Part 6 (2/2)
The poor fellow held his breath till the song was done.
Two steps forward and Big Medicine towered above the lovers.
Carrie sprang to her feet with a startled cry; then, recognizing the intruder, she held out her little hand and welcomed him. Turning to her lover she said:
”Henry, this is Mr. Cook, lately papa's partner in Indiana.”
The lover was a true gentleman, so he took the big hard hand of the visitor and said he was glad to see him.
Big Medicine stood for a few moments holding a hand of each of the lovers. Presently a tremor took possession of his burly frame. He did not speak a word. His breast swelled and his face grew awfully white.
He put Carrie's hand in that of her lover and turned away. As he did so a tear, a great bitter drop, rolled down his haggard cheek. A few long strides and Big Medicine was gone.
Shrilly piped the blue birds, plaintively sang the peewees, sweetly through the elms and burr oaks by the corner brick blew the fresh summer wind, as, just at sunset, Big Medicine once more stood in front of the old building with his eyes fixed on the vacant, staring window.
It was scarcely a minute that he stood there, but long enough for a tender outline of the circ.u.mstances of the past year to rise in his memory.
A rustling at the broken lattice, a sudden thrill through the iron frame of the watching man, a glimpse of a sweet face--no, it was only a fancy.
The house was still, and old and desolate. It stared at him like a death's head.
Big Medicine raised his eyes toward heaven, which was now golden and flas.h.i.+ng resplendently with sunset glories. High up, as if almost touching the calm sky, a great blue heron was toiling heavily westward.
Taking the course chosen by the lone bird, Big Medicine went away, and the places that knew him once know him no more forever.
THE VENUS OF BALHINCH.
When I returned from Europe with a finished education, I found that my fortune also was finished in the most approved modern style, so I left New York and drifted westward in search of employment. At length I came to Indiana, and, having not even a cent left, and mustering but one presentable suit of clothes, I looked about me in a hungry, half desperate sort of way, till I pounced upon the school in Balhinch. Now Balhinch is not a town, nor a cross-road place, nor a post-office--it is simply a neighborhood in the southwestern corner of Union Towns.h.i.+p, Montgomery County--a neighborhood _sui generis_, stowed away in the breaks of Sugar Creek, containing as good, quiet, law-abiding folk as can be found anywhere outside of Switzerland. My school was a small one in numbers, but the pupils ranged from four to six feet three in alt.i.tude, and well proportioned. The most advanced cla.s.s had thumbed along pretty well through the spelling book. I need not take up your time with the school, however, for it has nothing at all to do with my story, excepting merely to explain how I came to be in Balhinch, in the State of Indiana.
My first sight of Susie Adair was on Sunday at the Methodist prayer meeting. I was sitting with my back to a window and facing the door of the log meeting house when she entered. It was July--a hot glary day, but a steady wind blew cool and sweet from the southwest, bringing in all sorts of woodland odors. The gra.s.shoppers were chirruping in the little timothy field hard by, and over in a bit of woodland pasture a swarm of blue jays were worrying a crow, keeping up an incessant squeaking and chattering. The dumpy little cla.s.s leader--the only little man in Balhinch--had just begun to give out the hymn
”Love is the sweetest bud that blows, Its beauties never die, On earth among the saints it grows And ripens in the sky,” &c.,
when Susie came in. Ben Crane was sitting by me. He nudged me with his elbow and whispered:
”How's that 'ere for poorty?”
I made him no answer, but remained staring at the girl till long after she had taken her seat. Nature plays strange tricks. Susie, the daughter of farmer Adair, was as beautiful in the face as any angel could be, and her form was as perfect as that of the Cnidian Venus. Her motion when she walked was music, and as she sat in statuesque repose, the undulations of her queenly form were those of perfect ease, grace and strength. Her hands were small and taper, a little browned from exposure, as was also her face. Her hair was the real cla.s.sic gold, and her grey eyes were riant with health and content. When her red lips parted to sing, they discovered small even teeth, as white as ivory. I can give you no idea of her. Physically she was perfection's self in the mould of a Venus of the grandest type. Her head, too, was an intellectual one (though feminine), in the best sense of the word. The first thought that flashed across my mind was embodied in the words--_A Venus_--and I still think of her as the best model I ever saw.
”How's that for poorty?” repeated Crane.
”Who is she!” I replied interrogatively.
”She's my jewlarker,” said he.
”Your what?”
”My sweetheart.”
”What is her name?”
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