DREAMED OF THE ANGELUS.
Gunhild wrote that she could not spare the money to come out, and to
Milford the summer fell flat and lay spiritless on the ground. He begged
her to let him bear the expense, and for this she scolded him. But she
enlivened him with a suggestion. Near the first of October she would
visit her uncle in the city. "It will make me glad to have you come to
see me then," she said. "And I shall feel that you have held the summer
and brought it with you. Mrs. Goodwin wrote to me as soon as she came
home. She said much about you, and I really think she likes you deeply.
I have been astonished at her. I did not think that she would care for
me more when her house I left, but she does. She is a good woman. Oh,
you remember the Miss Swartz who was with her. Well, she wanted to keep
company with a fiddler in a variety show, and Mrs. Goodwin objected, and
that was not the end of it. The girl went out at night late and married
the fiddler, and Mrs. Goodwin has seen her no more."
There was a lament for the swift flight of the sunny days, by the woman
on the bicycle and the man casting his line into the lake, but to
Milford the time was slow. He remembered having seen a lame cow limping
down the road, with the sluggish hours dragging at her feet, and he told
the hired man that she had come back again to vex him. But time was
never so slow that it did not pass, and one evening the sun went down
beyond the fading edge of September. Milford waited two days longer and
then went to the city; and just out of the fields, how confusing was the
noise and the sight of scattering crowds that were never scattered! But
his sense of the world soon came back to him. He had been moneyless in
many a town, hanging about the gambler's table, feeding upon the chip
tossed by the exultant winner. The woods, the cattle, the green and
purple pictures, musings with his head in the grass, had taken the
gamester's wild leap out of his blood, but he knew that he dared not go
near the vice. He found the Norwegian's cottage, in the western part of
town, and he stood at the door listening before he rang the bell. A
little girl came out with a tin pail, the gripman's dinner. As she
opened the door he saw Gunhild. She dropped a boy's jacket, which she
had evidently been mending, and came bounding to meet him, with her
welcome bursting out in a laugh. Her hands were warm, and her eyes full
of happiness. There was no put-on and no disguises in their meeting. It
was two destinies touching again, destinies that were to become as one.
She led him into the neat little parlor, gave him a rocking-chair, and
talked of her gladness at his coming, standing for a moment in front of
a glass to put back into place a wayward wisp of hair. Their meeting had
not been cool. She drew up a chair beside him and they talked about the
country, of the haunted house, and the tree that had hoisted a vine
like an umbrella. He told her that he had come through the fields to the
station, and had stood in the ditch among the wild sunflowers. He had
plucked some for her, but they were dead and had fallen to pieces.
They went out into the park, not far away, and sat amid the scenes of a
changing season, the leaves falling about them. It was an odd courtship,
an indefinite engagement. There was no attempt at sentiment, no time
when either one felt that something tender must be said, but between
them there was a wholesome understanding of the heart. They were not
living a love story. She was not clothed in the glamour-raiment of
love's ethereal fancy, not sigh-fanned by the breath of reverential
melancholy. Her hand did not feel like the velvet paw of a kitten; it
was a hand that had toiled; and though easier days may come, the mark of
labor can never be erased from the palm.
She left him on the rustic seat, and hastened across the sward to pluck
a bloom that had been sheltered from the early frost, and he looked at
her, a gladness tingling in his nerves. How trim she was in her dark
gown! She looked back at him, pointed at a policeman standing off among
the trees, and imitated the walk of a sneak-thief. She returned
laughing, and pinning the flower on his coat, stood to gaze upon him as
if he were in bloom, and said in an accent that always reminded him of a
banjo's lower tones, "See, the frost has not killed you." Simple,
playful, loving, strong, were the words to express an estimate of
her--the healthy refinement of an honest heart, and modest because she
had seen immodesty. She possessed a knowledge that was a better
safeguard than mere innocence, and her passion illumined her virtue.
They strolled among the trees, society's forest; they listened co the
ducks and the geese, the city's barnyard.
"Would you rather live in the country?" he asked.
"I would not rather teach art there," she laughed.
"It must be very hard."
"It is very stupid."
"I don't suppose the farmers take to it any too kindly."
"No, they often ask me why I do not draw comic as they see in the
newspapers."
"They must like to see themselves buying gold bricks."
She did not understand him, and he explained that the honest farmer
believing that a fortune was coming down the road to meet him, was the
prey of sharp swindlers who prowled about through the country. Steve
Hardy, one of the shrewdest men in the community, once had bought an
express package filled with worthless paper. It was a case of "honesty"
trying to beat the three-shell man at his own game. Ignorance always
credits itself with shrewdness. Industry is no sure sign of honesty.
"Worked like a thief" has become a saying. Smiling at his philosophy,
she said that he never could have learned it in a school.
"No," he replied. "In the school we are taught to believe in the true,
the beautiful, and the good; but in life we find that the true as we
learned it is often false, the beautiful painted, and the good bad."
"I would not have you think that," she said. "The beautiful is not
always painted." She stooped and picked up a maple leaf, blushed with
the rudeness of the frost. "This is not painted, and it is beautiful. It
was the cold that brought out its color. You must not be a--what would
you call it?"
"Cynic?"
"Yes. You must not be that. It is an acknowledgment of failure."
He took her hand, and they walked on among the trees. "You talk like a
virtue translated from a foreign tongue," he said. He called her a
heathen grace. She protested. She was a Christian, so devout that she
would have hung her head in the potato field had she heard the ringing
of the angelus. They saw a woman on a wheel, and he dropped her hand.
The woman waved at them, jumped off and came to meet them, smiling. It
was Mrs. Blakemore. "Oh, I am so surprised and delighted," she said,
shaking hands. "Why, how unexpected! You must come home with me. I don't
live far from here. Bobbie will be delighted to see you. He refuses to
go to school, and we won't force him, he is so delicate. How well you
look, Gunhild! And you too, Mr. Milford." The man would have yielded
against his will; the woman saw this and declined the invitation. She
said that they had an engagement to dine. Milford looked at her in
surprise. He thought of the frost-tinted leaf. Mrs. Blakemore was
sorry--she said. It would be such a disappointment to Bobbie. George was
out of town. She bade them an effusive good-bye, mounted her wheel,
pulling at her short skirts, and glided away.
"Engagement to dine?" said Milford, as they turned from watching Mrs.
Blakemore.
"Yes, at the little bakery over by the edge of the park."
"Oh, I see. But I thought you wanted to go with her."
"I knew that you did not," she replied.
"But did you?" he asked.
"I would not spoil a beautiful day," she answered.
They dined at the bakery, flattering themselves that the girl who waited
on them did not know that they were lovers. They did not see her wink at
her fat mother behind the showcase.
"I haven't asked you how long I may stay," said Milford, as they walked
out.
"I was afraid to come to that," she replied. "I must leave on the train
to-night. I have only waited for you."
"When do you think I can see you again?"
"I do not know. I will write."
"Remember that nothing can keep us apart--nothing but yourself."
"Then we shall not be kept apart. But why do you leave it with me?"
"Because you are to decide when I tell you something."
"Do you put it off because it is so hard to tell?"
"No, because I'm not ready yet. I will be when I close out with the old
woman."
"I would like to know now."
"It would be plucking green fruit," he replied.
"You know best," she said, trustfully.
The air grew chilly when the sun had set, and they returned to the
cottage to sit alone in the parlor. They heard the kindly tones of the
gripman talking to his children. There was a melodeon in the room, and
she played a Norwegian hymn. The barefoot youngsters scampered in the
passage-way.
"Let them come in," he said.
"No, they are undressed for bed," she replied. It was the evening romp,
a tired mother's trial-time before the hour of rest when all are asleep.
He went to the railway station with her; walked that they might be
longer on the road, looked at cottages, gazed up at flats, planning for
the future. In the deep secrecy of a crowd he kissed her good-bye, and
then went forth to stroll about the town. He stood listening to the
weird song of a salvation woman; he dropped a nickel into a rich
beggar's hat; he saw the grief-stricken newsboy weeping in a doorway,
and believing that he was a liar, gave him a penny; he went to sleep in
a hotel and dreamed that he saw a woman with bowed head listening to the
angelus.