Vandemark's Folly Part 21

We were late; and the heads of the people were bowed in prayer as we went in; so we stood by the door until the prayer was over. The preacher was Elder Thornd.y.k.e. I was surprised at seeing him because he had told me that he and his wife were going to Monterey Centre; but there he was, laboring with his text, speaking in a halting manner, and once in a while bogging down in a dead stop out of which he could not pull himself without giving a sort of honk like a wild goose. It was his way. I never sat under a preacher who had better reasoning powers or a worse way of reasoning. Down in front of him sat Grandma Thornd.y.k.e, listening intently, and smiling up to him whenever he got in hub-deep; but at the same time her hands were clenched into fists in her well-darned black-silk gloves.

I did not know all this then, for her back was toward us; but I saw it so often afterward! It was that honking habit of the elder's which had driven them, she often told me, from New England to Ohio, then to Illinois, and finally out to Monterey Centre. The new country caught the halt like Elder Thornd.y.k.e, the lame like the Fewkeses, the outcast like the Bushyagers and the Blivens, the blind like me, the far-seeing like N.V. Creede, the prophets like old Dunlap the Abolitionist and Amos Thatcher, and the great drift of those who felt a drawing toward the frontier like iron filings to a magnet, or came with the wind of emigration like tumble-weeds before the autumn blast.

I remembered that when Virginia was with me back there by the side of the road that first day, Elder Thornd.y.k.e and his wife had come by inquiring for her; and I did not quite relish the idea of being found here with her after all these long days; so when church was out I took Virginia by the hand and tried to get out as quickly as possible; but when we reached the door, there were Elder Thornd.y.k.e and grandma shaking hands with the people, and trying to be pastoral; though it was clear that they were as much strangers as we. The elder was filling the vacant pulpit that day by mere chance, as he told me; but I guess he was really candidating a little after all. It would have been a bad thing for Monterey Centre if he had received the call.

They greeted Virginia and me with warm handclasps and hearty inquiries after our welfare; and we were pa.s.sing on, when Grandma Thornd.y.k.e headed us off and looked me fairly in the face.

"Why," said she, "you're that boy! Wait a minute."

She stepped over and spoke to her husband, who seemed quite in the dark as to what she was talking about. She pointed to us--and then, in despair, she came back to us and asked us if we wouldn't wait until the people were gone, as she wanted us to meet her husband.

"Oh, yes," said Virginia, "we'll be very glad to."

"Let us walk along together," said grandma, after the elder had joined us. "Ah--this is my husband, Mr. Thornd.y.k.e, Miss--"

"Royall," said Virginia, "Virginia Royall. And this is Jacob Vandemark."

"Where do you live?" asked grandma.

"I'm going out to my farm in Monterey County," I said; "and Virginia is--is--riding with me a while."

"We are camping," said Virginia, smiling, "down by the river. Won't you come to dinner with us?"

3

Grandma ran to some people who were waiting, I suppose, to take them to the regular minister's Sunday dinner, and seemed to be making some sort of plea to be excused. What it could have been I have no idea; but I suspect it must have been because of the necessity of saving souls; some plea of duty; anyhow she soon returned, and with her and the elder we walked in silence down to the grove where our wagon stood among the trees, with my cows farther up-stream picketed in the gra.s.s.

"Just make yourselves comfortable," said I; "while I get dinner."

"And," said the elder, "I'll help, if I may."

"You're company," I said.

"Please let me," he begged; "and while we work we'll talk."

In the meantime Grandma Thornd.y.k.e was turning Virginia inside out like a stocking, and looking for the seamy side. She carefully avoided asking her about our whereabouts for the last few days, but she scrutinized Virginia's soul and must have found it as white as snow. She found out how old she was, how friendless she was, how--but I rather think not why--Virginia had run away from Buck Gowdy; and all that could be learned about me which could be learned without entering into details of our hiding from the world together all those days alone on the trackless prairie. That subject she avoided, though of course she must have had her own ideas about it. And after that, she came and helped me with the dinner, talking all the time in such a way as to draw me out as to my past. I told her of my life on the ca.n.a.l--and she looked distrustfully at me. I told her of my farm, and of how I got it; and that brought out the story of my long hunt for my mother, and of my finding of her unmarked grave. Of my relations with Virginia she seemed to want no information. By the time our dinner was over--one of my plentiful wholesome meals, with some lettuce and radishes and young onions I had bought the night before--we were chatting together like old friends.

"That was a better dinner," said the elder, "than we'd have had at Mr.

Smith's."

"But Jacob, here," said grandma, "is not a deacon of the church."

"That doesn't lessen my enjoyment of the dinner," said the elder.

"No," said Grandma Thornd.y.k.e dryly, "I suppose not. But now let us talk seriously. This child"--taking Virginia's hand--"is the girl they were searching for back there along the road."

"Ah," said the elder.

"She had perfectly good reasons for running away," went on Grandma Thornd.y.k.e, "and she is not going back to that man. He has no claim upon her. He is not her guardian. He is only the man who married her sister--and as I firmly believe, killed her!"

"I wouldn't say that," said the elder.

"Now I calculate," said Grandma Thornd.y.k.e, "and unless I am corrected I shall so report--and I dare any one to correct me!--that this child"--squeezing Virginia's hand--"had taken refuge at some dwelling along the road, and that this morning--not later than this morning--as Jacob drove along into Waterloo he overtook Virginia walking into town where she was going to seek a position of some kind. So that you two children were together not longer than from seven this morning until just before church. You ought not to travel on the Sabbath!"

"No, ma'am," said I; for she was attacking me.

"Now we are poor," went on Grandma Thornd.y.k.e, "but we never have starved a winter yet; and we want a child like you to comfort us, and to help us--and we mustn't leave you as you are any longer. You must ride on with Mr. Thornd.y.k.e and me."

This to Virginia--who stretched out her hands to me, and then buried her face in them in Grandma Thornd.y.k.e's lap. She was crying so that she did not hear me when I asked:

"Why can't we go on as we are? I've got a farm. I'll take care of her!"

"Children!" snorted grandma. "Babes in the wood!"

I think she told the elder in some way without words to take me off to one side and talk to me; for he hummed and hawed, and asked me if I wouldn't show him my horses. I told him that I was driving cows, and went with him to see them. I now had six again, besides those I had left with Mr. Westervelt back along the road toward Dubuque; and it took me quite a while to explain to him how I had traded and traded along the road, first my two horses for my first cows, and then always giving one sound cow for two lame ones, until I had great riches for those days in cattle.

He thought this wonderful, and said that I was a second Job; and had every faculty for acquiring riches. I had actually made property while moving, an operation that was so expensive that it bankrupted many people. It was astonis.h.i.+ng, he insisted; and began looking upon me with more respect--making property being the thing in which he was weakest, except for laying up treasures in Heaven. He was surprised, too, to learn that cows could be made draught animals. He had always thought of them as good for nothing but giving milk. In fact I found myself so much wiser than he was in the things we had been discussing that when he began to talk to me about Virginia and the impossibility of our going together as we had been doing, it marked quite a change in our relations.h.i.+p--he having been the scholar and I the teacher.

"Quite a strange meeting," said he, "between you and Miss Royall."

"Yes," said I, thinking it over, from that first wolf-hunted approach to my camp to our yesterday of clouds and suns.h.i.+ne; "I never had anything like it happen to me."

"Mrs. Thornd.y.k.e," said he, "is a mighty smart woman. She knows what'll do, and what won't do better than--than any of us."

I wasn't ready to admit this, and therefore said nothing.

"Don't you think so?" he asked.

"I do' know," I said, a little sullenly.

"A girl," said he, "has a pretty hard time in life if she loses her reputation."

Again I made no reply.

"You are just two thoughtless children," said he; "aren't you now?"

"She's nothing," said I, "but a little innocent child!"

"Now that's so," said he, "that's so; but after all she's old enough so that evil things might be thought of her--evil things might be said; and there'd be no answer to them, no answer. Why, she's a woman grown--a woman grown; and as for you, you're getting a beard. This won't do, you know; it is all right if there were just you and Miss Royall and my wife and me in the world; but you wouldn't think for a minute of traveling with this little girl the way you have been--the way you speak of doing, I mean--if you knew that in the future, when she must make her way in the world with nothing' but her friends, this little boy-and-girl experience might take her friends from her; and when she will have nothing but her good name you don't want, and would not for the world have anything thoughtlessly done now, that might take her good name from her. You are too young to understand this as you will some day----"

"The trouble with me," I blurted out, "is that I've never had much to do with good women--only with my mother and Mrs. Fogg--and they could never have anything said against them--neither of them!"

"Where have you lived all your life?" he asked.

Then I told him of the way I had picked up my hat and come up instead of being brought up, of the women along the ca.n.a.l, of her who called herself Alice Rucker, of the woman who stole across the river with me--but I didn't mention her name--of as much as I could think of in my past history; and all the time Elder Thornd.y.k.e gazed at me with increasing interest, and with something the look we have in listening to tales of midnight murder and groaning ghosts. I must have been an astonis.h.i.+ng sort of mystery to him. Certainly I was a castaway and an outcast to his ministerial mind; and boy as I was, he seemed to feel for me a sort of awed respect mixed up a little with horror.

"Heavenly Father!" he blurted out. "You have escaped as by the skin of your teeth."

"I do' know," said I.