 | Ida Hauchawout |  |
§ 5
The afternoon was so fine! A sea of crystal light bathed the hills and valleys, and where I worked, the ground was mottled with light sifting through the leaves. Birds sang, and two woodchucks, bitten by curiosity, reconnoitered my realm. Then the brush crackled, and forward came Widdle out of nowhere and sidling slightly as he came.
"Nice view you have up here."
"Yes, I enjoy it very much. Have that stump over there. How've you been?"
"Oh, pretty fair, thank you. I was thinkin' you might like to look over them papers I spoke about. I have 'em here now." And he fished in his coat-pocket.
I turned over the one paper he extracted, which was a memorandum to the effect that Ida Widdle, née Hauchawout, sole owner of such-and-such property, desired and hereby agreed that in the event of her death and the absence of any children, her husband, Henry Widdle, was to succeed her as sole owner and administrator. And this was witnessed by Notary Driggs of Shrivertown.
"There's no question in my mind as to the validity of that," I solemnly assured him. "It seems to me that a lawyer could make it very difficult for any one to disturb you in your place. Still, I'm not a lawyer. Why not see one? Or ask Justice Driggs?"
"Well," he said, turning his head slowly and as slowly taking the paper, "I don't like to go to any lawyer unless I have to. I'm afraid of 'em. They could make a lot o' trouble for an inexperienced feller like me. I don't calc'late to do nothin' unless I have to, but I thought you might know."
I stopped my work and meditated on his fate and how well chance had dealt with him in one way and another. After a time, during which it seemed to me that he might be thinking of the misused Ida, he searched in his pockets and finally extracted another paper, which I thought might be another agreement of some kind. He held this in his hands for a minute or more, then unfolding the paper very carefully he said:
"You bein' a writer, I thought I'd bring up a little thing I've fixed up here about my wife an' ask you what you thought of it. It's some poetry I've been thinkin' I'd put in 'The Banner' over here to Bixley."
I could scarcely suppress my astonishment, let alone my curiosity, as to the nature of this composition which was to be published, at his request presumably, by "The Banner."
"How do you mean, publish?" I inquired respectfully, and holding out my hand. "Suppose you let me see it."
"If you don't mind, I'd rather read it to you. It's in my writin' an' kind o' mixed up, but I can read it to you."
"By all means. But tell me something about it first. You say it's a poem about your wife. Did you compose it yourself?"
"Yes, sir. Only yesterday an' last night. Well, mebbe three days, countin' the time I been thinkin' on it."
"And it's going to be published in 'The Banner?' Do you submit it, or just how is that?"
"Oh, they always print death-rhymes," he went on in his slow explanatory way. "They charge ten cents a line. Everybody does it when anybody they're fond of dies — husband or wife, or like o' that."
"Oh, I see," I hazarded, a great light dawning. "It's a custom, and you feel in a way that you ought to do it."
"Yes, sir, that's it. If it don't cost too much, I thought I'd just put this in."
I prepared to give the matter attentive ear.
"Read it," I said, and he smoothed out the paper, the slanting afternoon light falling over him and it, and began: "'Dearest wife who now are dead, I miss you as in the days before we
were wed. Gone is your kind touch, your loving
care. I look around, but can't find you
anywhere. The kind deeds that you scattered
far and wide Tell me that you are no longer by
my side. I look around now and seek you in
vain; My tears they fall like rain. The house is silent without your
dear tread, Everywhere that you were you are
now missed instead. I am lonely now but our Father
above Now has you in His care and love. If gone from me, you are happy
there at rest, And death that tortures me for you
is best. Dear husband, weep not for your
departed wife, For from heaven, looking down, I
see you as in life. I see your woe and grief and misery, And would be there with you if I
could in glee, So kind you were, dear husband, and
so good. The Father of All above knows
what you've withstood; He knows how hard you've tried,
what efforts you have made, To help and serve in love. Don't
be afraid. Face the world with courage, husband dear, And never have any fear. For if in life you may now be misunderstood, Our Father who is in heaven knows
that you were kind and good. Your efforts were very many, your
rewards were few. The world should know how kind
you were and true. The tongues of men may slander,
husband dear, But do not let that trouble your ear. I, your wife in heaven, know how we While we were together on earth did
love and agree, And in heaven too, when it pleases
God to call us, We will love and be happy together
as we did on earth always.'"
He paused and looked up, and I confess that by now my mouth had
unconsciously opened a little. The simplicity! The naïf
unconsciousness of
"Tell me," I managed to say at last, "did you write all that yourself?"
"Well, you know the papers publish them death-rhymes right along, every week. I see 'em in 'The Banner,' an' I just took some of the lines from them, but most of 'em are mine."
"You have quite a few lines there," I volunteered, trying to evade the necessity for comment. "At ten cents a line you are going to have a big bill to pay."
"That's so," he agreed, scratching his head rather ruefully. "I hadn't thought o' that. Let's see," and he began to count them.
Looking at him as he counted up the cost of his poetic flight, which totaled three dollars and forty cents, as he finally announced, and thinking of his wife, the dreary round of her days, the heavy labor up to the very hour of her death, the carefully exacted agreement as to the ultimate disposition of her property in case of her death, I could not help thinking of the pathos and the futility of so much that we call life and effort, the absolute nonsense that living becomes in so many instances. Above me as I speculated was that great blazing ball we call the "sun" spinning about in space and with its attendant planets. And upon the surface of this thing, "the earth," we, with our millions of little things we call "homes" and "possessions." And about and above and beneath us, mysteries, mysteries, mysteries. Not even within miles of a guess as to what we are or what the sun is or the "reason" for our being here for anything. And yet passion and lust and beauty and greed and yearning, this endless pother and bitterness and delight in order to retain this elusive and inexplicable something, "life," "us," "ours," in space. Birds awing, trees blowing and whispering, fields teeming with mysterious and yet needed things, and then, on every hand, this wealth of tragedy. Life living on life, men and animals plotting and scheming as though there were only so much to be had and all of that in the possession of others.
And yet, despite the mystery and the suffering and the bitterness, here was this golden day, an enormous treasure in itself, and these lovely trees, those mountains blue, this wondrous, soothing panorama. Beauty, beauty, beauty, appealing and consoling to the heart — life's anodyne. And here, in the very heart of it, Ida Hauchawout, and her father, with his "no enimel gets fet py me," and his son who threw a pitchfork at him, and this poor clown before me with his death-rhymes and his fear of losing the little that had been left to him. His love. His loss. His gain. His desire to place himself right before the "world." This was what he was rhyming about. This was what he was worrying about.
Was he guilty of any wrong before the world? Not a bit that I could see. Was he entitled to what he had come by? As much so as any of us are entitled to anything. But here he was, worrying, worrying, worrying, and trying to decide in the face of his loss or gain whether his verse, this tribute or self-justification, was worth three
Mesdames and Messieurs, are we all mad? Or am I? Or is life? Is the whole thing, what it appears to be to so many, an aimless, insane, accidental jumble and gibberish? We articulate or put together out of old mysteries new mysteries, machines, methods, theories. But to what end? What about all the Hauchawouts, past, present, and to come, sons, daughters, and relatives, and all the fighting and the cruelty and the parading and the nonsense?
The crude and defeated Ida. And this fumbling, seeking, and rather to be pitied dub with his rhymes. Myself, writing and wondering about it all.
| Ida Hauchawout | |