2
I was sorry for the people in the towns, and sold most of my eggs, fowls, butter, cream and milk on credit: and though Virginia and I were not on good terms and I never went to see her any more; and though Grandma Thorndyke was, I felt sure, trying to get Virginia's mind fixed on a better match, like Bob Wade or Paul Holbrook, I used to take eggs, butter, milk or flour to the elder's family almost every time I went to town: and when the weather was warm enough so that they would not freeze, I took potatoes, turnips, and sometimes some cabbage for a boiled dinner, with a piece of pork to go with it.
When the elder found out who was sending it he tried to thank me, but I made him promise not to tell his family where these things came from, on pain of not getting any more. I said I had as good right to contribute to the church as any one, and just because I had no money it was tough to have the little I could give made public. By this time I had worked up quite a case, and was looking like a man injured in his finest feelings and twitted of his poverty. The elder looked bewildered, and promised that he wouldn't tell.
"But I'm sure, Jake, that the Lord won't let your goodness go unrewarded, in the next world, anyhow, and I don't think in this."
I don't think he actually told, but I have reason to believe he hinted. In fact, Kittie Fleming told me when I went down to their place after some seed oats, that Grandma Thorndyke had said at the Flemings' dinner table that I was an exemplary boy, in my way, and when I grew up I would make some girl a husband who would be kind and a good provider.
"I was awful interested," she said.
"Why?" I asked; for I couldn't see for the life of me how it interested her.
"I'm a girl," said she, "and I feel interested in--in--in such things--husbands, and good providers." Here I grew hot all over, and twisted around like a worm on a hot griddle. "I didn't think, when you were playing the needle's eye with me, that you acted as if you would be a very good husband!"
I peeked up at her through my eyebrows, and saw she was grinning at me, and sort of blushing, herself. But I had only one word for her.
"Why?"
"You didn't seem to--to--kiss back very much," she giggled; and as I was struggling to think of something to say (for it seemed a dreadful indictment as I looked at her, so winning to a boy who hadn't seen a girl for weeks) she ran off; and it was not till I was sitting by the stove at home after washing up the dishes that evening that I thought what a fine retort it would have been if I had offered to pay back then, with interest, all I owed her in the way of response. I spent much of the evening making up nice little speeches which I wished I had had the sprawl to get off on the spur of the moment. I grew fiery hot at the thought of how badly I had come off in this little exchange of compliments with Kittie. Poor Kittie! She supped sorrow with a big spoon before many years; and then had a long and happy life. I forgave her, even at the time, for making fun of the Hell Slew Dutch boy. All the girls made fun of me but Virginia, and she did sometimes--Virginia and Rowena Fewkes.
Thinking of Rowena reminded me of the fact that I had not seen any of the Fewkeses for nearly two years. This brought up the thought of Buck Gowdy, who had carried them off to his great farmstead which he called Blue-grass Manor. Whenever I was in conversation with him I was under a kind of strain, for all the fact that he was as friendly with me as he was with any one else. I remembered how I had smuggled Virginia away from him; and wondered whether or not he had got intimate enough by this time at Elder Thorndyke's so that she had given him any inkling as to my share in that matter.
This brought me back to Virginia--and then the whole series of Virginia dreams recurred. She sat in the chair which I had bought for her, in the warm corner next the window. She was sewing. She was reading to me. She was coming over to my chair to sit in my lap while we talked over our adventures. She looked at my chapped and cracked hands and told me I must wear my mittens every minute. She--but every boy can go on with the series: every boy who has been in the hopeless but blissful state in which I then was: a state which out of hopelessness generates hope as a dynamo generates current.
This was followed by days of dark despondency. Magnus Thorkelson and I were working together plowing for oats, for we did not work our oats on the corn ground of last year then as we do now, and he tried to cheer me up. I had been wishing that I had never left the canal; for there I always had good clothes and money in my pocket. We couldn't stay in this country, I said. Nobody had any money except a few money sharks, and they robbed every one that borrowed of them with their two per cent. a month. I was getting raggeder and raggeder every day. I wished I had not bought this other eighty. I wished I had done anything rather than what I had done. I wished I knew where I could get work at fair wages, and I would let the farm go--I would that! I would be gosh-blasted if I wouldn't, by Golding's bow-key[15]!
[15] "By Golding's bow-key" was a very solemn objurgation. It could be used by professors of religion, but under great provocation only. It harks back to the time when every man who had oxen named them Buck and Golding, and the bow-key held the yoke on. Ah, those far-off, Arcadian days, and the blessing of blowing those who lived in them!--G.v.d.M.
"Oh!" exclaimed Magnus, "you shouldn't talk so! Ve got plenty to eat. Dere bane lots people in Norvay would yump at de shance to yange places wit' us. What nice land here in Iovay! Some day you bane rich man. All dis slew bane some day dry for plow. I see it in Norvay and Sveden. And now dat ve got ralroad, dere bane t'ousan's an' t'ousan's people in Norvay, and Denmark, and Sveden and Yermany come here to Iovay, an' you an' your vife an' shildern bane big bugs. Yust vait, Yake. Maybe you see your sons in county offices an' your girls married vit bankers, an' your vife vare new calico dress every day. Yust vait, Yake. And to-night I pop some corn if you furnish butter, hey?"
To hear the pop-corn going off in the skillet, like the volleys of musketry we were so soon to hear at Shiloh; to see Magnus with his coat off, stirring it round and round in the sizzling butter until one or two big white kernels popped out as a warning that the whole regiment was about to fire; to see him, with his red hair all over his freckled face, lift the hissing skillet and shake it until the volleys died down to sharpshooting across the lines; and then to hear him laugh when he turned the vegetable snowdrift out into the wooden butter-bowl a little too soon, and a last shot or two blew the fluffy kernels all over the room--all this was the very acme of success in making a pleasant evening. All the time I was thinking of Magnus's prediction.
"County officer!" I snorted. "Banker! Me!"
"Ay dank so," said Magnus. "Or maybe lawyers and yudges."
"Any girl I would have," I said, "wouldn't have me; and any girl that would have me, the devil wouldn't have!"
"Anybody else say dat to me, I lick him," he stated.
"There ain't any farm girls out in this prairie," I said; "and no town girl would come in here," and I spread my hands out to show that I thought my house the worst place in the world, though I was really a little proud of it--for wasn't it mine? made with my own hands, mainly?
"Girls come where dey want to come," said he, "in spite of--"
"Of hell and high water," I supplied, as he hesitated.
"So!" he answered, adopting my words, and afterward using them at a church social with some effect. "In spite of Hell Slew and high water. An' if dey bane too soft in de hand to come, I bring you out a fine farm girl from Norvay."