Part 21

"Howdy, Tom?" said Rachel, cordially. "I hope you are well." Rachel regarded him a moment, and then let her eyes droop. Had Rachel discovered that her face was at its best when her long eyelashes were lowered in this fashion, or was the action merely instinctive?

"Oh, so-so!" answered Tom, uneasily, as he seated himself with the rest at the table. Rachel sat next to him, and he treated her with hospitable politeness, but she looked in vain for any sign of his old affection. She hardly once fairly encountered his eye during the meal. He seemed more indifferent to her attractions than she had ever known any man, old or young, to be. And yet she knew that her charms had lost nothing of their completeness. That very morning she had gone into the rarely opened Albaugh parlor and examined herself in the largest looking-glass in the house--the one that hung between the parlor windows, and that had a print of Mount Vernon in the upper panel of the space inclosed between the turned frames. Her fresh and yet delicate complexion was without a speck or flaw, her large eyes were as lustrous as ever, and there was the same exquisite symmetry and harmony of features that had made her a vision of loveliness to so many men. But Tom seemed more interested in his cousin, whom he kept laughing with a little childish byplay while talking to his sister's guest. Rachel felt herself baffled, and by degrees, though treated cordially, she began to feel humiliated. When dinner was finished by a course of pumpkin pie and quince preserves served with cream, Tom pushed back his chair and explained that he was just going to begin building some rail pens to hold the corn when it should be gathered and shucked, and that he could not allow himself the usual noon-time rest. The days were getting so short, you know. Would Rachel excuse him? Barbara would blow the horn so that he could put the saddle on Rachel's horse when she wanted it. But wouldn't she stay to supper?

Rachel declined to stay to supper, and she was visibly less animated after dinner than she had been before. The conversation flagged on both sides; Barbara became preoccupied with her winding-blades, her bobbins, and her shuttle, while Rachel was absorbed in turning the heel of her stocking. By half-past 1 o'clock the guest felt bound to go home; the days were getting shorter and there was much to be done at home, she remembered. The horn was blown, and Tom led her horse out to the block and helped her to mount. As he held her stirrup for her to place her foot, it brought to his memory, with a rush, her refusal to let him ride home with her from the Timber Creek school-house after the "singing." When he looked up he saw that Rachel's mind had followed the same line of association; both of them colored at this manifest encounter of their thoughts.

"I suppose I oughtn't to have said 'no' that day at the school-house." Rachel spoke with feeling, moved more by the desperate desire she felt to draw Tom out than by any calculation in making the remark.

"Yes, you ought," said Tom. "I never blamed you."

Then there was an awkward pause.

"Good-bye, Tom," said Rachel, extending her hand. "Won't you come over and see us sometime?"

"I'm generally too tired when night comes. Good-bye, Rachel"; and he took her hand in a friendly way. But this was one of those farewells that are aggravated by mental contrast, and Rachel felt, as she looked at Tom's serious and preoccupied face, that it was to her the end of a chapter.

Tom started up the pathway toward the house, but stopped half-way and plucked a ripe seed-pod from the top of a poppy-stalk, and rubbed it out between his two hands as he looked a little regretfully after Rachel until she disappeared over the hill. Then he turned and saw Barbara standing on the porch regarding him inquiringly.

"You aren't like yourself any more, Tom," she said.

"I know that," he answered, meditatively, at the same time filliping the minute poppy-seeds away, half a dozen at a time, with his thumb. "I don't seem to be the same fellow that I was three months ago. Then I'd 'a' followed Rachel like a dog every step of the way home."

"She's awfully in love with you, poor girl."

"Oh! she'll get over that, I suppose. She's been in love before."

"And you don't care for her any more?"

"I don't seem to care for anything that I used to care for. I wouldn't like to be what I used to be."

This sentence was rather obscure, and Barbara still looked at Tom inquiringly and waited for him to explain. But he only went on in the same inconsequential way, as he plucked and rubbed out another poppy-head. "I don't care for anything nowadays, but just to stay with you and mother. When a fellow's been through what I have, I suppose he isn't ever the same that he was; it takes the _ambition_ out of you. Hanging makes an awful change in your feelings, you know"; and he smiled grimly.

"Don't say that; you make me shiver," said Barbara.

"But I say, Barb," and with this Tom sowed broadcast all the poppy-seed in his hand, "yonder comes somebody over the hill that'll get a warmer welcome than Rachel did, I'll guarantee."

How often in the last week had Barbara looked to see if somebody were not coming over the hill! Now she found her vision obstructed by a "laylock" bush, and she came down the path to where her brother stood. As soon as she had made out that the pedestrian was certainly Hiram Mason, she turned and went into the house, to change her apron for a fresher one, and with an instinctive wish to hide from Mason a part of the eagerness she had felt for his coming. But when he had reached the gate and was having his hand cordially shaken by Tom, Barbara came back to the door to greet him; and just because she couldn't help it, she went out on the porch, then down the steps and half-way to the gate to tell him how glad she was to see him.

XXXI

HIRAM AND BARBARA

The cordiality of his welcome was a surprise to Mason; he could hardly tell why. The days had dragged heavily since his separation from Barbara, and his mind had been filled with doubts. The delay imposed upon him by Barbara's circumstances and then by his own was unwholesome; love long restrained from utterance is apt to make the soul sick. During his last week in Moscow he had copied court minutes and other documents into the folio records in an abstracted fashion, while the conscious part of his intellect was debating his chance of securing Barbara's consent. He fancied that she might hold herself more than ever aloof from him now; that her pride had been too deeply wounded to recover, and that she would never bring herself to accept him.

When he had at length finished all there was for him to do in the clerk's office at Moscow, and Magill had contrived to borrow enough money to pay him his fifty cents a day, Mason was too impatient to wait for some wagon bound for the Timber Creek neighborhood. He started on foot, intending to pass the night under the friendly roof of the Graysons, and to push on homeward in the morning; for he would already be a month late in beginning his college year. His mind was revolving the plan of his campaign against Barbara's pride all the way over the great lonely level prairie, the vista of which stretched away to the west until it was interrupted by a column of ominous black smoke, which told of the beginning of the autumnal prairie fires that annually sweep the great grassy plains and keep them free of trees. At length the tantalizing forest, so long in sight, was reached, and he entered the pale fringe of slender poplar-trees--that forlorn hope thrown out by the forest in its perpetual attempt to encroach on a prairie annually fire-swept. But when at last he entered the greater forest itself, now half denuded of its shade, the problem was still before him. He contrived with much travail of mind what seemed to him an ingenious device for overcoming Barbara's fear of his family. He would propose that his mother should write her a letter giving a hearty assent to his proposal of marriage. If that failed, he could not think of any other plan likely to be effective.

Like many conversations planned in absence, this one did not seem so good when he had the chance to test it. The way in which Tom welcomed him at the gate, shaking his hand and taking hold of his arm in an affectionate, informal way, gave him an unexpected pleasure, though nothing could be more natural under the circumstances than Tom's gratitude. And when Tom said, "Barbara'll be awful glad to see you, an' so'll Mother," Mason was again surprised. Not that he knew any good reason why Barbara and her mother should not be glad to see him, but he who broods long over his feelings will hatch forebodings. When Hiram looked up from Tom at the gate, he saw Barbara's half-petite figure and piquant face, full as ever of force and aspiration, waiting half-way down the walk. Barbara paused there, half-way to the gate, but she could not wait even there; she came on down farther and met him, and looked in his eyes frankly and told him--with some reserve in her tone, it is true, but with real cordiality--that she was glad to see him. And by the time he reached the porch, Mother Grayson herself--kindly, old-fashioned soul that she was--stood in the door and greeted Mason with tears in her eyes.

After a little rest and friendly talk in the cool, well-kept, home-like sitting-room, Hiram went out with Tom to look about the familiar place. The fruit trees were pretty well stripped of their foliage by a recent wind and the ground was carpeted with brown and red and yellow leaves, while the rich autumn sunlight, which but half warmed the atmosphere, gave one an impression of transientness and of swift-impending change. It was one of those days on which the seasons are for the instant arrested--a little moment of repose and respite before the inevitable catastrophe. The busiest man can hardly resist the influence of such a day; farmers are prone to bask in the slant sunlight at such times and to talk to one another over line-fences or seated on top-rails. The crows fly hither and thither in the still air, and the swallows, gathered in noisy concourse, seem reluctant to set out upon their southward journey. But Mason soon left Tom and entered the kitchen, where he sat himself down upon a bench over against the loom and watched the swift going to and fro of Barbara's nimble shuttle, and listened to the muffled pounding of the loom-comb, presently finding a way to make himself useful by winding bobbins.

The two were left alone at intervals during the afternoon, but Mason could not summon courage to reopen the question so long closed between them. His awkward reserve reacted on Barbara, and conversation between them became difficult, neither being able to account for the mood of the other.

After a while Janet, tired with following Tom the livelong day, came into the kitchen and besought Barbara to sing "that song about Dick, you know"; and though Mason did not know who Dick might be, he thought he would rather hear Barbara sing than to go on trying to keep up a flagging conversation; so he seconded Janet's request. When Barbara had tied a broken string in the "harness" of the loom, she resumed her seat on the bench and sang while she wove.

BARBARA'S WEAVING SONG.

Fly, shuttle, right merrily, merrily, Carry the swift-running thread; Keep time to the fancy that eagerly Weaveth a web in my head.

For Dick he will come again, come again, Dick he will come again home from afar With musket and powder-horn, Musket and powder-horn, home from the war.

Beat up the threads lustily, lustily, Weave me a web good and strong; Heart brimful and flowing with joyousness Ever is bursting with song.

For Dick he will come again, etc.

Warp, hold the woof lovingly, lovingly, Taking and holding it fast; Hearts bound together in unity Love with a love that will last.

For Dick he will come again, come again, Dick he will come again home from afar With musket and powder-horn, Musket and powder-horn, home from the war.

By the time the ditty was ended, Mrs. Grayson was setting the supper-table by the fire-place, doing her best to honor her guest. She took down the long-handled waffle-irons and made a plate of those delicious cakes unknown since kitchen fire-places went out, and the like of which will perhaps never be known again henceforth. She got out some of the apple-butter, of which half a barrel had been made so toilsomely but the week before, and this she flanked with a dish of her peach preserves, kept sacredly for days of state. The "chaney" cups and saucers were also set out in honor of Hiram, and the almost transparent preserved peaches were eaten with country cream, from saucers thin enough to show an opalescent translucency, and decorated with a gilt band and delicate little flowers. This china, which had survived the long wagon-journey from Maryland, was not often trusted upon the table.

"My! What a nice supper we've got, Aunt Marthy!" said Janet, clapping her hands, as they took their seats at the table.

"It seems to me you're making company out of me," said Mason, in a tone of protest.

"We sha'n't have you again soon, Mason," said Tom, "and we don't often see the like of you."

The words were spontaneous, but Tom ducked his head with a half-ashamed air when he had spoken them. Barbara liked Tom's little speech: it expressed feelings that she could not venture to utter; and it had, besides, a touch of Tom's old gayety of feeling in it.

When supper was well out of the way Hiram proposed a walk with Barbara, but it did no good. They talked mechanically about what they were not thinking about, and by the time they got back to the house Mason was becoming desperate. He must leave in the morning very early, and he had made no progress; he could not bring himself to approach the subject about which Barbara seemed so loath to speak, and concerning which he dreaded a rebuff as he dreaded death.

They entered the old kitchen and found no one there; the embers were flickering in the spacious fire-place and peopling the room with grotesque shadows and dancing lights.

"Let us sit here awhile, Barbara," he said, with a strange note of entreaty in his tone, as he swung the heavy door shut and put down the wooden latch--relic of the pioneer period.

"Just as you please, Mr. Mason," answered Barbara,

"Oh! say _Hiram_, won't you?" He said this with a touch of impatience.

"Hiram!" said Barbara, laughing.

He led her to the loom-bench.

"Sit there on high, as you did the night you put me into a state of misery from which I haven't escaped yet. There, put your feet on the chair-rung, as you did that night."

He spoke with peremptoriness, as he placed a chair for her feet, so that she might sit with her back to the loom. Then he drew up another shuck-bottomed chair in such a way as to sit beside and yet half facing her, but lower.

"Now," he said, doggedly, "we can finish the talk we had then."

"That seems ages ago," said Barbara, dreamily; "so much has happened since."

"So long ago that you don't care to renew the subject?"

"I--" But Barbara stopped short. The feeble blaze in the fire-place suddenly went out.

Hiram did not know where to begin. He got up and took some dry chips from a basket and threw them on the slumbering coals, so as to set the flame a-going again. Then he sat down in his chair and looked up at the now silent Barbara, and tried in vain to guess her mood. But she remained silent and waited for him to take the lead.

"Do you remember what you said then?" he asked.

"No! how can I? It seems so long ago."

"You said a pack of nonsense." As he blurted out this charge Mason turned his head round obliquely, still regarding Barbara.

"Did I? That's just like me," Barbara answered, with a little laugh.

"No, it isn't like you," he replied, almost rudely. "You're the most sensible woman I ever knew, except on one subject."

"What's that?" Barbara was startled by the vehemence and abruptness of his speech, and she asked this in a half-frightened voice.

"Your pride. I looked up to you then, as I do now. You're something above me--I just worship you." To a man of maturity this sort of talk seems extravagant enough. But one must let youth paint itself as it will, with all its follies on its head. You've said sillier things than that in your time, sober reader--you know you have!

"I do just worship you, Barbara Grayson," Hiram went on; "but you talked a parcel of fool stuff that night about the superiority of my family, and about your not being able to bear it that my people should look down on you, and--well, a pack of tomfoolery; that's what it was, Barbara, and there's no use of calling it anything else."

Barbara was silent.

"Now, I'm not going to give you a chance to make any more such speeches. But I want to ask you whether, if I should send you a letter from my mother when I get home, and maybe from my sisters too, after I have told them the whole truth, urging you to accept me and become one of our family--I want to know whether, then, you would be willing; whether you'd take pity on a poor fellow who can't get along without you. Would that suit you?"

"No, it wouldn't," said Barbara, looking at the now blazing chips in the fire-place with her head bent forward.

"Well, what on earth _would_, then?" And Mason tilted back his chair in the nervousness of desperation and brought his eyes to a focus on her face, which was strangely illuminated in the flickering foot-lights from the hearth.

"Did I talk that way last summer?"

"Yes, you did."

"It must have hurt you. I can see it hurt you, from the way you speak about it."

"Yes," said Mason; "I've been in a sort of purgatory ever since."

"And I didn't mean to hurt your feelings. I'd rather do anything than to hurt your feelings." Here she paused, unable to proceed at once, but he waited for her to show the way. Presently she went on:

"Now, Mr. Mason,--Hiram, I mean,--I'm going to punish myself for my foolish pride. I must have felt very differently then to what I do now. The more I have seen of you the more I have--admired you." Barbara stopped and took up the hem of her apron and picked at the stitches as though she would ravel them. Then she proceeded, dropping her head lower, "Somehow I hate to say it,--but I'm going to punish myself,--the more I have seen of you the more I have--_liked_ you. It don't matter much to me now whether your mother likes me or not, and I really don't seem to care what your sisters think about your loving a poor girl from the country."

"Hush! Don't talk that way about yourself," said Hiram. But Barbara was so intent on finishing what she had resolved to say that she did not give any heed to him, but only went on pulling and picking at the hem of her apron.

"I only want to know one thing, Mr. Mason, and that is whether you--whether you really and truly want me?" Her face blushed deeply, she caught her breath, her head bowed lower than before, as though trying in vain to escape from Hiram's steadfast gaze.

"God only knows how I do love you, Barbara," said Hiram, speaking softly now and letting his eyes rest on the floor.

"Well," said Barbara, "as good a man as you deserves to have what he wants, you know"; and here she smiled faintly. "I'll put in the dust all the wicked pride that hurts you so." And Barbara made a little gesture. Then after a moment she began again, stammeringly, "If--if you really want me, Hiram Mason,--why--then--I'll face anything rather than miss of being yours. Now will that do? And will you forgive me for keeping you in purgatory, as you call it, all this time?" There were tears in her eyes as she spoke; partly of penitence, perhaps, but more than half of happiness.

When she had finished, Mason got up and pushed his chair away and came and sat down on the loom-bench beside her, Barbara making room for him, as for the first time she lifted her eyes timidly to his.

"I've been a goose, Barbara, not to understand you before. What a woman you are!"

XXXII

THE NEXT MORNING

When Tom waked up the next morning in the gray daybreak, he found that Mason, who should have shared his room, had not come to bed at all. And when Tom came down to uncover the live coals and build up the kitchen fire, he found that the embers had not been covered under the ashes as usual; there were instead smoking sticks of wood that had newly burned in two, the ends having canted over backward outside of the andirons. The table stood in the floor set with plates and cups and saucers for two, and there were the remains of an early breakfast. There was still heat in the coffee-pot when Tom touched it, and from these signs he read the story of Barbara's betrothal to Mason; he conjectured that this interview, which was to precede a separation of many months, had been unintentionally protracted until it was near the time for Mason's departure. The debris of the farewell love-feast, eaten in the silent hour before daybreak, seemed to have associations of sentiment. Tom regarded these things and was touched and pleased, but he was also amused. This sitting the night out seemed an odd freak for a couple so tremendously serious and proper as the little sister and the schoolmaster.

An hour later, when Tom, having finished his chores, came in for his breakfast, Barbara had reappeared below stairs with an expression of countenance so demure--so entirely innocent and unconscious--that Tom could not long keep his gravity; before he had fairly begun to eat he broke into a merry, boyish laugh.

"What _are_ you laughing about?" demanded Barbara, looking a little foolish and manifesting a rising irritation, that showed how well she knew the cause of his amusement.

"Oh! nothing; but why don't you eat your breakfast, Barb? You seem to have lost your appetite."

"Don't tease Barb'ry now," said Mrs. Grayson.

"I'm not teasing," said Tom; "but I declare, Barb, it must have seemed just like going to housekeeping when you two sat down to eat breakfast by yourselves this morning."

"O Tom!" broke in Janet, who couldn't quite catch the drift of the conversation, "Barbara went to bed with her clothes on last night. When I waked up this morning she was lying on the bed by me with her dress on."

Tom now laughed in his old unrestrained fashion.

"Say, Barbara," Janet went on, "are you going to marry that Mr. Mason that was here yesterday?"

Knowing that she could not get rid of Janet's inquiries except by answering, Barbara said: "Oh, I suppose so," as she got up to set the pot of coffee back on the trivet and hide a vexation that she knew to be foolish.

"Don't you _know_ whether you're going to marry him or not?" put in Janet. "I sh'd think you'd know. And I sh'd think he'd be a real nice husband." Then after a few moments of silence, Janet turned on Tom. "Tom, who's _your_ sweetheart?"

"Haven't got any," said Tom.

"Isn't that purty girl that was here yesterday your sweetheart?"

"No!"

"Aren't you _ever_ going to get married?"

"Maybe, some day. Not right off, though."

"I wish you would find a good wife, Tom," said Barbara without looking from her plate. "It would cheer you up." Barbara felt a little guilty at the thought of leaving the brother who had always seemed her chief responsibility.

"Say, Tom, won't you wait for me?" said Janet, solemnly.

"Yes, that's just what I'll do," said Tom, looking at her. "I hadn't thought of it before; but that's just exactly what I'll do, Janet. I'll wait for you, now you mention it."

"Will you, indeed, and double deed?"

"Yes, indeed, and deed and double deed, I'll wait for you, Janet."

"That'll be nice," said Janet, continuing her breakfast with meditative seriousness. "Now I'm your sweetheart, ain't I?"

XXXIII