BARBARA AND HIRAM BY THE LOOM.
"Well, no, not much for some folks, but a good deal for us; we're rather poor, you know." There is a pride that conceals poverty; there is a greater pride that makes haste to declare it, feeling that only hidden poverty is shameful. "You know father was a smart man in some ways," Barbara continued, "but he hadn't any knack. He lost most of his money before he came to Illinois; and then when he got here he made the mistake, that so many made, of settling in the timber, though very little of the prairie had been taken up yet. If he hadn't been afraid of the winters on the prairie, we might have been pretty well off; but it's been a hard struggle opening a farm in the woods. Then we have had nothing but misfortune. My father died of a congestive chill, and then my three brothers and my sister died, and Tom and I are all that's left to mother. And there are doctor's bills to pay yet, and a little debt on the farm."
"Yes, yes," said Hiram, wounded in thinking of the pain he was giving Barbara in forcing her to speak thus frankly of the family troubles. "I know what it is. Poverty and I are old acquaintances; regular old cronies. She's going to stand by my side till I graduate, anyhow; but as I have known her ever since I was born, I can afford to laugh in her face. There's nothing like being used to a thing."
Barbara made no reply to this. Mason sat and looked at her awhile in silence. There was no good in trying to help her on his present footing. He leaned forward, resting his elbow on the loom-bench by her side.
"Look here, Barbara," he said, with abrupt decision, "let's, you and me, go in partnership with our poverty some day, and see what'll come of it. I suppose, so far as money is concerned, the equations would be about equal without the trouble of figuring it out."
Barbara looked at her hands in her lap with her eyes out of focus, and made no reply. After a while Hiram spoke again.
"Did I—make you mad, Barbara?" He used the word "mad" in the sense attached to it in that interior country, meaning angry.
"No, not mad," said Barbara. "Not that—but—I don't know what to say. I don't believe what you propose can ever be."
Mason waited for her to explain herself, but she did not seem to be able to get her own consent. At length he got up and went to the mantel-piece and took down Barbara's slate.
"Let's talk about algebra awhile," he said.
Barbara was fond enough of algebra, but it seemed droll that Mason, with an unsettled proposition of marriage on hand, should revert to his favorite study. She could not see what he was writing, but when he passed the slate to her, she read:
a = another lover.
b = objections to H. Mason.
c = interfering circumstances.
x = a + b + c.
"Now," said Mason, when she looked up, "I'd like you to help me to get the exact value of x in this little equation. It's a kind of fortune-telling by algebra. We must proceed by elimination; you may strike out such of the letters on the right side of the last equation as do not count for anything."
But instead of proceeding as the master suggested, Barbara, whose reserve was partly dissipated by her amusement, took the pencil that he offered her, and after a moment's reflection wrote below:
a = 0
b = 0
x = c
"I never saw an equation more to my taste," said Hiram. "If it's only circumstances, then circumstances and I are going to fight it out. You think there are things that will keep us from making an equation between Barbara and Hiram?"
"There wouldn't be any equation," she said, looking out of half-closed eye-lids, as she always did when speaking with feeling. "Your family is an educated one, and your father and mother wouldn't approve of us. Mother never had any chance to learn, and her talk is very old-fashioned, but she's just as good as good can be, all the same. Tom's unsteady; I hope he'll get over that yet; but your father and mother and your sisters wouldn't like it."
"Yes, they would, if they knew you," said Mason, with enthusiasm; "and, besides, I don't see that I'm bound to get their consent."
"But that wouldn't change matters," persisted Barbara, despondingly. "If they didn't like it, it wouldn't be nice."
"Don't you bother about my happiness, Barbara. If I have you, do you think anything else will trouble me?" He got up and snuffed the candle with his fingers like the brave man that he was.
"I'm not bothering about you at all," said Barbara. "I'm not so good as you think I am. I let you take care of yourself in this matter; you're strong, and such things won't worry you." She was picking at her dress as she spoke. "Ever since you said what you did when you helped me over the fence last,"—Barbara took a long breath as she thought of that scene; she had often retraced all its details in her memory,—"I've known that you felt so toward me that you would face any thing. But I—I couldn't bear it if your folks should look down on me and I be—your wife." It was hard to say the last words; they sounded strangely, and when they were uttered, the sound of them put her into a trepidation not altogether disagreeable.
"Look down on you?" said Hiram, with a vehemence Barbara had never known him to manifest before. "Do you think my folks are such idiots? They don't meet a person like you often enough to get the habit of looking down on such."
"But you don't know women folks," said Barbara.
"I know my family better than you do, and you've got mighty curious notions about them and about yourself. You've always lived here in the woods, and you don't know what you're worth."
He lifted the empty apple-basket out of the way and sat down by her.
"Now, Barbara, you say you know how I feel toward you. You are the girl of all girls in the world for me. And now you won't spurn me, will you?" he said entreatingly.
Barbara's lips quivered and she seemed about to lose control of herself. However, after a little period of silence and struggle, she suppressed her feelings sufficiently to speak:
"I couldn't spurn you," she said. Then, after another pause: "Maybe you don't care any more for me than I do for you. But I'm in such trouble—that I can't tell what to say. Won't you wait and give me a little time? Things may be better after a while."
"How long shall I stay away? A week?" Mason's voice had a note of protest in it.
"Don't be hurt," she said, lifting her eyes timidly to his. "But I'm in such a hard place. Let me have two weeks or so to think about it, and see how things are going to turn." It was not that Barbara saw any chance for a change of circumstances, but that she could not resolve to decide the question either way, and wished to escape from her present perplexity by postponement.
"Just as you say," said Mason, regretfully; "but I tell you, Barbara, it's two weeks of dead lost time."
Then he got up and held out his hand to her.
"Good-bye, Barbara."
"Good-bye, Mr. Mason."
"Oh, call me Hiram! It's more friendly, and you call all the other young men by their first names."
"But you're the master."
"I'm not the master of you, that's clear. Besides, you've left school." He was holding her hand in gentle protest all this time.
"Well, good-bye—Hiram!" said Barbara, with a visible effort which ended in a little laugh.
Mason let go of her hand and turned abruptly and walked out of the door, and then swiftly down the meadow path. Barbara stood and looked after him as long as she could see his form; then she slowly shut and latched the kitchen door and came and covered with ashes the remaining embers of the fire, and took the candle from the mantel-piece and went through the now vacant sitting-room to her chamber above.