Beauty and The Beast - Bayard Taylor (story read aloud .TXT) 📗

knew what answer to make, so he said, at a venture, “That’s as it happens.” Then he colored a little, for the words seemed foolish to his ears.

“Time’s precious,” said the girl, “so I’ll tell you at once we want help. Our hay MUST be got in while the fine weather lasts.”

“I’ll help you!” Jacob exclaimed, taking his arms from the rail, and looking as willing as he felt.

“I’m so glad! But I must tell you, at first, that we’re not rich, and the hands are asking a great deal now. How much do you expect?”

“Whatever you please?” said he, climbing the fence.

“No, that’s not our way of doing business. What do you say to a dollar a day, and found?”

“All right!” and with the words he was already at her side, taking long strides over the elastic turf.

“I will go on with my mowing,” said she, when they reached the horses, “and you can rake and load with my father. What name shall I call you by?”

“Everybody calls me Jake.”

“`Jake!’ Jacob is better. Well, Jacob, I hope you’ll give us all the help you can.”

With a nod and a light laugh she sprang upon the machine. There was a sweet throb in Jacob’s heart, which, if he could have expressed it, would have been a triumphant shout of “I’m not afraid of her! I’m not afraid of her!”

The farmer was a kindly, depressed man, with whose quiet ways Jacob instantly felt himself at home. They worked steadily until sunset, when the girl, detaching her horses from the machine, mounted one of them and led the other to the barn. At the supper-table, the farmer’s wife said: “Susan, you must be very tired.”

“Not now, mother!” she cheerily answered. “I was, I think, but after I picked up Jacob I felt sure we should get our hay in.”

“It was a good thing,” said the farmer; “Jacob don’t need to be told how to work.”

Poor Jacob! He was so happy he could have cried. He sat and listened, and blushed a little, with a smile on his face which it was a pleasure to see. The honest people did not seem to regard him in the least as a stranger; they discussed their family interests and troubles and hopes before him, and in a little while it seemed as if he had known them always.

How faithfully he worked! How glad and tired he felt when night came, and the hay-mow was filled, and the great stacks grew beside the barn! But ah! the haying came to an end, and on the last evening, at supper, everybody was constrained and silent. Even Susan looked grave and thoughtful.

“Jacob,” said the farmer, finally, “I wish we could keep you until wheat harvest; but you know we are poor, and can’t afford it. Perhaps you could—”

He hesitated; but Jacob, catching at the chance and obeying his own unselfish impulse, cried: “Oh, yes, I can; I’ll be satisfied with my board, till the wheat’s ripe.”

Susan looked at him quickly, with a bright, speaking face. “It’s hardly fair to you,” said the farmer.

“But I like to be here so much!” Jacob cried. “I like—all of you!”

“We DO seem to suit,” said the farmer, “like as one family. And that reminds me, we’ve not heard your family name yet.”

“Flint.”

“Jacob FLINT!” exclaimed the farmer’s wife, with sudden agitation.

Jacob was scared and troubled. They had heard of him, he thought, and who knew what ridiculous stories? Susan noticed an anxiety on his face which she could not understand, but she unknowingly came to his relief.

“Why, mother,” she asked, “do you know Jacob’s family?”

“No, I think not,” said her mother, “only somebody of the name, long ago.”

His offer, however, was gratefully accepted. The bright, hot summer days came and went, but no flower of July ever opened as rapidly and richly and warmly as his chilled, retarded nature. New thoughts and instincts came with every morning’s sun, and new conclusions were reached with every evening’s twilight. Yet as the wheat harvest drew towards the end, he felt that he must leave the place. The month of absence had gone by, he scarce knew how. He was free to return home, and, though he might offer to bridge over the gap between wheat and oats, as he had already done between hay and wheat, he imagined the family might hesitate to accept such an offer. Moreover, this life at Susan’s side was fast growing to be a pain, unless he could assure himself that it would be so forever.

They were in the wheat-field, busy with the last sheaves; she raking and he binding. The farmer and younger children had gone to the barn with a load. Jacob was working silently and steadily, but when they had reached the end of a row, he stopped, wiped his wet brow, and suddenly said, “Susan, I suppose to-day finishes my work here.”

“Yes,” she answered very slowly.

“And yet I’m very sorry to go.”

“I—WE don’t want you to go, if we could help it.”

Jacob appeared to struggle with himself. He attempted to speak. “If I could—” he brought out, and then paused. “Susan, would you be glad if I came back?”

His eyes implored her to read his meaning. No doubt she read it correctly, for her face flushed, her eyelids fell, and she barely murmured, “Yes, Jacob.”

“Then I’ll come!” he cried; “I’ll come and help you with the oats. Don’t talk of pay! Only tell me I’ll be welcome! Susan, don’t you believe I’ll keep my word?”

“I do indeed,” said she, looking him firmly in the face.

That was all that was said at the time; but the two understood each other tolerably well.

On the afternoon of the second day, Jacob saw again the lonely house of his father. His journey was made, yet, if any of the neighbors had seen him, they would never have believed that he had come back rich.

Samuel Flint turned away to hide a peculiar smile when he saw his son; but little was said until late that evening, after Harry and Sally had left. Then he required and received an exact account of Jacob’s experience during his absence. After hearing the story to the end, he said, “And so you love this Susan Meadows?”

“I’d—I’d do any thing to be with her.”

“Are you afraid of her?”

“No!” Jacob uttered the word so emphatically that it rang through the house.

“Ah, well!” said the old man, lifting his eyes, and speaking in the air, “all the harm may be mended yet. But there must be another test.” Then he was silent for some time.

“I have it!” he finally exclaimed. “Jacob, you must go back for the oats harvest. You must ask Susan to be your wife, and ask her parents to let you have her. But,—pay attention to my words!—you must tell her that you are a poor, hired man on this place, and that she can be engaged as housekeeper. Don’t speak of me as your father, but as the owner of the farm. Bring her here in that belief, and let me see how honest and willing she is. I can easily arrange matters with Harry and Sally while you are away; and I’ll only ask you to keep up the appearance of the thing for a month or so.”

“But, father,”—Jacob began.

“Not a word! Are you not willing to do that much for the sake of having her all your life, and this farm after me? Suppose it is covered with a mortgage, if she is all you say, you two can work it off. Not a word more! It is no lie, after all, that you will tell her.”

“I am afraid,” said Jacob, “that she could not leave her home now. She is too useful there, and the family is so poor.”

“Tell them that both your wages, for the first year, shall go to them. It’ll be my business to rake and scrape the money together somehow. Say, too, that the housekeeper’s place can’t be kept for her—must be filled at once. Push matters like a man, if you mean to be a complete one, and bring her here, if she carries no more with her than the clothes on her back!”

During the following days Jacob had time to familiarize his mind with this startling proposal. He knew his father’s stubborn will too well to suppose that it could be changed; but the inevitable soon converted itself into the possible and desirable. The sweet face of Susan as she had stood before him in the wheat-field was continually present to his eyes, and ere long, he began to place her, in his thoughts, in the old rooms at home, in the garden, among the thickets by the brook, and in Ann Pardon’s pleasant parlor. Enough; his father’s plan became his own long before the time was out.

On his second journey everybody seemed to be an old acquaintance and an intimate friend. It was evening as he approached the Meadows farm, but the younger children recognized him in the dusk, and their cry of, “Oh, here’s Jacob!” brought out the farmer and his wife and Susan, with the heartiest of welcomes. They had all missed him, they said—even the horses and oxen had looked for him, and they were wondering how they should get the oats harvested without him.

Jacob looked at Susan as the farmer said this, and her eyes seemed to answer, “I said nothing, but I knew you would come.” Then, first, he felt sufficient courage for the task before him.

He rose the next morning, before any one was stirring, and waited until she should come down stairs. The sun had not risen when she appeared, with a milk-pail in each hand, walking unsuspectingly to the cow-yard. He waylaid her, took the pails in his hand and said in nervous haste, “Susan, will you be my wife?”

She stopped as if she had received a sudden blow; then a shy, sweet consent seemed to run through her heart. “O Jacob!” was all she could say.

“But you will, Susan?” he urged; and then (neither of them exactly knew how it happened) all at once his arms were around her, and they had kissed each other.

“Susan,” he said, presently, “I am a poor man—only a farm hand, and must work for my living. You could look for a better husband.”

“I could never find a better than you, Jacob.”

“Would you work with me, too, at the same place?”

“You know I am not afraid of work,” she answered, “and I could never want any other lot than yours.”

Then he told her the story which his father had prompted. Her face grew bright and happy as she listened, and he saw how from her very heart she accepted the humble fortune. Only the thought of her parents threw a cloud over the new and astonishing vision. Jacob, however, grew bolder as he saw fulfilment of his hope so near. They took the pails and seated themselves beside neighbor cows, one raising objections or misgivings which the other manfully combated. Jacob’s earnestness unconsciously ran into his hands, as he discovered when the impatient cow began to snort and kick.

The harvesting of the oats was not commenced that morning. The children were sent away, and there was a council of four persons held in the parlor. The result of mutual protestations and much weeping was, that the farmer and his wife agreed to receive Jacob as a son-in-law; the offer of the wages was four times refused by them, and then accepted; and the chance of their being able to live and labor together was finally decided to be too fortunate to let