Читать книгу Spring Came on Forever - Bess Streeter Aldrich - Страница 4

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To Matthias Meier the ride to the Stoltz farm that Sunday was a long one, but pleasant. The road lay through the straggling town, over the river bridge under which the dark waters of the recently melted snows foamed and charged in wrath at the sturdiness of the timbers, on across the level lands where mud and matted grasses clutched but could not hold Trixie's flying hoofs, and then into the darkness of the Big Woods where it wound sinuously among the maples and oaks and hazelnut underbrush, a leaf-soaked and twig-covered track just wide enough for a single wagon, so that one must turn into the spaces between stumps when meeting another.

As he rode, Matthias tried to analyze what peculiar force in his nature had summoned him on this unbidden call,--what emotional upheaval had urged him to plan this trip all week. He was not accustomed to follow up all his uncle's customers, he admitted, and grinned to himself at the thought.

For the first half of the trip through river bottoms, creek-beds, and on open trails, he rode enthusiastically toward his destination. About the third quarter, on more distant meadow land, he grew a bit apprehensive over his impulsive journey. In the last quarter through the Big Woods, his fervor collapsed so perceptibly that he called himself all kinds of a fool for coming. But it was noticeable that he held doggedly to his way.

At a weather-beaten cabin in a clearing he inquired of a young boy how far it was to the Stoltz farm and was told he was nearly there, that he would find it lying just beyond the third bend of the road and that he would know it from the red barn standing where the timber began to thin for the open land. He thanked the voluble informer and rode on slowly, entirely apprehensive now because of the bold thing he was doing.

The woods were thinning,--the maples and the oaks and the walnuts were not quite so close together,--not quite so thick now, the bare hazel-brush and the sumac. He rounded a clump of undergrowth that tangled with a thicket of wild plum trees, and there in a clearing not twenty feet away was the girl herself. Evidently she had heard the sound of Trixie's padding hoofs for she stood facing the trail, her hand at her throat in an attitude of startled expectancy. To-day she was bareheaded, and the sun shining into the clearing turned the braided coronet of her light yellow hair into a pale golden wreath.

She came forward hesitatingly when Matthias slipped off his horse.

"Guten nach Mittag," she said shyly,--and then by way of explaining her presence added, as always, in the German: "I was searching for signs of the first blue-bells."

Bridle-rein over his arm and hat off, Matthias approached and held out his hand.

Even while she put her own little hard hand into it, she flushed and said: "You should not be here."

"Why?" Now that he was here and safely over breaking the ice of the meeting, he felt no fear, but a heady boldness instead.

She raised her eyes to his slowly, and Matthias' heart beat quickly at seeing again the deep blueness of them. "Because . . . I should have told you when you asked where I lived . . . but, of course, I could not know by the asking you meant to come."

Then why were you down in the timber road, watching, Amalia?

Her hand still held in his, Matthias asked: "What is it you meant to have told me . . . Amalia?"

She dropped her eyes away from Matthias' searching ones.

"That I am betrothed." And with that Amalia had completed the unfinished sentence.

"You are betrothed?" . . . he repeated slowly. "I . . . I had not thought of that. I have thought of many things . . . but never that. All week I thought only of you . . . and that I would come to-day."

"I, too, shall be truthful now. Something . . . also . . . some queer thing," she spoke shyly in spite of her honesty, "made me wonder if you might."

"If you are . . . as you say, betrothed, . . . who . . . who is he?"

"An old friend of my father's. Oh, not old . . ." she added apologetically, "at least not as old as my father. He is a good man. My father and my brother Fritz are very fond of him. My mother is not living."

"I'm sorry . . . perhaps if your mother . . ."

"I should not be here talking to you," she said, when he seemed not intending to finish his thought. "I don't know why I came. It is not right. I have been promised since I was sixteen. I shall be eighteen soon."

But the hand of Amalia which had been promised for nearly two years still lay trembling in the hand of Matthias Meier. As though just now discovering that member's perfidy, she withdrew it suddenly.

"Where is he now?" Matthias asked quietly.

"Gone with the men to the Nebraska Territory to find suitable holdings for some of our church people. We are to move as soon as they return for us. It is said that sometime before many years it may be a state, too, even as Illinois."

"Yes, I suppose so." He felt definitely disappointed, vaguely sad that this lovely girl of whom he had thought all week was betrothed. A door that had so recently opened a bit seemed suddenly shut in his face.

"You have come a long way. Perhaps you would like to sit down awhile . . ." she smiled, "beside your kettle."

And almost for the first time Matthias gave heed to the fact that the kettle which he had fashioned with such meticulous care hung on three hickory stakes in the clearing with a mound of ashes underneath.

"Already you have used it?"

"Yes . . . we made the soap, using all of our grease from the butchering so we will have a plentiful supply for the long journey and a whole year after."

But the words recalled this disquieting thing he had heard of her betrothal and going away, and he frowned as he seated himself beside her on a log near the kettle.

"But this man . . . you do not love him?" It was as much a statement as a question. She was a mere child and Matthias felt very old.

Amalia pondered. "I respect him . . . and my father says that is the same thing."

"I don't agree with him," Matthias contended boldly, and in the impulsiveness of youth stood up. "Where is your father? I would like to see him."

But Amalia, alarmed, was saying: "Do not go to the house to see him, I beg of you. I am sorry not to be more hospitable. You saw how domineering he was." Herrscht was the word she used. "He should not know you are here. He would only anger and hurt you. Always after Sunday dinner he sleeps. Indeed . . ." and the gay little smile which had so captivated Matthias was there again for a flashing moment; "he begins it in the church service."

Matthias laughed at that and sat down again beside her. "What causes you to think of going to that troubled territory?"

"It is no longer troubled. The Pawnees have long been quieted, and my father thinks all is well now to settle there. We are of the Lutheran faith and here our farms are scattered. My father says that by moving there and keeping together we can retain our customs and our language and our church relations."

"But why . . . ?" Matthias wanted to know. "What advantage is there in the people of one church being so close? I can see how the Pilgrims of England--persecuted as they were--But you're not."

"My father says none but the followers of Luther are right, and it is not well to mingle so much with others. Already two of the young people have married out of the church."

If Matthias held his own opinion on the iniquitous depths of that sin, he did not say so. Indeed, when she was speaking so earnestly he found himself far more interested in watching her long lashes sweep a soft cheek.

"Our farm is already sold to the English Dunbar family. All things are as near ready to go as is possible . . . the wagons are kept always in repair--and the harnesses. Already many barrels are packed. When the men arrive, all the families need is a short time for the last of the baking and the loading of the wagons, and the colony can start. My father says it is like the German army, each knowing his part and obeying orders instantly."

For some time sitting there on the sunken log in the clearing the girl told of the plans for the coming journey. Matthias, listening and commenting, was disturbed at his own disturbance over the moving. Once he ventured again: "This man . . . if you do not love him . . . ?"

She glanced away. "I am promised," she said simply.

Very soon, in spite of nature's heralding of the spring, it grew too cool, and when the sun dipped behind the top of the timber, the chilliness of the air made the girl suddenly shiver.

"You must go in," Matthias was all solicitude, but found himself hinting broadly: "You do not wish me to go?"

"Nein. It would be too hard to explain to my father. He could not understand that you were--" she put out her hand, "a new friend."

At that, Matthias forgot the coming journey and the faith of Martin Luther, the domineering father and the affianced who was far off beyond the Big Muddy.

"Meet me here again next Sunday afternoon, Amalia. You'll come? It couldn't be otherwise."

When she hesitated, he said, to test her: "Or I shall come boldly to the house to call on my new friend."

"I'll come," she turned away, anxious and hurried now that she had been here such a long time. "But it will be wrong," she called over her shoulder.

"And beautiful," Matthias grinned back at her impudently so that she, too, was smiling a bit mischievously when she went away.