The Graysons Part 8

"Mayn't I sit out there and help Barbara peel apples, Mrs. Grayson?"

"You may do what you like, Mr. Mason," said the old lady, pleased with his familiarity; "but peelin' apples ain't jest the kind of work to set a schoolmaster at."

"Schoolmasters a'n't all of them so good for nothing as you think. Come on, Barbara, a little apple-peeling will make it seem like home to me; and this living 'round in other people's houses has made me homesick."

Barbara came out and took her old place on the loom-bench, beside the great three-peck basket of yellow apples. Her seat raised her considerably higher than Mason, who occupied a low chair. In front of Barbara was another chair, on which sat a pan to hold the quarters of apples when prepared for drying; on one of the rungs of this Barbara supported her feet. The candle which Mrs. Grayson lighted shed a dim yellow light from one end of the high smoke-blackened mantel-shelf, which extended across the chimney above the cavernous kitchen fire-place. The joists of the loft were of heavy logs, and these, and the boards which overlaid them, and all the woodwork about this kitchen, were softened and sombered by the smoke that had escaped from the great, rude chimney; for the kitchen was the original log-cabin built when Tom's father, fresh from Maryland, had first settled on the new farm; the rest of the house had grown from this kernel.

The mother, who had not dreamed of any relation between Barbara and Hiram Mason more friendly than that of master and pupil, was a little surprised at the apparently advanced stage of their acquaintance; but she liked it, because it showed that the schoolmaster was not "stuck up," and that he understood that "our Barb'ry" was no common girl. Tom looked in at the open outside door of the kitchen after a while, and was pleased. "Barb deserved a nice beau if ever anybody did," he reflected, and it might keep her from feeling so bad over his own failures. Not wishing to intrude, and wearied to exhaustion with his first day of farm-work since his return, he went around to the front door and through the sitting-room upstairs to bed. When the mother had finished "putting things to rights" she went into the sitting-room, and the apple-peelers were left with only the loom, the reel, and the winding-blades for witnesses.

They talked of school, of their studies, and of many other things until the great basket of apples began to grow empty while the basket of parings and corings was full. The pan of apple-quarters having overflowed had been replaced by a pail, which was also nearly full, when, after a playful scuffle of hands in the basket, Hiram secured the last apple and peeled it. Then laying down his knife, he asked:

"You'll be back at school next week?"

Barbara had been dreading this inquiry. She wished Mason had not asked it. She had heartily enjoyed his society while they talked of things indifferent, but the question brought her suddenly and painfully back into the region of her disappointment and perplexities.

"I'm afraid I can't come any more. Things haven't gone right with us."

The wide s.p.a.ces between her words indicated to her companion the effort it cost to allude to her affairs.

Mason was more than ever puzzled. By what means could he establish such a ground of confidence between them as would enable him to enter into her difficulties and give her, at the least, the help of his sympathy and counsel? There seemed no way so good as that by direct approach.

"Barbara," he said, drawing his chair nearer to the loom-bench and leaning forward toward her, "won't you please tell me about your affairs, if--if you can do it? I don't want to intrude, but why can't you let me be your best friend and--help you if I can?"

This speech had a different effect from what Mason had intended.

Barbara's pride resented an offer of help from him. Of all things, she did not wish to be pitied by the man she was beginning to love. He would always think of her as lower than himself, and she had too much pride to relish anything like the role of Cophetua's beggar maid.

"I can't do it, Mr. Mason; there's nothing anybody can do." She spoke with her eyes downcast. Having ventured so much and gained nothing, Mason leaned back in his chair and turned his head about to what a photographer would call a "three-quarters position," and looked at Barbara from under his brows without saying anything more. He was like a pilot waiting for the fog to lift. This silent regard made Barbara uneasy. She could not help feeling a certain appreciation of his desire to help her, however disagreeable it might be to her feelings. Perhaps she was wrong to repel his confidence so abruptly.

"I suppose you know about poor Tom?" she said, making so much concession to his kindness, but half swallowing the rapidly spoken words.

"Yes," said Hiram; "I heard he had got into a sc.r.a.pe such as many a bright boy gets into. A village like Moscow is a hard place for a boy raised in the country. But he'll pull out of that."

It lifted a weight from Barbara's mind that Mason did not take a too serious view of Tom. She wished, however, that he would not look at her so long in that askance fashion.

"Did the trouble cost you much money?" he ventured to inquire after a while.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BARBARA AND HIRAM BY THE LOOM.]

"Well, no, not much for some folks, but a good deal for us; we're rather poor, you know." There is a pride that conceals poverty; there is a greater pride that makes haste to declare it, feeling that only hidden poverty is shameful. "You know father was a smart man in some ways,"

Barbara continued, "but he hadn't any knack. He lost most of his money before he came to Illinois; and then when he got here he made the mistake, that so many made, of settling in the timber, though very little of the prairie had been taken up yet. If he hadn't been afraid of the winters on the prairie, we might have been pretty well off; but it's been a hard struggle opening a farm in the woods. Then we have had nothing but misfortune. My father died of a congestive chill, and then my three brothers and my sister died, and Tom and I are all that's left to mother. And there are doctor's bills to pay yet, and a little debt on the farm."

"Yes, yes," said Hiram, wounded in thinking of the pain he was giving Barbara in forcing her to speak thus frankly of the family troubles. "I know what it is. Poverty and I are old acquaintances; regular old cronies. She's going to stand by my side till I graduate, anyhow; but as I have known her ever since I was born, I can afford to laugh in her face. There's nothing like being used to a thing."

Barbara made no reply to this. Mason sat and looked at her awhile in silence. There was no good in trying to help her on his present footing.

He leaned forward, resting his elbow on the loom-bench by her side.

"Look here, Barbara," he said, with abrupt decision, "let's, you and me, go in partnership with our poverty some day, and see what'll come of it. I suppose, so far as money is concerned, the equations would be about equal without the trouble of figuring it out."

Barbara looked at her hands in her lap with her eyes out of focus, and made no reply. After a while Hiram spoke again.

"Did I--make you mad, Barbara?" He used the word "mad" in the sense attached to it in that interior country, meaning angry.

"No, not mad," said Barbara. "Not that--but--I don't know what to say. I don't believe what you propose can ever be."

Mason waited for her to explain herself, but she did not seem to be able to get her own consent. At length he got up and went to the mantel-piece and took down Barbara's slate.

"Let's talk about algebra awhile," he said.

Barbara was fond enough of algebra, but it seemed droll that Mason, with an unsettled proposition of marriage on hand, should revert to his favorite study. She could not see what he was writing, but when he pa.s.sed the slate to her, she read:

_a_ = another lover.

_b_ = objections to H. Mason.

_c_ = interfering circ.u.mstances.

_x_ = _a_ + _b_ + _c_.

"Now," said Mason, when she looked up, "I'd like you to help me to get the exact value of _x_ in this little equation. It's a kind of fortune-telling by algebra. We must proceed by elimination; you may strike out such of the letters on the right side of the last equation as do not count for anything."

But instead of proceeding as the master suggested, Barbara, whose reserve was partly dissipated by her amus.e.m.e.nt, took the pencil that he offered her, and after a moment's reflection wrote below:

_a_ = 0 _b_ = 0 _x_ = _c_

"I never saw an equation more to my taste," said Hiram. "If it's only circ.u.mstances, then circ.u.mstances and I are going to fight it out. You think there are things that will keep us from making an equation between Barbara and Hiram?"

"There wouldn't be any equation," she said, looking out of half-closed eye-lids, as she always did when speaking with feeling. "Your family is an educated one, and your father and mother wouldn't approve of us.

Mother never had any chance to learn, and her talk is very old-fashioned, but she's just as good as good can be, all the same.

Tom's unsteady; I hope he'll get over that yet; but your father and mother and your sisters wouldn't like it."

"Yes, they would, if they knew you," said Mason, with enthusiasm; "and, besides, I don't see that I'm bound to get their consent."

"But that wouldn't change matters," persisted Barbara, despondingly. "If they didn't like it, it wouldn't be nice."

"Don't you bother about my happiness, Barbara. If I have you, do you think anything else will trouble me?" He got up and snuffed the candle with his fingers like the brave man that he was.

"I'm not bothering about you at all," said Barbara. "I'm not so good as you think I am. I let you take care of yourself in this matter; you're strong, and such things won't worry you." She was picking at her dress as she spoke. "Ever since you said what you did when you helped me over the fence last,"--Barbara took a long breath as she thought of that scene; she had often retraced all its details in her memory,--"I've known that you felt so toward me that you would face any thing. But _I_--I couldn't bear it if your folks should look down on me and I be--your wife." It was hard to say the last words; they sounded strangely, and when they were uttered, the sound of them put her into a trepidation not altogether disagreeable.

"Look down on _you_?" said Hiram, with a vehemence Barbara had never known him to manifest before. "Do you think my folks are such idiots?

They don't meet a person like you often enough to get the habit of looking down on such."

"But you don't know women folks," said Barbara.

"I know my family better than you do, and you've got mighty curious notions about them and about yourself. You've always lived here in the woods, and you don't know what you're worth."

He lifted the empty apple-basket out of the way and sat down by her.

"Now, Barbara, you say you know how I feel toward you. You are the girl of all girls in the world for me. And now you won't spurn me, will you?"

he said entreatingly.

Barbara's lips quivered and she seemed about to lose control of herself.

However, after a little period of silence and struggle, she suppressed her feelings sufficiently to speak: