Part 43 (1/2)
Mr. Getz looked very downcast. There was a long silence between them.
”I must go now, father. This is the hour that I always spend in the store.”
”I'll board you fur six, then,” he growled.
”And make me work from four in the morning until eight or nine at night? It is easier standing in the store. I can read when there are no customers.”
”To think I brung up a child to talk to me like this here!” He stared at her incredulously.
”The rest will turn out even worse,” Tillie prophesied with conviction, ”unless you are less harsh with them. Your harshness will drive every child you have to defy you.”
”I'll take good care none of the others turns out like you!” he threateningly exclaimed. ”And YOU'LL see oncet! You'll find out! You just wait! I tried everything--now I know what I'm doin'. It'll LEARN you!”
In the next few weeks, as nothing turned up to make good these threats, Tillie often wondered what her father had meant by them. It was not like him to waste time in empty words.
But she was soon to learn. One evening the doctor came over to the store to repeat to her some rumors he had heard and which he thought she ought to know.
”Tillie! your pop's workin' the directers to have you chased off William Penn till the April election a'ready!”
”Oh, Doc!” Tillie gasped, ”how do you know?”
”That's what the talk is. He's goin' about to all of 'em whenever he can handy leave off from his work, and he's tellin' 'em they had ought to set that example to onruly children; and most of 'em's agreein' with him. Nathaniel Puntz he agrees with him. Absalom he talks down on you since you won't leave him come no more Sundays, still. Your pop he says when your teachin' is a loss to him instead of a help, he ain't leavin'
you keep on. He says when you don't have no more money, you'll have to come home and help him and your mom with the work. Nathaniel Puntz he says this is a warnin' to parents not to leave their children have too much education--that they get high-minded that way and won't even get married.”
”But, Doc,” Tillie pleaded with him in an agony of mind, ”you won't let them take my school from me, will you? You'll make them let me keep it?”
The doctor gave a little laugh. ”By golly, Tillie, I ain't the President of America! You think because I got you through oncet or twicet, I kin do ANYthing with them directers, still! Well, a body can't ALWAYS get ahead of a set of stubborn-headed Dutchmen--and with Nathaniel Puntz so wonderful thick in with your pop to work ag'in' you, because you won't have that dumm Absalom of hisn!”
”What shall I do?” Tillie cried. ”I can never, never go back to my old life again--that hopeless, dreary drudgery on the farm! I can't, indeed I can't! I won't go back. What shall I do?”
”Look-ahere, Tillie!” the doctor spoke soothingly, ”I'll do what I otherwise kin to help you. I'll do, some back-talkin' myself to them directers. But you see,” he said in a troubled tone, ”none of them directers happens to owe me no doctor-bill just now, and that makes it a little harder to persuade 'em to see my view of the case. Now if only some of their wives would up and get sick for 'em and I could run 'em up a bill! But,” he concluded, shaking his head in discouragement, ”it's a wonderful healthy season--wonderful healthy!”
In the two months that followed, the doctor worked hard to counteract Mr. Getz's influence with the Board. Tillie, too, missed no least opportunity to plead her cause with them, not only by direct argument, but by the indirect means of doing her best possible work in her school.
But both she and the doctor realized, as the weeks moved on, that they were working in vain; for Mr. Getz, in his statements to the directors, had appealed to some of their most deep-rooted prejudices. Tillie's filial insubordination, her ”high-mindedness,” her distaste for domestic work, so strong that she refused even to live under her father's roof--all these things made her unfit to be an instructor and guide to their young children. She would imbue the ”rising generation”
with her worldly and wrong-headed ideas.
Had Tillie remained ”plain,” she would no doubt have had the champions.h.i.+p 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 unG.o.dly 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.