Tillie, a Mennonite Maid Part 39

"Well," she began, with a.s.sumed 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 sa.s.sed 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 ap.r.o.n.

"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 towns.h.i.+p 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 la.s.situde 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 pa.s.sed 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 tutors.h.i.+p to a rich man's son. He would write to Tillie, later, when he could. Meanwhile, G.o.d 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.

"w.i.l.l.yam 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."

XXIV

THE REVOLT OF TILLIE

At half-past seven o'clock on Sat.u.r.day 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 partizans.h.i.+p 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.