The Youngest Daughter of Zelophehad

THE idea was John’s originally; but Henry annexed it so promptly that in a minute or two it seemed to have been his all the time. That was no unusual occurrence. John and Henry presented, in practical matters, the relation of a colony and a mother country — with constant taxation of ideas and grudgingly allowed representation in results. It did seem in those days as if Henry had the making of a statesman in him, his sense of relations was so clear and practical.

This time John’s notion concerned finance, an unheard-of thing in John. Henry was hypothetically the financier of our body, although, as our resources rarely passed out of his hands, that made little difference to the rest of us. All our pecuniary transactions seemed to take much the same form, — a magnificent. conception on Henry’s part, his gracious permission to the rest of us to fill subordinate places in its execution, and then a gathering in the fruits by Henry himself. Not being entirely inexpressive, we sometimes demurred at this; but there always seemed to be a good masculine reason why this conclusion should be quite just and legal. John, with his dreamy head somewhere in the sky, did n’t care much for money anyway, and I, being feminine, was quite unconvincing, and Mary was too young to command much attention. So the spending of our small common profits, as well as the laying of our united financial schemes, remained in Henry’s hands.

The source of our profits was usually the heads of the family, or some of the adult members of the household —all adults seemed to be loaded with money, often having whole dollars in their pockets at once — and our processes were rather industrial than commercial. Hence John’s sudden proposal was fascinating enough from its very novelty. He suggested, in fact, that we should go out into the public mart and engage in trade. We all held our breath for a moment at the enterprise of the plan. And then Henry, recovering his, made the scheme his own in two sentences; and John immediately became a subordinate, a mere fetchand-carry. Mary and I waited to be assigned places in the plan of things.

The notion was so simple yet so adventurous in its way that it is a wonder none of us had ever thought of it before. Out in the orchard were ripe apples and grapes and some peaches, more of all than the household needed; at the end of our drive ran the county road, along which passed the hungry public. Could there be a more suggestive juxtaposition of supply and demand? Henry visualized it instantly — the road a public mart, the eager passer hungrily demanding, the immense profits cert ai nly consequent upon trade. He was out in the world, a merchant, a financier, a capitalist. He expanded visibly before us as we eyed him. Awhile he mused, then assumed active command of us all.

On Wednesday there would be a meeting at the little county-seat, the road to which lay past our gate. Its purpose was negligible—politics, probably; we had not even thought of asking to be allowed to go. But we had gathered from talk at the table that many men would be there. The meeting would begin in the early afternoon; that meant that from ten o’clock on there would be a constant passing by our gate. Some of these travelers would come from the far west of the county, some from the scantily settled expanse to the northwest. They would all be hungry. Henry laid his plans.

Mary was sent to spread the scheme, in its most meagre outlines, before my father and mother. Mary’s participation in an enterprise often ended with that. But somehow, in Mary’s serious and honest telling, any exploit seemed to take on not only plausibility but positive merit. This time, however, my mother looked dubious, my father amused. Maldy lingered on a passing foot at the open door, and looked at Mary with the complacence which Mary alone won from her. She recovered from that, however, to frown at Henry, skulking in dignified indifference outside the open window, and to express unsolicited disapproval —Maldy’s opinion often outran solicitation — of the whole scheme.

‘I want to make some money,’ said Mary gently but persistently. Mary was guileless as the rising moon, but it was wise for her to say I instead of we.

‘Huuf!’ said Maldy, and went on.

‘Oh, let them do it,’ said my father in answer to my mother’s look of reluctance. My father was in a hurry to be off somewhere. It was a truly venturous one who went to ask a favor when the authority was in a hurry. The decision was instantaneous, but one could never tell whether the necessity for haste would work for or against the petitioner. ‘It won’t do them any harm so long as people are going toward town — as soon as they begin to come back the children must come in. Do you understand?’ My father raised his voice, and Henry’s head now appeared at the window.

I heard that injunction regretfully, not because it curtailed the profits, but because it limited the experience. If men — the kind of men who went by on the road—were in any way different when they came back from a political meeting, I should like to see them. That mysterious thing called drunkenness, of which we read in temperance stories, along with its well-detailed symptoms, I had never had a chance to observe. Henry submitted with a less impersonal reluctance; he saw nickels slipping past him.

But a ‘stand’ at the roadside we were to have. Henry promptly issued orders — certain duties for me, certain others for John, minor ones for Mary. On Monday the stand was to be built, on Tuesday the fruit gathered and our minds prepared, on Wednesday the great transaction would begin, about ten o’clock. Henry was so busy giving orders that the time seemed to fly. He came out several times to help me get the baskets of grapes, but he always remembered something else that must be superintended, and hurried off abruptly. The first time I heard the term captain of industry I knew instantly what it meant, remembering Henry.

Tuesday night everyt hing was ready. Inside the screened porch was our stockin-trade, scores of apples and early peaches, baskets of grapes, a few of the ripest; pears. A serious question had arisen while we gathered them. As connoisseurs in fruit, within the limits of our own orchards, we knew to the last, finest degree, the palatability of every variety. There are people to whom an apple is an apple, and a peach, a peach. But we were none of that sort. We recognized delicate gradations of toothsomeness, and balanced nicely the relative allurements of choice varieties. A man might as well call himself frankly Philistine and barbarian at once, as voluntarily eat a Ben Davis and call it good. As amateurs of apples we could hardly bear the thought of offering a customer any but what we knew to be the best. It was a betrayal of our own good taste. But, on the other hand, would it pay to sacrifice our cherished General Grants or our last, high-in-the-tree Benonis, when the cottony Sops of Wine or the flat saccharine Ramsdale’s Reds would suit the undiscriminating public quite as well, and were bigger and rosier at that? Henry considered the matter and settled it from the point of view of commercialism rather than that of art. It would be an insult to give any one a Sops of Wine — we always had difficulty with that plural — but there would be no offense in selling them, if we could do it.

So our rosy baskets, which looked so enticing, really contained many of what we small epicures regarded as the discards of the orchards, refused by our finer taste. If these did not prove enticing enough — if our customers had better taste than we expected — Mary and I could hurry back and hastily gather some of the others, Henry said. ‘Anyway,’ he added, ‘we’re not going to try to sell to them when they come back.’

We sat in the dark, considering prospects. A vague expectation of unsatisfaction disturbed me, but I postponed formulating it.

‘I wish we had some watermelons,’ said Henry, raising his voice but the least degree.

Maldy was sitting, also in the dark, just inside the kitchen window, and we knew it. But Maldy said nothing.

Afler a pause crowded with suggestion, Henry pursued, with the manner of one filling time and ears with pleasant conversation, ‘Everybody likes watermelon this time of year.’

There was still no sound from within the kitchen, and conversation lapsed.

All the watermelons on the place belonged to Maldy; I don’t know why, but this was the custom. My father said it was because she was the only one who could proteetthem adequately. Certain it was that no man or child interfered twice with Maldy’s watermelons, even though they were the first to ripen and the finest to taste in the whole country. Maldy always made a show of being very stingy with them, and ended by being so generous that her own profits were scanty. Certainly these earliest ripe watermelons would be a great attraction on our stand. But Maldy said nothing.

Henry, by feeling, counted his change, the combined capital of all four of us. It was conveniently all in small pieces.

‘I,’ said Mary dreamily, ‘am going to buy a gold bracelet with my money.’ She ran imaginative fingers about her round little wrist. ‘Aunt Ella will get it for me when she goes back to New York.’

‘And,’ I broke in enthusiastically, ‘I’ll get a new David Copperjidd with mine.’ David Copperfield had come to us already old, and its choicest sections had long since been read into annihilation.

‘We’re not going to divide up the money,’ said Henry with simple authority. ‘ We’re going to take it all and get a new gun with it.’ Then to our silence he added, ‘We need a new saddle because mine is getting too small. But I guess we’ll get the gun.’

After a pause I spoke out. My spirit was Patrick Henry’s, but my words were my own. I have forgotten them now, but at the time they seemed eloquent and should have been convincing. That they were not was due to the limitations of the language, not to any lack of spirit behind them. But Henry s position was unchanged.

‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘John and I are going to do all the selling. You will have to keep back in the grove when there is anybody there.’

I paused abruptly in my rush of argument. and contumely. This was a fresh blow. I had already had visions of myself in the new and attractive rôle of sales-pcrson, and had practiced little graces and urbanities among the grape-vines, combining, as nearly as I could, my mother’s gracious manner with her poorer visitors, and that of a shoe-clerk who had sometimes fitted me and whose ease I greatly admired.

I had expected to add largely to our sales by my charm — and who knew what further it might all lead to?

‘Well, I guess not, Mr. Henry!’ I burst out, with indignation which fettered expression.

‘When there’s nobody passing, went on Henry, now fully committed to setting forth his policy, ‘you can come out. And you can bring rags and keep the dust wiped off everything and things like that. But it ain’t the place for girls.’

I was meditating a sufficient answer for this when Mary spoke.

‘You are a mean thing,’ she said.

She rose and said it again with greater emphasis, ‘ You re a mean thing!’

Vituperation was foreign to Mary’s tongue, and her phrases were limited. She felt around on the dark floor for the prim elderly doll still dear to her eight-year-old heart, and took her departure. Just beyond the door she paused again and her serious little voice came back to us out of the darkness with less of indignation in it than of sober conviction. ‘You’re a mean thing!’ she repeated once more.

I heard Maldy’s chair scrape on the kitchen floor and her solid step on the back-stairs as she followed Mary, to see her to bed. Old as we were, Maldy had no faith in our putting of ourselves to bed; and her vesper visit to us was as certain as my mother’s. We could not help thinking, however, that there was a precautionary element in Maldy’s final look at us which my mother’s lacked.

While we continued to sit there, in an uncomfortable, unadjusted silence, I could hear the distant murmur of her voice in Mary’s little room above, and I knew that she was comforting Mary. When Mary was in trouble she rarely said anything; but every one in the house—except the cause of her distress — wanted to comfort her. I used to wonder how she accomplished it; there were times when I went without comforting.

The silence downstairs continued, unimpaired by conciliatory remark, until we were once more called from our musings to go to bed. In harassed moments life sometimes seemed to consist entirely of regretful retirings and reluctant arisings.

In the morning Mary seemed to melt away from the breakfast-table without any one’s noting her departure. That was not surprising. When Mary was at outs with the world she simply disappeared— usually to my mother’s room — until either her mood or the situation was readjusted. My own policy was different. I was accustomed to remain active on the field of battle. It was not considered technically correct to call in a higher authority to arbitrate differences. This t ime my method was, I confess, inartistic, but it accomplished something. A dinner-pail full of strong brine, poised in unsteady hands over the finest baskets of grapes, brought Henry to a compromise. All the money we made above what t he gun cost I could have. As I appeared incredulous, he went a step further. I could have half the bounties on skins from his killings for the first year. That really left me still unexpectant, but it held a show of victory. And anyway it would be no fun to stay at the house all the morning when the novel excitement of traffic was in full blare down the road. I assisted in carrying the baskets down to the stand while Henry made out his scale of prices. That done, I was allowed to sit in partial concealment behind the hedge and make up ‘pokes’ of heavy paper; Maldy had afforded us only a very meagre supply of paper bags.

Mary lived on her pride in some seclusion or other, and did not approach us. I was aware that I had compromised with my independence — But what of that? I could be proud any day and we could n’t have a stand at the road every day. Curiosity and interest in life conquered.

The stand was built under the shade of art osage-orange tree, allowed to grow for shade above the rest of the trimmed hedge. John and Henry arranged the best-looking of their wares tastefully upon it and then everything was ready. We awaited custom. We had a point of vantage at the top of the hill, from which we could command a view of the road in each direction. It was a bare dusty way, it s yellow thread enclosed on each side by a stretch of weeds, now in August ripeness, wild hemp and sunflower and dog-fennel, with an occasional stretch of prairie grass not yet crowded out by the weeds of civilization.

A team approached down the neighboring hill, with a wagon full of people. About the stand excitement swelled. ‘Now you keep back,’ Henry dropped over his shoulder to me. ‘It’s a whole lot of men.’ The feminist crouched low behind the thickest part of the hedge. Henry and John took easy commercial attitudes at the stand. The wagon rolled on in its little yellow dust-cloud, made the slow ascent of the hill, quickened its speed as it touched the upper level, and rattled past us without a pause. Its occupants were the Bledsoes, who lived two miles beyond us and had fruit at home. Ikie Bledsoe waved a jeering hand at us from the rear of the wagon, where he sat with his knees doubled over the endgate, and dropped an indistinguishable remark as the horses started to trot down the other side of the hill.

Henry looked along the empty road for a few silent minutes and then sent John to get a corn-knife and cut down the weeds in front of the stand. The sight of John’s activity revived everyone’s spirits. Presently an old man jogged up the hill on a ragged sorrel horse, rode up to the stand, and after long consideration bought a nickel’s worth of peaches. The sorrel, as they turned away, snatched an apple from the stand, knocked off three others and stepped on one of them.

Two women, both in gingham sunbonnets and half-hander gloves, drove past next. They stopped and looked at our wares, but only, apparently, to see how ours compared with what they had at home, as if we were a fruit exhibit at the county fair. Henry was sober. At that moment the gun did n’t look any bigger than a revolver to him.

A long spring-wagon full of men came next, and the men made a combined purchase of thirty-five cents’ worth. It was a great comfort at least to have money enough to rattle. Henry let John hold it part of the time. The next man bought a nickel’s worth of grapes, and then two more, evidently hired men taking a holiday, bought a dozen apples, haggling over the price. Then it seemed to be time to dust the stock off and Henry sent me to the house to get one of Maldy’s turkey-wings, Maldy’s fortunate absence from the kitchen made it possible for me to secure one without question, and also to sample the cookies on which I found Ellen experimenting. I complimented the result very cordially, and Ellen received my remarks with more than wonted graciousness and gave me a handful to take back to the road.

When I returned to the stand I found there a gloom which even the distribution of cookies did not entirely lighten. I gathered, as I wielded my turkey-wing,—and found it a not very pliable or sympathetic implement, that successive vehicles had passed inattentive. Even at this moment a wagon, full to the dashboard, lumbered past, dully indifferent. Henry forgot to send me back to cover. A spring wagon followed, its occupants regaling themselves with watermelons and impassive to the out-spread charms of more aristocratic fruits. A moverwagon followed, its engulfed inhabitants also enjoying watermelon, the driver thrusting his head out from under the canvas like a turtle, to eject the seeds, and somebody in the vague interior discarding well-cleaned rinds through the hole in the rear.

‘I’ll bet they stole them,’ said Henry acidly. Of course it was true that movers did not have the best of reputations among us.

A man coming from the other direction bought a few grapes to take home and said that if his woman was there she might want a whole basketful. But that was colorless comfort to us. A wagon containing two young men and two girls and great hilarity approached, and for sheer gallantry the young man in the back seat must treat to grapes and peaches. Our sky brightened. Conversation turned to comparison of different makes of firearms.

Now as noon drew on a pret ty regular stream of vehicles began to pass — a wagon with two men on the seat and two women, each with a baby, on kitchen chairs behind; a second wagon, with sideboards on and boards laid across them for seats, all full of people; other conveyances of the same kind, all crowded full and overflowing with sociability. They all creaked up the hill slowly, greeted by our rising hopes, and then rattled down it noisily, pursued by our indignant disappointment. They rarely stopped, even at the boys’ shrill announcement of their wares. I remained behind the hedge continuously.

One thing began to seem strange. About half of these people were eating watermelon. The coincidence seemed more and more remarkable — that they should all have brought watermelon along and with one mind have begun to eat it at this precise point. We considered the practical improbability of this. As we did so, another thing came to our notice. We could trace a coming wagon down the long hill opposite us and almost, into the hollow. Then a little interval would always elapse before we could see the horses’ bobbing heads as they climbed the hill to our station. Now we noticed that this interval was often unnecessarily long. Men did not usually rest, their horses at the bottom of a hill. What were they doing? We traced a certain white and bay team down the opposite slope and into the hiatus at the bottom. Then minutes elapsed while we craned our necks at the top of the hill and waited for the white ears and bay ears to appear in the line of the yellow t rack. Finally the wagon was in front of us — and the people in it were eating watermelon! We fixed our eyes on the next wagon approaching — with precisely the same resulting observation.

Henry bade John watch the stand, and raced away down the hill. John bade me do so, and followed him. An hour before, I had coveted this position. Now, after a moment of reluctant obedience, I swept all t he stores behind the hedge and followed John.

At the bottom of the hill we at first saw nothing unusual as we came racing up. Then, when we were opposite the big cottonwood tree which stood by a farm-gate opening into a field, we saw. A team advanced down the other hill at the very same moment, the men behind it talking loudly and absorbedly until they reached us. Then they too saw, and stopped. At the very foot of the cottonwood, on a small solitary patch of blue-grass set among the daisy-flowered dog-fennel, were two little round piles of watermelons, their st riped and splotched greenness a beautiful thing to the hungry eye. And between the two piles stood Mary, in a little blue dress, her soft childish arms tightly clasping a big mottled green melon, around which they could barely reach. The whitish-gray trunk of the tree stretched up behind her and its tinkling, glinting leaves sounded and shone overhead.

Mary uttered not a word as the wagon stopped. She gave one appealing look at the occupants, and then drooped her head until her brown hair touched the top of her green burden. Her cheeks grew pinker and pinker and she clasped her melon tighter and tighter, but she stood her ground bravely, waiting. The men looked for a moment and then one of them called in a jolly way, ‘What do you want for it, sissy?’

‘Only fifty cents,’ said Mary, shyer than ever.

The man jumped out and came to get it and Mary relinquished her solid burden and took his two quarters with the same sedate diffidence.

‘See here,’ demanded Henry when the wagon had rattled on, ‘what are you doing this for?’

‘I wanted to get some money to buy a bracelet,’ said Mary simply, looking the piles over to select another melon.

‘Well, gee whiz, how do you think we’re going to make any?’

’You would n’t give me any of yours,’said Mary in the same impersonal way, wiping the new melon off with a dish-towel she had had secreted neatly behind the tree.

‘Well, I’d like to know what right you think you have to do this — Where’d you get these melons anyway?’ he broke off, shifting his line of arraignment.

‘ Maldy gave them to me. She brought them down here for me,’ answered Mary with the same natural simplicity, a manner especially exasperating to Henry when he was in a belligerent position. When one simply told the whole truth, secreted nothing, colored nothing, defended nothing, what was there for her antagonist to attack or to continue to attack?

Henry came to an abrupt stop which seemed to jolt his ideas all to pieces. ‘I’ll bet she did n’t!’ he exploded.

Mary made no answer. From behind the tall weeds which formed a thick fringe beyond the clipped hedge rose Maldy, eyeing Henry impassively.

Henry looked at our assembled forces. Mary, supported by Maldy, was invulnerable. I, of course, was on their side; John was never a hot-headed partisan.

Maldy’s look spoke stolid triumph. ‘Got your gun yet?’ she asked grimly.

That evening when Maldy was putting us to bed — we were tired that night and willing to retire early when the notion was suggested to us — the voice of an itinerant. Methodist preacher, who had timed his travels so carefully that he arrived at our house just at supper-time, kept rising to us from the porch below. The preacher had looked in at the convention on his way, and his thoughts were on polities and large matters of statesmanship. He discoursed broadly on democracy and then dropped to a detail — I missed the connection.

‘Woman is the greatest moral force in the world,’ he said authoritatively, ‘—er, that is, one of the greatest, of course. The Lord never intended her to take any part in government. She has always ruled by love and gentleness, and if she tries any other way she will lose all her influence.’

’Huuf!’ said Maldy, as she tucked Mary in. Then she went clumping down the stairs to cut a watermelon and distribute it on the porch.

Left alone, Mary lay quiet, a long time, in her still little way. Then she suddenly sat up in her bed. ‘Barbara,’ she said, ‘I am going to give you and Henry and John some of my money. I’m sorry about Henry.’