The Making of Americans, Being a History of a Family's Progress (8 page)

     His wife called to him. He sighed and she came to him. “Don't you want to be going David,” she said to him. “If you don't really want to be going you've just got to say David what you want to be doing. I'll never be a woman to make you do anything you are not really wanting. You just say David what it is you are really wanting. I'll do it if you want me really badly to do it. You know I never want you not to do everything just like you really need it. The children, they are all waiting there just for you to say it. David I say you just say it what you want and I do it.” He sighed and he looked a little sullen.
     “Of course Martha you know I do what I got to do for you and the children. You know I always do what is right for me to do for you and the children. I don't ever think what I am needing, I only just want to do the best I can for you and the children. Can't you see Martha I just came back here to see it. That ain't got nothing to do with what I made up my mind was the right way to do it. I just came here to see I don't forget it. Yes I come now Martha. Sure I always will do it what is right for me to do so you and the children can have it. I never do any other way in it. I go on with you now I got another look to see I don't forget it. I just stopped here to see it. Its just I wanted to see what way it looked so I would get it right not to forget it. Alright Martha I come, you go on, I be with you in a minute. I just look to see I got it fixed right so I don't forget it. Alright Martha I come now. I got it fixed now I can't forget it. Alright we go on now I done what I needed. I came back just to do it. Now we go on to the children and we go on to do it like we said we would do it.” And he sighed and he got up and he looked back as he went away from it and she talked about how much the children were going to like it and he began to forget it.
     All, the wagon and the driver and the horses and the children, had waited for them to come up to it. Now they went on again, slowly and creaking, as is the way always when a whole family do it. Moving through a country is never done very quickly when a whole family do it.
     They had not gone very far yet. They had not been going many hours. They were all having now just coming in them their first tired, the first hot sense of being very tired. This is the hardest time in a day's walking to press through and get over being tired until it comes to the last tired, that last dead tired sense that is so tired. Then you cannot press through to a new strength and to get another tired, you just keep on, that is you keep on when you have learned how you can do it, then you just get hardened to it and know there is no pressing through it, there is no way to win out beyond it, it is just a dreary dull dead tired, and you must learn to know it, and it is always and you must learn to bear it, the dull drag of being almost dead with being tired.
     In between these first and last are many little times of tired, many ways of being very tired, but never any like the first hot tired when you begin to learn how to press through it and never any like the last dead tired with no beyond ever to it.
     It was this first hot tired they all had in them now just in its beginning, and they were all in their various ways trying to press themselves to go through it, and they were mostly very good about it and not impatient or complaining. They were all now beginning with the dull tired sense of hot trudging when every step has its conscious meaning and all the movement is as if one were lifting each muscle and every part of the skin as a separate action. All the springiness had left them, it was a weary conscious moving the way it always is before one presses through it to the time of steady walking that comes when one does not any longer do it with a conscious sense with each movement. It is not until one has settled to it, the steady walk where one is not conscious of the movement, that you have become really strong to do it, and the whole family were now just coming to it, they were just pressing through their first hot tired.
     And now once more the father had done it. The father was no longer with them, once more he had slipped back and they had lost him.
     The mother said to the children. “Well you go on, I go back to get him.” She felt no anger in her toward him. She just went patiently back to find him.
     She told the children to keep on slowly as they were going and she would go back and find him. She walked back looking patiently everywhere for him. She found him before she had gotten back to where she had the last time found him. He had not gotten back yet to where be could see all he was going to leave behind him. She had walked faster than he and had caught him.
     She had no impatient feeling in her against him. It was a way he had, she knew it, it was right for him to have it, the kind of a feeling he had about leaving. It was a way he had, she was not impatient with him, he was right to have that kind of a feeling in him. It was right for him to act that way to see about not forgetting. It was only that she knew he would like it and it would be so good for the children that made her want to urge him not to give up now they had made their beginning.
     But she was not in any way impatient to him, she had no impatient feeling in her against him. It was just his way and now she would coax him and he would come back with her to the wagon. It was only a way he always had had whenever he had to do a new thing. And so she walked a little with him and began to talk about the children and how nice it would be when they would all get rich and how the children would like it to work and help him, and they sat down and after they had been resting, when they got up again she did not do any discussing, she just started him back toward the wagon, and always she was telling about how good he was to do what was best for her and the children. Soon they came up with the wagon which was still very slowly moving.
     It was so hot doing so much walking, she said then to him, he looked a little sick, she thought he ought not to do any more walking, perhaps it would be better if he would get into the wagon and ride a little with the little children. It would be awful if he got sick and nobody to take care of them for he was the only one that could do their talking. And so she coaxed him into the wagon with the children.
     They went on and soon it was too far, there was not now any more going back for him. And then he was content, and he had the new city and the ship, and then he was content with the new world around him.
     They had, for a little while, a hard time beginning, but on the whole things went very well with them. The sons made money for them, the daughters worked and then got married to men whom they found making money around them. Some did very well then and some not so well, and they all had their troubles as all people have them, and some died, and some lived and were prosperous and had children. One as I was saying died a glutton and spoiling him was the one weak thing the strong mother did to harm any of them.
     The old man never made much of a fortune but with the help his children gave him he lived very well and when he died he left his wife a nice little fortune. She lived long and was strong to the last and firmly supporting and her back was straight and firm and always she was like a great mountain, and always she was directing and leading all whom she found needing directing.
     She was then very old, and always well, and always working, and then she had a stroke, and then another, and then she died and that was the end of that generation.
     There had been born to Martha and David Hersland many sons and daughters. All who lived to be grown up had gotten married and almost all of these were prosperous. One, the glutton, died and left his wife and children to his brothers, he had not made enough money to leave them provided, and his brothers each one in their turn gave the money to support them.
     Of the daughters two of them were well married. The third one always lived with her husband but it was her brothers who kept her dressed and gave her children education and then later in their life started them out in their working.
     On the whole it was a substantial progress the family had made in wealth, in opportunity, in education, in following out the mother's leading to come to the new world to find for themselves each one a sufficient fortune.
     In all of them the father and the mother were variously mixed to make them, but mostly it was the mother who was strongest in them. Some, like the glutton, had in certain ways the important feeling in them that the father had had in religion. Some, like the daughter who had not made much of a success in marrying, had his way of not being very good at keeping on even after they had made the beginning, but mostly all of them had the strength and solid power in them that the mother had it in her to give to all of them. Most of them began and kept on well after they had made a beginning. And so they were mostly very successful in the business of living.
     In every one of them the father and mother were very variously mixed up in them. The fourth son, David Hersland, one of the fathers we must soon be realising so that we can understand our own being, was the only one of all of them who had gone to the far west to make his fortune. It is a little hard to see just how the mixture of this father and this mother came to make him. He was in some ways, as I was saying, a very splendid kind of person. He was big and abundant and full of new ways of thinking, and this was all his mother in him, but he had not her patient steadfast working. He was irritable and impatient and uncertain and not always very strong at keeping going, though always he was abundant and forceful and joyous and determined and always powerful in starting. And then too he was in his way important inside to him as his father had been when he felt his religion in him. But all this will show more and more in him as I tell you slowly the history of him.
     He had gone as a young man to Gossols to make his fortune. This was the new world in a new world and it took this newest part of this new world to content him. He alone of all the brothers had this restless feeling in him. All the others did very well where the mother had brought them. He alone had needed to go farther to find for himself his life and a sufficient fortune.
     As I was saying he had brought his wife to Gossols with him. He had married her in Bridgepoint where one of his sisters had settled with her man who made there a very good living. At this time David though he was quite a young man had already made enough money to support him and a wife and children. This he had done before he had thought to go to Gossols where he was to make his great fortune. And so it was right for his sister at this time to be anxious to arrange a marriage for him. Now the idea of going to the far west was just beginning to work in him. Perhaps marrying might keep him with them, anyway it would be good for him to have a good wife to go to Gossols with him, and so he met little Fanny Hissen. It was arranged by his sister that this young woman should be married to him.
     Fanny Hersland all her life was a sweet gentle little woman. Not that she did not have a fierce little temper sometimes in her and one that could be very stubborn, but mostly she was a sweet little gentle mother woman and only would be hurt, not angry, when any bad thing happened to them.
     Her mother was one of those four good foreign women the grandmothers, always old women or as little children to us the generation of grandchildren. These four good foreign women, the grandmothers we need only to be just remembering, had each one a different kind of a foreign man to be a master to them. These four foreign women, the one strong to bear many children and then always after strong to lead them, the steady good one who was patient to bear her many children and then always was patient to suffer with them, the sweet pure one who died as soon as she had born all of them for that was all she knew then to do for them, and the little gentle weeping hopeless one who sorrowed in her having them and always after sorrowed in them, all these four foreign women had very many and very different kinds of children.
     The gentle little hopeless one who wept out all the sorrow for her children had many and very little children. She was the mother of the pretty gentle little woman that David Hersland married in Bridgepoint and took out to Gossols with him.
     The little weary weeping mother of all these gentle cheery little children had a foreign husband who was not very pleasant to his children. He too was little like his wife and like all his children but there was a great deal in him to cause terror to his wife and children. He was like old David Hersland important in religion. It was very deep inside him and with him it was much harder on his children. His wife too had sorrow in religion, she had sorrow from his being so important in religion and she had sorrow too from her own self in her own religion. But then it was all sorrow and sadness, and always a trickling kind of weeping that she had every moment in her living, and it really was not much worse in religion. It was just a way she had, this trickling weeping, even as when it sometimes did happen she was laughing. She never ever really stopped her sad trickling, to her joy was as it has been said of laughing, it is madness, and of mirth who doeth it, for even in laughter the heart is sorrowful and the end of that mirth is heaviness. It was in her as it was said by the quaker woman. I often think if I could be so fixed as never to laugh or to smile I should be one step better, it fills me with sorrow when I see people so full of laugh.
     It was a hard father and a dreary mother that gave the world so many and such pleasant little children. Mostly they were cheerful little children. Perhaps it was that the mother had wept out all the sorrow for them. There was no weeping that she had left over to them. They were mostly all in their later living cheerful hopeful gentle little men and women. They lived without ambition or excitement but they were each in their little circle joyful in the present. They lived and died in mildness and contentment.
     It was one of these cheerful gentle little Hissen people that David Hersland married there in Bridgepoint and then took to Gossols with him. And now he with all the mixed up father and strong mother in him and this little gentle cheerful pretty little woman who yet had a fierce little temper that could be very stubborn were to come together and make a life together and to mix up well and then to have many different kinds of children through her.