| |
| SHE stood against the kitchen sink, and looked | |
| Over the sink out through a dusty window | |
| At weeds the water from the sink made tall. | |
| She wore her cape; her hat was in her hand. | |
| Behind her was confusion in the room, | 5 |
| Of chairs turned upside down to sit like people | |
| In other chairs, and something, come to look, | |
| For every room a house has—parlor, bed-room, | |
| And dining-room—thrown pell-mell in the kitchen. | |
| And now and then a smudged, infernal face | 10 |
| Looked in a door behind her and addressed | |
| Her back. She always answered without turning. | |
| |
| “Where will I put this walnut bureau, lady?” | |
| “Put it on top of something that’s on top | |
| Of something else,” she laughed. “Oh, put it where | 15 |
| You can to-night, and go. It’s almost dark; | |
| You must be getting started back to town.” | |
| Another blackened face thrust in and looked | |
| And smiled, and when she did not turn, spoke gently, | |
| “What are you seeing out the window, lady?” | 20 |
| |
| “Never was I beladied so before. | |
| Would evidence of having been called lady | |
| More than so many times make me a lady | |
| In common law, I wonder.” | |
| |
| “But I ask, | 25 |
| What are you seeing out the window, lady?” | |
| |
| “What I’ll be seeing more of in the years | |
| To come as here I stand and go the round | |
| Of many plates with towels many times.” | |
| |
| “And what is that? You only put me off.” | 30 |
| |
| “Rank weeds that love the water from the dish-pan | |
| More than some women like the dish-pan, Joe; | |
| A little stretch of mowing-field for you; | |
| Not much of that until I come to woods | |
| That end all. And it’s scarce enough to call | 35 |
| A view.” | |
| |
| “And yet you think you like it, dear?” | |
| |
| “That’s what you’re so concerned to know! You hope | |
| I like it. Bang goes something big away | |
| Off there upstairs. The very tread of men | 40 |
| As great as those is shattering to the frame | |
| Of such a little house. Once left alone, | |
| You and I, dear, will go with softer steps | |
| Up and down stairs and through the rooms, and none | |
| But sudden winds that snatch them from our hands | 45 |
| Will ever slam the doors.” | |
| |
| “I think you see | |
| More than you like to own to out that window.” | |
| |
| “No; for besides the things I tell you of, | |
| I only see the years. They come and go | 50 |
| In alternation with the weeds, the field, | |
| The wood.” | |
| |
| “What kind of years?” | |
| “Why, latter years— | |
| Different from early years.” | 55 |
| “I see them, too. | |
| You didn’t count them?” | |
| “No, the further off | |
| So ran together that I didn’t try to. | |
| It can scarce be that they would be in number | 60 |
| We’d care to know, for we are not young now. | |
| And bang goes something else away off there. | |
| It sounds as if it were the men went down, | |
| And every crash meant one less to return | |
| To lighted city streets we, too, have known, | 65 |
| But now are giving up for country darkness.” | |
| |
| “Come from that window where you see too much for me, | |
| And take a livelier view of things from here. | |
| They’re going. Watch this husky swarming up | |
| Over the wheel into the sky-high seat, | 70 |
| Lighting his pipe now, squinting down his nose | |
| At the flame burning downward as he sucks it.” | |
| |
| “See how it makes his nose-side bright, a proof | |
| How dark it’s getting. Can you tell what time | |
| It is by that? Or by the moon? The new moon! | 75 |
| What shoulder did I see her over? Neither. | |
| A wire she is of silver, as new as we | |
| To everything. Her light won’t last us long. | |
| It’s something, though, to know we’re going to have her | |
| Night after night and stronger every night | 80 |
| To see us through our first two weeks. But, Joe, | |
| The stove! Before they go! Knock on the window; | |
| Ask them to help you get it on its feet. | |
| We stand here dreaming. Hurry! Call them back!” | |
| |
| “They’re not gone yet.” | 85 |
| |
| “We’ve got to have the stove, | |
| Whatever else we want for. And a light. | |
| Have we a piece of candle if the lamp | |
| And oil are buried out of reach?” | |
| Again | 90 |
| The house was full of tramping, and the dark, | |
| Door-filling men burst in and seized the stove. | |
| A cannon-mouth-like hole was in the wall, | |
| To which they set it true by eye; and then | |
| Came up the jointed stovepipe in their hands, | 95 |
| So much too light and airy for their strength | |
| It almost seemed to come ballooning up, | |
| Slipping from clumsy clutches toward the ceiling. | |
| “A fit!” said one, and banged a stovepipe shoulder. | |
| “It’s good luck when you move in to begin | 100 |
| With good luck with your stovepipe. Never mind, | |
| It’s not so bad in the country, settled down, | |
| When people ’re getting on in life, You’ll like it.” | |
| Joe said: “You big boys ought to find a farm, | |
| And make good farmers, and leave other fellows | 105 |
| The city work to do. There’s not enough | |
| For everybody as it is in there.” | |
| “God!” one said wildly, and, when no one spoke: | |
| “Say that to Jimmy here. He needs a farm.” | |
| But Jimmy only made his jaw recede | 110 |
| Fool-like, and rolled his eyes as if to say | |
| He saw himself a farmer. Then there was a French boy | |
| Who said with seriousness that made them laugh, | |
| “Ma friend, you ain’t know what it is you’re ask.” | |
| He doffed his cap and held it with both hands | 115 |
| Across his chest to make as ’twere a bow: | |
| “We’re giving you our chances on de farm.” | |
| And then they all turned to with deafening boots | |
| And put each other bodily out of the house. | |
| “Goodby to them! We puzzle them. They think— | 120 |
| I don’t know what they think we see in what | |
| They leave us to: that pasture slope that seems | |
| The back some farm presents us; and your woods | |
| To northward from your window at the sink, | |
| Waiting to steal a step on us whenever | 125 |
| We drop our eyes or turn to other things, | |
| As in the game ‘Ten-step’ the children play.” | |
| |
| “Good boys they seemed, and let them love the city. | |
| All they could say was ‘God!’ when you proposed | |
| Their coming out and making useful farmers.” | 130 |
| |
| “Did they make something lonesome go through you? | |
| It would take more than them to sicken you— | |
| Us of our bargain. But they left us so | |
| As to our fate, like fools past reasoning with. | |
| They almost shook me.” | 135 |
| |
| “It’s all so much | |
| What we have always wanted, I confess | |
| It’s seeming bad for a moment makes it seem | |
| Even worse still, and so on down, down, down. | |
| It’s nothing; it’s their leaving us at dusk. | 140 |
| I never bore it well when people went. | |
| The first night after guests have gone, the house | |
| Seems haunted or exposed. I always take | |
| A personal interest in the locking up | |
| At bedtime; but the strangeness soon wears off.” | 145 |
| He fetched a dingy lantern from behind | |
| A door. “There’s that we didn’t lose! And these!”— | |
| Some matches he unpocketed. “For food— | |
| The meals we’ve had no one can take from us. | |
| I wish that everything on earth were just | 150 |
| As certain as the meals we’ve had. I wish | |
| The meals we haven’t had were, anyway. | |
| What have you you know where to lay your hands on?” | |
| |
| “The bread we bought in passing at the store. | |
| There’s butter somewhere, too.” | 155 |
| |
| “Let’s rend the bread. | |
| I’ll light the fire for company for you; | |
| You’ll not have any other company | |
| Till Ed begins to get out on a Sunday | |
| To look us over and give us his idea | 160 |
| Of what wants pruning, shingling, breaking up. | |
| He’ll know what he would do if he were we, | |
| And all at once. He’ll plan for us and plan | |
| To help us, but he’ll take it out in planning. | |
| Well, you can set the table with the loaf. | 165 |
| Let’s see you find your loaf. I’ll light the fire. | |
| I like chairs occupying other chairs | |
| Not offering a lady—” | |
| |
| “There again, Joe! | |
| You’re tired.” | 170 |
| |
| “I’m drunk-nonsensical tired out; | |
| Don’t mind a word I say. It’s a day’s work | |
| To empty one house of all household goods | |
| And fill another with ’em fifteen miles away, | |
| Although you do no more than dump them down.” | 175 |
| |
| “Dumped down in paradise we are and happy.” | |
| |
| “It’s all so much what I have always wanted, | |
| I can’t believe it’s what you wanted, too.” | |
| |
| “Shouldn’t you like to know?” | |
| |
| “I’d like to know | 180 |
| If it is what you wanted, then how much | |
| You wanted it for me.” | |
| |
| “A troubled conscience! | |
| You don’t want me to tell if I don’t know.” | |
| |
| “I don’t want to find out what can’t be known. | 185 |
| |
| But who first said the word to come?” | |
| |
| “My dear, | |
| It’s who first thought the thought. You’re searching, Joe, | |
| For things that don’t exist; I mean beginnings. | |
| Ends and beginnings—there are no such things. | 190 |
| There are only middles.” | |
| |
| “What is this?” | |
| “This life? | |
| Our sitting here by lantern-light together | |
| Amid the wreckage of a former home? | 195 |
| You won’t deny the lantern isn’t new. | |
| The stove is not, and you are not to me, | |
| Nor I to you.” | |
| |
| “Perhaps you never were?” | |
| |
| “It would take me forever to recite | 200 |
| All that’s not new in where we find ourselves. | |
| New is a word for fools in towns who think | |
| Style upon style in dress and thought at last | |
| Must get somewhere. I’ve heard you say as much. | |
| No, this is no beginning.” | 205 |
| |
| “Then an end?” | |
| |
| “End is a gloomy word.” | |
| “Is it too late | |
| To drag you out for just a good-night call | |
| On the old peach trees on the knoll to grope | 210 |
| By starlight in the grass for a last peach | |
| The neighbors may not have taken as their right | |
| When the house wasn’t lived in? I’ve been looking: | |
| I doubt if they have left us many grapes. | |
| Before we set ourselves to right the house, | 215 |
| The first thing in the morning, out we go | |
| To go the round of apple, cherry, peach, | |
| Pine, alder, pasture, mowing, well, and brook. | |
| All of a farm it is.” | |
| |
| “I know this much: | 220 |
| I’m going to put you in your bed, if first | |
| I have to make you build it. Come, the light.” | |
| |
| When there was no more lantern in the kitchen, | |
| The fire got out through crannies in the stove | |
| And danced in yellow wrigglers on the ceiling, | 225 |
| As much at home as if they’d always danced there. | |
| |
