The Abandoned Farmer

by Sydney Herman Preston

Peter rubbed his chin thoughtfully before he spoke. "I was going to say that we might share and share alike, but I'm ready to do more than that," with an expansive smile. "You see, as I told you once before, taking one year with another, farming don't pay, and you might have to share two years' losses against one year's profits." He paused for a moment, and I nodded knowingly. "Now," he continued, "I'll take the hull darned crop myself, and if it don't pay expenses you don't lose, but if there is any profit once in a while, I'll have something for horse and cow feed."

This offer sounded so generous that I almost succumbed; indeed, I would have agreed at once but for the caution inspired by my previous dealings with him, and the remembrance that Marion counted it one of my failings that my first impulse was always to agree with any plausible proposition. This thought gave me moral courage enough to withhold my consent until I had time to talk it over with my wife.

Now when I eagerly began to explain the advantages of working the land on shares I was so full of the subject that I forgot temporarily that Marion was leaving me to my own devices, nor did I remember till I paused for her opinion, and heard the interesting comment that I'd better get the whitewash mixed up so that we could do the kitchen right after dinner.

I mixed the whitewash with fierce energy. After dinner I applied it with a concentrated vigor that, properly distributed, would have whitened the White House. As I worked, I ruminated bitterly upon Marion's aggravating reserve, doubly annoying in that I had an instinct that she saw a fatal flaw in the plan which was not apparent to me. When I finished the walls and ceiling of the kitchen I found that I had incidentally whitened the stove, the floor and myself.

To my surprise, Marion made no comment on this as she prepared to scrub the floor, her features expressing calm content, with perhaps a suggestion of scornful amusement that was not definite enough to justify me in accusing her of implying that I hadn't done the work neatly. She had just dipped her scrubbing brush into the pail of water, and I was in the act of removing my bespattered overalls, when the front door-bell rang. It was such an unusual occurrence at Waydean for anyone to come to the front door that the sound of the bell at this juncture created a commotion. Neither of us was presentable, but Marion seized a towel and rubbed some splatches of lime off my face, hurried me into an old coat and declared I must go. I had learned previously that on any special occasion it is always the man who must go, so I did not protest. I even went willingly, for the bell rang a second time with a portentous reverberation that thrilled me with expectancy that something was about to happen, and I was in the mood to enjoy something happening. As I glanced at the mirror in the hall I was startled to see that my hair and beard were powdered a delicate gray with the lime, and that the lines in my face looked like the deep seams of old age, but as this couldn't be helped I opened the door with my usual air of inquiring dignity.

"How are you, Mr. Waydean?" demanded a hearty voice, and a large, bearded, black-clothed, silk-hatted man grasped my hand with a fervent pressure.

I am singularly open to sympathy, and at that particular time I would have welcomed the benediction of a wayside beggar, so I returned the hearty hand-clasp and replied that I was from fair to middling, warmly inviting him to walk into the parlor. It did not occur to me until he spread his coat tails and inverted his hat on the floor that he looked as if he might be an ex-clerical insurance or book agent, and I was rather more relieved than impressed when he announced that he was the new pastor of the only church in the neighborhood. I attempted to apologize for my disordered appearance and to explain that I was not a church-goer, also that Waydean was not my name, but that of the place.

"Not one word, Mr. Waydean," he interrupted, his deep voice drowning my courteous utterance. "You wouldn't think so, perhaps, but I was brought up on a farm, and I have learned that clothes do not make a man. Would you be a different person, let me ask, were you clothed in sheepskins or purple and fine linen?"

"I never tried either of those costumes," I answered, "but if you saw me in my ordinary clothes you wouldn't take me for a farmer."

"Come now, Mr. Waydean," he urged, tapping my knee insistently; "would you or would you not be the same man? A straight answer, if you please—no hedging."