Wayside Courtships

by Garland, Hamlin

  "You see, they held meetings every other Sunday. So dad worked up the organ business and got one, and then locked it up when the Baptists held their services. Well, it went from bad to worse. They didn't speak as they passed by—that is, the old folks; we young folks didn't care a continental whether school kept or not. Well, upshot is, the church died out. The wind blew the horse sheds down, and there they lie—and the church is standing there empty as an—old boot—and——" He grew too sleepy to finish.

  Suddenly a comical idea roused him again. "Say, Stacey—by Jinks!—are you a Baptist?"

  "Yes."

  "Oh, Peter! ain't that lovely?" He chuckled shamelessly, and went off to sleep without another word.

  II.

  Herman was still sleeping when Stacey rose and dressed and went down to breakfast. Mrs. Mills defended Herman against the charge of laziness: "He's probably been out late all the week."

  Stacey found Mott in the county courthouse, and a perfunctory examination soon put him in possession of a certificate. There was no question of his attainments.

  Herman met him at dinner-time.

  "Well, elder, I'm going down to get a rig to go out home in. It's colder'n a blue whetstone, so put on all the clothes you've got. Gimme your check, and I'll get your traps. Have you seen Mott?"

  "Yes."

  "Well, then, everything's all fixed."

  He turned up about three o'clock, seated on the spring seat of a lumber wagon beside a woman, who drove the powerful team. Whether she was young or old could not be told through her wraps. She wore a cap and a thick, faded cloak.

  Mrs. Mills hurried to the door. "Why, Mattie Allen! What you doin' out such a day as this? Come in here instanter!"

  "Can't stop," called a clear, boyish voice. "Too late."

  "Well, land o' stars!—you'll freeze."

  When Wallace reached the wagon side, Herman said, "My sister, Stacey."

  The girl slipped her strong brown hand out of her huge glove and gave him a friendly grip. "Get right in," she said. "Herman, you're going to stand up behind."

  Herman appealed to Mrs. Mills for sympathy. "This is what comes of having plebeian connections."

  "Oh, dry up," laughed the girl, "or I'll make you drive."

  Stacey scrambled in awkwardly beside her. She was not at all embarrassed, apparently.

  "Tuck yourself in tight. It's mighty cold on the prairie."

  "Why didn't you come down with the baroosh?" grumbled Herman.

  "Well, the corn was contracted for, and father wasn't able to come—he had another attack of neuralgia last night after he got the corn loaded—so I had to come."

  "Sha'n't I drive for you?" asked Wallace.

  "No, thank you. You'll have all you can do to keep from freezing." She looked at his thin coat and worn gloves with keen eyes. He could see only her pink cheeks, strong nose, and dark, smiling eyes.

  It was one of those terrible Illinois days when the temperature drops suddenly to zero, and the churned mud of the highways hardens into a sort of scoriac rock, which cripples the horses and sends the heavy wagons booming and thundering along like mad things. The wind was keen and terrible as a saw-bladed sword, and smote incessantly. The desolate sky was one thick, impenetrable mass of swiftly flying clouds. When they swung out upon the long pike leading due north, Wallace drew his breath with a gasp, and bent his head to the wind.

  "Pretty strong, isn't it?" shouted Mattie.

  "Oh, the farmer's life is the life for me, tra-la!" sang Herman, from his shelter behind the seat.

  Mattie turned. "What do you think of Penelope this month?"

  "She's a-gitten there," said Herman, pounding his shoe heels.

  "She's too smart for young Corey. She ought to marry a man like Bromfield. My! wouldn't they talk?"

  "Did y' get the second bundle of magazines last Saturday?"

  "Yes; and dad found something in the Popular Science that made him mad, and he burned it."

  "Did 'e? Tum-la-la! Oh, the farmer's life for me!"

  "Are you cold?" she asked Wallace.

  He turned a purple face upon her. "No—not much."

  "I guess you better slip right down under the blankets," she advised.

  The wind blew gray out of the north—a wild blast which stopped the young student's blood in his veins. He hated to give up, but he could no longer hold the blankets up over his knees, so he slipped down into the corner of the box, with his back to the wind, with the blankets drawn over his head.

  The powerful girl slapped the reins down on the backs of the snorting horses, and encouraged them with shouts like a man: "Get out o' this, Dan! Hup there, Nellie!"

  The wagon boomed and rattled. The floor of the box seemed beaten with a maul. The glimpses Wallace had of the land appalled him, it was so flat and gray and bare. The houses seemed poor, and drain-pipe scattered about told how wet it all was.

  Herman sang at the top of his voice, and danced, and pounded his feet against the wagon box. "This ends it! If I can't come home without freezing to death, I don't come. I should have hired a rig, irrespective of you——"

  The girl laughed. "Oh, you're getting thin-blooded, Herman. Life in the city has taken the starch all out of you."

  "Better grow limp in a great city than freeze stiff in the country," he replied.

  An hour's ride brought them into a yard before a large gray-white frame house.

  Herman sprang out to meet a tall old man with head muffled up. "Hello, dad! Take the team. We're just naturally froze solid—at least I am. This is Mr. Stacey, the new teacher."

  "How de do? Run in; I'll take the horses."

  Herman and Wallace stumbled toward the house, stiff and bent.

  Herman flung his arms about a tall woman in the kitchen door. "Hello, muz!" he said. "This is Mr. Stacey, the new teacher."

  "Draw up to the fire, sir. Herman, take his hat and coat."

  Mattie came in soon with a boyish rush. She was gleeful as a happy babe. She unwound the scarf from her head and neck, and hung up her cap and cloak like a man, but she gave her hair a little touch of feminine care, and came forward with both palms pressed to her burning cheeks.

  "Did you suffer, child?" asked Mrs. Allen.

  "No; I enjoyed it."

  Herman looked at Stacey. "I believe on my life she did."

  "Oh, it's fun. I don't get a chance to do anything so exciting very often."

  Herman clicked his tongue. "Exciting? Well, well!"

  "You must remember things are slower here," Mattie explained.

  She came to light much younger than Stacey thought her. She was not eighteen, but her supple and splendid figure was fully matured. Her hair hung down her back in a braid, which gave a subtle touch of childishness to her.

  "Sis, you're still a-growin'," Herman said, as he put his arm around her waist and looked up at her.

  She seemed to realize for the first time that Stacey was a young man, and her eyes fell.

  "Well, now, set up the chairs, child," said Mrs. Allen.

  When the young teacher returned from his cold spare room off the parlor the family sat waiting for him. They all drew up noisily, and Allen said:

  "Ask the blessing, sir?"

  Wallace said grace.

  As Allen passed the potatoes he continued:

  "My son tells me you are a minister of the gospel."

  "I have studied for it."

  "What denomination?"

  "Tut, tut!" warned Herman. "Don't start any theological rabbits to-night, dad. With jaw swelled up you won't be able to hold your own."

  "I'm a Baptist," Stacey answered.

  The old man's face grew grim. It had been ludicrous before with its swollen jaw. "Baptist?" The old man turned to his son, whose smile angered him. "Didn't you know no more'n to bring a Baptist preacher into this house?"

  "There, there, father!" began the wife.

  "Be quiet. I'm boss of this shanty."

  Herman struck in: "Don't make a show of yourse
lf, old man. Don't mind the old gent, Stacey; he's mumpy to-day, anyhow."

  Stacey rose. "I guess I—I'd better not stay—I——"

  "Oh, no, no! Sit down, Stacey. It's all right. The old man's a little acid at me. He doesn't mean it."

  Stacey got his coat and hat. His heart was swollen with indignation. He felt as if something fine were lost to him, and the cold outside was so desolate now.

  Mrs. Allen was in tears; but the old man, having taken his stand, was going to keep it.

  Herman lost his temper a little. "Well, dad, you're a little the cussedest Christian I ever knew. Stacey, sit down. Don't you be a fool just because he is——"

  Stacey was buttoning his coat with trembling hands, when Martha went up to him.

  "Don't go," she said. "Father's sick and cross. He'll be sorry for this to-morrow."

  Wallace looked into her frank, kindly eyes and hesitated.

  Herman said: "Dad, you are a lovely follower of Christ. You'll apologize for this, or I'll never set foot on your threshold again."

  Stacey still hesitated. He was hurt and angry, but being naturally a sweet and gentle nature, he grew sad, and, yielding to the pressure of the girl's hand on his arm, he began to unbutton his overcoat.

  She helped him off with it, and hung it back on the nail. She did not show tears, but her face was unwontedly grave.

  They sat at the table again, and Herman and Mattie tried to restore something of the brightness which had been lost. Allen sat grimly eating, his chin pushed down like a hog's snout.

  After supper, as his father was about retiring to his bedroom, Herman fixed his bright eyes on him, and something very hard and masterful came into his boyish face.

  "Old man—you and I haven't had a settlement on this thing yet. I'll see you later."

  Allen shrank before his son's look, but shuffled sullenly off without uttering a word.

  Herman turned to Wallace. "Stacey, I want to beg your pardon for getting you into this scrape. I didn't suppose the old gentleman would act like that. The older he gets, the more his New Hampshire granite shows. I hope you won't lay it up against me."

  Wallace was too conscientious to say he didn't mind it, but he took Herman's hand in a quick clasp.

  "Let's have a song," proposed Herman. "Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast, to charm a rock, and split a cabbage."

  They went into the best room, where a fire was blazing, and Mattie and Herman sang hymns and old-fashioned love songs and college glees wonderfully intermingled. They ended by singing "Lorena," a wailing, supersentimental love song current in war times, and when they looked around there was a lofty look on the face of the young preacher—a look of exaltation, of consecration and resolve.

  III.

  The next morning, at breakfast, Herman said, as he seized a hot biscuit, "We'll dispense with grace this morning, and till after the war is over." But Wallace blessed his bread in a silent prayer, and Mattie thought it very brave of him to do so.

  Herman was full of mockery. "The sun rises just the same, whether it's 'sprinkling' or 'immersion.' It's lucky Nature don't take a hand in these theological contests—she doesn't even referee the scrap. She never seems to care whether you are sparring for points or fighting to a finish. What you theologic middle-weights are really fighting for I can't see—and I don't care, till you fall over the ropes on to my corns."

  Stacey listened in a daze to Herman's tirade. He knew it was addressed to Allen, and that it deprecated war, and that it was mocking. The fresh face and smiling lips of the young girl seemed to put Herman's voice very far away. It was such a beautiful thing to sit at table with a lovely girl.

  After breakfast he put on his cap and coat and went out into the clear, cold November air. All about him the prairie extended, marked with farmhouses and lined with leafless hedges. Artificial groves surrounded each homestead, relieving the desolateness of the fields.

  Down the road he saw the spire of a small white church, and he walked briskly toward it, Herman's description in his mind.

  As he came near he saw the ruined sheds, the rotting porch, and the windows boarded up, and his face grew sad. He tried one of the doors, and found it open. Some tramp had broken the lock. The inside was even more desolate than the outside. It was littered with rotting straw and plum stones and melon seeds. Obscene words were scrawled on the walls, and even on the pulpit itself.

  Taken altogether it was an appalling picture to the young servant of the Man of Galilee, a blunt reminder of the ferocity and depravity of man.

  As he pondered the fire burned, and there rose again the flame of his resolution. He lifted his face and prayed that he might be the one to bring these people into the living union of the Church of Christ.

  His blood set toward his heart with tremulous action. His eyes glowed with zeal like that of the Middle Ages. He saw the people united once more in this desecrated hall. He heard the bells ringing, the sound of song, the smile of peaceful old faces, and voices of love and fellowship filling the anterooms where hate now scrawled hideous blasphemy against woman and against God.

  As he sat there Herman came in, his keen eyes seeking out every stain and evidence of vandalism.

  "Cheerful prospect—isn't it?"

  Wallace looked up with the blaze of his resolution still in his eyes. His pale face was sweet and solemn.

  "Oh, how these people need Christ!"

  Herman turned away. "They need killing—about two dozen of 'em. I'd like to have the job of indicating which ones; I wouldn't miss the old man, you bet!" he said, with blasphemous audacity.

  Wallace was helpless in the face of such reckless thought, and so sat looking at the handsome young fellow as he walked about.

  "Well, now, Stacey, I guess you'll need to move. I had another session with the old man, but he won't give in, so I'm off for Chicago. Mother's brother, George Chapman, who lives about as near the schoolhouse on the other side, will take you in. I guess we'd better go right down now and see about it. I've said good-by to the old man—for good this time; we didn't shake hands either," he said, as they walked down the road together. He was very stern and hard. Something of the father was hidden under his laughing exterior.

  Stacey regretted deeply the necessity which drove him out of Allen's house. Mrs. Allen and Mattie had appealed to him very strongly. For years he had lived far from young women, and there was a magical power in the intimate home actions of this young girl. Her bare head, with simple arrangement of hair, someway seemed the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.

  He thought of her as he sat at the table with George and his aged mother. They lived alone, and their lives were curiously silent. Once in a while a low-voiced question, and that was all.

  George read the Popular Science, Harper's Monthly Magazine, and the Open Court, and brooded over them with slow intellectual movement. It was wonderful the amount of information he secreted from these periodicals. He was better informed than many college graduates.

  He had little curiosity about the young stranger. He understood he was to teach the school, and he did not go further in inquiry.

  He tried Wallace once or twice on the latest discoveries of John Fiske and Edison, and then gave him up and retired to his seat beside the sitting-room stove.

  On the following Monday morning school began, and as Wallace took his way down the lane the wrecked church came again to his eyes. He walked past it with slow feet. His was a deeply religious nature, one that sorrowed easily over sin. Suffering of the poor did not trouble him; hunger seemed a little thing beside losing one's everlasting soul. Therefore to come from his studies upon such a monument of human depravity as this rotting church was to receive a shock and to hear a call to action.

  Approaching the schoolhouse, his thought took a turn toward the scholars and toward Mattie. He had forgotten to ask her if she intended to be one of his pupils.

  There were several children already gathered at the schoolhouse door as he came up. It was all very Amer
ican—the boxlike house of white, the slender teacher approaching, the roughly clad urchins waiting.

  He said, "Good morning, scholars."

  They chorused a queer croak in reply—hesitating, inarticulate, shy. He unlocked the door and entered the cold, bare room—familiar, unlovely, with a certain power of primitive associations. In such a room he had studied his primer and his Ray's Arithmetic. In such a room he had made gradual recession from the smallest front seat to the back wall seat; and from one side of such a room to the other he had furtively worshiped a graceful girlish head.

  He allowed himself but a moment of such dreaming, and then he assumed command, and with his ready helpers a fire was soon started. Other children came in, timorous as rabbits, slipping by with one eye fixed on him like scared chickens. They pre-empted their seats by putting down books and slates, and there arose sly wars for possession, which he felt in curious amusement—it was so like his own life at that age.

  He assumed command as nearly in the manner of the old-time teachers as he could recall, and the work of his teaching was begun. The day passed quickly, and as he walked homeward again there stood that rotting church, and in his mind there rose a surging emotion larger than he could himself comprehend—a desire to rebuild it by uniting the warring factions, of whose lack of Christianity it was fatal witness.

  IV.

  Now this mystical thing happened. As this son of a line of preachers brooded on this unlovely strife among men, he lost the equipoise of the scholar and student of modern history. He grew narrower and more intense. The burden of his responsibility as a preacher of Christ grew daily more insupportable.

  Toward the end of the week he announced preaching in the schoolhouse on Sunday afternoon, and at the hour set he found the room crowded with people of all ages and sorts.

  His heart grew heavy as he looked out over the room on women nursing querulous children, on the grizzled faces of grim-looking men, who studied him with keen, unsympathetic eyes. He had hard, unfriendly material to work with. There were but few of the opposite camp present, while the Baptist leaders were all there, with more curiosity than sympathy in their faces.