Main-Travelled Roads Part 35

"My mudder she lock me up."

Claude stared. "Locked you up? What for?"

"She tondt like it dot I come out to see you."

"Oh, she don't?" said Claude. "What's the matter o' me? I ain't a dangerous chap. I ain't eatin' up little. girls."

Nina went on placidly. "She saidt dot you was goin' to marry me undt' get the farm."

Claude grinned, then chuckied, and at last roared and whooped with the delight of it. He took off his hat and said:

"She said that, did she? Why, bless her old cabbage head-"

The opening of the door and the sudden irruption of Frau Haldeman interrupted him. She came rus.h.i.+ng toward him like a she grizzly bear, uttering a torrent of German expletives, and hurled herself upon him, clutching at his hair and throat. He leaped aside and struck down her hands with a sweep of his hard right arm. As she turned to come again he shouted,

"Keep off! or I'll knock you down!"

But before the blow came Nina seized the infuriated woman from behind and threw her down, and held her till the old man came hobbling to the rescue. He seemed a little dazed by it all and made no effort to a.s.sault Claude.

The old woman, who was already black in the face with rage, suddenly fell limp, and Nina, kneeling beside her, grew white with fear.

"Oh, vat is the matter! I hat kildt her!"

Claude rushed for a bucket of water and dashed it in the old woman's face. He flooded her with slas.h.i.+ngs of it, especially after he saw her open her eyes, ending by emptying the bucket in her face. He was a little malicious about that.

The mother sat up soon, wet, scared, bewildered, gasping.

"Mein Gott! Mein Gotd Ich bin ertrinken!"

"What does she say-she's been drinkin'? Well, that looks reasonable."

"No, no-she thinks she is trouned."

"Oh, drowned!" Claude roared again. "Not much she ain't. She's only just getting cooled off."

He helped the girl get her mother to the house and stretch her out on a bed. The old woman seemed to have completely exhausted herself with her effort and submitted like a child to be waited upon. Her sudden fainting had subdued her.

Claude had never penetrated so far into the house before, and was much pleased with the neatness and good order of the rooms, though they were bare of furniture and carpets.

As the girl came out with him to the gate he uttered the most serious word he had ever had with her

"Now, I want you to notice," he said, "that I did nothing to call out the old lady's rush at me. I'd 'a' hit her, sure, if she'd 'a' clinched me again. I don't believe in striking a woman, but she was after my hide for the time bein', and I can't stand two such clutches in the same place. You don't blame me, I hope."

"No. You done choost ride."

"What do you suppose the old woman went for me for?"

Nina looked down uneasily.

"She know you an' me lige one anudder, an' she is afrait you marry me, an' den ven she tie you get the farm a-ready."

Claude whisfied. "Great Jehosaphat! She really thinks that, does she? Well, dog my cats! What put that idea into her head?"

"I told her," said Nina calmly.

"You told her?" Claude turned and stared at her. She looked down, and her face slowly grew to a deep red. She moved uneasily from one foot to the' other, like an awkward, embarra.s.sed child. As he looked at her standing like a culprit before him, his first impulse was to laugh. He was not specially refined, but he was a kindly man, and it suddenly occurred to 'him that the girl was suffering.

"Well, you were mistaken," he said at last, gently enough. "I don't know why you should think so, but I never thought of marrying you-never thought of it."

The flush faded from her face, and she stopped swaying. She lifted her eyes to his in a tearful, appealing stare.

"I t'ought so-you made me t'ink so."

"I did? How? I never said a word to you about-liking you or-marrying-or anything like that. I-" He was going to tell her he intended to marry Lucindy, but he checked himself.

Her lashes fell again, and the tears began to stream down her cheeks. She knew the worst now. His face had convinced her. She could not tell him the grounds of her belief-that every time he had said, "I don't like to see a woman do -this or that," or, "I like to see a woman fix up around the house," she had considered his words in the light of courts.h.i.+p, believing that in such ways the Yankees made love. So she stood suffering dumbly while he loaded his cream can and stood by the wheel ready to mount his wagon.

He turned. "I'm mighty sorry about it," he said. "Mebbe I was to blame. I didn't mean nothing by it-not a thing. It was all a mistake.

Let's shake hands over it and call the whole business off."

He held his hand out to her, and with a low cry she seized it and laid her cheek upon it. He started back in amazement and drew his hand away. She fell upon her knees in the path and covered her face with her ap.r.o.n, while he hastily mounted his seat and drove away.

Nothing so profoundly moving had come into his life since the death of his mother, and as he rode on down the road he did a great deal of thinking. First it gave him a pleasant sensation to think a woman should care so much for him. He had lived a homeless life for years and had come into intimate relations with few women, good or bad. They had always laughed with him (not at him, for Claude was able to take care of himself), and no woman before had taken him seriously, and there was a certain charm about the realization.

Then he fell to wondering what he had said or done to give the girl such a notion of his purposes. Perhaps he had been too free with his talk. He was so troubled that he hardly smiled once during the rest of his circuit, and at night he refrained from going up town, and sat under the trees back of the creamery and smoked and pondered on the astounding situation.

He came at last to the resolution that it was his duty to declare himself to Lucindy and end all uncertainty, so that no other woman would fall into Nina's error. He was as good as an engaged man, and the world should know it.

The next day, with his newly painted buggy flas.h.i.+ng in the sun, and the extra dozen ivory rings he had purchased for his harnesses clas.h.i.+ng together, he drove up the road as a man of leisure and a resolved lover. It was a beautiful day in August.

Lucindy was getting a light tea for some friends up from the Siding, when she saw Claude drive up.

"Well, for the land sake!" she broke out, using one of her mother's phrases, "if here isn't that creamery man!" In that phrase lay the answer to Claude's question-if he had heard it. He drove in, and Mr. Kennedy, with impartial hospitality, went out and asked hiin to 'light and put his team in the barn.

He did so, feeling very much exhilarated. He never before had gone courting in this direct and aboveboard fas.h.i.+on. He mistook the father's hospitality for compliance in his designs. He followed his host into the house and faced, with very fair composure, two girls who smiled broadly as they shook hands with him. Mrs.

Kennedy gave him a lax hand and a curt how-de-do, and Lucindy fairly scowled in answer to his radiant smile.

She was much changed, he could see. She wore a dress with puffed sleeves, and her hair was dressed differently. She seemed strange and distant, but he thought she was "putting that on" for the benefit of others. At the table the three girls talked of things at the Siding and ignored him so that he was obliged to turn to Farmer Kennedy for refuge. He kept his courage up by thinking, "Wait till we are alone."

After supper, when Lucindy explained that the dishes would have to be washed, he offered to help her in his best manner.

"Thank you, I don't need any help," was Lucindy's curt reply.

Ordinarily he was a man of much facility and ease in addressing women, but be was vastly disconcerted by her manner. He sat rather silently waiting for the room to clear. When the visitors intimated that they must go, he rose with cheerful alacrity.

"I'll get your horse for you."

He helped hitch the horse into the buggy, and helped the girls in with a return of easy gallantry, and watched them drive off with joy. At last the field was clear.