town consisting of a trust, a saloon, a druggist's, and a general store. The station loafers stared at them. Father would no more have dared play the mouth-organ to these gangling youths than he would have dared kiss a traffic policeman at Forty-second and Fifth Avenue. They edged around the corner of the station and gingerly stepped off into an ocean of slush, deaf to the yells of the bus-driver who hopefully represented that he would take them practically anywhere in the world for fifty cents. They were an odd couple. Father had no need of an overcoat, now. He was wearing three shirts, two waistcoats, two pairs of trousers, and three pairs of socks, to say nothing of certain pages of an evening newspaper cunningly distributed through his garments, crackly but warm. He waddled chubbily and somewhat stiffly, but he outfaced the winter wind as he had not done for many weeks. In this outfit he could never have gone the rounds of offices looking for work, but in the open he had the appearance of a hardy woodsman--or at least the father of a woodsman. He wore defiantly the romantic wreck of that plaid cap which he had bought for Cape Cod, which his daughter had sequestered at Saserkopee, and which he had stolen back from her. Also he had a secret joy in the fact that his shirt--that is, his outer and most visible shirt--was a coarse garment of blue flannel, a very virile and knightly tabard with large white buttons, which Mother had never let him wear in public. It was such a noble habiliment as a fireman might have worn, or a longshoreman, or Dan'l Boone. Mother was almost equally bulky, with an unassayed number of garments, but over them all she wore a still respectable Raglan town coat. They both carried bundles, and in Father's right hand was a red pasteboard case which protected the mouth-organ. This, as they modestly trotted through the village, he tried to conceal in the palm of his hand, and he glared at a totally innocent passer-by whom he suspected of wanting to hear the mouth-organ. Mother didn't know of his mental struggles. She was thinking more about her feet. She looked up with mild astonishment when, as they left the town by the highroad southward, Father burst out, "I'll play if I want to, but I can't stand the gawping gumps here." "Why, Father!" she said, trustingly. The noontime sun came out. To conceal from his stomach the fact that it was hungry, Father grew boyishly enthusiastic about going Southward. "Gee!" he burbled, "we'll hit down toward Florida--palms and alligators and--and everything--Land of Flowers! What's this hotel?--the Royal Points de Anna? Play the mouth-organ there. Make a hit. Then we'll strike New Orleans and jump to San Francisco.... Gee! it's a long way between houses along here!" They approached a farm-yard. Father was tremendously urging himself to play the mouth-organ there, to skip and be nimble, and gain a minstrel's meed. Meaning lunch. Frowning with intentness, he stopped before the house. Mother meekly halted beside him. She had not lost quite all of the training in self-dependence she had got from a business life, these last weeks, but she looked to him for leadership in the new existence. Father swung his shapeless pack from his shoulders, set it down on the ground, reluctantly drew his mouth-organ from its case. He became aware that a large, astonished woman was staring from the kitchen window. He stared back. The mouth-organ was left suspended in air. Hastily he stuck it in his pocket and, as though hypnotized, moved toward the kitchen door. He had to give the woman some explanation for encamping in her yard.... Why! She might have thought that he had intended to make a fool of himself by playing the mouth-organ there! The woman opened the door curiously, stared over Father's head at Mother, then back at the little man with his pink, cheery face and whiff of delicate silver hair. "I--uh--I-- Could I cut some wood or something for you?" said Father. "Mrs.--uh--Mrs. Smith and I are tramping across the United States--San Francisco and New Orleans and so on--and--" "Why, you poor things, you must be terribly cold and tired! Think of it! San Francisco! You tell Mrs. Smith to come right in and warm herself by the fire, and I guess I can find some dinner for both of you." Father scuttled out, informed Mother that she had become Mrs. Smith, and before her slightly dazed mind could grasp it all she was in at a kitchen table near the stove, and eating doughnuts, salt pork, beans, apple pie, and vast cups of coffee. Not but that Father himself was also laying in the food with a lustiness that justified his lumberjack's blue-flannel shirt. From time to time he dutifully mentioned his project of cutting wood, but the woman was more interested in him as a symbol. In a dim, quite unanalytic way Father perceived that, to this woman, this drab prisoner of kitchen and woodshed, it was wonderful to meet a man and woman who had actually started for--anywhere. She sighed and with a look of remembering old dreams she declared: "I wish my old man and I could do that. Gawd! I wouldn't care how cold we got. Just get away for a month! Then I'd be willing to come back here and go on cooking up messes. He goes into town almost every day in winter--he's there now--but I stay here and just work." Father understood that it would have desecrated her vision of the heroic had he played the mouth-organ for pay; perceived that she didn't even want him to chop wood. Mother and he were, to this woman, a proof that freedom and love and distant skies did actually exist, and that people, just folks, not rich, could go and find them. When she had warmed Mother's feet and given them her wistful good wishes, the woman let them go, and the Smiths recently Applebys, went comfortably and plumply two more miles on their way to Japan. Father's conscience was troubling him, not because he had taken food from the woman--she had bestowed it with the friendly and unpatronizing graciousness of poor women--but because he had been too cowardly to play the mouth-organ. When Mother had begun to walk wearily and Father had convinced himself that he wouldn't be afraid to play, next chance he had, they approached a crude road-house, merely a roadside saloon, with carriage-sheds, a beer sign, and one lone rusty iron outdoor table to give an air of _al fresco_. "I'm going over there and play," said Father. "I won't have you hanging around saloons," snapped Mother. "Now, Mother, I reckon I wouldn't more than drink a couple of horses' necks or something wild like that." "Yes, and that's just the way temptation gets you," said Mother, "drinking horses' necks and all them brandy drinks. I wish I'd never tasted that nasty cocktail you made me take last year. I wish I'd joined the White-Ribboners like Mrs. Tubbs wanted me to." "Well, we'll organize a Hoboes' Chapter of the W. C. T. U. and have meetings under the water-tank at the depot--" They were interrupted by a hail from the road-house. A large man with a detective's mustache and a brewer's cheeks, a man in shirt-sleeves and a white apron, stood on the porch, calling, "Hey! Mr. and Mrs. Smith! Come right in and get warm." Father and Mother stared at each other. "He means us," gasped Father. Mechanically the Innocents straggled across the road. The saloon-keeper shook hands with both of them, and bellowed: "Lady telephoned along the line--great things for gossip, these rural telephones--said you was coming this way, and we're all watching out for you. You come right into the parlor. No booze served in there, Mrs. Smith. Make yourselves comfortable, and I'll have the Frau cut you up a coupla sandwiches. How'd you leave San Francisco? Pretty warm out there, ain't it?" He had, by this time, shooed them into the plush and crayon-enlargement parlor behind the barroom. His great voice overawed them--and they were cold. Mother secretively looked for evidences of vice, for a roulette-table or a blackjack, but found nothing more sinful than a box of dominoes, so she perched on a cane chair and folded her hands respectably. "How's San Francisco?" repeated the saloon-keeper. "Why--uh--um--uh--how do you mean?" Father observed. "Yes, I heard how you folks 've tramped from there. How is it, nice climate out there?" "Why, it's pretty nice--orange groves 'most everywhere. Nice climate," said Father, avoiding Mother's accusing look and desperately hoping she wouldn't feel moved to be veracious and virtuous. "Hey, Mamie, here's the old couple that 've tramped clear from San Francisco," bawled the saloon-keeper. A maternal German woman, with a white apron of about the proportions of a cup defender's mainsail, billowed into the room, exclaimed over Mother's wet feet, provided dry stockings and felt slippers for her, and insisted on stuffing both of them with fried eggs and potato salad. The saloon-keeper and a select coterie of farmers asked Father questions about San Francisco, Kansas, rainy seasons, the foot-and-mouth disease, irrigation, Western movie studios, and the extent of Mormonism. Father stuck pretty closely to a Sunday-newspaper description of the Panama-Pacific Exposition for answers to everything, and satisfied all hands to such an extent that they humbly asked him how much danger there was of a Japanese invasion of the Philippines, and how long did he think the great European war would last. Abashed, prickly with uncomfortableness, Father discovered that the saloon-keeper was taking up a collection for them. It was done very quietly, and the man slipped a dollar and fifteen cents into his hand in so casual a manner, so much as though he were merely making change, that Father took it and uneasily thrust it into his pocket. He understood the kindly spirit of it because he himself was kindly. He realized that to these stay-at-homes the Applebys' wandering was a thing to revere, a heroism, like prize-fighting or religion or going to war. But he didn't psychologize about it. He believed in "the masses" because he belonged to the masses. As a matter of fact, Father had very little time to devote to meditation when they hit the road again. He was busy defending himself while Mother accused him of having lied scandalously. He protested that he had never said that he had been to San Francisco; they had made that mistake themselves. "Now don't you go trying to throw dust in my eyes. I just won't have this lying and prevaricating and goings-on. I'm just going to-- What's the matter, Seth? You're limping. Are your feet cold?" And that was the end of Mother's moral injunctions, for Father, with a most unworthy cunning, featured the coldness of his feet till she had exhausted her vocabulary of chiropodal sympathy, after which he kept her interested in the state of his ears, his hands, and the tip of his nose. She patted him consolingly, and they toiled on together, forgetting in the closeness of their comradeship the strangeness of being on an unknown road, homeless, as a chilly sunset spread bands of cold lemon and gray across the enormous sky, and all decent folk thought of supper. Then everything went wrong with the wandering Innocents. * * * * * About supper-time Father made another attempt to get himself to play the mouth-organ, at a mean farm-house which came in sight after a lonely stretch. Mother was sinking with weariness. He hitched the mouth-organ out of its case, but again he shrank, and he feebly said, to a tumble-haired farmer in overalls, "Can I split some wood for you? Mrs. Smith and I are tramping--" The farmer ungenerously took him at his word. For an hour he kept Father hacking at a pile of wood, while Mother crouched near, trying to keep warm, with his coat over her feet. Father's back turned into one broad ache, and his arms stung, but he stuck to it till the farmer growled: "I guess that'll do. Now don't hang around here." He handed Father a bundle. Father thought of throwing it at him, but simultaneously he thought of keeping it and consuming its contents. He gasped with the insult. He became angrier and angrier as he realized that the insult applied to Mother also. But before he could think of a smart, crushing, New-Yorkish reply the farmer grumped away into the house. The Applebys dragged themselves back to the highroad. Father was blaming himself for having brought her to this.... "But I did try to get a job first," he insisted, and remembered how he had once begged the owner of a filthy shoe-store on Third Avenue for a place as porter, shoeblack, anything. Their road led them by a clump of woods. "We'll have a fire here and camp!" cried Father. He had never made a fire in the open, and he understood it to be a most difficult process. But he was a young lover; his sweetheart was cold; he defied man and nature. Disdaining any possible passer-by, he plunged into the woodland. With bare hands he scooped the light fall of snow from between two rocks, and in the darkness fumbled for twigs and leaves. Gruntingly he dragged larger boughs, piled the wood with infinite care, lighted it tremblingly. They sat on the rocks by the fire and opened the farmer's bundle. There were cold, gristly roast beef, bread and cheese, and a large, angry-looking sausage. "Um!" meditated Father; then, "I'll heat up the roast beef." Which he grandly did, on little sticks, and they ate it contemplatively, while their souls and toes relaxed in the warmth, and the black tree-trunks shone cozily in the glow. "No cockroaches and no smell of fried fish here, like there is on Avenue B," said Father. "And we don't have to go home from our picnic. I wonder why folks let themselves get all old and house-bound, when they could be like us?" "Yes," said Mother, drowsily. He hadn't nerved himself to play the mouth-organ, not all day, but now, with the luxury of fire and solitude, he played it, and, what's more, he tried to whistle a natty little ballad which touchingly presented a castaway as "long-long-longing for his Michigan, his wish-again ho-o-ome." Yet Father wasn't altogether satisfied with his fire. The dry twigs he kept feeding to it flared up and were gone. The Innocents huddled together, closer and closer to the coals. Father gave little pats to her shoulder while she shivered and began to look anxious. "Cold, old honey?" "Yes, but it don't matter," she declared. "Come on, I guess we'd better go look for a place to sleep. I'm afraid--don't know as I could keep this fire up all night, after all." "Oh, I can't walk any. Oh, I guess it will be all right when I get going again." She tried to smile at him, and with the slowness of pain she reached for her bundle. He snatched it from her. "I can carry all our stuff, anyway," he said. Leaning on him, moving step by step, every step an agony of soreness and cold, lifting her feet each time by a separate effort of her numbed will, she plodded beside him, while he tried to aid her with a hand under her elbow. "There! There's where we'll go!" he whispered, as the shapes of farm-buildings lifted against the sky. "We won't ask permission. We mightn't get it! Like that last farmer. And I won't let you go one step farther. We'll butt right into the barn and sleep in the hay." "But--do you--think we'd better?" "We will!" The mouse-like Father was a very lion, emboldened by his care for her. He would have faced ten farmers terrible with shot-guns. Without one timorous glance he led her to the small side-door of the barn, eased down the latch, lifted her over the sill, closed the door. In the barn was a great blackness, but also a great content. It seemed warm, and was intimate with the scent of cows and hay, alive with the quiet breathing of animals. Father lit a match and located the stairs to the haymow. Mother was staggering. With his arm about her waist, very tender and reverent, he guided her to the stairs and up them, step by agonized step, to the fragrant peace of the haymow. She sank down and he covered her so deep with hay that only her face was left uncovered. "Warm, Mother?" She did not answer. She was already asleep. Through a night haunted by vague monsters of darkness--and by sneezes whenever spears of hay invaded his indignant city nose--Father turned and thrashed. But he was warm, and he did sleep for hours at a time. At what must have been dawn he heard the farmer at the stalls in the stable below. He felt refreshed, cozily drowsy, and he did a shameless thing, a trick of vagrants and road-wallopers: he put his thumb to his nose, aimed his hand toward the supposititious location of the farmer below, and twirled his outspread fingers in a flickering manner. It is believed that he intended to convey spirited defiance, or possibly insult, by this amazing gesture. He grinned contentedly and went to sleep again.... Fortunately Mother was asleep and did not see him acting--as she often but vainly defined it--"like a young smart Aleck." Father awakened from an agitating dream of setting the barn afire, and beheld Mother sitting up amid the hay--an amazing, a quite incredible situation for Mrs. Seth Appleby. She mildly dabbled at her gray hair, which was still neat, and looked across in bewilderment. Like a jack-in-the-box, Father came up out of the hay to greet her. "How do you like your room in the Wal-dorf-As-torya?" he said. "Sleep well, old honey?" "Why--why, I must have!" she marveled. "I don't hardly remember coming here, though." "Ready to tramp on?" She swore that she was. And indeed her cheeks were ruddy with outdoors, the corners of her eyes relaxed. But she was so stiff that they had hobbled a mile, and Father had shucked several tons of corn in return for breakfast, before she ceased feeling as though her legs were made of extraordinarily brittle glass. _ |
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