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Tillie: A Mennonite Maid

H >> Helen Reimensnyder Martin >> Tillie: A Mennonite Maid



Robert Rowe, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.



TILLIE A MENNONITE MAID

A STORY OF THE PENNSYLVANIA DUTCH

BY HELEN REIMENSNYDER MARTIN





CONTENTS


I "OH, I LOVE HER! I LOVE HER!"
II "I'M GOING TO LEARN YOU ONCE!"
III "WHAT'S HURTIN' YOU, TILLIE?"
IV "THE DOC" COMBINES BUSINESS AND PLEASURE
V "NOVELS AIN'T MORAL, DOC!"
VI JAKE GETZ IN A QUANDARY
VII "THE LAST DAYS OF PUMP-EYE"
VIII MISS MARGARET'S ERRAND
IX "I'LL DO MY DARN BEST, TEACHER!"
X ADAM SCHUNK'S FUNERAL
XI "POP! I FEEL TO BE PLAIN"
XII ABSALOM KEEPS COMPANY
XIII EZRA HERR, PEDAGOGUE
XIV THE HARVARD GRADUATE
XV THE WACKERNAGELS AT HOME
XVI THE WACKERNAGELS "CONVERSE"
XVII THE TEACHER MEETS ABSALOM
XVIII TILLIE REVEALS HERSELF
XIX TILLIE TELLS A LIE
XX TILLIE IS "SET BACK"
XXI "I'LL MARRY HIM TO-MORROW!"
XXII THE DOC CONCOCTS A PLOT
XXIII SUNSHINE AND SHADOW
XXIV THE REVOLT OF TILLIE
XXV GETZ "LEARNS" TILLIE
XXVI TILLIE'S LAST FIGHT





TILLIE A MENNONITE MAID

A STORY OF THE PENNSYLVANIA DUTCH





I

"OH, I LOVE HER! I LOVE HER!"


Tillie's slender little body thrilled with a peculiar ecstasy as
she stepped upon the platform and felt her close proximity to the
teacher--so close that she could catch the sweet, wonderful
fragrance of her clothes and see the heave and fall of her bosom.
Once Tillie's head had rested against that motherly bosom. She had
fainted in school one morning after a day and evening of hard,
hard work in her father's celery-beds, followed by a chastisement
for being caught with a "story-book"; and she had come out of her
faint to find herself in the heaven of sitting on Miss Margaret's
lap, her head against her breast and Miss Margaret's soft hand
smoothing her cheek and hair. And it was in that blissful moment
that Tillie had discovered, for the first time in her young
existence, that life could be worth while. Not within her memory
had any one ever caressed her before, or spoken to her tenderly,
and in that fascinating tone of anxious concern.

Afterward, Tillie often tried to faint again in school; but, such
is Nature's perversity, she never could succeed.

School had just been called after the noon recess, and Miss
Margaret was standing before her desk with a watchful eye on the
troops of children crowding in from the playground to their seats,
when the little girl stepped to her side on the platform.

This country school-house was a dingy little building in the heart
of Lancaster County, the home of the Pennsylvania Dutch. Miss
Margaret had been the teacher only a few months, and having come
from Kentucky and not being "a Millersville Normal," she differed
quite radically from any teacher they had ever had in New Canaan.
Indeed, she was so wholly different from any one Tillie had ever
seen in her life, that to the child's adoring heart she was
nothing less than a miracle. Surely no one but Cinderella had ever
been so beautiful! And how different, too, were her clothes from
those of the other young ladies of New Canaan, and, oh, so much
prettier--though not nearly so fancy; and she didn't "speak her
words" as other people of Tillie's acquaintance spoke. To Tillie
it was celestial music to hear Miss Margaret say, for instance,
"buttah" when she meant butter-r-r, and "windo" for windah. "It
gives her such a nice sound when she talks," thought Tillie.

Sometimes Miss Margaret's ignorance of the dialect of the
neighborhood led to complications, as in her conversation just now
with Tillie.

"Well?" she inquired, lifting the little girl's chin with her
forefinger as Tillie stood at her side and thereby causing that
small worshiper to blush with radiant pleasure. "What is it,
honey?"

Miss Margaret always made Tillie feel that she LIKED her. Tillie
wondered how Miss Margaret could like HER! What was there to like?
No one had ever liked her before.

"It wonders me!" Tillie often whispered to herself with throbbing
heart.

"Please, Miss Margaret," said the child, "pop says to ast you will
you give me the darst to go home till half-past three this after?"

"If you go home till half-past three, you need not come back,
honey--it wouldn't be worth while, when school closes at four."

"But I don't mean," said Tillie, in puzzled surprise, "that I want
to go home and come back. I sayed whether I have the darst to go
home till half-past three. Pop he's went to Lancaster, and he'll
be back till half-past three a'ready, and he says then I got to be
home to help him in the celery-beds."

Miss Margaret held her pretty head on one side, considering, as
she looked down into the little girl's upturned face. "Is this a
conundrum, Tillie? How your father be in Lancaster now and yet be
home until half-past three? It's uncanny. Unless," she added, a
ray of light coming to her,--"unless 'till' means BY. Your father
will be home BY half-past three and wants you then?"

"Yes, ma'am. I can't talk just so right," said Tillie
apologetically, "like what you can. Yes, sometimes I say my we's
like my w's, yet!"

Miss Margaret laughed. "Bless your little heart!" she said,
running her fingers through Tillie's hair. "But you would rather
stay in school until four, wouldn't you, than go home to help your
father in the celery-beds?"

"Oh, yes, ma'am," said Tillie wistfully, "but pop he has to get
them beds through till Saturday market a'ready, and so we got to
get 'em done behind Thursday or Friday yet."

"If I say you can't go home?"

Tillie colored all over her sensitive little face as, instead of
answering, she nervously worked her toe into a crack in the
platform.

"But your father can't blame YOU, honey, if I won't let you go
home."

"He wouldn't stop to ast me was it my fault, Miss Margaret. If I
wasn't there on time, he'd just--"

"All right, dear, you may go at half-past three, then," Miss
Margaret gently said, patting the child's shoulder. "As soon as
you have written your composition."

"Yes, ma'am, Miss Margaret."

It was hard for Tillie, as she sat at her desk that afternoon, to
fix her wandering attention upon the writing of her composition,
so fascinating was it just to revel idly in the sense of the touch
of that loved hand that had stroked her hair, and the tone of that
caressing voice that had called her "honey."

Miss Margaret always said to the composition classes, "Just try to
write simply of what you see or feel, and then you will be sure to
write a good 'composition.'"

Tillie was moved this afternoon to pour out on paper all that she
"felt" about her divinity. But she had some misgivings as to the
fitness of this.

She dwelt upon the thought of it, however, dreamily gazing out of
the window near which she sat, into the blue sky of the October
afternoon--until presently her ear was caught by the sound of Miss
Margaret's voice speaking to Absalom Puntz, who stood at the foot
of the composition class, now before her on the platform.

"You may read your composition, Absalom."

Absalom was one of "the big boys," but though he was sixteen years
old and large for his age, his slowness in learning classed him
with the children of twelve or thirteen. However, as learning was
considered in New Canaan a superfluous and wholly unnecessary
adjunct to the means of living, Absalom's want of agility in
imbibing erudition never troubled him, nor did it in the least
call forth the pity or contempt of his schoolmates.

Three times during the morning session he had raised his hand to
announce stolidly to his long-suffering teacher, "I can't think of
no subjeck"; and at last Miss Margaret had relaxed her Spartan
resolution to make him do his own thinking and had helped him out.

"Write of something that is interesting you just at present. Isn't
there some one thing you care more about than other things?" she
had asked.

Absalom had stared at her blankly without replying.

"Now, Absalom," she had said desperately, "I think I know one
thing you have been interested in lately--write me a composition
on Girls."

Of course the school had greeted the advice with a laugh, and Miss
Margaret had smiled with them, though she had not meant to be
facetious.

Absalom, however, had taken her suggestion seriously.

"Is your composition written, Absalom?" she was asking as Tillie
turned from the window, her contemplation of her own composition
arrested by the sound of the voice which to her was the sweetest
music in the world.

"No'm," sullenly answered Absalom. "I didn't get it through till
it was time a'ready."

"But, Absalom, you've been at it this whole blessed day! You've
not done another thing!"

"I wrote off some of it."

"Well," sighed Miss Margaret, "let us hear what you have done."

Absalom unfolded a sheet of paper and laboriously read:

"GIRLS

"The only thing I took particular notice to, about Girls, is that
they are always picking lint off each other, still."

He stopped and slowly folded his paper.

"But go on," said Miss Margaret. "Read it all.'

"That's all the fu'ther I got."

Miss Margaret looked at him for an instant, then suddenly lifted
the lid of her desk, evidently to search for something. When she
closed it her face was quite grave.

"We'll have the reading-lesson now," she announced.

Tillie tried to withdraw her attention from the teacher and fix it
on her own work, but the gay, glad tone in which Lizzie Harnish
was reading the lines,

"When thoughts
Of the last bitter hour come like a blight
Over thy spirit--"

hopelessly checked the flow of her ideas.

This class was large, and by the time Absalom's turn to read was
reached, "Thanatopsis" had been finished, and so the first stanza
of "The Bells" fell to him. It had transpired in the reading of
"Thanatopsis" that a grave and solemn tone best suited that poem,
and the value of this intelligence was made manifest when, in a
voice of preternatural solemnity, he read:

"What a world of merriment their melody foretells!"

Instantly, when he had finished his "stanza," Lizzie raised her
hand to offer a criticism. "Absalom, he didn't put in no
gestures."

Miss Margaret's predecessor had painstakingly trained his reading-
classes in the Art of Gesticulation in Public Speaking, and Miss
Margaret found the results of his labors so entertaining that she
had never been able to bring herself to suppress the monstrosity.

"I don't like them gestures," sulkily retorted Absalom.

"Never mind the gestures," Miss Margaret consoled him--which
indifference on her part seemed high treason to the well-trained
class.

"I'll hear you read, now, the list of synonyms you found in these
two poems," she added. "Lizzie may read first."

While the class rapidly leafed their readers to find their lists
of synonyms, Miss Margaret looked up and spoke to Tillie,
reminding her gently that that composition would not be written by
half-past three if she did not hasten her work.

Tillie blushed with embarrassment at being caught in an idleness
that had to be reproved, and resolutely bent all her powers to her
task.

She looked about the room for a subject. The walls were adorned
with the print portraits of "great men,"--former State
superintendents of public instruction in Pennsylvania,--and with
highly colored chromo portraits of Washington, Lincoln, Grant, and
Garfield. Then there were a number of framed mottos: "Education
rules in America," "Rely on yourself," "God is our hope," "Dare to
say No," "Knowledge is power," "Education is the chief defense of
nations."

But none of these things made Tillie's genius to burn, and again
her eyes wandered to the window and gazed out into the blue sky;
and after a few moments she suddenly turned to her desk and
rapidly wrote down her "subject"--"Evening."

The mountain of the opening sentence being crossed, the rest went
smoothly enough, for Tillie wrote it from her heart.

"EVENING.

"I love to take my little sisters and brothers and go out, still,
on a hill-top when the sun is setting so red in the West, and the
birds are singing around us, and the cows are coming home to be
milked, and the men are returning from their day's work.

"I would love to play in the evening if I had the dare, when the
children are gay and everything around me is happy.

"I love to see the flowers closing their buds when the shades of
evening are come. The thought has come to me, still, that I hope
the closing of my life may come as quiet and peaceful as the
closing of the flowers in the evening.

"MATILDA MARIA GETZ."

Miss Margaret was just calling for Absalom's synonyms when Tillie
carried her composition to the desk, and Absalom was replying with
his customary half-defiant sullenness.

"My pop he sayed I ain't got need to waste my time gettin' learnt
them cinnamons. Pop he says what's the use learnin' TWO words
where [which] means the selfsame thing--one's enough."

Absalom's father was a school director and Absalom had grown
accustomed, under the rule of Miss Margaret's predecessors, to
feel the force of the fact in their care not to offend him.

"But your father is not the teacher here--I am," she cheerfully
told him. "So you may stay after school and do what I require."

Tillie felt a pang of uneasiness as she went back to her seat.
Absalom's father was very influential and, as all the township
knew, very spiteful. He could send Miss Margaret away, and he
would do it, if she offended his only child, Absalom. Tillie
thought she could not bear it at all if Miss Margaret were sent
away. Poor Miss Margaret did not seem to realize her own danger.
Tillie felt tempted to warn her. It was only this morning that the
teacher had laughed at Absalom when he said that the Declaration
of Independence was "a treaty between the United States and
England,"--and had asked him, "Which country, do you think,
hurrahed the loudest, Absalom, when that treaty was signed?" And
now this afternoon she "as much as said Absalom's father should
mind to his own business!" It was growing serious. There had never
been before a teacher at "William Penn school-house who had not
judiciously "showed partiality" to Absalom.

"And he used to be dummer yet [stupider even] than what he is
now," thought Tillie, remembering vividly a school entertainment
that had been given during her own first year at school, when
Absalom, nine years old, had spoken his first piece. His pious
Methodist grandmother had endeavored to teach him a little hymn to
speak on the great occasion, while his frivolous aunt from the
city of Lancaster had tried at the same time to teach him "Bobby
Shafto." New Canaan audiences were neither discriminating nor
critical, but the assembly before which little Absalom had risen
to "speak his piece off," had found themselves confused when he
told them that

"On Jordan's bank the Baptist stands,
Silver buckles on his knee."

Tillie would never forget her own infantine agony of suspense as
she sat, a tiny girl of five, in the audience, listening to
Absalom's mistakes. But Eli Darmstetter, the teacher, had not
scolded him.

Then there was the time that Absalom had forced a fight at recess
and had made little Adam Oberholzer's nose bleed--it was little
Adam (whose father was not at that time a school director) that
had to stay after school; and though every one knew it wasn't
fair, it had been accepted without criticism, because even the
young rising generation of New Canaan understood the impossibility
and folly of quarreling with one's means of earning money.

But Miss Margaret appeared to be perfectly blind to the perils of
her position. Tillie was deeply troubled about it.

At half-past three, when, at a nod from Miss Margaret the little
girl left her desk to go home, a wonderful thing happened--Miss
Margaret gave her a story-book.

"You are so fond of reading, Tillie, I brought you this. You may
take it home, and when you have read it, bring it back to me, and
I'll give you something else to read."

Delighted as Tillie was to have the book for its own sake, it was
yet greater happiness to handle something belonging to Miss
Margaret and to realize that Miss Margaret had thought so much
about her as to bring it to her.

"It's a novel, Tillie. Have you ever read a novel?"

"No'm. Only li-bries."

"What?"

"Sunday-school li-bries. Us we're Evangelicals, and us children we
go to the Sunday-school, and I still bring home li-bry books. Pop
he don't uphold to novel-readin'. I have never saw a novel yet."

"Well, this book won't injure you, Tillie. You must tell me all
about it when you have read it. You will find it so interesting,
I'm afraid you won't be able to study your lessons while you are
reading it."

Outside the school-room, Tillie looked at the title,--Ivanhoe,"--
and turned over the pages in an ecstasy of anticipation.

"Oh! I love her! I love her!" throbbed her little hungry heart.





II

"I'M GOING TO LEARN YOU ONCE!"


Tillie was obliged, when about a half-mile from her father's farm,
to hide her precious book. This she did by pinning her petticoat
into a bag and concealing the book in it. It was in this way that
she always carried home her "li-bries" from Sunday-school, for all
story-book reading was prohibited by her father. It was
uncomfortable walking along the highroad with the book knocking
against her legs at every step, but that was not so painful as her
father's punishment would be did he discover her bringing home a
"novel"! She was not permitted to bring home even a school-book,
and she had greatly astonished Miss Margaret, one day at the
beginning of the term, by asking, "Please, will you leave me let
my books in school? Pop says I darsen't bring 'em home."

"What you can't learn in school, you can do without," Tillie's
father had said. "When you're home you'll work fur your wittles."

Tillie's father was a frugal, honest, hard-working, and very
prosperous Pennsylvania Dutch farmer, who thought he religiously
performed his parental duty in bringing up his many children in
the fear of his heavy hand, in unceasing labor, and in almost
total abstinence from all amusement and self-indulgence. Far from
thinking himself cruel, he was convinced that the oftener and the
more vigorously he applied "the strap," the more conscientious a
parent was he.

His wife, Tillie's stepmother, was as submissive to his authority
as were her five children and Tillie. Apathetic, anemic,
overworked, she yet never dreamed of considering herself or her
children abused, accepting her lot as the natural one of woman,
who was created to be a child-bearer, and to keep man well fed and
comfortable. The only variation from the deadly monotony of her
mechanical and unceasing labor was found in her habit of
irritability with her stepchild. She considered Tillie "a dopple"
(a stupid, awkward person); for though usually a wonderful little
household worker, Tillie, when very much tired out, was apt to
drop dishes; and absent-mindedly she would put her sunbonnet
instead of the bread into the oven, or pour molasses instead of
batter on the griddle. Such misdemeanors were always plaintively
reported by Mrs. Getz to Tillie's father, who, without fail,
conscientiously applied what he considered the undoubted cure.

In practising the strenuous economy prescribed by her husband,
Mrs. Getz had to manoeuver very skilfully to keep her children
decently clothed, and Tillie in this matter was a great help to
her; for the little girl possessed a precocious skill in combining
a pile of patches into a passably decent dress or coat for one of
her little brothers or sisters. Nevertheless, it was invariably
Tillie who was slighted in the small expenditures that were made
each year for the family clothing. The child had always really
preferred that the others should have "new things" rather than
herself--until Miss Margaret came; and now, before Miss Margaret's
daintiness, she felt ashamed of her own shabby appearance and
longed unspeakably for fresh, pretty clothes. Tillie knew
perfectly well that her father had plenty of money to buy them for
her if he would. But she never thought of asking him or her
stepmother for anything more than what they saw fit to give her.

The Getz family was a perfectly familiar type among the German
farming class of southeastern Pennsylvania. Jacob Getz, though
spoken of in tha neighborhood as being "wonderful near," which
means very penurious, and considered by the more gentle-minded
Amish and Mennonites of the township to be "overly strict" with
his family and "too ready with the strap still," was nevertheless
highly respected as one who worked hard and was prosperous, lived
economically, honestly, and in the fear of the Lord, and was
"laying by."

The Getz farm was typical of the better sort to be found in that
county. A neat walk, bordered by clam shells, led from a wooden
gate to the porch of a rather large, and severely plain frame
house, facing the road. Every shutter on the front and sides of
the building was tightly closed, and there was no sign of life
about the place. A stranger, ignorant of the Pennsylvania Dutch
custom of living in the kitchen and shutting off the "best
rooms,"--to be used in their mustiness and stiff unhomelikeness on
Sunday only,--would have thought the house temporarily empty. It
was forbiddingly and uncompromisingly spick-and-span.

A grass-plot, ornamented with a circular flower-bed, extended a
short distance on either side of the house. But not too much land
was put to such unproductive use; and the small lawn was closely
bordered by a corn-field on the one side and on the other by an
apple orchard. Beyond stretched the tobacco--and wheat-fields, and
behind the house were the vegetable garden and the barn-yard.

Arrived at home by half-past three, Tillie hid her "Ivanhoe" under
the pillow of her bed when she went up-stairs to change her faded
calico school dress for the yet older garment she wore at her
work.

If she had not been obliged to change her dress, she would have
been puzzled to know how to hide her book, for she could not,
without creating suspicion, have gone up-stairs in the daytime. In
New Canaan one never went up-stairs during the day, except at the
rare times when obliged to change one's clothes. Every one washed
at the pump and used the one family roller-towel hanging on the
porch. Miss Margaret, ever since her arrival in the neighborhood,
had been the subject of wide-spread remark and even suspicion,
because she "washed up-stairs" and even sat up-stairs!--in her
bedroom! It was an unheard-of proceeding in New Canaan.

Tillie helped her father in the celery-beds until dark; then,
weary, but excited at the prospect of her book, she went in from
the fields and up-stairs to the little low-roofed bed-chamber
which she shared with her two half-sisters. They were already in
bed and asleep, as was their mother in the room across the hall,
for every one went to bed at sundown in Canaan Township, and got
up at sunrise.

Tillie was in bed in a few minutes, rejoicing in the feeling of
the book under her pillow. Not yet dared she venture to light a
candle and read it--not until she should hear her father's heavy
snoring in the room across the hall.

The candles which she used for this surreptitious reading of
Sunday-school "li-bries" and any other chance literature which
fell in her way, were procured with money paid to her by Miss
Margaret for helping her to clean the school-room on Friday
afternoons after school. Tillie would have been happy to help her
for the mere joy of being with her, but Miss Margaret insisted
upon paying her ten cents for each such service.

The little girl was obliged to resort to a deep-laid plot in order
to do this work for the teacher. It had been her father's custom--
ever since, at the age of five, she had begun to go to school--to
"time" her in coming home at noon and afternoon, and whenever she
was not there on the minute, to mete out to her a dose of his
ever-present strap.

"I ain't havin' no playin' on the way home, still! When school is
done, you come right away home then, to help me or your mom, or I
'll learn you once!"

But it happened that Miss Margaret, in her reign at "William Perm"
school-house, had introduced the innovation of closing school on
Friday afternoons at half-past three instead of four, and Tillie,
with bribes of candy bought with part of her weekly wage of ten
cents, secured secrecy as to this innovation from her little
sister and brother who went to school with her--making them play
in the school-grounds until she was ready to go home with them.

Before Miss Margaret had come to New Canaan, Tillie had done her
midnight reading by the light of the kerosene lamp which, after
every one was asleep, she would bring up from the kitchen to her
bedside. But this was dangerous, as it often led to awkward
inquiries as to the speedy consumption of the oil. Candles were
safer. Tillie kept them and a box of matches hidden under the
mattress.

It was eleven o'clock when at last the child, trembling with
mingled delight and apprehension, rose from her bed, softly closed
her bedroom door, and with extremely judicious carefulness lighted
her candle, propped up her pillow, and settled down to read as
long as she should be able to hold her eyes open. The little
sister at her side and the one in the bed at the other side of the
room slept too soundly to be disturbed by the faint flickering
light of that one candle.

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