The End of the World | Page 7

that?" Julia was so used to hearing her mother speak in
an excited way that she hardly noticed the strange tremor in this
question.
"August."
The symphony ceased in a moment. The scrubbing-brush dropped in
the pail of soapsuds. But the vocal storm burst forth with a violence
that startled even Julia. "August said that, did he? And you listened, did
you? You listened to _that? You_ listened to that? You listened to
_that_? Hey? He slandered your mother. You listened to him slander
your mother!" By this time Mrs. Anderson was at white heat. Julia was
speechless. "I saw you yesterday flirting with that Dutchman, and

listening to his abuse of your mother! And now you insult me! Well,
to-morrow will be the last day that that Dutchman will hold a plow on
this place. And you'd better look out for yourself, miss! You--"
Here followed a volley of epithets which Julia received standing. But
when her mother's voice grew to a scream, Julia took the word.
"Mother, hush!"
It was the first word of resistance she had ever uttered. The agony
within must have been terrible to have wrung it from her. The mother
was stunned with anger and astonishment. She could not recover
herself enough to speak until Jule had fled half-way up the stairs. Then
her mother covered her defeat by screaming after her, "Go to your own
room, you impudent hussy! You know I am liable to die of
heart-disease any minute, and you want to kill me!"
CHAPTER III.
A FAREWELL.
Mrs. Anderson felt that she had made a mistake. She had not meant to
tell Julia that August was to leave. But now that this stormy scene had
taken place, she thought she could make a good use of it. She knew that
her husband co-operated with her in her opposition to "the Dutchman,"
only because he was afraid of his wife. In his heart, Samuel Anderson
could not refuse anything to his daughter. Denied any of the happiness
which most men find in loving their wives, he found consolation in the
love of his daughter. Secretly, as though his paternal affection were a
crime, he caressed Julia, and his wife was not long in discovering that
the father cared more for a loving daughter than for a shrewish wife.
She watched him jealously, and had come to regard her daughter as one
who had supplanted her in her husband's affections, and her husband as
robbing her of the love of her daughter. In truth, Mrs. Samuel Anderson
had come to stand so perpetually on guard against imaginary
encroachments on her rights, that she saw enemies everywhere. She
hated Wehle because he was a Dutchman; she would have hated him on
a dozen other scores if he had been an American. It was offense enough

that Julia loved him.
So now she resolved to gain her husband to her side by her version of
the story, and before dinner she had told him how August had charged
her with being false and cruel to Andrew many years ago, and how Jule
had thrown it up to her, and how near she had come to dropping down
with palpitation of the heart. And Samuel Anderson reddened, and
declared that he would protect his wife from such insults. The notion
that he protected his wife was a pleasant fiction of the little man's,
which received a generous encouragement at the hands of his wife. It
was a favorite trick of hers to throw herself, in a metaphorical way, at
his feet, a helpless woman, and in her feebleness implore his protection.
And Samuel felt all the courage of knighthood in defending his
inoffensive wife. Under cover of this fiction, so flattering to the vanity
of an overawed husband, she had managed at one time or another to
embroil him with almost all the neighbors, and his refusal to join fences
had resulted in that crooked arrangement known as a "devil's lane" on
three sides of his farm.
Julia dared not stay away from dinner, which was miserable enough.
She did not venture so much as to look at August, who sat opposite her,
and who was the most unhappy person at the table, because he did not
know what all the unhappiness was about. Mr. Anderson's brow
foreboded a storm, Mrs. Anderson's face was full of an earthquake,
Cynthy Ann was sitting in shadow, and Julia's countenance perplexed
him. Whether she was angry with him or not, he could not be sure. Of
one thing he was certain: she was suffering a great deal, and that was
enough to make him exceedingly unhappy.
Sitting through his hurried meal in this atmosphere surcharged with
domestic electricity, he got the notion--he could hardly tell how--that
all this lowering of