Teeftallow/Chapter 11

WITH the reëntry of Nessie Sutton into his life, the boyhood of Abner Teeftallow, one might say, ended. Thereafter, the texture of his thoughts was no longer the Pan-like dallying over the mere surface of things which constitute childhood. The girl brought a certain unity to his mental life. Take, for example, the smallish man who had grumbled to Abner on the night of the crap game about the injustice of the rich toward the poor. This man proved to be a labour organizer, and a few days later returned to his logical attack. He declared that Railroad Jones was oppressing the men on his construction works by not paying them a living wage.

Abner stared at Mr. Shallburger and drawled naïvely, "If anybody ain't gittin' a square deal, why don't he quit?"

"Quit!" snapped the organizer. "Labourers can't quit work; men of wealth own all the instruments of production; besides, it's the human right of these men to have a living wage."

This struck Abner as nonsense. He said he guessed the men must be getting a living wage—didn't see anybody dying.

Shallburger looked at Abner clearly, pondering whether or not to answer such a lump. Finally he did speak, slowly, as if teaching the alphabet to an infant:

"A living wage doesn't mean merely food and clothing for a man. It means enough to rear a family, to educate them so that they in turn can go on with life"—here a little enthusiasm warmed his voice. "Suppose all workers made just enough for their individual selves; then, so far as they were concerned, creation would come to an end when they ​died. A living wage means that life shall go on, Mr. Teeftallow, that it shall grow larger and better, not less and worse."

At the time Shallburger made this argument, it seemed the veriest nonsense to Abner; men striking to-day so there would be more and better labourers twenty years from now—fantastic.

But it was Nessie Sutton who eventually vitalized the organizer's theory. After the youth's first accidental meeting with the girl, he now saw Nessie briefly every day. Every afternoon at six o'clock he glimpsed her as she passed across the piazza of the Scovell House.

Abner ate his own supper at five, along with the other labourers, but instead of going immediately to the garage, Abner loitered in the porch swing of the hotel until six, when Nessie returned from her work uptown.

For a number of days he had confined his remarks to a mere "Good-evenin'" as she passed in to supper, which she ate with the Scovell family after the men boarders were finished. When she had entered the dark hallway, Abner would get out of the swing, look after her as she disappeared inside; then, filled with a queer faint pain, he would take himself off to the garage.

For a number of days he spent an hour regularly for this rather unhappy glimpse of her. Then one afternoon she quite startled him by pausing in the doorway, turning to look out at the dilapidated village which lay in the yellowing light, and saying that she was so tired she didn't want any supper.

This sudden chance to begin one of the many conversations he had planned startled the youth.

"Are you sick?" he asked in an anxious tone.

"My back hurts—I stoop over all day sewing."

"What do you sew?" asked Abner, following his frail clue eagerly.

"Hats. I'm Mr. Baxter's milliner." She hesitated, then added to assist this self-conscious conversation, "I'm getting ready for our fall opening." She drew a long breath, ​as if the very thought of the fall opening wearied her, and her bosom lifted and fell beneath her rather deeply cut blouse.

The expressiveness of this bodily gesture brought home to Abner that the girl really was tired. A protective feeling toward her arose in the teamster and filled him with a dim trouble. It also took his mind from the thread of conversation which held them momentarily secure in each other's presence. The seconds ticked off. The silence arose like a wall, separating them once more. In desperation Abner was about to tell the girl that one of his mules had flung off a shoe that morning. He was on the verge of this when Nessie said:

"I saw you walk by the Grand to-day."

"Did you?" asked Abner gratefully.

"Yes, Mr. Northcutt was in there talking to Mr. Baxter about the boys shooting up the church Sunday night."

Abner became genuinely interested. "What did they say?"

"Mr. Baxter said if they found out who did it the lawyers up at Lanesburg would get them right out—I guess they would, too, you can't depend much on the law to help anything," added Nessie thoughtfully.

A trickle of uneasiness went through the teamster; he lowered his voice a trifle and asked, "Did you tell 'em what you knowed, Nessie?"

The girl was shocked. "Goodness, no! I was so afraid they'd ask me—I couldn't tell a story, and I wouldn't told who done it either. I was jest sitting there scringin', wonderin' what in the world I'd say if they ast me, when Mr. Northcutt said when the courts failed a community, God would help 'em."

The teamster stared at the girl blankly. "What did he mean?"

"He's plannin' to have Brother Blackman come over from Cypress Creek and hold a protracted meetin'. I hope he will. It would give a person somewhere to go, and then we need it."

This last phrase was said rather pointedly, but Abner ​responded, "Yes, I guess we do," as impersonally as if he had not been one of the disturbers on Sunday night.

By this time the conversation was well launched, apparently, but somehow Abner's unprogressive "I guess we do," finished that topic completely and left the two young persons in another painful lacuna. Abner began thinking frantically for the next thing to say. The topic of his mule's shoe bobbed up again in his mind but was put down. However, it effectively held its own against all other themes.

The youth and the girl looked at each other, caught by this queer shy silence of hill lovers. Finally it became impossible to remain any longer in each other's company. Nessie said in a mechanical tone, "I guess Miss Scovell's waiting dinner for me," and went inside.

Abner drew a long breath as she disappeared. As much as he regretted her going, still—it was a relief. He got up from the swing, went out the gate and up toward the garage.

As he went he recalled every word of their conversation exactly as if someone were repeating it in his ears. Nessie had sewed till her back ached—she was a milliner and had to trim hats for a living—it made her tired. This fact filled Abner with distress. If he could only take this burden from her! If he and this blonde girl with the burnished yellow hair and blue eyes could only . . .

Now it was just at this point that Abner recalled the fellow Shallburger's dictum on the necessity of a man's making a living wage—a wage on which a man could marry, rear children, and keep the world going on. . . .

The "world going on" now meant for Abner, Nessie Sutton living in pleasant idleness in some pleasant home where he came after each day's work.

And Nessie should do nothing! She should rest from morning till night in a porch swing! He was emphatic in his thoughts about that. The æsthetic justification of mere beauty—of a delicate untoiling blooming—filled Abner with a tenderness he had never known before.

​Later in his life, when the years must inevitably dim Nessie’s corn-silk hair and fade the pansies in her eyes, Abner would look upon his household drudge with the stolid indifference of all hillmen for all hill wives, but just at this moment the thought of Nessie wearying her fingers by lifting so much as a cambric needle filled him with a melancholy as exquisite and aching as the dawn of first love itself.