Chapter 9

Bert remarked how much she looked like his own mother in the back. She had the same tired droop in the shoulders, the same colorless dress, characterless with much washing.

"Certainly. I feel at home already," replied Bert. "Now, Jim," he said, after she left the room, "I'm going t' stay right here while you go and order our trunks around--just t' pay you off f'r last night."

"All right," said Hartley cheerily, going out.

After getting warm, Bert returned to the sitting-room, and sat down at the parlor organ and played a gospel hymn or two from the Moody and Sankey hymnal. He was in the midst of the chorus of _Let Your Lower Lights_, etc., when a young woman entered the room. She had a whisk-broom in her hand, and stood a picture of gentle surprise. Bert wheeled about on his stool.

"I thought it was Stella," she began.

"I'm a book agent," Bert explained. "I might as well out with it. There are two of us. Come here to board."

"Oh!" said the girl, with some relief. She was very fair and very slight, almost frail. Her eyes were of the sunniest blue, her face pale and somewhat thin, but her lips showed scarlet, and her teeth were fine. Bert liked her and smiled.

"A book agent is the next thing to a burglar, I know; but still--"

"Oh, I didn't mean that, but I _was_ surprised. When did you come?"

"Just a few moments ago. Am I in your way?" he inquired, with elaborate solicitude.

"Oh no! Please go on. You play very well. It is seldom young men play at all."

"I had to at college; the other fellows all wanted to sing. You play, of course."

"When I have time." She sighed. There was a weary droop in her voice; she seemed aware of it, and said more brightly:

"You mean Madison, I suppose?"

"Yes; I'm in my second year."

"I went there two years. Then I had to quit and come home to help mother."

"Did you? That's why I'm out here on this infernal book business--to get money to go on with."

She looked at him with interest now, noticing his fine eyes and waving brown hair.

"It's dreadful, isn't it? But you've got a hope to go back. I haven't." She ended with a sigh, a far-off expression in her eyes. "It almost killed me to give it up. I don't s'pose I'd know any of the scholars you know. Even the teachers are not the same. Oh, yes--Sarah Shaw; I think she's back for the normal course."

"Oh yes!" exclaimed Bert, "I know Sarah. We boarded on the same street; used t' go home together after class. An awful nice girl, too."

"She's a worker. She teaches school. I can't do that, for mother needs me at home." There was another pause, broken by the little girl, who called:

"Maud, mamma wants you."

Maud rose and went out, with a tired smile on her face that emphasized her resemblance to her mother. Bert couldn't forget that smile, and he was still thinking about the girl, and what her life must be, when Hartley came in.

"By jinks! It's _snifty_, as dad used to say. You can't draw a long breath through your nostrils without freezing y'r nose solid as a bottle," he announced, throwing off his coat. "By-the-way, I've just found out why you was so anxious to get into this house. Another case o' girl, hey?"

Bert blushed; he couldn't help it, notwithstanding his innocence in this case. "I didn't know it myself till about ten minutes ago," he protested.

Hartley winked prodigiously.

"Don't tell me! Is she pretty?"

The girl returned at this moment with an armful of wood.

"Let _me_ put it in," cried Hartley, springing up. "Excuse me. My name is Hartley, book agent: Blaine's _Twenty Years_, plain cloth, sprinkled edges, three dollars; half calf, three fifty. This is my friend Mr. Lohr, of Marion; German extraction, soph at the university."

The girl bowed and smiled, and pushed by him toward the door of the parlor. Hartley followed her in, and Bert could hear them rattling away at the stove.

"Won't you sit down and play for us?" asked Hartley, after they returned to the sitting-room. The persuasive music of the book agent was in his fine voice.

"Oh no! It's nearly dinner-time, and I must help about the table."

"Now make yourselves at home," said Mrs. Welsh, appearing at the door leading to the kitchen; "if you want anything, just let me know."

"All right. We will," replied Hartley.

By the time the dinner-bell rang they were feeling at home in their new quarters. At the table they met the usual group of village boarders: the Brann brothers, newsdealers; old man Troutt, who ran the livery-stable--and smelled of it; and a small, dark, and wizened woman who kept the millinery store. The others, who came in late, were clerks in the stores near by.

Maud served the dinner, while Stella and her mother waited upon the table. Albert admired the hands of the girl, which no amount of work could quite rob of their essential shapeliness. She was not more than twenty, he decided, but she looked older, so wistful was her face.

"They's one thing ag'in' yeh," Troutt, the liveryman, remarked to Hartley: "we've jest been worked for one o' the goldingedest schemes you _ever_ see! 'Bout six munce ago s'm' fellers come all through here claimin' t' be after information about the county and the leadin' citizens; wanted t' write a history, an' wanted all the pitchers of the leading men, old settlers, an' so on. You paid ten dollars, an' you had a book an' your pitcher in it."

"I know the scheme," grinned Hartley.

"Wal, sir, I s'pose them fellers roped in every man in this town. I don't s'pose they got out with a cent less'n one thousand dollars. An' when the book come--wal!" Here he stopped to roar. "I don't s'pose you ever see a madder lot o' men in your life. In the first place, they got the names and the pitchers mixed so that I was Judge Ricker, an' Judge Ricker was ol' man Daggett. Didn't the judge swear--oh, it was awful!"

"I should say so."

"An the pitchers that wa'n't mixed was so goldinged _black_ you couldn't tell 'em from niggers. You know how kind o' lily-livered Lawyer Ransom is? Wal, he looked like ol' black Joe; he was the maddest man of the hull bi'lin'. He throwed the book in the fire, and tromped around like a blind bull."

"It wasn't a success, I take it, then. Why, I should 'a' thought they'd 'a' nabbed the fellows."

"Not much! They was too keen for that. They didn't deliver the books theirselves; they hired Dick Bascom to do it f'r them. 'Course, Dick wa'n't t' blame."

"No; I never tried it before," Albert was saying to Maud, at their end of the table. "Hartley offered me a job, and as I needed money, I came. I don't know what he's going to do with me, now I'm here."

Albert did not go out after dinner with Hartley; it was too cold. He had brought his books with him, planning to keep up with his class, if possible, and was deep in "Cæsar" when a timid knock came upon the door.

"Come!" he called, student fashion,

Maud entered, her face aglow.

"How natural that sounds!" she said.

Albert sprang up to take the wood from her arms. "I wish you'd let me do that," he said, pleadingly, as she refused his aid.

"I wasn't sure you were in. Were you reading?"

"Cæsar," he replied, holding up the book. "I am conditioned on Latin. I'm going over the 'Commentaries' again."

"I thought I knew the book," she laughed.

"You read Latin?"

"Yes, a little--Vergil."

"Maybe you can help me out on these _oratia obliqua_. They bother me yet. I hate these 'Cæsar saids.' I like Vergil better."

She stood at his shoulder while he pointed out the knotty passage. She read it easily, and he thanked her. It was amazing how well acquainted they felt after this.

The wind roared outside in the bare maples, and the fire boomed in its pent place within, but these young people had forgotten time and place. The girl sank into a chair almost unconsciously as they talked of Madison--a great city to them--of the Capitol building, of the splendid campus, of the lakes, and the gay sailing there in summer and ice-boating in winter.

"Oh, it makes me homesick!" cried the girl, with a deep sigh. "It was the happiest, sunniest time of all my life. Oh, those walks and talks! Those recitations in the dear, chalky old rooms! Oh, _how_ I would like to go back over that hollow door-stone again!"

She broke off, with tears in her eyes, and he was obliged to cough two or three times before he could break the silence.

"I know just how you feel. The first spring when I went back on the farm it seemed as if I couldn't stand it. I thought I'd go crazy. The days seemed forty-eight hours long. It was so lonesome, and so dreary on rainy days! But of course I expected to go back; that's what kept me up. I don't think I could have stood it if I hadn't had hope."

"I've given it up now," she said, plaintively; "it's no use hoping."

"Why don't you teach?" he asked, deeply affected by her voice and manner.

"I did teach here for a year, but I couldn't endure the strain; I'm not very strong, and the boys were so rude. If I could teach in a seminary--teach Latin and English--I should be happy, I think. But I can't leave mother now."

She was a wholly different girl in Albert's eyes as she said this. Her cheap dress, her check apron, could not hide the pure intellectual flame of her spirit. Her large, blue eyes were deep with thought, and the pale face, lighted by the glow of the fire, was as lovely as a rose. Almost before he knew it, he was telling her of his life.

"I don't see how I endured it as long as I did," he went on. "It was nothing but work, work, and dust or mud the whole year round; farm-life, especially on a dairy farm, is slavery."

"Yes," she agreed, "that is true. Father was a carpenter, and I've always lived here; but we have people who are farmers, and I know how it is with them."

"Why, when I think of it now it makes me crawl! To think of getting up in the morning before daylight, and going out to the barn to do chores, to get ready to go into the field to work! Working, wasting y'r life on dirt. Waiting and tending on cows seven hundred times a year. Goin' round and round in a circle, and never getting out. You needn't talk to me of the poetry of a farmer's life."

"It's just the same for us women," she corroborated. "Think of us going around the house day after day, and doing just the same things over an' over, year after year! That's the whole of most women's lives. Dishwashing almost drives me crazy."

"I know it," said Albert; "but somebody has t' do it. And if a fellow's folks are workin' hard, why, of course he can't lay around and study. They're not to blame. I don't know that anybody's to blame."

"I don't suppose anybody is, but it makes me sad to see mother going around as she does, day after day. She won't let me do as much as I would." The girl looked at her slender hands. "You see, I'm not very strong. It makes my heart ache to see her going around in that quiet, patient way; she's so good."

"I know, I know! I've felt just like that about my mother and father, too."

There was a long pause, full of deep feeling, and then the girl continued in a low, hesitating voice:

"Mother's had an awful hard time since father died. We had to go to keeping boarders, which was hard--very hard for mother." The boy felt a sympathetic lump in his throat as the girl went on again: "But she doesn't complain, and she didn't want me to come home from school; but of course I couldn't do anything else."

It didn't occur to either of them that any other course was open, nor that there was any special heroism or self-sacrifice in the act; it was simply _right_.

"Well, I'm not going to drudge all my life," said Albert, at last. "I know it's kind o' selfish, but I can't live on a farm. I've made up my mind to study law and enter the bar. Lawyers manage to get hold of enough to live on decently, and that's more than you can say of the farmers. And they live in town, where something is going on once in a while, anyway."

In the pause which followed, footsteps were heard on the walk outside, and the girl sprang up with a beautiful blush.

"My stars! I didn't think--I forgot--I must go."

Hartley burst into the room shortly after she left it, in his usual breeze.

"Hul-_lo!_ Still at the Latin, hey?"

"Yes," said Bert, with ease. "How goes it?"

"Oh, I'm whooping 'er up! I'm getting started in great shape. Been up to the court-house and roped in three of the county officials. In these small towns the big man is the politician or the clergyman. I've nailed the politicians through the ear; now you must go for the ministers to head the list--that's your lay-out."

"How 'm I t' do it?" asked Bert, in an anxious tone. "I can't sell books if they don't want 'em."

"Why, cert! That's the trick. Offer a big discount. Say full calf, two fifty; morocco, two ninety. Regular discount to the clergy, ye know. Oh, they're on to that little racket--no trouble. If you can get a few of these leaders of the flock, the rest will follow like lambs to the slaughter. Tra-la-la--who-o-o-_ish_, whish!"

Albert laughed at Hartley as he plunged his face into the ice-cold water, puffing and wheezing.

"Jeemimy Crickets! but ain't that water cold! I worked Rock River this way last month, and made a boomin' success. If you take hold here in the--"

"Oh, I'm all ready to stand anything short of being kicked out."

"No danger of that if you're a real book agent. It's the snide that gets kicked. You've got t' have some savvy in this, just like any other business." He stopped in his dressing to say, "We've struck a great boarding-place, hey?"

"Looks like it."

"I begin t' cotton to the old lady a'ready. Good 'eal like mother used t' be 'fore she broke down. Didn't the old lady have a time of it raisin' me? Phewee! Patient! Job wasn't a patchin'. But the test is goin' t' come on the biscuit; if her biscuit comes up t' mother's I'm hern till death."

He broke off to comb his hair, a very nice bit of work in his case.

II

There was no discernible reason why the little town should have been called Tyre, and yet its name was as characteristically American as its architecture. It had the usual main street lined with low brick or wooden stores--a street which developed into a road running back up a wide, sandy valley away from the river. Being a county town, it had a court-house in a yard near the centre of the town, and a big summer hotel. Curiously shaped and oddly distributed hills rose abruptly out of the valley sand, forming a sort of amphitheatre in which the village lay. These square-topped hills ended at a common level, showing that they were not the result of an upheaval, but were the remains of the original stratification formations left standing after the scooping action of the post-glacial floods had ceased.

Some of them looked like ruined walls of castles ancient as hills, on whose massive tops time had sown sturdy oaks and cedars. They lent a distinct air of romance to the landscape at all times; but when in summer graceful vines clambered over their rugged sides, and underbrush softened their broken lines, it was not at all difficult to imagine them the remains of an unrecorded and very war-like people.

Even now, in winter, with yellow-brown and green cedars standing starkly upon their summits, these towers possessed a distinct charm, and in the early morning when the trees glistened with frost, or at evening when the white light of the sun was softened and violet shadows lay along the snow, the whole valley was a delight to the eye, full of distinct and lasting charm.

In the campaign which Hartley began, Albert did his best, and his best was done unconsciously; for the simplicity of his manner--all unknown to himself--was the most potent factor in securing consideration.

"I'm not a book agent," he said to one of the clergymen to whom he first appealed; "I'm a student trying to sell a good book and make a little money to help me to complete my course at the university."

In this way he secured three clergymen to head the list, much to the delight and admiration of Hartley.

"Good! Now corral the alumni of the place. Work the fraternal racket to the bitter end. Oh, say! there's a sociable to-morrow night; I guess we'd better go, hadn't we?"

"Go alone?"

"Alone? No! Take some girls. I'm going to take neighbor Pickett's daughter; she's homely as a hedge fence, but I'll take her for business reasons."

"Hartley, you're an infernal fraud!"

"Nothing of the kind--I'm a salesman," ended Hartley, with a laugh.

After supper the following day, as Albert was still lingering at the table with the girls and Mrs. Welsh, he said to Maud:

"Are you going to the sociable?"

"No; I guess not."

"Would you go if I asked you?"

"Try me and see!" answered the girl, with a laugh, her color rising.

"All right. Miss Welsh, will you attend the festivity of the evening under my guidance and protection?"

"Yes, thank you; but I must wash the dishes first."

"I'll wash the dishes; you go get ready," said Mrs. Welsh.

Albert felt that he had one of the loveliest girls in the room as he led Maud down the floor of the vestry of the church. Her cheeks were glowing, and her eyes shining with maidenly delight as they took seats at the table to sip a little coffee and nibble a bit of cake.

Maud introduced him to a number of young people who had been students at the university. They received him cordially, and in a very short time he was enjoying himself very well indeed. He was reminded rather disagreeably of his office, however, by seeing Hartley surrounded by a laughing crowd of the more frolicsome young people. He winked at Albert, as much as to say, "Good stroke of business."

The evening passed away with songs, games, and recitations, and it was nearly eleven o'clock when the young people began to wander off toward home in pairs. Albert and Maud were among the first of the young folks to bid the rest good-night.

The night was clear and keen but perfectly still, and the young people, arm in arm, walked slowly homeward under the bare maples, in delicious companionship. Albert held Maud's arm close to his side.

"Are you cold?" he asked, in a low voice.

"No, thank you; the night is lovely," she replied; then added, with a sigh, "I don't like sociables so well as I used to--they tire me out."

"We stayed too long."

"It wasn't that; I'm getting so they seem kind o' silly."

"Well, I feel a little that way myself," he confessed.

"But there is so little to see here in Tyre at any time--no music, no theatres. I like theatres, don't you?"

"I can't go half enough."

"But nothing worth seeing ever comes into these little towns--and then we're all so poor, anyway."

The lamp, turned low, was emitting a terrible odor as they entered the sitting-room.

"My goodness! it's almost twelve o'clock! Good-night!" She held out her hand.

"Good-night!" he said, taking it, and giving it a cordial pressure which she remembered long.

"Good-night!" she repeated, softly, going up the stairs.

Hartley, who came in a few minutes later, found his partner sitting thoughtfully by the fire, with his coat and shoes off, evidently in deep abstraction.

"Well, I got away at last--much as ever. Great scheme, that sociable, eh? I saw your little girl introducing you right and left."

"Say, Hartley, I wish you'd leave her out of this thing; I don't like the way you speak of her when--"

"Phew! You don't? Oh, all right! I'm mum as an oyster--only keep it up! Get into all the church sociables you can; there's nothing like it."

* * * * *

Hartley soon had canvassers out along the country roads, and was working every house in town. The campaign promised to lengthen into a month--perhaps longer. Albert especially became a great favorite. Every one declared there had never been such book agents in the town. "They're such gentlemanly fellows. They don't press anybody to buy. They don't rush about and 'poke their noses where they're not wanted.' They are more like merchants with books to sell." The only person who failed to see the attraction in them was Ed Brann, who was popularly supposed to be engaged to Maud. He grew daily more sullen and repellent, toward Albert noticeably so.

One evening about six, after coming in from a long walk about town, Albert entered his room without lighting his lamp, lay down on the bed, and fell asleep. He had been out late the night before with Maud at a party, and slumber came almost instantly.

Maud came in shortly, hearing no response to her knock, and after hanging some towels on the rack went out without seeing the sleeper. In the sitting-room she met Ed Brann. He was a stalwart young man with curling black hair, and a heavy face at its best, but set and sullen now. His first words held a menace:

"Say, Maud, I want t' talk to you."

"Very well; what is it, Ed?" replied the girl, quietly.

"I want to know how often you're going to be out till twelve o'clock with this book agent?"

Perhaps it was the derisive inflection on "book agent" that woke Albert. Brann's tone was brutal--more brutal even than his words, and the girl turned pale and her breath quickened.

"Why, Ed, what's the matter?"

"Matter is just this: you ain't got any business goin' around with that feller with my ring on your finger, that's all." He ended with an unmistakable threat in his voice.

"Very well," said the girl, after a pause, curiously quiet; "then I won't; here's your ring."

The man's bluster disappeared instantly. Bert could tell by the change in his voice, which was incredibly great, as he pleaded:

"Oh, don't do that, Maud; I didn't mean to say that; I was mad--I'm sorry."

"I'm _glad_ you did it _now_, so I can know you. Take your ring, Ed; I never 'll wear it again."

Albert had heard all this, but he did not know how the girl looked as she faced the man. In the silence which followed she scornfully passed him and went out into the kitchen. Brann went out and did not return at supper.

Young people of this sort are not self-analysts, and Maud did not examine closely into causes. She was astonished to find herself more indignant than grieved. She broke into an angry wail as she went to her mother's bosom:

"Mother! mother!"

"Why, what's the matter, Maudie? Tell me. There, there! don't cry, pet! Who's been hurtin' my poor little bird?"

"Ed has; he said--he said--"

"There, there! poor child! Have you been quarrelling again? Never mind; it'll come out all right."

"No, it won't--not the way you mean," the girl declared. "I've given him back his ring, and I'll never wear it again."

The mother could not understand with what wounding brutality the man's tone had fallen upon the girl's spirit, and Maud could not explain sufficiently to justify herself. Mrs. Welsh consoled herself with the idea that it was only a lover's quarrel--one of the little jars sure to come when two natures are settling together--and that all would be mended in a day or two.

Albert, being no more of a self-analyst than Maud, simply said, "Served him right," and dwelt no more upon it for the time.

At supper, however, he was extravagantly gay, and to himself unaccountably so. He joked Troutt till Maud begged him to stop, and after the rest had gone he remained seated at the table, enjoying the indignant color in her face and the flash of her infrequent smile, which it was such a pleasure to provoke. He volunteered to help wash the dishes.

"Thank you, but I'm afraid you'd be more bother than help," she replied.

"Thank _you_, but you don't know me. I ain't so green as I look by no manner o' means. I've been doing my own housekeeping for four terms."

"I know all about that," laughed the girl. "You young men rooming do precious little cooking and no dish-washing at all."

"That's a base calumny! I made it a point to wash every dish in the house, except the spider, once a week; had a regular cleaning-up day."

"And about the spider?"

"I wiped that out nicely with a newspaper every time I wanted to use it."

"Oh, horrors!--Mother, listen to that!"