“I mean God will punish me for it.”
“Oh, child, what do you mean? God loves us as his children. Is there a greater joy for parents than to see their children happy? A father, a mother, who sees her children dance happily, is doubly happy. God looked upon you as you danced so joyfully. Your parents also have seen you dance, and have rejoiced. Let the living say what they please. When my John comes back! Ah, he can dance! But I say nothing. Thou hast in me a friend who does thee justice. What more dost thou need?”
The counsel and support of Brown Mariann were consoling; but Barefoot had not wholly confided in her; had not told her all. It was not merely what people said of her that troubled her; alas, it was no longer true that she could be satisfied with being once completely happy. She longed to see again the person who had made her so; who had completely changed her whole being; and yet knew nothing more about her.
Yes, Barefoot was completely changed. She suffered no work to fail; no one could blame her; but a deep melancholy had taken firm hold of her. There was another reason for this sadness, which she could acknowledge before the world. Dami had not written a single word from America. She forgot herself so far as one day to say to Brown Mariann, “The Proverb is not false, that when a fire burns beneath an empty pot, a poor soul burns also. Under my heart there burns a fire, and my poor soul burns with it.”
“Why so?”
“That Dami has not written to me,” she said, deeply blushing. “This waiting is the most frightful murder of time. Time is never so sadly destroyed as by expectation. At no hour, at no minute, can one feel secure. No ground is firm beneath one; one foot must be always in the air.”
“Oh, child, say not so,” cried Mariann, sorrowfully. “How can you speak of waiting? Think of me, how I have waited patiently, and shall wait till my last hour, and never give it over!”
In the recognition of another’s grief, the complaint of Barefoot was extinguished in tears; and she said, “My heart is so heavy, that I think only of dying. How many thousands of pails of water must I draw, and how many more Sundays will there be? Ah, one need not, after all, fret so much, for life will soon have an end. When Rose scolds, I think, ‘Well, scold on, we shall both die soon, and then there will be an end.’ And then comes over me again such fear! I tremble at the thought of death, when I lie and think how it will be when I am dead! I shall hear nothing! I shall see nothing! These eyes, this ear is dead. Every thing that is myself will exist no longer. It is day, and I shall never know it! They will mow, they will reap, and I shall not be there. Oh, what is this dying?”
“What wouldst thou have?” asked Mariann. “Many others have died of more worth than thou. We must bear it calmly—”
“Hark! the watch cries something.” Thus Barefoot interrupted her strange complaint; and she, who now would die, and again would not die was anxious to learn what the village watcher had cried.