The Storyteller

New Zealand Tablet, 3 July 1913, Page 5

The Storyteller

THE WOOING OF BETTY The kitchen was in ' apple-pie order/ as Mrs. Warner would have said, and Betty took her patchwork down to the spring-house. In the little cobblestone pavilion the water gurgled and bubbled about the great bright cans of morning's milk, and the air sifting through the wild cucumber vine was heavenly sweet. Betty, in her gown of blue print, sang a little snatch of song in sheer lightness of heart as she found her crewels. The lithe young figure of the man that had been lying along the warm wall straightened itself, swung briskly erect and strode up the walk between the ing currants. ' Hello, little Miss Betty!' he said, suddenly, filling tho spring-house door. 'Land, Cassius!' cried Betty, and blushed divinely. ' I didn't hear you.' 'I thought you'd never get done,' he said, and came in, tossing his big straw hat on the floor while he drank from the tin cup that in two musical pinhole streams leaked into the trough. You been waitin' V demanded Betty. ' Most an hour,' confessed Cassius Holmes. He sat down beside her, his blithe sun-burnt face beautiful in its eagerness. ' I saw your mother go by while I was milkin',' he said, 'so I knew you was alone.' 'You'd ought to be home,' she said, severely, ' rye tone, so. You'll never make a farmer, Cassius.' Yes, I shall,' he said, seriously. 'I love the old place oyer there. But I got something better to think about. That's what it is, Betty—' You take hold of that skein,' she said. 'I ain't

got but a minute to work. I took fifteen minutes off, an’ now I must— ’ ' ‘.

His strong brown fingers closed over the skein and over both her hands. Betty,’ he said, pleadingly, ‘ain’t things any better ?’ She shook her head, her eyes on the clasped hands while she struggled feebly to free her own. ‘ What’s she say?’ pursued Cassius. ‘Mother?’ said Betty., ‘Oh, nothin’.’ ‘You ain’t said anything to her yet?’ asked Cassius, wistfully. . ‘No, no!’ cried Betty, hurriedly. ‘Cassius Holmes, you let go. You hurt my hand.’ But the little fingers had ceased fluttering, and Cassius only held them the more closely. , ‘ Betty !’ he burst out, passionately. ‘lt ain’t fait! It ain’t right, to you nor to me neither Don’t you see it ain’t? I tell you, Betty, you’ve got to tell her.’ I can t, Cass,’ said Betty, helplessly. Her mouth was quivering, but he drew his conclusion relentlessly. ‘ Then you don’t love me—that’s all about it,’ he said, quietly, and withdrew his hands. Her own went swiftly out and caught his fingers tightly. t - ‘Cass!’ she cried, breathlessly, ‘I do, I do ! I’ve told you a hundred times I do with my whole heart. But, oh, if you knew how hard it is— ’ ‘I know,’ he said, gently. ‘I do know, dear. But it’s been hard for other girls, too. Seethere’s Sinie an Lizabeth an’ Liveyit’s been hard for ’em all. You don’t think you love your mother better’n all the other girls in the world—do you, now?’ Betty was forcing the tears back, and she went over it all patiently, as she had been over it before to this man who would not understand.

‘ Sinie’s got brothers ’n sisters,’ she said. ‘ ’Lizabeth Ann s father s alive. An’ Livey an’ her mother never did get along. Don’t you see, Cass ? Every one of ’em was glad to leave home—they said so. Anybody could be married that way. But we— ’ There was a sob in Betty’s throat, and she shook her head mutely. ‘ Mother ain’t like their mothers,’ she said, simply. You see that, don’t you? She’ll die if I leave her, Cass.’ He looked at her, wondering if she could be right, and certain that she was wrong. ‘ Did she ever say so?’ he asked, fairly. ‘Cassius Holmes cried Betty, indignantly. ‘No, of course she never .said so. Mother ain’t like that. If she was, it’d be easier. She never says a word, but I know. Why, think of her here, even’s an’ nights an’ meals, all alone in the house! I couldn’t do it.’ | Liddy would come an’ stay home,’ he suggested. ‘ Liddy Ann !’ said Betty, contemptuously. ‘ What company’d she be, I’d like to know? Besides, it ain’t company mother wants. It’s me.’ Cassius struggled dumbly with this for a few minutes, and disbelieved the whole matter. Why, the whole world wouldn’t be married if they was like you!’ he cried. ‘That’s just it!’ flashed Betty, ‘but they ain’t like me. Mother is my mother, an’ not theirs. She’s different, I tell you, Cass. You’re selfish, an’ you want me to be selfish, an’—’ J She broke down and cried helplessly on his coat sleeve.

There, there, he said, soothingly. ‘ You needn’t marry me— least to-day you needn’t, if you won’t cry, Betty.’ The man sighed, wearily .but very tenderly, and looked above her bright head, away over the meadow, all the joy gone out of-his eyes. He patted her shoulder as he would soothe a child. There, there, dear, he said ‘we won’t talk any more about it now.’ J One eye, blue as the print gown, was shown to him.

‘ You .ain’t angry, Cass ‘No,’ he answered, ‘no angry, of course. Only disappointed again, an’ hurt—l’m hurt, Betty, because

-j-you may not know it even— you don't love me enough. You don't' ■'/ ■[ . - W : -: -' :i : He loved \ to hear her protestations, but he sighed as he histened. ; For six months now, ever since the sleighing party in February, he had been. listening and arguing and going beaten from,the field. : And at that moment he loved Betty more desperately than ever. He thought it all out for the thousandth time as he went across the starry fields where the dew was hardly dry. : Mrs. Warner, a little invalid with a life of "hard work behind her, , had been a widow for but a year, and she and Betty had clung to the big farm and had been all the world, to each other until that sleigh-ride party in February. Betty would never leave her there alonehe faced that at last and found no alternative. And for him to sell his own rich strip of land and come over to the hilly, stony stretch known as ' Warner's place meant only years of needless, profitless toil for them both. There was a dejected droop to the strapping young shoulders that smote his mother's heart as he passed the dairy window. ' Cassius!' she called. ' You come here!' .•.He stood in the low doorway, fanning his flushed face with his hat, and looking at her with a smile in his eyes. She was a nervous, quick-moving woman, and her keen eyes read, his face. 'l've been thinkin',' she said, briskly. - 'What, mother?' asked Cassius, leaning in the doorway. ' Why don't you buy the Bitley corner, an' fix up that house some, an' hev it ready—' ' Bitley !' cried Cassius. ' Is he willin' to sell ?' Mrs. Holmes nodded. ■ Mis' Bitley was just here,' she said. ' Says they're going to California. Jake says they're gettin' old for this climate. She says he'll sell.' Cassius straightened himself, his eyes shining. ' I'll go right an' see him,' he said. ' I guess he'll sell cheap if they want to go right off.' He hesitated for a moment. .' You know what I want it for he asked, shyly. ..' 'Betsey Warner,' guessed his mother, bluntly. 'lf she'll ever leave her mother,' he admitted. Mrs. Holmes put back her hair with the back of her hand. K ''-■"' 'So that's it?' she said. Well, that's all right. Them kind makes the best wives. Cass, you go an' see Bitley.' The Bitley corner, adjoining the Holmes farm, was five acres of garden, with a snug, new, little frame house under two elm trees. Mrs. Bitley's daughter, lately home from ' town,' had introduced some bits of lattice and a wider verandah, and strips of flowers, and even a short gravelled drive, and the place had called alluringly to Cassius many a time as he had driven by to the village. As Mrs. Bitley showed him the house, he heard not one word that she said, or learned whether the cistern was filtered or the cellar dry; he only knew that Betty by the window, and Betty in that corner, and Betty on the porch, would be advance revelations of heaven. And as for Betty among the flowers, gathering salvia, transplanting pinks, tying up —the mere thought was a decision. Cassius would have the Bitley corner. 'Hev they got much garden truck this year?' inquired his mother, when he told her. *' What they got besides spare-grass?' ' Oh —some beans,' said Cassius, vaguely. ' Mother, don't you think the house'll furnish up real well?' ' It ought to,' said his mother. ' How's their peas look?' l * Don't b'lieve I noticed the peas,' confessed Cassius. '....'' Roof leak any?' demanded Mrs. Holmes. _ ' I didn't see it leak any,' replied Cassius, absently. 1 Nice porch they've got. Rose bush right in front.' Mrs. Holmes regarded him silently. s ' You'd best get into that house as soon as ever you can,' she said, dryly.. In a fortnight the Bitlevs were gone, bag and baggage, and Cassius stalked through the sunny, empty rooms, his face shining. Betty did not know yet that the house was his, and Betty was as steadfast as ever

in her decision. Still, the possession of tire house made him feel like a lion of ..strength, and that night he went whistling up the road to Warner’s place, his heart as light as if she knew and rejoiced with him. ‘Mis’ Warner,' he said, appearing.in the kitchen door when Betty and she were drying the dishes, ‘ can Betty go to town with me to-morrow I I’ve got to buy some things, an’ I need her advice.’ ‘ 'Course, Cassius,’ said Mrs. Warner, cheerily. ‘ I want a new quart dipper, anyways. She can fetch that out.’ ~

‘lt’s ironin’ day,’ objected Betty. ‘The clothes can lay till next day,’ said Mrs. Warner, jest as well as not.. You go on.’ Mrs. Warner looked at Cassius smilingly. ‘ Betty’s too careful o’ me,’ she said. ‘ She ain’t like some girls. makes a baby out o’ me.’ Cassius heart suddenly bounded. Oh, he thought exultantly, couldn’t Betty see? Her mother' wanted to be her mother—not some one of whom Betty took care ! .

. He called for Betty next morning when the world was a riot of singing birds, and the dew-white fields were stirred by the'early wind. They drove down the long shady road between the soft meadows, and Betty m her little print gown, with a pink rose in: her!hat, sat primly in the old phaeton, half dreading to hear Cassius return to the magic, subject, half troubled that he did not. But all the three long, fragrant miles to town, even past the door of Bitley corner itself, Cassius talked on tranquilly of rye, and the new colt, and the new henhouse; and little Betty listened, and stole shy glances at his strong, brown fingers ,on the lines,; and her heart beat and then ached at his impersonality. It is a terrible thing, Betty felt suddenly, when one whom we love ceases to talk to us about ourselves ! , In the village Cassius drove straight to 'the store,' and the quart clipper having been duly selected, they went upstairs where the harness and furniture were kept. v. relation o' mother's,' Cassius had explained, truthfully enough, 'an' I ain't no hand at it. So I thought if you'd tell me—' As it chanced, Si, the storekeeper's man, had just bought a farm of his own, and had given up his place as clerk, porter, and bookkeeper to a strange new factotum, who settled in his own mind that Betty and Cassius were bride and groom. And to little Betty, first embarrassed, then shyly amused, came at last the unwilling consciousness of how'supremely sweet it was to be so mistaken. And so as they considered and weighed the durability of carpets and. dining-room table she half let herself pretend that it was true. To put a telltale question, she even waited until the factotum's back was turned, that he might not know- that he was wrong. 'I wish,' said Betty, then before a fat'brown chair, 'that I knew the sort of house these things were going in, Cass. I could tell so much better about them.' Why, it's the Bitley place, you know,' said Cassium, well knowing that she did not know. 'lt is?' said Betty, startled. 'Have they sold? Oh, I'm so sorry.' 'Why?' asked Cassius curiously. • ' I like that little house,' said Betty. 'I always wanted mother to sell the farm an' buy it. It's plenty big enough for us two.' ■Cassius suddenly bent to see what the springs of a rocker were like. ' Yes,' he said in a muffled but strangely exultant voice, 'it's big enough for two!' and beamed sunshine on the returning factotum, in pure joy. In an hour everything had been selectedsimple things of matting and willow, such as the little store afforded and Betty's good taste commended. Betty sighed as they picked their way among the kegs and barrels to the door. She sighed again as they took their places in the old phaeton and turned homeward. ' What's the matter?' asked Cassius, as they drove down the shady street. 'Nothing,' said Betty shamelessly. 'Little tired?' suggested Cassius/ longing to take her in his arms.

. Betty shook -her head. ' ..' No,' she said. ' But I was thinkin'—it seemed 'most as if—'most as if—' 'What?' said Cassius, wild to hear her say it. ''Most as if we had bought those things,' ended Betty lamely. _. / ' Why, so ,we did! cried Cassius, laughing happily, and Betty thought, a little heartlessly. She was /Silent on the homeward drive, and Cassius went back •to the subject of new colts and rye and hen-houses. Mother and I are goin' to get things all settled for 'em,' he said, as he left her at the gate. ' I'll come over for you in a day or two to take a look at the house. Will you?' '-. , ' . Betty nodded. :' Some afternoon,' she promised. At odd hours .Cassius worked rapturously away on the house at Bitley's corner, laying carpets, unpacking furniture, hanging curtains, as if the world had to be made in six days. Mrs. Holmes came over and advised, but she and Cassius did not arrange the furniture. That was Betty's share. ■- '.-• Betty came at his bidding one golden afternoon, when by his own confession Cassius was too busy to accompany her. So he waited in the meadow until the little figure in its blue sunbonnet had toiled along the road to the Bitley House and disappeared within doors. Cassius never could quite remember how he spent those hours, but they passed some way, and he forced himself to stay away until, when the shadows slanted, he saw her appear on the porch ready to go home. Then he raced along the road, hailed her merrily, and bade her go back and show him what she had done. The doors and windows of the little house stood open to the sweet droning airs of late afternoon. The blossoming bushes in the garden sent sweets to all the rooms as Cassius and Betty walked through them. Betty had acquired a certainly little housewifely air that was almost possession, as she showed this arrangement and that makeshift with an adorable pride in her handiwork. ' I put the dining-room table here, and drew the curtain away back,' said little Betty, ' so they can look over the garden at meal time. Will they care to look over the garden, Cassius?' ■ Yes—they'll care,' announced Cassius soberly. ' Are they a family?' asked Betty curiously. "' Are they old people 'There are only two of them,' said Cassius, 'an'they ain't old.' ' I thought they weren't,' said Betty. ' I saved the splint-bottomed settee for the porch.- You can see the moon come out o' your cornfield from there. Will they care about settin' there to watch it?' ' Oh, yes —yes,'-said Cassius, 'they'll care.'. Betty sighed. ' I don't believe I'll ever want to come here after they get settled,' she said. 'Oh, pshaw!' said Cassius, 'we'll be here often.' Betty said nothing, but her heart ached as it had ached that day in town. Oh, she thought, miserably, Cassius didn't see—he didn't see !'. They went out the kitchen door, and Cassius locked it and gave her the key.' ' Have your mother come over an' look at it, if she will,' he said. ' I won't go up home with youl'll hev to go for the cows to-night. Tim's gone to town. Much obliged, Betty. Good-night.' Betty went down the road alone, carrying her sunbonnet, her hand on the key in her apron pocket. Her throat ached, and something stirred and beat in her heart, and would not be quieted. For the first time in her life she felt unwilling to go home. She stopped at the top of the hill and looked back on the Bitley cottage, moving the key in her pocket. The r simple joy of settling the tiny rooms would have been slough to teach her the ways of some of the rest of the world, of whose sweetness she had never dreamed. But the fact that they had chosen the .things together—she and Cassius —and that she had arranged them for him, and that they had gone over the-, house together, made the lesson tenfold plainer and sweeter. For the first time these simple human joys that are in the

world allured and possessed her, and she sped down the hill toward home, a blinding mist of tears in her eyes. • . . •

‘ I’ve got to do it,’ she said over and over. ‘ Some things are wrong an’ some are right—l do’ know. I’ll tell mother, an’ then I’ve got to do it. Onlyseems as though Cass don’t love me any more. Maybe he’s tired ’waitin’.’

The front hall door stood open, and Betty went in and straight through to the kitchen to find her mother. Her head was erect, and there was a light in her face and a new light in her eyes. In the passage she heard voices, coming from the kitchenher mother’s voice was raised in earnest talk with a neighbor, Betty stopped, spellbound, at her words: “ ‘Yes,’ her mother was saying, Betty, she’s a dutiful daughter. An’ I don’t see but she’s just as good a girl as them six Stanford girls. Yet every one of ’em is married off. I do’ knowßetty don’t seem to take to the. idea o‘ marryin’. I get afraid that I’ll hev to die some time an’ leave her alone.’

The shrill tones of Mis’ Slocum, from the mill, were raised in reply, but Betty did not hear. With a bewildering gladness of understanding breaking upon her, she turned and sped out of the house, and across the fields, still warm in the late night, down to the stile by the lane. Cassius was comingshe knew that he would be on his way home, and she could hear the tinkle of the Jersey’s bell. Betty let down the bars and stood there, all the meadows and all the world swimming in the gold light of the evening sun. It shone upon her happy face when Cassius came up the lane between the wild rose hedges and saw her waiting for him. With glad heart and quickened step he came to her.

Then she knew that he was not ‘ tired waitin’.’