Читать книгу Spring Came on Forever - Bess Streeter Aldrich - Страница 5

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All week Amalia went about her housework. She cooked and cleaned and scrubbed in her energetic and immaculate way. Everything was as it had been,--save one. And all week Matthias sold his uncle's iron wares, kept the books, and occasionally shod a horse at the blacksmith end of the shop. And everything was as it had been,--save one.

Sunday was milder. The Big Woods gave forth the pungent odor of bursting buds and warming leaf-mold. At the creek-bed fuzzy pussies scratched insistently inside the branches of the willows. Wild gray geese flew honking across the timber-land and disappeared in the distant north. Swallows darted high in their nuptial flight and a meadow-lark sat on a stake-and-rider fence and sang the prairie's love song to the spring.

Amalia had been in the clearing only a short time when Matthias came riding through the damp dark timber road and into the open. At the sight of the gallant figure that had scarce been out of her mind all week, she stopped, frightened at the import of the moment, her hand at her throat as though she must stifle the call of her heart to him.

With no word Matthias dismounted, threw Trixie's bridle-reins over a scrub oak and with open arms walked toward the girl.

With no word Amalia, trembling, waited for him to come. It was not until his arms closed around her and he had kissed her--and even for a long moment afterward--that a word was spoken.

"I have thought of you every moment." His voice shook with emotion.

"And I of you."

"You must break your betrothal, Amalia."

"At this moment it is broken, Matthias."

"This . . ." said Matthias after a time, "is what love is."

"Yes," said Amalia, "I know now. All week I have known."

"And when the homesteaders go you will stay with me? My uncle is old. In time I shall be able to buy the foundry from him. It is not my choice of businesses. I have been restless in it, but with you to be there with me, I shall settle down and like it better."

"I will stay, Matthias. I fear for the trouble it will make, but I will stay."

"And you do not think it wicked, then, to marry outside the church?" he teased her. "Do I seem now such a heathen . . . such a monster?" But when he saw how troubled it made her, he drew her to him again with comforting words, calling her his kleine Taube,--"little dove" in the English.

The afternoon slipped away as they talked of this new-old thing that had come to them.

"Spring! It seems that this spring belongs just to us, and to no other," Amalia said once.

"But they will keep coming, little dove. Think of it. They will all be ours. All our lives we'll live them over and over together . . . this same feel in the air . . . the odors of the woods . . . the wild geese honking . . ."

"Even when we grow very old . . ."

Matthias laughed at that. How could youth grow old? "I shall hold you close then, just as I do now, and say: 'It's spring again, Amalia! They keep coming.'"

"And I shall say: 'They will go on . . . forever . . . even though we grow old . . . and after.'"

But there were other things besides these sentimental generalities to discuss, so that they must put an end to their first rapturous moments, sit down on the log and speak of the seriousness of the future. Matthias would have gone immediately to the house but Amalia would not hear of it. "Not to-day--" she begged him. "It is so beautiful. For when that time comes, we shall have anger and harsh words. No, Matthias, give me my perfect day."

And because she would have it so, he did not go in to confront her father, but left her there in the clearing until he should come again.

On the next Sunday there came a dash of warm rain as he rode into the clearing, and at once he saw her in the doorway of the sheep-shelter, a hooded gossamer about her shoulders.

He had brought her a gift,--a little work-box covered with shells,--angel-wings and moon shells, Roman snails, and other fragile fan-like shells of a sea they had never seen. On the under side of the cover a mirror fitted into the blue silk lining and in the various compartments were a needle-ball and a pin-cushion and a tiny silver thimble.

Amalia, to whom gifts were rare, was quite beside herself with joy at the daintiness of the treasure. Almost were the strange queer shells symbolic to her of things to come,--unknown journeys with Matthias to far-off seas, hearing the sound of wind in whipping sails and the call of the gulls on the sand.

But when Matthias would have gone in to see her father, she put him off again. She had meant to break the news, she told him, but always when she was about to speak, her courage had failed her. If he would give her but another week, she would prepare him for the announcement which would so anger him. Of one thing she was certain, it must come first from her own lips.

But on the following Sunday when he arrived there was no question about Matthias interviewing the father this time, for Wilhelm Stoltz was away,--gone to one of the church friend's home many miles up the river. It gave Amalia a delicious sense of freedom so that she was as gay as a child.

She had a wonderful piece of news for him,--she had used the thimble and one of the needles. Already she had started a quilt,--the Tree of Life pattern,--Baum des Lebens. Even now two finished blocks were in the shell box.

"Ever since I was a tiny girl I have sewed," she said to him. "It comes very easy to me. Many times I have made things for my hope chest"--hoffnung Kiste, she called it--"knowing I must some day wed but not knowing who the man would be. When I knew it was but my father's friend Herman . . ."

She sighed, so that Matthias' arms went around her again and he drew her close. "But it will be no Herman now . . ." (kleine Taube) . . . "little dove."

"No . . . never. And this is so different . . . to think of you as I sew."

But even while she clung to him she told him this: "I wake in the night and think of this which I am doing contrary to my father's wishes. I feel then that I am wicked . . . but when morning comes I know that it is not wicked at all . . . just happiness and right."

And when Matthias said nothing could come between them now, she confessed: "Of that I am sure . . . and yet I am sad to part from my young brother Fritz. That is my greatest sorrow. As for leaving our good people . . . they will all be angry and hurt . . ."

But Matthias turned that away with lover-like speed. "When they know how much we love each, other . . . they will see that it could not be otherwise." Of such are the simple rules of youth.

"But my father has so often said only woe comes to those who marry outside the church."

"Love . . . our kind of love . . . is greater than the teachings of a single church."

And now that the afternoon was waning she was anxious and alert about her father's return.

"What was that, Matthias?" she would say, startled.

"Nothing . . . some little wild thing . . . a chipmunk or a squirrel."

And because of her constant watchfulness on this Sunday, Matthias was firm. "You shall cease your worries," calling her liebes Kind. "It is not good to fear so. It shall not go on longer. Next Sunday I shall tell him, and we will face the consequences. If he is too angry, I shall take you home with me on Trixie with no baggage. My aunt will take you in and we shall be married at once."

He kissed her again and again, held her close to him, could scarcely bear to leave her. Even when he had mounted Trixie and was riding into the timber road he turned back for the last sight of her.

She stood just in front of an alder thicket, and as he looked, she raised her hand high in farewell.

He carried that picture with him all the way home: Amalia, a little blue and pink and golden figure against the green of the new leaves, as though Spring herself had just stepped out of the alder thicket. His kleine Taube,--little dove!