An Indiana Girl/Chapter 9

When the breakfast work was finished the following Sunday Virgie entered into her preparations for church with a reluctance that was entirely foreign to her customary, eager interest, and she hummed unconsciously a simple air in troubled repetition. She had said nothing to her father of Kent's proposal, and he had not guessed that aught was amiss with them, though her singing attracted his attention, as he was familiar with that characteristic of hers, and wondered much as to the cause for her disturbance. As they drove away he addressed himself to her several times in the tones of his light-heartedness, and, receiving only monosyllabic replies, finally grew serious and troubled over her pre-occupied manner. He was on the point of asking her the cause for her worry, but forebore doing so, trusting that she would enlighten him in due time, assured that he enjoyed her closest confidence.

Upon their arrival she led him at once to their pew, carefully avoiding that portion of the congregation that were conversing on the front platform, and studiously avoided Kent's glance of recognition as he grudgingly nodded to her father from back of the pulpit.

"Law me!" said Mrs. Martin, under her breath, as she quickly caught the sign of estrangement between the two young people.

"Did you see that?" asked Sister Callum, astounded, with her eyes glued on Virgie, and then both ladies watched her assiduously during the whole service.

Kent was nervous but forceful, talking over their heads and addressing the wall at the back of the room with an overdrawn earnestness that amounted to almost anger. His auditors listened in wonderment and were moved by his vehemence as they had never been before. Sister Callum and Widow Martin were roused to a high pitch of expectancy as the thunderous tones vibrated through the little room and shook them with a momentary terror. They felt the responsibility of the new conditions that were constantly becoming more evident between these young people, and they absorbed every look, action or word of each in the hope of a solution.

The parson drew his sermon to a close in a voice that died away in despair. The men looked into each other's faces for the approbation they felt at his unusual flight of oratory and the sincerity that backed it. The choir arose, still under the spell, and with an effort brought themselves to sing an anthem in a disjointed way until the leader recovered self-control. As they sang Sister Callum collected herself sufficiently to say: "Well, if that ain't the beatenest thing ever I see! What you suppose 'tis?"

"It certainly beats all creation," Mrs. Martin replied, unable to discuss the matter further for lack of enlightenment, but speedily resolved to learn more at once.

Virgie passed out of the church hurriedly, bent on getting away from her friends to where she could nurse her own feelings and reason out her much-perturbed thoughts; but Brandt insisted on remaining for a moment to discuss the sensational sermon with the admiring members, and Virgie was drawn back into their midst an unwilling listener.

Widow Martin made her way hastily to their group and engaged Brandt in a discussion that to Virgie seemed interminable. She curbed her impatience with the greatest effort for some moments until a mode of relief occurred to her, and, turning to Mrs. Martin, she asked amiably, "Why can't you come and take dinner with us, Aunt Sarah?"

"But the children?" protested the widow meekly.

"Oh, we have plenty of room for them in the wagon if you will only get them together. I expect they are hungry, so we had better start!" And she moved off with her father, while the delighted widow went in search of her two offspring.

"M'land, but she's in a rush!" said Mrs. Callum as she passed, a child in each hand, and a smile of eager expectancy spread over her kindly old face.

"Comin' to meetin' to-night?" asked the sister significantly.

"Caint tell; mebbe," the widow replied, as she hurried out to take a seat beside Brandt in the front of the wagon, while the two children piled in the back seat with Virgie, grinning with joy to be in her company.

She took each of them by the hand in pleased relief, smiled on their evident happiness, and drew them just a little closer in love and sympathy.

"Ain't heer'n anythin' o' Snellins yet, hev y'?" asked the widow of Brandt by way of introducing conversation.

"No, we haven't. Funny thing about him, isn't it?"

"Oh, I reckon he'll be back!" said the widow pleasantly, in an effort at re-assurance.

"Love Aunt Virgie?" asked Virgie, drawing the two smiling faces around in front of her own and looking seriously into their laughing blue eyes.

Gyp, the girl of eight, threw her arms around and kissed her impetuously, while Bennie, the boy of four, being crowded out of reach, replied, "Ness, 'um," by way of affirmative.

"And Virgie loves you too. What a pretty pin!" she added, as she caught sight of a brooch all too old for the child. "Where did you get that?"

"Mommie give it t' me. It uster be hers," said Gyp, with no small pride.

"Didn't," said Ben.

"Why, Bennie!" said the widow, turning quickly, with a look of disapproval and alarm.

"I seen the man bring it," insisted the boy doggedly.

"Mommie always had it—she said so, so now!" said Gyp, with childish faith in her mother's statement.

"Babies, babies!" Virgie laughed. "Shame on you for quarreling this way."

"I ain't a baby," said Bennie, for the time diverted by masculine pride from the point of his former argument.

"Well, I ask forgiveness. You are not a baby then, but who would ever have expected a man to raise such trouble with two helpless young ladies like sister and I, and on Sunday, too?" Virgie said, in a conciliatory tone, as she watched his darkened face with an amused smile.

The child's eyes blinked in perplexity as he tried sturdily to fathom the position in which he found himself. He realized his false assumption of manliness, yet could not but feel that his deception had carried conviction. The rebuke, however, placed the situation beyond his grasp, and he finally yielded with a sheepish smile. Virgie laughed outright, lifted his face to hers and kissed him squarely on his ruddy mouth. Recovering himself with solemn dignity he looked Brandt full in the face as the old man turned about, and his expression was so defiant that Brandt opened his eyes in wonderment.

"My goodness, what a scare you gave me!" he said, drawing himself as far away as the breadth of seat would permit. Bennie laughed foolishly, and followed up the advantage with a mild onslaught that ended by his nearly falling out of the wagon.

"Now, you behave," said his mother, with disgust in her voice, but pride in her heart.

"What was all the row about back here a while ago?" asked Brandt, disinterestedly.

"Why, Bennie he said," began Gyp, when her another's face scowled a warning that left the baby mouth wide agape with fear and the unended sentence still hanging to her lips. Then the widow as suddenly gained her smiling composure and drew the questioner into a discussion that ended all thought of his inquiry.

Virgie gathered the little girl quickly to her in convulsive sympathy, and, while no word was said, each wondered much at the sinister look of warning.

"What does the secrecy mean?" she asked herself as the boy's statement came back to her. "And why should a trivial gift be the cause of so much unpleasant difference of opinion in this little family?" Always unsuspicious of wrong-doing, she could supply no solution but that of family jealousy; and this only increased her perplexity. It was much too improbable that in childish differences a mother could take the exaggerated fear Mrs. Martin had shown. Yet no other cause would occur to her, and she carried her cogitations the balance of the journey, ever recurring to them in the intervals of the others' conversation.

In the house she assisted her little guests divest themselves of their outward wraps, and, pointing to the bureau drawer for the widow to get an apron, she changed her own gown for a simpler one, and the party moved out to the kitchen, where Brandt had already filled the wood stove and was on the point of lighting the chips.

"I will do that if you will get some water, father," Virgie said, taking the match from him.

"All right," he replied. "Come on, folks," and he beckoned for the children to follow him out to the well. "Now, Bennie, you say when, and Gyp and I will be the grinders," he said, and the three worked industriously till the kettle and drinking bucket had been filled, when they returned to the kitchen not half so breathless as they pretended.

"As I wuz sayin' when them harum-scarums come in," resumed the widow, covering the import of her remarks by a reference to Brandt and the children. "As I wuz sayin', it wuz the first real and mighty gospel I ever heard him preach. He's got the power a-workin' in him now fer sure; but my land! where'd he get it all a-sudden? That's what beats me." She paused and glanced furtively at Virgie, but, obtaining no reply, resumed: " Ef it wan't fer his tex' I'd a-thought, an' I 'don't 'low I'm th' only one, thet he'd news from somewheres thet wuz full of joy without end. He's jest like rheumatism fer signs—always showin' his kind o' weather long afore it comes. But there's his tex' again. 'What of that?' I ask myself. When he held out his hand like this (and here the widow thrust her hand and arm out full length toward Virgie with imitating emphasis) an' said 'Earthly hopes air on'y sorrow. God gives hopes thet air of joy fulfilled.' Thet's not happiness," she resumed after a pause, "thet's disappointment—thet's what it is—thet made him say it th' way he did," and, though she gave no evidence of observing her auditor's agitation, she throbbed with an inward satisfaction difficult to conceal.

"I say 'amen' to the sentiment and truth of his statement," said Brandt seriously, but the old man's "amen" was not of literal inference, as he only intended to corroborate the parson's assertion and not perpetuate it. "Ambition was once my only word, but the hope it inspired has gone with it," he said, and sighed regretfully.

"What a deep impression the sermon has made upon all of you!" said Virgie, smiling feebly. "Please let us forget it, or, not forget it exactly, but why not cheer up and profit by it. All hope is not gone yet. You know there is still lots and lots of happiness for everybody, so why not make the most of it?" And, though still suffocating from his words, that filled her with guilty shame and partial resentment, she led them back to smiles and laughter through the medium of the children.

The meal finished, and the women occupied with their feminine interests, Brandt slipped away to his room of books, and, throwing himself into his easy chair, gave his thoughts over to other days, influenced by the young parson's burning words.

In early boyhood he had been a firm believer in opportunity. The earnestness of this conviction keeping him ever alert to the possibilities of his surroundings and honestly desirous of success. His grandfather was an illustrious example of the self-made man, and George, being his namesake, had patterned himself as near as he could after the grandparent. He had held "opportunity" as the keynote of all success, and yet he had failed always in his own opportunities. He knew now, as he sat alone, an exiled old man estranged from his own people, the cause of his failure, and he reviewed for the thousandth time, as he had done in late years, the elements of his failures.

There was the lack of self-assurance in his nature that was a counterpart of his mother's—a sweetly, dependent woman without a will or convictions. From the other side he had drawn his father's impatience and feverish nervousness. These had caused him to jump at results without going into their causes, and his opportunities had been missed for lack of helpful assurance, confidence and sturdy application. He tried to do and failed, then tried again and again, and always failure came to reward him. He knew now the cause of it all, and Kent's words impressed him with their strangely fitting application to his own hopes. They were near bringing him back to his youthful feeling of resentment against causes outside his own making when he went drifting off into the happy days of his wooing that lasted into a delicious nap of refreshing dreams. His tired brain took up the order of his early days in glowing sequence and bore him along in a labyrinth of joys unspeakable. The sad departure from home and friends, with all its attendant mortification, did not come into the spell as it should have done to make the dreams complete. He vaguely felt this portion of his life's story lacking, and moved his head uneasily as he slept. His brow contracted as the truant facts eluded his control, and the trouble of it all finally caused him to assume a meditative expression, and still he slept.

There were those days of his father's disgust and anger, his friends' unwelcome pity and his wife's despair. Then the terrible journey, in which he was torn between love and compassion for her sufferings and hatred for himself and the world. The days of privation, in which she bore the ills so foreign to her old home life with a strengthful fortitude, and, helping him through his almost total collapse, lead him up to renewed effort that surprised even himself.

These were the things that troubled his dreams now, for they would not arrange themselves in chronological order, and his slumbering consciousness felt their wrong connection; but, when he finally awakened with a start, they came about quickly in cruel procession. He arose and went out into the yard repeating, "Earthly hopes are only sorrow, but God gives hopes that are joy fulfilled," the words consoling him mightily.