Chapter Chapter 22 · Chapter III

On Saturday Ambrosch drove up to the back gate, and Ántonia jumped down

from the wagon and ran into our kitchen just as she used to do. She was

wearing shoes and stockings, and was breathless and excited. She gave

me a playful shake by the shoulders. ‘You ain’t forget about me, Jim?’

Grandmother kissed her. ‘God bless you, child! Now you’ve come, you

must try to do right and be a credit to us.’

Ántonia looked eagerly about the house and admired everything. ‘Maybe I

be the kind of girl you like better; now I come to town,’ she suggested

hopefully.

How good it was to have Ántonia near us again; to see her every day and

almost every night! Her greatest fault, Mrs. Harling found, was that

she so often stopped her work and fell to playing with the children.

She would race about the orchard with us, or take sides in our

hay-fights in the barn, or be the old bear that came down from the

mountain and carried off Nina. Tony learned English so quickly that by

the time school began she could speak as well as any of us.

I was jealous of Tony’s admiration for Charley Harling. Because he was

always first in his classes at school, and could mend the water-pipes

or the doorbell and take the clock to pieces, she seemed to think him a

sort of prince. Nothing that Charley wanted was too much trouble for

her. She loved to put up lunches for him when he went hunting, to mend

his ball-gloves and sew buttons on his shooting-coat, baked the kind of

nut-cake he liked, and fed his setter dog when he was away on trips

with his father. Ántonia had made herself cloth working-slippers out of

Mr. Harling’s old coats, and in these she went padding about after

Charley, fairly panting with eagerness to please him.

Next to Charley, I think she loved Nina best. Nina was only six, and

she was rather more complex than the other children. She was fanciful,

had all sorts of unspoken preferences, and was easily offended. At the

slightest disappointment or displeasure, her velvety brown eyes filled

with tears, and she would lift her chin and walk silently away. If we

ran after her and tried to appease her, it did no good. She walked on

unmollified. I used to think that no eyes in the world could grow so

large or hold so many tears as Nina’s. Mrs. Harling and Ántonia

invariably took her part. We were never given a chance to explain. The

charge was simply: ‘You have made Nina cry. Now, Jimmy can go home, and

Sally must get her arithmetic.’ I liked Nina, too; she was so quaint

and unexpected, and her eyes were lovely; but I often wanted to shake

her.

We had jolly evenings at the Harlings’ when the father was away. If he

was at home, the children had to go to bed early, or they came over to

my house to play. Mr. Harling not only demanded a quiet house, he

demanded all his wife’s attention. He used to take her away to their

room in the west ell, and talk over his business with her all evening.

Though we did not realize it then, Mrs. Harling was our audience when

we played, and we always looked to her for suggestions. Nothing

flattered one like her quick laugh.

Mr. Harling had a desk in his bedroom, and his own easy-chair by the

window, in which no one else ever sat. On the nights when he was at

home, I could see his shadow on the blind, and it seemed to me an

arrogant shadow. Mrs. Harling paid no heed to anyone else if he was

there. Before he went to bed she always got him a lunch of smoked

salmon or anchovies and beer. He kept an alcohol lamp in his room, and

a French coffee-pot, and his wife made coffee for him at any hour of

the night he happened to want it.

Most Black Hawk fathers had no personal habits outside their domestic

ones; they paid the bills, pushed the baby-carriage after office hours,

moved the sprinkler about over the lawn, and took the family driving on

Sunday. Mr. Harling, therefore, seemed to me autocratic and imperial in

his ways. He walked, talked, put on his gloves, shook hands, like a man

who felt that he had power. He was not tall, but he carried his head so

haughtily that he looked a commanding figure, and there was something

daring and challenging in his eyes. I used to imagine that the ‘nobles’

of whom Ántonia was always talking probably looked very much like

Christian Harling, wore caped overcoats like his, and just such a

glittering diamond upon the little finger.

Except when the father was at home, the Harling house was never quiet.

Mrs. Harling and Nina and Ántonia made as much noise as a houseful of

children, and there was usually somebody at the piano. Julia was the

only one who was held down to regular hours of practising, but they all

played. When Frances came home at noon, she played until dinner was

ready. When Sally got back from school, she sat down in her hat and

coat and drummed the plantation melodies that Negro minstrel troupes

brought to town. Even Nina played the Swedish Wedding March.

Mrs. Harling had studied the piano under a good teacher, and somehow

she managed to practise every day. I soon learned that if I were sent

over on an errand and found Mrs. Harling at the piano, I must sit down

and wait quietly until she turned to me. I can see her at this moment:

her short, square person planted firmly on the stool, her little fat

hands moving quickly and neatly over the keys, her eyes fixed on the

music with intelligent concentration.