Chapter 17

Had Tillie remained "plain," she would no doubt have had the championship of the two New Mennonite members of the Board. But her apostasy had lost her even that defense, for she no longer wore her nun-like garb. After her suspension from meeting and her election to William Penn, she had gradually drifted into the conviction that colors other than gray, black, or brown were probably pleasing to the Creator, and that what really mattered was not what she wore, but what she was. It was without any violent struggles or throes of anguish that, in this revolution of her faith, she quite naturally fell away from the creed which once had held her such a devotee. When she presently appeared in the vain and ungodly habiliments of "the world's people," the brethren gave her up in despair and excommunicated her.

"No use, Tillie," the doctor would report in discouragement, week after week; "we're up against it sure this time! You're losin' William Penn till next month, or I'll eat my hat! A body might as well TRY to eat his hat as move them pig-headed Dutch once they get sot. And they're sot on puttin' you out, all right! You see, your pop and Nathaniel Puntz they just fixed 'em! Me and you ain't got no show at all."

Tillie could think of no way of escape from her desperate position. What was there before her but a return to the farm, or perhaps, at best, marriage with Absalom?

"To be sure, I should have to be reduced to utter indifference to my fate if I ever consented to marry Absalom," she bitterly told herself. "But when it is a question between doing that and living at home, I don't know but I might be driven to it!"

At times, the realization that there was no possible appeal from her situation did almost drive her to a frenzy. After so many years of struggle, just as she was tasting success, to lose all the fruits of her labor--how could she endure it? With the work she loved taken away from her, how could she bear the gnawing hunger at her heart for the presence of him unto whom was every thought of her brain and every throbbing pulse of her soul? The future seemed to stretch before her, a terrible, an unendurable blank.

The first week of April was the time fixed for the meeting of the Board at which she was to be "chased off her job"; and as the fatal day drew near, a sort of lethargy settled upon her, and she ceased to straggle, even in spirit, against the inevitable.

"Well, Tillie," the doctor said, with a long sigh, as he came into the store at six o'clock on the eventful evening, and leaned over the counter to talk to the girl, "they're all conwened by now, over there in the hotel parlor. Your pop and Nathaniel Puntz they're lookin' wonderful important. Tour pop," he vindictively added, "is just chucklin' at the idea of gettin' you home under his thumb ag'in!"

Tillie did not speak. She sat behind the counter, her cheeks resting on the backs of her hands, her wistful eyes gazing past the doctor toward the red light in the hotel windows across the way.

"Golly! but I'd of liked to beat 'em out on this here game! But they've got us, Tillie! They'll be wotin' you out of your job any minute now. And then your pop'll be comin' over here to fetch you along home! Oh! If he wasn't your pop I c'd say somethin' real perfane about him."

Tillie drew a long breath; but she did not speak. She could not. It seemed to her that she had come to the end of everything.

"Look-ahere, Tillie," the doctor spoke suddenly, "you just up and get ahead of 'em all--you just take yourself over to the Millersville Normal! You've got some money saved, ain't you?"

"Yes!" A ray of hope kindled in her eyes. "I have saved one hundred and twenty-five dollars! I should have more than that if I had not returned to the world's dress."

"A hundred and twenty-five's plenty enough for a good starter at the Millersville Normal," said the doctor.

"But," Tillie hesitated, "this is April, and the spring term closes in three months. What should I do and where could I go after that? If I made such a break with father, he might refuse to take me home even if I had nowhere else to go. Could I risk that?"

The doctor leaned his head on his hand and heavily considered the situation.

"I'm blamed if I dare adwise you, Tillie. It's some serious adwisin' a young unprotected female to leave her pop's rooft to go out into the unbeknownst world," he said sentimentally. "To be sure, Miss Margaret would see after you while you was at the Normal. But when wacation is here in June she might mebbe be goin' away for such a trip like, and then if you couldn't come back home, you'd be throwed out on the cold wide world, where there's many a pitfall for the onwary."

"It seems too great a risk to run, doesn't it? There seems to be nothing--nothing--that I can do but go back to the farm," she said, the hope dying out of her eyes.

"Just till I kin get you another school, Tillie," he consoled her. "I'll be lookin' out for a wacancy in the county for you, you bet!"

"Thank you, Doc," she answered wearily; "but you know another school couldn't possibly be open to me until next fall--five months from now."

She threw her head back upon the palm of her hand. "I'm so tired--so very tired of it all. What's the use of struggling? What am I struggling FOR?"

"What are you struggling FUR?" the doctor repeated. "Why, to get shed of your pop and all them kids out at the Getz farm that wears out your young life workin' for 'em! That's what! And to have some freedom and money of your own--to have a little pleasure now and ag'in! I tell you, Tillie, I don't want to see you goin' out there to that farm ag'in!"

"Do you think I should dare to run away to the Normal?" she asked fearfully.

The doctor tilted back his hat and scratched his head.

"Leave me to think it over oncet, Tillie, and till to-morrow mornin' a'ready I'll give you my answer. My conscience won't give me the dare to adwise you offhand in a matter that's so serious like what this is."

"Father will want to make me go out to the farm with him this evening, I am sure," she said; "and when once I am out there, I shall not have either the spirit or the chance to get away, I'm afraid."

The doctor shook his head despondently. "We certainly are up ag'in' it! I can't see no way out."

"There is no way out," Tillie said in a strangely quiet voice. "Doc," she added after an instant, laying her hand on his rough one and pressing it, "although I have failed in all that you have tried to help me to be and to do, I shall never forget to be grateful to you--my best and kindest friend!"

The doctor looked down almost reverently at the little white hand resting against his dark one.

Suddenly Tillie's eyes fixed themselves upon the open doorway, where the smiling presence of Walter Fairchilds presented itself to her startled gaze.

"Tillie! AND the Doc! Well, it's good to see you. May I break in on your conference--I can see it '& important." He spoke lightly, but his voice was vibrant with some restrained emotion. At the first sight of him, Tillie's hand instinctively crept up to feel if those precious curls were in their proper place. The care and devotion she had spent upon them during all these weary, desolate months! And all because a man--the one, only man--had once said they were pretty! Alas, Tillie, for your Mennonite principles!

And now, at sight of the dear, familiar face and form, the girl trembled and was speechless.

Not so the doctor. With a yell, he turned upon the visitor, grasped both his hands, and nearly wrung them off.

"Hang me, of I was ever so glad to see a feller like wot I am you. Teacher," he cried in huge delight, "the country's saved! Providence fetched you here in the nick of time! You always was a friend to Tillie, and you kin help her out now!"

Walter Fairchilds did not reply at first. He stood, gazing over the doctor's shoulder at the new Tillie, transformed in countenance by the deep waters through which she had passed in the five months that had slipped round since he had gone out of her life; and so transformed in appearance by the dropping of her Mennonite garb that he could hardly believe the testimony of his eyes.

"Is it--is it really you, Tillie?" he said, holding out his hand. "And aren't you even a little bit glad to see me?"

The familiar voice brought the life-blood back to her face. She took a step toward him, both hands outstretched,--then, suddenly, she stopped and her cheeks crimsoned. "Of course we're glad to see you--very!" she said softly but constrainedly.

"Lemme tell you the news," shouted the doctor. "You 'll mebbe save Tillie from goin' out there to her pop's farm ag'in! She's teacher at William Penn, and her pop's over there at the Board meetin' now, havin' her throwed off, and then he'll want to take her home to work herself to death for him and all them baker's dozen of children he's got out there! And Tillie she don't want to go--and waste all her nice education that there way!"

Fairchilds took her hand and looked down into her shining eyes.

"I hardly know you, Tillie, in your new way of dressing!"

"What--what brings you here?" she asked, drawing away her hand.

"I've come from the Millersville Normal School with a letter for you from Mrs. Lansing," he explained, "and I've promised to bring you back with me by way of answer.

"I am an instructor in English there now, you know, and so, of course, I have come to know your 'Miss Margaret,'" he added, in answer to Tillie's unspoken question.

The girl opened the envelop with trembling fingers and read:

"MY DEAR LITTLE MENNONITE MAID: We have rather suddenly decided to go abroad in July--my husband needs the rest and change, as do we all; and I want you to go with me as companion and friend, and to help me in the care of the children. In the meantime there is much to be done by way of preparation for such a trip; so can't you arrange to come to me at once and you can have the benefit of the spring term at the Normal. I needn't tell you, dear child, how glad I shall be to have you with me. And what such a trip ought to mean to YOU, who have struggled so bravely to live the life the Almighty meant that you should live, you only can fully realize. You're of age now and can act for yourself. Break with your present environment now, or, I'm afraid, Tillie, it will be never.

"Come to me at once, and with the bearer of this note. With love, I am, as always, your affectionate

"'Miss MARGARET.'"

When she had finished Tillie looked up with brimming eyes.

"Doc," she said, "listen!" and she read the letter aloud, speaking slowly and distinctly that he might fully grasp the glory of it all. At the end the sweet voice faltered and broke.

"Oh, Doc!" sobbed Tillie, "isn't it wonderful!"

The shaggy old fellow blinked his eyes rapidly, then suddenly relieved his feelings with an outrageous burst of profanity. With a rapidity bewildering to his hearers, his tone instantly changed again to one of lachrymose solemnity:

"'Gawd moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform!'"

he piously repeated. "AIN'T, now, he does, Tillie! Och!" he exclaimed, "I got a thought! You go right straight over there to that there Board meetin' and circumwent 'em! Before they're got TIME to wote you off your job, you up and throw their old William Penn in their Dutch faces, and tell 'em be blowed to 'em! Tell 'em you don't WANT their blamed old school--and you're goin' to EUROPE, you are! To EUROPE, yet!"

He seized her hand as he spoke and almost pulled her to the store door.

"Do it, Tillie!" cried Fairchilds, stepping after them across the store. "Present your resignation before they have a chance to vote you out! Do it!" he said eagerly.

Tillie looked from one to the other of the two men before her, excitement sparkling in her eyes, her breath coming short and fast.

"I will!"

Turning away, she ran down the steps, sped across the street, and disappeared in the hotel.

The doctor expressed his overflowing feelings by giving Fairchilds a resounding slap on the shoulders. "By gum, I'd like to be behind the skeens and witness Jake Getz gettin' fooled ag'in! This is the most fun I had since I got 'em to wote you five dollars a month extry, Teacher!" he chuckled. "Golly! I'm glad you got here in time! It was certainly, now," he added piously, "the hand of Providence that led you!"

XXVI

TILLIE'S LAST FIGHT

"We are now ready to wote fer the teacher fer William Penn fer the spring term," announced the president of the Board, when all the preliminary business of the meeting had been disposed of; "and before we perceed to that dooty, we will be glad to hear any remarks."

The members looked at Mr. Getz, and he promptly rose to his feet to make the speech which all were expecting from him--the speech which was to sum up the reasons why his daughter should not be reelected for another term to William Penn. As all these reasons had been expounded many times over in the past few months, to each individual school director, Mr. Getz's statements to-night were to be merely a more forcible repetition of his previous arguments.

But scarcely had he cleared his throat to begin, when there was a knock on the door; it opened, and, to their amazement, Tillie walked into the room. Her eyes sparkling, her face flushed, her head erect, she came straight across the room to the table about which the six educational potentates were gathered.

That she had come to plead her own cause, to beg to be retained at her post, was obviously the object of this intrusion upon the sacred privacy of their weighty proceedings.

Had that, in very truth, been her purpose in coming to them, she would have found little encouragement in the countenances before her. Every one of them seemed to stiffen into grim disapproval of her unfilial act in thus publicly opposing her parent.

But there was something in the girl's presence as she stood before them, some potent spell in her fresh girlish beauty, and in the dauntless spirit which shone in her eyes, that checked the words of stern reproof as they sprang to the lips of her judges.

"John Kettering,"--her clear, soft voice addressed the Amish president of the Board, adhering, in her use of his first name, to the mode of address of all the "plain" sects of the county,--"have I your permission to speak to the Board?"

"It wouldn't be no use." The president frowned and shook his head. "The wotes of this here Board can't be influenced. There's no use your wastin' any talk on us. We're here to do our dooty by the risin' generation." Mr. Kettering, in his character of educator, was very fond of talking about "the rising generation." "And," he added, "what's right's right."

"As your teacher at William Penn, I have a statement to make to the Board," Tillie quietly persisted. "It will take me but a minute. I am not here to try to influence the vote you are about to take."

"If you ain't here to influence our wotes, what are you here fer?"

"That's what I ask your permission to tell the Board."

"Well," John Kettering reluctantly conceded, "I'll give you two minutes, then. Go on. But you needn't try to get us to wote any way but the way our conscience leads us to."

Tillie's eyes swept the faces before her, from the stern, set features of her father on her left, to the mild-faced, long-haired, hooks-and-eyes Amishman on her right. The room grew perfectly still as they stared at her in expectant curiosity; for her air and manner did not suggest the humble suppliant for their continued favor,--rather a self-confidence that instinctively excited their stubborn opposition. "She'll see oncet if she kin do with us what she wants," was the thought in the minds of most of them.

"I am here," Tillie spoke deliberately and distinctly, "to tender my resignation."

There was dead silence.

"I regret that I could not give you a month's notice, according to the terms of my agreement with you. But I could not foresee the great good fortune that was about to befall me."

Not a man stirred, but an ugly look of malicious chagrin appeared upon the face of Nathaniel Puntz. Was he foiled in his anticipated revenge upon the girl who had "turned down" his Absalom? Mr. Getz sat stiff and motionless, his eyes fixed upon Tillie.

"I resign my position at William Penn," Tillie repeated, "TO GO TO EUROPE FOR FOUR MONTHS' TRAVEL with Miss Margaret."

Again she swept them with her eyes. Her father's face was apoplectic; he was leaning forward, trying to speak, but he was too choked for utterance. Nathaniel Puntz looked as though a wet sponge had been dashed upon his sleek countenance. The other directors stared, dumfounded. This case had no precedent in their experience. They were at a loss how to take it.

"My resignation," Tillie continued, "must take effect immediately--to-night. I trust you will have no difficulty in getting a substitute."

She paused--there was not a movement or a sound in the room.

"I thank you for your attention." Tillie bowed, turned, and walked across the room. Not until she reached the door was the spell broken. With her hand on the knob, she saw her father rise and start toward her.

She had no wish for an encounter with him; quickly she went out into the hall, and, in order to escape him, she opened the street door, stepped out, and closed it very audibly behind her. Then hurrying in at the adjoining door of the bar-room, she ran out to the hotel kitchen, where she knew she would find her aunt.

Mrs. Wackernagel was alone, washing dishes at the sink. She looked up with a start at Tillie's hurried entrance, and her kindly face showed distress as she saw who it was; for, faithful to the Rules, she would not speak to this backslider and excommunicant from the faith. But Tillie went straight up to her, threw her arms about her neck, and pressed her lips to her aunt's cheek.

"Aunty Em! I can't go away without saying good-by to you. I am going to Europe! TO EUROPE, Aunty Em!" she cried. The words sounded unreal and strange to her, and she repeated them to make their meaning clear to herself. "Miss Margaret has sent for me to take me with her TO EUROPE!"

She rapidly told her aunt all that had happened, and Mrs. Wackernagel's bright, eager face of delight expressed all the sympathy and affection which Tillie craved from her, but which the Mennonite dared not utter.

"Aunty Em, no matter where I go or what may befall me, I shall never forget your love and kindness. I shall remember it always, ALWAYS."

Aunty Em's emotions were stronger, for the moment, than her allegiance to the Rules, and her motherly arms drew the girl to her bosom and held her there in a long, silent embrace.

She refrained, however, from kissing her; and presently Tillie drew herself away and, dashing the tears from her eyes, went out of the house by the back kitchen door. From here she made her way, in a roundabout fashion, to the rear entrance of the store-keeper's house across the road, for she was quite sure that her father had gone into the store in search of her.

Cautiously stepping into the kitchen, she found Fairchilds restlessly pacing the floor, and he greeted her return with a look of mingled pleasure and apprehension.

"Your father is out front, in the store, Tillie," he whispered, coming close to her. "He's looking for you. He doesn't know I'm in town, of course. Come outside and I 'll tell you our plan."

He led the way out of doors, and they sought the seclusion of a grape-arbor far down the garden.

"We'll leave it to the Doc to entertain your father," Fairchilds went on; "you will have to leave here with me to-night, Tillie, and as soon as possible, for your father will make trouble for us. We may as well avoid a conflict with him--especially for your sake. For myself, I shouldn't mind it!" He smiled grimly.

He was conscious, as his eyes rested on Tillie's fair face under the evening light, of a reserve in her attitude toward him that was new to her. It checked his warm impulse to take her hands in his and tell her how glad he was to see her again.

"How can we possibly get away to-night?" she asked him. "There are no stages until the morning."

"We shall have to let the Doc's fertile brain solve it for us, Tillie. He has a plan, I believe. Of course, if we have to wait until morning and fight it out with your father, then we'll have to, that's all. But I hope that may be avoided and that we may get away quietly."

They sat in silence for a moment. Suddenly Fairchilds leaned toward her and spoke to her earnestly.

"Tillie, I want to ask you something. Please tell me--why did you never answer my letters?"

She lifted her startled eyes to his. "Your letters?"

"Yes. Why didn't you write to me?"

"You wrote to me?" she asked incredulously.

"I wrote you three times. You don't mean to tell me you never got my letters?"

"I never heard from you. I would--I would have been so glad to!"

"But how could you have missed getting them?"

Her eyes fell upon her hands clasped in her lap, and her cheeks grew pale.

"My father," she half whispered.

"He kept them from you?"

"It must have been so."

Fairchilds looked very grave. He did not speak at once.

"How can you forgive such things?" he presently asked. "One tenth of the things you have had to bear would have made an incarnate fiend of me!"

She kept her eyes downcast and did not answer.

"I can't tell you," he went on, "how bitterly disappointed I was when I didn't hear from you. I couldn't understand why you didn't write. And it gave me a sense of disappointment in YOU. I thought I must have overestimated the worth of our friendship in your eyes. I see now--and indeed in my heart I always knew--that I did you injustice."

She did not look up, but her bosom rose and fell in long breaths.

"There has not been a day," he said, "that I have not thought of you, and wished I knew all about you and could see you and speak with you--Tillie, what a haunting little personality you are!"

She raised her eyes then,--a soft fire in them that set his pulse to bounding. But before she could answer him they were interrupted by the sound of quick steps coming down the board walk toward the arbor. Tillie started like a deer ready to flee, but Fairchilds laid a reassuring hand upon hers. "It's the Doc," he said.

The faithful old fellow joined them, his finger on his lips to warn them to silence.

"Don't leave no one hear us out here! Jake Getz he's went over to the hotel to look fer Tillie, but he'll be back here in a jiffy, and we've got to hurry on. Tillie, you go on up and pack your clo'es in a walise or whatever, and hurry down here back. I'm hitchin' my buggy fer yous as quick as I kin. I'll leave yous borry the loan of it off of me till to-morrow--then, Teacher, you kin fetch it over ag'in. Ain't?"

"All right, Doc; you're a brick!"

Tillie sped into the house to obey the doctor's bidding, and Fairchilds went with him across the street to the hotel stables.

In the course of ten minutes the three conspirators were together again in the stable-yard behind the store, the doctor's horse and buggy ready before them.

"Father's in the store--I heard his voice," panted Tillie, as Fairchilds took her satchel from her and stowed it in the back of the buggy.

"Hurry on, then," whispered the doctor, hoarsely, pushing them both, with scant ceremony, into the carriage. "GOOD-by to yous--and good luck! Och, that's all right; no thanks necessary! I'm tickled to the end of my hair at gettin' ahead of Jake Getz! Say, Fairchilds," he said, with a wink, "this here mare's wonderful safe--you don't HAVE to hold the reins with both hands! See?"

And he shook in silent laughter at his own delicate and delicious humor, as he watched them start out of the yard and down the road toward Millersville.