"Ten years ago Wes, here, could have got land in Dakota pretty easy, but now it's about all a feller's life's worth to try it. I tell you things seem shuttin' down on us fellers."
"Plenty o' land to rent?" suggested someone.
"Yes, in terms that skin a man alive. More than that, farmin' ain't so free a life as it used to be. This cattle-raisin' and butter-makin' makes a nigger of a man. Binds him right down to the grindstone, and he gets nothin' out of it-that's what rubs it in. He simply wallers around in the manure for somebody else. I'd like to know what a man's life is worth who lives as we do? How much higher is it than the lives the niggers used to live?"
These brutally bald words made Howard thrill witb emotion like some great tragic poem. A silence fell on the group.
"That's the God's truth, Grant," said young Cosgrove after a pause.
"A man like me is helpless," Grant was saying. "Just like a fly in a pan of molasses. There ain't any escape for him. The more he tears around, the more liable he is to rip his legs off."
"What can he do?"
The men listened in silence.
"Oh, come, don't talk politics all night!" cried Rose, breaking in.
"Come, let's have a dance. Where's that fiddle?"
"Fiddle!" cried Howard, glad of a chance to laugh. "Well, now!
Bring out that fiddle. Is it William's?"
"Yes, Pap's old fiddle."
"Oh, gosh! he don't want to hear me play," pr~ tested William.
"He's heard s' many fiddlers."
"Fiddlers! I've heard a thousand violinists, but not fiddlers. Come, give us 'Honest John.'"
William took the fiddle in his work-calloused and crooked hands and began tuning it. The group at the kitchen door turned to listen, their faces lighting up a little. Rose tried to get a set on the floor.
"Oh, good land!" said some. "We're all tuckered out. What makes you so anxious?"
"She wants a chance to dance with the New Yorker."
"That's it exactly," Rose admitted.
"Wal, if you'd churned and mopped and cooked for hayin' hands as I have today, you wouldn't be so full o' nonsense."
"Oh, bother! Life's short. Come quick, get Bettie out. Come, Wes, never mind your hobbyhorse."
By incredible exertion she got a set on the floor, and William got the fiddle in tune. Howard looked across at Wesley, and thought the change in him splendidly dramatic. His face had lighted up into a kind of deprecating, boyish smile. Rose could do anything with him.
William played some of the old tunes that had a thou-sand associated memories in Howard's brain, memories of harvest moons, of melon feasts, and of clear, cold winter nights. As he danced, his eyes filled with a tender, luminous light. He came closer to them all than he had been able to do before. Grant had gone out into the kitchen.
After two or three sets had been danced, the company took seats and could not be stirred again. So Laura and Rose disappeared for a few moments, and returning, served strawberries and cream, which she "just happened to have in the house."
And then William played again. His fingers, now grown more supple, brought out clearer, firmer tones. As he played, silence fell on these people. The magic of music sobered every face; the women looked older and more careworn, the men slouched sullenly in their chairs or leaned back against the wall.
It seemed to Howard as if the spirit of tragedy had entered this house. Music had always been William's unconscious expression of his unsatisfied desires. He was never melancholy except when he played. Then his eyes grew somber, his drooping face full of shadows.
He played on slowly, softly, wailing Scotch tunes and mournful Irish songs. He seemed to find in the songs of these people, and especially in a wild, sweet, low-keyed Negro song, some expression for his indefinable inner melancholy.
He played on, forgetful of everybody, his long beard sweeping the violin, his toilworn hands marvelously obedient to his will.
At last he stopped, looked up with a faint, deprecating smile, and said with a sigh:
"Well, folkses, time to go home."
The going was quiet. Not much laughing. Howard stood at the door and said good night to them all, his heart very tender.
"Come and see us," they said.
"I will," he replied cordially. "I'll try and get around to see everybody, and talk over old times, before I go back."
After the wagons had driven out of the yard, Howard turned and put his arm about his mother's neck.
"Tired?"
"A little."
"Well, now, good night. I'm going for a little stroll." His brain was too active to sleep. He kissed his mother good night and went out into the road, his hat in his hand, the cool, moist wind on his hair.
It was very dark, the stars being partly hidden by a thin vapor. On each side the hills rose, every line familiar as the face of an old friend. A whippoorwill called occasionally from the hillside, and the spasmodic jangle of a bell now and then told of some cow's battle with the mosquitoes.
As he walked, he pondered upon the tragedy he had rediscovered in these people's lives. Out here under the inexorable spaces of the sky, a deep distaste of his own life took possession of him. He felt like giving it all up. He thought of the infinite tragedy of these lives which the world loves to call "peaceful and pastoral." HIS mind went out in the aim to help them. What could he do to make life better worth living? Nothing. They must live and die practically as he saw them tonight.
And yet he knew this was a mood, and that in a few hours the love and the habit of life would come back upon him and upon them; that he would go back to the city in a few days; that these people would live on and make the best of it.
"I'll make the best of it," he said at last, and his thought came back to his mother and Grant.
IV
