Tillie, a Mennonite Maid Part 33

"I don't see what's left--unless you call me 'Say'!"

"I must have something to call you," she pleaded. "Would you mind if I called you by your Christian name?"

"I should like nothing better."

He drew forward a volume of Mrs. Browning's poems which lay among his books on the table, opened it at the fly-leaf, and pointed to his name.

"'Walter'?" read Tillie. "But I thought--"

"It was Pestalozzi? That was only my little joke. My name's Walter."

On the approach of Sunday, Fairchilds questioned her one evening about Absalom.

"Will that lad be taking up your whole Sunday evening again?" he demanded.

She told him, then, why she suffered Absalom's unwelcome attentions. It was in order that she might use her influence over him to keep the teacher in his place.

"But I can't permit such a thing!" he vehemently protested. "Tillie, I am touched by your kindness and self-sacrifice! But, dear child, I trust I am man enough to hold my own here without your suffering for me! You must not do it."

"You don't know Nathaniel Puntz!" She shook her head. "Absalom will never forgive you, and, at a word from him, his father would never rest until he had got rid of you. You see, none of the directors like you--they don't understand you--they say you are 'too tony.' And then your methods of teaching--they aren't like those of the Millersville Normal teachers we've had, and therefore are unsound! I discovered last week, when I was out home, that my father is very much opposed to you.

They all felt just so to Miss Margaret."

"I see. Nevertheless, you shall not bear my burdens. And don't you see it's not just to poor Absalom? You can't marry him, so you ought not to encourage him."

"'If I refused to le-LET Absalom come, you would not remain a month at New Canaan," was her answer.

"But it isn't a matter of life and death to me to stay at New Canaan! I need not starve if I lose my position here. There are better places."

Tillie gazed down upon the chenille table-cover, and did not speak. She could not tell him that it did seem to HER a matter of life and death to have him stay.

"It seems to me, Tillie, you could shake off Absalom through your father's objections to his attentions. The fellow could not blame you for that."

"But don't you see I must keep him by me, in order to protect you."

"My dear little girl, that's rough on Absalom; and I'm not sure it's worthy of you."

"But you don't understand. You think Absalom will be hurt in his feelings if I refuse to marry him. But I've told him all along I won't marry him. And it isn't his feelings that are concerned. He only wants a good housekeeper."

Fairchilds's eyes rested on the girl as she sat before him in the fresh bloom of her maidenhood, and he realized what he knew she did not--that unsentimental, hard-headed, and practical as Absalom might be, if she allowed him the close intimacy of "setting-up" with her, the fellow must suffer in the end in not winning her. But the teacher thought it wise to make no further comment, as he saw, at any rate, that he could not move her in her resolution to defend him.

And there was another thing that he saw. The extraneous differences between himself and Tillie, and even the radical differences of breeding and heredity which, he had a.s.sumed from the first, made any least romance or sentiment on the part of either of them unthinkable, however much they might enjoy a good comrades.h.i.+p,--all these differences had strangely sunk out of sight as he had, from day to day, grown in touch with the girl's real self, and he found himself unable to think of her and himself except in that deeper sense in which her soul met his. Any other consideration of their relation seemed almost grotesque. This was his feeling--but his reason struggled with his feeling and bade him beware. Suppose that she too should come to feel that with the meeting of their spirits the difference in their conditions melted away like ice in the suns.h.i.+ne. Would not the result be fraught with tragedy for her? For himself, he was willing, for the sake of his present pleasure, to risk a future wrestling with his impracticable sentiments; but what must be the cost of such a struggle to a frail, sensitive girl, with no compensations whatever in any single phase of her life? Clearly, he was treading on dangerous ground.

He must curb himself.

Before another Sunday came around, the ax had fallen--the brethren came to reason with Tillie, and finding her unable to say she was sincerely repentant and would amend her vain and carnal deportment, she was, in the course of the next week, "set back."

"I would be willing to put back the curls," she said to her aunt, who also reasoned with her in private; "but it would avail nothing. For my heart is still vain and carnal. 'Man looketh upon the outward appearance, but G.o.d looketh on the heart.'"

"Then, Tillie," said her aunt, her kindly face pale with distress in the resolution she had taken, "you'll have to go home and stay. You can't stay here as long as you're not holding out in your professions."

Tillie's face went white, and she gazed into her aunt's resolute countenance with anguish in her own.

"I'd not do it to send you away, Tillie, if I could otherwise help it.

But look how inconwenient it would be havin' you here to help work, and me not havin' dare to talk or eat with you. I'm not obeyin' to the 'Rules' NOW in talkin' to you. But I tole the brethren I'd only speak to you long enough to reason with you some--and then, if that didn't make nothin', I'd send you home."

The Rules forbade the members to sit at table or hold any unnecessary word of communication with one who had failed to "hold out," and who had in consequence been "set back." Tillie, in her strange indifference to the disgrace of being set back, had not foreseen her inevitable dismissal from her aunt's employ. She recognized, now, with despair in her soul, that Aunty Em could not do otherwise than send her home.

"When must I go, Aunty Em?"

"As soon as you make your mind up you AIN'T goin' to repent of your carnal deportment."

"I can't repent, Aunty Em!" Tillie's voice sounded hollow to herself as she spoke.

"Then, Tillie, you're got to go to-morrow. I 'll have to get my niece from East Donegal over."

It sounded to Tillie like the crack of doom.

The doctor, who was loath to have her leave, who held her interests at heart, and who knew what she would forfeit in losing the help which the teacher was giving her daily in her studies, undertook to add his expostulations to that of the brethern and sisters.

"By gum, Tillie, slick them sw.a.n.ged curls BACK, if they don't suit the taste of the meeting! Are you willin' to leave go your nice education, where you're gettin', fur a couple of d.a.m.ned curls? I don't know what's got INto you to act so blamed stubborn about keepin' your hair strubbled 'round your face!"

"But the vanity would still be in my heart even if I did brush them back. And I don't want to be deceitful."

"Och, come now," urged the doctor, "just till you're got your certificate a'ready to teach! That wouldn't be long. Then, after that, you can be as undeceitful as you want."

But Tillie could not be brought to view the matter in this light.

She did not sit at table with the family that day, for that would have forced her aunt to stay away from the table. Mrs. Wackernagel could break bread without reproach with all her unconverted household; but not with a backslider--for the prohibition was intended as a discipline, imposed in all love, to bring the recalcitrant member back into the fold.

That afternoon, Tillie and the teacher took a walk together in the snow-covered woods.

"It all seems so extraordinary, so inexplicable!" Fairchilds repeated over and over. Like all the rest of the household, he could not be reconciled to her going. His regret was, indeed, greater than that of any of the rest, and rather surprised himself. The pallor of Tillie's face and the anguish in her eyes he attributed to the church discipline she was suffering. He never dreamed how wholly and absolutely it was for him.

"Is it any stranger," Tillie asked, her low voice full of pain, "than that your uncle should send you away because of your UNbelief?" This word, "unbelief," stood for a very definite thing in New Canaan--a lost and hopeless condition of the soul. "It seems to me, the idea is the same," said Tillie.

"Yes," acknowledged Fairchilds, "of course you are right. Intolerance, bigotry, narrowness--they are the same the world over--and stand for ignorance always."

Tillie silently considered his words. It had not occurred to her to question the perfect justice of the meeting's action.

Suddenly she saw in the path before her a half-frozen, fluttering sparrow. They both paused, and Tillie stooped, gently took it up, and folded it in her warm shawl. As she felt its throbbing little body against her hand, she thought of herself in the hand of G.o.d. She turned and spoke her thought to Fairchilds.

"Could I possibly hurt this little bird, which is so entirely at my mercy? Could I judge it, condemn and punish it, for some mistake or wrong or weakness it had committed in its little world? And could G.o.d be less kind, less merciful to me than I could be to this little bird?

Could he hold my soul in the hollow of his hand and vivisect it to judge whether its errors were worthy of his divine anger? He knows how weak and ignorant I am. I will not fear him," she said, her eyes s.h.i.+ning. "I will trust myself in his power--and believe in his love."

"The New Mennonite creed won't hold her long," thought Fairchilds.

"Our highest religious moments, Tillie," he said, "come to us, not through churches, nor even through Bibles. They are the moments when we are most receptive of the message Nature is always patiently waiting to speak to us--if we will only hear. It is she alone that can lead us to see G.o.d face to face, instead of 'through another man's dim thought of him.'"

"Yes," agreed Tillie, "I have often felt more--more RELIGIOUS," she said, after an instant's hesitation, "when I've been walking here alone in the woods, or down by the creek, or up on Chestnut Hill--than I could feel in church. In church we hear ABOUT G.o.d, as you say, through other men's dim thoughts of Him. Here, alone, we are WITH him."