The Graysons: A Story of Illinois
The two were left alone at intervals during the afternoon, but Mason could not summon courage to reopen the question so long closed between them. His awkward reserve reacted on Barbara, and conversation between them became difficult, neither being able to account for the mood of the other.
After a while Janet, tired with following Tom the livelong day, came into the kitchen and besought Barbara to sing "that song about Dick, you know"; and though Mason did not know who Dick might be, he thought he would rather hear Barbara sing than to go on trying to keep up a flagging conversation; so he seconded Janet's request. When Barbara had tied a broken string in the "harness" of the loom, she resumed her seat on the bench and sang while she wove.
BARBARA'S WEAVING SONGFly, shuttle, right merrily, merrily,Carry the swift-running thread;Keep time to the fancy that eagerlyWeaveth a web in my head.For Dick he will come again, come again,Dick he will come again home from afarWith musket and powder-horn,Musket and powder-horn, home from the war.Beat up the threads lustily, lustily,Weave me a web good and strong;Heart brimful and flowing with joyousnessEver is bursting with song.For Dick he will come again, etc.Warp, hold the woof lovingly, lovingly,Taking and holding it fast;Hearts bound together in unityLove with a love that will last.For Dick he will come again, come again,Dick he will come again home from afarWith musket and powder-horn,Musket and powder-horn, home from the war.By the time the ditty was ended, Mrs. Grayson was setting the supper-table by the fire-place, doing her best to honor her guest. She took down the long-handled waffle-irons and made a plate of those delicious cakes unknown since kitchen fire-places went out, and the like of which will perhaps never be known again henceforth. She got out some of the apple-butter, of which half a barrel had been made so toilsomely but the week before, and this she flanked with a dish of her peach preserves, kept sacredly for days of state. The "chaney" cups and saucers were also set out in honor of Hiram, and the almost transparent preserved peaches were eaten with country cream, from saucers thin enough to show an opalescent translucency, and decorated with a gilt band and delicate little flowers. This china, which had survived the long wagon-journey from Maryland, was not often trusted upon the table.
"My! What a nice supper we've got, Aunt Marthy!" said Janet, clapping her hands, as they took their seats at the table.
"It seems to me you're making company out of me," said Mason, in a tone of protest.
"We sha'n't have you again soon, Mason," said Tom, "and we don't often see the like of you."
The words were spontaneous, but Tom ducked his head with a half-ashamed air when he had spoken them. Barbara liked Tom's little speech: it expressed feelings that she could not venture to utter; and it had, besides, a touch of Tom's old gayety of feeling in it.
When supper was well out of the way Hiram proposed a walk with Barbara, but it did no good. They talked mechanically about what they were not thinking about, and by the time they got back to the house Mason was becoming desperate. He must leave in the morning very early, and he had made no progress; he could not bring himself to approach the subject about which Barbara seemed so loath to speak, and concerning which he dreaded a rebuff as he dreaded death.
They entered the old kitchen and found no one there; the embers were flickering in the spacious fire-place and peopling the room with grotesque shadows and dancing lights.
"Let us sit here awhile, Barbara," he said, with a strange note of entreaty in his tone, as he swung the heavy door shut and put down the wooden latch – relic of the pioneer period.
"Just as you please, Mr. Mason," answered Barbara,
"Oh! say Hiram, won't you?" He said this with a touch of impatience.
"Hiram!" said Barbara, laughing.
He led her to the loom-bench.
"Sit there on high, as you did the night you put me into a state of misery from which I haven't escaped yet. There, put your feet on the chair-rung, as you did that night."
He spoke with peremptoriness, as he placed a chair for her feet, so that she might sit with her back to the loom. Then he drew up another shuck-bottomed chair in such a way as to sit beside and yet half facing her, but lower.
"Now," he said, doggedly, "we can finish the talk we had then."
"That seems ages ago," said Barbara, dreamily; "so much has happened since."
"So long ago that you don't care to renew the subject?"
"I – " But Barbara stopped short. The feeble blaze in the fire-place suddenly went out.
Hiram did not know where to begin. He got up and took some dry chips from a basket and threw them on the slumbering coals, so as to set the flame a-going again. Then he sat down in his chair and looked up at the now silent Barbara, and tried in vain to guess her mood. But she remained silent and waited for him to take the lead.
"Do you remember what you said then?" he asked.
"No! how can I? It seems so long ago."
"You said a pack of nonsense." As he blurted out this charge Mason turned his head round obliquely, still regarding Barbara.
"Did I? That's just like me," Barbara answered, with a little laugh.
"No, it isn't like you," he replied, almost rudely. "You're the most sensible woman I ever knew, except on one subject."
"What's that?" Barbara was startled by the vehemence and abruptness of his speech, and she asked this in a half-frightened voice.
"Your pride. I looked up to you then, as I do now. You're something above me – I just worship you." To a man of maturity this sort of talk seems extravagant enough. But one must let youth paint itself as it will, with all its follies on its head. You've said sillier things than that in your time, sober reader – you know you have!
"I do just worship you, Barbara Grayson," Hiram went on; "but you talked a parcel of fool stuff that night about the superiority of my family, and about your not being able to bear it that my people should look down on you, and – well, a pack of tomfoolery; that's what it was, Barbara, and there's no use of calling it anything else."
Barbara was silent.
"Now, I'm not going to give you a chance to make any more such speeches. But I want to ask you whether, if I should send you a letter from my mother when I get home, and maybe from my sisters too, after I have told them the whole truth, urging you to accept me and become one of our family – I want to know whether, then, you would be willing; whether you'd take pity on a poor fellow who can't get along without you. Would that suit you?"
"No, it wouldn't," said Barbara, looking at the now blazing chips in the fire-place with her head bent forward.
"Well, what on earth would, then?" And Mason tilted back his chair in the nervousness of desperation and brought his eyes to a focus on her face, which was strangely illuminated in the flickering foot-lights from the hearth.
"Did I talk that way last summer?"
"Yes, you did."
"It must have hurt you. I can see it hurt you, from the way you speak about it."
"Yes," said Mason; "I've been in a sort of purgatory ever since."
"And I didn't mean to hurt your feelings. I'd rather do anything than to hurt your feelings." Here she paused, unable to proceed at once, but he waited for her to show the way. Presently she went on:
"Now, Mr. Mason, – Hiram, I mean, – I'm going to punish myself for my foolish pride. I must have felt very differently then to what I do now. The more I have seen of you the more I have – admired you." Barbara stopped and took up the hem of her apron and picked at the stitches as though she would ravel them. Then she proceeded, dropping her head lower, "Somehow I hate to say it, – but I'm going to punish myself, – the more I have seen of you the more I have —liked you. It don't matter much to me now whether your mother likes me or not, and I really don't seem to care what your sisters think about your loving a poor girl from the country."
"Hush! Don't talk that way about yourself," said Hiram. But Barbara was so intent on finishing what she had resolved to say that she did not give any heed to him, but only went on pulling and picking at the hem of her apron.
"I only want to know one thing, Mr. Mason, and that is whether you – whether you really and truly want me?" Her face blushed deeply, she caught her breath, her head bowed lower than before, as though trying in vain to escape from Hiram's steadfast gaze.
"God only knows how I do love you, Barbara," said Hiram, speaking softly now and letting his eyes rest on the floor.
"Well," said Barbara, "as good a man as you deserves to have what he wants, you know"; and here she smiled faintly. "I'll put in the dust all the wicked pride that hurts you so." And Barbara made a little gesture. Then after a moment she began again, stammeringly, "If – if you really want me, Hiram Mason, – why – then – I'll face anything rather than miss of being yours. Now will that do? And will you forgive me for keeping you in purgatory, as you call it, all this time?" There were tears in her eyes as she spoke; partly of penitence, perhaps, but more than half of happiness.
When she had finished, Mason got up and pushed his chair away and came and sat down on the loom-bench beside her, Barbara making room for him, as for the first time she lifted her eyes timidly to his.
"I've been a goose, Barbara, not to understand you before. What a woman you are!"
XXXII
THE NEXT MORNING
When Tom waked up the next morning in the gray daybreak, he found that Mason, who should have shared his room, had not come to bed at all. And when Tom came down to uncover the live coals and build up the kitchen fire, he found that the embers had not been covered under the ashes as usual; there were instead smoking sticks of wood that had newly burned in two, the ends having canted over backward outside of the andirons. The table stood in the floor set with plates and cups and saucers for two, and there were the remains of an early breakfast. There was still heat in the coffee-pot when Tom touched it, and from these signs he read the story of Barbara's betrothal to Mason; he conjectured that this interview, which was to precede a separation of many months, had been unintentionally protracted until it was near the time for Mason's departure. The débris of the farewell love-feast, eaten in the silent hour before daybreak, seemed to have associations of sentiment. Tom regarded these things and was touched and pleased, but he was also amused. This sitting the night out seemed an odd freak for a couple so tremendously serious and proper as the little sister and the schoolmaster.
An hour later, when Tom, having finished his chores, came in for his breakfast, Barbara had reappeared below stairs with an expression of countenance so demure – so entirely innocent and unconscious – that Tom could not long keep his gravity; before he had fairly begun to eat he broke into a merry, boyish laugh.
"What are you laughing about?" demanded Barbara, looking a little foolish and manifesting a rising irritation, that showed how well she knew the cause of his amusement.
"Oh! nothing; but why don't you eat your breakfast, Barb? You seem to have lost your appetite."
"Don't tease Barb'ry now," said Mrs. Grayson.
"I'm not teasing," said Tom; "but I declare, Barb, it must have seemed just like going to housekeeping when you two sat down to eat breakfast by yourselves this morning."
"O Tom!" broke in Janet, who couldn't quite catch the drift of the conversation, "Barbara went to bed with her clothes on last night. When I waked up this morning she was lying on the bed by me with her dress on."
Tom now laughed in his old unrestrained fashion.
"Say, Barbara," Janet went on, "are you going to marry that Mr. Mason that was here yesterday?"
Knowing that she could not get rid of Janet's inquiries except by answering, Barbara said: "Oh, I suppose so," as she got up to set the pot of coffee back on the trivet and hide a vexation that she knew to be foolish.
"Don't you know whether you're going to marry him or not?" put in Janet. "I sh'd think you'd know. And I sh'd think he'd be a real nice husband." Then after a few moments of silence, Janet turned on Tom. "Tom, who's your sweetheart?"
"Haven't got any," said Tom.
"Isn't that purty girl that was here yesterday your sweetheart?"
"No!"
"Aren't you ever going to get married?"
"Maybe, some day. Not right off, though."
"I wish you would find a good wife, Tom," said Barbara without looking from her plate. "It would cheer you up." Barbara felt a little guilty at the thought of leaving the brother who had always seemed her chief responsibility.
"Say, Tom, won't you wait for me?" said Janet, solemnly.
"Yes, that's just what I'll do," said Tom, looking at her. "I hadn't thought of it before; but that's just exactly what I'll do, Janet. I'll wait for you, now you mention it."
"Will you, indeed, and double deed?"
"Yes, indeed, and deed and double deed, I'll wait for you, Janet."
"That'll be nice," said Janet, continuing her breakfast with meditative seriousness. "Now I'm your sweetheart, ain't I?"
XXXIII
POSTSCRIPTUM
It was in the last days of October, a few weeks after the proper close of the story which I have just related, when Henry Miller – the most matter-of-fact and unsensational of young men – threw his family into a state of excitement and supplied the gossip of the neighborhood with a fresh topic by announcing at home and abroad that he was going to leave the country, either for the Iowa country to the west of the Mississippi or for the fertile bottom-lands up north on the "Wisconse" River, as it was called. He was the only son of his father, and had inherited the steady, plodding industry and frugality so characteristic of a "Pennsylvania Dutch" race. Until he was of age he was bound, not only by law, but by the custom of the country, to serve his father much as a bondsman or an apprentice might have served, for an able-bodied son was distinctly recognized as an available and productive possession in that day. When he became of age his close-fisted father made no new arrangement with him, offered him no start, paid him no wages, and gave him no share in the produce of the fields. It was enough, in the father's estimation, that Henry would succeed to a large part of the property at his death. But Henry, on mature reflection, had made up his mind that emigration would be better than a reversionary interest that must be postponed to the death of so robust a man as his father, who was yet in middle-life and who came of a stock remarkable for longevity. Was not his grandfather yet alive in Pennsylvania, while his great-grandfather had not been dead many years? It was after calculating the "expectation of life" in the Miller family that Henry notified his father of his intention to go where land was cheap and open a large farm for himself. In vain the father urged that he could not get on without him, and that there would be no one to look after things if the father should die. Henry persisted that he must do something for himself and that his father would have to hire a man, for he should surely leave as soon as the crops were gathered, so as to get land enough open in some frontier country to afford him a small crop of corn the first year.
Henry's mother and sisters were even more opposed to his going than his father was, and they did not hesitate to blame the senior Miller with great severity for not having "done something" for Henry. Henry's father had never before known how unpleasant a man's home may come to be. He was reminded that Henry had not an acre, nor even a colt, that he could call his own, and that other farmers had done better than that. This state of siege became presently quite intolerable, and the elder Miller resolved not only "to do something" for Henry, but to do it in such a way that his son would begin life very well provided for. He wanted to silence the clamor of the house and the neighborhood once for all, and prove to his critics how much they were mistaken.
It was about a week after Henry's first resolution was taken that he and his father were finishing the corn-gathering. They were throwing the unshucked ears into a great wagon of the Pennsylvania pattern – a wagon painted blue, the "bed" of which rose in a great sweep at each end as though some reminiscence of the antique forms of marine architecture had affected its construction. When all the corn within easy throwing distance had been gathered, Henry, who was on the near side, would slip the reins from the standard over the fore wheel and drive forward the horses, which even in moving bit off the ends of corn ears or nibbled at the greenest-looking blades within their reach.
"Let's put on the sideboards," said the elder, "and we can finish the field this load." Though Miller's ancestors had come to this country with the Palatine immigration, away back in 1710, there was a little bit of German in his accent; he said something like "gorn" for corn. The sideboards were put up, and these were so adjusted that when they were on the wagon the inclosing sides were rendered level at the top and capable of holding nearly double the load contained without the boards.
"Henry," said the father, when the two were picking near together and throwing corn over the tail-gate of the wagon, "if you give up goin' away an' git married right off, an' settle toun here, I'm a-mine to teed you that east eighty an' a forty of timber. Eh?"
"That's purty good," said Henry; "but if your deed waits till I find a wife, it may be a good while coming."
"That eighty lays 'longside of Albaugh's medder an' lower gorn-field," said the father, significantly.
"You mean if I was to marry Rache, Albaugh might give us another slice."
"Of gourse he would; an' I'd help you put up a house, an' maybe I'd let you hav' the roan golt. You'd hav' the red heifer anyhow."
"But I never took a shine to Rache; and if I did, I couldn't noways come in. They's too many knocking at that door."
"But Rachel ain't no vool," said the elder. "She knows a good piece of lant w'en she sees it, an' maybe she's got enough of voolin' rount."
All that afternoon Henry revolved this proposition in his mind, and he even did what he had never done before in his life – he lay awake at night. The next day, after the midday dinner, he said to himself: "I might as well resk it. Albaugh's got an all-fired good place, and all out of debt. And that's a tre-mendous nice eighty father's offered to give me."
So he went up stairs and put on a new suit of blue jeans fresh from his mother's loom. Then he walked over to Albaugh's, to find Rachel sewing on the front porch.
Rachel had been "kindah dauncey like," as her mother expressed it, ever since her visit to Barbara. She had received as many attentions as usual, but they seemed flat and unrelishable to her now. She began seriously to reflect that a girl past twenty-three was growing old in the estimation of the country, and yet she was further than ever from being able to make a choice between the lovers that paid her court, more or less seriously.
When she looked up and saw Henry Miller coming in at the gate she felt a strange surprise. She had never before seen him in Sunday clothes or visiting on a week-day.
"Hello, Henry! Looking for Ike?" she asked, with neighborly friendliness.
"No, not as I know of. I've come to talk to you, Rache."
"To me? Well, you're the last one I'd look for to come to talk to me; and in day-time, and corn-shucking not begun yet." There was an air of excited curiosity in her manner. It was plain to be seen that she was inwardly asking, "What can Henry Miller be up to, anyhow?" but to him she said, "Come in, Henry, an' take a cheer."
"No, I'll sed down here," he answered, taking a seat on the edge of the porch, like the outdoor man that he was, approaching a house with half reluctance.
The relations between Henry and Rachel were unconstrained. They had played "hide and whoop" together in childhood, and times innumerable they had gone on black-berrying and other excursions together; he had swung her on long grape-vine swings on the hill-side; they had trudged to and from school in each other's company, exchanging sweet-cakes from their lunch-baskets, and yet they had never been lovers.
"Rache," he said, locking his broad, brown hands over his knee, "father says he'll give me that east-eighty whenever I get married, if I won't go off West."
"You'll be a good while getting married, Henry. You never was a hand to go after the girls."
"No, but I might chance to get married shortly, for all that. The boys that do a good deal of sparking and the girls that have a lot of beaux don't always get married first. You'd ought to know that, Rache, by your own experience."
Rachel laughed good-naturedly, and waited with curiosity to discover what all this was leading up to.
"What I 'm thinking," said Henry, with the air of a man approaching a horse-trade cautiously, lest he should make a false step, "is this: that eighty of our'n jines onto your medder and west corn-field."
"Do you want to sell it?" said Rachel. "You might see father; he'd like to have it, I expect."
"Can't you guess what it is that I'm coming at?"
"No, I can't," said Rachel; "not to save my life."
"Looky here, Rache," and Henry gave his shoulders a twitch, "the two farms jine; now, what if you and me was to jine?"
"Well, Henry Miller, if you don't beat the Dutch! I never heard the like of that in all my born days!" Rachel had heard many propositions of marriage, but this sort of love-making, with eighty acres of prairie land for a buffer, was a novelty to her.
"Looky here, Rache," he said, in a tone of protest, "I've knew you ever since you was knee-high to a grasshopper. Now, what's the use of fooling and nonsense betwixt you and me? You know what I am – a good, stiddy-going, hard-working farmer, shore to get my sheer of what's to be had in the world without scrouging anybody else. And I know just exactly what you air. We've always got along mighty well together, and if I haven't ever made a fool of myself about your face, w'y, so much the better for me. Now, whaddy yeh say? Let's make it a bargain."
"W'y, Henry Miller, what a way of talking!"
"Rache, come, go along with me and see where'bouts I'm going to put up a house. Father's promised to help me. It's down by the spring, just beyand your medder fence. Will you go along down?"
"Well, I don't care if I do go down with you, Henry. But it's awful funny to come to such a subject in that way."
Rachel put on her sun-bonnet, and they went through the orchard together.
"We could put up a nice house there. Father's willing to throw in a forty of timber too – the forty that jines onto this eighty over yander. We'd be well fixed up to begin, no matter what your father done or didn't do for us. Whaddy you think of the plan?"
"You – you haven't said you loved me, or anything," said Rachel, piqued at having her charms quite left out of the account. But she could not hide from herself that Henry's proposition had substantial advantages. She only added, "What a curious man you are!"
"Don't you believe I'd make a good husband?"
"Yes, of course you would."
"And a good provider?"
"Yes, I'm shore of that."
"Well, now, I'm not going to pretend I'm soft on you. If you say 'No,' well and good; there's an end. I sha'n't worry myself into consumption. You've got a right to do as you please. I'm not going to have folks say that I'm another of the fools that's broke their hearts over Rache Albaugh. Once you're mine, I'll set my heart on you fast enough. But I never set my heart on anything I mightn't be able to get."
Rachel did not say anything to this bit of philosophy. She had in the last two weeks recognized the advisability of her getting married as soon as she could settle herself. But on taking an inventory of her present stock of beaux, she had mentally rejected them all. They were prospectively an unprosperous lot, and Rachel was too mature to marry adversity for the sake of sentiment. She found herself able to listen to Henry Miller's cool-blooded proposition with rather more tolerance than she felt when hearing the kind of love-talk she had been used to. Why not get her father to do as well by her as the Millers would by Henry, or to do better, seeing he was the richer and had but two children? Then they might begin life with plenty of acres and a good stock of butter cows.
