Part 7

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 The pan of apple-quarters having overflowed had been replaced by a pail, which was also nearly full, when, after a playful scuffle of hands in the basket, Hiram secured the last apple and peeled it.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 spaces 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 scrape 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.

"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 passed the slate to her, she read:

_a_ = another lover. _b_ = objections to H. Mason. _c_ = interfering circumstances. _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 amusement, 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 circumstances, then circumstances 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:

"I couldn't _spurn_ you," she said. Then, after another pause: "Maybe you don't care any more for me than I do for you. But I'm in such trouble--that I can't tell what to say. Won't you wait and give me a little time? Things may be better after a while."

"How long shall I stay away? A week?" Mason's voice had a note of protest in it.

"Don't be hurt," she said, lifting her eyes timidly to his. "But I'm in such a hard place. Let me have two weeks or so to think about it, and see how things are going to turn." It was not that Barbara saw any chance for a change of circumstances, but that she could not resolve to decide the question either way, and wished to escape from her present perplexity by postponement.

"Just as you say," said Mason, regretfully; "but I tell you, Barbara, it's two weeks of dead lost time."

Then he got up and held out his hand to her.

"Good-bye, Barbara."

"Good-bye, Mr. Mason."

"Oh, call me Hiram! It's more friendly, and you call all the other young men by their first names."

"But you're the master."

"I'm not the master of you, that's clear. Besides, you've left school." He was holding her hand in gentle protest all this time.

"Well, good-bye--Hiram!" said Barbara, with a visible effort which ended in a little laugh.

Mason let go of her hand and turned abruptly and walked out of the door, and then swiftly down the meadow path. Barbara stood and looked after him as long as she could see his form; then she slowly shut and latched the kitchen door and came and covered with ashes the remaining embers of the fire, and took the candle from the mantel-piece and went through the now vacant sitting-room to her chamber above.

X

THE AFFAIR AT TIMBER CREEK CAMP MEETING

When Tom Grayson found himself suddenly stranded on the farmstead in Hubbard Township he went to work to learn again the arts half forgotten during his three-years' absence in Moscow. It was necessary to put his soft hands to the plow, and to burn his fair face in the hot sun of the hay-field. With characteristic heedlessness of results he set out, on the very first day after his return, to mow alongside the stalwart hired man, Bob McCord, the father of Mely. Bob lived in a little cabin not far from the Grayson place, and since Tom left the farm he had done most of the work for Mrs. Grayson. He was commonly known as "Big Bob," because he had a half-brother of sinister birth who was older than himself, but a small man, and who for distinction was "Little Bob." Big Bob fulfilled his name in every dimension. His chest was deep, his arms were gigantic in their muscularity, and no man had ever seen his legs show signs of exhaustion. His immense muscles were softened in outline by a certain moderate rotundity; his well-distributed adipose was only one of many indications of his extraordinary physical thriftiness. In more than one stand-up fight he had demonstrated his right to the title of champion of the county. Yet he was a boyishly good-natured man, with no desire to hurt anybody, and he never fought from choice. But every rising fisticuffer within half a hundred miles round had heard of Bob's strength, and the more ambitious of these had felt bound to "dare" him. It was not consonant with the honor of such a man as Bob to "take a dare"; so against first one and then another aspiring hero he had fought, until at length there was none that ventured any more to "give a dare" to the victor of so many battles. His physical perfections were not limited to mere bull strength: no man had a keener eye or a steadier hand; none could send a rifle-ball to its mark with a more unerring aim. Had he lived in the days of the Saxon invasion of England, McCord would have stood high on the list of those renowned for exploits of strength and daring, the very darling hero of the minstrel. Our own Indian wars of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries brought renown to just such men as he, semi-barbarian path-makers for the advance of civilization. He had lagged a generation late. In the peaceful time, when strength of muscle was secondary to mental power, and when a sure aim was no longer important for the defense of one's life, nor the chief means for winning one's meat, the powerful Bob McCord saw degenerate men, whom he could have held at arms-length, prevail over him in the struggle for subsistence. For though he was capable of hard work he could never endure steady application; his nature was under mortgage to adventurous ancestors, the ancient Indian-fighters and scouts of the Appalachian country, and those more remote forefathers, the untamed emigrants who had been almost expelled from the Scottish border in the time of the Stuarts, to help resettle the devastated north of Ireland, to say nothing of the yet wilder Irish women with whom they had mated. Nothing less than the sound of the cup scraping on the bottom of the family meal-box would impel Bob to work. Every wind that came from the great sea of grass to the westward brought him the whir of the wings of prairie-hens; dreams of bear-hunting filled his mind whenever he looked into the recesses of the woods. At sight of the rising moon his hunter's soul imagined the innumerable deer which at that hour come from their coverts to graze on the prairies. Every stream tantalized him with the thought of darting perch, and great prowling cat-fish hidden beneath its surface, and challenging him to catch them if he could. If, as we are taught to believe, the manliness of the English aristocracy and that of the American apery is only kept alive by outdoor sports, how much their superior in surplus manhood must such a man as Bob McCord be! In his estimation no days were counted a part of human life except those passed in circumventing and taking the wild creatures of the woods or the prairie, and those others spent in the rude fun of musters, barbecues, elections, corn-shuckings, wood-choppings, and like assemblages, where draughts from a generous big-bellied bottle, with a twisted neck, alternated with athletic feats, practical jokes, and tales as rude as the most unblushing of those told by pious pilgrims to Canterbury in the old religious time.

It was alongside this son of Anak that Tom set himself to do a full day's work at the start. The severity of labor accorded well with his pungent feeling of penitence. Big Bob regarded him as he might any other infant, not unkindly; he even had a notion that the Widow Grayson and her children were in some sense under his care, and he did not wish any harm to come to the boy, but a practical joke was too good a thing to be missed. For two hours and a half, on that morning of Tom's appearance in the field with a scythe, Bob did not once stop to take the usual rests. Tom felt inevitable exhaustion coming on, though he cut a much narrower swath than his companion. McCord's herculean right knee was bare, having that morning forced itself through his much-bepatched trousers of butternut-dyed cotton cloth. While swinging his wider-sweeping scythe at a desperate rate, he kept telling Tom stories of adventure and the well-worn joe-millers of the log-cabin firesides, never seeming to notice the poor fellow's breathless endeavors to keep up or his ever-narrowing swath. Only when at length he turned and looked at Tom's face and perceived that the persistency of his will might carry him too far, he said, as with his scythe he picked some bunches of good grass from the edge of an elder patch and cast a wistful glance at the jug standing in a cool fence corner:

"Looky h-yer, Tom, you're a-gittin' kind-uh white-like about the gills, un 'f you try to keep up weth me, yer hide 'll be on the fence afore night."

"I know that," said Tom, who found himself so thoroughly beaten that there was no use in denying it.

"Well, hang yer scythe on that air red-haw over there un take a leetle rest, un then try a pitch-fork awhile. I 'lowed I'd see what sort uv stuff you've got, seein's you wuz so almighty gritty. A bigger man'n you couldn't hold agin me"; and Bob let the amusement he felt at Tom's discomfiture escape in a long hearty chuckle, rising at length into a loud laugh, as he reversed his scythe and fell to whetting it, making the neighboring woods ring with the tune he beat on the resonant metal,--a kind of accompaniment to the briskness of his spirit.

And now Barbara appeared bringing the snack that was commonly served to the mowers in the forenoon. Bob hung up his scythe, and, having taken some whisky, joined the exhausted Tom under the shady boughs of a black walnut. Barbara uncovered her basket, which contained an apple-pie to be divided between the two and a bottle of sweet milk. Tom had stretched himself in sheer exhaustion on a swath of hay.

"You foolish boy," said Barbara. "You've gone at your work too brash. You ought to be ashamed of yourself. Here, take some of this pie; and don't you work so hard the rest of the day."

"Tom," said Bob, speaking with his mouth full of pie, "'f I had the eddication you've got, you wouldn't ketch me in this yere hot sun. I'd take a school. What's eddication good fer, anyhow, ef 't ain't to git a feller out uh the hot sun?"

But for the present Tom resolved to stick faithfully to his toil. As the days wore on, and he became accustomed to the strain, he found the work a sedative; he was usually too tired to think much of his disappointment. Only the face of Rachel Albaugh haunted his visions in lonely hours, and at times a rush of indignant feeling towards George Lockwood disturbed his quiet.

In the early days of August there came a time of comparative leisure. The summer harvests were over, and the fields of tall corn had been "laid by" after the last plowing. Then Illinois had a breathing spell; and shutting up its house, and hitching up its horse, and taking all the children, it went to visit its "relations," staying a week at a place. Farmers frequented the town to meet old friends and get the better of them in swapping horses; and in this time of relaxation came the season of Baptist Associations and Methodist Camp-meetings and two-days' Basket Meetings--jolly religious picnics, where you could attend to your soul's salvation and eat "roas'in' ears" with old friends in the thronged recesses of the forests, among a people who were perhaps as gregarious as any the world has ever produced. Children looked forward to this gypsying with eagerness, and adults gave themselves over to it with the abandon of children. What night-scenes there were! Within the oval of tents at a camp-meeting two great platforms were raised on posts six or eight feet high and covered with earth; on these were built blazing bonfires, illuminating all the space inclosed by the tents and occupied by the enthusiastic assembly, which, as one great chorus, made the wide forest vocal with a tide of joyous or pathetic song. But there were two poles to the magnetism of a camp-meeting. In the region of outer blackness, quite beyond the reach of any illumination from platform bonfires or pulpit eloquence, there were also assemblies of those who were attracted by the excitement, but to whom the religious influences were a centrifugal force. Here jollity and all conceivable deviltry rejoiced also in a meet companionship.

The Great Union Camp-Meeting was held in the first half of August on the Timber Creek camp-ground, only a mile and a half from the Grayson place. The mother and Barbara went every evening and came back with accounts of the attendance, of the old friends encountered, and of the sermons of favorite preachers. They told how "powerfully" the elder had preached, and how the eloquent young preacher, who was junior on the next circuit, had carried all before him in a pathetic exhortation. But Tom showed no desire to attend. He was slowly sinking into a depression quite unusual with him. He had been accustomed to the excitement of the town, and the prospect of a life of dull routine on a farm ate into his spirit like a biting rust. Barbara amused him with stories of the camp-meeting; she told him of the eccentric German exhorter whose broken English she mimicked, and of the woman she had heard relate in a morning "speaking-meeting" that, when convinced of the sin of wearing jewelry, she had immediately taken off her ear-rings and given them to her sister. These things lightened his spirit but for a moment; he would relapse soon into the same state of mental lassitude, or more acute melancholy. Barbara endeavored to cheer him with projects; he could take a school the next winter, and with the money earned pay his board somewhere in town and take up the study of law again. But all of Barbara's projects were moderate and took full account of difficulties. Tom had little heart for a process that demanded plodding and patient waiting; nor did any of Barbara's suggestions hold out any prospect of his recovering his ground with Rachel, which was the thing he most desired.

One evening, as he finished a supper which he had eaten with little relish and in silence, he pushed back his chair and sat moodily looking into the black cave of the kitchen fire-place, where the embers were smoldering under the ashes. Then when his mother had left the kitchen, and Barbara was clearing away the plates, he said:

"The more I think of it, the worse I feel about George Lockwood. The tricky villain got me into that scrape and then told all about it where he knew it would do me the most harm. I'd just like to shoot him."

"You'd better shoot him and get yourself hanged!" said Barbara with impatience. "_That_ would mend matters, wouldn't it?"

"'T wouldn't matter much to me," said Tom. "This country life doesn't suit me; I'd just as well be out of it, and they do say hanging is an easy way of dying." This last was spoken with a grim smile.

"I suppose you don't think of _us_," said Barbara.

"I'm more trouble than good to you and mother."