My Ántonia, Willa Cather [i want to read a book TXT] 📗

tablecloths and pillowcases, and some of the sheets. Old Mrs. Shimerda knit yards and yards of lace for her underclothes. Tony told me just how she meant to have everything in her house. She’d even bought silver spoons and forks, and kept them in her trunk. She was always coaxing brother to go to the post-office. Her young man did write her real often, from the different towns along his run.

“The first thing that troubled her was when he wrote that his run had been changed, and they would likely have to live in Denver. ‘I’m a country girl,’ she said, ‘and I doubt if I’ll be able to manage so well for him in a city. I was counting on keeping chickens, and maybe a cow.’ She soon cheered up, though.

“At last she got the letter telling her when to come. She was shaken by it; she broke the seal and read it in this room. I suspected then that she’d begun to get fainthearted, waiting; though she’d never let me see it.

“Then there was a great time of packing. It was in March, if I remember rightly, and a terrible muddy, raw spell, with the roads bad for hauling her things to town. And here let me say, Ambrosch did the right thing. He went to Black Hawk and bought her a set of plated silver in a purple velvet box, good enough for her station. He gave her three hundred dollars in money; I saw the check. He’d collected her wages all those first years she worked out, and it was but right. I shook him by the hand in this room. ‘You’re behaving like a man, Ambrosch,’ I said, ‘and I’m glad to see it, son.’

“ ’Twas a cold, raw day he drove her and her three trunks into Black Hawk to take the night train for Denver⁠—the boxes had been shipped before. He stopped the wagon here, and she ran in to tell me goodbye. She threw her arms around me and kissed me, and thanked me for all I’d done for her. She was so happy she was crying and laughing at the same time, and her red cheeks was all wet with rain.

“ ‘You’re surely handsome enough for any man,’ I said, looking her over.

“She laughed kind of flighty like, and whispered, ‘Goodbye, dear house!’ and then ran out to the wagon. I expect she meant that for you and your grandmother, as much as for me, so I’m particular to tell you. This house had always been a refuge to her.

“Well, in a few days we had a letter saying she got to Denver safe, and he was there to meet her. They were to be married in a few days. He was trying to get his promotion before he married, she said. I didn’t like that, but I said nothing. The next week Yulka got a postal card, saying she was ‘well and happy.’ After that we heard nothing. A month went by, and old Mrs. Shimerda began to get fretful. Ambrosch was as sulky with me as if I’d picked out the man and arranged the match.

“One night brother William came in and said that on his way back from the fields he had passed a livery team from town, driving fast out the west road. There was a trunk on the front seat with the driver, and another behind. In the back seat there was a woman all bundled up; but for all her veils, he thought ’twas Ántonia Shimerda, or Ántonia Donovan, as her name ought now to be.

“The next morning I got brother to drive me over. I can walk still, but my feet ain’t what they used to be, and I try to save myself. The lines outside the Shimerdas’ house was full of washing, though it was the middle of the week. As we got nearer, I saw a sight that made my heart sink⁠—all those underclothes we’d put so much work on, out there swinging in the wind. Yulka came bringing a dishpanful of wrung clothes, but she darted back into the house like she was loath to see us. When I went in, Ántonia was standing over the tubs, just finishing up a big washing. Mrs. Shimerda was going about her work, talking and scolding to herself. She didn’t so much as raise her eyes. Tony wiped her hand on her apron and held it out to me, looking at me steady but mournful. When I took her in my arms she drew away. ‘Don’t, Mrs. Steavens,’ she says, ‘you’ll make me cry, and I don’t want to.’

“I whispered and asked her to come out of doors with me. I knew she couldn’t talk free before her mother. She went out with me, bareheaded, and we walked up toward the garden.

“ ‘I’m not married, Mrs. Steavens,’ she says to me very quiet and natural-like, ‘and I ought to be.’

“ ‘Oh, my child,’ says I, ‘what’s happened to you? Don’t be afraid to tell me!’

“She sat down on the draw-side, out of sight of the house. ‘He’s run away from me,’ she said. ‘I don’t know if he ever meant to marry me.’

“ ‘You mean he’s thrown up his job and quit the country?’ says I.

“ ‘He didn’t have any job. He’d been fired; blacklisted for knocking down fares. I didn’t know. I thought he hadn’t been treated right. He was sick when I got there. He’d just come out of the hospital. He lived with me till my money gave out, and afterward I found he hadn’t really been hunting work at all. Then he just didn’t come back. One nice fellow at the station told me, when I kept going to look for him, to give it up. He said he was afraid Larry’d gone bad and wouldn’t come back any more. I guess he’s gone to Old Mexico. The conductors get rich down there, collecting half-fares off the natives and robbing the company. He was always talking about fellows who had got