Old Ebenezer Part 36

"Then that is where we must have fallen apart. I have been prouder since I knew you."

"I said foolishly proud," she replied, laughing.

They came to the wooden bridge. "Well, I turn back here," he said, halting and leaning against the rail.

"Surely there would be no harm in your coming to the house," she replied. "You are my protector," she added, with a smile. He was beginning to dislike the word, and now he felt a heaviness settle upon his heart.

"When your father has invited me as a friend of the family, I will come," he said, leaning over and looking down into the water. He looked up and in her eyes he thought he saw a gentle rebuke, but it was gone in a moment. She must have had it in her mind to tell him that he ought to be bolder, but another feeling seemed swiftly to come, and she said: "Your instinct is right." She held out her hand.

He grasped it, looked into her eyes, turned about and hastened toward the town.

CHAPTER XXIX.

GONE AWAY.

A few days later, at the breakfast table, Mrs. Staggs remarked that Mrs. McElwin and her daughter were gone on a visit to friends and would be absent several weeks. Lyman did not think to disguise his concern. With an abruptness that made the cups totter in the saucers he shoved himself back from the table and fell into a deep muse. Why should the girl have gone away just at that particular time? Was it a blow aimed at him? He had wanted to tell her something. It was in the nature of a confession, not startling, not, as he now viewed it, beyond a commonplace acknowledgment, and he wondered why he should have suppressed it. He wanted simply to tell her that, at the time when the joking ceremony had been performed, he had looked at her, with his mind reverting to the sick man whose face he had seen that day at the window, and had thought of the charm she could throw upon the gloom-weighted scene should she step into the room. This had come to pa.s.s; he had beheld it, and his mind had been sweetened by it; he had walked nearly all the way home with her and had not mentioned it.

He had been too talkative as a protector and too silent as a man. And, all day, there was a bitter taste in his mouth, and, at evening, as he sat alone in the office he cut himself with a cynical smile. Warren came in, bright and brusque.

"Well, I've just got back from old man Pitt's," said he. "I couldn't wait any longer, so I went. The old man was at work in the field and I went out and told him not to disturb himself. The old lady was weaving a rag carpet, and I told her not to let the loom fall into silence.

The girl was churning and I told her to keep at it. Ah, what a picture, that girl at the churn. Her red calico dress was tucked up, and her sleeves were rolled, and her hair had been grabbed in a hurry and fastened with a thorn. She blushed and put her hand to her hair as if she wanted to fix it, but I cried to her not to tamper with it. I said that she might have gold pins, but couldn't improve on that thorn; I swore that the finest hairdresser in the world would spoil it; and she laughed and I saw the inside of her mouth--"

"A rose with the bud pinched out," said Lyman.

"How did you know? Did you ever see the inside of her mouth? You've hit it all right. Yes, sir, that's what you have. Well, I took hold of the churn dasher and helped her, and she pretended to be afraid that we might turn the churn over, and our hands came together and I felt like throwing up my hat and dancing right there."

"Did you find out as to how she stands?"

"Lyman, would you believe that I weakened? I put both my hands on her hair and I s.n.a.t.c.hed a kiss from her, but she looked up at me and I weakened; I couldn't ask her. She wasn't scared; she was astonished; and when she looked down, I kissed the back of her neck, standing there in full view of the world, and she shivered as if she was cold, but her face was scarlet."

"Do you call it weakening when you grab a woman and kiss her? I should think that was rather strengthening."

"I didn't find out how she stood, that is, I did not get it in words, so I must have weakened. But I think it's all right. After dinner, while we were in the 'big room,' she showed me a photograph of a yap and said that it was Cousin Jerry. 'Permit me,' said I, bowing, and I sailed the picture out into the yard where the dog lay asleep in the sun. And there it lay, with the June bugs buzzing about it, till I relented and went after it. I weakened in going after it, but she pouted and I gave in. I reckon that after all, it's better not to be so headlong. Many a fellow would have rushed the thing and spoiled it right there. I am learning patience from you, Lyman."

"Well, don't keep on learning, or you'll get the worst of it. A woman will pardon a thing that's rash where she would look with scorn upon a gentle stupidity. You bite like a black ba.s.s and I'm a sucker; you leap up into the sunshine, and I lie under a rotting log. I am inclined to think, old boy, that there is a good deal of what they call the chump about me. You have gone to Pitt's and said more than you intended to say. And look at me: I have not said half of what I ought to have said. You know where to find your girl, but I have let mine go away. And I know now that she went away in disgust. However, I ought not to say that. It might imply that she was impatient with me and that would mean that she was waiting for me to say something, when in fact I don't believe she thinks of me at all, except as her protector and friend."

Warren sat nibbling at the stem of a corn-cob pipe. He stretched forth his legs and chewed upon the stem till it cracked between his teeth.

"This disposition to under-estimate yourself is where the whole trouble lies," said Warren. "It is the only weakness I have ever been able to find in your character. Don't you think it must be on account of some sort of work you have done? Haven't you at some time been in a position where everybody could come along and boss you?"

"I waited in a dining-room to pay my way through college. And you have struck it. Yes, sir, you've struck it on the top of the head. If a man has once stood as a servant, he is, if at all sensitive, ever afterward afflicted with a sort of self-repression. It is a sense of independence that makes the cow-boy aggressive; it is the wear of discipline that makes the regular soldier, long after quitting the army, appear humble. To wear a white ap.r.o.n and to carry a bowl of soup across a dining-room, one must not have had a high spirit or must have stabbed it. I stabbed mine."

"And yet you are as proud as the devil," said Warren.

"Yes, and I am not afraid of a pistol, but I fancy that anyone could drive me with a teaspoon. If I am ever the father of a boy I will teach him to work, to cut down trees, to dig ditches, to do anything rather than to wait on another man."

"But you don't regret having made the sacrifice to get the education, do you?"

"You over-rate my learning. I don't know anything thoroughly. I sailed through with the cla.s.s and put myself in a position to learn, that's about all. But I have acquired one great piece of knowledge, which, had I not received a regular training, might have seemed to me as the arrogance of ignorance, and that is the fact that profound knowledge hurts the imagination. Of course I had read this--but ascribed it to prejudice. I know now, however, that it is true; and I would take care not to over-educate the boy with an instinct for art. His technique would destroy his creation. And take it in the matter of writing. I believe in correctness, but it is a fact that when a writer becomes a purist he conforms but does not create. After all, I believe that what's within a man will come out regardless of his training. There may be mute, inglorious Miltons, but Art struggles for expression. The German woman worked in a field and had no books, but she brought tears to the eyes of the Empress, with a little poem, dug up out of the ground."

"That sounds all right enough," said Warren, "but I don't know about its truth. It strikes me--and I like to think about it--that, if Nancy had been schooled and all that, she could have written about the sweetest poetry that ever was sent out."

Lyman smiled at his friend. "Education would undoubtedly a.s.sist her in the writing of verses," said he. "The log school-house would have given her the expression for poetry."

"May be so. But I don't want her to write. She'd fill up the paper and hurt the circulation. Sad day for a newspaper man when his wife fills up the paper. By the way, I forgot to tell you that I had a talk with the old man. I went out to the field with him after dinner; he was cutting oak sprouts from among the young corn and we had quite a chat.

I reminded him of the fact that I hadn't known his daughter long, but I gave him to understand that I was all right. I told him that the express company had a high regard for me, and this made him open his eyes. He gradually caught my drift, and then he leaned on his hoe and laughed till the tears ran down his face; and I didn't have anything to lean on, so I took hold of the hoe handle and laughed too. After awhile the absurdity of the situation struck him, both of us leaning on a hoe, laughing fit to kill ourselves, and then he shook me off.

But I wasn't to be put off this way. I told him I guessed I had to have some place to laugh, and I grabbed the hoe-handle again, and went on with my t.i.ttering. 'Young fellow,' he said, 'you just about suit me. You won't stay shuck off, and that's the sort of a man that gets next to me.' So we shook hands and without another word on the tender subject we went on talking about something else. Oh, he's all right, and the girl is too, I think. I don't know about the mother, but she is blue-eyed and tender-looking and I think she'll give in. Have you seen the banker lately?"

"I met him in the street this morning and spoke to him, and he bowed very politely. I've been thinking. Suppose my serial story should be accepted and they should send me a check. How could I get it cashed without going to his bank? And if any royalties should come from the sale of my book, what then? There's no other way open and I'll have to do business through his bank."

"That will be all right, if the check should happen to be large enough. Anyway, we don't do business with a bank because we like the owner of the concern. Oh, I didn't tell you that we have an account there already. We have about two hundred and fifty dollars over there and we don't owe a cent."

"Good!" Lyman cried, not because of the money, but that Warren had broken the ice.

"Good; I should say it is. I call it glorious. And it has come mainly through you. Why, when you came in I was still bleeding under the heel, you know."

"It has been your business management and economy, Warren. I have done nothing but scribble at odd times--I have played and you have worked."

"That's all right."

"No, it isn't all right. Whatever success may come to this paper belongs to you. What there is already has flowed through the channel of your energy, and I am not going to claim half the profits. The plant is yours, not mine. Without you the paper could not have lived a week."

"We'll fix that all right. But say, isn't it terrible to wait. I don't mind work, but I hate to wait, and I ought not to go out yonder again before day after tomorrow."

"What, ought not to go before day after tomorrow! You ought not to go before next week."

"Oh, come, now, old man, don't say that. This thing of waiting is awful. I think I could stand to be hanged if they'd do it at once, but the waiting would put me out. I never could wait. And besides I don't believe in it. One day I saw an old man at a soldiers' home and I asked him concerning his prospects and he said that he was waiting, and when I asked him what for, he said, 'to die.' And then I couldn't help but ask him what he was going to do then. I don't believe in waiting for anything; my idea is to go to it at once."

"Yes, that's all very well; but the old soldier was right after all, for life is but waiting for death."

"No," said Warren, "life is a constant fight against death, and we don't wait so long if we are fighting. If I thought as you do, I couldn't wait--I'd have to go out and hunt up death at once. I reckon you are low-spirited today. I'm glad I'm not a writer, Lyman. Writing saps all a man's spirit and leaves him no nourishment."

"I have always regarded the necessity to write as a sad infliction,"

Lyman replied. "A man steals from himself his most secret beliefs and emotions and puts them in the mouth of his characters. He is a sham."

"You ain't, old fellow."

"I am a fraud. Where are you going?"

"I've got to stir about," Warren answered. "I have to think when I sit still and I don't want to think. The truth is, I want to know how she stands. I wish I had a picture of her as she stood at the churn. It would make the fortune of a painter. Believe I'll get up a prayer-meeting at Mt. Zion."

"What, you get up a prayer-meeting?"

"Yes, so I can go home with her through the woods. I think that after a season of prayer and song she would lean toward me."

"Why not wait for a thunder storm and comfort her between flashes of lightning?"