Part 3 (2/2)
Abraham caught up the pail and flung its contents out upon the gra.s.s, scattering the hens that came sidling back with squawks of inquiring temerity.
When next Emmy came for water, the old woman took her by the hand in silence and led her into the dim meat-cellar, a half-bas.e.m.e.nt with one low window level with the gra.s.s. There was the pail, safe hidden behind the soft-soap barrel.
”I had to hide it from your pa,” Becky whispered. ”Don't you never let him know you're afraid o' the well-water. He drunk it when he was a little boy. He don't believe in the snakes. But _there wa'n't none then_. It's when water gets old and rotten. You can believe what Becky says. _She_ knows! But you mustn't ever tell. Your father 'd be as mad as fire if he knowed I said anything about snakes. He'd send me right away, and some strange woman would come, and maybe she'd whip Emmy.
Emmy want Becky to go?” Sobs, and little arms clinging wildly to Becky's ap.r.o.ned skirts. ”No, no! Well, she ain't goin'. But Emmy mustn't tell tales or she might have to. Tattlers are wicked anyway. 'Telltale t.i.t!
Your tongue shall be slit, and all the little dogs'--There! run now!
There's your poppy. Don't you never,--never!”
Emmy let her eyes be wiped, and with one long, solemn, secret look of awed intelligence she ran out to meet her father. She did not love him, and the smile with which she met him was no new lesson in diplomacy. But her first secret from him lay deep in the beautiful eyes, her mother's eyes, as she raised them to his.
”Ain't that wonderful!” said Becky, with a satisfied sigh, watching her.
”Safe as a jug! An' she not five years old!” For vital reasons she had taught the child an ugly lesson. Such lessons were common enough in her experience of family discipline. She never thought of it again.
That year which took Emmy's mother from her brought to the child her first young companion and friend. Adam Bogardus came as ch.o.r.e-boy to the farm,--an only child himself, and sensitive through the clas.h.i.+ng of gentle instincts with rough and inferior surroundings; brought up in that depressed G.o.d-fearing att.i.tude in which a widow not strong, and earning her bread, would do her duty by an only son. Not a natural fighter, she took what little combativeness he had out of him, and made his school-days miserable--a record of humiliations that sunk deep and drove him from his kind. He was a big, clumsy, sagacious boy, grave as an old man, always snubbed and condescended to, yet always trusted.
Little Emmy made him her bondslave at sight. His whole soul blossomed in adoration of the beautiful, masterful child who ordered him about as her va.s.sal, while slipping a soft little trustful hand in his. She trotted at his heels like one of the lambs or chickens that he fed. She brought him into perpetual disgrace with Becky, for wasting his time through her imperious demands. She was the burden, the delight, the handicap, the incentive, and the reward of his humble apprentices.h.i.+p. And when he was promoted to be one of the regular hands she followed him still, and got her pleasure out of his day's work. No one had such patience to tell her things, to wait for her and help her over places where her tagging powers fell short. But though she bullied him, she looked up to him as well. His occupations commanded her respect. He was the G.o.d of the orchards and of the cider-making; he presided at all the functions of the farm year. He was a perfect calendar besides of country sports in their season. He swept the ice pools in the meadow for winter sliding, after his day's work was done. He saved up paper and string for kite-making in March. He knew when willow bark would slip for April's whistles. In the first heats of June he climbed the tall locust-trees to put up a swing in which she could dream away the perfumed hours.
At harvest she waited in the meadow for him to toss her up on the hay-loads, and his great arms received her when she slid off in the barn. She knelt at his feet on the b.u.mping boards of the farm-wagon while he braced himself like a charioteer, holding the reins above her head. He threshed the nut-trees and routed marauding boys from her preserves, and carved pumpkin lanterns to light her to her attic chamber on cold November nights, where she would lie awake watching strange shadows on the sloping roof, half wors.h.i.+ping, half afraid of her idol's ugliness in the dark.
These were some of Paul's ill.u.s.trations of that pastoral beginning, and no doubt they were sympathetically close to the truth. He lingered over them, dressing up his mother's choice instinctively to the little aristocrat beside him.
When Emmy grew big enough to go to the Academy, three miles from the farm, it was all in the day's work that Adam should take her and fetch her home. He combined her with the mail, the blacksmith, and other village errands. Whoever met her father's team on those long stony hills of Saugerties would see his little daughter seated beside his hired man, her face turned up to his in endless confiding talk. It was a face, as we say, to dream of. But there were few dreamers in that little world.
The farmers would nod gravely to Adam. ”Abraham's girl takes after her mother; heartier lookin', though. Guess he'll need a set o' new tires before spring.” The comments went no deeper.
Abraham was now well on in years; he made no visits, and he never drove his own team at night. When his daughter began to let down her frocks and be asked to evening parties, it was still Adam who escorted her.
He sat in the kitchen while she was amusing herself in the parlor. She discussed her young acquaintances with him on their way home. The time for distinctions had come, but she was too innocent to feel them herself, and too proud to accept the standards of others. He was absolutely honest and unworldly. He thought it no treachery to love her for herself, and he believed, as most of us do, that his family was as good as hers or any other.
It would be hard to explain the old man's obliviousness. Perhaps he had forgotten his own youth; or cla.s.s prejudice had gone so deep with him as to preclude the bare thought of a child of his falling in love with one of his ”men.” His imagination could not so insult his own blood. But when the awakening came, his pa.s.sion of anger and resentment knew no bounds. To discharge his faithless employee out of hand would be the cripple throwing away his crutch. Though he called Adam _one_ of his men, and though his pay was that of a common laborer, his duties had long been of a much higher order. Abraham had made a very good bargain out of the widow's son. Adam knew well that he could not be spared, and pitied the old man's helpless rage. He took his frantic insults as part of his senility, and felt it no unmanliness to appease it by giving his promise that he would speak no more of love to Emmy while he was taking her father's wages. But Emmy did not indorse this promise fully. To her it looked like weakness, and implied a sort of patience which did not become a lover such as she wished hers to be. The winter wore on uncomfortably for all. Towards spring, Becky's last illness and pa.s.sing away brought the younger ones together again, and closer than before.
Adam kept his promise through days and nights of sickroom intimacy; but though no word of love was spoken, each bore silent witness to what was loveliest in the other, and the bond between them deepened.
Then spring came, and its restlessness was strong upon them both. But it was Emmy to whom it meant action and rebellion.
They stood on the orchard hill one Sunday afternoon at the pause of the year. Buds were swelling and the edges of the woods wore a soft blush against the vaporous sky. The bare brown slopes were streaked with snow.
A floe of winter ice, grinding upon itself with the tide, glared yellow as an old man's teeth in the setting sun. From across the river came the thunder of a train, bound north, two engines dragging forty cars of freight piled up by some recent traffic-jam; it plunged into a tunnel, and they waited, listening to the monster's smothered roar. Out it burst, its breath packed into clouds, the engines whooped, and round the curve where a point of cedars cut the sky the huge creature unwound itself, the hills echoing to its tread.
Emmy watched it out of sight, and breathed again. ”Hundreds, hundreds going every day! It seems easy enough for everybody else. Oh, if I were a man!”
”What do you want I should do, Emmy?” Adam knew well what man she was thinking of.
”_I_ want? Don't you ever want things yourself?”
”When I want a thing bad, I gen'ly think it's worth waiting for.”
”People don't get things by waiting. I don't know how you can stand it,--to stay here year after year. And now you've tied yourself up with a promise, and you know you cannot keep it!”
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