第11章 Jim Lancy's Waterloo(4)

The railroad companies own the elevators,and they have the cinch on us.Our grain is at their mercy.God knows how I'm going to raise that interest.As for the five hundred we were going to pay on the mort-gage this year,Annie,we're not in it."Autumn was well set in by this time,and the brilliant cold sky hung over the prairies as young and fresh as if the world were not old and tired.Annie no longer could look as trim as when she first came to the little house.Her pretty wedding garments were beginning to be worn and there was no money for more.Jim would not play chess now of evenings.He was forever writing articles for the weekly paper in the adjoin-ing town.They talked of running him for the state legislature,and he was anxious for the nomination.

"I think I might be able to stand it if Icould fight 'em!"he declared;"but to sit here idle,knowing that I have been cheated out of my year's work,just as much as if Ihad been knocked down on the road and the money taken from me,is enough to send me to the asylum with a strait-jacket on!"Life grew to take on tragic aspects.Annie used to find herself wondering if anywhere in the world there were people with light hearts.For her there was no longer antici-pation of joy,or present companionship,or any divertissement in the whole world.Jim read books which she did not understand,and with a few of his friends,who dropped in now and then evenings or Sundays,talked about these books in an excited manner.

She would go to her room to rest,and lying there in the darkness on the bed,would hear them speaking together,some-times all at once,in those sternly vindictive tones men use when there is revolt in their souls.

"It is the government which is helping to impoverish us,"she would hear Jim saying."Work is money.That is to say,it is the active form of money.The wealth of a country is estimated by its power of production.And its power of production means work.It means there are so many men with so much capacity.

Now the government owes it to these men to have money enough to pay them for their work;and if there is not enough money in circulation to pay to each man for his honest and necessary work,then I say that government is in league with crime.

It is trying to make defaulters of us.It has a hundred ways of cheating us.When Ibought this farm and put the mortgage on it,a day's work would bring twice the results it will now.That is to say,the total at the end of the year showed my profits to be twice what they would be now,even if the railway did not stand in the way to rob us of more than we earn.

So that it will take just twice as many days'work now to pay off this mortgage as it would have done at the time it was contracted.It's a conspiracy,I tell you!

Those Eastern capitalists make a science of ruining us."He got more eloquent as time went on,and Annie,who had known him first as rather a careless talker,was astonished at the boldness of his language.But conver-sation was a lost art with him.He no longer talked.He harangued.

In the early spring Annie's baby was born,--a little girl with a nervous cry,who never slept long at a time,and who seemed to wail merely from distaste at living.It was Mrs.Dundy who came over to look after the house till Annie got able to do so.

Her eyes had that fever in them,as ever.

She talked but little,but her touch on Annie's head was more eloquent than words.

One day Annie asked for the glass,and Mrs.Dundy gave it to her.She looked in it a long time.The color was gone from her cheeks,and about her mouth there was an ugly tightening.But her eyes flashed and shone with that same --no,no,it could not be that in her face also was coming the look of half-madness!She motioned Mrs.

Dundy to come to her.

"You knew it was coming,"she said,brokenly,pointing to the reflection in the glass."That first day,you knew how it would be."Mrs.Dundy took the glass away with a gentle hand.

"How could I help knowing?"she said simply.She went into the next room,and when she returned Annie noticed that the handkerchief stuck in her belt was wet,as if it had been wept on.

A woman cannot stay long away from her home on a farm at planting time,even if it is a case of life and death.Mrs.Dundy had to go home,and Annie crept about her work with the wailing baby in her arms.

The house was often disorderly now;but it could not be helped.The baby had to be cared for.It fretted so much that Jim slept apart in the mow of the barn,that his sleep might not be disturbed.It was a pleasant,dim place,full of sweet scents,and he liked to be there alone.Though he had always been an unusual worker,he worked now more like a man who was fighting off fate,than a mere toiler for bread.

The corn came up beautifully,and far as the eye could reach around their home it tossed its broad green leaves with an ocean-like swelling of sibilant sound.Jim loved it with a sort of passion.Annie loved it,too.Sometimes,at night,when her fatigue was unbearable,and her irritation wearing out both body and soul,she took her little one in her arms and walked among the corn,letting its rustling soothe the baby to sleep.

The heat of the summer was terrible.

The sun came up in that blue sky like a curse,and hung there till night came to comfort the blistering earth.And one morning a terrible thing happened.Annie was standing out of doors in the shade of those miserable little oaks,ironing,when suddenly a blast of air struck her in the face,which made her look up startled.For a moment she thought,perhaps,there was a fire near in the grass.But there was none.

Another blast came,hotter this time,and fifteen minutes later that wind was sweep-ing straight across the plain,burning and blasting.Annie went in the house to finish her ironing,and was working there,when she heard Jim's footstep on the door-sill.