An Indiana Girl/Chapter 2
"Good morning!" came the cheery greeting, in response to a knock, at near the noon hour. The young woman wore a pleasant smile of unusual affability, and because of this the caller found himself for an instant at a loss for the best manner in which to make his wants known.
"Does anyone named Snellins," he began. Then, reaching into a great pocket, he pulled out a bundle of very legal-like-looking papers, and, turning them back until he found the desired one, continued: "Benjamin Snellins is the name. Does he live here?"
"Yes," she said, after waiting patiently through the action that he had depended upon to cover his momentary embarrassment, and in which the unnecessary first name had been brought into use. "Yes, but he is not here now. Perhaps father can help you, though," she added. "Shall I call him?"
"If you please," he replied. She turned smilingly and left him standing there while in the near regions of the little house, though just out of his sight he could hear, in tones that held a world of filial love, "Father, there is a gentleman here who wishes to see Ben. Will you please come in?"
The answer was not audible, but her gracious invitation for him to "come in" was distinctly so. He entered and remained standing until he heard a pair of heavy, muddy boots being scraped outside the kitchen door; then, smiling, he stepped forward to greet an old gentleman as he came through the house and into the room.
"I am sorry to have taken you from your work," he said, earnestly, "and, if you will return and let me go with you, I can talk to you there just as well. I wanted to see Benjamin Snellins, and, as he is not here, I will have to wait for him anyway."
"Well," laughed the other, "I was only fixing a bit of fence, but, if you don't mind looking on, you are very welcome to come," and with that he led his visitor through the neatly kept dining-room, where, with a great apron that reached from her chin to her toes, making her look as though her pretty head stuck out of a tent top, was the cause of his early embarrassment doing some of the many things that big-aproned women always find to do, and, to judge from the odor as they passed through the kitchen, that garment had been more or less busy around dinner preparations.
After the kitchen the pair moved down the walk, past the hen-house to where a fence, radiant in the noonday sun, shone back in patches of new additions that had taken the place of the old, weather-worn and worm-eaten ones.
"My name is Harvey," said the younger man, picking up a strip of lath and looking at it as critically as though it were the subject of his speech. "Frank Harvey," he went on. "I am a United States special pension examiner, and I am sent here for a deposition of Mr. Snellins on a case that he knows something about, it seems."
"I guess he can help you all right enough. I have often heard him speak of the army. He enlisted from somewhere down in Vermont, I think, and, I guess from all of his grunting and complaining, he's mighty sorry of it. He got a wound in his head somehow, and it has given him a sight of trouble, as he expresses it, but he could not get a pension on it, and that is what makes him so mad."
"I cannot understand why he should be held out of it," Frank replied.
"Ben don't want a pension. I don't believe that he would take it if you gave it to him. What's the matter with him is, he is just a natural kicker. He is always full of trouble of one kind or another, and, if it was not that, it would be something else."
"Does he work for you?"
"In the winter he does. He goes away every summer—no one seems to know where; but in the winter he turns up just as regular as clockwork. You are lucky to find him back now; it is a week ahead of his time, and he has already been back two."
"A sort of nomad," ventured Frank.
"A sort of blamed fool," said the old man, explosively. Then, in fear lest he should be taken too seriously, he added: "He is just an all 'round crank that no one can quite understand."
"Well, he must be a strange character," Frank answered in quick sympathy.
"There now—that is done, and I guess Virgie must have something for us to eat by this time, so we had better go in. Women are terrible when you keep them waiting," he said, in mock fear, as he gathered up the saw and hammer and a few nails that were scattered about.
"Then I may eat with you?" Frank asked. "I had expected to get to Ashville in time for dinner, but I hardly think I can make it now."
"I suppose that the little one has fixed for both of us, and, if she has not, I will divide with you," he said, smiling, as they went into the cosey little dining-room that would have been appetizing in itself without the many dishes already there heaped full of smoking-hot things.
"I guess I can afford to divide," said the host, as he beheld the bounteous spread, and accompanied his remark with a nod toward the table, a look of mild approval stealing over his kindly face.
"And still appease your own appetite," laughingly replied Frank.
"Yes, indeed; and it would not make much difference how big it was either. Well, little one," he added, looking expectantly toward the kitchen door and raising his voice just a shade higher.
"In a minute, father," came the answer, and the men remained standing—a pretty compliment from father to daughter that filled Frank with a vague wondering. Then in came a great dish of smoking something; he could not tell what it was, followed by the most charming representative of sweet and girlish naturalness that he had ever seen.
"Don't let it burn you, dear," her father said. "Here, let me take it," and, as he leaned forward and placed the dish on the table, he turned his face up toward them.
"This is Mr. Harvey, Virgie; and Mr. Harvey, this is my daughter." Then continuing, as he regained his upright position, "My daughter, Miss Virginia Brandt."
The dinner began with a simple thank-offering by the host, father and daughter bowing their heads in devout gratitude. Harvey was unusually moved by the sincerity and earnest reverence of the two humbly lowered heads, and his heart melted under the tender influence.
"Now, don't keep jumping up all the time, dear," said George Brandt in mild complaint as the meal progressed. Then aside, as if in explanation to Harvey, "She works too hard altogether. She's a regular little busybody."
"You must not say things like that about me, father, for a busybody is an old gossip, or some such horrible person, and I am sure that I am not old," Virgie laughed.
"No, I should hardly say you were," he replied.
In the table's centre was a large bowl filled with golden rod, and, as father and daughter sat opposite, some of the matted sprays obstructed his range of vision, and he leaned to one side, at the beginning of the table-talk, gazing, you might think, critically, as though, under the disguise of his remarks, he would absorb as much of her sweet girlishness as he could while that excuse lasted.
Virgie, naturally, was used to her father's ways; she understood him thoroughly. He had been her gallant, her adorer, her sort of worshiper for as long as she could remember; but it was only in her later years that she had come to realize the beauty, the unselfishness of his devotion. From the child who accepts everything as natural, thinking her life filled with only the things that are as they should be, never taking into her small reasonings the home love that surrounded her, deeply absorbed in appeasing the five senses which, always busy, moved by curiosity—childlife's greatest impetus; she had gradually grown into the realization of the care that had protected her, through the exploring of baby things, on through the selfishness of childhood until now, in young woman-hood (she was in her eighteenth year)—the value—the true worth of that love and care—surged in upon her in its daily manifestations with a warmth that made her own life glow in sweet response. But, in fear that her father's admiration might not be shared by their guest, she hastened to change the subject.
"Have you heard from Ben yet, father?"
"No, pet; I suppose that we will, though, very soon. Don't you think we will?"
"No-o," she answered, perplexedly, "I feel, some way, as though he had left for good. Something must have happened. Oh! what could it have been? I am worried dreadfully."
"I hope that he will return soon," said Frank.
"He will be back shortly," George Brandt replied, "for he knows that we have lots of work laid out to do. He ought not to have gone away," he added, with just a shade of annoyance.
"I want you to promise me something. Will you, father?" Virgie asked, tilting her head one side to get a better view of him.
"Unconditionally?" he questioned; then added, "I don't know how I am going to keep up with your fancies if I have to keep looking into those blossoms all the time. I cannot see whether you are for sure serious or just laughing at me."
"I am really serious," she said, rising and taking the obstructing flowers from the table. After placing them on the window shelf, and re-seating herself, continued, "You can see now that I am."
"Well, I promise then," and both men looked at her. The apparently unwarranted change made them wait interestedly for her reply.
"Please do not be cross to Ben if he comes back. He is awfully trying at times I know, but he is such a faithful old simpleton, and I am confident he does not mean to do wrong. He tries so hard to do what you want him to."
"But he takes affairs into his own hands too much, my dear, and always at the most awkward times. It has come to such a state that I cannot put any dependence in him, and now you wish to keep me from having a plain talk with him. You are——"
"Plain talks always mean disagreeable things," she interposed.
"People who do disagreeable things should only expect as much in return," her father protested.
"Yes, but you have promised me," she said, while the displeasure of her father had taken much out of the pleasure of having gained that promise—a fact very evident in her sweet face. Then she added, exultingly, as though a perfect solution had occurred to her: "Let me talk to him. Of course I cannot scold, but I will be awfully serious."
"A pretty method of casting pearls," he said, yielding the case reluctantly.
Frank had listened to the amiable discussion, and at its conclusion had no doubt left in his mind as to which, if he were to choose between the father's annoyance and plain talk or the daughter's impulsive reasoning, would be the least humiliating.
"It does not matter much to me now what time he returns. I have no other people to see this side of Callings, which I should judge is twenty or more miles from here, and I cannot possibly drive there to-day, so you see I shall be forced to remain to-night at Ashville anyway. No—no more potatoes, thank you," to Mr. Brandt, and, continuing: "I was forewarned by my predecessor when I accepted this territory that it rivaled the mountains of Switzerland to get about in. Of course I have not found it quite so bad as that," he laughed, "but, without a railroad in the county, I am forced to drive everywhere, and at times it is most inconvenient."
"What has come of that scheme to run a road across the northeast corner up there?" asked George Brandt, who, with the exception of the weekly rural paper that found its way to his isolated home, had lost all knowledge, if not interest, in the doings of the outside world.
"Their plans failed."
"Was that it?" he asked, putting one of those questions to which no answer is expected. In his tone a lack of interest in affairs outside his own was plainly manifest, and, with the meal finished, they arose from the table.
"You will find it rather slow waiting around here," said Brandt, "but, if you care to read, there are some books in the other room, perhaps not of the sort you like, but they will help fill up the time. I find that in idle hours they carry me over many a gloomy thought, and at the same time I feel as though I had accomplished something, even if I have only re-read some one that is already quite familiar."
"Perhaps Mr. Harvey would prefer being out of doors, father, even if he has only you and your work to watch," suggested Virgie.
"If I am allowed to express a preference, I believe I would rather follow your father's suggestion, as I drove quite late last night and am afraid I am in for a siege of cold now, and I must take no chance of prolonging it," Frank hastily interposed. "That is, if I do not intrude?"
"You will not intrude if you do not try to help me. Men always seem to think that they know how to wash dishes and do lots of other such things, and I have yet to see the first one who can," she replied, with charming frankness.
"Well, I had not thought of offering my services," Harvey replied, laughingly, "but I might prove to be the first one—if you will only give me a trial."
"There it is. You all think you can!" she retorted, with great emphasis on the "think." "Men are so wonderfully versatile that they think they can do anything, but they never rise to expectations, at least not to their own."
At this juncture her father, who had been looking from one to the other amusedly, put on his hat and went out.
"You will find the library in the other room."
"Then you will not give me a trial?" he asked.
"No," she replied, rather shortly, and commenced to hum as she went about her work.
"A strange mixture of ideal loveliness with her parent and at times of uninviting incivility with a stranger," thought Frank, as he started toward the library indicated. "Yet I am a stranger," he mused, standing with his chin in one hand and his elbow in the other, running his eyes over the book-shelves in an abstracted manner. "What else could I expect? I have, after a fashion, forced myself upon them, and uninvited people should not expect too much. It is not the first indifferent reception that I have had," he went on, but the too apparent contrast had left a little twinge of wounded vanity in his heart that any amount of such sensible reasoning would not remove. He took a book at random and seated himself near the window, where he remained long looking out on the huge, majestic sycamores that mingled a riot of confused colors with the smaller, sturdier oaks, trim maples and angular black gums. There was green running into red and brown and yellow and back to green again, the dominating color, from which the others had come to make this color harmony, but he took no note of these as he gazed in dreamy meditation.
Brandt's house was situated far up in the hills of Broom County, where few men enter from the outer world, and from which the inhabitants—a strange, mixed people—seldom come to lend picturesqueness to more civilized surroundings. There are many men who can tell you of Broom, by which the district is commonly known. Men who have lived nearby, working their lands into rich harvests, which, when garnered, leave them naught to do but to speculate on the crop to come. Lands that yield only substantial things, material things, and, in the absence of that romance in their lives to which all men and women turn in idleness, these nearby farmers and townspeople have turned to "Broom." Exchanging their stories, burnishing them up with bits of imaginary untruths when the occasion warranted until, on the whole, they are wonderful tales of a savage, ignorant people—the descendants of criminals advanced by wild living. From these one would be led to think that all of the escaped convicts of the Union had found refuge and bred there. But, if you were to ask one of these great tale-relators what he had seen among the hills, you would doubtless find that he had never ventured beyond the very border of its wildness, and in the end it might dawn upon you, that is, if you cared to follow out the subject, that the tales were but traditional and the purest fiction.
It is true that into these wilds have straggled, now and then, a fugitive in an effort to seek seclusion from a rigorous law. They have never remained long; such men are fond of darkness, but of the sort that has in it the flickering of dim lights and a sense of companionship in a surrounding of fellow beings, even though they may know none of them, and not the darkness that echoes back their own miserable thoughts in creaking boughs and moaning winds. Her population was more a mixture of chance inhabitants of a far different character than Frank Harvey had been led to believe, and as he sat, book in hand, before the window looking out upon the road that wandered down in a deep decline, edged by a handsome wall of autumn-touched trees, he wondered at the unusual gentleness that he had found here, where every tale had spoken of naught but wildness and depravity, and he was much at a loss for an explanation.
With a gesture, that indicated a dismissal of the subject without reaching a result, he opened the book and looked at it for the first time. "David Copperfield, as I'm a living sinner," he said to himself, and, much pleased with the choice that he had unconsciously made, he promptly broke into the middle of it. The book was a favorite of his. Hardly to be counted as a novel-reader, he was not without a leaning toward this one and two or three others into which he had forced himself until, becoming interested, he had gone on to the end. A second reading of Copperfield had not sufficed to tire him, and, with this renewal of old acquaintances, he was soon absorbed.
"You are obeying orders beautifully," said Virgie from the doorway. "You seem quite interested."
"Indeed I was!" said Frank, with enthusiasm.
"Do you enjoy reading so much?" she asked.
"Only at times," he replied. "I guess it is because of the smallness of my circle of book friends that I feel so well acquainted with each of them. Then, too, I admit them so seldom to a review of their sorrows and pleasures that I am much impressed when they do talk to me."
"It is David Copperfield," she said, and the name came in a tone of fondness; then, holding before her breast the shining plate and tea towel that she had brought to the door, she leaned forward and looked at an illustration in the book, and continued: "It was Dickens' favorite, you know, and I believe it is mine, too. I have never quite decided which of his works I like best. He has such an uncanny way of bringing the people to you, and after you have become absorbed you regain your own surroundings, with a feeling of their absence, they leave you then and something seems lacking; so much do you miss their going away that you feel disappointed."
"Then he disappoints you," said Frank, mistaking her impression.
"Oh! indeed no," she replied quickly. "The real charm for me lies in that—in that—what shall I say? 'In that disappointment' hardly expresses it. I guess, after all, his seeming to have written just for me is where the pleasure lies," she ended abruptly.
"I would have given anything to have said that," smiled Frank. "I think that you have covered it all in just those few words."
"And if I have," she said, "I do not suppose he would feel complimented at being so easily dismissed. Yet one cannot be a whole review, for, if we were, we would only be living the lives of others, and then we could never arrive at anything ourselves."
"I think that you are right," he agreed, and, after a pause, asked: "Has Mr. Snellins returned yet?"
"Then we are to dismiss poor Copperfield and Dora and all the rest without the least bit of sympathy," she said, seeming reluctant to give them up so easily; but, continuing, with her interest much abated: "No, we have seen nothing of him yet. You shall know, though, just as soon as he arrives." Then her curiosity, seeming to get the better of her, she ventured: "Is Ben asking for a pension?"
"No," Frank replied, in a non-committal way, and Virgie turned her attention to the plate again, not knowing how to proceed. "If he does not want a pension," she asked herself, "what can a pension agent want of him?" The unsatisfactory answer to her first question only served to make her the more curious, and it was a curiosity in which she felt no reproach of conscience, for "had not Ben always made a confidant of her, and accepted her as a sort of adviser?" she asked herself. "Surely there could be no harm in her knowing the present need of him," she argued, and, since a direct question had elicited nothing, she approached the subject from another point.
"I think he failed twice," she said.
"So your father told me; at least he said that he had failed, though he did not say how often. It must have been through some fault of his own."
"But he was a soldier, so how could he fail?"
"I would not dare attempt to answer that," Frank replied. "The cause is too remote a one to be guessed at, and I have had no opportunity to study his case."
"But you are going to now," she said, in a way that implied a question.
"Well, no; I have not come for that, but I shall be glad to help him in any way that I can," he said, and she started with instinctive fear, looking at him searchingly. "It is as a witness that I shall interview him—in reference to a companion that served in the same regiment that he did, and his will be the last deposition that goes to make up the case." After which Virgie sighed relievedly.
"Then it only remains for Ben to decide it?" she asked, regaining partial composure, putting her question into a form that would draw from him the most information possible—not attempting to conceal her renewed curious interest.
"Well, hardly," he replied, amused at her lack of knowledge and evident desire to have an explanation. He was familiar with the total ignorance of the people at large, and individuals in particular, as to the workings of his department, and he had been drawn into an explanation of it so often that he had reduced it to as few words as possible with which to enlighten the inquisitive and interested ones, and though the form was an old one, and he had grown weary of it with the frequent repetitions, he felt called upon to again explain the mystery of the work.
"This Mr. Snellins," he continued, "will have scarcely as much weight in his testimony as you seem to think, for, by a count of the depositions that have already been taken, there are now forty-three, and each is equally as important as his will be. You see," he said, entering into a full explanation, "when the first application for a pension is made a list of perhaps five or six names is given as references, and to each of these persons it becomes necessary to apply, no matter where they are, for any information that they may be able to give. Naturally, the first depositions given are friendly to the applicant, so that their statements are as good as valueless, but among them there invariably occurs a reference to a somebody else who can shed a little light on the matter, and then it becomes the duty of the examiner who has taken that information to refer to the someone mentioned when he sends the summary of his interview to the department. Then from the department the papers are packed off to the examiner who has that territory in which the someone referred to was last known to reside, and, if that someone can be found, his deposition is taken, added to the pile and again the lot is returned to the department, with the summary of this examiner, which is his individual opinion of that one man's testimony. And so the story is piled up, a little added each time the lot are sent out, until the whole is as complete as can be made."
"But it must take a long time," said Virgie, to whom the carting about process seemed quite unnecessary, "and a man could starve a dozen times over before his case was settled."
"I suppose it does appear to have a good bit of red tape to it," Frank said, "but, with the millions of dollars that are distributed annually, unusual precaution is necessary."
"Why can they not write to these people?" she asked, seeking a simpler and easier means for deciding a case.
"Because the informers are generally quite lacking in a knowledge of the information desired, and then, too, the testimony must be given under oath."
"Oh!" was all she could say, for to her the process of administering an oath, which she had never seen, though often wondered at, seemed an awful thing. The mere thought of such a proceeding had always produced a depressing effect upon her.
"Have you any other suggestions?" he asked, feeling well repaid for the explanation by her attentive following, and much amused by her earnestness.
"If I had I would hesitate to give them after so palpable a failure of my first one," she said, regaining her habitual cheerfulness.
"Then I shall ask a favor of you," he said, his having become master of the situation leading him to a facetious bent.
"And that is?"
"That you bear witness to the testimony of Mr. Snellins if he ever returns." And, in her quick change from a cheerful expression to one of depression again, he found a strange sense of satisfaction in being able to sway her moods.
It is difficult to describe the satisfaction that arises in the mind of a good man when he finds himself in control of a situation that had, from its beginning, seemed hopelessly lost. It is the bringing about of the result that is partially desired, yet not directly aimed at because of its seeming hopelessness. Such a conclusion is gratifying in the extreme to the man who has never obtained results except by a concentration of his best efforts toward the end in view.
Frank Harvey had been largely benefited by the process of having the corners rubbed off, as all young men are supposed to do before they can arrive at anything worth arriving at, and he had accumulated enough experience with people and their ways to be a very level-headed fellow. He was, therefore, a little reluctant to take credit for the moods or humors of the people that surrounded him. He knew that, with Virgie, the fear was but the emotion of a previously conceived situation, and entirely outside any influence of his own. If she had chosen to cry, or have laughing hysteria in turns, he would not have felt responsible for the mood. He was quick to detect other influences than his own at work, even though she was following his line of conversation. People could indulge flights of either sort of emotion from a central point of stoicism, he would have told you had you asked him, but it would depend altogether upon themselves to what degree they carried them. Yet, with all his lack of self-crediting, there was within him a something akin to satisfaction in the ready sympathy he found where he had thought no one but her father could influence her.
"Oh! I never took an oath in my life," she said.
"The service I ask will not require it of you; that will be for Mr. Snellins only. All that I ask of you is to bear witness to the testimony, and then sign the document."
"Will my name go to Washington?" she asked, excitedly.
"Yes," he replied, smiling at the wonderful importance she attached to that fact, and thinking in the meantime of the little note that would be taken of her signature in the great bulk of matter that goes to Washington to be seen only by disinterested clerks.
"But, what if they should ever send for me, or write to me, or something," she said. "I would be frightened to death."
"Little chance of that," he replied, smilingly. "Witnesses in the position that you will occupy are never called upon."
"Well, I hardly know," she said, undecidedly. "I must ask father;" and, excusing herself, she left him. Unable to concentrate his mind upon the book he closed it, and sat looking out the window as he waited for Snellins, who was not destined to come.