An Indiana Girl/Chapter 3

The afternoon dragged itself out until the short day had reached that time when the shadows, that not long before boldly and clearly outlining short counterparts of the trees along the road, had grown much longer than the trees themselves. Stretching across the road in weak lines, breaking in irregular, sharp angles over the stones, and, rising up over the hedge that bordered the opposite side, they died away among the stubble and clodded ground in a barren cornfield.

Harvey arose, his patience much exhausted by the long wait. He had not expected to leave the district that night, but the prospect of having to waste the afternoon had not occurred to him. He concluded that he could not wait much longer if he was to get to Ashville before dark, and to drive there after dark through the irregular country, with its steep hills and loose stones, was not to be thought of. With a feeling of regret for the lost time, and a little nettled at the prospect of having the hard ride over again, he pulled himself together and sauntered into the yard, where he found George Brandt, still busy with the building that was in thoughtful preparation for the storms of a winter not far away.

"Well, young man," said George Brandt, standing with a hammer poised above his head, just where it had stopped when he caught sight of Frank, who wore a gloomy expression, and walked slowly with his hands pushed deep into his trousers' pocket, "I guess you are going to be disappointed this time."

"Yes, I guess I am," he replied, trying to regain at least a semblance of cheerfulness in accepting the inevitable, but not succeeding with much grace.

"We have to make the best of these things, though," said Brandt, continuing with his work. "Look at my position—can't say a word to the villain when I do lay eyes on him. Bound hand and foot, you might say, by a promise. But a man's word keeps him out of lots of trouble sometimes, I suppose," he added, philosophically. The thoughts he did not speak were very emphatically expressed with the hammer.

"It will be dark in an hour from now," Harvey said, resolved to give the day up as wasted, "so I had better be starting."

"I am mighty sorry your trip was for nothing; however, you may have better luck to-morrow. I cannot promise though. Ben is such an unreliable fellow. You have learned that to-day without my telling you, but I think he will surely be back this evening."

Then Frank bid the old man "good-bye," and as he drove away over the rough road he could hear the industrious hammer above the rattle of his light wagon's wheels.

"B'n up to Brandt's, have ye?" said the voluble landlord, rounding up the information he had succeeded in drawing from Harvey during the evening meal, as they sat down by the office stove—a modest counterpart of the mammoth round, two-piece, cast-iron kind we are used to watching from a comfortable distance as they grow rapidly redder and redder after a vigorous prodding by the station agent, who so easily glides from the menial position of janitor to an exalted "company's agent" (that fact being embroidered on his cap), which is donned just as the redness reaches a cherry ripe and the train comes in. But the country railway station and agents and such things have nothing to do with Silas Dole, the landlord (commonly known as "Jolly Si" because of his good nature and his bouncing way of showing it); though the stove has much to do with him, because, with the chill evenings coming on, it had again resumed its importance as the central point from which many legs of various lengths led out like spokes to a wheel of good fellowship. "Si" was about to resume the conversation where it was left off in the dining-room, but he was called away to take down a clothes-line and attend to other chores, and when he returned some of the "regulars" had dropped in. In the introductions that followed he was restrained for a time, but not for long, and at the first opportunity took it up again.

"B'n up to Brandt's?" he commenced. "Smashin' fine man Brandt is—treated you square I 'low?"

"Well, yes, I had dinner there," Frank replied.

"Couldn't a-b'n no other way; he never was knowed to do a mean thing since he's b'n 'round here, an' that's thirty-six year."

"Nigh onto thirty-eight," said Lem Henderson, from the other side of the stove, with a positiveness that set his foot to bobbing.

"'Taint now, be it?" asked "Si," a little surprised at his miscalculation, and Lem's head nodded a continuous assent in union with his foot.

"Well, it were in the spring o' the year anyhow," continued "Si," "an' him an' his woman come a-draggin' in here so pesky tired that we jest had to give 'em room ef it did crowd me an' Faribee some. You remember we hadn't nothin' but that log place then—what you an' Peters' boys helped me to build?" he asked of Turner, who up to this time had apparently been deep in thought or in a trance, or some other brain-absorbing state.

"I swan I do," said he, rising to the occasion with unnecessary enthusiasm, and, continuing, "Sam Peters was shot about the middle—"

"Yes, I hear'n tell about that," said "Si," breaking in on the equally voluble Turner, who at once resumed his thinking attitude, vanquished but not in the least offended.

"We kept 'em along o' us fer nigh a month," continued "Si" retrospectively. "His woman was plum give out, and fust think we knowed she was down with chills an' fever, an' Brandt went clean crazy. You couldn't-a no more talked horse-sense into him than nothin'. Kept a-callin' hisself a blamed fool an' wuss things, an' when she sort o' come round agin she must-a 'greed with him, 'cause she give him one layin'-out I shan't never forgit so long as I live. Said she was tired a-bein' passeled about over the country 'thout never knowin' whur she was a-goin' to next, an' 'bout th' time she got through she 'lowed they'd better stop right where they wuz; an' Brandt, he didn't seem to know 'zactly what he was a-wantin', so they tuk up that bit o' lan' down whur he bees now, an' in less 'an three years she'd managed t' get hol' a right smart o' groun' 'round thur. They didn't bother much 'ith thur neighbors then, 'cause they wan't none noways handy, but we used to see 'the lady' (that's what folks got to callin' of her) once in a long while. Well, one night 'long come "Doc" Seebert an' gets Faribee an' takes her down thur, an' when she comes back she's got a bundle, an' she jest looks 't me an' says. Says she: 'Si,' you'll go an' 'tend t' things; Brandt, he ain't fittin'.' An' when I see him I knowed he wan't. 'Lem' can tell you how onfittin' he were," said the narrator, looking at Henderson, who with solemn face nodded assent without attempting to break into the tale.

"Then,' he went on, "we kep' that little bundle here with us fer weeks an' weeks, 'til 'way into the summer, an' one day Brandt, he come over an' says to me; he says, an' he was looking mighty down in the mouth, 'Si,' says he, 'I guess I be all right now,' an' I says right off—'fine as a fiddle,' an' I jest stood a-lookin' at him. I didn't kinder know what else moughten be the best thing to say, an' he jest stood a-lookin' at the floor. So what do you think? That blessed baby goes an' sets up a-yellin' in t'other room, an' he looks up smilin' kinder weaklike, an' then I knowed what he'd come fer; so I calls Faribee an' she brings the baby in, an', when it kep' on a-cryin' an' stickin' its little fists in its eyes, Faribee says: 'That ain't no way to be a-greetin' of your pop first time you see him. Young ladies should be a-havin' of better manners,' an' Brandt, he smiles again more happier an' looks at her, not knowin' jest what to do. 'I s'pose I should be takin' her home,' he says. 'I don't 'low you will,' says Faribee, speakin' up prompt. 'I ain't a-goin' to give her over jest yet. What does men know 'bout colic an' cramps?' she asks him, an' he looks foolish an' 'lows he ain't very knowin' on them things, but he keeps on, an' says, 'I'm a-thinkin' she'll be a bother.' 'You go about your business,' says my woman, makin' out she's cross, an' afterwhile he goes away, an' we jest kep' that baby all through that summer, an' the winter too."

"I remember one night, jest 'bout 'long this time o' year, Faribee says to him—I can see him now, settin' up straight, like company manners an' all (he was allus that way), an' me back agin the wall, on the hind legs of a cheer, an' Faribee, she'd been a-hummin' to the gal, when she stopped all of a-suddint an' says: 'Brandt, you're a tyrant; here's this baby nigh a growed-up woman, an' she ain't got no name yit.' 'That's right,' says I. 'Well, what would you suggest?' he says, smilin'. 'Lord have mercy on the man,' says Faribee. 'If he ain't a-goin' amongst strangers askin' fer a name fer his own!' 'Well,' says he, 'sif he wan't jest sure of hisself, 'I have been a-thinkin' of it, an' we might call her Virginia, prowidin' it 'ud be all right,' he says, which opset my woman a bit, 'cause she'd sort o' settled on 'Jennie,' but she had to agree with him, an' first thing we knowed ever'body was a-callin' of the little one 'Virgie.'"

"Well, sir," "Si" commenced again after a short pause, "he tuck her home that nex' spring, an' I don't believe the wife an' me was ever lonesomer; it was awful the way we missed that baby. But when she was a little gal he uster bring her over to see us ever' few days, an' afterwhile she got to comin' of her ownself, an' she never got tired a-tellin' her 'Aunt Faribee' 'bout the great things her father was a-teachin' her out o' books, 'till the hull distric' tuk her up an' would a-spoiled her, only she wouldn't let 'em. She don't have much time to come here no more, 'cause she has such a heap o' things to do, helpin' her pop an' the new parson an' the poor folks, though Lord knows we're as poor as anybody; but sometimes she drops in an', rollin' up her sleeves, she'll put on a apron an' work about jest as common as dirt, an' when she laughs an' talks like nothin' wasn't a-botherin' of her it's a sight worth seein'."

"Well, I guess I'll be a-goin'," said Henderson, rising slowly and straightening his stiff, weather-warped old legs.

"Don't be in a hurry," said the host, genially.

"Th' woman's got rheumatiz now, so she's sort o' cross, an' don't do to aggervate her now, so I best be a-goin'," he repeated.

"Ever'body knows his own afflictions best," said "Si," smiling.

"Now it ain't so bad since it's turned cool," said Henderson, missing the humor of his friend's jibe, and continuing, "an' Brandt's girl give her somethin' now, so she's easin' up a bit, an' now, so I ain't a-gettin' complained on 'smuch 's it was," he said, with his "now so" covering the pauses in which he ruminated through his rusty brain for words to express himself.

"Can't keep a man away from the busom of his family," and, winking at Harvey, Dole bid the homeward-bound patriarch a cheery "good-night!" and closed the door after him.

"Pensions is a good thing sometimes," started Turner before the host could regain his chair, but Frank was not in the mood to go over this—to him—tiresome subject again; therefore, he rose hastily, and, complaining of fatigue, shook hands all around and followed "Si" up a narrow stairway to a little lamp-lighted room, where he soon lost the procession of strange characters that had made up the day in a sound, healthy sleep.