A FAREWELL.
Mrs. Anderson felt that she had made a mistake. She had not meant to
tell Julia that August was to leave. But now that this stormy scene had
taken place, she thought she could make a good use of it. She knew that
her husband co-operated with her in her opposition to "the Dutchman,"
only because he was afraid of his wife. In his heart, Samuel Anderson
could not refuse anything to his daughter. Denied any of the happiness
which most men find in loving their wives, he found consolation in the
love of his daughter. Secretly, as though his paternal affection were a
crime, he caressed Julia, and his wife was not long in discovering that
the father cared more for a loving daughter than for a shrewish wife.
She watched him jealously, and had come to regard her daughter as one
who had supplanted her in her husband's affections, and her husband as
robbing her of the love of her daughter. In truth, Mrs. Samuel Anderson
had come to stand so perpetually on guard against imaginary
encroachments on her rights, that she saw enemies everywhere. She hated
Wehle because he was a Dutchman; she would have hated him on a dozen
other scores if he had been an American. It was offense enough that
Julia loved him.
So now she resolved to gain her husband to her side by her version of
the story, and before dinner she had told him how August had charged her
with being false and cruel to Andrew many years ago, and how Jule had
thrown it up to her, and how near she had come to dropping down with
palpitation of the heart. And Samuel Anderson reddened, and declared
that he would protect his wife from such insults. The notion that he
protected his wife was a pleasant fiction of the little man's, which
received a generous encouragement at the hands of his wife. It was a
favorite trick of hers to throw herself, in a metaphorical way, at his
feet, a helpless woman, and in her feebleness implore his protection.
And Samuel felt all the courage of knighthood in defending his
inoffensive wife. Under cover of this fiction, so flattering to the
vanity of an overawed husband, she had managed at one time or another to
embroil him with almost all the neighbors, and his refusal to join
fences had resulted in that crooked arrangement known as a "devil's
lane" on three sides of his farm.
Julia dared not stay away from dinner, which was miserable enough. She
did not venture so much as to look at August, who sat opposite her, and
who was the most unhappy person at the table, because he did not know
what all the unhappiness was about. Mr. Anderson's brow foreboded a
storm, Mrs. Anderson's face was full of an earthquake, Cynthy Ann was
sitting in shadow, and Julia's countenance perplexed him. Whether she
was angry with him or not, he could not be sure. Of one thing he was
certain: she was suffering a great deal, and that was enough to make him
exceedingly unhappy.
Sitting through his hurried meal in this atmosphere surcharged with
domestic electricity, he got the notion--he could hardly tell how--that
all this lowering of the sky had something to do with him. What had he
done? Nothing. His closest self-examination told him that he had done no
wrong. But his spirits were depressed, and his sensitive conscience
condemned him for some unknown crime that had brought about all this
disturbance of the elements. The ham did not seem very good, the cabbage
he could not eat, the corn-dodger choked him, he had no desire to wait
for the pie. He abridged his meal, and went out to the barn to keep
company with his horses and his misery until it should be time to return
to his plow.
Julia sat and sewed in that tedious afternoon. She would have liked one
more interview with August before his departure. Looking through the
open hall, she saw him leave the barn and go toward his plowing. Not
that she looked up. Hawk never watched chicken more closely than Mrs.
Anderson watched poor Jule. But out of the corners of her eyes Julia saw
him drive his horses before him from the stable. At the field in which
he worked was on the other side of the house from where she sat she
could not so much as catch a glimpse of him as he held his plow on its
steady course. She wished she might have helped Cynthy Ann in the
kitchen, for then she could have seen him, but there was no chance for
such a transfer.
Thus the tedious afternoon wore away, and just as the sun was settling
down so that the shadow of the elm in the front-yard stretched across
the road into the cow pasture, the dead silence was broken. Julia had
been wishing that somebody would speak. Her mother's sulky
speechlessness was worse than her scolding, and Julia had even wished
her to resume her storming. But the silence was broken by Cynthy Ann,
who came into the hall and called, "Jule, I wish you would go to the
barn and gether the eggs; I want to make some cake."
Every evening of her life Julia gathered the eggs, and there was nothing
uncommon in Cynthy Ann's making cake, so that nothing could be more
innocent than this request. Julia sat opposite the front-door, her
mother sat farther along. Julia could see the face of Cynthy Ann. Her
mother could only hear the voice, which was dry and commonplace enough.
Julia thought she detected something peculiar in Cynthy's manner. She
would as soon have thought of the big oak gate-posts with their round
ball-like heads telegraphing her in a sly way, as to have suspected any
such craft on the part of Cynthy Ann, who was a good, pious,
simple-hearted, Methodist old maid, strict with herself, and censorious
toward others. But there stood Cynthy making some sort of gesture, which
Julia took to mean that she was to go quick. She did not dare to show
any eagerness. She laid down her work, and moved away listlessly. And
evidently she had been too slow. For if August had been in sight when
Cynthy Ann called her, he had now disappeared on the other side of the
hill. She loitered along, hoping that he would come in sight, but he did
not, and then she almost smiled to think how foolish she had been in
imagining that Cynthy Ann had any interest in her love affair. Doubtless
Cynthy sided with her mother.
And so she climbed from mow to mow gathering the eggs. No place is
sweeter than a mow, no occupation can be more delightful than gathering
the fresh eggs--great glorious pearls, more beautiful than any that men
dive for, despised only because they are so common and so useful! But
Julia, gliding about noiselessly, did not think much of the eggs, did
not give much attention to the hens scratching for wheat kernels amongst
the straw, nor to the barn swallows chattering over the adobe dwellings
which they were building among the rafters above her. She had often
listened to the love-talk of these last, but now her heart was too heavy
to hear. She slid down to the edge of one of the mows, and sat there a
few feet above the threshing-floor with her bonnet in her hand, looking
off sadly and vacantly. It was pleasant to sit here alone and think,
without the feeling that her mother was penetrating her thoughts.
A little rustle brought her to consciousness. Her face was fiery red in
a minute. There, in one corner of the threshing-floor, stood August,
gazing at her. He had come into the barn to find a single-tree in place
of one which had broken. While he was looking for it, Julia had come,
and he had stood and looked, unable to decide whether to speak or not,
uncertain how deeply she might be offended, since she had never once let
her eyes rest on him at dinner. And when she had come to the edge of the
mow and stopped there in a reverie, August had been utterly spell-bound.
A minute she blushed. Then, perceiving her opportunity, she dropped
herself to the floor and walked up to August.
"August, you are to be turned off to-morrow night."
"What have I done? Anything wrong?"
"No."
"Why do they send me away?"
"Because--because--" Julia stopped.
But silence is often better than speech. A sudden intelligence came
into the blue eyes of August. "They turn me off because I love Jule
Anderson."
[Illustration: A LITTLE RUSTLE BROUGHT HER TO CONSCIOUSNESS.]
Julia blushed just a little.
"I will love her all the same when I am gone. I will always love her."
Julia did not know what to say to this passionate speech, so she
contented herself with looking a little grateful and very foolish.
"But I am only a poor boy, and a Dutchman at that"--he said this
bitterly--"but if you will wait, Jule, I will show them I am of some
account. Not good enough for you, but good enough for _them_.
You will--"
"I will wait--_forever_--for _you_, Gus." Her head was down, and her
voice could hardly be heard. "Good-by." She stretched out her hand, and
he took it trembling.
"Wait a minute." He dropped the hand, and taking a pencil wrote on a
beam:
"March 18th, 1843."
"There, that's to remember the Dutchman by."
"Don't call yourself a Dutchman, August. One day in school, when I was
sitting opposite to you, I learned this definition, 'August: grand,
magnificent,' and I looked at you and said, Yes, that he is. August is
grand and magnificent, and that's what you are. You're just grand!"
I do not think he was to blame. I am sure he was not responsible. It was
done so quickly. He kissed her forehead and then her lips, and said
good-by and was gone. And she, with her apron full of eggs and her
cheeks very red--it makes one warm to climb--went back to the house,
resolved in some way to thank Cynthy Ann for sending her; but Cynthy
Ann's face was so serious and austere in its look that Julia concluded
she must have been mistaken, Cynthy Ann couldn't have known that August
was in the barn. For all she said was:
"You got a right smart lot of eggs, didn't you? The hens is beginnin' to
lay more peart since the warm spell sot in."