"So you see I'm through with this place!" Fairchilds concluded as, late that night, he and the doctor sat alone in the sitting-room, discussing the afternoon's happenings.
"I was forced to believe," he went on, "when I saw Jake Getz's fearful anxiety and real distress while Tillie remained unconscious, that the fellow, after all, does have a heart of flesh under all his brutality. He had never seen a woman faint, and he thought at first that Tillie was dead. We almost had HIM on our hands unconscious!"
"Well, the faintin' saved Tillie a row with him till he got her home oncet a'ready," the doctor said, as he puffed away at his pipe, his hands in his vest arms, his feet on the table, and a newspaper under them to spare the chenille table-cover.
"Yes. Otherwise I don't know how I could have borne to see her taken home by that ruffian—to be punished for so heroically defending ME!"
"You bet! That took cheek, ain't?—fur that little girl to stand there and jaw Jake Getz—and make him quit lickin' you! By gum, that minds me of sceneries I've saw a'ready in the theayter! They most gener'ly faints away in a swoond that way, too. Well, Tillie she come round all right, ain't?—till a little while?"
"Yes. But she was very pale and weak, poor child!" Fairchilds answered, resting his head wearily upon his palm. "When she became conscious, Getz carried her out of the woods to his buggy that he had left near the school-house."
"How did Absalom take it, anyhow?"
"He's rather dazed, I think! He doesn't quite know how to make it all out. He is a man of one idea—one at a time and far apart. His idea at present is that he is going to marry Tillie."
"Yes, and I never seen a Puntz yet where didn't come by what he set his stubborn head to!" the doctor commented. "It wonders me sometimes, how Tillie's goin' to keep from marryin' him, now he's made up his mind so firm!"
"Tillie knows her own worth too well to throw herself away like that."
"Well, now I don't know," said the doctor, doubtfully. "To be sure, I never liked them Puntzes, they're so damned thick-headed. Dummness runs in that family so, it's somepin' surprisin'! Dummness and stubbornness is all they got to 'em. But Absalom he's so well fixed—Tillie she might go furder and do worse. Now there's you, Teacher. If she took up with you and yous two got married, you'd have to rent. Absalom he'd own his own farm."
"Now, come, Doc," protested Fairchilds, disgusted, "you know better—you know that to almost any sort of a woman marriage means something more than getting herself 'well fixed,' as you put it. And to a woman like Tillie!"
"Yes—yes—I guess," answered the doctor, pulling briskly at his pipe. "It's the same with a male—he mostly looks to somepin besides a good housekeeper. There's me, now—I'd have took Miss Margaret—and she couldn't work nothin'. I tole her I don't mind if my wife IS smart, so she don't bother me any."
"You did, did you?" smiled Fairchilds. "And what did the lady say to that?"
"Och, she was sorry!"
"Sorry to turn you down, do you mean?"
"It was because I didn't speak soon enough," the doctor assured him. "She was promised a'ready to one of these here tony perfessers at the Normal. She was sorry I hadn't spoke sooner. To be sure, after she had gave her word, she had to stick to it." He thoughtfully knocked the ashes from his pipe, while his eyes grew almost tender. "She was certainly, now, an allurin' female!
"So now," he added, after a moment's thoughtful pause, "you think your game's played out here, heh?"
"Getz and Absalom left me with the assurance that at the Saturday-night meeting of the Board I'd be voted out. If it depends on them—and I suppose it does—I'm done for. They'd like to roast me over a slow fire!"
"You bet they would!"
"I suppose I haven't the least chance?"
"Well, I don' know—I don' know. It would suit me wonderful to get ahead of Jake Getz and them Puntzes in this here thing—if I anyways could! Le' me see." He thoughtfully considered the situation. "The Board meets day after to-morrow. There's six directors. Nathaniel Puntz and Jake can easy get 'em all to wote to put you out, fur they ain't anyways stuck on you—you bein' so tony that way. Now me, I don't mind it—them things don't never bother me any—manners and cleanness and them."
"Cleanness?"
"Och, yes; us we never seen any person where wasted so much time washin' theirself—except Miss Margaret. I mind missus used to say a clean towel didn't last Miss Margaret a week, and no one else usin' it! You see, what the directors don't like is your ALWAYS havin' your hands so clean. Now they reason this here way—a person that never has dirty hands is lazy and too tony."
"Yes?"
"But me, I don't mind. And I'm swanged if I wouldn't like to beat out Jake and Nathaniel on this here deal! Say! I'll tell you what. This here game's got fun in it fur me! I believe I got a way of DOIN' them fellers. I ain't tellin' you what it is!" he said, with a chuckle. "But it's a way that's goin' to WORK! I'm swanged if it ain't! You'll see oncet! You just let this here thing to me and you won't be chased off your job! I'm doin' it fur the sake of the fun I'll get out of seein' Jake Getz surprised! Mebbe that old Dutchman won't be wonderful spited!"
"I shall be very much indebted to you, doctor, if you can help me, as it suits me to stay here for the present."
"That's all right. Fur one, there's Adam Oberholzer; he 'll be an easy guy when it comes to his wote. Fur if I want, I can bring a bill ag'in' the estate of his pop, disceased, and make it 'most anything. His pop he died last month. Now that there was a man"—the doctor settled himself comfortably, preparatory to the relation of a tale—"that there was a man that was so wonderful set on speculatin' and savin' and layin' by, that when he come to die a pecooliar thing happened. You might call that there thing phe-non-e-ma. It was this here way. When ole Adam Oberholzer (he was named after his son, Adam Oberholzer, the school director) come to die, his wife she thought she'd better send fur the Evangelical preacher over, seein' as Adam he hadn't been inside a church fur twenty years back, and, to be sure, he wasn't just so well prepared. Oh, well, he was deef fur three years back, and churches don't do much good to deef people. But then he never did go when he did have his sound hearin'. Many's the time he sayed to me, he sayed, 'I don't believe in the churches,' he sayed, 'and blamed if it don't keep me busy believin' in a Gawd!' he sayed. So you see, he wasn't just what you might call a pillar of the church. One time he had such a cough and he come to me and sayed whether I could do somepin. 'You're to leave tobacco be,' I sayed. Ole Adam he looked serious. 'If you sayed it was caused by goin' to church,' he answered to me, 'I might mebbe break off. But tobacco—that's some serious,' he says. Adam he used to have some notions about the Bible and religion that I did think, now, was damned unushal. Here one day when he was first took sick, before he got so deef yet, I went to see him, and the Evangelical preacher was there, readin' to him that there piece of Scripture where, you know, them that worked a short time was paid the same as them that worked all day. The preacher he sayed he thought that par'ble might fetch him 'round oncet to a death-bed conwersion. But I'm swanged if Adam didn't just up and say, when the preacher got through, he says, 'That wasn't a square deal accordin' to MY way of lookin' at things.' Yes, that's the way that there feller talked. Why, here oncet—" the doctor paused to chuckle at the recollection—"when I got there, Reverend was wrestlin' with Adam to get hisself conwerted, and it was one of Adam's days when he was at his deefest. Reverend he shouted in his ear, 'You must experience religion—and get a change of heart—and be conwerted before you die!' 'What d' you say?' Adam he ast. Then Reverend, he seen that wouldn't work, so he cut it short, and he says wery loud, 'Trust the Lord!' Now, ole Adam Oberholzer in his business dealin's and speculatin' was always darned particular who he trusted, still, so he looked up at Reverend, and he says, 'Is he a reliable party?' Well, by gum, I bu'st right out laughin'! I hadn't ought to—seein' it was Adam's death-bed—and Reverend him just sweatin' with tryin' to work in his job to get him conwerted till he passed away a'ready. But I'm swanged if I could keep in! I just HOLLERED!"
The doctor threw back his head and shouted with fresh appreciation of his story, and Fairchilds joined in sympathetically.
"Well, did he die unconverted?" he asked the doctor.
"You bet! Reverend he sayed afterwards, that in all his practice of his sacred calling he never had knew such a carnal death-bed. Now you see," concluded the doctor, "I tended ole Adam fur near two months, and that's where I have a hold on his son the school-directer."
He laughed as he rose and stretched himself.
"It will be no end of sport foiling Jake Getz!" Fairchilds said, with but a vague idea of what the doctor's scheme involved. "Well, doctor, you are our mascot—Tillie's and mine!" he added, as he, too, rose.
"What's THAT?"
"Our good luck." He held out an objectionably clean hand with its shining finger-nails. "Good night, Doc, and thank you!"
The doctor awkwardly shook it in his own grimy fist. "Good night to you, then, Teacher."
Out in the bar-room, as the doctor took his nightly glass of beer at the counter, he confided to Abe Wackernagel that somehow he did, now, "like to see Teacher use them manners of hisn. I'm 'most as stuck on 'em as missus is!" he declared.
Tillie's unhappiness, in her certainty that on Saturday night the Board would vote for the eviction of the teacher, was so great that she felt almost indifferent to her own fate, as she and the doctor started on their six-mile ride to East Donegal. But when he presently confided to her his scheme to foil her father and Absalom, she became almost hysterical with joy.
"You see, Tillie, it's this here way. Two of these here directers owes me bills. Now in drivin' you over to East Donegal I'm passin' near to the farms of both of them directers, and I'll make it suit to stop off and press 'em fur my money. They're both of 'em near as close as Jake Getz! They don't like it fur me to press 'em to pay right aways. So after while I'll say that if they wote ag'in' Jake and Nathaniel, and each of 'em gets one of the other two directers to wote with him to leave Teacher keep his job, I'll throw 'em the doctor's bill off! Adam Oberholzer he owes me about twelve dollars, and Joseph Kettering he owes me ten. I guess it ain't worth twelve dollars to Adam and ten to Joseph to run Teacher off William Penn!"
"And do you suppose that they will be able to influence the other two—John Coppenhaver and Pete Underwocht?"
"When all them dollars depends on it, I don't suppose nothin'—I know. I'll put it this here way: 'If Teacher ain't chased off, I'll throw you my doctor's bill off. If he is, you'll pay me up, and pretty damned quick, too!'"
"But, Doc," faltered Tillie, "won't it be bribery?"
"Och, Tillie, a body mustn't feel so conscientious about such little things like them. That's bein' too serious."
"Did you tell the teacher you were going to do this?" she uneasily asked.
"Well, I guess I ain't such a blamed fool! I guess I know that much, that he wouldn't of saw it the wayIsee it. I tole him I was goin' to bully them directers to keep him in his job—but he don't know how I'm doin' it."
"I'm glad he doesn't know," sighed Tillie.
"Yes, he darsent know till it's all over oncet."
The joy and relief she felt at the doctor's scheme, which she was quite sure would work out successfully, gave her a self-confidence in the ordeal before her that sharpened her wits almost to brilliancy. She sailed through this examination, which otherwise she would have dreaded unspeakably, with an aplomb that made her a stranger to herself. Even that bugbear of the examination labeled by the superintendent, "General Information," and regarded with suspicion by the applicants as a snare and a delusion, did not confound Tillie in her sudden and new-found courage; though the questions under this head brought forth from the applicants such astonishing statements as that Henry VIII was chiefly noted for being "a great widower"; and that the Mother of the Gracchi was "probably Mrs. Gracchi."
In her unwonted elation, Tillie even waxed a bit witty, and in the quiz on "Methods of Discipline," she gave an answer which no doubt led the superintendent to mark her high.
"What method would you pursue with a boy in your school who was addicted to swearing?" she was asked.
"I suppose I should make him swear off!" said Tillie, with actual flippancy.
A neat young woman of the class, sitting directly in front of the superintendent, and wearing spectacles and very straight, tight hair, cast a shocked and reproachful look upon Tillie, and turning to the examiner, said primly, "Iwould organize an anti-swearing society in the school, and reward the boys who were not profane by making them members of it, expelling those who used any profane language."
"And make every normal boy turn blasphemer in derision, I'm afraid," was the superintendent's ironical comment.
When, at four o'clock that afternoon, she drove back with the doctor through the winter twilight, bearing her precious certificate in her bosom, the brightness of her face seemed to reflect the brilliancy of the red sunset glow on snow-covered fields, frozen creek, and farm-house windows.
"Bully fur you, Matilda!" the doctor kept repeating at intervals. "Now won't Miss Margaret be tickled, though! I tell you what, wirtue like hern gits its rewards even in this here life. She'll certainly be set up to think she's made a teacher out of you unbeknownst! And mebbe it won't tickle her wonderful to think how she's beat Jake Getz!" he chuckled.
"Of course you're writin' to her to-night, Tillie, ain't you?" he asked. "I'd write her off a letter myself if writin' come handier to me."
"Of course I shall let her know at once," Tillie replied; and in her voice, for the first time in the doctor's acquaintance with her, there was a touch of gentle complacency.
"I'll get your letter out the tree-holler to-morrow morning, then, when I go a-past—and I can stamp it and mail it fur you till noon. Then she'll get it till Monday morning yet! By gum, won't she, now, be tickled!"
"Isn't it all beautiful!" Tillie breathed ecstatically. "I've got my certificate and the teacher won't be put out! What did Adam Oberholzer and Joseph Kettering say, Doc?"
"I've got them fixed all right! Just you wait, Tillie!" he said mysteriously. "Mebbe us we ain't goin' to have the laugh on your pop and old Nathaniel Puntz! You'll see! Wait till your pop comes home and says what's happened at Board meetin' to-night! Golly! Won't he be hoppin' mad!"
"What is going to happen, Doc?"
"You wait and see! I ain't tellin' even you, Tillie. I'm savin' it fur a surprise party fur all of yous!"
"Father won't speak to me about it, you know. He won't mention Teacher's name to me."
"Then won't you find out off of him about the Board meetin'?" the doctor asked in disappointment. "Must you wait till you see me again oncet?"
"He will tell mother. I can get her to tell me," Tillie said.
"All right. Somepin's going to happen too good to wait! Now look-ahere, Tillie, is your pop to be tole about your certificate?"
"I won't tell him until I must. I don't know how he'd take it. He might not let me get a school to teach. Of course, when once I've got a school, he will have to be told. And then," she quietly added, "I shall teach, whether he forbids it or not."
"To be sure!" heartily assented the doctor. "And leave him go roll hisself, ain't! I'll keep a lookout fur you and tell you the first wacancy I hear of."
"What would I do—what should I have done in all these years, Doc—if it hadn't been for you!" smiled Tillie, with an affectionate pressure of his rough hand; and the doctor's face shone with pleasure to hear her.
"You have been a good friend to me, Doc."
"Och, that's all right, Tillie. As I sayed, wirtue has its reward even in this here life. My wirtuous acts in standin' by you has gave me as much satisfaction as I've ever had out of anything! But now, Tillie, about tellin' your pop. I don't suspicion he'd take it anyways ugly. A body'd think he'd be proud! And he hadn't none of the expense of givin' you your nice education!"
"I can't be sure how he WOULD take it, Doc, so I would rather not tell him until I must."
"All right. Just what you say. But I dare tell missus, ain't?"
"If she won't tell the girls, Doc. It would get back to father, I'm afraid, if so many knew it."
"I 'll tell her not to tell. She 'll be as pleased and proud as if it was Manda or Rebecca!"
"Poor Aunty Em! She is so good to me, and I'm afraid I've disappointed her!" Tillie humbly said; but somehow the sadness that should have expressed itself in the voice of one under suspension from meeting, when speaking of her sin, was quite lacking.
When, at length, they reached the Getz farm, Mr. Getz met them at the gate, his face harsh with displeasure at Tillie's long and unpermitted absence from home.
"Hello, Jake!" said the doctor, pleasantly, as her father lifted her down from the high buggy. "I guess missus tole you how I heard Tillie fainted away in a swoond day before yesterday, so this morning I come over to see her oncet—Aunty Em she was some oneasy. And I seen she would mebbe have another such a swoond if she didn't get a long day out in the air. It's done her wonderful much good—wonderful!"
"She hadn't no need to stay all day!" growled Mr. Getz. "Mom had all Tillie's work to do, and her own too, and she didn't get it through all."
"Well, better LET the work than have Tillie havin' any more of them dangerous swoonds. Them's dangerous, I tell you, Jake! Sometimes folks never comes to, yet!"
Mr. Getz looked at Tillie apprehensively. "You better go in and get your hot supper, Tillie," he said, not ungently.
Before this forbearance of her father, Tillie had a feeling of shame in the doctor's subterfuges, as she bade her loyal friend good night and turned to go indoors.
"You'll be over to Board meetin' to-night, ain't?" the doctor said to Mr. Getz as he picked up the reins.
"To be sure! Me and Nathaniel Puntz has a statement to make to the Board that'll chase that tony dude teacher off his job so quick he won't have time to pack his trunk!"
"Is that so?" the doctor said in feigned surprise. "Well, he certainly is some tony—that I must give him, Jake. Well, good night to yous! Be careful of Tillie's health!"
Getz went into the house and the doctor, chuckling to himself, drove away.
Tillie was in bed, but sleep was far from her eyes, when, late that night, she heard her father return from the Board meeting. Long she lay in her bed, listening with tense nerves to his suppressed tones as he talked to his wife in the room across the hall, but she could not hear what he said. Not even his tone of voice was sufficiently enlightening as to how affairs had gone.
In her wakefulness the night was agonizingly long; for though she was hopeful of the success of the doctor's plot, she knew that possibly there might have been some fatal hitch.
At the breakfast-table, next morning, her father looked almost sick, and Tillie's heart throbbed with unfilial joy in the significance of this. His manner to her was curt and his face betrayed sullen anger; he talked but little, and did not once refer to the Board meeting in her presence.
It was not until ten o'clock, when he had gone with some of the children to the Evangelical church, that she found her longed-for opportunity to question her stepmother.
"Well," she began, with assumed indifference, as she and her mother worked together in the kitchen preparing the big Sunday dinner, "did they put the teacher out?"
"If they put him out?" exclaimed Mrs. Getz, slightly roused from her customary apathy. "Well, I think they didn't! What do you think they done yet?"
"I'm sure," said Tillie, evidently greatly interested in the turnips she was paring, "I don't know."
"They raised his salary five a month!"
The turnips dropped into the pan, and Tillie raised her eyes to gaze incredulously into the face of her stepmother, who, with hands on her hips, stood looking down upon her.
"Yes," went on Mrs. Getz, "that's what they done! A dumm thing like that! And after pop and Nathaniel Puntz they had spoke their speeches where they had ready, how Teacher he wasn't fit fur William Penn! And after they tole how he had up and sassed pop, and him a directer yet! And Nathaniel he tole how Absalom had heard off the Doc how Teacher he was a' UNbeliever and says musin' is the same to him as prayin'! Now think! Such conwictions as them! And then, when the wote was took, here it come out that only pop and Nathaniel Puntz woted ag'in' Teacher, and the other four they woted FUR! And they woted to raise his salary five a month yet!"
Tillie's eyes dropped from her mother's face, her chin quivered, she bit her lip, and suddenly, unable to control herself, she broke into wild, helpless laughter.
Mrs. Getz stared at her almost in consternation. Never before in her life had she seen Tillie laugh with such abandon.
"What ails you?" she asked wonderingly.
Tillie could find no voice to answer, her slight frame shaking convulsively.
"What you laughin' at, anyhow?" Mrs. Getz repeated, now quite frightened.
"That—that Wyandotte hen jumped up on the sill!" Tillie murmured—then went off into a perfect peal of mirth. It seemed as though all the pent-up joy and gaiety of her childhood had burst forth in that moment.
"I don't see nothin' in that that's anyways comical—a Wyandotte hen on the window-sill!" said Mrs. Getz, in stupid wonder.
"She looked so—so—oh!" Tillie gasped, and wiped her eyes with a corner of her apron.
"You don't take no int'rust in what I tole you all!" Mrs. Getz complained, sitting down near her stepdaughter to pick the chickens for dinner. "I'd think it would make you ashamed fur the way you stood up fur Teacher ag'in' your own pop here last Thursday—fur them four directers to go ag'in' pop like this here!"
"What reasons did they give for voting for the teacher?" Tillie asked, her hysterics subsiding.
"They didn't give no reasons till they had him elected a'ready. Then Adam Oberholzer he got up and he spoke how Teacher learned the scholars so good and got along without lickin' 'em any (pop he had brung that up AG'IN' Teacher, but Adam he sayed it was FUR), and that they better mebbe give him five extry a month to make sure to keep such a kind man to their childern, and one that learnt 'em so good."
Tillie showed signs, for an instant, of going off into another fit of laughter.
"What's ailin' you?" her mother asked in mystification. "I never seen you act so funny! You better go take a drink."
Tillie repressed herself and went on with her work.
During the remainder of that day, and, indeed, through all the week that followed, she struggled to conceal from her father the exultation of her spirits. She feared he would interpret it as a rejoicing over his defeat, and there was really no such feeling in the girl's gentle heart. She was even moved to some faint—it must be confessed, very faint—pangs of pity for him as she saw, from day to day, how hard he took his defeat. Apparently, it was to him a sickening blow to have his "authority" as school director defied by a penniless young man who was partly dependent upon his vote for daily bread. He suffered keenly in his conviction that the teacher was as deeply exultant in his victory as Getz had expected to be.
In these days, Tillie walked on air, and to Mrs. Getz and the children she seemed almost another girl, with that happy vibration in her usually sad voice, and that light of gladness in her soft pensive eyes. The glorious consciousness was ever with her that the teacher was always near—though she saw him but seldom. This, and the possession of the precious certificate, her talisman to freedom, hidden always in her bosom, made her daily drudgery easy to her and her hours full of hope and happiness.
Deep as was Tillie's impression of the steadiness of purpose in Absalom's character, she was nevertheless rather taken aback when, on the Sunday night after that horrible experience in the woods, her suitor stolidly presented himself at the farm-house, attired in his best clothes, his whole aspect and bearing eloquent of the fact that recent defeat had but made him more doggedly determined to win in the end.
Tillie wondered if she might not be safe now in dismissing him emphatically and finally; but she decided there was still danger lest Absalom might wreak his vengeance in some dreadful way upon the teacher.
Her heart was so full of happiness that she could tolerate even Absalom.
Only two short weeks of this brightness and glory, and then the blow fell—the blow which blackened the sun in the heavens. The teacher suddenly, and most mysteriously, resigned and went away.
No one knew why. Whether it was to take a better position, or for what other possible reason, not a soul in the township could tell—not even the Doc.
Strange to say, Fairchilds's going, instead of pleasing Mr. Getz, was only an added offense to both him and Absalom. They had thirsted for vengeance; they had longed to humiliate this "high-minded dude"; and now not only was the opportunity lost to them, but the "job" they had determined to wrest from him was indifferently hurled back in their faces—he DIDN'T WANT IT! Absalom and Getz writhed in their helpless spleen.
Tillie's undiscerning family did not for an instant attribute to its true cause her sudden change from radiant happiness to the weakness and lassitude that tell of mental anguish. They were not given to seeing anything that was not entirely on the surface and perfectly obvious.
Three days had passed since Fairchilds's departure—three days of utter blackness to Tillie; and on the third day she went to pay her weekly visit to the tree-hollow in the woods where she was wont to place Miss Margaret's letters.
On this day she found, to her amazement, two letters. Her knees shook as she recognized the teacher's handwriting on one of them.
There was no stamp and no post-mark on the envelop. He had evidently written the letter before leaving, and had left it with the doctor to be delivered to her.
Tillie had always been obliged to maneuver skilfully in order to get away from the house long enough to pay these weekly visits to the tree-hollow; and she nearly always read her letter from Miss Margaret at night by a candle, when the household was asleep.
But now, heedless of consequences, she sat down on a snow-covered log and opened Fairchilds's letter, her teeth chattering with more than cold.
It was only a note, written in great haste and evidently under some excitement. It told her of his immediate departure for Cambridge to accept a rather profitable private tutorship to a rich man's son. He would write to Tillie, later, when he could. Meanwhile, God bless her—and he was always her friend. That was all. He gave her no address and did not speak of her writing to him.
Tillie walked home in a dream. All that evening, she was so "dopplig" as finally to call forth a sharp rebuke from her father, to which she paid not the slightest heed.
Would she ever see him again, her heart kept asking? Would he really write to her again? Where was he at this moment, and what was he doing? Did he send one thought to her, so far away, so desolate? Did he have in any least degree the desire, the yearning, for her that she had for him?
Tillie felt a pang of remorse for her disloyalty to Miss Margaret when she realized that she had almost forgotten that always precious letter. When, a little past midnight, she took it from her dress pocket she noticed what had before escaped her—some erratic writing in lead on the back of the envelop. It was in the doctor's strenuous hand.
"Willyam Pens as good as yoorn ive got them all promist but your pop to wote for you at the bored meating saterdy its to be a surprize party for your pop."
At half-past seven o'clock on Saturday evening, the School Board once more convened in the hotel parlor, for the purpose of electing Fairchilds's successor.
"Up till now," Mr. Getz had remarked at the supper-table, "I ain't been tole of no candidate applyin' fur William Penn, and here to-night we meet to elect him—or her if she's a female."
Tillie's heart had jumped to her throat as she heard him, wondering how he would take it when they announced to him that the applicant was none other than his own daughter—whether he would be angry at her long deception, or gratified at the prospect of her earning so much money—for, of course, it would never occur to him that she would dare refuse to give him every cent she received.
There was unwonted animation in the usually stolid faces of the School Board to-night; for the members were roused to a lively appreciation of the situation as it related to Jake Getz. The doctor had taken each and every one of them into his confidence, and had graphically related to them the story of how Tillie had "come by" her certificate, and the tale had elicited their partizanship for Tillie, as for the heroine of a drama. Even Nathaniel Puntz was enjoying the fact that he was to-night on the side of the majority. With Tillie, they were in doubt as to how Jake Getz would receive the news.
"Is they a' applicant?" he inquired on his arrival.
"Why, to be sure," said Nathaniel Puntz. "What fur would it be worth while to waste time meetin' to elect her if they ain't none?"
"Then she's a female, is she?"
"Well, she ain't no male, anyways, nor no Harvard gradyate, neither. If she was,Iwouldn't wote fur her!"
"What might her name be?"
"It's some such a French name," answered the doctor, who had carried in the lamp and was lingering a minute. "It would, now, surprise you, Jake, if you heard it oncet."
"Is she such a foreigner yet?" Getz asked suspiciously. "I mistrust 'em when they're foreigners."
"Well," spoke Adam Oberholzer, as the doctor reluctantly went out, "it ain't ten mile from here she was raised."
"Is she a gradyate? We hadn't ought to take none but a Normal. We hadenoughtrouble!"
"No, she ain't a Normal, but she's got her certificate off the superintendent."
"Has any of yous saw her?"
"Och, yes, she's familiar with us," replied Joseph Kettering, the Amishman, who was president of the Board.
"Why ain't she familiar with me, then?" Getz inquired, looking bewildered, as the president opened the ink-bottle that stood on the table about which they sat, and distributed slips of paper.
"Well, that's some different again, too," facetiously answered Joseph Kettering.
"Won't she be here to-night to leave us see her oncet?"
"She won't, but her pop will," answered Nathaniel Puntz; and Mr. Getz vaguely realized in the expressions about him that something unusual was in the air.
"What do we want with herpop?" he asked.
"We want hiswote!" answered Adam Oberholzer—which sally brought forth hilarious laughter.
"What you mean?" demanded Getz, impatient of all this mystery.
"It's the daughter of one of this here Board that we're wotin' fur!"
Mr. Getz's eyes moved about the table. "Why, none of yous ain't got a growed-up daughter that's been to school long enough to get a certificate."
"It seems there's ways of gettin' a certificate without goin' to school. Some girls can learn theirselves at home without even a teacher, and workin' all the time at farm-work, still, and even livin' out!" said Mr. Puntz. "I say a girl with inDUStry like that would make any feller a good wife."
Getz stared at him in bewilderment.
"The members of this Board," said Mr. Kettering, solemnly, "and the risin' generation of the future, can point this here applicant out to their childern as a shinin' example of what can be did by inDUStry, without money and without price—and it'll be fur a spur to 'em to go thou and do likewise."
"Are you so dumm, Jake, you don't know YET who we mean?" Nathaniel asked.
"Why, to be sure, don't I! None of yous has got such a daughter where lived out."
"Except yourself, Jake!"
The eyes of the Board were fixed upon Mr. Getz in excited expectation. But he was still heavily uncomprehending. Then the president, rising, made his formal announcement, impressively and with dignity.
"Members of Canaan Township School Board: We will now proceed to wote fur the applicant fur William Penn. She is not unknownst to this here Board. She is a worthy and wirtuous female, and has a good moral character. We think she's been well learnt how to manage childern, fur she's been raised in a family where childern was never scarce. The applicant," continued the speaker, "is—as I stated a couple minutes back—a shining example of inDUStry to the rising generations of the future, fur she's got her certificate to teach—and wery high marks on it—and done it all by her own unaided efforts and inDUStry. Members of Canaan Township School Board, we are now ready to wote fur Matilda Maria Getz."
Before his dazed wits could recover from the shock of this announcement, Jake Getz's daughter had become the unanimously elected teacher of William Penn.
The ruling passion of the soul of Jacob Getz manifested itself conspicuously in his reception of the revelation that his daughter, through deliberate and systematic disobedience, carried on through all the years of her girlhood, had succeeded in obtaining a certificate from the county superintendent, and was now the teacher-elect at William Penn. The father's satisfaction in the possession of a child capable of earning forty dollars a month, his greedy joy in the prospect of this addition to his income, entirely overshadowed and dissipated the rage he would otherwise have felt. The pathos of his child's courageous persistency in the face of his dreaded severity, of her pitiful struggle with all the adverse conditions of her life,—this did not enter at all into his consideration of the case. It was obvious to Tillie, as it had been to the School Board on Saturday night, that he felt an added satisfaction in the fact that this wonder had been accomplished without any loss to him either of money or of his child's labor.
Somehow, her father's reception of her triumph filled her heart with more bitterness than she had ever felt toward him in all the years of her hard endeavor. It was on the eve of her first day of teaching that his unusually affectionate attitude to her at the supper-table suddenly roused in her a passion of hot resentment such as her gentle heart had not often experienced.
"I owe YOU no thanks, father, for what education I have!" she burst forth. "You always did everything in your power to hinder me!"
If a bomb had exploded in the midst of them, Mr. and Mrs. Getz could not have been more confounded. Mrs. Getz looked to see her husband order Tillie from the table, or rise from his place to shake her and box her ears. But he did neither. In amazement he stared at her for a moment—then answered with a mildness that amazed his wife even more than Tillie's "sassiness" had done.
"I'd of LEFT you study if I'd knowed you could come to anything like this by it. But I always thought you'd have to go to the Normal to be fit fur a teacher yet. And you can't say you don't owe me no thanks—ain't I always kep' you?"
"Kept me!" answered Tillie, with a scorn that widened her father's stare and made her stepmother drop her knife on her plate; "I never worked half so hard at Aunty Em's as I have done here every day of my life since I was nine years old—and SHE thought my work worth not only my 'keep,' but two dollars a week besides. When do you ever spend two dollars on me? You never gave me a dollar that I hadn't earned ten times over! You owe me back wages!"
Jake Getz laid down his knife, with a look on his face that made his other children quail. His countenance was livid with anger.
"OWE YOU BACK WAGES!" he choked. "Ain't you my child, then, where I begat and raised? Don't I own you? What's a child FUR? To grow up to be no use to them that raised it? You talk like that to me!" he roared. "You tell me I OWE you back money! Now listen here! I was a-goin' to leave you keep five dollars every month out of your forty. Yes, I conceited I'd leave you have all that—five a month! Now fur sassin' me like what you done, I ain't leavin' you have NONE the first month!"
"And what," Tillie wondered, a strange calm suddenly following her outburst, as she sat back in her chair, white and silent, "what will he do and say when I refuse to give him more than the price of my board?"
Her school-work, which began nest day, diverted her mind somewhat from its deep yearning for him who had become to her the very breath of her life.
It was on the Sunday night after her first week of teaching that she told Absalom, with all the firmness she could command, that he must not come to see her any more, for she was resolved not to marry him.
"Who are you goin' to marry, then?" he inquired, unconvinced.
"No one."
"Do you mean it fur really, that you'd ruther be a' ole maid?"
"I'd rather be SIX old maids than the wife of a Dutchman!"
"What fur kind of a man do you WANT, then?"
"Not the kind that grows in this township."
"Would you, mebbe," Absalom sarcastically inquired, "like such a dude like what—"
"Absalom!" Tillie flashed her beautiful eyes upon him. "You are unworthy to mention his name to me! Don't dare to speak to me of him—or I shall leave you and go up-stairs RIGHT AWAY!"
Absalom sullenly subsided.
When, later, he left her, she saw that her firm refusal to marry him had in no wise baffled him.
This impression was confirmed when on the next Sunday night, in spite of her prohibition, he again presented himself.
Tillie was mortally weary that night. Her letter had not come, and her nervous waiting, together with the strain of her unwonted work of teaching, had told on her endurance. So poor Absalom's reception at her hands was even colder than her father's greeting at the kitchen door; for since Tillie's election to William Penn, Mr. Getz was more opposed than ever to her marriage, and he did not at all relish the young man's persistency in coming to see her in the face of his own repeated warning.
"Tillie," Absalom began when they were alone together after the family had gone to bed, "I thought it over oncet, and I come to say I'd ruther have you 'round, even if you didn't do nothin' but set and knit mottos and play the organ, than any other woman where could do all my housework fur me. I'll HIRE fur you, Tillie—and you can just set and enjoy yourself musin', like what Doc says book-learnt people likes to do."
Tillie's eyes rested on him with a softer and a kindlier light in them than she had ever shown him before; for such a magnanimous offer as this, she thought, could spring only from the fact that Absalom was really deeply in love, and she was not a little touched.
She contemplated him earnestly as he sat before her, looking so utterly unnatural in his Sunday clothes. A feeling of compassion for him began to steal into her heart.
"If I am not careful," she thought in consternation, "I shall be saying, 'Yes,' out of pity."
But a doubt quickly crept into her heart. Was it really that he loved her so very much, or was it that his obstinacy was stronger than his prudence, and that if he could not get her as he wanted her,—as his housekeeper and the mother of numberless children,—he would take her on her own conditions? Only so he got her—that was the point. He had made up his mind to have her—it must be accomplished.
"Absalom," she said, "I am not going to let you waste any more of your time. You must never come to see me again after to-night. I won't ever marry you, and I won't let you go on like this, with your false hope. If you come again, I won't see you. I'll go up-stairs!"
One would have thought that this had no uncertain ring. But again Tillie knew, when Absalom left her, that his resolution not only was not shaken,—it was not even jarred.
The weeks moved on, and the longed-for letter did not come. Tillie tried to gather courage to question the doctor as to whether Fairchilds had made any arrangement with him for the delivery of a letter to her. But an instinct of maidenly reserve and pride which, she could not conquer kept her lips closed on the subject.
Had it not been for this all-consuming desire for a letter, she would more keenly have felt her enforced alienation from her aunt, of whom she was so fond; and at the same time have taken really great pleasure in her new work and in having reached at last her long-anticipated goal.
In the meantime, while her secret sorrow—like Sir Hudibras's rusting sword that had nothing else to feed upon and so hacked upon itself—seemed eating out her very heart, the letter which would have been to her as manna in the wilderness had fallen into her father's hands, and after being laboriously conned by him, to his utter confusion as to its meaning, had been consigned to the kitchen fire.
Mr. Getz's reasons for withholding the letter from his daughter and burning it were several. In the first place, Fairchilds was "an UNbeliever," and therefore his influence was baneful; he was Jacob Getz's enemy, and therefore no fit person to be writing friendly letters to his daughter; he asked Tillie, in his letter, to write to him, and this would involve the buying of stationery and wasting of time that might be better spent; and finally, he and Tillie, as he painfully gathered from the letter, were "making up" to a degree that might end in her wanting to marry the fellow.
Mr. Getz meant to tell Tillie that he had received this letter; but somehow, every time he opened his lips to speak the words, the memory of her wild-cat behavior in defense of the teacher that afternoon in the woods, and her horribly death-like appearance when she had lain unconscious in the teacher's arms, recurred to him with a vividness that effectually checked him, and eventually led him to decide that it were best not to risk another such outbreak. So she remained in ignorance of the fact that Fairchilds had again written to her.
Carlyle's "Gospel of Work" was indeed Tillie's salvation in these days; for in spite of her restless yearning and loneliness, she was deeply interested and even fascinated with her teaching, and greatly pleased and encouraged with her success in it.
At last, with the end of her first month at William Penn, came the rather dreaded "pay-day"; for she knew that it would mean the hardest battle of her life.
The forty dollars was handed to her in her schoolroom on Friday afternoon, at the close of the session. It seemed untold wealth to Tillie, who never before in her life had owned a dollar.
She' did not risk carrying it all home with her. The larger part of the sum she intrusted to the doctor to deposit for her in a Lancaster bank.
When, at five o'clock, she reached home and walked into the kitchen, her father's eagerness for her return, that he might lay his itching palms on her earnings, was perfectly manifest to her in his unduly affectionate, "Well, Tillie!"
She was pale, but outwardly composed. It was to be one of those supreme crises in life which one is apt to meet with a courage and a serenity that are not forthcoming in the smaller irritations and trials of daily experience.
"You don't look so hearty," her father said, as she quietly hung up her shawl and hood in the kitchen cupboard. "A body'd think you'd pick up and get fat, now you don't have to work nothin', except mornings and evenings."
"There is no harder work in the world, father, than teaching—even when you like it."
"It ain't no work," he impatiently retorted, "to set and hear off lessons."
Tillie did not dispute the point, as she tied a gingham apron over her dress.
Her father was sitting in a corner of the room, shelling corn, with Sammy and Sally at his side helping him. He stopped short in his work and glanced at Tillie in surprise, as she immediately set about assisting her mother in setting the supper-table.
"You was paid to-day, wasn't you?"
"Yes."
"Well, why don't you gimme the money, then? Where have you got it?"
Tillie drew a roll of bills from her pocket and came up to him.
He held out his hand. "You know, Tillie, I tole you I ain't givin' you none of your wages this month, fur sassin' me like what you done. But next month, if you're good-behaved till then, I'll give you mebbe five dollars. Gimme here," he said, reaching for the money across the heads of the children in front of him.
But she did not obey. She looked at him steadily as she stood before him, and spoke deliberately, though every nerve in her body was jumping.
"Aunty Em charged the teacher fifteen dollars a month for board. That included his washing and ironing. I really earn my board by the work I do here Saturdays and Sundays, and in the mornings and evenings before and after school. But I will pay you twelve dollars a month for my board."
She laid on his palm two five-dollar bills and two ones, and calmly walked back to the table.
Getz sat as one suddenly turned to stone. Sammy and Sally dropped their corn-cobs into their laps and stared in frightened wonder. Mrs. Getz stopped cutting the bread and gazed stupidly from her husband to her stepdaughter. Tillie alone went on with her work, no sign in her white, still face of the passion of terror in her heart at her own unspeakable boldness.
Suddenly two resounding slaps on the ears of Sammy and Sally, followed by their sharp screams of pain and fright, broke the tense stillness.
"Who tole you to stop workin', heh?" demanded their father, fiercely. "Leave me see you at it, do you hear? You stop another time to gape around and I 'll lick you good! Stop your bawlin' now, this minute!"
He rose from his chair and strode over to the table. Seizing Tillie by the shoulder, he drew her in froet of him.
"Gimme every dollar of them forty!"
"I have given you all I have."
"Where are you got the others hid?"
"I have deposited my money in a Lancaster bank."
Jacob Getz's face turned apoplectic with rage.
"Who took it to Lancaster fur you?"
"I sent it."
"What fur bank?"
"I prefer not to tell you that."
"You PERFER! I'll learn you PERFER! Who took it in fur you—and what fur bank? Answer to me!"
"Father, the money is mine."
"It's no such thing! You ain't but seventeen. And I don't care if you're eighteen or even twenty-one! You're my child and you 'll obey to me and do what I tell you!"
"Father, I will not submit to your robbing me, You can't force me to give you my earnings. If you could, I wouldn't teach at all!"
"You won't submit! And I darsent rob you!" he spluttered. "Don't you know I can collect your wages off the secretary of the Board myself?"
"Before next pay-day I shall be eighteen. Then you can't legally do that. If you could, I would resign. Then you wouldn't even get your twelve dollars a month for my board. That's four dollars more than I can earn living out at Aunty Em's."
Beside himself with his fury, Getz drew her a few steps to the closet where his strap hung, and jerking it from its nail, he swung out his arm.
But Tillie, with a strength born of a sudden fury almost matching his own, and feeling in her awakened womanhood a new sense of outrage and ignominy in such treatment, wrenched herself free, sprang to the middle of the room, and faced him with blazing eyes.
"Dare to touch me—ever again so long as you live!—and I'll kill you, I'll KILL you!"
Such madness of speech, to ears accustomed to the carefully tempered converse of Mennonites, Amish, and Dunkards, was in itself a wickedness almost as great as the deed threatened. The family, from the father down to six-year-old Zephaniah, trembled to hear the awful words.
"Ever dare to touch me again so long as we both live—and I'll stab you dead!"
Mrs. Getz shrieked. Sally and Sammy clung to each other whimpering in terror, and the younger children about the room took up the chorus.
"Tillie!" gasped her father.
The girl tottered, her eyes suddenly rolled back in her head, she stretched out her hands, and fell over on the floor. Once more Tillie had fainted.