Vandemark's Folly Part 34

"This ain't the last time, Jacob," said she, as she climbed into Jim Boyd's buggy that Henderson L. had borrowed. "You may expect to find your house red up any time when I can get a ride out."

I was in a daze for some time trying to study out developments. Buck Gowdy and Mrs. Mobley; Rowena and Magnus Thorkelson; Gowdy's calls on Rowena, or at least at her home; Rowena's going to live in his house as a hired girl; her warmth to me; her nervousness, or fright, at Gowdy; Gowdy's religious tendency in the midst of his entanglements with the fair s.e.x; his seeming reconciliation with Virginia; his pulling of the wool over the eyes of Mrs. Thornd.y.k.e, and probably the elder's--. Out of this maze I came to a sudden resolution. I would go to Waterloo and get me a new outfit of clothes, even to gloves and a pair of "fine boots."

CHAPTER XVII

I RECEIVE A PROPOSAL--AND ACCEPT

Dogs and cats get more credit, I feel sure, for being animals of fine feeling and intelligence, than in justice they are ent.i.tled to; because they have so many ways of showing forth what they feel. A dog can growl or bark in several ways, and show his teeth in at least two, to tell how he feels. He can wag his tail, or let it droop, or curl it over his back, or stick it straight out like a flag, or hold it in a bowed shape with the curve upward, and frisk about, and run in circles, or sit up silently or with howls; or stand with one foot lifted; or c.o.c.k his head on one side: and as for his eyes and his ears, he can almost talk with them.

As for a cat, she has no such rich language as a dog; but see what she can do: purring, rubbing against things, arching her back, glaring out of her eyes, setting her hair on end, swelling out her tail, sticking out her claws and scratching at posts, sneaking along as if ready to pounce, pouncing either in earnest or in fun, mewing in many voices, catching at things with nails drawn back or just a little protruded, or drawing the blood with them, laying back her ears, looking up pleadingly and asking for milk--why a cat can say almost anything she wants to say.

Now contrast these domestic animals with a much more necessary and useful one, the cow. Any stockman knows that a cow is a beast of very high nervous organization, but she has no very large number of ways of telling us how she feels: just a few tones to her lowing, a few changes of expression to her eye, a small number of shades of uneasiness, a little manner with her eyes, showing the whites when troubled or letting the lids droop in satisfaction--these things exhausted, and poor bossy's tale is told. You can get nothing more out of her, except in some spasm of madness. She is driven to extremes by her dumbness.

I am brought to this sermon by two things: what happened to me when Rowena Fewkes came over to see me in the early summer of 1859, a year almost to a day from the time when Magnus and I left Blue-gra.s.s Manor after our spell of work there: and what our best cow, Spot, did yesterday.

We were trying to lead Spot behind a wagon, and she did not like it. She had no way of telling us how much she hated it, and how panicky she was, as a dog or a cat could have done; and so she just hung back and acted dumb and stubborn for a minute or two, and then she gave an awful bellow, ran against the wagon as if she wanted to upset it, and when she found she could not affect it, in as pathetic a despair and mental agony as any man ever felt who has killed himself, she thrust one horn into the ground, broke it off flush with her head, and threw herself down with her neck doubled under her shoulder, as if trying to commit suicide, as I verily believe she was. And yet dogs and cats get credit for being creatures of finer feelings than cows, merely because cows have no tricks of barking, purring, and the like.

It is the same as between other people and a Dutchman. He has the same poverty of expression that cows are cursed with. To wear his feelings like an overcoat where everybody can see them is for him impossible. He is the bovine of the human species. This is the reason why I used to have such fearful crises once in a while in my dumb life, as when I was treated so kindly by Captain Sproule just after my stepfather whipped me; or when I nearly killed Ace, my fellow-driver, on the ca.n.a.l in my first and successful rebellion; or when I used to grow white, and cry like a baby in my fights with rival drivers. I am thought by my children, I guess, an unfeeling person, because the surface of my nature is ice, and does not ripple in every breeze; but when ice breaks up, it rips and tears--and the thicker the ice, the worse the ravage. The only reason for saying anything about this is that I am an old man, and I have always wanted to say it: and there are some things I have said, and some I shall now have to say, that will seem inconsistent unless the truths just stated are taken into account.

But there are some things to be told about before this crisis can be understood. Life dragged along for all of us from one year to another in the slow movement of a new country in hard times: only I was at bottom better off than most of my neighbors because I had cattle, though I could not see how they then did me much good. They grew in numbers, and keeping them was just a matter of labor. My stock was the only thing I had except land which was almost worthless; for I could use the land of others for pasture and hay without paying rent.

Town life went backward in most ways. My interest in it centered in Virginia and through her in Elder Thornd.y.k.e's family; but of this family I saw little except for my visits from Grandma Thornd.y.k.e. She came out and red up the house as often as she could catch a ride, and I kept up my now well-known secret policy of supplying the Thornd.y.k.e family with my farm, dairy and poultry surplus. Why not? I lay in bed of nights thinking that Virginia had been that day fed on what I grew, and in the morning would eat buckwheat cakes from grain that I worked to grow, flour from my wheat that I had taken to mill, spread with b.u.t.ter which I had made with my own hands, from the cows she used to pet and that had hauled her in my wagon back along the Ridge Road, and with nice sorghum mola.s.ses from cane that I had grown and hauled to the sorghum mill. That she would have meat that I had prepared for her, with eggs from the descendants of the very hens to which she had fed our table sc.r.a.ps when we were together. That maybe she would think of me when she made bread for Grandma Thornd.y.k.e from my flour. It was sometimes almost like being married to Virginia, this feeling of standing between her and hunger.

The very roses in her cheeks, and the curves in her developing form, seemed of my making. But she never came with grandma to help red up.

2

Grandma often told me that now I was getting pretty nearly old enough to be married, or would be when I was twenty-one, which would be in July--"Though," she always said, "I don't believe in folks's being married under the spell of puppy love. Thirty is soon enough; but yet, you might do well to marry when you are a little younger, because you need a wife to keep you clean and tidy, and you can support a wife." She began bringing girls with her to help fix my house up; and she would always show them the castor and my other things.

"Dat bane for Christina," said Magnus one time, when she was showing my castor and a nice white china dinner set, to Kittie Fleming or Dose Roebuck, both of whom were among her samples of girls shown me. "An' dat patent churn--dat bane for Christina, too, eh, Yake?"

"Christina who?" asked Grandma Thornd.y.k.e sharply.

"Christina Quale," said Magnus, "my cousin in Norvay."

This was nuts and apples for Grandma Thornd.y.k.e and the girls who came.

Magnus showed them Christina's picture, and told them that I had a copy of it, and all about what a nice girl Christina was. Now grandma made a serious thing of this and soon I had the reputation of being engaged to Magnus's cousin, who was the daughter of a rich farmer, and could write English; and even that I had received a letter from her. This seemed unjust to me, though I was a little mite proud of it; for the letter was only one page written in English in one of Magnus's. All the time grandma was bringing girls with her to help, and making me work with them when I helped. They were nice girls, too--Kittie, and Dose, Lizzie Finster, and Zeruiah Strickler, and Amy Smith--all farmer girls. Grandma was always talking about the wisdom of my marrying a farmer girl.

"The best thing about Christina," said she, "is that she is the daughter of a farmer."

I struggled with this Christina idea, and tried to make it clear that she was nothing to me, that it was just a joke. Grandma Thornd.y.k.e smiled.

"Of course you'd say that," said she.

But the Christina myth grew wonderfully, and it made me more interesting to the other girls.

"You look too high For things close by, And slight the things around you!"

So sang Zeruiah Strickler as she scrubbed my kitchen, and in pauses of her cheerful and encouraging song told of the helplessness of men without their women. I really believed her, in spite of my success in getting along by myself.

"Why don't you bring Virginia out some day?" I asked on one of these occasions, when it seemed to me that Grandma Thornd.y.k.e was making herself just a little too frequent a visitor at my place.

"Miss Royall," said she, as if she had been speaking of the Queen of Sheba, "is busy with her own circle of friends. She is now visiting at Governor Wade's. She is almost a member of the family there. And her law matters take up a good deal of her time, too. Mr. Gowdy says he thinks he may be able to get her property for her soon. She can hardly be expected to come out for this."

And grandma swept her hands about to cast down into nothingness my house, my affairs, and me. This plunged me into the depths of misery.

So, when I furnished the cream for the donation picnic at Crabapple Grove in strawberry time, I went prepared to see myself discarded by my love. She was there, and I had not overestimated her coldness toward me. Buck Gowdy came for only a few minutes, and these he spent eating ice-cream with Elder Thornd.y.k.e, with Virginia across the table from him, looking at her in that old way of his. Before he left, she went over and sat with Bob Wade and Kittie Fleming; but he joined them pretty soon, and I saw him bending down in that intimate way of his, first speaking to Kittie, and then for a longer time, to Virginia--and I thought of the time when she would not even speak his name!

Once she walked off by herself in the trees, and looked back at me as she went; but I was done with her, I said to myself, and hung back. She soon returned to the company, and began flirting with Matthias Trickey, who was no older than I, and just as much of a country b.u.mpkin. I found out afterward that right off after that, Matthias began going to see her, with his pockets full of candy with mottoes on it. I called this sparking, and the sun of my hopes set in a black bank of clouds. I do not remember that I was ever so unhappy, not even when John Rucker was in power over me and my mother, not even when I was seeking my mother up and down the ca.n.a.l and the Lakes, not even when I found that she had gone away on her last long journey that bleak winter day in Madison. I now devoted myself to the memory of my old dreams for my mother, and blamed myself for treason to her memory, getting out that old letter and the poor work-worn shoe, and weeping over them in my lonely nights in the cabin on the prairie. I can not now think of this without pity for myself; and though Grandma Thornd.y.k.e was one of the best women that ever lived on this footstool, and was much to me in my after life, I can not think of her happiness at my despair without blaming her memory a little. But she meant well. She had better plans, as she thought, for Virginia, than any which she thought I could have.

3

It was not more than a week after this donation picnic, when I came home for my nooning one day, and found a covered wagon in the yard, and two strange horses in the stable. When I went to the house, there were Old Man Fewkes and Mrs. Fewkes, and Surajah Dowlah and Celebrate Fourth. I welcomed them heartily. I was so lonesome that I would have welcomed a stray dog, and that is pretty nearly what I was doing.

"I guess," ventured the old man, after we had finished our dinner, "that you are wondering where we're goin', Jake."

"A long ways," I said, "by the looks of your rig."

"You see us now," he went on, "takin' steps that I've wanted to take ever sen' I found out what a den of inikerty we throwed ourselves into when we went out yon'," pointing in the general direction of the Blue-gra.s.s Manor.

"What steps are you takin'?" I asked.

"We are makin'," said he, "our big move for riches. Gold! Gold! Jake, you must go with us! We are goin' out to the Speak."

I had never heard of any place called the Speak, but I finally got it through my head that he meant Pike's Peak. We were in the midst of the Pike's Peak excitement for two or three years; and this was the earliest sign of it that I had seen, though I had heard Pike's Peak mentioned.

"Jake," said Old Man Fewkes, "it's a richer spot than the Arabian Knights ever discovered. The streams are rollin' gold sand. Come along of us to the Speak, an' we'll make you rich. Eh, ma?"

"I have been drailed around," said ma, as she saw me looking at her, "about as much as I expect to be; but this is like goin' home. It's the last move; and as pa has said ag'in an' ag'in, it ain't but six or eight hundred mile from Omaha, an' with the team an' wagin we've got, that's nothin' if we find the gold, an' I calculate there ain't no doubt of that. The Speak looks like the best place we ever started fur, and we all hope you'll leave this Land o' Desolation, an' come with us. We like you, an' we want you to be rich with us."

"Where's Rowena?" I asked.

Silence for quite a while. Then Ma Fewkes spoke.

"Rowena," she said, her voice trembling, "Rowena ain't goin' with us."

"Why," I said, "last summer, she seemed to want to start for Texas. She ain't goin' with you? I want to know!"

"She ain't no longer," said Old Man Fewkes, "a member o' my family. I shall will my proputty away from her. I've made up my mind, Jake: an'

now le's talk about the Speak. Our plans was never better laid.

Celebrate, tell Jake how we make our money a-goin', and you, Surrager, denote to him your machine f'r gittin' out the gold."

I was too absorbed in thinking about Rowena to take in what Surajah and Celebrate said. I have a dim recollection that Celebrate's plan for making money was to fill the wagon box with white beans which were scarce in Denver City, as we then called Denver, and could be sold for big money when they got there. I have no remembrance of Surajah Dowlah's plan for mining. I declined to go with them, and they went away toward Monterey Centre, saying that they would stay there a few days, "to kind of recuperate up," and they hoped I would join them. What about Rowena?

They had been so mysterious about her, that I had a new subject of thought now, and, for I was very fond of the poor girl, of anxiety. Not that she would be the worse for losing her family. In fact, she would be the better for it, one might think. Her older brothers and sisters, I remembered, had been bound out back east, and this seemed to show a lack of family affection; but the tremor in Ma Fewkes's voice, and the agitation in which Old Man Fewkes had delivered what in books would be his parental curse, led me to think that they were in deep trouble on account of their breach with Rowena. Poor girl! After all, they were her parents and brothers, and as long as she was with them, she had not been quite alone in the world. My idea of what had taken place may be judged by the fact that when I next saw Magnus I asked him if he knew that Rowena and her people had had a fuss. I looked upon the case as that of a family fuss, and that only. Magnus looked very solemn, and said that he had seen none of the family since we had finished our work for Gowdy--a year ago.

"What said the old man, Yake?" he asked anxiously.

"He said he was going to will his property away from her!" I replied, laughing heartily at the idea: but Magnus did not laugh. "He said that she ain't no longer a member of his family, Magnus. Don't that beat you!"