My Antonia, Page 40

  I

  TWO YEARS AFTER I left Lincoln, I completed my academic course atHarvard. Before I entered the Law School I went home for the summervacation. On the night of my arrival, Mrs. Harling and Frances andSally came over to greet me. Everything seemed just as it used to be. Mygrandparents looked very little older. Frances Harling was married now,and she and her husband managed the Harling interests in Black Hawk.When we gathered in grandmother's parlour, I could hardly believe that Ihad been away at all. One subject, however, we avoided all evening.

  When I was walking home with Frances, after we had left Mrs. Harling ather gate, she said simply, 'You know, of course, about poor Antonia.'

  Poor Antonia! Everyone would be saying that now, I thought bitterly. Ireplied that grandmother had written me how Antonia went away to marryLarry Donovan at some place where he was working; that he had desertedher, and that there was now a baby. This was all I knew.

  'He never married her,' Frances said. 'I haven't seen her since she cameback. She lives at home, on the farm, and almost never comes to town.She brought the baby in to show it to mama once. I'm afraid she'ssettled down to be Ambrosch's drudge for good.'

  I tried to shut Antonia out of my mind. I was bitterly disappointed inher. I could not forgive her for becoming an object of pity, whileLena Lingard, for whom people had always foretold trouble, was now theleading dressmaker of Lincoln, much respected in Black Hawk. Lena gaveher heart away when she felt like it, but she kept her head for herbusiness and had got on in the world.

  Just then it was the fashion to speak indulgently of Lena and severelyof Tiny Soderball, who had quietly gone West to try her fortune the yearbefore. A Black Hawk boy, just back from Seattle, brought the news thatTiny had not gone to the coast on a venture, as she had allowed peopleto think, but with very definite plans. One of the roving promotersthat used to stop at Mrs. Gardener's hotel owned idle property along thewaterfront in Seattle, and he had offered to set Tiny up in businessin one of his empty buildings. She was now conducting a sailors'lodging-house. This, everyone said, would be the end of Tiny. Even ifshe had begun by running a decent place, she couldn't keep it up; allsailors' boarding-houses were alike.

  When I thought about it, I discovered that I had never known Tiny aswell as I knew the other girls. I remembered her tripping briskly aboutthe dining-room on her high heels, carrying a big trayful of dishes,glancing rather pertly at the spruce travelling men, and contemptuouslyat the scrubby ones--who were so afraid of her that they didn't dareto ask for two kinds of pie. Now it occurred to me that perhaps thesailors, too, might be afraid of Tiny. How astonished we should havebeen, as we sat talking about her on Frances Harling's front porch, ifwe could have known what her future was really to be! Of all the girlsand boys who grew up together in Black Hawk, Tiny Soderball was to leadthe most adventurous life and to achieve the most solid worldly success.

  This is what actually happened to Tiny: While she was running herlodging-house in Seattle, gold was discovered in Alaska. Miners andsailors came back from the North with wonderful stories and pouches ofgold. Tiny saw it and weighed it in her hands. That daring, which nobodyhad ever suspected in her, awoke. She sold her business and set outfor Circle City, in company with a carpenter and his wife whom she hadpersuaded to go along with her. They reached Skaguay in a snowstorm,went in dog-sledges over the Chilkoot Pass, and shot the Yukon inflatboats. They reached Circle City on the very day when some SiwashIndians came into the settlement with the report that there had been arich gold strike farther up the river, on a certain Klondike Creek.Two days later Tiny and her friends, and nearly everyone else in CircleCity, started for the Klondike fields on the last steamer that wentup the Yukon before it froze for the winter. That boatload of peoplefounded Dawson City. Within a few weeks there were fifteen hundredhomeless men in camp. Tiny and the carpenter's wife began to cook forthem, in a tent. The miners gave her a building lot, and the carpenterput up a log hotel for her. There she sometimes fed a hundred and fiftymen a day. Miners came in on snowshoes from their placer claims twentymiles away to buy fresh bread from her, and paid for it in gold.

  That winter Tiny kept in her hotel a Swede whose legs had been frozenone night in a storm when he was trying to find his way back to hiscabin. The poor fellow thought it great good fortune to be cared for bya woman, and a woman who spoke his own tongue. When he was told thathis feet must be amputated, he said he hoped he would not get well; whatcould a working-man do in this hard world without feet? He did, in fact,die from the operation, but not before he had deeded Tiny Soderball hisclaim on Hunker Creek. Tiny sold her hotel, invested half her money inDawson building lots, and with the rest she developed her claim. Shewent off into the wilds and lived on the claim. She bought other claimsfrom discouraged miners, traded or sold them on percentages.

  After nearly ten years in the Klondike, Tiny returned, with aconsiderable fortune, to live in San Francisco. I met her in Salt LakeCity in 1908. She was a thin, hard-faced woman, very well-dressed, veryreserved in manner. Curiously enough, she reminded me of Mrs. Gardener,for whom she had worked in Black Hawk so long ago. She told me aboutsome of the desperate chances she had taken in the gold country, but thethrill of them was quite gone. She said frankly that nothing interestedher much now but making money. The only two human beings of whom shespoke with any feeling were the Swede, Johnson, who had given her hisclaim, and Lena Lingard. She had persuaded Lena to come to San Franciscoand go into business there.

  'Lincoln was never any place for her,' Tiny remarked. 'In a town of thatsize Lena would always be gossiped about. Frisco's the right fieldfor her. She has a fine class of trade. Oh, she's just the same asshe always was! She's careless, but she's level-headed. She's the onlyperson I know who never gets any older. It's fine for me to have herthere; somebody who enjoys things like that. She keeps an eye on me andwon't let me be shabby. When she thinks I need a new dress, she makes itand sends it home with a bill that's long enough, I can tell you!'

  Tiny limped slightly when she walked. The claim on Hunker Creek tooktoll from its possessors. Tiny had been caught in a sudden turn ofweather, like poor Johnson. She lost three toes from one of those prettylittle feet that used to trip about Black Hawk in pointed slippers andstriped stockings. Tiny mentioned this mutilation quite casually--didn'tseem sensitive about it. She was satisfied with her success, but notelated. She was like someone in whom the faculty of becoming interestedis worn out.