TESTS
That September Amanda began her third year of teaching at Crow Hill.
"I declare," Millie said, "how quick the time goes! Here's your third
year o' teachin' started a'ready. A body gets old fast."
"Yes, I'll soon be an old maid school teacher."
"Now, mebbe not!" The hired girl had lost none of her frankness. "I
notice that Mart Landis sneaks round here a good bit this while past."
"Ach, Millie, he's not here often."
"No, o' course not! He just stops in in the afternoon about every other
day with a book or something of excuse like that, and about every other
day in the morning he's likely to happen to drop in to get the book
back, and then in between that he comes and you go out for a walk after
flowers or birds or something, and then between times there he comes
with something his mom told him to ask or bring or something like that
--no, o' course not, he don't come often! Not at all! I guess he's just
neighborly, ain't, Amanda?" Millie chuckled at her own wit and Amanda
could not long keep a frown upon her face.
"Of course, Millie," she said with an assumed air of indifference, "the
Landis people have always been neighborly. Pennsylvania Dutch are great
for that."
It was not from Millie alone that Amanda had to take teasing. Philip,
always ready for amusement, was at times almost insufferable in the
opinion of his sister.
"What's the matter with Mart Landis's home?" the boy asked innocently
one day at the supper table.
"Why?" asked Uncle Amos. "I'll bite."
"Well, he seems to be out of it a great deal; he spends half of his
time in our house. I think, Uncle Amos, as head of the house here, you
should ask him what his intentions are."
"Phil!" Amanda's protest was vehement. "You make me as tired as some
other people round here do. As soon as a man walks down the road with a
girl the whole matter is settled--they'll surely marry soon! It would
be nice if people would attend to their own affairs."
"Makes me tired too," said Philip fervently. "Last week I met that
Sarah from up the road and naturally walked to the car with her. You
all know what a fright she is--cross-eyed, pigeon-toed, and as
brilliant mentally as a dark night in the forest. When I got into the
car I heard some one say, 'Did you see Philip Reist with that girl? I
wonder if he keeps company with her.' Imagine!"
"Serves you right," Amanda told him with impish delight. "I hope every
cross-eyed, pigeon-toed girl in the county meets you and walks with
you!"
"Feel better now, Sis?" His grin brought laughter to the crowd and
Amanda's peeved feeling was soon gone.
It was true, Martin Landis spent many hours at the Reist farmhouse. He
seemed filled with an insatiable desire for the companionship of
Amanda. Scarcely a day passed without some glimpse of him at the Reist
home.
Just what that companionship meant to the young man he did not stop to
analyze at first. He knew he was happy with Amanda, enjoyed her
conversation, felt a bond between them in their love for the vast
outdoors, but he never went beyond that. Until one day in early
November when he was walking down the lonely road after a pleasant
evening with Amanda. He paused once to look up at the stars,
remembering what the girl had said concerning them, how they comforted
and inspired her. A sudden rush of feeling came to him as he leaned on
the rail fence and looked up.... "Look here," he told himself, "it's
time you take account of yourself. What's all this friendship with your
old companion leading to? Do you love Amanda?" The "stars in their
courses" seemed to twinkle her name, every leafless tree along the road
she loved seemed to murmur it to him--Amanda! It was suddenly the
sweetest name in the whole world to him!
"Oh, I know it now!" he said softly to himself under the quiet sky. "I
love her! What a woman she is! What a heart she has, what a heart! I
want her for my wife; she's the only one I want to have with me 'Till
death us do part'--that's a fair test. Why, I've been wondering why I
enjoyed each minute with her and just longed to get to see her as often
as possible--fool, not to recognize love when it came to me! But I know
it now! I'm as sure of it as I am sure those stars, her stars, are
shining up there in the sky."
As he stood a moment silently looking into the starry heavens some
portion of an old story came to him. "My love is as fair as the stars
and well-nigh as remote and inaccessible." Could he win the love of a
girl like Amanda Reist? She gave him her friendship freely, would she
give her love also? A woman like Amanda could never be satisfied with
half-gods, she would love as she did everything else--intensely,
entirely! He remembered reading that propinquity often led people into
mistakes, that constant companionship was liable to awaken a feeling
that might masquerade as love. Well, he'd be fair to her, he'd let
separation prove his love.
"That's just what I'll do," he decided. "Next week I'm to go on my
vacation and I'll be gone two weeks. I'll not write to her and of
course I won't see her. Perhaps 'Absence will make the heart grow
fonder' with her. I hope so! It will be a long two weeks for me, but
when I come back--" He flung out his arms to the night as though they
could bring to him at once the form of the one he loved.
So it happened that after a very commonplace goodbye given to Amanda in
the presence of the entire Reist household Martin Landis left Lancaster
County a few weeks before Thanksgiving and journeyed to South Carolina
to spend a quiet vacation at a mountain resort.
To Amanda Reist, pegging away in the schoolroom during the gray
November days, his absence caused depression. He had said nothing about
letters but she naturally expected them, friendly little notes to tell
her what he was doing and how he was enjoying the glories of the famous
mountains of the south. But no letters came from Martin.
"Oh," she bit her lip after a week had gone and he was still silent. "I
won't care! He writes home; the children tell me he says the scenery is
so wonderful where he is--why can't he send me just one little note?
But I'm not going to care. I've been a fool long enough. I should know
by this time that it's a case of 'Out of sight, out of mind.' I'm about
done with castles in Spain! All my sentimental dreams about my knight,
all my rosy visions are, after all, of that substance of which all
dreams are made. I suppose if I had been practical and sensible like
other girls I could have made myself like Lyman Mertzheimer or some
other ordinary country boy and settled down into a contented woman on a
farm. Why couldn't I long ago have put away my girlish illusions about
knights and castles in Spain? I wonder if, after all, gold eagles are
better and more to be desired than the golden roofs of our dream
castles? If an automobile like Lyman Mertzheimer drives is not to be
preferred to Sir Galahad's pure white steed! I've clung to my
romanticism and what has it brought me? It might have been wiser to let
go my dreams, sweep the illusions from my eyes and settle down to a
sordid, everyday existence as the wife of some man, like Lyman
Mertzheimer, who has no eye for the beauties of nature but who has two
eyes for me."
Poor Amanda, destruction of her dream castles was perilously imminent!
The golden turrets were tottering and the substance of which her dreams
were made was becoming less ethereal. If Lyman Mertzheimer came to her
then and renewed his suit would she give him a more encouraging answer
than those she had given in former times? Amanda's hour of weakness and
despair was upon her. It was a propitious moment for the awakening of
the forces of her lower nature which lay quiescent in her, as it dwells
in us all--very few escape the Jekyll-Hyde combination.
When Martin Landis returned to Lancaster County he had a vagrant idea
of what the South Carolina mountains are like. He would have told you
that the trees there all murmur the name of Amanda, that the birds sing
her name, the waterfalls cry it aloud! During his two weeks of absence
from her his conviction was affirmed--he knew without a shadow of doubt
that he loved her madly. All of Mrs. Browning's tests he had applied--
"Unless you can muse in a crowd all day,
On the absent face that fixed you;
Unless you can love, as the angels may,
With the breadth of heaven betwixt you;
Unless you can dream that his faith is fast,
Through behoving and unbehoving;
Unless you can die when the dream is past--
Oh, never call it loving!"
Amanda was enthroned in his heart, he knew it at last! How blind he had
been! He knew now what his mother had meant one day when she told him,
"Some of you men are blinder'n bats! Bats do see at night!"
As he rode from Lancaster on the little crowded trolley his thoughts
were all of Amanda--would she give him the answer he desired? Could he
waken in her heart something stronger than the old feeling of
friendship, which was not now enough?
He stepped from the car--now he would be with her soon. He meant to
stop in at the Reist farmhouse and ask her the great question. He could
wait no longer.
"Hello, Landis," a voice greeted him as he alighted from the car. He
turned and faced Lyman Mertzheimer, a smiling, visibly happy Lyman.
"Oh, hello," Martin said, not cordially, for he had no love for the
trouble-maker. "I see you're in Lancaster County for your vacation
again."
"Yes, home from college for Thanksgiving. I hear you've been away for
several weeks."
The college boy fell into step beside Martin, who would have turned and
gone in another direction if he had not been so eager to see Amanda.
"Yes, Landis," continued the unwelcome companion. "I'm home for
Thanksgiving. It'll be a great day for me this year. By the way, I saw
Amanda Reist a number of times since I'm here. Perhaps you'll be
interested to know that Amanda's promised to marry me--congratulate
me!"
"To marry you! Amanda?" Martin's face blanched and his heart seemed
turned to lead.
"Why not?" The other laughed softly. "I'm not as black as I'm painted,
you know."
"I--I hope not," Martin managed to say, his body suddenly seeming to be
rooted in the ground. His feet dragged as he walked along. Amanda to
marry Lvman Mertzheimer! What a crazy world it was all of a sudden.
What a slow, poky idiot he had been not to try for the prize before it
was snatched from him!
Lyman, rejoicing over the misery so plainly written in the face of
Martin, walked boldly down the middle of the road, while Martin's feet
lagged so he could not keep pace with the man who had imparted the
bewildering news. Martin kept along the side of the road, scuffing
along in the grass, thinking bitter thoughts about the arrogant youth
who walked in the middle of the road. The honk, honk of a speeding
automobile fell heedlessly upon the ears of both, till Martin looked
back in sudden alarm. His startled eyes saw a car tearing down the road
like a huge demon on wheels, its driver evidently trusting to the
common sense of the man in the way to get out of the path of danger in
time. But Lyman walked on in serene preoccupation, gloating over the
unlucky, unhappy man who was following. With a cry of warning Martin
rushed to the side of the other man and pushed him from the path of the
car, but when the big machine came to a standstill Martin Landis lay in
the dusty road, his eyes closed, a thin red stream of blood trickling
down his face.
The driver was concerned. "He's knocked out," he said as he bent over
the still form. "I'm a doctor and I'll take him home and fix him up.
He's a plucky chap, all right! He kept you from cashing in, probably.
Say, young fellow, are you deaf? I honked loud enough to be heard a
mile. Only for him you'd be in the dust there and you'd have caught it
full. The car just grazed him. It's merely a scalp wound," he said in
relief as he examined the prostrate figure. "Know where he lives?"
"Yes, just a little distance beyond the schoolhouse down this road."
"Good. I'll take him home. I can't say how sorry I am it happened. Give
me a lift, will you? You sit in the back seat and hold him while I
drive."
Lyman did not relish the task assigned to him but the doctor's tones
admitted of no refusal. Martin Landis was taken to his home and in his
semiconscious condition he did not know that his head with its
handkerchief binding leaned against the rascally breast of Lyman
Mertzheimer.