Three Lives: Stories of The Good Anna, Melanctha and The Gentle Lena — John Shaqi
Three Lives: Stories of The Good Anna, Melanctha and The Gentle LenaStein, Gertrude
General
Three Lives: Stories of The Good Anna, Melanctha and The Gentle Lena
Stein, Gertrude
Working class women -- Fiction
Many times during the preparations for this summer, Jane had met Anna
with sharp resistance, in opposition to her ways. It was simple for
little Jane to give unpleasant orders, not from herself but from Miss
Mary, large, docile, helpless Miss Mary Wadsmith who could never think
out any orders to give Anna from herself.
Anna's eyes grew slowly sharper, harder, and her lower teeth thrust a
little forward and pressing strongly up, framed always more slowly the
"Yes, Miss Jane," to the quick, "Oh Anna! Miss Mary says she wants you
to do it so!"
On the day of their migration, Miss Mary had been already put into the
carriage. "Oh, Anna!" cried little Jane running back into the house,
"Miss Mary says that you are to bring along the blue dressings out of
her room and mine." Anna's body stiffened, "We never use them in the
summer, Miss Jane," she said thickly. "Yes Anna, but Miss Mary thinks
it would be nice, and she told me to tell you not to forget, good-by!"
and the little girl skipped lightly down the steps into the carriage
and they drove away.
Anna stood still on the steps, her eyes hard and sharp and shining,
and her body and her face stiff with resentment. And then she went
into the house, giving the door a shattering slam.
Anna was very hard to live with in those next three days. Even Baby,
the new puppy, the pride of Anna's heart, a present from her friend
the widow, Mrs. Lehntman--even this pretty little black and tan felt
the heat of Anna's scorching flame. And Edgar, who had looked forward
to these days, to be for him filled full of freedom and of things to
eat--he could not rest a moment in Anna's bitter sight.
On the third day, Anna and Edgar went to the Wadsmith country home.
The blue dressings out of the two rooms remained behind.
All the way, Edgar sat in front with the colored man and drove. It was
an early spring day in the South. The fields and woods were heavy from
the soaking rains. The horses dragged the carriage slowly over the
long road, sticky with brown clay and rough with masses of stones
thrown here and there to be broken and trodden into place by passing
teams. Over and through the soaking earth was the feathery new spring
growth of little flowers, of young leaves and of ferns. The tree tops
were all bright with reds and yellows, with brilliant gleaming whites
and gorgeous greens. All the lower air was full of the damp haze
rising from heavy soaking water on the earth, mingled with a warm and
pleasant smell from the blue smoke of the spring fires in all the open
fields. And above all this was the clear, upper air, and the songs of
birds and the joy of sunshine and of lengthening days.
The languor and the stir, the warmth and weight and the strong feel
of life from the deep centres of the earth that comes always with the
early, soaking spring, when it is not answered with an active fervent
joy, gives always anger, irritation and unrest.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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