The Grandmothers/Chapter 9

RALPH TOWER, Alwyn's father, was not an educated man. Because of their poverty his parents could not hope to send more than one son away to school. They wanted a preacher in the family, for no calling was so honorable as the ministry. Jim, their eldest, was more studious than the other two boys, spoke fluently, and took pains with his appearance. So, while still almost a child, he was chosen to receive an education, and it was useless for Ralph and Evan to have ambitions; they would have to stay on the farm in any case.

The three grew up together happily and roughly. Their mother disciplined them with a worn army belt which hung behind the door; their father ignored them unless there was work to be done. They spent all their spare time in the woods, hunting coons by lantern light, trapping muskrats and skunks, which they drowned and washed in a deserted well. One evening a cow who had dropped her calf alone in the marshes, charged them, and Ralph, the last of the three to take flight, broke his leg. Later Evan fell from a beam in the barn without being seriously hurt, and when he was eleven a furious ram kept him in a tree for several hours. Their clothes and their bodies exhaled a faint animal odor, which, according to their father, made the house smell like a wigwam. They were afraid of girls, and preferred each other to their friends. Undernourished but energetic, half savage but hopeful, a poor farmer's ordinary sons, dressed in overalls or grown men's clothes hastily cut down, with copper toes on their boots and rabbits' feet in their pockets for good luck until their late adolescence they were as much alike as young dogs of the same litter.

Then mature character developed out of the characterlessness of boyhood, and they drew apart, at first imperceptibly, then with decision, as if, while roving like aimless wild animals over the countryside, they had come upon roads leading in three directions; and Jim, suddenly sober and self-conscious, began to look toward the future which the piety of his parents had chosen for him.

Those were hard times in Wisconsin. They heard their father say to their mother that the farm would have to be mortgaged before long; and for some time. the younger boys thought they were as well off as Jim, for apparently, in that family, no one could have a start in life.

But in 1894 Timothy Davis began to send their uncle Leander money from the West every month. Leander was in poor health, and one day he proposed to his brother and sister-in-law that an "old bachelor's wing" be added to their house; the money Timothy sent should pay for it, keep them from running into debt, and enable them to send Jim to college as well. Henry and Rose promised to care for him as long as he lived; so he gave up the mail route, sold his house. and garden, and as soon as the new rooms were completed made his home in one of them, where he sat by himself all day, paying no attention to the farmwork, rarely taking part in family discussions, and watching his nephews with the timid solicitude which is an old bachelor's way of loving another man's sons.

The youngest, Evan, was a wistful, freckled stripling with a quick temper. The path of an unlucky life seemed to have been blazed ahead of this boy by his peculiar spirit which no one understood, and people began to say that he would come to a bad end. He loved no one but his uncle, and it was certain that he and his father would never be at peace. He kept threatening to run away from home, and Ralph at least knew that sooner or later he would.

Ralph wanted to go to a school in Milwaukee and become a veterinary surgeon, having a passion for animals, dreaming of race horses, and prize bulls, and dogs worth as much as a whole farm. But he was obviously the one who would never go anywhere, who would have to make sacrifices, and learn to be patient with their father as he grew old and arbitrary. His brothers were going to leave the country, but he would have to turn back among the still only half-cultivated hills, to go on being what they had all been as ignorant children, what their forefathers had been: a child of nature. He was strong, obedient, and moody, resenting what the future might do, as if, mysteriously, at the age of eighteen, the past had already done its worst.

In the autumn of 1895 Jim, the lucky one, went off alone to a little college town to learn how to preach virtue and pious progress and the fear of God: a rudely handsome young man, anxious, awkward, and eager to please. The allowance which he received from home was inadequate, though it looked so generous to his puritan father, so magical to his brothers; but his pleasant face made it easy to find employment in the afternoons and evenings; he was used to harder work, and study was child's play.

He had many talents, and for four years he was pleasantly occupied by small, gratifying successes. There were boating parties, Sunday night suppers, and picnics; embarrassed, idealistic friendships; and a series of best girls with rigid waists, pompous hats, and exciting flounces. He took part in the brutal wedge-football of the period, winning as a trophy a turtle-necked sweater adorned with a great scarlet A. His hair parted in the middle and falling over each ear in a loose, blond wave, he won an oratorical contest with a speech called "Macbeth and Iago, or Intellect and Ambition." He developed a fine bass voice, and traveled all over the Middle West with a male quartet. He was photographed again and again, usually in profile, and clippings from small-town newspapers were sent back to the farm, where they were read aloud with astonishment.

Though none of his friends were irreligious, culture seemed to be more highly regarded than mere religion. He experienced some things and thought about many others of which his father at least would have disapproved. He was being prepared for life, not precisely, he felt, for the ministry; for a glorious destiny, perhaps, but perhaps it would seem inglorious to his loving, narrow-minded family; and he began to think uneasily of the hard-working men on the farm and their expectations.

The Spanish-American War broke out, and one day his mother wrote that Evan, having nothing to look forward to at home, had joined the army. America had been at peace since before Jim was born, and he thought of war as if it were death itself, and pictured the island in the south as a military graveyard, full of soldiers and flowers. At any rate, reckless Evan would be the sort of soldier who has no future; he might as well be dead. The family had grown smaller by one. Ralph would do what their father had done before him—work the land and care for the old people; there was no one but Jim left to do what their father had wanted to do. Their father's life had been a long, impatient prophecy, a prophecy of success at last for one of the Towers, which Jim alone bore the burden of having to fulfill. So he felt many tired, fanatic eyes upon him—not only his father's, but those of the other aging pioneers who had conquered an empire in which no one had yet become famous, and his envious brothers' eyes, especially Ralph's. Dreaming of family councils around his bed during which it was decided that he had wasted his opportunities, Jim began to feel that, like an heir apparent, he had no right to dream, nor to make plans or friends, nor even to marry, except as it furthered the ambitions which his family had, and which he was obliged to represent.

There was a girl named Irene Geiger who, among others, wanted to marry him. She also had a beautiful singing voice, and intended to prepare herself for grand opera. They sang together. Her father, a wealthy brewer of German birth, said with great feeling: "Young fellow, you certainly sing fine. You must get your voice trained."

Jim dreamed of changing the direction of his life, knowing that if he married this cheerful, ambitious girl, her father would give him every opportunity, sparing no expense. He told himself that his family expected of him fame, having passed their lives in obscurity, and prosperity which they might share, having for generations lived and died in poverty; that he stood on the brilliant threshold of an unexpected life, of a career more brilliant than the ministry; and finally that music as well was a divine persuasion, like argument and prayer. He pictured himself in a satin suit and the blaze of footlights, singing as easily as a meadow lark, while the large bouquets of admirers who had forgotten all their troubles fell on the stage around him. He was at once listener and singer, and a flood that was both light and sound troubled him and then made him forget his trouble. A sort of excitement poured also from that imaginary stage into his mind, even into his body, so that when he held Irene's hand he fancied that he loved her as the heroes of music loved their heroines; for a moment he forgot not only the imaginary audience, but the actual audience of father, mother, and brother, anxiously watching his life.

Would not his father and brother be ill at ease in that future audience, with their Sunday coats glossy at the elbows, their celluloid collars slipping up around their strong, red throats, their hands hardened by hammers and shovels and harnesses? At the thought of them, Jim felt lonesome and cold, though he stood with his sweetheart under the chestnuts on the campus, and though those chestnuts were in bloom; and he remembered how, when he was a six-year-old boy, walking home alone in a winter twilight through the woods, having found a handmade whistle in his pocket, he had blown on it as loudly as he could, in order to forget that he might get lost and freeze to death; perhaps that was what music was for. . ..

Irene was very much in love, and often embarrassed him by forcing her way into his heart, as a woman might throw open a door and rustle into a room where a young man—his heavy head in his hands, his forehead wrinkled, his eyes half closed—broods upon his limited resources, and his ambitions, and the opposition to them which may arise. But his new ambitions were hers as well, and she held in her generous hands resources which seemed to him scarcely limited at all. So at last he made up his mind to marry her.

At the end of May, chaperoned by her cousin, a sturdy German spinster, he took her to Hope's Corner to be seen by his parents, taking with him as well for their approval his new plans for the future, about which he had not dared to write a letter. As they drew near the farm he thought of the old-fashioned morality of which it was an unbroken stronghold, and began to study the bright, overdressed girl beside him with anxiety, almost with disapprobation; and he wished that Evan were there, so that by contrast he might seem to his father an obedient son—that his uncle Leander were there to defend him, as he always defended the young against the old.

After Evan had gone away to war, Leander had fallen ill, and upon his recovery had announced that he was going to California. "A sick spell at my time of life shows the way the wind is blowing. I want to see Tim again before I die." Knowing that he overestimated his strength, and hoping that he still had a long time to live, the family had discouraged him; but a little before Jim's visit he had set out alone.

So Jim would have to speak for himself; and in imagination, he heard himself stuttering, or saw himself unable to say anything at all.

In the evening, after the preliminary greetings had been accomplished by his parents with a noncommittal, awkward, but faultless courtesy, the German girl, eager and unabashed, sat down on the organ stool, and sang, "I dreamt I dwelt in marble halls." Jim sang, and joined her in one or two duets. Then she played the prelude of a passionate aria; the old cabinet organ rattled as her vigorous tread filled the bellows with air, as her capable hands pulled out stop after stop; and when she pressed open the swell-box, her skirt spread out over her knees like a great satin bagpipe. But Jim whispered that this piece would not please the family, and they sang instead a two-part anthem. Irene looked appealingly, as it were over the series of strong, high notes, toward his parents, and gazed at Ralph as a woman in love does gaze at a young man who may become her brother-in-law-gazed, in fact, a moment longer than she ought to have done.

The stern father, though proud of Jim's talent and his own understanding of music, listened suspiciously. Little Flora wept with pleasure. Their mother said, "Now that—that is singing I can appreciate. I wish Evan and Leander were here to enjoy it."

Then Flora was sent to bed. Ralph took a lamp, escorted the two ladies, who pretended to be tired, to their room, and returned. Jim was standing dramatically in front of the organ, as if he were going to sing again—without accompaniment this time.

"Pa—ma—" he said, "I want to marry Irene."

Ralph blushed. Jim looked at his mother, and she looked at her husband for permission to congratulate her son, but his face was inexpressive; his twisted hands, one on each knee, did not move.

The silence was miserable. Jim ran his forefinger around his collar. "I want to be a singer. I guess I'll give concerts, with her. I can do that better, better than be a minister."

At last the father answered. "No. It's not right. I won't have it. We've spent too much on your schooling—"

"It won't cost you a cent," Jim pleaded. "Irene's father is well off. I'll be trained with her."

"How did he make all this money?" his father inquired scornfully.

"He's a . . . He was a brewer," the young man admitted.

"There you are. A brewer!" his father snapped. "I tell you, it's enough to make a man lose heart!"

Jim's mother said, "Now, Henry, if he's set his mind on it—"

“No, sir. I didn't bring up my son to be a good-for-nothing singer."

There followed another sharp silence.

Jim bit his lips, cried, "I'm a grown man," and strode out of the room.

Presently Ralph said, "Good night, pa and ma," and followed his brother.

The mother rose. "Well, Henry, they'll have to get married sooner or later. And live their own lives. We can't stop them."

"Say no more about it," he replied.

She went into the kitchen, set the batter for the breakfast pancakes on the stove to rise, and began to prepare for the night.

Henry Tower noticed that he had been left alone. After a time he pulled open the top drawer of a bureau, took out his flutes and his fife, unwrapped their flannel coverings, and lifted them one by one to his lips. He gazed into the finger holes, which had looked up at him all during the last war like a row of small, expressionless eyes. His favorite son a good-for-nothing singer. . . . He was glad that Evan, the least obedient, was a soldier; war was bad, but better than disgraceful behavior. He blew very softly into the flutes, not only so that no one in the house should know what he was doing that part of him which loved. music playing so softly that the part of him which hated it could not hear; as, of two people lying side by side, the one who is sleepless whistles a little in the night. He knew what no one else had discovered, that he was growing deaf. His rheumatic hands closed on the flutes as if he meant to break them, and he walked across to the window as if he meant to throw them away.

His wife opened the bedroom door. She saw him put away the instruments and wished that she had not, knowing that when his weakness had been exposed he never gave in to it. She sighed, for her husband, for her son—whichever would have to give up in the end. The Towers would have to settle their differences between them; she could not take sides.

Meanwhile, in the room over their heads, the boys were undressing slowly. Jim sat in his nightshirt, staring angrily at an eagle woven in the rag rug with its wings outspread; it was clear from his expression that he meant to go against his father's will.

Ralph threw his shirt and trousers on a chair, and removed them at once, lest the odor of the stables be transferred to his brother's college clothes. "You can't do it," he said without any introduction. "Can't marry her, Jim."

Jim looked up hopelessly. He expected sympathy and encouragement from everyone as young or younger than he, but they were all against him; Ralph on his father's side. . . . "Pa's too old-fashioned," he muttered. "Unreasonable. Things are changing."

"I'm not talking about pa. Getting married doesn't change much."

"What do you mean, then?"

In the silent room both brothers breathed heavily, and the lamp gulped on the table as the kerosene went up the wick, and they could hear the blows of a horse's hoofs in the stall, like those of a fist on a great wooden opponent.

"Well . . . " Ralph began gloomily. "Well, when I took her to her room, that old maid went ahead. Your girl held my hand. She kissed me." Knowing his own passions, he expected to see an angry movement or a change of color, but Jim only prodded the rag eagle with one foot.

"You know," Ralph went on, "I'm going to get married pretty soon. Marianne Duff. Her engagement to that bishop's boy turned out to be nothing. We love each other. She wouldn't do what your girl did. I couldn't have such a thing happen."

Jim stared in astonishment at his brother, his brother's excited eyes, his large earth-colored hands working to turn back the cuffs of the nightshirt. Jealousy, the jealousy that a man ought to feel, that he ought to feel and did not. . . . He asked himself if he really loved Irene.

"Besides," Ralph insisted, "you hadn't ought to be a singer. Pa's made sacrifices. Only one of us boys could have a chance. I gave up wanting to be a veterinary so you could be a minister—we all want you to. You sing well enough already. Singing doesn't count—it's not much of a man's job."

Jim's dream of a career changed. Everyone left the great hall in which he had wanted to sing, that is, everyone he loved; just a few supercilious strangers would be there, to make fun of the country boy—no one who loved him. Suddenly he felt that it was a lonesome business to have his good luck and be educated. Apparently, in a measure, it would satisfy Ralph to have his lucky brother preaching the gospel. Apparently music was a private, even a selfish pleasure, whereas religion comforted everyone. It was a lonesome business to be selfish.

Ralph had nothing to add. He knelt on his side of the bed to say his prayers, forcing Jim to his knees, though there was not a whisper of thanksgiving in his heart and he did not know what to ask for. Looking strangely weary and deaf, Ralph said his prayers proudly, with his eyes only half shut, as at the end of a serious council the head of a family prays for them all. Jim felt like a boy who has heard the last words of a father or grandfather, and is afraid to try to get along without a blessing. Ralph was younger than himself, but it takes youth and strength to represent an authority as immortally old as that seemed to be. Over the patchwork quilt—of serviceable materials that had worn well, in dull colors that did not fade—Ralph's dark head, as he whispered almost perfunctorily to himself and God, nodded slightly as if he were giving his consent to something and refusing something else. Refusing Jim's new ambitions; refusing, incidentally, the girl who was not worthy of being his sister-in-law. . ..

Then Jim thought that only a man who is nobody's son and brother can do what he likes—he had been a son and brother before he knew what music was. He had seemed for a few months to be an exception to the family rule of disappointment; there were to be no exceptions. His dream of a career, the career of the dream itself, was over. Whether he liked it or not, it would be a lifework in itself to recompense them for the opportunities they had given him; whatever he wanted to represent, from now on he would have to represent their ideals. Perhaps, he thought, that is all it means to be a servant of God.

As a servant of God he felt exceedingly humble, so humble in fact that he did not feel ashamed—not of having disappointed them, nor of being about to disappoint Irene, nor of the likelihood of disappointing himself all the rest of his life. Ralph, though younger, was more of a man than he; as he stood up, Jim saw how his body was one hard, thick knot from head to foot, which would never be untied. Love in Ralph's heart was the passion which he had pretended to feel, which he might pretend to feel again, and perhaps never would. Ralph, at the end of a hard day's work, said his prayers with a sober passion, as he ought to be able to do and was not. Ralph, as if by inheritance or by instinct, had in his heart love, and religion, and obedience.

He himself, James Arthur Tower, had only his talents. A mouthpiece, to sing only when the joy of others required song, which was not often; to pray, whether he had anything to pray for or not, out loud, for others, because he had a gift of speech. . . . Just as Ralph rose from his knees, Jim thought of his prayer, the prayer of all such men as he: that he might make use of other people's passion, in his life—he would have need of it; and that those who loved him should have no reason to be ashamed of him; and that he might never be found out. His will had been broken, and he felt as if he did not have a heart of his own to break. Ralph blew out the lamp, and the two brothers slipped into bed.

Next morning the postman, Leander's successor, brought the news of Leander's death. He had had a stroke of paralysis on his journey west, had been taken from the train to a hospital in Oklahoma, and after lying unconscious for three days, had passed away. The letter came from the Catholic priest who had buried him.

In the sorrow and confusion of that morning Jim's trouble was almost forgotten. He could not wait for it to be remembered, having to return to college with his guests. His father took leave of him with these. words: "Well, Jim, we know best. You'll get over it."

Jim gazed at Ralph; Ralph stared impassively at him.

"You've got a duty in this world," their father added. "You've got to bear witness for the Lord. Remember that."

Irene overheard, and did not altogether misinterpret their glances, in which there was evidence of mourning for something beside the old bachelor's death—mourning in which she, though a stranger, had a part.

As they went back in the little slow train, the German aunt who believed that a prompt marriage must have been arranged, peering into their gloomy faces, congratulated herself aloud on the fact that she was an old maid.

Jim never told Irene that the visit had failed, that his father and brother were stronger than he; she did not need to be told. A flood of tears seemed to run into her heart whenever she thought of it, whenever she sang; but all her friends and even she herself observed that it gave her voice a new beauty, which encouraged her to go on with her career alone.

Jim worked all summer as the college president's secretary, entered a theological seminary in the autumn, and at the end of September went home to be the best man at his brother's marriage to Marianne Duff.