He looked forward every afternoon to these little exchanges of wit, and was depressed when for any reason the womenfolks were away. There were other places pleasanter than the Kennedy farm-some of "the Dutchmen" had fine big brick houses and finer and bigger barns, but their women were mostly homely and went around barefooted and barelegged, with ugly blue dresses hanging frayed and greasy round their lank ribs and big joints.
"Some way their big houses have a look like a stable when you get close to 'em," Claude said to 'Cindy once. "Their women work so much in the field they don't have any time to fix up-the way you do. I don't believe in women workin' in the fields." He said this looking 'Cindy in the face. "My wife needn't set her foot outdoors 'less she's a mind to."
"Oh, you can talk," replied the girl scornfully, "but you'd be like the rest of 'em." But she was glad that she had on a clean collar and apron-if it was ironing day.
What Claude would have said further 'Cindy could not divine, for her mother called her away, as she generally did when she saw her daughter lingering too long with the creamery man. Claude was not considered a suitable match for Lucindy Kennedy, whose father owned one of the finest farms in the coulee. Worldly considerations hold in Molasses Gap as well as in Bluff Siding and Tyre.
But Claude gave little heed to these moods in Mrs. Kennedy. If 'Cindy sputtered, he laughed; and if she smiled, he rode on whistling till he came to old man Haldeman's, who owned the whole lower half of Molasses Gap, and had one ummarried daughter, who thought Claude one of the handsomest men in the world. She was always at the gate to greet him as he drove up, and forced sections of cake and pieces of gooseberry pie upon him each day.
"She's good enough-for a Dutchman," Claude said of her, "but I hate to see a woman go around looking as if her clothes would drop off if it rained on her. And on Sundays, when she dresses up, she looks like a boy rigged out in some girl's cast-off duds."
This was pretty hard on Nina. She was tall and lank and sandy, with small blue eyes, her limbs were heavy, and she did wear her Sunday clothes badly, but she was a good, generous soul and very much in love with the creamery man. She was not very clean, but then she could not help that; the dust of the field is no respecter of sex. No, she was not lovely, but she was the only daughter of old Ernest Haldeman, and the old man was not very strong.
Claude was the daily bulletin of the Gap. He knew whose cow died the night before, who was at the strawberry dance, and all about Abe Anderson's night in jail up at the Siding. If his coming was welcome to the Kennedy's, who took the Bluff Siding Gimlet and the county paper, how much the more cordial ought his greeting to be at Haldeman's, where they only took the Milwaukee Weekly Freiheit.
Nina in her poor way had longings and aspirations. She wanted to marry "a Yankee," and not one of her own kind. She had a little schooling obtained at the small brick shed under the towering cottonwood tree at the corner of her father's farm; but her life had been one of hard work and mighty little play. Her parents spoke in German about the farm, and could speak English only very brokenly. Her only brother had adventured into the foreign parts of Pine County and had been killed in a sawmill. Her life was lonely and hard.
She had suitors among the Germans, plenty of them, but she had a disgust of them-considered as possible husbands-and though she went to their beery dances occasionally, she had always in her mind the ease, lightness, and color of Claude. She knew that the Yankee girls did not work in the fields-even the Norwegian girls seldom did so now, they worked out in town-but she had been brought up to hoe and pull weeds from her childhood, and her father and mother considered it good for her, and being a gentle and obedient child, she still continued to do as she was told. Claude pitied the girl, and used to talk with her, during his short stay, in his cheeriest manner.
"Hello, Nina! How you vass, ain't it? How much cream already you got this morning? Did you hear the news, not?"
"No, vot hass happened?"
"Everything. Frank Mcvey's horse stepped through the bridge and broke his leg, and he's going to sue the county-mean Frank is, not the horse."
"Iss dot so?"
"Sure! and Bill Hetner had a fight, and Julia Dooriliager's got home."
"Vot wass Bill fightding apoudt?"
"Oh, drunk-fighting for exercise. Hain't got a fresh pie cut?"
Her face lighted up, and she turned so suddenly to go that her bare leg showed below her dress. Her unstockinged feet were thrust into coarse working shoes. Claude wrinkled his nose in disgust, but he took the piece of green currant pie on the palm of his hand and bit the acute angle from it.
"First-rate. You do make lickin' good pies," he said Out of pure kindness of heart, and Nina was radiant.
"She wouldn't be so bad-lookin' if they didn't work her in the fields like a horse," he said to himself as he drove away.
The neighbors were well aware of Nina's devotion, and Mrs. Smith, who lived two or three houses down the road, said, "Good evening, Claude. Seen Nina today?"
"Sure! and she gave me a piece of currant pie-her own make."
"Did you eat it?"
"Did I? I guess yes. I ain't refusin' pie from Nina-not while her pa has five hundred acres of the best land in Molasses Gap."
Now, it was this innocent joking on his part that started all Claude's trouble. Mrs. Smith called a couple of days later and had her joke with 'Cindy.
"'Cindy, your cake's all dough."
"Why, what's the matter now?"
"Claude come along t'other day grinnin' from ear to ear, and some currant pie in his musstache. He had jest fixed it up with Nina. He jest as much as said he was after the old man's acres."
"Well, let him have 'em. I don't know as it interests me," replied 'Cindy, waving her head like a banner. "If he wants to sell himself to that greasy Dutchwoman why, let him, that's all! I don't care."
Her heated manner betrayed her to Mrs. Smith, who laughed with huge enjoyment.
"Well, you better watch out!"
The next day was very warm, and when Claude drove up under the shade of the big maples he was ready for a chat while his horses rested, but 'Cindy was nowhere to be seen. Mrs. Kennedy came out to get the amount of the skimming and started to re-enter the house without talk.
"Where's the young folks?" asked Claude carelessly.
"If you mean Lucindy, she's in the house."
"Ain't sick or nothin', is she?"
"Not that anybody knows of. Don't expect her to be here to gass with you every time, do ye?"
"Well, I wouldn't mind"' replied Claude. He was too keen not to see his chance. "In fact, I'd like to have her with me all the time, Mrs. Kennedy," he said with engaging frankness.
"Well, you can't have her," the mother replied ungraciously.
"What's the matter with me?"
"Oh, I like you well enough, but 'Cindy'd be a big fool to marry a man without a roof to cover his head."
"That's where you take your inning, sure," Claude replied. "I'm not much better than a hired hand. Well, now, see here, I'm going to make a strike one of these days, and then-look out for me! You don't know but what I've invested in a gold mine. I may be a Dutch lord in disguise. Better not be brash."
Mrs. Kennedy's sourness could not stand against sueb sweetness and drollery. She smiled in wry fashion. "You'd better be moving, or you'll be late."
"Sure enough. If I only had you for a mother-in-law-that's why I'm so poor. Nobody to keep me moving. If I had someone to do the talking for me, I'd work." He grinned broadly and drove out.
His irritation led him to say some things to Nina which he would not have thought of saying the day before. She had been working in the field and had dropped her hoe to see him.
"Say, Nina, I wouldn't work outdoors such a day as this if I was you. I'd tell the old man to go to thunder, and I'd go in and wash up and look decent Yankee women don't do that kind of work, and your old dad's rich; no use of your sweatin' around a cornfield with a hoe in your hands. I don't like to see a woman goin'
round without stockin's and her hands all chapped and calloused. It ain't accordin' to Hoyle. No, sir! I wouldn't stand it. I'd serve an injunction on the old man right now."
A dull, slow flush crept into the girl's face, and she put one hand over the other as they rested on the fence. One looked so much less monstrous than two.
Claude went on, "Yes, sir! I'd brace up and go to Yankee meeting instead of Dutch; you'd pick up a Yankee beau like as not."
He gathered his cream while she stood silently by, and when he looked at her again she was in deep thought.
"Good day," he said cheerily.
"Goodbye," she replied, and her face flushed again.
It rained that night, and the roads were very bad, and he was late the next time he arrived at Haldeman's. Nina came out in her best dress, but he said nothing about it, supposing she was going to town or something Like that, and he hurried through with his task and had mounted his seat before he realized that anything was wrong.
Then Mrs. Haldeman appeared at the kitchen door and hurled a lot of unintelligible German at him. He knew she was mad, and mad at him, and also' at Nina, for she shook her fist at them alternately.
Singular to tell, Nina paid no attention to her mother's sputter. She looked at Claude with a certain timid audacity.
"How you like me today?"
"That's better," he said as he eyed her critically. "Now you're talkin'! I'd do a little reading of the newspaper myself, if I was. you. A woman's business ain't to work out in the hot sun-it's to cook and fix up things round the house, and then put on her clean dress and set in the shade and read or sew on something. Stand up to 'em! Doggone me if I'd paddle round that hot cornfield with a mess o' Dutchmen-it ain't decent!"
He drove off with a chuckle at the old man, who was seated at the back of the house with a newspaper in his hand. He was lame, or pretended he was, and made his wife and daughter wait upon him. Claude had no conception of what was working in Nina's mind, but he could not help observing the changes for the better in her appearance. Each day he called she was neatly dressed and wore her shoes laced up to the very top hook.
She was passing through tribulation on his account, but she sald nothing about it. The old man, her father, no longer spoke to her, and the mother sputtered continually, but the girl seemed sustained by some inner power. She calmly went about doing as she pleased, and no fury of words could check her or turn her aside.
Her hands grew smooth and supple once more, and her face lost the parboiled look it once had.
Claude noticed all these gains and commented on them with the freedom of a man who had established friendly relations with a child.
"I tell you what, Nina, you're coming along, sure. Next ground hop you'll be wearin' silk stockin's and high-heeled shoes. How's the old man? Still mad?"
"He don't speak to me no more. My mudder says I am a big fool."
"She does? Well, you tell her I think you're just getting sensible."
She smiled again, and there was a subtle quality in the mixture of boldness and timidity of her manner. His praise was so sweet and stimulating.
"I sold my pigs," she said. "The old man, he wass madt, but I didn't mind. I pought me a new dress with the money."
"That's right! I like to see a woman have plenty Of new dresses," Claude replied. He was really enjoying the girl's rebellion and growing womanliness.
Meanwhile his own affairs with Lucindy were in a bad way. He seldom saw her now. Mrs. Smith was careful to convey to her that Claude stopped longer than was necessary at Haldeman's, and so Mrs. Kennedy attended to the matter of recording the cream. Kennedy hersell was always in the field, and Claude had no opportunity for a conversation with him, as he very much wished to have. Once, when he saw 'Cindy in the kitchen at work, he left his team to rest in the shade and sauntered to the door and looked in.
She was kneading out cake dough, and she looked the loveliest thing he had ever seen. Her sleeves were rolled up. Her neat brown dress was covered with a big apron, and her collar was open a liffle at the throat, for it was warm in the kitchen. She frowned when she saw him.
He began jocularly. "Oh, thank you, I can wait till it bakes. No trouble at all."
"Well, it's a good deal of trouble to me to have you standin' there gappin' at me!"
"Ain't gappin' at you. I'm waitin' for the pie."
"'Tain't pie; it's cake."
"Oh, well, cake'll do for a change. Say, 'Cindy-"
"Don't call me 'Cindy!"
"Well, Lucindy. It's mighty lonesome when I don't see you on my trips."
"Oh, I guess you can stand it with Nina to talk to."
"Aha! jealous, are you?"
"Jealous of that Dutchwoman! I don't care who you talk to, and you needn't think it."
Claude was learned in woman's ways, and this pleased him mightily.
"Well, when shall I speak to your daddy?"
"I don't know what you mean, and I don't care."
"Oh, yes, you do. I'm going to come up here next Sunday in my best bib and tucker, and I'm going to say, 'Mr. Kennedy'-'~
The sound of Mrs. Kennedy's voice and footsteps approaching made Claude suddenly remember his duties.
"See ye later," he said with a grin. "I'll call for the cake next time."
"Call till you split your throat, if you want to," said 'Cindy.
Apparently this could have gone on indefinitely, but it didn't. Lucindy went to Minneapolis for a few weeks to stay with her brother, and that threw Claude deeper into despair than anything Mrs. Kennedy might do or any word Lucindy might say. It was a dreadful blow to him to have her pack up and go so suddenly and without one backward look at him, and, besides, he had planned taking her to Tyre on the Fourth of July.
Mr. Kennedy, much better-natured than the mother, told Claude where she had gone.
"By mighty! That's a knock on the nose for me. When did she go?"
"Yistady. I took her down to the Siding."
"When's she coming back?"
"Oh, after the hot weather is over; four or five weeks."
"I hope I'll be alive when she returns," said Claude gloomily.
Naturally he had a little more time to give to Nina and her remarkable doings, which had set the whole neighborhood to wondering "what had come over the girl."
She no longer worked in the field. She dressed better, and had taken to going to the most fashionable church in town. She was a woman transformed. Nothing was able to prevent her steady progression and bloom. She grew plumper and fairer and became so much more attractive that the young Germans thickened round her, and one or two Yankee boys looked her way. Through it all Claude kept up his half-humorous banter and altogether serious daily advice, without once realizing that any-thing sentimental connected him with it all. He knew she liked him, and sometimes he felt a little annoyed by her attempts to please him, but that she was doing all that she did and ordering her whole life to please him never entered his self-sufficient head.
There wasn't much room left in that head for anyone else except Lucindy, and his plans for wining her. Plan as he might, he saw no way of making more than the two dollars a day he was earning as a cream collector.
Things ran along thus from week to week till it was nearly time for Lucindy to return. Claude was having his top buggy repainted and was preparing for a vigorous campaign when Lucindy should be at home again. He owned his team and wagon and the buggy-nothing more.
One Saturday Mr. Kennedy said, "Lucindy's coming home. I'm going down after her tonight."
"Let me bring her up," said Claude with suspicious eagerness.
Mr. Kennedy hesitated. "No, I guess I'll go myself. I want to go to town, anyway."
Claude was in high spirits as he drove into Haldeman's yard that afternoon.
Nina was leaning over the fence singing softly to herself, but a fierce altercation was going on inside the house. The walls resounded. It was all Dutch to Claude, but he knew the old people were quarreling.
Nina s
miled and colored as Claude drew up at the side gate. She seemed not to hear the eloquent discussion inside.
"What's going on?" asked Claude.
"Dey tink I am in house."
"How's that?"
"My mudder she lock me up."
Claude stared. "Locked you up? What for?"
"She tondt like it dot I come out to see you."
"Oh, she don't?" said Claude. "What's the matter o' me? I ain't a dangerous chap. I ain't eatin' up little. girls."
Nina went on placidly. "She saidt dot you was goin' to marry me undt' get the farm."
Claude grinned, then chuckied, and at last roared and whooped with the delight of it. He took off his hat and said:
"She said that, did she? Why, bless her old cabbage head-"
The opening of the door and the sudden irruption of Frau Haldeman interrupted him. She came rushing toward him like a she grizzly bear, uttering a torrent of German expletives, and hurled herself upon him, clutching at his hair and throat. He leaped aside and struck down her hands with a sweep of his hard right arm. As she turned to come again he shouted,
"Keep off! or I'll knock you down!"
But before the blow came Nina seized the infuriated woman from behind and threw her down, and held her till the old man came hobbling to the rescue. He seemed a little dazed by it all and made no effort to assault Claude.
The old woman, who was already black in the face with rage, suddenly fell limp, and Nina, kneeling beside her, grew white with fear.
"Oh, vat is the matter! I hat kildt her!"
Claude rushed for a bucket of water and dashed it in the old woman's face. He flooded her with slashings of it, especially after he saw her open her eyes, ending by emptying the bucket in her face. He was a little malicious about that.
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