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Marg’et Ann
by
Lloyd had indulged a hope which he could not mention to any one, least of all to Marg’et Ann, that the minister would marry again in due season. But nothing pointed to a fulfillment of this wish. The good man seemed far more interested in the abolition of slavery in the South than in the release of his daughter from bondage to her own flesh and blood, Lloyd said to himself, with the bitterness of youth. Indeed, the household had moved on with so little change in the comfort of its worthy head that a knowledge of Lloyd’s wishes would have been quite as startling to the object of them as the young man’s reasons for their indulgence.
The gold fever had seemed to the minister a moral disorder, calling for spiritual remedies, which he had not failed to administer in such quantity and of such strength as corresponded with the religious therapeutics of the day.
Marg’et Ann hinted of this when her lover came to her with his plans.
She was making soap, and although they stood on the windward side of the kettle, her eyes were red from the smoke of the hickory logs.
“Do you think it is just right, Lloyd?” she asked, stirring the unsavory concoction slowly with a wooden paddle. “Isn’t it just a greed for gold, like gambling?”
Lloyd put both elbows on the top of the ash hopper and looked at her laughingly. He had on a straw hat lined with green calico, and his trousers were of blue jeans, held up by “galluses” of the same; but he was a handsome fellow, with sound white teeth and thick curling locks.
“I don’t know as a greed for gold is any worse than a greed for corn,” he said, trying to curb his voice into seriousness.
“But corn is useful–it is food–and, besides, you work for it.” Marg’et Ann pushed her sunbonnet back and looked at him anxiously.
“Well, I’ve planted a good deal more corn than I expect to eat this year, and I was calculating to sell some of it for gold,–you wouldn’t think that was wrong, would you, Marg’et Ann?”
“No, of course not; but some one will eat it,–it’s useful,” maintained the girl earnestly.
“I haven’t found anything more useful than money yet,” persisted the young man good-naturedly; “but if I come home from California with two or three bags full of gold, I’ll buy up a township and raise corn by the wholesale,–that’ll make it all right, won’t it?”
Marg’et Ann laughed in spite of herself.
“You’re such a case, Lloyd,” she said, not without a note of admiration in her reproof.
When it came to the parting there was little said. Marg’et Ann hushed her lover’s assurances with her own, given amid blinding tears.
“I’ll be just the same, Lloyd, no matter what happens, but I can’t let you make any promises; it wouldn’t be right. I can’t expect you to wait for me. You must do whatever seems right to you; but there won’t be any harm in my loving you,–at least as long as you don’t care for anybody else.”
The young man said what a young man usually says when he is looking into trustful brown eyes, filled with tears he has caused and cannot prevent, and at the moment, in the sharp pain of parting, the words of one were not more or less sincere than those of the other.
* * * * *
The years that followed moved slowly, weighted as they were with hard work and monotony for Marg’et Ann, and by the time the voice of the corn had changed three times from the soft whispering of spring to the hoarse rustling of autumn, she felt herself old and tired.
There had been letters and messages and rumors, more or less reliable, repeated at huskings and quiltings, to keep her informed of the fortunes of those who had crossed the plains, but her own letters from Lloyd had been few and unsatisfactory. She could not complain of this strict compliance with her wishes, but she had not counted upon the absence of her lover’s mother, who had gone to Ohio shortly after his departure and decided to remain there with a married daughter. There was no one left in the neighborhood who could expect to hear directly from Lloyd, and the reports that came from other members of the party he had joined told little that poor Marg’et Ann wished to know, beyond the fact that he was well and had suffered the varying fortunes of other gold-hunters.