The crossways

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Chapter I

LIZZIE Knntz was in a very unaccustomed frame of mind. It required but a slight upheaval in^ the dead level of monotony in which her girlhood was passed, to produce a state of mental confusion and even chaos; and the news which had come to the farm that morning was not slight, but, to the bucolic minds of the Euntzes, stupendous. Its ultimate effect upon Lizzie, after six hours of endeavoring to digest it, was an attitude of questioning vaguely the most fundamental facts of her life.

''It wonders me,'' she remarked to her elder sister Sallie as she stood at the kitchen sink drying the supper dishes which Sallie was washing, **what fur kind of a girl it would be, anyhow, that our Matthew would think good enough fur him — so high-educated like he is."

Sallie, stout and phlegmatic, worked on stolidly without replying. It would take more than six hours for the great news to penetrate her to the point of making her discuss it.

The room in which they worked was the scrupum i -J J J J J J

J J J J J -J

J ■ J J J J J lously clean kitchen of a substantial Pennsylvania farmhouse. The house itself, as well as the finelybuilt bams and out-houses, gave evidence of the characteristic prosperity, industry and frugality of the Pennsylvania German farmer.

**You mind when Matthew was home last Christmas," continued Lizzie, *'he didn't think even the school-teacher (and her a stylish towner too and wonderful tony) good-enough educated fur him to take interest!''

Sallie scraped her pans industriously, but made no comment.

'*I Ve been considerin', Sallie, mebby Matthew's wife will think that us we 're too common."

"To be sure we ain't towners," Sallie conceded.

"And mebby she won't act congenial."

No reply from Sallie save a dull surprise in her eyes at her sister's unusual talkativeness. Unnecessary wo^ds were counted a waste of time in this frugal household.

"If Matthew's wife 's so high-educated like what a body 'd think he 'd pick out, mebby she won't be so much fur workin' and savin' like what Matthew 's used to in his women-folks. I took notice a 'ready — didn't you? — that such educated people, they ain't so much fur work. But such a wife wouldn't never suit our Matthew!"

Sallie looked at Lazzie wonderingly. "It '11 go to your head, Lizzie, thinkin' so deep. Go get the peas out and start shellin' 'em oncet fur to-morrow dinner. Till I get these here dishes away, 1 11 come help/'

Lizzie sighed in vague discouragement at her sister 's unresponsiveness and went to do her bidding.

Sitting on the kitchen door-step, the sunset glow in her wavy yellow hair and on her fair young face, the tragic signs of this maiden's repressed and buried life were manifest in the pensive droop of her mouth, the wistfulness of her eyes, the weariness of spirit betrayed in the relaxed curves of her body as she drooped over her task.

Sallie, who in a moment joined her in her work, seemed the very antithesis of her sister in every particular. She was only a year and a half older than Lizzie, but there was no least suggestion in her buxom frame and smooth, placid countenance, of weariness, restlessness, or unsatisfied desires.

** Preacher's Missus says not to pick peas and shell 'em the night before, but just when a body 's ready to cook 'em," remarked Lizzie. "They 're not so wonderful tough then, she says."

**We always picked and shelled 'em the night before," replied Sallie in a tone of finality.

**I suspicioned a 'ready, Sallie, mebby us we 're too set. New ways might be as good as oum— or mebbe even better."

Sallie ignored, by her silence, sentiments so revolutionary. For several minutes they worked without speaking, Lizzie every now and then casting furtive glances at her sister^ evidently trying to gather courage for even more radical utterances.

*'We done a turrible hard day's work to-day,'* she began, *'with such a big washin' and ironin', and the cleanin' up fur Matthew and his wife!'* Well, ain't!" SaUie nodded.

The boys had such a many fine shirts in the wash! Three a-piece yet! It 's too much!"

**I think! But to be sure it takes a many shirts fur both of 'em to go to a Sunday school sallybration in one week, besides goin' to sit up with their reg'lar comp'ny."

''Say, Sallie!"

''What?"

"I got a notion to ast the boys will they leave me and you borrow the loan of their horse and buggy off of 'em fur to-morrow afternoon to go to town to do some buyin' because Matthew's fetchin' his wife!"

Sallie raised her eyes and stared. **What fur buyin'?"

"Me and you needs new calico frocks something shameful. I have shame fur Matthew's wife to see us lookin' so hard."

Sallie 's eyes fell again to her work. "Where would we get the money fur new frocks?" she inquired indifferently.

"But look a-here, Sallie, don't it never seem funny to you to think that if we was hired out to work fur strangers^ we wouldn't have to work half as hard as we do at home fur pop and the boys, and we 'd have a-plenty to dress on? Them thoughts come to me still and make me feel awful funny. Look how me and you and mom work fur our boys — ^gettin' up at four o'clock to wash and iron and bake fur 'em — ^yet every time we ast 'em to leave us borrow the loan of their buggy they say us no!"

**It 's theim. They eamt the money to pay fur it."

**Me and you and mom helped to earn all the money that ever come to this farm, Sallie. But wha^t do we ever get fur it? What did mom ever get fur workin' so hard all her life and havin' so many children with it all?"

**Och, Lizzie, you talk dumn! (stupid) Ain't we females? To be sure we got to take what the men want to give us."

** Sometimes, Sallie, I can't help fur the thought comin' to me — a woman 's better oflf if she hasn't any men-folks, but just goes oflf and works fur herself. She has more fur it."

Lizzie had never heard of the New Woman and had no idea that she was voicing the sentiments of the modem claimant for '* rights."

"It 's the women's dooty to take care of the men," said Sallie, who would no more have questioned these fundamental principles of her bringing-up than she would have questioned a statement of the Bible.

**Sallie, look a-here; you mind that time our Mamie paid me five cents fur stayin' with her baby all afternoon till she went to town over, and I took the five cents and bought beans and planted 'em, thinkin' to make a little? Well, pop he picked my beans last night without sayin' nothin' to me and sold 'em on market this morning. I 11 ast him fur my bean money. And I '11 ast the boys if they won't leave me and you have the buggy to-morrow. Then mebby we kin get ourselfs new frocks oncet. And mebby," she added doubtfully, *'pop '11 leave mom have the price of a new calico frock."

'*Too many ' mebby 's.' You kin go ast if you want. But you won't get nothin'."

**I 'm a-goin' to ast anyhow, as soon as the peas is through and we 're fixed all."

**Mom 11 say to you we ain't got time fur town — ^with Matthew and his woman comin' so soon and unexpected. You mind how Matthew's comin' makes so much work always."

**And comin' with his wife yet!"

*'But she '11 be a help," Sallie corrected her. ''Matthew has her to run and fetch and carry fur him now. He won't bother us so much."

Lizzie looked doubtful. ** Mebby it '11 be that we '11 have him and her to fetch and carry fur. Matthew writes in his letter that he got her from 'down South' and I heard a 'ready that down there it gives such funny women and girls; they ain't raised to the work. Preacher's Missus she tole me; she knowed one of 'em oncet where didn't know no better than to cook a chicken with the feet at! — and the head at, yet!"

**I ain't waitin' on no woma/nl" Sallie quickly retorted, showing, for the first time during their talk, a faint spark of animation. **But you ain't got no need to worry. Our Matthew ain't marryin' no high-flyer. Leave him alone fur choosin' a wife where will take care of him good!"

**Yes, well, but," said Lizzie still doubtful, "such hard work don't seem to go with nice-educated folks — ^the kind our Matthew 's throwed in with still, and the kind he 'd look 'round fur when it come to marryin'. Just to think," she sighed, **of bein' fit to be our Matthew 's wife ! To feel yourself good enough to make that free with such a high-minded person! It draws my breath!"

** Ain't!" Sallie agreed. *'It would seem like as if she couldn't feel easy with him."

**I can't seem to think it 's true that our Matthew 's a real doctor now ! And to think he 's comin ' from New York over and takin' Doc Weaver's practice and buyin' his old home to live in! It don't seem like as if it could be. I guess he '11 fix the house grand, ain't?"

**Yes, ain't! He's so much fur havin' things tony that way."

The Cross way 8 ti

It will make such a heap of work fur his wife when they get to housekeepin', the way he '11 have to have his napkin every meal and such a many towels to wash with; a clean one every day!" Lizzie's tone of solicitude for Matthew's wife was not unmixed with sisterly pride in her brother's high-minded fastidiousness.

"Yes, to think!" said Sallie, shaking her head.

*'And a clean shirt he puts on every morning f

'*Yes, now mind!"

"And so sneaky about how he eats his wittles! He must have a clean fork, still, fur his pie, you mind?"

"Ain't!" nodded Sallie.

"It looks so funny — ain't? — ^to see a man comin' down drest fine in the morning a 'ready."

"It would look funnier to see a woman."

"Well, to be sure. Say, Sallie, Preacher he says our Matthew 's worthy to travel with the best." Well, I guess anyhow!"

I wisht I 'd of been a boy, that pop would have left me go to school till I got graduated."

"Nothin' was too good fur our Matthew — in pop's eyes. Even college yet!" said Sallie, warming up.

"And another college after that, to learn doctorin'!" breathed Lizzie.

"Don't it beat all!"

"Well, I guess! Nor pop wouldn't have thought nothing too much fur Sammy and Ezra neither, if they 'd wanted to get educated like what Matthew did."

''But to be sure they didn't want. And a good thing, too, that Sammy and Ezra they took to fannin' — fur if all the boys would have hated the farmin' like what Matthew hated it, how would pop have got along oncetr*

*'Pop 's so wonderful proud fur Matthew! I have shame, still, to hear him braggin' Matthew to the neighbors. It sounds so ! ' '

''But Matthew 's worthy fur it/'

"To be sure I know he 's worthy fur it, but it would be a little to pop's credit, too, if he 'd left me and you go to school a little longer. But no, we must come oflf school when we 're only ten years old a 'ready, to work fur him and the boys."

The faint bitterness in Lizzie's tone filled Sallie with a mild wonder. **I can't see what use schoolin' would do W5. Now a man he kin earn with his education."

"I '11 be wonderful bashful to see Matthew's wife, Sallie, as dumn as what I am yet!"

Sallie made no reply.

"Don't it make nothin' to you, Sallie, to have Matthew's missus comin' to live with us till their house is fixed a'ready?"

"If Matthew conceited she was too tony for us, I guess he wouldn't fetch her, Lizzie."

"Well, I guess too," Lizzie sighed.

The peas were finished now and Sallie rose and took away the pans. **Here 's pop and Ezra and Sammy comin' if you 're goin' to ast 'em that," she said. **Bnt it '11 end with your asking. '*

She went indoors and Lizzie, too, rose, a faint flush in her delicate face as, with timid resolution, she walked out to the pump where her two stalwart brothers, having finished their evening farm-chores, were stopping, before going to bed, to draw a drink of water.

Chapter II

**T" HAVE thirsty too," Lizzie said as she joined JL her brothers by the pump-bed, took the tin-cup from its hook and, as a matter of course, pumped a drink of water for each of them before helping herself. It never would have occurred to them to pump for their sister or to offer her the cup first.

"We done such a turrible big washin' and ironin' to-day," she began diplomatically, as she handed the cup to Sam, the elder; **I 'm wonderful tired this evening."

Sam did not reply as he received the cup and drank greedily of the cold well water. He was a powerfully-built youth, twenty-six years old, with a keen strong face which betrayed both selfishness and irritability. He was, therefore, held in great respect, even awe, by every member of the family.

**You 11 be enough tireder every evening, Lizzie, oncet you 're married to Dan Schwenkfelters," said Ezra teasingly. **At home here, there 's mom and Sallie to help along. But Dan's place is bigger 'n oum yet and only you to do all. And you know Dan ain't one to hire fur his wife neither, fur all he 's so well-fixed. It 's put out in Fokestown he wants to get married because it '11 come cheaper f inhim than hirin' a housekeeper where has to have wages and then won't do as much as a man's woman would. ' '

The diversity of character as shown in the two brothers was as marked as that between Sallie and Lizzie; Ezra was as dull as Sam was keen, and as amiable as Sam was ill-tempered. In one respect only was he a match for Sam — in his greed to claim his own and hold fast to it. Had it not been for this, his one forceful quality, he would have been, because of his stupidity and easy good-temper, an object of contempt to his father and brothers, if not, indeed, to his mother and sisters, whose idea of manhood was inseparable from that of brute tyranny in a mild form.

**I ain't promised yet to Dan Schwenkf elters, " said Lizzie a bit testily.

**You won't never do no better," Sam quickly spoke, as having drunk, he handed the tin-cup to Ezra. "Who else 'round here is so good-fixed?" He 's too old; he kreistles [disgusts] me." You better not dishearten him; pop would have wonderful cross at you!" said Sam sharply. *'He 's only too glad you 're got a chance at the best match 'round here."

''What use is it to a body to be so good-fixed if he 's so wonderful tight like what Dan is — so near with his money he 's the talk of the township!" protested Lizzie.

''That 's why he's so good-fixed/' answered Sam; ''because he was always so near. You women-folks thinks all that money 's good fur is to get it quick spent — ^at the cloes!"*

"Do me and mom and Sallie ever spend at the does?" asked Lizzie with unwonted spirit. "Look how much you and Ezra spends, toward us!"

Ezra gave a guffaw of amusement at the absurdity of the comparison, but Sam frowned.

"Them that earns the money has the right to spend it," he said roughly.

"I think anyhow!" Ezra nodded.

Lizzie checked the retort which rose to her lips. She had a favor to ask and could not afford to irritate her brothers.

"Say, Sammy," shef said as Ezra returned the cup to her, "will you and Ezra leave me and Sallie borrow the loan of your buggy to-morrow afternoon to go to town over, to do some buy in' against Matthew's bringin' home his wife?"

"What fur buyin'?"

"Calico frocks. We ain't none of us spent a cent at the does all summer, except Sallie she got such a new pink ribbon at her Sunday hat. Look how hard we worked all summer!" she pleaded. "We

* At the does — on clothes.

might have that much fur it — that we needn't feel shame fur ourselfs before Matthew's wife/'

**That 's so, too," said Ezra, looking questioningly at Sam.

''Is pop givin' you the money to spend at the does?" demanded Sam.

*'I'm askin' him in a minute. He has my bean money, anyhow."

''Them beans brang only twelve cents. You can't do much buy in' with that."

"Mebby pop '11 add a little," she said wistfully. "Or," she added courageously, "mebby you and Ezra would leave me and Sallie have a little."

"It ain't fur us to buy your frocks!" returned Sam curtly. "You talk dumn!"

"Well, if pop leaves us go, durst we have the buggy?"

"He won't leave you. He knows if you go gooddressed when Dan Schwenkfelters' keepin' comp'ny with you, Dan he '11 get discouraged and fall back. He 's as much took with your plain dressin' as with your good looks, Lizzie, and it wears the buggy so, ridin' to town," Sam objected.

"It does wear it," Ezra admitted regretfully.

"We 'd go slow and careful, Sam."

"Anyhow," said Sam turning away, "it looks fur rain. It '11 give a storm to-morrow, mebby, and then the roads will be too muddy.

i6

"But if it don't give no storm T' Lizzie persisted, stepping after him.

''Look a-here, Lizzie, me and Ezra didn't pay out our money fur that there buggy to have it wore out by you and Sallie/'

Lizzie stopped in the path, her bosom swelling, her face flushed, while Sam walked off to the house and Ezra, too, slunk away quickly by another path.

She did not move until they were both out of sight. Her blue eyes wore the strained look of unshed tears. She did not herself realize how much had hung, for her, on her brothers' consent to her request; something far more fundamental than a wish to be well-dressed before her new sister-in-law. The startling news of Matthew's marriage and his impending visit to the farm with his wife, had so taken her out of her orbit that some latent emotions and ideas which had long been fermenting in the subconscious region of her soul were now suddenly, violently, stirred to the surface — so suddenly and violently, however, as to leave her still in a state of bewilderment.

* ' It ain 't no use astin ' pop, then — ^if the boys won 't give us the dare to use their buggy," she told herself with a long, deep breath. **But anyhow," she thought, turning listlessly to meet her father as he came up the garden path, **I '11 get my bean money off him. That he kin give me."

Kuntz, like all his sons, was stalwart; and like his two elder boys, Matthew and Sam, his face was nigged and strong. But his mouth and eyes bore lines suggesting a pettiness, even a meanness, of character which time had not yet stamped so deeply upon the countenances of the young men.

**Look-a-here, Lizzie,'' he greeted his daughter gruffly, though not unaflfectionately, *' these here rosesfalks — what fur did you plant 'em?" He indicated some young rose-bushes growing by the fence. ** Plant somepin useful, I don't give the ground to no flowers!"

'*I'd love fur to grow some rose-stalks, oncet, pop. ' '

**Do they bring any money? And do we get ground fur nothin'?" he argued.

''These are so close by the fence — ^they don't take no room."

**They '11 grow to take room and they '11 shade the young wegetables close to 'em. No," he affirmed, beginning to pull them out by the roots, ''I don't have n

Oh, pop, don't!''

You 'd waste your time on 'em, too, if I let 'em."

I begged 'em off of Preacher's Missus, pop, and

I had so glad fur 'em when she give 'em to me!"

**You 'd better have glad to plant somepin useful."

Lizzie's breast heaved as she saw him ruthlessly

tear them up and toss them over the fence ; but there was an unwonted flash in her soft eyes that her father did not see.

She turned to walk back to the house and he walked at her side.

*'Will you leave me have my bean money?'' she asked in an unsteady voice.

*'What do you want it fur?

"To keep."

"I kin keep it fur you.

"I 'd like to keep it myself, seein' I eamt it off our Mamie fur stayin' one afternoon with her baby."

*'It don't suit to pay it to you now. Till it suits me oncet, I '11 give it to you."

Lizzie said no more. She had been used all her life to such treatment at the hands of the men of the family. Yet to-night she was stung by a new and strange sense of the injustice of it all.

When she reached the bedroom which she and Sallie shared, the latter, already in bed, did not waste words to inquire the result of Lizzie's quest. The girl's lagging step and pale, bitter countenance told enough.

** Sallie," said Lizzie solemnly, when she had blown out the light and lay at her sister's side, '*it seems like as if when God cursed 'em in the Garden of Eden, all the curse fell on Eve and none on Adam. It is a curse to be a woman in this here world ! But I can't see where the men 's cursed any."

** Lizzie Kuntz!" Sallie said, scandalized. ''It 's a wonder if somethin' turrible don't happen you — talkin' that blasp/iemous yet!''

**If Matthew's wife is high-educated, ther 's a many questions I 'd like to ast off of her," said Lizzie.

*'What does it make to talk? It eTids with talkin'. Like them W. C. T. U. meetin's at Fokestown. They meet frequent, if not oftener, and pass such resolutions. But it don't go no furder."

Lizzie sighed, turned over, and wearily closed her eyes.

Chapter III

W'HEN the sleeping Endymion was kissed by . Diana, he went mad — moon-struck — and became a poet. I don't have any trouble believing that fairy tale!" Matthew Kuntz nodded to his bride seated opposite him in a Pullman car, on their way from Philadelphia to Lebanon. **My experience exactly. I was asleep to a lot of things when I let myself, without the least hesitation or misgiving, fall in love with you; get moon-struck, in fact — and I 've been deliciously mad ever since. I 'm only just now coming to enough to realize it."

''Oh!" the soft drawling voice of the Southern bride answered. **You 're coming to, are you?"

She was a young woman to arrest the eye inevitably, perhaps because of the marked distinction of her appearance — a distinction which left one without an instant's doubt as to her place in the scale, not of society merely, but of being ; for she was unmistakably a girl of a fine and uncommon type, as was manifest in the purity and thoughtf ulness of her face, the deep lights and shadows of her eyes, the sensitiveness of her mouth.

The bridegroom was of a scarcely less distinguished appearance, though in a very different way. The stern keenness of his face was manifestly not merely that of the sharp business man, but of a strong intellectuality. There was a rugged force about him which, while it never in the world would have suggested his early life on a farm, would have been accounted for by that circumstance. In the immaculate neatness and spruceness of his dress, he bore the stamp of his years of sojourn in New York as well as that of the successful physician.

''I 'm waking up," Dr. Kuntz continued, **to the colossal nerve I had ! You see, I 've always been so used to forging ahead to any given point I wanted to reach that it never occurred to me to hold off on account of — "

Well?" she gently urged as he hesitated. Of our different bringing-up, Jean. Now that I 'm actually taking you right into it — ^you, a Southern girl ! I 'm beginning for the first time to wonder— "

''Wonder what, dear?"

** Whether even your broad philosophy of life can meet it without — ^wincing."

*'How foolish!" she said, flushing. **As if anything in all the universe," she added tenderly, ''could matter to you and me, Matthew, but that we have found each other! You don't mean it when you pretend to doubt — you look as confident as I feel. I can't imagine you/' she went on smiling,

"hesitating with misgivings and a lack of self-confidence before any obstacles; and for such a trivial reason! If you mean what you say, why don't you look anxious? You only look analytical and speculative. You are interested to see how I shall be impressed. You know so well that instead of — ^the very word is absurd — 'wincing/ my whole heart will go out to everyone and everything connected with you. I am hungry for all of you — from your babyhood up — ^that I can get. How I shall make your mother and father talk about you!"

'*I was blind and mad with love," he reaffirmed, **to have brought you into this so recklessly — ^without having prepared you more. My only explanation of it is that all along I suppose I have had a subconscious reliance on your common-sense and that transcendental way you have of ignoring material conditions, which latter is, of course, simply a disease of youth, or I should say a passing phase. I suppose I did realize that I was catching you young enough to train you; for after all, a girl like you must recognize, eventually, the real excellence of what at first will impress you as crude."

It was true, as she said, that he looked ** speculative" rather than '* anxious"; and that a lack of selfassurance was too foreign to his nature ever to cause him an instant's pause in anything he wished to do. It was this forcef ulness, combined with his many other telling qualities, that, during their brief but intense courtship, had captivated and dominated the elemental feminine in her to the extinction of those finer perceptions and instincts which were hers through breeding and training and which, had they not been submerged by her passionate infatuation for the brilliant, good-looking doctor, would undoubtedly have revealed this very masculine dominance which intoxicated her, to be — not always the protecting chivalry she took it for — but often the outcome of the Pennsylvania-German idea of the inferiority of her sex, bred in his bones and ineradicable.

**But there are things," he repeated, '*that I ought to have prepared you for, dear, that I ought to tell you now, before we get to the farm, to let you down a little easily — '*

''Matthew!" she protested, *'you really hurt me. I should have to be such a very light-minded person if I were capable, in the face of what you and I are to each other, of considering the 'things' you hint at!"

"I admit, dear," he returned, "that it is only the most superficial sort of people who have time to consider any social rank except that of character and culture — "

"In both of which," she broke in, "you are so far beyond me! And I 'm proud of it!"

He leaned back in his chair, folded his arms and looked down upon the fine, sweet face of the girl before him, his strong countenance betraying his proud, though Turk-like, sense of possession; this rare and precious thing was his own, to be taken care of as a valuable jewel or an expensive horse; to be affectionately moulded to his will. He did not think of his wife as a separate individuality with a life of her own to live. She would live for him. Any necessary adjusting of their lives would be done by her. He had had to do his share of that process during their courtship. Now that she was his wife, compromise was over for him.

These were, of course, not definitely formulated thoughts of his mind, but rather a mental attitude. It was this hereditary idea of the relation of the sexes that, persisting through all his education in schools and in society, governed him now inevitably and left him comparatively complacent before the prospect of the trying ordeal to which he realized his wife was about to be subjected in his father's home.