A Breath of Prairie and other stories Part 13

"You wished to wash, Camilla?"

The woman did not move.

"They were very kind"--she looked through the window with the tiny panes: "have we any right to--lie to them?"

"We have not lied."

"Tacitly."

"No. I'm Ichabod Maurice and you're Camilla Maurice. We have not lied."

"But--"

"The past is dead, dead!"

The woman's face dropped into her hands. Woman ever weeps instinctively for the dead.

"You are sorry that it is--so?" There was no bitterness in the man's voice, but he did not look at her, and Camilla misunderstood.

"Sorry!" She came close, and a soft warm face pressed tightly against his face. "Sorry!" Her arms were around him. "Sorry!" again repeated.

"No! No! No! No, without end! I'm not sorry. I'm Camilla Maurice, the happiest woman in the world!"

Later they utilized the tin basin and the mirror with a crack across its centre. Dinner was waiting when they went below.

To a casual observer, Hans had been very idle while they were gone. He sat absently on the doorstep, watching the gra.s.s that grew almost visibly in the warm spring sun. Occasionally he tapped his forehead with his finger tips. It helped him to think, and just now he sadly needed a.s.sistance.

"Who were these people, anyway?" he wondered. Not farmers, certainly.

Farmers did not have hands that dented when you pressed them, and farmers' wives did not lift their skirts daintily from behind. Hans had been very observant as his visitors came up the muddy street. No, that was not the way of farmers' wives: they took hold at the sides with both hands, and splashed right through on their heels.

Hans pulled the yellow tuft on his chin. What could they be, then? Not summer boarders. It was only early spring; and, besides, although the little German was an optimist, even he could not imagine any one selecting a Dakota prairie for an outing. Yet ... No, they could not be summer boarders.

But what then? In his intensity Hans actually forgot the gra.s.s and, unfailing producer of inspiration, ran his fingers frantically through his mane.

"Ah--at last--of course!" The round face beamed and a hard hand smote a harder knee, joyously. That he had not remembered at once! It was the new banker, to be sure. He would tell Minna, quite as a matter of fact, for there could be no mistake. Hank Judge, the machine agent, and Eli Stevens, the proprietor of the corner store, had said only yesterday there was to be a bank. Looking up the street the little man spied a familiar figure, and sprang to his feet as though released by a spring, his hand already in the air. There was Hank Judge, now, and he didn't know--

"Dinner, Hans," announced Minna at his elbow.

Holding the child of his brain hard in both hands lest it should escape prematurely, the little German went inside to preside over a repast, the distinctively German incense of which ascended most appetizingly.

Hans, junior, in a childish treble, spoke an honest little German blessing, beginning "_Mein Vater von Himmel_," and emphasized by the raps of Hans senior's knuckles on certain other small heads to keep their owners quiet.

"Fresh lettuce and radishes!" commented Camilla, joyously.

"Raised in our own garden _hinein_," bobbed Minna, in ecstasy.

"And sauerkraut--" began Ichabod.

"From cabbages so large," completed Hans, spreading his arms to designate an imaginary vegetable of heroic proportions.

"They must have grown very fast to be so large in May," commented Camilla.

Hans and Minna exchanged glances--pitying, superior glances--such as we give behind the backs of the infirm, or the very old; and the subject of vegetables dropped.

"A great country for a bank, this," commented Mr. Becher, with infinite _finesse_ and between intermittent puffs at a hot potato.

"Is that so?"

Hans nodded violent confirmation, then words, English words, being valuable to him, he came quickly to the test.

"You will build for the bank yourself, is it not so?"

It was not the German and Minna who exchanged glances this time.

"No, I shall not build for the bank myself, Mr. Becher."

"You will rent, perhaps?" Hans's faith was beautiful.

"No, I shall not rent."

The German's face fell. To have wasted all that thought; for after all it was not the banker!

Minna, senior, stared in surprise, and her attention being diverted, Minna the younger seized the opportunity to inundate herself with a cup of hot coffee.

The spell was broken.

"I'm going to take a homestead," explained Ichabod.

Hans's fork paused in mid-air and his mouth forgot to close. At the point where the German struck, the earth was very hard.

"So?" he interrogated, weakly.

At this juncture the difference between the two Minnas, which had been transferred from the table to the kitchen, was resumed; and although Ichabod ate the remaining kraut to the last shred, and Camilla talked to Hans of the _Vaterland_ in his native German, each knew the occasion was a failure. An ideal had been raised, the ideal of a Napoleon of finance, a banker; and that ideal materializing, lo there stood forth a farmer! _Ach Gott von Himmel!_

After dinner Hans stood in the doorway and pointed out the land-office.

Ichabod thanked him, and under the impulse of habit felt in his pocket for a cigar. None was there, and all at once he remembered Ichabod Maurice did not smoke. Strange he should have such an abominable inclination to do so just then; but nevertheless the fact remained. Ichabod Maurice never had smoked.

He started up the street.

A small man, with very high boots and a very long moustache, sat tipped back in the sun in front of the land-office. He was telling a story; a good one, judging from the attention of the row of listeners.

He grasped the chair tightly with his left hand while his right, holding a cob pipe, gesticulated actively. The story halted abruptly as Ichabod came up.

"Howdy!" greeted the little man.

Maurice nodded.

"Don't let me interrupt you," he temporized.

"Not at all," courtesied the teller of stories, as he led the way inside. "I've told that one until I'm tired of it, anyway." He tapped the ashes from his pipe-bowl, meditatively. "A fellow has to kill the time some way, though, you know."