Bound to Rise
"Sit up to the table, children, breakfast's ready." The speaker was a woman of middle age, not good-looking in the ordinary acceptation of the term, but nevertheless she looked good. She was dressed with extreme plainness, in a cheap calico; but though cheap, the dress was neat. The children she addressed were six in number, varying in age from twelve to four. The oldest, Harry, the hero of the present story, was a broad-shouldered, sturdy boy, with a frank, open face, resolute, though good-natured. "Father isn't here," said Fanny, the second child. "He'll be in directly. He went to the store, and he may stop as he comes back to milk." The table was set in the center of the room, covered with a coarse tablecloth. The breakfast provided was hardly of a kind to tempt an epicure. There was a loaf of bread cut into slices, and a dish of boiled potatoes. There was no butter and no meat, for the family were very poor.
I had never seen Eugene angry. He hummed songs all day long. In the
evening he used to come back from the fields sitting sideways on one of
the oxen, and he nearly always sang the same song. It was the story of
a soldier, who went back to the war after he had learned that the girl
he had been engaged to marry had married another man. He used to dwell
on the refrain, which finished like this--
And when a bullet comes and takes
Away my precious life,
You'll know I died because you were
Another fellow's wife.[1]
Pauline always used to treat Eugene with much respect. She could never
understand my freedom with him. The first evening that she saw me
sitting next to him on the bench outside the door she made signs to me
to come in. But Eugene called me back, saying, "Come and listen to the
wood owl." We often used to be sitting on the bench, still, when
everybody had gone to bed. The wood owl came quite near to an old elm
tree which was by the door, and we used to think that it was saying
"good night" to us. Then it would fly away, its great wings passing
over us in silence. Sometimes a voice would sing on the hillside. I
used to tremble when I heard it. The full voice coming out of the
night reminded me of Colette. Eugene would get up to go in when the
voice stopped singing, but I always used to stop, hoping to hear it
again. Then he would say, "Come along in: it is all over."
"Sit up to the table, children, breakfast's ready." The speaker was a woman of middle age, not good-looking in the ordinary acceptation of the term, but nevertheless she looked good. She was dressed with extreme plainness, in a cheap calico; but though cheap, the dress was neat. The children she addressed were six in number, varying in age from twelve to four. The oldest, Harry, the hero of the present story, was a broad-shouldered, sturdy boy, with a frank, open face, resolute, though good-natured. "Father isn't here," said Fanny, the second child. "He'll be in directly. He went to the store, and he may stop as he comes back to milk." The table was set in the center of the room, covered with a coarse tablecloth. The breakfast provided was hardly of a kind to tempt an epicure. There was a loaf of bread cut into slices, and a dish of boiled potatoes. There was no butter and no meat, for the family were very poor.