Tillie, a Mennonite Maid Part 34

They walked in silence for a s.p.a.ce, Tillie feeling with mingled bliss and despair the fascination of this parting hour. But it did not occur to Fairchilds that her departure from the hotel meant the end of their intercourse.

"I shall come out to the farm to see you, Tillie, as often as you will let me. You know, I've no one else to talk to, about here, as I talk with you. What a pleasure it has been!"

"Oh, but father will never le--let me spend my time with you as I did at the hotel! He will be angry at my being sent home, and he will keep me constantly at work to make up for the loss it is to him. This is our last talk together!"

"I'll risk your father's wrath, Tillie. You don't suppose I'd let a small matter like that stand in the way of our friendship?"

"But father will not l--LET--me spend time with you. And if you come when he told you not to he would put you out of William Penn!"

"I'm coming, all the same, Tillie."

"Father will blame me, if you do."

"Can't you take your own part, Tillie?" he gravely asked. "No, no," he hastily added, for he did not forget the talk he had overheard about the new caps, in which Mr. Getz had threatened personal violence to his daughter. "I know you must not suffer for my sake. But you cannot mean that we are not to meet at all after this?"

"Only at chance times," faltered Tillie; "that is all."

Very simply and somewhat constrainedly they said good-by the next morning, Fairchilds to go to his work at William Penn and Tillie to drive out with her Uncle Abe to meet her father's displeasure.

XXI

"I'LL MARRY HIM TO-MORROW!"

Mr. Getz had plainly given Absalom to understand that he did not want him to sit up with Tillie, as he "wasn't leaving her marry." Absalom had answered that he guessed Tillie would have something to say to that when she was "eighteen a'ready." And on the first Sunday evening after her return home he had boldly presented himself at the farm.

"That's where you'll get fooled, Absalom, fur she's been raised to mind her pop!" Mr. Getz had responded. "If she disobeyed to my word, I wouldn't give her no aus styer. I guess you wouldn't marry a girl where wouldn't bring you no aus styer!"

Absalom, who was frugal, had felt rather baffled at this threat.

Nevertheless, here he was again on Sunday evening at the farm to a.s.sure Tillie that HE would stand by her, and that if she was not restored to membership in the meeting, he wouldn't give himself up, either.

Mr. Getz dared not go to the length of forbidding Absalom his house, for that would have meant a family feud between all the Getzes and all the Puntzes of the county. He could only insist that Tillie "dishearten him," and that she dismiss him not later than ten o'clock. To almost any other youth in the neighborhood, such opposition would have proved effectual. But every new obstacle seemed only to increase Absalom's determination to have what he had set out to get.

To-night he produced another book, which he said he had bought at the second-hand book-store in Lancaster.

"'Cupid and Psyche,'" Tillie read the t.i.tle. "Oh, Absalom, thank you.

This is lovely. It's a story from Greek mythology--I've been hearing some of these stories from the teacher"--she checked herself, suddenly, at Absalom's look of jealous suspicion.

"I'm wonderful glad you ain't in there at the HOtel no more," he said.

"I hadn't no fair chancet, with Teacher right there on the GROUNDS."

"Absalom," said Tillie, gravely, with a little air of dignity that did not wholly fail to impress him, "I insist on it that you never speak of the teacher in that way in connection with me. You might as well speak of my marrying the County Superintendent! He'd be just as likely to ask me!"

The county superintendent of public instruction was held in such awe that his name was scarcely mentioned in an ordinary tone of voice.

"As if there's no difference from a teacher at William Penn to the county superintendent! You ain't that dumm, Tillie!"

"The difference is that the teacher at William Penn is superior in every way to the county superintendent!"

She spoke impulsively, and she regretted her words the moment they were uttered. But Absalom only half comprehended her meaning.

"You think you ain't good enough fur him, and you think I ain't good enough fur YOU!" he grumbled. "I have never saw such a funny girl!

Well," he nodded confidently, "you'll think different one of these here days!"

"You must not cherish any false hopes, Absalom," Tillie insisted in some distress.

"Well, fur why don't you want to have me?" he demanded for the hundredth time.

"Absalom,"--Tillie tried a new mode of discouragement,--"I don't want to get married because I don't want to be a farmer's wife--they have to work too hard!"

It was enough to drive away any lover in the countryside, and for a moment Absalom was staggered.

"Well!" he exclaimed, "a woman that's afraid of work ain't no wife fur me, anyways!"

Tillie's heart leaped high for an instant in the hope that now she had effectually cooled his ardor. But it sank again as she recalled the necessity of retaining at least his good-will and friendship, that she might protect the teacher.

"Now, Absalom," she feebly protested, "did you ever see me afraid of work?"

"Well, then, if you ain't afraid of workin', what makes you talk so CONTRARY?"

"I don't know. Come, let me read this nice book you've brought me," she urged, much as she might have tried to divert one of her little sisters or brothers.

"I'd ruther just set. I ain't much fur readin'. Jake Getz he says he's goin' to chase you to bed at ten--and ten comes wonderful soon Sundays.

Leave us just set."

Tillie well understood that this was to endure Absalom's clownish wooing. But for the sake of the cause, she said to herself, she would conquer her repugnance and bear it.

For two weeks after Tillie's return home, she did not once have a word alone with Fairchilds. He came several times, ostensibly on errands from her aunt; but on each occasion he found her hard at work in her father's presence. At his first visit, Tillie, as he was leaving, rose from her corn-husking in the barn to go with him to the gate, but her father interfered.

"You stay where you're at!"

With burning face, she turned to her work. And Fairchilds, carefully suppressing an impulse to shake Jake Getz till his teeth rattled, walked quietly out of the gate and up the road.

Her father was more than usually stern and exacting with her in these days of her suspension from meeting, inasmuch as it involved her dismissal from the hotel and the consequent loss to him of two dollars a week.

As for Tillie, she found a faint consolation in the fact of the teacher's evident chagrin and indignation at the tyrannical rule which forbade intercourse between them.

At stated intervals, the brethren came to reason with her, but while she expressed her willingness to put her curls back, she would not acknowledge that her heart was no longer "carnal and vain," and so they found it impossible to restore her to favor.

A few weeks before Christmas, Absalom, deciding that he had imbibed all the arithmetical erudition he could hold, stopped school. On the evening that he took his books home, he gave the teacher a parting blow, which he felt sure quite avenged the outrageous defeat he had suffered at his hands on that Sunday night at the hotel.

"Me and Tillie's promised. It ain't put out yet, but I conceited I'd better tell you, so's you wouldn't be wastin' your time tryin' to make up to her."

"You and Tillie are engaged to be married?" Fairchilds incredulously asked.

"That's what! As good as, anyways. I always get somepin I want when I make up my mind oncet." And he grinned maliciously.