Best Short Stories Omnibus - Volume 2

White Bread-2

On her way down-town after supper Mis' Tyrus Burns went round by Jane Mellish's house. It was in her mind that she had been, after all, a little hard on Jane, and she thought of inviting her to go to a motion-picture show.

"Besides," she thought, "if I get round her right, mebbe I can make her see herself and her bread more general."

On the little front porch Molly was sitting alone. It was an exquisite time of daylight and shadow, and, for a third integrant delight, above the bare locust-trees came the moon.

"Gone to bed, has she?" said Mis' Tyrus Burns. "I don'no' but it was a hard meeting for her."

Molly's look questioned her.

"That bread business," Mis' Burns said, briefly. "Molly, look here. Can't you bring something to bear?"

"You mean for her to give the receipt?" Molly asked.

"Certain," said Mis' Burns. "Or don't you want she should do it?"

"She must do as she likes," Molly told her. "I oughtn't to influence her."

"But she says it's for you she's keeping it," Mis' Burns reminded her. "She says it's been handed from mother to daughter for generations, and she won't give away your birthright. She says—"

"Does she say that?" asked Molly.

Mis' Tyrus Burns moved nearer to the girl. The soft, thick face of the woman was momentarily twitched out of drawing. "She don't guess it," she said, "but I bet you she's just hiding herself in under that for a reason." She did not add aloud what she want down the street saying to herself: "Pride's pride, and sin's sin. And I declare I don'no' which Jane Mellish is et by."

Molly looked after Mis' Burns. "She never said a word about Ellen coming home," Molly thought. "But my! how she must wish I was out of the way."

The moon was free of the locust-trees when the gate opened again, and Molly, still alone on the porch, greeted Nat Commons. This great, fine creature, president of the Katy Town School Board, bass singer in the First Church choir, was on his way to his night's work as foreman in the Katy Town Epitome composing-room. The two did not shake hands. At the other extreme of the gamut which makes hand-shaking a form lay Katy Town, where too much hand-shaking might denote that "something was meant."

Nat set one foot on the step, leaned on his knee, and looked across at her. "I come to help you make up your mind," he said.

Through Molly Mellish went a faint, delicious ripple.

All these months she had been running away, with the certainty that his step was a little way behind, patient, unhurrying. To-night it was as if, abruptly, she felt on her cheek the breath of the runner.

"How do you know my mind isn't made up now?" she asked.

"Then," Nat said, "maybe I come to help you make it over—and make it right."

He leaned on his knee, his large hands loosely clasped. His powerful young frame and his young, boyish face cut off from Molly her vision of the street, of the rest of the world. There was about him a sense of enormous capacity for work, for physical accomplishment, which drew her, as knightly powers to kill drew women once.

"You stay!" he said. "Keep the school!"

She shook her head. "I've told you how I feel," she answered.

"You can stay," he said to her. "You can stay! You stay."

"If Ellen wants the school back," said Molly, "then she's got to have it back. The Board told her she could."

"Any time inside a year," he reminded her. "Well, it's two years."

"But it took her the two years to get well!" cried Molly. "And now she wants to be here. And her mother's alone."

"Her mother's got money," Nat Commons argued. "Ellen don't need the school. You do. And that ought to decide it, because one of you is just as good a teacher as the other one."

Molly was silent. All this was true. After all, must she worry, and stint her own mother, and herself face the city with its doubtful chances, just because Ellen Burns had taken it in her head to have back the school?

With no warning at all, Nat Commons came in the dusk of the porch and stooped and laid his cheek against her cheek. "Molly," he said, "I guess you know, don't you? Do you want me?"

She turned her head toward him never so little, but it proved to be enough. It was the moment when innumerable past lines drew together.

"You stay here," he said, in a little while. "It won't be more than a year till we can go to housekeeping—the four of us. Only, till then you and I had ought to be where we can see each other. You stay here, and keep the school."

But, Molly told herself through the night, to stay there without work was impossible. To find work in Katy Town was equally impossible. Why should not Ellen Burns come back and live there quietly until the year was past, and then take back the school?—Ellen Burns, to whom the salary was not important; Ellen Burns, who had no trousseau to buy. ...

A little while after dawn she heard her mother walk through the hall. Molly dressed and went down. Jane was outside the kitchen door, standing idle in the first sun. The morning was upon her, with its pathetic sense of wide-eyed, open-handed promise. The day still hoped for everything from the world. The time was like a child running into a room where there was evil.

"Haven't you been sleeping, mother?" Molly asked.

"Not very well," Jane confessed. "What was Sarah Burns saying to you out on the porch last night?" she added.

"She wanted I should speak to you about your white-bread receipt," Molly told her. "Mother, why not let them have it?"

Jane spoke out with a passion which amazed her daughter. "Why don't Sarah Burns sell her mahogany and her silver tea-set away from Ellen?" she cried. "I 'ain't no such things for you. Everybody in town's crazy over my bread receipt. You'd be the fifth generation that's kep' it secret. I won't give it. It's all we've got. I've made up my mind."

Molly hesitated, and risked it. "If it's on my account, mother—" she said, slowly, and caught the swift look in her mother's eyes, and could not steal away her defenses—"do just as you think you ought, dear," she said only.

Jane's lips thinned and tightened. "They's no 'ought' about this," she said. "It's bigger than 'ought.' It's tradition."

Molly laughed out. "That's beautiful, mother," she said. "Tell me," she added, "did you know what Nat said to me on the porch last night, after Mis' Burns went?"

Jane's look questioned, and the girl's look answered.

"You knew what I'd say to him, didn't you, mother?" said Molly.

"I hoped I knew," Jane said. "Oh, Molly! And you'll keep the school?"

"I guess so," said Molly.

Grandma Mellish appeared in the kitchen doorway. "Jane!" she shouted, needlessly. "Is they any of your white bread old enough to toast?"

Jane frowned. "I'm going to hate the name o' my white bread," she said. "Yes—they's some in the under crock. Let's hurry breakfast," she added to Molly. "I got to be down to the Epitome office to pick the cook-book cover.

The Epitome office was up a flight of sunless stairs, and when Jane reached there toward one o'clock, only the foreman, Nat Commons, was in the composing-room. He strode down between the forms, tying on his ticking apron, and upset Jane's simple dignity by throwing his bare arms about her and kissing her.

"Molly will!" he cried, his head up as if he were singing it.

"So would I if I was Molly, Jane said, primly, and frowned to show how much she was at ease.

"And she's just about made up her mind to keep the school," he added. "Hold her up to that—Mother Mellish!"

"Hold her up to it yourself," Jane warned him, "or what's the use of being president of the Board and her husband-to-be? Show me some cook-book covers."

"The Board don't meet till a week from Saturday," he added, while he brought the paper. "She's got till then to make up her mind."

"Oh, she'll stay," Jane said. "Don't you think this brown's real tasty? And see 't you give me a nice border around my dedication. I laid awake last night and got it half wrote."

The others of the committee arriving, the cook-book took shape before their eyes. It was Nat Commons's ardent hope to give them a different tail-piece for every page, and indefatigably he brought them proofs of dolphins and torches and serpents and ram's horns.

"Land, what's this?" Mis' Arthur Port demanded. "Looks like two loaves of bread. Jane, this must be to go to the foot of your white-bread receipt, sure enough."

"That's an open book," Jane said, tartly. "What makes your jokes so heavy, Martha Port? Your own heft, mebbe."

"Well, we've all been thinking and talking about you and your bread so much since yesterday, I suppose I have got bread on the brain," Mis' Port replied, humbly.

"Must be a surprise to have somethin' on the brain," Jane offered. "Now, black ink or gold, ladies?" she wanted to know.

"Black ink," voted Mis' Arthur Port, with sudden energy. "We can't stand the expense of the gold with some folks holding back stingy on the book's insides!"

Back in her kitchen Jane Mellish turned with definite relief for the sympathy and indorsement of Grandma Mellish. The old woman was before the stove again.

"What do you think!" Jane shouted, sitting on tin wood-box beside her. "Them women can't leave me alone. They keep harping away on my bread receipt."

"Hey?" said Grandma Mellish.

Jane said this once more, her indignation a little touched with impatience.

"Hey?" said Grandma Mellish, in exactly the same tone. This was evidently one of her ways of entertainment. She had whole days w r hen it was almost impossible to communicate with her, though nothing intervened save her unvaried interrogative.

"My white bread, my bread receipt!" Jane screamed, determined on sympathy at any price. "They want to get my white bread away from me."

"Hey?" said Grandma Mellish.

But when Jane had turned from her, despairing of rapport here, the old woman relented.

"Tell 'em," she said, sharply—"tell 'em to go plumb to thunder. Tell the hull church to go plumb to thunder. Tell 'em nothin' in their book is fit to eat at a heathens' picnic. Tell 'em you wouldn't buy it for nothin' to a junk-shop. Tell 'em to go right along, plumb to thunder, afoot or ahossback—"

"There, there, there!" Jane cried, and hurried from the room.

"Hey?" said Grandma Mellish, and began all over again.

Molly found her mother with tears on her face.

"Mother!" Molly cried. "You're being miserable over that old bread. It isn't worth it!"

"You go down-town and see if you can find something for supper," Jane said only, and drew away.

"Nobody on earth understands just the way I am," Jane thought, bitterly. "Not even Molly. What do they have me make the Communion bread for, if it ain't something everybody can't do? I've a good notion to tell 'em I won't never make another loaf for 'em."

Nevertheless, on the night before Communion, two weeks later, Jane "set sponge," as usual, for her bread. It was a task in which she always delighted. She brought special pans, kept scrupulously for nothing else; she measured and weighed her flour; for years she had dissolved her yeast in the same blue cup. She moved among her ingredients like a priestess. The time bore less the flavor of a task than of a ceremony.

Nat Commons dropped in the kitchen on his way to the School Board meeting.

"I'm going to stay to it just long enough to see 'em vote to keep you in the school," he said to Molly. "Then I've got to hike for the office. We've got to get the cook-books out by Monday noon."

"I haven't said I'd take the school even if I got it," Molly reminded him.

"You will, though," Nat told her. "It 'll be in the Katy Town Epitome in the morning, and then you'll have to."

Molly went with him to the door, and in the dusk two women were entering—Mis' Tyrus Burns and Mis' Arthur Port. They went by her into the kitchen. When Nat had gone, Molly sat on the porch. The door stood open to the spring night, and she could hear the voices of the women.