PAGE 19
Neighbour Rosicky
by
Rosicky motioned her to sit down on the chair where the tea-kettle had been, and looked up at her with that lively affectionate gleam in his eyes.”You was awful good to me, I won’t never forgit dat. I hate it to be sick on you like dis. Down at de barn I say to myself, dat young girl ain’t had much experience in sickness, I don’t want to scare her, an’ maybe she’s got a baby comin’ or somet’ing.”
Polly took his hand. He was looking at her so intently and affectionately and confidingly; his eyes seemed to caress her face, to regard it with pleasure. She frowned with her funny streaks of eyebrows, and them smiled back at him.
”I guess maybe there is something of that kind going to happen. But I haven’t told anyone yet, not my mother or Rudolph. You’ll be the first to know.”
His hand pressed hers. She noticed that it was warm again. The twinkle in his yellow-brown eyes seemed to come nearer.
“I like mighty well to see dat little child, Polly,” was all he said. The he closed his eyes and lay half-smiling. But Polly sat still, thinking hard. She had a sudden feeling that nobody in the world, not her mother, not Rudolph, or anyone, really loved her as much as old Rosicky did. It perplexed her. She sat frowning and trying to puzzle it out. It was as if Rosicky had a special gift for loving people, something that was like an ear for music or an eye for colour. It was quiet, unobtrusive; it was merely there. You saw it in his eye,- perhaps that was why they were merry. You felt it in his hands, too. After he dropped off to sleep, she sat holding his warm, broad, flexible brown hand. She had never seen another in the least like it. She wondered if it wasn’t a kind of gipsy hand, it was so alive and quick and light in its communications,- very strange in a farmer. Nearly all the farmers she knew had huge lumps of fist, like mauls, or they were knotty and bony and uncomfortable-looking, with stiff fingers. But Rosicky’s was like quicksilver, flexible, muscular, about the colour of a pale cigar, with deep, deep creases across the palm. It wasn’t nervous, it wasn’t a stupid, lump; it was a warm brown human hand, with some cleverness in it, a great deal of generosity, and something else which Polly could only call “gypsy-like”- something nimble and lively and sure, in the way that animals are.
Polly remembered that hour long afterwards; it had been like an awakening to her. It seemed to her that she had never learned so much about life from anything as from old Rosicky’s hand. It brought her to herself; it communicated some direc
t and untranslatable message.
When she heard Rudolph coming in the car, she ran out to meet him.
“Oh, Rudy, your father’s been awful sick! He raked up those thistles he’s been worrying about, and afterward he could hardly get to the house. He suffered so I was afraid he was going to die.”
Rudolph jumped to the ground.”Where is he now?”
“On the bed. He’s asleep. I was terribly scared, because, you know, I’m so fond of your father.” She slipped her arm through his and they went into the house. That afternoon they took Rosicky home and put him to bed, though he protested that he was quite well again.
The next morning he got up and dressed and sat down to breakfast with his family. He told Mary that his coffee tasted better than usual to him, and he warned the boys not to bear any tales to Doctor Ed when he got home. After breakfast he sat down by his window to do some patching and asked Mary to thread several needles for him before she went to feed her chickens,- her eyes were better than his, and her hands steadier. He lit his pipe and took up John’s overalls. Mary had been watching him anxiously all morning, and as she went out of the door with her bucket of scraps, she saw that he was smiling. He was thinking, indeed, about Polly, and how he might never have known what a tender heart she had if he hadn’t got sick over there. Girls nowadays didn’t wear their heart on their sleeve. But now he knew Polly would make a fine woman after the foolishness wore off. Either a woman had that sweetness at her heart or she hadn’t. You couldn’t always tell by the look of them; but if they had that, everything came out right in the end.