University of Virginia Library

3. CHAPTER III.
A FAREWELL.

MRS. ANDERSON felt that she had made a
mistake. She had not meant to tell Julia that
August was to leave. But now that this stormy
scene had taken place, she thought she could
make a good use of it. She knew that her husband
co-operated with her in her opposition to “the Dutchman,”
only because he was afraid of his wife. In his heart, Samuel
Anderson could not refuse anything to his daughter. Denied
any of the happiness which most men find in loving their wives,
he found consolation in the love of his daughter. Secretly, as
though his paternal affection were a crime, he caressed Julia, and
his wife was not long in discovering that the father cared more
for a loving daughter than for a shrewish wife. She watched
him jealously, and had come to regard her daughter as one who
had supplanted her in her husband's affections, and her husband
as robbing her of the love of her daughter. In truth, Mrs.
Samuel Anderson had come to stand so perpetually on guard
against imaginary encroachments on her rights, that she saw

enemies everywhere. She hated Wehle because he was a Dutchman;
she would have hated him on a dozen other scores if he
had been an American. It was offense enough that Julia loved
him.

So now she resolved to gain her husband to her side by her
version of the story, and before dinner she had told him how
August had charged her with being false and cruel to Andrew
many years ago, and how Jule had thrown it up to her, and how
near she had come to dropping down with palpitation of the
heart. And Samuel Anderson reddened, and declared that he
would protect his wife from such insults. The notion that he
protected his wife was a pleasant fiction of the little man's,
which received a generous encouragement at the hands of his
wife. It was a favorite trick of hers to throw herself, in a metaphorical
way, at his feet, a helpless woman, and in her feebleness
implore his protection. And Samuel felt all the courage
of knighthood in defending his inoffensive wife. Under cover
of this fiction, so flattering to the vanity of an overawed husband,
she had managed at one time or another to embroil him
with almost all the neighbors, and his refusal to join fences had
resulted in that crooked arrangement known as a “devil's
lane” on three sides of his farm.

Julia dared not stay away from dinner, which was miserable
enough. She did not venture so much as to look at
August, who sat opposite her, and who was the most unhappy
person at the table, because he did not know what all the unhappiness
was about. Mr. Anderson's brow foreboded a storm, Mrs.
Anderson's face was full of an earthquake, Cynthy Ann was
sitting in shadow, and Julia's countenance perplexed him.
Whether she was angry with him or not, he could not be sure.

Of one thing he was certain: she was suffering a great deal, and
that was enough to make him exceedingly unhappy.

Sitting through his hurried meal in this atmosphere surcharged
with domestic electricity, he got the notion—he could
hardly tell how—that all this lowering of the sky had something
to do with him. What had he done? Nothing. His
closest self-examination told him that he had done no wrong.
But his spirits were depressed, and his sensitive conscience condemned
him for some unknown crime that had brought about
all this disturbance of the elements. The ham did not seem very
good, the cabbage he could not eat, the corn-dodger choked him,
he had no desire to wait for the pie. He abridged his meal, and
went out to the barn to keep company with his horses and
his misery until it should be time to return to his plow.

Julia sat and sewed in that tedious afternoon She would
have liked one more interview with August before his departure.
Looking through the open hall, she saw him leave the barn
and go toward his plowing. Not that she looked up. Hawk
never watched chicken more closely than Mrs. Anderson watched
poor Jule. But out of the corners of her eyes Julia saw him
drive his horses before him from the stable. As the field in
which he worked was on the other side of the house from
where she sat she could not so much as catch a glimpse of him
as he held his plow on its steady course. She wished she might
have helped Cynthy Ann in the kitchen, for then she could have
seen him, but there was no chance for such a transfer.

Thus the tedious afternoon wore away, and just as the sun
was settling down so that the shadow of the elm in the front-yard
stretched across the road into the cow-pasture, the dead
silence was broken. Julia had been wishing that somebody

would speak. Her mother's sulky speechlessness was worse than
her scolding, and Julia had even wished her to resume her
storming. But the silence was broken by Cynthy Ann, who
came into the hall and called, “Jule, I wish you would go to the
barn and gether the eggs; I want to make some cake.”

Every evening of her life Julia gathered the eggs, and there
was nothing uncommon in Cynthy Ann's making cake, so that
nothing could be more innocent than this request. Julia sat
opposite the front-door, her mother sat farther along. Julia
could see the face of Cynthy Ann. Her mother could only hear
the voice, which was dry and commonplace enough. Julia
thought she detected something peculiar in Cynthy's manner.
She would as soon have thought of the big oak gate-posts with
their round ball-like heads telegraphing her in a sly way, as to
have suspected any such craft on the part of Cynthy Ann, who
was a good, pious, simple-hearted, Methodist old maid, strict
with herself, and censorious toward others. But there stood
Cynthy making some sort of gesture, which Julia took to mean
that she was to go quick. She did not dare to show any eagerness.
She laid down her work, and moved away listlessly. And
evidently she had been too slow. For if August had been in
sight when Cynthy Ann called her, he had now disappeared
on the other side of the hill. She loitered along, hoping
that he would come in sight, but he did not, and then she
almost smiled to think how foolish she had been in imagining
that Cynthy Ann had any interest in her love affair. Doubtless
Cynthy sided with her mother.

And so she climbed from mow to mow gathering the eggs.
No place is sweeter than a mow, no occupation can be more
delightful than gathering the fresh eggs—great glorious pearls,

more beautiful than any that men dive for, despised only because
they are so common and so useful! But Julia, gliding about
noiselessly, did not think much of the eggs, did not give much
attention to the hens scratching for wheat kernels amongst the
straw, nor to the barn swallows chattering over the adobe dwellings
which they were building among the rafters above her.
She had often listened to the love-talk of these last, but now
her heart was too heavy to hear. She slid down to the edge of
one of the mows, and sat there a few feet above the threshing-floor
with her bonnet in her hand, looking off sadly and
vacantly. It was pleasant to sit here alone and think, without
the feeling that her mother was penetrating her thoughts.

A little rustle brought her to consciousness. Her face was
fiery red in a minute. There, in one corner of the threshing-floor,
stood August, gazing at her. He had come into the barn
to find a single-tree in place of one which had broken. While
he was looking for it, Julia had come, and he had stood and
looked, unable to decide whether to speak or not, uncertain how
deeply she might be offended, since she had never once let
her eyes rest on him at dinner. And when she had come to the
edge of the mow and stopped there in a reverie, August had
been utterly spell-bound.

A minute she blushed. Then, perceiving her opportunity,
she dropped herself to the floor and walked up to August.

“August, you are to be turned off to-morrow night.”

“What have I done? Anything wrong?”

“No.”

“Why do they send me away?”

“Because—because—” Julia stopped.

But silence is often better than speech. A sudden intelligence

[ILLUSTRATION]

A LITTLE RUSTLE BROUGHT HER TO CONSCIOUSNESS.

[Description: 555EAF. Page 031. Illustration page. Engraving of a woman standing on a pile of hay in a barn with her head turned to look at a man in the background.]

came into the blue eyes of August. “They turn me off because
I love Jule Anderson.”

Julia blushed just a little.

“I will love her all the same when I am gone. I will always
love her.”

Julia did not know what to say to this passionate speech, so
she contented herself with looking a little grateful and very
foolish.

“But I am only a poor boy, and a Dutchman at that”—he
said this bitterly—“but if you will wait, Jule, I will show them
I am of some account. Not good enough for you, but good
enough for them. You will—”

“I will wait—forever—for you, Gus.” Her head was down,
and her voice could hardly be heard. “Good-by.” She stretched
out her hand, and he took it trembling.

“Wait a minute.” He dropped the hand, and taking a pencil
wrote on a beam:

“March 18th, 1843.”

“There, that's to remember the Dutchman by.”

“Don't call yourself a Dutchman, August. One day in
school, when I was sitting opposite to you, I learned this definition,
`August: grand, magnificent,' and I looked at you and
said, Yes, that he is. August is grand and magnificent, and
that's what you are. You're just grand!”

I do not think he was to blame. I am sure he was not responsible.
It was done so quickly. He kissed her forehead
and then her lips, and said good-by and was gone. And she,
with her apron full of eggs and her cheeks very red—it makes
one warm to climb—went back to the house, resolved in some
way to thank Cynthy Ann for sending her; but Cynthy Ann's

face was so serious and austere in its look that Julia concluded
she must have been mistaken, Cynthy Ann couldn't have known
that August was in the barn. For all she said was:

“You got a right smart lot of eggs, didn't you? The hens
is beginnin' to lay more peart since the warm spell sot in.”