The Project Gutenberg eBook of Rocky Fork
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Title: Rocky Fork
Author: Mary Hartwell Catherwood
Illustrator: Frank T. Merrill
Release date: October 5, 2025 [eBook #76984]
Language: English
Original publication: Boston: Lothrop, Lee & Shepard, 1911
Credits: David E. Brown, Mary Fahnestock-Thomas, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ROCKY FORK ***
[Illustration: “I’M DOCTOR GARDE’S LITTLE GIRL.”--_Page 11._]
ROCKY FORK
BY
MARY HARTWELL CATHERWOOD
ILLUSTRATED BY FRANK T. MERRILL
_NEW EDITION_
[Illustration]
BOSTON
LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD CO.
_Copyright, 1911_,
BY LOTHROP, LEE AND SHEPARD CO.
_All rights reserved_
_Electrotyped and Printed by
THE COLONIAL PRESS
C. H. Simonds & Co., Boston, U.S.A._
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. DOCTOR GARDE’S LITTLE GIRL 9
II. MR. PITZER 19
III. THE GEOGRAPHY-SCHOOL TEACHER 25
IV. COMPANY 36
V. THE GEOGRAPHY SCHOOL 56
VI. THE NARROWS AND MARY ANN FURNACE 73
VII. MISS MELISSA FURTHER DISAPPROVES OF THE ROCKY FORK 84
VIII. WHICH TREATS OF THUMB-PAPERS 101
IX. THEY CHURN 108
X. MOTHER OUTDOORS DISTURBED 115
XI. BLUEBELL MAKES A POEM 127
XII. “JORDAN STORMY BANKS” 139
XIII. ABRAM HAS A THEORY 152
XIV. BLUEBELL HAS NO THEORY 163
XV. THE FORD 169
XVI. A TRIO AND CHORUS 173
XVII. DOCTOR GARDE LISTENS TO REASON 186
XVIII. BLUEBELL AND TILDY 199
XIX. THE CHILD IN THE BLACKBERRY PATCH 207
XX. THE LAST TIME 215
XXI. THE FIRST RAILROAD TRAIN 230
XXII. MISS BIGGAR 245
XXIII. A DUCK AMONG SWANS 252
XXIV. MISS MELISSA DROPS A FEW HINTS 263
XXV. EVENTS 271
XXVI. MISS BIGGAR’S POSSESSIONS 288
XXVII. DINNER IN DOLL-LAND 297
XXVIII. SOMEBODY ARRIVES 305
XXIX. DOCTOR GARDE’S LITTLE GIRL 312
XXX. TWO LETTERS 319
ILLUSTRATIONS
“I’M DOCTOR GARDE’S LITTLE GIRL” (_page 11_) _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
“HERE’S A WAX DOLL FOR YOU” 46
THE PRINCIPAL FIGURES IN A PROCESSION TO THE SCHOOL-HOUSE 110
LIZA STEPPED BACK, DRAWING HER ROLL OFF THE SPINDLE INTO A
LONG WOOLLY THREAD 134
“I SEIZED HIS BRIDLE AND TRIED TO LEAD HIM OUT” 184
THE PERFORMER PLAYED SOME LITTLE MARCH 254
[Illustration: ROCKY FORK]
CHAPTER I
DOCTOR GARDE’S LITTLE GIRL
Many years ago the morning sun looked down among the tall hills of
central Ohio, and saw one little girl patting along a path. The path
wound down through a hollow, and up, up over wood-clothed heights which
she thought nearly touched the sky.
At first glance this little girl appeared to be a large slat sun-bonnet
taking a walk on a pair of long pantalettes. But at second glance
one brown, thin arm escaped from a short sleeve might have been seen
carrying a calico bag by its drawing-string; and under the pantalettes
a pair of stout-shod little feet skipped along.
It was not more than seven o’clock. The tall meadow grass was
glittering, and every bird known to the State was singing with his
morning voice. When she reached the small run which twisted along the
hollow, and put her foot on the first of the stepping-stones which
crossed it, the little girl could not help stopping to gaze in the
water. The minnows played around the stone with a quiver of their tiny
bodies which fascinated the gazer. She stooped cautiously and tried to
catch one in her hand, but sunshine on the pebbles was not more elusive.
“Good-morning, little girl,” said a winning voice; and the little
girl jumped up, reeled, set one foot in the water, and brandished her
reticule in the effort to regain her balance. The sugared butter-bread
and sweet cookies tumbled against currant-pie and cherries, and all
settled to an upside-down condition as she finally got on the bank and
saw a gentleman preparing to trip across the stones.
It was an uncommon thing to meet any one, and especially a stranger, on
that long two-mile path to school. But it was a wonderful thing to meet
such a grand stranger. She dropped a bobbing curtsy, and the gentleman,
having crossed, stopped and smiled. He had glittering black eyes, and
curly hair and whiskers, glittering teeth and boots, fine clothes, and
altogether the look of a “town gentleman.”
“Whose little girl are you?” inquired this town gentleman affably,
rubbing the wet soles of his boots on the grass.
Under the long slat sun-bonnet a round face blushed all about its blue
eyes and quite back to its auburn hair, and a timid voice piped from
the calico funnel: “I’m Doctor Garde’s little girl.”
“Ah! where does Doctor Garde live?”
“Right back there in that big house.”
“And who lives in this house I just passed?”
“Mrs. Banks. Her little girls go to school with me.”
“Yes. And where do you go to school?”
“In the school-house ’way at the other side of the hills.”
“Oho! many children go there?”
“All of ’em in our districk. There’s Willeys, and Pancosts, and
Harrises, and Halls, and Bankses, and Martins, and me, and my little
sister’s going when she gets big enough.”
“Yes. Well, thank you. I may call there in the course of the day. Does
that path lead back to your school-house?”
“Yes, sir. But you must turn to the right at the big sand-banks, and
cross the foot-log over Rocky Fork by Hall’s mill.”
The gentleman nodded, and passed on smiling as Doctor Garde’s little
girl dropped him another curtsy. She skipped across the stones and
hastened up rising ground to the Banks’. Theirs was a weather-beaten
domicile, part log and part frame, with a covered stoop at one door on
which Tildy sat plaiting her long hair preparatory to going to school.
Tildy, it must be confessed, was a raw-boned girl, but with a
low-browed, serious face. Her nature leaned to the solemn side of life,
as her sister Teeny’s leaned towards what was merry. Matilda liked to
sit in the grass and dress her locks, or to watch from the doorstep the
rocks and glooms on each side of her home.
Teeny appeared within, tying her bonnet, the string of her reticule
across her arm. A bunch of old-fashioned pink roses was pinned to her
dress, which hooked in front and was just long enough to sweep her
heels when she walked. Teeny was a big girl who felt quite a young
woman, since she was “going on” fifteen, ciphered in long division, and
had finished a sampler with her name, “Christine Banks,” embroidered
under a beautiful piece of poetry. “We’re takin’ curran’-pie for our
dinner to-day, Melissy,” announced Tildy solemnly as Doctor Garde’s
little girl ran up.
“I got some, too,” she responded with triumph. So little made a triumph
in that region and time.
“’Tain’t sweetened with sugar.”
“’Tis, too! I saw Liza put in heaps.” She sat down on the steps and
explored her reticule. There was rather a sorry mess in its depths, but
the slices of bread were reduced again to their proper basis, and the
other goodies piled carefully on them.
“Why don’t you call me Bluebell?” she suggested with a rather hopeless
accent.
“’Cause that ain’t your name,” said Tildy, strictly.
“I guess my father always calls me that.”
“’Tain’t your name, anyhow. Your name is Melissy Jane Garde, goin’ on
eight years old.”
“It’s just Melissy,” cried the younger, doggedly, as if she would like
to disown that.
“My mother called me Bluebell, too, and she’s gone to heaven. I sh’d
think you might call me what my mother called me.”
“Your name’s Melissy,” repeated Tildy, looking with undisturbed eyes
upon the distance. Here the argument dropped, as it usually did. The
defeated party turned to other things.
“I pretty near fell in the run. The’ was a man come along and scared me
so. He was prettier than my father!” exclaimed Melissa, pausing after
this climax; “that is, dressed up prettier; and he said he was coming
to school to-day. I wonder what he’s coming there for?”
“Prob’ly it’s somebody the directors is sending to whip us,” opined
Matilda with serious resignation. “They say Mr. Pitzer ain’t strict
enough.”
“Oh, do you s’pose it is?” cried the credulous little girl beside her.
“I never got whipped at school yet.”
“Now, Tildy,” exclaimed the pink-faced elder sister, stepping out, “if
you don’t hurry up we’ll go on and leave you.”
“I think I’ll stay at home,” said Tildy, reflecting on the fine
stranger’s probable errand.
“No, you won’t,” cried her mother’s voice from an inner room, making a
pause in the monotonous rattle of a loom; and though it was a plaintive
voice and not very decided, Tildy was moved by it to get her sun-bonnet
and follow the other two. They were making a round of the garden, to
gather pinks, hollyhocks, bouncing-betties, bachelor-buttons, and
asparagus sprays. Having tied up a bunch apiece, they left the house
and began their root-matted and rocky ascent. There were levels above
where the woods made a twilight at noon, where ferns crowded to their
knees, and some stood as high as their waists. Who could help stopping
to inhale that breath which is no plant’s but a fern’s?
“There’s vinegar-balls on this oak,” remarked Tildy, casting her eyes
up as they passed under a dark-leaved tree. So, sticks and climbing
being brought to bear upon the tree, one or two small apple-shaped
bunches were brought down to yield a tart juice to sucking lips.
I do not pretend to say the balls were wholesome. But the same
lips loved the white, honey-filled ends of clover-blossoms, tender
sticks of sweet-briar when stripped of its skin, and they doted on
“mountain-tea,” a winter-green of three rich fleshy leaves, which clung
all over these heights in fragrant mats. The three girls were lovers
of Mother Outdoors. Melissa especially gloried in the woods. The noble
tree arches, the dew, and sweet earth-smell filled her with worshipping
joy. It was so nice to be a little girl with a sun-bonnet hanging off
her shoulders by the strings, and the great woods cooling her face, and
sighing away off as if thinking up some song to sing to her!
In due course they came to three giant ridges of sand. These stood in
a clear place, and nobody in that region troubled himself about the
geological cause of their existence in the heart of the woods. There
they were, too tempting to be resisted. Melissa dropped her reticule,
Tildy seriously followed her example, and Christine forgot her dress
hooking in front and her claims to big girlhood. All three mounted
the dunes, sat down, gathered their clothing close about their feet,
and shot down the sides as if on invisible sleds. This queer sort of
coasting was great fun. When it seemed expedient to adjourn, they shook
the clean sand from their dresses, and the eldest and youngest untied
their low shoes to turn them upside down. Matilda being barefoot and
therefore free from such civilized cares, improved the time by taking
an extra slide, which was too much for the other girls, so they tried
it again.
Thus the morning waxed later. So by the time they crossed the foot-log
over Rocky Fork and approached the log school-house, “books” were
actually “taken up.”
The school-house was chinked with clay and had double doors which
opened close beside a travelled road. The woods and heights rose behind
it, and at one side a sweep of play-ground extended into a viney hollow
where hung the grape-vine swing for which all the girls in school daily
brought pocketfuls of string.
CHAPTER II
MR. PITZER
Christine stepped over the threshold and dropped a curtsy which dipped
her dress in the dust. Matilda followed and was taken with a similar
convulsion on the same spot. Then the smallest bobbed violently; all
this homage being paid to a somewhat threadbare man who sat behind a
high desk opposite the door.
Continuous high desks on a raised platform extended around the walls,
and continuous benches ran in front of them. Here sat the elders of
the school--the big boys and girls, with their backs to smaller fry
who camped on long benches set along the middle of the floor, swinging
their heels and holding spellers in their hands. The benches were made
of split logs, the flat sides planed smooth, and the round sides bored
with holes into which legs were stuck; as these legs were not always
even, boys at opposite ends of a bench could “teeter-totter” the whole
row of urchins between them. There were no backs against which you
might rest your shoulders, but any tired little fellow might lie down
if he took his own risks about rolling off. There had been teachers who
would not allow the muscles thus to relax. But Mr. Pitzer was a kind,
soft-hearted old man, who, as Matilda has hinted, was not considered
strict enough. He had taught the school many seasons.
The directors said he might do for summer, but each winter they
determined to engage some strapping modern pedagogue who could control
the young men and wild young women who sallied knowledge-ward during
the long term. Still Mr. Pitzer was found in his place. He taught
manners and morals as well as the common branches, and his sweet,
severe face under iron-gray hair became stamped on every mind that
entered the double doors.
The tardy pupils, unchallenged, hung their bonnets and dinner-bags on
nails in the wall, Teeny took her big-girls’ seat, and straightway
lay flat on her desk in the agonies of writing a morning copy,
while the other two sat side by side on a bench murmuring the
first reading-lesson. A hum like the music of many hives sounded
all over the room. “D-i-s--dis, d-a-i-n, dain, disdain,” crossed
“in-com-pat-i-bil-i-ty;” and the important scratching of slate-pencils
in the hands of ciphering big boys, seemed to supplement a breathing
and occasional sputter of quill pens.
“Second Reader may stand up!” cried the master.
Bluebell’s class, including her tall friend Matilda, formed in a row in
front of the master’s desk, each holding his reader clinched before his
face.
A polished walnut ferule lay at Mr. Pitzer’s hand, and the text-book
sprawled on the desk. He wore spectacles of so slight an iron frame
that the glasses seemed suspended miraculously between his stern eyes
and the eyes turned up to him. Like a commander giving some military
order, he now cried out: “Attention!”
At the signal every girl dipped low and every boy bent forward with a
bow. It would have been a misdemeanor for the girls to bow and the
boys to curtsy, and they knew it. Then the boy at the top of the class
began to read in a voice which could be heard on the opposite side of
the road; he was followed by a timid little girl who put her nose close
to the book and spelled and whispered; and she in turn by a merry girl
who had been put back from the Third Reader when the master was cross,
for pronouncing ships wrecked, “shipses rick-ed.” Very little did she
care, for, knowing the Second Reader by heart, it was easy for her to
rattle off the story of The Three Boys and the Three Cakes, with a
moral. Bluebell read in a clear, sensitive, appreciative voice, and
Tildy followed. They spelled the words which the master pronounced to
them, and had another lesson set. The military order was then varied:
“Obedience!”
At this they saluted as before, and took their seats.
Business went on as usual. The large girls recited in smart, high
voices, and the boys blundered in monotone, excepting little Joe Hall,
who was such a mite of a fellow, yet so smart that he knew almost
as much as the master. Joe had ciphered farther into the jungles of
arithmetic than anybody else, and could parse as fast as his tongue
would run. He always had his atlas lessons, and some said had been
clear through the geography, while his writing was so wonderful that
the master sometimes let him set copies when he himself was very busy.
“Somethin’s the matter with the master this mornin’,” whispered Tildy
to Bluebell, as they wriggled around trying to rest their backs.
It was true. He stalked about with his hands under his coat-tails,
sticking his under lip out. Even Joe Hall’s grandiloquent rendering of
Fourth Reader text could not draw his mind from some internal strain;
and after recess the trouble came out.
Mr. Pitzer read the rules of the school. Whenever he had heard
complaint, he brought out those ponderous rules and visited them upon
the pupils that they might know what he required of them, even if he
did not exact it. Every listener, except the new or very dull ones,
knew these rules by heart. They were written on tall cap sheets in the
best of flourishes, and covered the whole duty of boy and girl.
To-day the master read them with frowns and a sonorous voice.
“ARTICLE THIRTEENTH!” he thundered at last; “_Every boy or girl in
going to or from school shall treat with civility all persons whom they
meet upon the highway, he or she making a bow or a curtsy as the case
may be. It shall be a high misdemeanor to treat impolitely any stranger
or strangers in the schoolroom, or the play-ground, or the highway._”
And here as if to test Mr. Pitzer’s pupils in their behavior, a strange
man did step over the threshold, taking off his hat as he did so.
The schoolmaster stopped and glared. But Bluebell’s heart came into
her mouth. She felt unreasonably terrified and trapped by fate. For it
was the curly, glittering gentleman who had promised to come to the
school-house, possibly on that dread errand suggested by Tildy--to whip
the whole school!
CHAPTER III
THE GEOGRAPHY-SCHOOL TEACHER
“May I have a few minutes’ conversation with you?” said the fine
stranger to Mr. Pitzer. The schoolmaster bowed stiffly, said
“Certainly, sir,” with some pomp, and came forward. He evidently felt
distrust, not to say hostility; but after ARTICLE THIRTEENTH, he was
bound to set the school an example in politeness.
There was a stricture around Bluebell’s heart while she watched them
talking in low tones near the door. The stranger was pliant, eager
and voluble. Oh, _how_ he did want to get at them all with his stick!
_Would_ Mr. Pitzer give them over to such shame and pain! She reflected
about the black ripe cherries in her reticule, and wished she had
propitiated the good old man by giving them to him at recess. The
school stopped droning, and held its breath, just as the earth does
before a storm, to catch some hint of this colloquy. Mr. Pitzer seemed
more and more mellowed to the man’s proposals. The curves of his stern
face turned upwards; he nodded his head at the end of every sentence;
and finally, leading the way to his high desk, he told the school that
Mr. Runnels had something important to impart to them.
Bluebell shut her eyes, and cowered. Little Joe Hall sat bolt-upright,
and all the big scholars turned around on their seats.
“He’s going to begin with them on this bench,” whispered Tildy to
Bluebell. Mr. Runnels smiled with his teeth and picked up the ferule.
Oh, how earth brightened again as his business unfolded! The faint,
worm-eaten odor of the glass-smooth bench which she clutched, seemed
quainter to Bluebell than ever before. She had heard the Fourth Reader
class sing out the tale of Ginevra; and that chest, “carved by Antony
of Trent,” had just such an indescribable, pungent smell, she felt
certain, as the desk and seats of this school-house. It had always
given her a pleasant sensation; it now added to her joy; her heart
expanded; Mr. Runnels was a very nice man. He did not even hint that a
school ought to be whipped wholesale; Tildy Banks didn’t know anything
about it. His errand was to organize a geography school!
“The method,” said Mr. Runnels, “is altogether new. I have a fine and
complete set of painted maps representing every part of the earth’s
surface, and the exercise of storing the mind with this important
science is not only vastly improving, but novel and delightful. All of
you speak to your parents. The charge is trifling, but the benefit will
be lasting. Everybody is invited free to the organization of the school
to-night at Harris’s chapel west of this school-house. All the boys and
girls and young people of the next district will be there. So don’t
fail to urge your parents to bring you. So many bright eyes,” said Mr.
Runnels with a charming smile--
The school giggled with delight--
--“so many intelligent faces, instructed by a wise, kind master--”
Mr. Pitzer straightened his back and smiled around--
--“must surely take an interest in this beautiful globe on which we
live.”
Mr. Runnels went on and gave them a short lecture on geography. He
told them anecdotes of that ignoramus who did not believe the world
was round and turned on its axis, because, if this were the case, his
father’s mill-pond would spill all its water. The children laughed
uproariously, though few of them had ever thought of the earth except
as an expanse of rocks, trees and robe-like sward, cleft by the Rocky
Fork.
Mr. Pitzer and the geography-teacher parted with ceremonious bows.
The schoolmaster himself made a few cautious remarks to cool his own
enthusiasm; but the next class, which was the grave elders’ arithmetic,
constantly broke out with fractional questions about a different
science.
At last the sun had retreated from the middle of the floor to the very
door-sill. By this token they knew it was high noon. Spellers were laid
straight on the benches around the wall, desk lids were shut down over
their miscellany. Eyes looked expectantly at the master, and all arms
were folded. He uttered one magic word: “Dismissed!”
The school seemed to turn a complete somersault: every child projected
himself like an arrow toward the door, whooping, singing, scampering
and tumbling. Chaos surged to the brown wooden joists. Some nimble
little boys got on the desks and galloped around, while others slipped
out through the windows, which were set sidewise instead of lengthwise
in the log walls, looking like windows that had lain down to dream.
The master, swinging a thick wooden cane, walked to his house which
was near. It might confer distinction to go home to one’s dinner, but
this distinction was not courted even by children who lived in sight.
Could anything be more delightful than that noon hour! Was it only an
hour--that time stuffed full of events as a month? It was the kernel of
all day, at any rate.
Bluebell and Tildy went to their play-house to eat dinner. This summer
residence was formed by a triplet of trees growing so close together
as to form a deep alcove. The floor was carpeted thick with moss which
Bluebell and Tildy changed every few days. They had some gnarly
chairs, which you might have called chunks. Hanging their sun-bonnets
up on scales of bark, they ate their dinners in society, much as
foreign people attend the theatre. For all about them were similar
boxes, or residences, whose occupants visited, and exchanged samples
from each others’ reticules, so what was cooked on one side of the
district was tested on the other side.
Amanda Willey and Perintha Pancost knocked at the bark door of Misses
Garde and Banks, and were bidden to come right in and take chairs.
The residence being already comfortably full, however, and no chairs
visible, they stayed outside and took grass, which was far more
comfortable. Tildy and Perintha swapped a fragment of cherry-pie
and a bit of rather stale cake, while Amanda gave Bluebell a piece
of her cheese for some cherries. These were grave transactions,
each party examining what she received with due caution, excepting
Bluebell, who was willing to fling her repast right and left without
considering whether she got its equivalent or not. Amanda Willey was
a large-faced, smiling girl with very smooth hair cut short around her
neck. Over her ordinary dress she wore a long-sleeved pink sack, and a
pink apron tied about the waist like a grown woman’s. The costume was
most pleasing in Bluebell’s eyes.
“I got a black-silk apron,” she observed, smoothing and patting
Amanda’s drapery. “I’m going to ask Liza to let me wear it to geography
school.”
“I’m going,” exclaimed Perintha Pancost. “The man’s to board at our
house. He had his breakfast there.”
“I ain’t,” said Tildy. “He looks like a raskil. Mebby he’s come down
here to rob folks.”
The blue eyes, brown eyes and hazel eyes around her stood out at
this suggestion. Tildy spoke as if her acquaintance with rascals was
thorough.
“I don’t think that’s very smart of you, Till Banks,” said Perintha,
the hostess of the “raskil.” “My pa and ma don’t have robbers at our
house. He’s the pertiest kind of a man. I like him.”
“So do I,” decided Bluebell with a sigh of relief. Her credulous nature
had been staggered by Matilda. “I’ll take my Noey’s Ark book to read in
g’ography school.”
The boys, having swallowed their dinners, were already shouting at
“Bull in the Pen,” when the girls gathered to take turns at the swing.
How sweet these allotted ten or a dozen rushes through the air were,
with some swift-footed girl running under you to send you up among the
branches! The glee with which you grabbed a leaf, your slow reluctance
in “letting the old cat die,” and another succeed you! The number of
games of “Black Man,” “Poison,” “Base,” which can be crowded into one
noon, has never been computed. Every muscle is strained, the hair
clings to pink foreheads, lungs and hearts work like engines, and the
outdoor world is _too_ sweet to be given up when that rattle of the
master’s ferule against the window sash is supplemented by the stern
call of “Books!”
Drenched in the dew of health, every little body rushed again to the
hard benches. Bluebell told herself that she always liked afternoon,
it seemed so short; and as the sun stooped lower and lower, a lump
of homesickness grew in her for the old weather-stained house, her
father’s return from his daily rounds, and the baby’s tow head and
black eyes which were sure to meet her at the lower bars. Then there
was the spelling-class which crowned every day’s labor. Orthography may
not be the most important element of education, but Bluebell thought
it was, and she had a genius for it. While Tildy swung sleepy legs.
Bluebell mentally counted her own “head-marks,” and speculated on what
the master’s offered prize might be at the end of the term. Classes
succeeded each other, and the sweet dream-producing hum went on, until
Bluebell found herself again going triumphantly “down foot,” having
scored still another head-mark.
Then the roll was called, while reticules, bonnets and caps were slyly
gathered off their pegs and passed from hand to hand, that no one
might keep the others waiting. Joe Hall responded to his name with
a shout, while Amanda Willey’s voice could scarcely be heard; some
pupils answered “half a day;” and for others there was a hurried cry
of “absent,” not always correct, as in the case of John Tegarden, who
shook fist and head many times at Joe Hall for shouting absent to his
name when he was there in the body. Joe ducked his shoulders, and
intimated by lifting his eyebrows, grimacing and nodding, that this was
an oversight on his part. And John was obliged to carry his grievance
outdoors, as he was the first boy on his bench. Dinner-bag and cap in
hand, he stopped at the door to scrape and say “Good-evening!” to the
master, receiving a stately “Good-evening” in return. Thus one by one
they filed out, each child stopping to make that grave salutation,
until the master was free to close the double doors and fasten them
with chain and padlock.
It was more than two hours till sunset; but there were long shadows
in the woods, and an evening coolness was stealing over the beautiful
earth.
The Rocky Fork foaming over boulders or spreading into still pools at
the feet of leaning trees, shaded, variable, but clear as spring water,
cut the home path in two, and was spanned by a foot-log. The wheel of
Hall’s mill turned lazily here, and the mill-race made Bluebell’s brain
unsteady. Not so the shady pebbles in the stream. She sat and watched
them after crossing until Tildy’s voice up the ascent gave her warning
to hurry.
All the country was in that afterglow of sunset when she reached the
pasture-bars behind the house. And of course there was the little
sister at the bars, her curly tow hair dovetailed at the back, her
black eyes spread and both white claws clinging around the wood.
“Some tump’ny’s tum!” she cried.
CHAPTER IV
COMPANY
The announcement that there was company did not prevent Bluebell from
climbing the bars and giving Roxy a warm hug, but rather added strength
to the embrace.
“You little darling, it’s been so long since I saw you! Ear-ly this
morning sisser went away. Who’s come? Hope it isn’t somebody that’ll
keep us from playing and having a good time.”
The tow-headed sister spread her nervous little hands and attempted
description while trotting along.
“Lady with turls: nice, nice lady!”
“Is father home?”
“No.”
“Doesn’t Liza know who she is?”
“No. Liza say, ‘Take off your fings. Doctor be home pretty soon.’”
“Oh! It’s somebody to be doctored.”
“It’s tumnp’ny!” urged Rocco. “We goin’ to have plum p’serves for
supper.”
This settled it. Liza was a discriminating housekeeper who did not
regale calling patients with her best preserves. The doctor’s house was
also his office where people came for medicines or treatment, and the
Rocky Forkers were willing to make it a free hotel; but Liza was not.
Liza had been spinster mistress of the house for twenty-five years.
Her mother died only the year before her cousin, Doctor Garde, and his
orphans came, and the short, plump, merry, quick old maid had taken
care of her mother for a long time. She liked taking care of people.
It was really for the privilege of taking care of the children that
she rented her premises to her cousin. He came with two babies, and a
new medical diploma to build up a practice among the hills, and threw
himself entirely into work, leaving Liza to bring up the children as
she saw best. She was a woman with a wholesome soul, and they all
got on comfortably. While she thought the doctor remarkable in his
profession, and felt pride in his cases and cures, outside of that,
being considerably his senior, she took the attitude of a protecting
aunt.
To-night the children saw her standing in the back door, looking comely
and important, her black hair sleeked down to her cheeks.
“M’lissy,” she exclaimed--for when Liza was anxious or grave, she
called the child by her real name--“go into my room and put on your
blue calico, and your white stockings and slippers. I’ll come and braid
your hair.”
“Who’s come, Liza?”
“It’s some of your kin. Mind, now, don’t go through the sitting-room.”
Then Bluebell knew that the awful presence was there. She walked on
tiptoe past the closed door, Rocco at her heels, and slipped up the
staircase to that half nursery, half bedroom, which the children
occupied with Liza. It contained some of their mother’s furniture: a
mahogany chest of drawers, bulging in front; a stuffed rocking-chair
in which Bluebell told the little sister stories; a crib, and a
trundle-bed which was not pushed under Liza’s white-valanced and
quilt-covered four-poster, but stood under a window that the
cherry-boughs scraped. The room was whitewashed as fair as a lily, even
to the hewed wood joists. Liza’s dresses hung on nails along the wall,
and Bluebell’s hung beneath in a row which she could reach.
Her heelless slippers and fine open-work stockings came out of the
chest of drawers; and she was soon struggling to hook the blue calico,
but ineffectually, when Liza came up like a breeze, brushed and braided
her hair in two short tails, tied the tails with yellow brocaded ribbon
from her own ribbon-box, and looked her over approvingly.
“Now don’t forget your curchy,” she admonished. “Come here, Rocky: let
me braid your hair, too, while I’m about it.”
Rocky demurred, but it was no use. Her lint locks were swiftly made
into two tiny strands and also tied across with yellow ribbon, giving
her an ancient and grotesque appearance. The children trod down-stairs
a step at a time, hand in hand. Bluebell trembling with bashful
self-consciousness. It choked her voice and made her dizzy when she
entered the sitting-room, so that she stumbled on a strip of the
home-woven carpet laid loose upon the floor. There were a few chairs,
including one gilt-ornamented rocker, and a case of the doctor’s books,
in the sitting-room; and nothing more; for the guest in white curls was
on the porch looking up the amphitheatre of woods surrounding her.
She was certainly a great lady. Her dress of plum-colored poplin had
a long pointed waist; she wore a broad embroidered collar turned over
ribbon, and just as the children appeared, put a large, open-faced gold
watch back into its pocket. Her hair was coiled on the top of her head
and fastened with a shell comb, two full curls being left at each side
of the forehead.
Bluebell felt overwhelmed when this lady turned her delicate face
from the hills and reached two transparent hands toward the country
children. Bluebell made her obeisance, and the lady seemed pleased with
the conscientious gravity with which she did it.
“Don’t you know me?” said this lady, pressing a hand of each child.
“No, ma’am.”
“I am Miss Calder. Your father has told you about me? I became
responsible for you when you were an infant, and you received my name,
Melissa.”
Bluebell searched her memory painfully. She was very anxious to know
her namesake, who seemed the daintiest woman alive; but having no
recollection of the matter herself, she was forced to admit she did not
know she had one.
“I s’pose father forgot to tell me,” she observed, bringing forward the
best excuse she could think of for him.
“I dare say,” said Miss Calder. “He has not been the same man since
your mother died.” The fair old lady began to tremble. She took a
handkerchief out of the beaded reticule hanging to her arm, and,
hugging Bluebell to her, cried for several minutes with an agitation
which shook them both. Bluebell was much embarrassed. She felt that she
ought to be very sorry, and heaved several deep sighs; but the pain in
her nose, which Miss Calder was squeezing against the watch-case, kept
her from fully giving herself up to grief, and it was probably just as
well, as she had a whole lifetime in which to miss her mother.
The rose-leaf maiden lady dried her eyes, and sat down with the
children, one on each side of her.
“Are you ’sponsible for Rocco, too?”
“No. I do not know who named her. Your parents were living in another
place at that time, and your mother died soon after her birth. I have
not seen you since you were a babe in arms. Your mother was a very
lovely woman.”
“We’ve got a daguerreotype of her.”
“Indeed! will you let me see it?”
“Father will when he comes. He keeps it locked in his desk drawer.
I took it to school one day to show to the scholars, ’cause Printhy
Pancost said she knew my mother wasn’t pretty, and he said I mustn’t
take it any more.”
The fair lady smiled slightly, and said again, “Indeed!” This appeared
to be a polite word which she uttered without the least emotion, merely
to indicate that she was listening.
“What do you study at school?”
“Reading and spelling. I’m in the Second Reader. We’ve read as far as
the ‘Three Boys and the Three Cakes,’ and we’re spelling in ‘A-base.’
I could spell over to ‘In-com-pat-i-bil-i-ty,’ but the rest can’t. And
there’s going to be a g’ography school, and I’ll ask father to send me.”
“Indeed. You are very smart in your studies, Melissa. Little Roxana
doesn’t go to school?”
“No, ma’am.”
Here little Roxana, unwilling to be presented to company as totally
unaccomplished, rubbed her long fingers over the lady’s watch-guard and
asserted herself:
“I can sing at the foonerals!”
Bluebell felt disconcerted. She feared to shock the rose-leaf guardian;
but Rocco took no notice of her signal to drop the subject.
“I can sing ‘Back any more,’ and ‘Cap in a father’s hand.’” To prove
which the baby began at once and sang in a clear, bold voice:
“This is the way I long have sought,
I neva’ turn back any more:
And mourned a-tause I foun’ it not,
I neva’ turn back any more:
Away the holy proph-ups went,
I neva’ turn back any more:
The road ’t leads from bam-shum-ment,
I neva’ turn back any more!”
“Why, indeed!” exclaimed Miss Calder. But, like a wound-up musical box,
changing her tune, Rocco went on:
“There is a happy land,
Far, far away:
There saints and glory stand,
Bright, bright as day.
Caps in a father’s hand,
Love cannot die.”
“I know ‘Jucy-crucy-fide-him,’ too.”
“She means ‘The Jews, they crucified Him,’” said Bluebell.
“I sing it to the white chicken’s fooneral, and the black chicken’s
fooneral, and the speckled chicken’s fooneral.”
“You see,” said Bluebell, hot in the face, but constrained to answer
the raised eyebrows of this lady who probably never pulled off shoes
and stockings or rolled down a sandbank, or so much as looked at a
dead chicken, when she was a little girl, “we got a little graveyard.
And there were so many pretty little chicks died. And Liza lets us take
the fire shovel. We dig a nice little hole and fence it all round with
sticks in the bottom, and wrap the chicky up; then we ’tend like this
porch was the church, and we sing and have a funeral like they did
when Mary Jane Willey died--I just preach about what a good chicken it
was,” stammered Bluebell; “and then we ’tend like we’re cryin’ and put
it in our box that we pull with a string, and have a percession to the
grave.” She became so interested in the description that she ended with
some gusto.
Miss Calder put her handkerchief to her lips, shaking a little, and
Bluebell felt afraid that she was going to cry again.
“Isn’t that an unhealthy kind of play?” she finally asked.
“Oh no, ma’am--the chickens is just as clean!”
“But your feelings are so disturbed.”
“We just _let on_ we feel bad. We got ten chickens buried, and
headstones and footstones to ’em all. We enjoy ourselves so much!”
Miss Calderas smile now escaped from the handkerchief and ran up her
delicate shrivelled face.
“I have something for you in my trunk which may amuse you in a
different way.” So saying the lady rose and rustled into the
sitting-room, where in one corner stood a small, round-lidded
hair-trunk just as the driver from the station had left it. She opened
this with a key from her reticule, while Bluebell and Roxana stood one
at each end of it, their hands behind them and their pulses beating
with expectation. A scent of lavender and rose-leaves came from under
the cover. Miss Calder lifted musky robes of lawn, dazzling white
embroidered garments, and her cap and bonnet-box out, before she came
to certain packages which she methodically unwrapped.
Bluebell swallowed several times, and the little sister opened her
mouth.
[Illustration: “HERE’S A WAX DOLL FOR YOU.”--_Page 47._]
The first thing which came to sight was a string of blue and white
beads braided in a rope; that Miss Calder tied around Rocco’s
honored neck. Then followed a rattle and whistle, also for Rocco, whom
the good lady had evidently pictured to herself as yet an infant. But
when two flat packages revealed themselves, “Tales from Catland” in red
and gold and “Stories from Roman History” in black, flexible backs,
Bluebell felt unspeakably rich. This was, after all, a comparative
state. The superlative was reached when the last bundle of all came
out of several newspapers and folds of tissue paper. There were some
glimpses of pink gauze, the unmistakable presence of small gaitered
feet, then the actual dawning of rosy face and flaxen hair.
“Here’s a wax doll for you,” said Miss Calder, making the presentation
as if wax dolls were a common addition to every well-regulated little
girl’s family. This was the first of that particular class of dolls
the children had ever seen. Several cheap ladies with broken heads
were lying about the house; for whenever the doctor made a journey he
brought one of the children a doll and the other a book--the books
being always histories, or solid sciences.
Bluebell, I must confess, was too much an outdoor child to be a tender
mother of dolls. But this beautiful creature with real hair, woke
rapture in her. Her breath came short when she thanked the new friend.
The splendor of such a possession made her ashamed of her unmaternal
care over the plainer dollies who had fallen one by one into Rocco’s
untutored hands.
“What will you call her?”
“I think the prettiest name in the world is Georgiana,” said Bluebell,
hesitating. If this darling must be called Melissa it seemed more than
she could stand!
“That suits her very nicely,” agreed the fair maiden lady. Bluebell was
emboldened to go up closer and make her lips into an expectant bud.
“You want to kiss me, do you?” said Miss Calder, smiling; so she
inclined her cheek towards the bashful, eager little face, and Bluebell
felt as if she had kissed a white hollyhock’s yielding petal.
“I have some pretty pieces to make Miss Georgiana more clothes. Do you
know how to sew?”
“I can hem a little, but it sticks my finger.”
“Have you begun a sampler yet?”
“No, ma’am. But Liza’s going to start one for me. Teeny Banks has got
one done, but she’s a young woman.”
A well-known, ringing neigh came from the lane which led through woods
from the main road.
“That’s Ballie! Father’s at the bars. I’ll go and tell him you’re come.”
Father had flung himself out of the saddle, and the slender-legged,
delicate Arabian mare followed him into her stable. Her chestnut coat
had the richness of satin. She had one white stocking and a white face,
pink, sensitive nostrils and an arching neck. She had been known to do
marvels of speed, to breast swollen streams, to pick her way carefully
around dangerous cliffs in the darkest night. She and her master moved
together like one of the old sylvan Centaurs; but if Bluebell climbed
her back, as she sometimes did, the Arabian stepped as gently as a
nurse.
Accustomed to her father’s habits, Bluebell waited on the barn floor
until he stabled the pretty creature. She still held Miss Georgiana
carefully in her arms. He came out, unfastened his leggings, and hung
them in their usual place. His face was square, serious, and sweet.
His light hair hung below his high standing collar. He was a young
man, scarcely thirty, and so lovable when he got into the arms of his
children. Still, Bluebell had been taught not to address him by the
diminutive of papa. His own bringing-up had been austere, inclining to
plain, strong words like father, mother, children.
“See what I got!” cried his little girl.
Father lifted her up, doll and all, relaxing into a smile.
“Where did you get that?”
“Father, Miss Calder has come. And she brought Rocco some beads and me
some books, and Rocco a whistle, and me a doll, and she’s got a gold
watch and white curly hair! Oh, I’m so glad! And may I go to g’ography
school to-night? There’s a man going to teach in the church.”
Father put her down and took her hand.
“When did she come?” he inquired as they walked towards the house.
“Before I got home from school. I guess a man brought her. And,
father,” advised Bluebell, confidentially, “don’t say anything to her
about mother, for if you do, she’ll burst out a-crying!”
He looked down at the auburn head with wistful eyes.
It occurred to her afterwards that grown people seemed to pay little
attention to what children said; for when she came in with Rocco to
supper, father was showing Miss Calder the daguerreotype, and she was
crying in her web-like handkerchief.
Bluebell heard her say, “She was like a daughter to me.” The doctor sat
with his head on his hand. But Bluebell was prevented from witnessing
their meeting by Roxana’s singular behavior. This lint-locked damsel
stood beside the house, her hands locked behind her. The whistle
and rattle lay despised upon the earth, though her beads still hung
beneath her sulking chin. Bluebell’s heart misgave her. But she tried
persuasion.
“Darling, don’t you want to go and help sisser hunt up the old,
_pretty_ dollies, and set ’em in a nice row?” Rocco’s whole body shook
a negative.
“Would you like to _hold_ the wax dolly in your hands, and be _real_
careful?”
Rocco kicked backward with her heel to indicate her contempt for the
wax dolly.
“O dear!” sighed Bluebell, who had been taught it was the duty of an
elder sister to give up to the younger. “_Do_ you want to take my doll
right out of my mouth, when it was a present, too, and pull her hair
out and rub dirt on her face, and break her all to pieces?”
Roxana wriggled a very faint negative. But still it was evident that
wax doll stood between her sister’s heart and hers.
“I don’t da’st to give her away to you,” pleaded Bluebell, safe
on that point; still she looked ruefully at the fair Georgiana’s
dissension-creating face.
“I don’t want the ole fing!” exclaimed Rocco, sticking her lip further
out and scowling. She really did not know what was swelling in her
tender little heart.
“Then, honey-dew,” argued Bluebell, whose affection would burst into
pet names which she would not on any account have had her elders hear,
“what you poutin’ for?”
She held the disturbing Georgiana aloft.
“Georgiana,” said the elder sister, “I got just one little
Rockety-popperty, and I love her and hug her, and our mother’s dead,
so we’re half-orphans. And we play together and have the best times!
Buryin’ chickens and all.”
Rocco’s long fingers twisted nervously, and one full tear splashed on
the toe she was scowling at.
“And now a good friend’s come, and brought you, and my little sister’s
got mad! It makes me feel so bad I don’t want to play! You can just
stay here under this tree. I’m goin’ off in the woods or some place.
And our company will want to know what’s become of me, and folks will
say, ‘she went off and lay down like the babes in the woods ’cause her
sister didn’t love her any more!’”
Roxana uttered a mournful whoop. Her heart broke under its heavy
weight, and the freshet washed over her face.
“_I_ ain’t mad, B’uebell,” she surrendered, piteously.
They flew and caught each other in a tight embrace, Bluebell stooping
to the baby.
“I do love you any more!”
“You old darling!”
“Don’t go off to the woods!”
Rocco was such a delicious little sister in her melting moment, so
wet-eyed, so tremulous in the breast, clinging with such loving arms,
that the least pliable person could not resist her.
“No, I won’t go off to the woods, honey-dew,” vowed Bluebell.
“You can have my eggs in the rob--rob--robin’s nest,” hiccupped Rocco,
who in the triumph of affection gave up all things.
“And you can be Georgiana’s mother, and I’ll be her grandmother! Then
you’ll own her too, and I won’t be givin’ her away!” This flash of
Bluebell’s genius fused the whole difficulty.
Rocco’s tears were carefully wiped off on the wrong side of her apron.
A smile like the brightness after rain spread from her black eyelashes
all over her face, a reflection of the smile Georgiana had been so
steadily bestowing on her small maternal relative, her grandparent,
the dark, weather-beaten house, the cherry-trees, and all animate and
inanimate nature.
CHAPTER V
THE GEOGRAPHY SCHOOL
After supper Miss Calder professed herself very much fatigued; so Liza
showed her at once to the best room, and Doctor Garde, before setting
out on a night-ride, carried her trunk into it.
This gorgeous apartment was situated on the ground floor, opening
directly from the sitting-room; and as the rest of the family slept
up-stairs, the timid lady felt an unacknowledged chill running down her
spine. She considered that she had come into a wild and uncivilized
region, and remembered the brigand-like workmen at the Furnace who
seemed to regard her with curiosity.
“Are you not afraid, alone with the children, when Doctor Garde is
gone?” she asked Liza, while laying out her toilet-set.
“Oh no, I never think of such a thing. Mother and me lived here alone
so long. They say it is unsafe over in the Harris neighborhood. But
nobody ever tried to break into this house.”
A screech-owl screamed, and Miss Calder shuddered. These spinster
ladies were very polite to each other, but they really stood in social
opposition.
“She’s used to fine living, and she’ll think this is no place to bring
up the children,” was Liza’s secret fear.
“The children seem healthy and happy enough,” was Miss Calder’s silent
comment, “but they never will learn manners here. Maurice must be
roused, and reminded of his duty to them.”
There was a fireplace in the spare bedroom, now filled with asparagus
and roses set in a huge blue pitcher. The toilet-stand was covered
with ruffled dimity. The bed-valance was also of ruffled dimity, and a
mountain of feather-beds, dressed in the best linen and showiest quilts
the house afforded, offered Miss Calder repose. Liza had once been to
Fredericktown, and she flattered herself she knew how town-folks fixed
their company rooms. A chest on legs and a brass-knobbed bureau stood
in opposite corners. The flowered bowl and pitcher would be eagerly
seized by china-fanciers in these days. A long gilt-framed glass, with
a gaudy landscape at the top of it, was shrouded in gauze, like the
face of a Turkish wife. On each paper blind was represented a colossal
vase of flowers, so gorgeous that real roses were put almost out of
countenance by them. And the chairs were all wooden seats instead of
split-bottom, and had gilding on their backs. On the wall was a framed
certificate of Liza’s church-membership; and the plaster-of-Paris
images of a cat and a parrot ornamented opposite ends of the mantel,
while “Little Samuel” knelt pacifically between them.
“There’s no lock on the door that opens on to the porch,” bustled Liza,
“but you needn’t be afraid. Nobody could open that door without waking
you.”
Miss Calder saw this door with cold perspiration, and thought of her
cozy upper chamber at home, and her two bell-ropes which on the instant
would arouse Maria and the man.
But she smiled as pleasantly as possible, while thinking, “My nerves
will not bear such a strain long.”
Liza wished her good-night, and went to put the baby to bed, and attend
to her milking.
The cows were at the lower bars, waiting in content. Night had not
fairly set in, for twilight lingers so long among the hills. There was
dead blackness up the pine slopes, but an afterglow along the valley.
Bluebell sat on the fence watching these bovine mothers. She had called
them from the other side of the run, with long intonations: “Su-kee;
Pi-dey! Ro-see! Su-ukee!” Pidey’s bell had tinkled accompaniment,
recording their progress on the way. Now it dingled down the opposite
hill with such a clamor that Bluebell could fancy the knock-kneed trot
of both cows; and now it thumped as they plunged into the run; then it
wandered along, pausing over some very sweet bunch of grass, jerking at
a mouthful of sweet-briar, and finally coming to the bars in perfect
marching time: “_te-ding_, _te-ding_, _te-ding_, _a-ding_, _ding_.”
Bluebell had never heard an organ or an orchestra. She thought that
cow-bell in the dim landscape, with echoes coming back from the hills,
the most softening music in the world. The sound brought with it a
smell of roses, of grass after rain, and clover.
But another sound now attracted her ear, and she turned on the fence.
Ballie was neighing at the upper bars. The doctor had one foot in the
stirrup and was rising to his seat when his daughter’s voice burst out
in appeal:
“Oh, father, won’t you please take me to g’ography school?”
She clung panting to the fence. “The whole school’s goin’, and it’s
only to Harris’s chapel!”
He felt very tender toward his children this evening, though he thought
himself always too indulgent.
“But I haven’t time to take out the buggy now.”
“Can’t I ride behind you, father? I’m all dressed up ’cept my Sunday
flat.”
“Well, run and get it then, I can leave you at the chapel, and pick you
up when I come back. Tell Liza to pin a shawl around you.”
Bluebell was presently climbing to a seat behind the Arabian’s saddle,
and holding around her father as they trotted away. Her mother’s
black-silk, heavily fringed shawl was pinned tightly under her chin. It
must be confessed that Liza had not seen her wrapped. Liza was with the
baby, and Bluebell knew she would put the horrible old broche around
her--a wrap beautiful in its time, but now as old as Liza’s self, and
much the worse for wear. So the damsel knocked hastily at Miss Calder’s
door, to gain access to the chest within.
Miss Melissa opened it with some hesitation lest it were an early
housebreaker. She had on a flowered dressing-gown and was brushing out
her puffs.
“I only want to get my shawl out of the chest,” said the little girl,
and she hurried to lift the heavy lid.
“Are you going out, my dear?”
“Father’s goin’ to take me to g’ography school.”
“To geography school?”
“Yes, ma’am. I’m to ride behind him on Ballie, and he’ll leave me at
the door, and call for me when he comes back. It will be such fun!”
Miss Melissa looked as if she hardly thought so. Her inward comment
was, “Dear me! how negligent and ignorant of a mother’s duty a man is!”
Bluebell dragged out the heavy embroidered black shawl, and ran with
it. The silk apron was not attainable; but this royal garment and her
“flat” were more than she had hoped for. The “flat” was a brown crimped
straw with flopping brim, tied under the chin--a head-covering for
Sunday.
It was quite an adventure to be going towards that unknown delight of
geography school, behind on Ballie, who, though kind, curvetted and
begged to know why _she_ was asked to do double duty like any old hack.
They rode by the skirts of the pines, and down a knotty, steep wagon
road, over the bridge of the run to the cross-roads. Lights from
various cabins twinkled along their way. The horse’s hoofs struck the
county thoroughfare which led past the school-house, but paused at a
small white building, and here Bluebell alighted. Her mind had been too
busy for talk, and her young, grave father, occupied also, whistled
under his breath all the way. It made her feel sad to hear father
whistle so--it was like the far-off sigh of the pines.
“I’ll stop for you,” he said as he cantered off.
Harris’s chapel was lighted; and through its two open doors you could
see it was crowded. Its gable-end was towards the road, and a flight
of wooden steps led up to each door. Bluebell entered on the “women’s
side.” No kind of meeting could be held in the building which would
make it proper for these doors to be used indiscriminately. All the men
and boys entered at one door, all the women and girls at the other; a
certain partition in the benches separated the house into two sides,
one of which was composed of bonnets, and the other of bare heads
having the hair cropped around the ears.
But never had the chapel presented so enjoyable a sight to Bluebell’s
eyes as now. She liked the nine-o’clock Sunday-school, and even the
sermon, though the minister always pounded and the echoes of his voice
made your ears ache; but when the windows were open such pleasant air
came in, the children looked so nice in their Sunday clothes, and
their mothers so peaceful, and even ugly old Mr. Harris seemed quite
pleasant, when he started the singing, keeping time with his foot, and
rolling out cheerfully:
“Come, let us anew
Our journey pursue,
Roll round with the year,
And never stand still
Till the Master appear.”
But to-night the whitewashed walls glistened under tallow candles stuck
in tin sockets at regular intervals around them, besides those lights
in the great chandeliers made of cross-pieces of wood pierced with
holes. At the pulpit-end of the room, large maps covered the wall;
and below them stood Mr. Runnels with a long pointer in his hand. The
seats seemed filled to overflowing with everybody for miles around,
as Bluebell tiptoed up the aisle. The flat flopped and the fringed
shawl trailed. Some one put out a hand and pulled her, and she found
Perintha Pancost had squeezed a seat for her, which she thankfully
took, settling her little blushing face into the mass. She found Mandy
Willey on the other side of her. Mandy Willey had on the black-silk
apron, and her white sun-bonnet. She had also a pocketful of fresh
mountain-tea, which she divided with the other girls.
“What did you wear your flat for?” whispered Perintha disparagingly.
“Take it off!” Her school bonnet lay in her lap, and she looked
comfortable.
“I sha’n’t do it,” whispered back Bluebell with some asperity.
“My maw has an old shawl like that,” added Perintha, fingering the
fringe.
“Your maw!” retorted Bluebell, stung by the implied stricture when she
thought herself looking her grandest. She concentrated all her scorn on
the soft diminutive. “_I’d_ say mother!”
“Humph!” snuffed Perintha.
“Miss Calder’s come,” continued Bluebell in a dignified fashion. “She’s
a town-lady. She brought me a doll with real hair that you can comb
out, like mine.”
“I don’t care if she has,” retorted Perintha. “My cousin in Frederick
has two dolls nearly as big as I am, and _both_ of them has hair!”
So they might have gone on, trying to outshine each other in lustre
borrowed from their friends and relatives, much as grown people do, had
not Mr. Runnels now claimed everybody’s attention. He gave a brief,
plain lecture on the divisions of the earth’s surface. Then selecting
the map of North America, he requested the best singers to take their
places on front seats. Old Mr. Harris, who had come to keep a proper
check on proceedings, felt touched and complimented by this appeal.
He always led church singing; so, tiptoeing officiously about, he
weeded out a laughing girl here and an awkward young man there, in some
other place a middle-aged farmer who was noted for bass, or a matronly
shrill-voiced sister who responded with reluctance, and placed them in
array, himself at the head, good-naturedly ready to lend his influence
to education.
Then Mr. Runnels turned to the old schoolmaster who sat smiling and
prominent on a chair brought down from the high pulpit, and begged that
the school-children might be brought forward. Upon this, Mr. Pitzer
tiptoed along the aisles, summoning this one and that one of his flock
and ranging them behind the front row, where the heads of some scarcely
reached above the high backs of the seats. Bluebell felt important and
excited, and regretted having left behind her Noah’s Ark book, which
she had proposed to herself as a text-book to the maps. Perintha and
Mandy forgot to munch mountain-tea. Little Joe Hall sat beside the
master, on the men’s side, the master secretly proud of this boy’s
quick mind and alert manner, though pretending to be oblivious to them
lest parents of other children present might say he “showed partiality.”
The geography-teacher explained the map, and old Mr. Harris was the
first to go up and “point out” different countries. He made mistakes
and chirped pleasantly over them, but encouraged one or two blushing
girls to follow him, and a lumbering boy who was so frightened when
the pointer was placed in his hand that he could not tell land from
water.
Then little Joe Hall stepped forward and covered himself all over
with glory; he had the countries so thoroughly by heart that nobody
could puzzle him, though John Tegarden confusedly called for “Russian
Central.” The master smiled furtively around while he took off his
glasses and rubbed them.
But now the beauty of a geography school came into full play. The
improvised orchestra was instructed to lift up its voice and sing off
the map while Mr. Runnels indicated each country with the pointer. The
melody was a sort of chant, but it was a lively chant, and every rustic
took it up with enjoyment:
“Greenland, a desolate and barren region,
Greenland, a desolate and barren region!
“Russian America, New Archangel,
Russian America, New Archangel.
“British America has no capital,
British America has no capital.
“United States, Washington,
The government’s republican:
United States, Washington,
The government’s republican.
“Mexico, Mexico city,
Mexico, Mexico city.
“Central America, New Guatemala,
Central America, New Guatemala.”
It sounded so wonderfully learned. These geographical names were
caught up with gusto by everybody in the house except a few quiet old
folks who respected “good learning,” but felt that their day was too
far advanced to attempt it. In short, the geography-teacher and his
method made an excellent impression; and when he called a recess that
“signers” might come forward and enroll themselves in his classes, as
future lessons would be given with closed doors, a majority of all
present were put upon his lists. Even Mr. Pitzer joined the adult
class; not that he had anything to learn in the science of geography;
but he said he always liked to throw his influence on the right side.
“Ain’t your paw going to send you?” inquired Perintha of Bluebell.
Perintha was promenading with the air of a proprietress, just because
the geography-teacher boarded at her house!
“Course he is,” exclaimed Doctor Garde’s little girl, anxious for his
return; “he always wants me to learn everything I can.”
She stood on a bench and stretched up to one of the high windows to
peer in the direction he had taken. The boys and girls trooped in and
out enjoying their recess; the elderly people gathered in groups; and
she felt quite left out and behind the fashion, until little Joe Hall
called her attention.
“Bluebell Garde, your father wants you.”
“Where is he?” she asked, scrambling down.
“He’s up there talking to Mr. Runnels. I guess he’s signin’ for you.”
He had enrolled her name and paid the fee, in an absent way, but he did
not seem greatly impressed by the smiling geography-teacher.
“The children’s class will meet on Saturday afternoons,” said Mr.
Runnels. “Your little girl seems to have a wonderful mind. She has
learned the map of North America already.”
He said this, drawing his breath over his teeth and bowing in a way
which made Bluebell uncomfortable, “it seemed so affected”--she had
heard Liza speak of “affected people” with such condemnation that they
seemed next door to criminals. The young father looked down at her,
possibly flattered by this tribute to his child’s talents.
“She needs holding back instead of urging forward,” he said briefly;
and taking her hand, he nodded adieu to Mr. Runnels.
“Can’t I stay till it’s out, father?” begged Bluebell, trotting by his
side as he stalked out, his old patients right and left greeting him.
No. He had another call to make on the way home, and had no time for
the geography school.
So she was obliged to console herself, as they cantered along, with
rehearsing the chant which meant in her ears a triplet of gruesome
sounding names for one country:
“Greenland, a des-o-late and barren region!”
They drew up at Ridenour’s gate. Her father went in, with his
black-leather medicine-cases called “pill-bags” over his arm, merely
throwing the Arabian’s bridle over a post. Bluebell crept forward
into the saddle, and began to stroke the mare’s soft neck. She put her
foot into the strap above the stirrup and took a firm seat, imagining
herself flying at full gallop. It would have frightened Miss Melissa
beyond expression to see her in this unprotected, perilous plight.
Suddenly the flat did flop with violence, and she found herself
clinging with all her might to the plunging Arabian’s mane.
“I want you!” said the rough voice of a man, appearing through the
darkness.
CHAPTER VI
THE NARROWS AND MARY ANN FURNACE
“Oh!” added the man, frightened to see such a little shape cling to the
plunging horse, “I thought it was the doctor.”
The doctor was fortunately making a short call; and he now appeared to
quiet the still snorting creature.
“I held on tight, father!” said his little girl, trembling in every
nerve.
“I didn’t mean to scare anything,” apologized the furnace-man with some
compunction, though with his own anxiety and errand upper-most; “but
I saw the horse, like you was startin’ away and I wanted to stop you.
We’ve had an accident down to the Furnace. I went in to your place, but
Liza said you’d gone this way, so I come along expectin’ to meet you.
Eli Ridenour fell over the Narrows.”
“I’ll come,” said the doctor. “Is he at the Furnace?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, you go in and tell the family. Cautiously, mind; his mother
isn’t strong yet. And have them send a wagon with plenty of bedding to
bring him home.”
The furnace-man entered the house without ceremony, according to the
custom of the country, and Doctor Garde swung himself again into the
saddle, taking his little girl this time before him.
“You ought to be in bed,” he observed as they flew up the slope. “Guess
I better let you down where the lane turns off. You can run along then,
can’t you?”
Run along that dark lane, half a mile in length, through blackness, all
alone! Fathers are not mothers; and this father, though the tenderest
in intention, was so accustomed to heroic methods himself, that he did
not realize what terror his proposition held for his little girl.
“Don’t make me get off,” she pleaded, patting his shaven cheek. She
thought of Billy Bowl. It is impossible to explain how this mythical
character could haunt her after dark. He was a monster of ingratitude
in a story, and Bluebell had a greater horror of him than of any other
image her mind could call up. Billy Bowl was a bow-legged fellow who
slipped into a pit: there he lay bellowing for help--Bluebell could
fancy his hoarse cries--until some good man came along and pulled him
out. It was easy to picture this excellent person reaching into the
pit and taking hold of Billy’s repulsive hand. And being pulled out,
what did the bow-legged Billy do? He turned around--how strongly the
case was stated in that!--he _turned around_ and pushed in the man
who pulled him out! Many a night Bluebell wished Billy Bowl had been
left in the pit! Many a time did she regret Liza had ever told her the
story. She believed him always abroad, an element of evil on the air!
She could not tell any grown person about it. Father would laugh, and
show the absurdity of the fancy.
Father had not the slightest idea that his little girl nursed any
Bugaboo or felt her flesh creep at braving Billy Bowl the whole length
of that lane! With a shade of disapproval, however, he did observe:
“I hope my little girl isn’t a coward?”
Fear of Billy Bowl and general cowardice were two distinct things in
Bluebell’s mind.
“Course I’m not!” she answered with direct truth. “Didn’t I hold tight
and not get throwed off? And I didn’t scream, either. But do take
me along, you never took me to see any patients. I like to go with
you, father,” confessed Bluebell, half-ashamed to reveal how much she
enjoyed his society. And she added, patting his shaven cheek again:
“Little father!”
“Little father” was not displeased by the caress. He kissed her on
the forehead, and thought what a companion she would grow to be for
him. They cantered past the turning off of their lane. The road soon
required all his attention. They entered what was known about Rocky
Fork as the Narrows: a shelf dug out along a precipice. It was only a
mile or so in extent, but being of semi-circular shape, those who used
the pass could see but a few yards ahead of them. Above it the hill
rose perpendicularly in masses of rock and distorted pines as high as
Bluebell could see. Below it--many jagged, straight-down yards below
it--the Rocky Fork murmured along a bed of boulders.
About the middle of the Narrows a huge mass of rock hung over the way,
threatening every passer: it was called the Table. Every hard storm
brought part of it down, and a dangerous gully was worn under it. The
road was comfortably wide for horsemen, though in passing, the one who
had a right to the wall was thankful therefor; but vehicles could not
possibly pass each other.
Whenever two carriages met on the Narrows, the driver nearest the
entrance unhitched his horses, fastened them to the rear of his vehicle
and drew it backward into a broader place. No railing of any sort
protected the edge. No one but a native, or a person perfectly familiar
with every step of the way, would cross the Narrows, especially after
night.
The doctor’s horse picked her way, not too close to the mountain-wall.
Rock-splinters and flint-dust rolled over the edge and were heard
dropping and dropping until the brain turned dizzy following them.
She knew every foot of the road, but snorted frequently as if her
disapproval of it was unconquerable. Bluebell’s fingers tightened on
her father’s coat. Her face was toward the ravine. It was a gulf of
darkness: there was no moon, and it was just as well that little could
be seen except the white flinty track. Just after they passed the Table
rock, where Ballie had to tread quite on the outside to keep from
knocking her rider’s head, they heard footfalls advancing toward them.
Bluebell knew father would take care of her! still they must turn to
the right, and the right was the outside.
The footfalls quickened, they thumped tumultuously: it was a horse
galloping. No man in his senses would make a horse gallop along that
perilous cut. Bluebell could feel her father gathering himself,
tightening his hold on the bridle and around her little body to a cruel
clench. He leaned forward and whispered, “H----st!” to the mare, and
then shouted ahead:
“Look out there!”
The galloping horse, which they could see was riderless, plunged back
and reared directly in front of them. The Arabian recoiled, her hind
feet went over the precipice, and she scrambled like a cat to hang
on with her front hoofs and regain her hold. Father leaned to her
neck--Bluebell felt almost crushed for an instant; then they were on
the solid road, the riderless horse had dashed around the curve, and
the agile Arabian, trembling in every limb, turned her head back to
throw the glare of her eye upon her master’s face.
“Well done!” he said, patting her.
She uttered an exultant neigh, and hurried forward with a quicker step.
“Did I hurt you?” the doctor asked his little girl.
“No, sir,” she replied, breathing hard, but proud of having controlled
herself in this second fright. “There isn’t another horse in the world
as smart as Ballie!”
“She has brought me out of so many tight places,” said the doctor, “I
could trust my life to her. But I wish you were in bed.”
“I didn’t make any fuss!”
“No,” said father, “I’m glad you didn’t; you showed your old Irish
pluck, the pluck of your great-great-grandfather, old Sir James.
During the Irish rebellion in the last century, rough mobs gathered
with pikes at every bridge to spear men of his belief.”
“What’s a pike, father?”
“A pole with a sharp knife on the end. Once when he came by with his
followers the bridge was full, and he rode straight through, fighting
them on all hands, and the rioters missed the pleasure of throwing his
speared body in the stream.”
“It was right for him to fight, was it, father?”
“It is right to meet any emergency with pluck, and overcome it.”
Bluebell felt her heart swell. She determined to show her Irish pluck
in every emergency of life.
The road broadened and a glare fell across it: they had reached the
Furnace. The Furnace, which was called Mary Ann to distinguish it from
other furnaces in the ore region, was an open brick building built into
the hillside. It furnished an industry for many poor men. Here iron was
melted, and the fires seldom went out. Even in sunny days smoke hung
over the cluster of houses in a valley below, which was named from the
Furnace, Mary Ann Post-office.
It was a wonderfully picturesque sight which the riders came upon.
A flare lit up the coal-dust road, and you could look between brick
pillars at what seemed to be the centre of the earth on fire. Men
passed to and fro, thrown into strong relief, and each one wore a
red-flannel blouse known thereabouts as a “wamus,” a name which
probably came from “warm us”; the “wamuses” did not lessen the general
effect.
Bluebell felt excited. She did not miss a point of the picture. Her
father, she thought, was like old Sir James riding through danger.
But the doctor dismounted at once to serious business. One furnace-man
tied his horse, and another gave Bluebell a seat on a stool behind one
of the brick pillars.
“I met a horse galloping around the Narrows,” said Doctor Garde.
“’Twas Eli’s,” said a furnace-man. “It throwed him just at this end
of the Narrows, and went gallopin’ down to Mary Ann. And just a few
minutes ago back it came on the homeward road. We tried to catch it,
and that set it off on the run again. You had a pretty close shave of
it, didn’t you, Doc?”
“Very close,” replied the doctor. He went to his patient, who lay
outside on a bed of coats.
Bluebell sat quietly watching the fires and feeling sorry for the
injured man when he groaned. She heard somebody say it might have gone
worse with him, and that he was not badly hurt after all. Her head
settled against the brick pillar, and the men came and went before
her like figures in a dream. She wondered if it were true, as John
Tegarden said, that all the coal underground for rods around had been
on fire since the old furnace burnt down some years before. He said
horses’ feet sunk through and were in danger of burning off! Then she
heard frogs in the Rocky Fork singing their loudest, as if to drown the
far-reaching cry of insects which make the summer night ring; and the
cool wind and a smell of blossoming laurel rushed over her face.
But, waking next morning on her own bed, she had not the least idea how
she got there. Nor had she dreamed that the events of that finished day
were to make a great change in her life.
CHAPTER VII
MISS MELISSA FURTHER DISAPPROVES OF THE ROCKY FORK
Father had started on his rounds again when his daughter came down to
breakfast, and Miss Calder and Liza were at table, talking politely.
Liza wore a cool, faded lawn, one of her best afternoon dresses, over
which her kitchen apron was tied. Miss Calder, with less of the sun in
her blood, was in a black barège relieved by white sleeves and collar.
Each woman seemed so sweet and fair in her way, that Bluebell hardly
knew which to admire most.
Liza settled the little girl’s dress with a matronly twitch and
fastened a loose hook or two: then poured out her glass of milk and
helped her to bread and butter and fried chicken.
“You won’t want to go to school to-day, will you, Bluebell?” she said.
“Bluebell?” repeated Miss Calder, questioningly. “She is not commonly
called Melissa?”
“Well, no,” replied Liza apologetically; “seems like her mother give
her a kind of a pet name when she was a baby, because her eyes were so
blue. But laws! they’re gray now to what they were before she had the
whooping-cough. Whooping-cough is very hard on children. She had it two
years ago, and so had Rocco, and I was worryin’ about them the whole
summer.”
Bluebell had been considering the sacrifice of a school-day. She
thought of her head-marks, and the probability of Perintha Pancost
or Tildy Banks accumulating wealth of that kind to her detriment, in
her absence. She thought of the noon play, and the geography-school
excitement. Giving up school for the day, and for perhaps as many days
as Miss Calder stayed, was a serious sacrifice. Still, what little girl
_could_ go off to school when her friend was on a visit to the family?
“I won’t go,” said Bluebell, hoping Perintha Pancost at least might
not get the head-mark.
“You must not stay at home on my account,” said Miss Melissa. “I want
to see your school. Your father said he would be driving by that way in
the afternoon and would fetch me home.”
“But it’s so far!” cried the little girl eagerly. “Can you walk all
that way?”
“I think I should enjoy it,” replied Miss Calder, smiling. “I am quite
a pedestrian.”
Bluebell at once felt it was to be an important day. Teeny and Tildy
Banks would be aides-de-camp in the march. She would show her friend
off before the school. Perintha Pancost needn’t take on airs about
the geography-teacher. She could not remember when so distinguished a
visitor had honored the school. The whole pageant flashed before her
mind, even to the finale when her father’s low-seated buggy would be
whirled up before the step by Ballie, and Miss Calder disappear in a
cloud of dust.
So after breakfast they set out, Miss Melissa carrying a blotting-book
to fill with flowers and ferns for her herbarium: a possession
everybody should have, she informed Bluebell.
Bluebell carried a most superior lunch--not in the calico bag, which
smelled of stale bread-crumbs and had been used rather freely in
getting the “last tag” of various girls on separating for the day--but
in a willow hand-basket with lids, so cumbersome that she envied Teeny
and Tildy when they sallied forth with their slim reticule. However,
_they_ had not company.
“And how did you like the singing-school?” inquired Miss Melissa as she
and Bluebell walked down toward the run.
“It was a g’ography school. Oh, it was _so_ nice! He had them sing the
countries--I wish Rocco had waked ’fore we started: I’d ’a’ learned it
to her.”
“This country seems very romantic,” said Miss Calder, inhaling the air
with delight. “But it needs cultivation. You should see the smooth,
beautiful hills around Sharon.”
“Is that where you live, ma’am?”
“Yes, that has been my residence all my life,” said Miss Calder with
nice precision. “And, my dear, you may, if you please, call me Aunt
Melissa. Your mother called me Aunt Melissa.”
“Yes’m. Thank you,” murmured Bluebell. She was about to curtsy, but
hesitated lest it might not be a suitable occasion. “Aunt Melissa, is
Sharon a great big place--as big as Fredericktown?”
“I know nothing about Fredericktown. But Sharon is not a city. It is a
delightful small town of about two thousand inhabitants.”
Bluebell silently wondered who counted the people. She had vast
respect for cities and towns. She could not imagine anything ill-kept
or disgusting about a town. Presently they came to the run, and Miss
Melissa uttered one or two exclamations as she staggered across the
stones.
“This isn’t anything to the foot-log,” said Bluebell. “But, oh, Aunt!
wouldn’t it scared you last night if you’d been on Ballie when she
slipped over the Narrows! It’s an awful steep place!”
“Yes,” said the lady, turning quite pale; “the man who fetched me from
the cars drove along there. He assured me that there was no other
road, or I never should have allowed it.”
“But there _is_ another road.”
“He said there was none. And I have trembled ever since to think of
returning. I trust your father does not ride that way often?”
“Oh, yes, I guess he does.”
Miss Melissa trembled now to think how soon the little speaker might
become doubly orphaned.
“We rode that way last night,” repeated Bluebell, “and a runway horse
come by and pushed us off! Ballie was all off but her fore feet, Aunt,
and she just jumped back! I was scared,” she pursued, plodding along
innocently, her dark bare arms dropping with their load of basket; “but
I showed my Irish pluck and didn’t make any fuss. I didn’t make any,
either, when father left me on Ballie and went in to Ridenour’s. A man
come along and made her plunge so she would have run away or throwed me
off if I hadn’t held tight!”
“Indeed,” said Miss Melissa faintly. But a most determined look grew in
her shocked, affectionate face. “The poor children,” she ruminated,
“will not only have the bringing-up of boys, but their very lives will
be continually endangered by their absorbed young father, if I do not
interfere.”
“You see we had to go to Mary Ann Furnace to ’tend to a man that fell
over the Narrows and got hurt,” Bluebell went on; but by this time they
had reached the Banks’, and Teeny and Tildy were waiting.
Teeny walked beside Miss Calder, trying to feel quite a grown woman
and striking her dignified heels against her own dress at every step;
but Tildy hung back and helped Bluebell with the basket. Tildy felt
a motherly patronage for the smaller girl. They were chums, though
Bluebell’s arm had to reach up to Tildy’s waist, and Tildy’s arm lay
most comfortably on Bluebell’s shoulder. Whatever else might be in
Tildy’s disposition, she was a devoted partisan. These friends seldom
disagreed. Bluebell accepted Tildy’s solemn dictum with credulous
readiness, and was usually her partner when the school marched, or
in the delightful rainy-day game of “Round and round in a green
sugar-tree, one cold and frosty morning.”
There were, however, two things which Bluebell felt she could not yield
to Tildy, and these were the spelling-prize, and their one disputed
“piece” on Friday afternoon when “speaking” was in order.
To be sure, there were plenty of other pieces which might have been
added to their repertory, such as “_My bird is dead, says Nancy Ray_,”
“_Twinkle, twinkle, little star_,” and “_I like to see a little dog_,”
all fresh as the lips that mumbled them in class; but both Tildy and
Bluebell would speak “_Mary had a little lamb_,” or they wouldn’t
speak anything! They both loved and doted on this piece: they not only
knew it by heart, but each claimed it with a jealousy passing that
of authorship. If Mr. Pitzer called Bluebell’s name first, she flew
to the middle of the floor and shrilled “_Mary had a little lamb_,”
with a triumphant wag of her head at Tildy. If Tildy had the first
opportunity, the case was reversed, and Bluebell, with a sense of
injury, declined to contribute to the afternoon’s literary exercises.
The sweet-hearted schoolmaster smiled at their weekly controversy,
and perhaps the scholars got tired of the ever-recurring lamb; but the
literary range of the school was not very wide, and there were other
repetitions than Bluebell’s and Tildy’s.
The schoolward-going group this time walked with decorum past the
downs. But Miss Calder made frequent pauses on mossy logs while the
others brought her forage of ferns. They chewed sassafras leaves and
peeled long withes of spicewood. She could see distant laurel heights
through breaks in the woods, and they made a long detour to get her
bunches of the pinky-white blossoms. So it was actually late in the
forenoon when they came to the foot-log by Halls mill. Though Miss
Melissa had walked with spirit, she shrank from the boiling Rocky
Fork, and asked for the bridge, and even proposed going back rather
than trust the giddy foot-log. But this was not to be heard of, and
Teeny distinguished herself for firmness. She took tight hold of the
fluttering lady’s hand, and Tildy walked behind steadying her by the
dress. So after a tilt and a shriek or two, they brought her safely
to the other side in time for her to witness Bluebell’s intrepid
passage of the log, laden with all the baggage of the party except the
blotting-book, which Tildy went back to bring.
Then they all moved upon the mud-chinked school-house. Miss Melissa’s
gentle face expressed a refusal to be reconciled to this as an
institution of learning. She was a professor’s daughter, and had spent
her days in an academic atmosphere. She had even taught in the Young
Ladies’ Institute one year after her graduation, in order to ground
herself more firmly in polite knowledge. This was a long time ago; but
all her life her society had embraced college-bred people. So to speak,
Miss Melissa had never come in contact with the common schools of her
native land.
Mr. Pitzer got down from his desk and met them at the door; and
Bluebell, who had been whispering over to herself all the way from the
foot-log a formula of introduction, there kindly suggested by Miss
Calder, turned red as the old-fashioned roses on the master’s desk, and
felt her breath broken short by every beat of her heart. But she came
out bravely with the introduction:
“Miss Pitzer, allow me to present you to Mr. Calder.”
Then she dropped her own curtsy and hid her face in her calico bonnet
as she hung it up. For some of them _would_ laugh, and she was wrapped
in flames of mortification.
However, Miss Calder made a grand impression, and the schoolmaster
walked back three steps to make his bow longer. Then he handed her to
his chair on the platform, and he himself took a lower seat, leaving
Bluebell’s friend to appear the autocrat of the school. She looked
around at the chinked walls and ink-splashed, knife-marked desks, at
the sincere, reflective, bovine eyes which always distinguish country
children--eyes that seem as full of woodsy sweets as the violets. And
she looked at the flushed schoolmaster, who pushed his spectacles quite
into his hair, and puckered his mouth into very wise shapes while he
went on explaining to Joe Hall and the big boy who ciphered with him
a deep problem in common or vulgar fractions. It might have been that
Mr. Pitzer was out of his depth, though he was a great schoolmaster;
or that the explanation was too pompous. Miss Calder’s eyebrows went
up in the very least degree, though not for the world would this
gentle creature have hurt the self-esteem of any one. After Joe Hall
and the big boy had marked the extent of their next lesson with their
thumb-nails, the schoolmaster said some learned things to Miss Calder
about the importance of mathematics: and as this was a very apt class
he hoped to take it through the book. And she asked him if the course
embraced Algebra and Geometry, and was going on to mention Trigonometry
and the Calculus, when she observed the poor schoolmaster grow red and
stammer. He did not want to be put to shame before his pupils, but
spoke out with a humble spirit:
“No, madam, my researches have never extended so far.”
And something in the old man’s tone touched her so keenly that she
was shocked with herself, and wondered if she, Melissa Calder, had
been rude! Such a fear drove her to the extreme of kindness and
gentleness. When the schoolmaster found she was a living and breathing
graduate--alumnæ were as scarce as authors then--his deference
towards her became much greater. The true-hearted old gentleman loved
knowledge; he begged that she would make a few remarks to the school,
which would be much better than a continuation of the exercises. Miss
Melissa blushed; but everybody who entered a school in those days felt
bound to “make remarks” if called upon to do so. So Miss Melissa began:
“Young ladies and gentlemen”--which made the little boys giggle and
nudge each other; but as her soft, fine, cultivated voice went on, they
all listened and were drawn to her, except, perhaps, a few who thought
Bluebell Garde felt herself proprietress of a lion.
Bluebell felt indeed happy. Her reading-class was called after the
schoolmaster beamed his satisfaction over Miss Melissa’s talk, and
she read her loudest and glibbest. Then noon came on, and there never
was a more delightful noon. The hot day brought rank, sharp smells
from everything: even the dog-fennel along the road yielded a pungent
fragrance, and jimson-flowers were not to be despised.
Miss Melissa was pressed into the swing by an ardent group, and flung
up a few times among the leaves, where her white curls danced like
sensitive spiral springs. And all the big girls sat around her to eat
their dinners, and talked quite as if they had known her all their
lives. But Perintha Pancost mimicked her behind a tree, and refused
to be caught, when Bluebell Garde, the Blackman, patted her one, two,
three, right on her back! Perintha also had brought the first summer
pippins in her reticule, and she gave bites to every girl in school
except Bluebell and Tildy Banks.
The afternoon was devoted to festivity. Mr. Pitzer felt that so
distinguished a visitor must be entertained. Miss Calder might
disapprove of him, with everything else she had seen at Rocky Fork, but
she could not help liking the old master.
Pieces were “spoke,” as a matter of course. Joe Hall, in a shrill,
confident voice, told them he had
“Stood beneath a hollow tree,
The wind it hollow blew:
He thought upon the hollow world
And _all_ its hollow crew!”
without one misanthropic shade in his apple face. Two of the boys had
a dialogue, in which a tiny Mr. Lennox looked up to a lubberly Peter
Hurdle and told him he was a contented boy and quite a phil-os-o-pher.
And two of the girls had a dialogue which sounded like one end of a
telephonic conversation as it is heard nowadays; for one girl shouted
that she had lost her thimble, Mary, and would you please lend her
yours; in reply to which you heard only a murmur. There was quite a
colloquy, and the silent girl evidently gave a great deal of good
advice, but listen as you might you could only get it by inference from
what the loud-voiced girl said. Then John Tegarden shouted “_The boy
stood on the burning deck_,” until he came to the most exciting part,
when his memory failed and he retreated mumbling and injured, not so
much by the trick it had served him, as by Joe Hall, who ducked his
head and imitated John’s slouching, disappointed attitude. John picked
some clay out of the wall and watched for an opportunity to shy it at
Joe, but reflected that it might hurt; and being the tenderest-hearted
boy in the world, he crumbled it slowly away and watched Teeny Banks
lead out a group of embarrassed damsels and station them in a circle
around herself, it being understood that she was the mother and these
her daughters gathered in an easy family group to discuss the seasons.
One declared her rhymed preference for Spring, another for Summer, a
third for Autumn, and a fourth for Winter, when Teeny chimed in with
a sweet monotone informing them that each season in its round held
certain delights, and they must see the Creator’s hand in all.
Well was it for Tildy and Bluebell that Mary’s disputed lamb was not
called out that day. For Doctor Garde drove up just at this stage of
the proceedings, and Miss Calder bade the schoolmaster adieu, and the
schoolmaster went outside to see her in the buggy, the wind blowing
the hair from his dear old forehead, while during his absence several
charges of paper wads were exchanged across the house, to the scandal
of the big girls who picked the missiles from their hair or dresses,
and with impressive shakes of the head threatened to “tell master.”
There was too much electricity in the air, and the school was too
boisterous to settle down to routine again that afternoon. All besought
Mr. Pitzer to let them have “spelling-school,” even Bluebell, who had
declined riding home on account of her head-mark; and the smiling
schoolmaster consented.
They decided to “choose up and spell down,” instead of “choosing
across.” Then Joe Hall and Amanda Willey, being nominated by the
schoolmaster, approached each other and took his ferule between them.
Joe grasped it above Amanda’s hand, and Amanda grasped it above Joe’s
hand, and this continued until Joe’s hand came last at the top. This
result entitled him to the first choice; and he and Amanda, taking
their stations with backs against opposite walls, he chose:
“Bluebell Garde.”
CHAPTER VIII
WHICH TREATS OF THUMB-PAPERS
Bluebell Garde was deep in a discussion with Tildy Banks, and heard not
her name till it was repeated.
The conference had begun while the master was out of doors bidding
adieu to Miss Calder. The afternoon was so hot that little paper-fans,
made of old book leaves and fastened in the middle with pins, were
fluttering all over the house; the long windows and the door were wide
open; still a stifling heat made everybody feel aggressive. And at this
unfortunate time Tildy made a discovery which she imparted to Bluebell
in a harrowing whisper:
“P’rinthy Pancost’s got your thumb-paper!”
Bluebell looked across at Perintha. Then she grasped her own
spelling-book and reader, and turned the leaves with a rapid swish, her
eyes sparkling more at every turn. No thumb-paper reposed in any of
its accustomed places. It was made of a leaf of Joe Hall’s copybook,
and ornamented with birds which seemed to wear pantalettes. Bluebell
was very neat with her books, which she loved as friends; and not one
word was erased by a sweaty little thumb-mark. And P’rinthy Pancost had
_stolen_ her thumb-paper! The school was swarming with thumb-papers.
Every youngster in his hours of idleness employed himself folding bits
of paper into the required shape, and it was an art, I assure you,
which required skill. She could make, or accept from willing hands, a
dozen others in as many minutes. But that was not the point. She had
suffered spoliation, and, menacing Perintha Pancost, she cried out in a
loud whisper:
“You give me back my thumb-paper!”
“’Tain’t yours,” replied Perintha, coolly unfolding it. This was
a crowning insult. To unfold a thumb-paper was to destroy its
individuality and make it a mere square scrap.
“_’Tis_ mine!”
“’Tain’t!”
“The master’ll whip you!”
“Yah-yah!” taunted Perintha, whom the weather was reducing to
impishness.
Bluebell’s tears started, but she staunched them bravely with a corner
of her apron.
“Cry-baby cripsey!” whispered Perintha, leaning towards her.
“I’ll tell my Aunt Melissy on you!” threatened Bluebell, feeling that
this authority must crush her.
But Perintha sniffed.
“Your Aunt Melissy’s nobody’s daddy,” she said quite aloud, copying
from the boys this strong phrase which was calculated effectually to
put down upstarts.
To be told that you were “nobody’s daddy” was to be robbed of all
dignity and consideration in this world; it was a snub which the
meekest and most peaceable must feel. But to have your great-aunt
Melissa called “nobody’s daddy” was not only a family outrage, but an
attack on the infallible dignity of all grown people.
Bluebell shook her auburn head and whispered to Tildy, “I’ll tell the
master what she said!”
But Tildy, constituting herself second in the affair, advised with
head-shakings and dark looks that they deal with her themselves.
“The master would just make her give you the thumb-paper, and he
wouldn’t do anything to her,” said Tildy, remembering how she had
appealed to him against her enemies in vain, and had afterwards taken
ample satisfaction with her nails.
The master came in, and arrangements were made for the spelling-school,
during which Bluebell returned to the grievance on her mind. “Mary’s
lamb” was no wall of separation now. The dark head and the auburn head
rubbed against each other. Perintha looked defiant, and was evidently
making partisans of Minerva Ridenour and the other girls on her seat.
“Bluebell Garde!”
Bluebell started as Joe called her name the second time, and went to
take her place with some pleasure in being chosen first among the good
spellers. Perintha was chosen nearly last on the opposite side. I am
afraid there was exultation over this under the auburn mass of hair.
Joe Hall gave her a handful of wheat from his father’s mill to chew.
Tildy was below the big boys and girls on Joe’s side, so there was
no chance to confer with her, if the spelling code had not forbidden
whispering. Bluebell, therefore, munched her wheat and gave herself up
to the excitement of the occasion.
They spelled across: that is, the schoolmaster, standing between,
pronounced a word first to one side then to the other. Alas that little
words should have slain so many! If he had begun in words of three
syllables, many of them could have rolled the letters glibly. But among
the ie’s and the ei’s Teeny Banks and half a dozen other big girl’s
stranded. The lines thinned rapidly; those who missed, retiring to
central benches and watching the fortunes of their sides with great
anxiety.
Fortune favored Perintha Pancost. Easy words came to her, and she stood
among the last three on her side. Still, with Joe Hall and Bluebell
Garde opposing, though they stood alone, what could her side expect?
The contest waxed very hot; and constantly was Perintha Pancost
favored with words she could spell. Her leader went down; her only
other supporter went down.
Then Bluebell found herself overflowed with a word that had “ation” in
it, and Perintha spelling pertly at it stood an instant longer than she
did. Of course it floored her, but she could now boast that for once
she had out-spelled Bluebell Garde!
Joe Hall stood up three lines longer, spelling tremendous-sounding
words; and when he tripped, there was such a storm coming up that the
master said he would dismiss early that afternoon.
Already the thunder could be heard echoing among the hills. The roll
was hastily called. Tildy waited outside for Bluebell; under her slat
bonnet the hair was clinging to her temples, but the gloom of her eye
and firm pucker of her mouth indicated fullness of purpose.
“When she comes out,” said Tildy.
“Yes,” said Bluebell, piteously, from the depths of defeat and injury
and physical lassitude.
Perintha’s name came away down among the P’s, and she was ranged
accordingly on a bench which never got free as soon as the B’s and G’s
on the girls’ side.
“When she comes out,” repeated Tildy, “we won’t scratch her--”
“Oh, no!” exclaimed Bluebell. She could not bring her mind to that.
“Because the marks would show,” pursued Tildy; “and we won’t whip her
with sticks.”
“The master might whip us!” exclaimed Bluebell in terror. She prided
herself on never having been punished at school. And all teachers were
not like Mr. Pitzer in those days.
“Yes, he might,” assented Tildy, evidently having foreseen that
objection to the sticks; for when Mr. Pitzer had severe cause he could
be strict as the strictest.
“But I tell you what we _will_ do,” said Tildy, leaning forward and
laying the utmost emphasis on every word. She lifted her forefinger,
and her reticule slid down to her elbow:
“WE WILL CHURN HER!”
CHAPTER IX
THEY CHURN
A flare of lightning in the northern sky may have frightened Perintha
as she stepped over the sill; or she may have suspected an ambush at
each side of the school-house. At any rate, a strong desire to be once
more under her father’s roof, gave swiftness to the little bare feet,
and her pantalettes danced at a lively pace through the dog-fennel.
Her black eyes gave one quick look behind, and after that look her
reticule, like a swelling sail, stood straight backwards in the wind.
But Tildy had her before she was more than screened by the fence of
Martin’s wheat-field.
“Take hold of her other arm!” commanded Tildy. And Bluebell, panting,
took hold.
“Now churn!”
And they churned. Up and down they churned until it seemed all the
buttermilk of Perintha’s nature must go to the bottom and the pure
butter of repentance stand up to be gathered by their correcting hands.
So interested in their undertaking were the reformers that Perintha’s
cries and struggles seemed to make no impression on their senses.
Their sun-bonnets hung by the strings around their throats, and their
loosened hair switched up and down, keeping time to the churning. It
was so absorbing a gymnastic performance that Bluebell felt Perintha
must almost enjoy it, if she did strain to get away.
The churners were brought to a pause by hands laid on their shoulders,
and lo! there stood Mr. Pitzer with a following of half the school.
Perintha’s face came out of the crown of her sun-bonnet, all smeared
with tears and curly hair, and the black-eyed, piteous look she threw
up to the schoolmaster, cut Bluebell to the heart.
Doctor Garde’s little girl was terrified to find herself in the
position of a culprit; but this was endurable compared to the sudden
rush of remorse caused by Perintha’s helpless look. She had been
churning a malicious little imp, and behold here was the grieved face
of her daily playmate! All the pretty things Perintha had ever done,
flashed before her. Perintha sent some tissue-paper birds to Rocco
when Rocco was sick; yes, and she made the baby a set of pasteboard
chairs in a box house. And what fragrant apples had come to Bluebell’s
teeth from Perintha’s reticule! She would always let you have the first
swing, too; and what did that old thumb-paper amount to?
“She didn’t act so till I got mad to her first,” thought Bluebell,
making one of the principal figures in a procession to the
school-house, the master’s finger and thumb carrying the lobe of
her ear. Tildy walked on the other side of him, her ear similarly
supported. Perintha, bidden to follow, sobbed as mourner behind them,
and a sympathetic though silent crowd supported her.
This, however, was dispersed at the door. The master waved all
hangers-on away; and the nearer-rolling thunder gave them additional
warning. Even Teeny, after wavering with a concerned face around the
windows, was obliged to take to the foot-log and leave these culprits
to their fate.
[Illustration: THE PRINCIPAL FIGURES IN A PROCESSION TO THE
SCHOOL-HOUSE.--_Page 110._]
“Now, sir!” said Mr. Pitzer, taking his judgment-seat. And the thunder
rolled directly overhead. When Mr. Pitzer said “Now, sir,” to a girl,
he had forgotten she was anything but a culprit. He took out the Rules
of the School, and putting on his spectacles, and peering through the
darkening air, read Article Ninth:
“ARTICLE NINTH: _Pupils are under the jurisdiction of their parents
from the time they leave home until they appear upon the play-ground.
But from the time they enter the school-house until they enter their
parents’ door at night they are under the jurisdiction of the master,
and accountable to him for all misdemeanors._”
His spectacles flared at the three.
“They ketched me and shook me up and down, and I wasn’t doin’ anything
to them!” burst out Perintha with a sob, leaving Article Ninth entirely
aside from the question.
“She stole Bluebell Garde’s thumb-paper,” said Tildy, somber but
collected. Her reticule dangled from her elbow, and her bare toes
squirmed along a crack in the floor. Her face expressed determination
coupled with a gloomy distrust in Mr. Pitzer’s ability to deal out
justice. A brisk rush of air came through the open window, which made
the dear old man sneeze and take off his spectacles. Bluebell was
weeping in the bottom of her apron, which she lifted to her face.
“I thought I was sh-showin’ my Irish pluck,” she broke out, wringing
her small pink nose; “but I guess I wasn’t! and it makes me feel so bad
to think I hurt her!”
The master laid his hand on her head. The other hand he laid on
Perintha’s. Tildy stepped back as if she feared he might have a third
hand for her.
“P’rinthy can have my thumb-paper,” continued Bluebell; “and I don’t
care for the other things, ’cause she was good to my little sister when
my little sister was sick--and I got mad first.”
There was now a hearty duet of sobs performed by Bluebell and Perintha.
The latter thrust her arm up to the elbow in her pocket and drew out
the most crumpled and defaced of thumb-papers, which she held out to
Bluebell.
Tildy put her nose up. She’d like to see herself “knucklin’ under, that
way, to P’rinth’ Pancost or anybody else!”
But the master’s face glowed in the gathering dimness:
“Let dogs delight to bark and bite,
For ’tis their nature to;
Let bears and lions growl and fight,
For God hath made them so:
But children, you should never let
Your angry passions rise--”
One jagged knife of lightning, reflected on the school-house door, cut
short his exhortation.
“It’s going to storm,” he said, looking up as if the fact had just
presented itself to him. “You better all run home now, and try to be
good friends hereafter.” He put up the Articles, took down his hat, and
busied himself shutting the windows. He paused to say, “Good-evening,”
three separate times as the three went out curtsying to him for the
second time that evening.
Tildy stalked straight toward the foot-log. Perintha paused after
turning her bonnet’s mouth homeward, and twisted back, looking at the
ground.
“Good-by, Bluebell. I’m going to bring you some pippins to take to your
Aunt Melissy to-morrow.”
This was equivalent to a full apology, and Bluebell hastened to
acknowledge it.
“Goody! will you?”
“Yes,” said Perintha, lifting her still wet lashes.
The two little girls looked into each other’s eyes and smiled. It was a
treaty of peace. Then a cloud of dust travelling up the road enveloped
them; Perintha scudded away with it, and Bluebell, her mouth and eyes
filled, ran towards the Rocky Fork after Tildy’s retreating figure.
CHAPTER X
MOTHER OUTDOORS DISTURBED
“Wait, Tildy!” called Bluebell, when she reached the foot-log and saw a
figure climbing the heights beyond.
The wind may have carried her voice away, for it almost blew her off
the log, and a trampling sound far off, like the rush of an army of
giants through the woods, filled one’s ears. The heavy basket caught on
bushes as Bluebell scrambled up the rocky path, and tired her hands,
while Tildy’s reticule sailed straight on.
“Oh, Tildy, wait!” panted the little girl. Among the windings, or in
some short cut, Tildy’s figure ever and anon appeared and disappeared,
and Bluebell faced the storm alone. How black its gloom was in the
woods! The very rocks and trees which had been smiling landmarks so
long, seemed strange and threatening. A quick patter caught her, and
then a deluge mixed with frightful glares and deafening roars burst
over the world. The trees rocked and twisted, and just ahead of her
she saw one tall chestnut bend as if swooning, and fall across the way
with a long, sublime, whistling crash. Even in her terror Bluebell
heard and felt that wonderful cry of the falling tree which cannot be
forgotten. The splinters of its broken trunk stood up like pale yellow
icicles in the air. She made a detour among hazel-bushes to pass it,
and ran along the path, trembling in every nerve, yet under her fear
delighting in this revolution which had overtaken Mother Outdoors. The
warm summer rain dripped from every thread of her clothing and soaked
her body in its delicious bath. The footway turned into a miniature
canal; and every tree-trunk stood in startling blackness against the
general gloom. Before the first dash had quite thinned its gray sheet
to sprinkles, that far-off tramping arrived in earnest; the storm
pelted and poured; the lightning flashed in her very eyes, and its
answering thunder was instantaneous; a tree swept down here carrying
others with it; and there two went down together, until the whole woods
seemed cracking and wailing around her.
With streaming garments, and shoes that spurted water at every step,
the little girl still ran ahead. She could scarcely see the downs when
she passed them, but they appeared dimly, like the desert islands in
Mr. Runnel’s maps. Again and again the lightning seemed barely to miss
her, and she jumped as the thunder crashed around her ears. She ran
until she was out of breath, and then panted along among the drenched
ferns. In spite of the confusion and loneliness and closing darkness,
there was exhilaration in the warm, soaking rain.
It ceased to pour as she passed down the slope; the wind lulled; and
through openings she could see distant long dark threads stretching
from cloud to earth, then suddenly disappearing. The confusion in the
woods died away. But there was no clearing up, no emerald flash of wet
grass in the setting sun; no rapid drying of branches and laugh of
leaves. The rank, fresh smell of wet earth was mingled with scents
from the peppermint that bordered the run below, but the faintest
suggestion of old dead leaves came with them. The lightning retired
toward the horizon and threw a silent or distantly answered dazzle
through the woods once in awhile. And night was coming early without
any sunset.
Bluebell saw a man advancing through the bushes, drawing showers upon
himself at every step. She reflected that it was not far to Banks’ now,
and if he tried to carry her off they could hear her scream; so she
trotted forward, a desirable object to kidnap, her shapeless bonnet
hanging around her neck, which it discolored with its strings, her
dress and pantalettes clinging to every line of her vigorous little
figure. Still the man paused to parley with her, and his parleying
consisted in offering her two fingers of his left hand and turning back.
“Oh, father, I’m ’most drowned! And the woods fell down!”
“It’s been a hard storm,” said father. He had a closed umbrella in his
right hand. Branches and underbrush would interfere with it if open
here. He paused, setting it against a tree, and reached down to his
little girl.
“Perhaps I’d better carry you.”
“Oh, father, I’m wet as sop.”
He lifted her up and took his umbrella. He had on his gum coat and
boots which he wore over ordinary clothing when riding in the teeth of
storms.
Bluebell threw one arm across his shoulder, from which dangled the big
basket.
“That might have been left at the school-house,” said father.
“It’s Liza’s,” said Bluebell, “and all the rain has rained through it
and through my dinner cloth.”
“I might have brought it in the buggy. Did you get across the Rocky
Fork before the rain?”
“Yes, sir. And Tildy ran on ahead.”
She was progressing royally down the slope, rained on by every branch,
but so comfortable right by father’s light, long locks. He moved
sure-footed from stone to stone. The dark was closing around them. The
cry of frogs and of the disconsolate cows came up from low places in
the valley. But Doctor Garde’s little girl had the task of telling her
father she had “been called up by the master” that day. His code was
stern. He had told her if she received punishment at school and came
home with complaints, she would be punished again. Bluebell was very
proud of her standing and integrity at school. The closing night seemed
so dismal. What would he say if he knew she was called up!
She cuddled her free hand under his ear to have some vantage ground,
and broke forth:
“I churned P’rinthy Pancost, father!”
“Did you? How do you play that?”
“We didn’t play, father. We did it a-purpose, Tildy and me. We had a
fallin’ out. And the master called me up after school!”
Father walked on with the low pine-like whistle under his breath.
“But we made up,” his little girl went on, unwilling to enter into the
enormity of Perintha’s sin against Aunt Melissa; “and she’s going to
bring apples to-morrow.”
“That’s right,” said father. “Always treat your little mates kindly,
and obey the master.”
“Yes, sir,” assented Bluebell, giving his neck a little squeeze. “I do
like the master, father. I guess I’m going to take the prize in our
class in spelling!”
Father delivered a short whistle, and looked around into her face,
smiling. This signified that he was pleased. It was his note of
acclamation over his daughter’s achievements.
“I don’t _think_ anybody else has near as many head-marks as I have.
Father, won’t it be polite for me to go to school while Aunt Melissa’s
here? Can’t I go in the _afternoons_, anyhow?” coaxingly.
“Do you like to go so well?”
“Oh, yes, sir! We have such fun noons. And somebody else would get my
head-marks!”
He did not reply at once, and they came by Banks’s house. The candle
was lighted, a smell of supper came forth; and Tildy in dry clothes was
standing at the door.
“Why didn’t you wait?” called Bluebell.
“I couldn’t,” said Tildy, tartly.
“P’rinthy’s goin’ to bring some apples to-morrow,” assured Bluebell.
But Tildy sniffed. “Some folks is awful thick, all at once,” she
commented.
Bluebell looked down at her father’s ear, and wondered why it was mean
to make up with folks.
Tildy’s mother came to the door, drawn by the sound of voices, and
looked out anxiously. She was a very tall, ungainly woman, bent in the
shoulders, with gray, black-lashed eyes which Tildy’s were like. She
wore a clinging black calico. Her face was care-worn but very motherly.
Bluebell knew that her husband was dead, that he had worked at the
Furnace in the winter, and in the summer farmed his own land, which
lay along the valley between the hills and the run. He must have been
a pleasant man, for he was cousin to Liza at home. Mrs. Banks’s name
was also Eliza; and the neighbors to distinguish them called this one
“Robert’s Liza.”
“Did she get hurt?” cried Robert’s Liza, when she made out the doctor’s
armload.
“Not a bit,” he replied, facing around and smiling.
“Come in and have some tea or something before you go on, do! Tildy was
a sop, and I expect Bluebell’s wetter yet. Teeny got home before the
trees began to fall, but I’ve been that frightened about the children!”
“We can’t stop,” said the doctor. “I have to start out when I get back
with this soaked pappoose. The run’s rising, Liza. You’d do well to
take your crocks out of the milk-house to-night.”
“I’ll do that,” said Liza; “but do _you_ mind the Rocky Fork, Doc--it’s
dreadful when it gets up.”
“Oh, never mind me,” replied Bluebell’s father. He plashed on down
the slope with her; and through the humid dusk Bluebell heard the run
boiling, along with a sound of the Rocky Fork itself, which was quite
outside its banks, muddy and angry; and she could not be sure that
certain eddies did not swirl above the buried stepping-stones. But
father seemed sure of it, for he put his feet through the eddies, and
then the water reached the ankles of his gum boots. He stepped firmly
up on the meadow green, and during that short interval between the run
and the bars, condensed all that he had meant to say to his little girl
during the walk.
“Put me down now, father,” she said. “Ain’t you tired?”
He put her down and gave her two of his fingers again, while he took
the basket. Two fingers just filled her grasp.
“How do you like to live at the Rocky Fork?”
This question surprised her so she looked up at him; but his face was a
white blur in the general dimness.
“Would you rather live in the town where your Aunt Melissa does, and go
to a fine school?”
The prospect was like a dazzling flash to Doctor Garde’s little girl,
through even this gloomy weather.
“Oh, yes, sir! I’d like to live there! But”--with a rising pang--“Mr.
Pitzer is so good, and he let us have spelling-school this very
afternoon. Do they have mountain-tea there?”
“Probably not. So you’ve been happy up here in the hills, have you,
Bluebell?”
“Yes, sir.” She could barely remember a home in a city, and one
pillared church where music was made by unseen people. She had been
happy, and the Rocky Fork was the only place she had lived in.
“Miss Melissa has been speaking to me,” said the doctor. “I can’t
attend to Rocco and you as your mother would have done. I want to be a
good father.” There was an unusually tender tone in his voice.
“Why, father,” exclaimed Bluebell, climbing up the bars, so she could
take him around the neck when he lifted her over, “you’re such a nice,
nice man! I don’t think anybody could be gooder; I would be so sorry if
you was anybody else! I like you, father!”
He laughed half under his breath, and got over the bars with her.
“My daughter flatters me.”
“’Deed, father, I’m in such earnest! ’Deed and double-deed!”
“Ah? Well! Miss Melissa was a great friend of your mother’s, and I
think she has some right to advise about the future of you children.
You must be educated.”
Bluebell imagined herself an educated, faultless woman like Aunt
Melissa!
While she was imagining, her father lifted her up again and kissed
her, saying as he set her down, “Run right in now to Liza. She has dry
clothes and a nice supper ready for you.”
CHAPTER XI
BLUEBELL MAKES A POEM
In the night Bluebell was wakened by the cherry-boughs scraping her
window--and how they did scrape! The rain was tramping; it beat the
house and roared on the shingles; the pines were making a high,
thrilling noise which she did not know was like the voice of the sea.
All within was so dry and comfortable; all without so muddy and dark.
Yet off in the woods there were sweet smells, and birds’ nests tucked
in forked branches, and the May-apples were rank, and even old rotten
logs crumbling to yellow dust had a pungent odor of their own. What did
the birds do in a storm? Did they turn their tails down like chickens?
And how did the naked birds that were all furry bill and sprawling
limbs like the baby swallows under the shed-eaves, get along?
Father, on his night-ride, was the thread on which these thoughts were
strung. She thought of him first, and he ran through everything else.
Ballie’s firm, quick step was moving on distant roads; the pill-bags
were fastened behind the saddle; father whistled softly between his
teeth; and anxious people looked into the storm for him. It scarcely
occurred to Bluebell to wish him indoors. He and rough weather were
old acquaintances. She had seen him come to the open fire stamping,
the frost in his hair, or take off cloth leggings covered with mud, or
stiff-frozen from the ford. What did he care for summer rain, housed as
he was too, in rubber coat and boots, and on the most sensible horse
in the world! Bluebell decided to ask Liza if she might not put on her
very oldest dress and stand under the eaves where the water ran over in
a constant shower.
But in the morning everything looked so dreary and soaked that she did
not care to do it. Clouds scudded close to the earth; the hill above
the house showed black under its foliage; the elder-flowers by the rock
play-house were beaten to the ground; and hollyhocks in the garden
leaned down as if about to swoon. The cherry-leaves had a higher
polish and intenser green, but little unripe apples strewed the orchard.
Doctor Garde had not come home. Liza said she did not expect him before
night. In very bad weather she had known him to be gone two or three
days. Still, she kept some warm chicken in the old-fashioned Dutch oven
before the fire while she did her baking.
The air was oppressive. But Miss Melissa moved around wrapped in a
thick shawl. Liza took the roses out of her fireplace and started a
warmer color dancing over some sticks. The low-scudding clouds began to
pour again.
Bluebell spent the morning with Miss Calder making doll-clothes, and
wondering if Tildy’s mother let _her_ go to school. Only a few of the
children who lived nearest would be there, for so many had to cross the
numerous bends and turns of the Rocky Fork. They would have to play in
the house if it did not clear before noon, and the tracks of the boys’
bare feet would look so funny on the floor. To-day seemed years removed
from yesterday. This was a bit of dingy autumn thrust through a summer
day. Bluebell enjoyed the dress-making with zest, but she hoped it
would clear.
Rocco had her high chair drawn to the kitchen table, and helped Liza
with the baking. Her tow hair was braided back, the ends turned up and
tied with black thread, and her slim claws as clean as soap and water
could make them. She had Bluebell’s little rolling-pin and baking tins
and Liza’s thimble before her. Liza was making caraway seed-cake; she
watched the baby fondly, giving her dabs of dough which Rocco rolled
out, cut up and placed in her tins. As soon as they were baked she
divided them evenly on two saucers; for Rocco never ate any treat of
which Bluebell did not have exactly half. She had been known to keep a
mellow apple or pear from morning till dusk when Bluebell came home;
smelling it and turning it over wistfully, but waiting its division.
The rain poured while they ate dinner.
“It comes down by bucketfuls,” said Liza. “I do hope Abram will get
round and look after Liza-Robert’s stock. Lambs is so simple, and hers
are always gettin’ into the run.”
“Why doesn’t she let her farm to a tenant?” suggested Miss Calder.
“Well, that’s not the way around here. Abram, he’s her brother-in-law
and my first cousin; he lives about half a mile above us, and he ’tends
to things for her. Liza’s no manager.”
Soon after dinner Miss Melissa lay down for her daily nap. Georgiana
sat on the sitting-room mantel in an incomplete gingham dress, smiling
on the weather with unchanged serenity. Liza went up garret to do a
small “stent” of spinning. She always spun on dismal afternoons when
the needle would lag in sewing. She knit winter stockings for the
family. Bluebell and Rocco followed her, and the wheel could be heard
soon after the children’s feet ceased sounding on the stairs.
When the children’s feet ceased sounding on the stairs, they were in
the garret. It was one big dusky room, extending over the whole house,
with a chasm in the floor through which the stairs came up. At each
side the roof sloped so that even Rocco might knock her head. There
were windows in the gables; and from all the rafters hung dried
peppers, pennyroyal, ears of seed-corn, bags of seed, and sage, and
of dried raspberries, and blackberries, cherries, and peaches, for
in those days the art of canning fruit was not generally known to
housewifery. Liza’s special jams and preserves stood along a system
of shelves, in stone jars, broken-nosed tea-pots and flowered bowls
tied up closely with white cloths. The floor was clean and dustless. A
retired rocking-chair which had lost one rocker in the battle of life,
was settled in one corner where it lived on a pension of the children’s
favor. For right by it was their mother’s old trunk, the black and
white hair worn off it in patches, leaving a tough hide exposed.
In this casket Bluebell kept many of her play-things and all her most
precious books. She had “Emma and Caroline,” a paper-book some three
inches square, a diminutive Mother Goose, several histories, and a
work on geology suitable to advanced students which her father had
brought her, and her school prizes--notable among them a pink-backed
volume of Dr. Watts’s hymns which she had learned by heart. Here also
reposed her last Sunday-school book, which had rather harrowed her
mind; for it was the Memoir of Jane Ann Smith, who caught fire and
burned to death; the picture of Jane Ann running out of the mill door
all on fire, was put in as a lively frontispiece. There were almost no
books for children in those days. Hannah More’s tracts and memoirs of
very pious people constituted the library from which Bluebell and all
the other little Rocky Forkers chose; if it could be called choosing
when the librarian held the backs of an armload of books towards you,
and you might pick out only one at a hazard. Bluebell had found one
delicious story of a little girl whose uncle came and took her away to
India where she had no end of wonderful times. But most of the books
were grown-up, or very serious, or consisted of advice to young English
servants when starting out to service. So Bluebell unfolded from its
wrappings with tremulous delight that real fairy-book, “Tales from
Catland” which Aunt Melissa brought her. It was a book with some long
words in it, but even these were a sonorous pleasure; the Countess
Von Rustenfustenmustencrustenberg, Grandmagnificolowsky, the tall
page, Glumdalkin, the cross cat, Friskarina, the amiable cat. Bluebell
settled into the one-sided rocker, and lived in castles and woods and
palaces, while the rain beat the shingles directly overhead as if it
were playing thousands of small castanets, and Liza’s wheel sang high
or low.
Rocco sat down on the front of a small flax-wheel which worked with a
treadle, and afforded the baby just sitting-room, to watch Liza spin.
The great wheel stood in the centre of the garret; on its long bench
lay a pile of wool-rolls. Liza took hold of the end of a roll, attached
it to the spindle in some mysterious manner, and turned the wheel
around and around and around with a smooth stick which she called
her wheel-pin. The spokes seemed to approach each other, then melted
together into a transparency, the hum rose higher and higher until it
became a musical scream, and Liza stepped back drawing her roll off the
spindle into a long woolly thread. Back and forth she moved, from
the spindle to the gable window; now hurrying up the wheel, and now
letting it sing, as it seemed, away down in the sloping bench which
supported it.
[Illustration: LIZA STEPPED BACK, DRAWING HER ROLL OFF THE SPINDLE INTO
A LONG WOOLLY THREAD.--_Page 134._]
The rain rained on. Bluebell forgot her head-marks. When she had read
two stories and let the Cat-book sink to her knees, her imagination
was so stimulated that she craved half-unconsciously to make a story
herself. But Liza’s wheel put rhythm into her head, and Liza’s presence
mixed the practical with the purely ideal.
For a long time she sat and thought, constrained to form into shape
what she had in her mind; and if the thing itself was simple and the
shape grotesque, many an author since Bluebell will confess to having
given very poor expression to the finest inspiration.
“I believe it’s going to quit raining,” said Liza as a very pale ray
slanted through the window and shone on the point of the spindle.
She pulled out the last roll and stopped her wheel.
“What’s that noise?”
It seemed to be some one knocking perseveringly at the kitchen door.
Liza gave the wheel one more vigorous turn and finished her “stent”
before she started down.
“I expect it’s Abram,” she said. “Don’t let Rocco fall down the stairs,
Bluebell, and don’t play with my spinning.”
“No, ma’am, I won’t.”
Roused from the spell which wheel and book had cast, the children
turned to each other for a romp.
Bluebell paused impressively as she caught the little sister in her
arms, and proceeded to make a confidant of her.
“Honey-dew, sisser’s made a pretty piece!”
“Piece o’ what?”
“Poetry! Like ‘Poor Jane Ray’ and ‘Twinkle, twinkle.’”
Rocco heard these standards of literary excellence mentioned without
any emotion.
“I’ll say it to you.”
“Le’s p’ay,” suggested Rocco instead.
“It’s somethin’ pretty--about Liza,” urged the poet, tasting the first
difficulties of securing a public.
Rocco paused in the mad-career of a tumble and consented to listen.
“See that pretty maiden,”
(“That’s Liza, you know,” explained Bluebell,)
“Spinning in the rain.”
“’Tain’t wainin’,” said Rocco; “it’s twit.”
“It was, though. Now you just listen:
“See that pretty maiden,
Spinning in the rain:
The wheel goes round and round to make
Our stocking-yarn again.
“The wind goes roar and roar,
The wheel roars with its band;
The maiden turns it with a pin
For fear she might hurt her hand.”
“Isn’t that pretty?”
Rocco meditated. The subject of poetry had aroused other thoughts
within her; and the faculty of association carried her on from a hymn
Liza frequently sung to her--
“On Jordan’s stormy banks I stand,
And cast a wistful eye
On Canaan’s fair and happy land
Where my possessions lie--”
to the family who represented the idea to her. So without making any
comment on Bluebell’s poem, she said decidedly,
“I want to go to Jordan Stormy Banks’s house.”
CHAPTER XII
“JORDAN STORMY BANKS”
“All well as common, Liza?” inquired Abram, knocking the mud off his
feet at the kitchen door.
“Yes,” she replied, but with a shade of anxiety. “The doctor hasn’t got
home yet. Come in, Abram. Have you been over the run?”
“I guess I won’t come in,” said the farmer. He was large-framed,
stooping, and clothed in homespun wool of an indescribable dull color.
His wamus was belted in; his broad, slouching hat showed several holes.
He placed a hand on each side of the doorway and leaned in while he
talked. “Yes. I’ve been over there. Liza-Robert came nigh to losin’ her
milk-house last night. The milk-lids was afloat and the spring is clear
under water.”
“Tuh! tuh!” ejaculated Liza. “And I expect the Rocky Fork is clear out
of its banks.”
“I should say it was,” imparted Abram deliberately. “It’s half-way up
the Narrows and all over the meadow t’other side. Table Rock came down
in that blow yesterday!”
Liza uttered a cry. Table Rock had overhung the Narrows ever since her
memory began.
“Hall’s mill has been carried off and lodged in the bottom-lands. The
stone’s sunk and the frame’s split in two or three pieces.”
“Why, Abram!”
“Yes, it’s consider’ble high waters. The Ridenours was out in a canoe
over their corn-field this mornin’.”
“How’s Eli?”
“Doin’ well, as far as I know.”
“The doctor said he’d maybe have to stay by him a while last night.
Seems like he was threatened with inflammation.”
“If Doc’s t’other side of the Fork he’ll not ford it for a while. It’s
all ’round the school-house. Willey told me this mornin’ Mr. Pitzer
couldn’t take up school till the water went down again. That g’ography
man’ll have to put off his doin’s, too. There’s a sight of timber down
on the hill. I don’t know when we’ve had such a storm.”
“Did it do you any damage?”
“Well, no. Uprooted a few apple trees. That’s about all. Any chores
you’d like done outdoors?”
“I’m much obliged to you, Abram, but there isn’t anything. The cows
always come up to the bars. I s’pose Samantha’s well?”
“So’s to be around. The children’s folks have come to see ye, have
they?”
“Yes, it’s a kind of an adopted aunt of their mother’s.”
“Well,” said Abram, taking his hands off the sides of the door, “I must
get on toward home.”
He came back after going a few steps.
“I’ll look in again before night, Liza.”
“I’d be obliged if you would, Abram.”
Neither spoke of feeling anxious about the young doctor. Still Liza
girded herself more cheerfully to go out and gather her demoralized
poultry. A primrose-colored west brightened the whole landscape. The
beaten-down grass had already begun to lift itself, and a pleasant,
drying breeze was flowing down the valley. The broken clouds drifted
to all parts of the sky. Liza gathered drenched and gaping chickens
into her apron, where they trod upon each other with cold pink feet,
and piped shrilly for food and comfort. She had a special basket behind
the stove for these weather-orphans, where their down would curl once
more, and all of them subside into a buttercup-colored mass, too sleepy
to peep. There was one chicken that ran persistently through the
weeds away from her, yet calling with all his might for aid from some
quarter. He stretched his thin neck here and there and disconsolately
shook his pin-feather wings. Now lost in a forest of rag-weed, he made
the tops quiver over him as he ran; and now slipping through the garden
palings, he scampered dismayed up and down the bank of a deep canal,
the channel whereof he had known before the deluge as a neat garden
path between beds of vegetables. Liza reached through and gathered him
to the asylum in her apron just as she observed Bluebell picking her
way to the lower bars. The run was roaring through the meadow, and she
rose up apprehensively.
“Don’t go down to the water, Bluebell. You can’t cross now.”
“But Tildy’s on the other side and beckoned to me: I just want to talk
across to her.”
“I’m afraid you’ll fall in if you go too near. Remember the run’s up.”
“I’ll be careful. Tildy can’t come over, and she does want to see me so
bad!”
“You’ve both been weather-bound,” said Liza smiling. “Well, you be
careful. Where’s the baby?”
“She’s talking to Aunt Melissa. I gave her my new doll to hold.”
Precious as little sisters may be, there are times when the mature
girl of nine or ten feels that she cannot have them “tagging” after
her; when she gives them a sop in the shape of her best plaything, or
engages them in conversation with some elderly and charming relative,
while she slips out to gallop where heedless baby shoes would have to
be carried.
Tildy had been signaling at the other side of the run for some time.
Bluebell ran down the wet meadow, feeling joyful at being out of doors
once more. The hills were half-smiling. She could not help noticing how
the trees tossed. In the south-west was a cushion of foliage so large,
so green, so apt to dimple with the wind, that the little girl never
could help wishing to sit and tumble about on it.
The run showed wide and turbid from the back door, but on near approach
it seemed a ranting young river. Sticks and even rails were being
eddied away by what was day before yesterday a few strands of clear
water.
How wide was the separation between Bluebell and Tildy!
Resentment of the Perintha Pancost truce had been swept from Tildy’s
face by later occurrences.
“We can’t go to school any more,” she called.
“Oh, yes, we can when the waters go down.”
“The’ won’t be any school-house. The Rocky Fork’s all around it. Our
spring-house pretty near went, and if the run rises much higher it’ll
carry off our house and your house, too.”
Bluebell looked back at the weather-beaten homestead.
“It would look like Noey’s Ark. But it says there isn’t to be another
flood, Tildy, ’cause the rainbow’s put in the sky for a sign that the
waters shall no more cover the face of the earth!”
“Hain’t been any rainbow this wet spell,” said Tildy impressively.
Bluebell searched the whole sky, and brought her eyes down again
clouded with apprehension. There had been no rainbow this wet spell.
“I don’t believe it will rise to the roofs of the houses and the tops
of the mountains,” she cried, with an upward inflection of appeal.
“I wish’t it would. Then you could sit on your roof and I could sit on
mine, and sail sticks and boats across to each other. I’ve been havin’
lots of fun with mother’s old bread-bowl. Why didn’t you come down soon
as it quit rainin’? I beckoned to you.”
“I didn’t see you. Where’s Teeny?”
“She’s helpin’ mother with her weavin’. Why don’t you take off your
shoes and stockin’s?”
“I don’t know,” replied Bluebell looking down at her low shoes and then
at the lush, soft grass. She always had envied Tildy her untrammelled
toes, but her father had a prejudice against bare feet in all weathers.
Tildy, that fortunate creature, could walk sidewise in the dusty summer
road, dragging one foot and thus making a beautiful broad mark, with
stopping posts indicated, like the picture of a fence. But if Bluebell
attempted it she filled her stockings with dust and rendered her shoes
a dismal sight.
Tildy now came down to the brink and made her impression in the
yielding soil.
“Look there,” said she, displaying two fine black slippers of glossy
mud. “Take yours off, too, and maybe we can wade some.”
Bluebell found a dry stone, sat down upon it, and peeled her feet pink
and bare.
“Come along up the run,” called Tildy. “I’ve got my boat up here.”
So they scampered along on each side, the ooze coming between
Bluebell’s toes with a delicious rush.
The bread-bowl beached on Tildy’s side, was ready for service. She had
a pole to steer it with, and setting it afloat, ran along turning and
guiding it as anxiously as if it were a bulrush basket with another
little baby in it. Bluebell ran by her side of the stream, and begged
that the vessel might make a voyage to her. With a push of the pole,
Tildy turned its prow, but it got caught against a snag, and she
labored long to free it. Finally, the cracked and rather unseaworthy
vessel came triumphantly in, and Bluebell caught it with joy.
The two girls felt as if they had shaken hands across the separating
stream. Bluebell had some of the baby’s seed cookies in her pocket. She
wiped the bowl very dry with bunches of grass, and made a nest of fresh
grass in the centre, on which a handful of thimble cakes were then
carefully deposited, and the gallant craft started on its return trip.
It moved down stream, and both girls accompanied it. Tildy poled with
care lest the cargo might get slopped. Now, there was a rail coming
down stream in the centre of the current, pointing like a long black
finger to the fact that that bowl must be got out of the way, or there
would be a collision on the high seas.
Bluebell danced and exclaimed while Tildy poled in set determination.
Alas for the noble bread-bowl! In despair she stuck the pole into it,
brought it with a swish to land with its grass and seed-cakes scattered
to the stream, and losing her balance fell partly in herself.
“Oh, Tildy!” screamed Bluebell, when Tildy scrambled on the bank,
dripping to her waist.
“This makes the second time this week I’ve got wet,” said she solemnly.
“I don’t b’lieve I want to wade now.” She sat down on the grass and
wrung her clothes. Her mood was very sombre indeed.
“I expect I’ll take sick and die,” she said. “Father used to get wet to
his hide before he took bed-fast. And I’m a good deal his build.”
“Just as soon as my father comes home,” cried Bluebell, “I’ll ask him
to ride Ballie over the run and give you some medicine.”
“You needn’t throw it up to me that you’ve got a father when I ain’t
got any,” said Tildy, dismally.
“Why, Tildy! I _never_!”
“You did, too. But mebbe you ain’t got any either, now.”
“My father’s comin’ home to-night!”
“Mebbe he is.”
“He’s just gone to see his patients, and he’s comin’ right straight
home!”
“Table Rock fell down over the Narrows yesterday.”
“I don’t care if it did!” warded off Bluebell, with quivering lip.
“My Uncle Abram says it could ’a’ hit your father just as easy as not!”
“But it didn’t!”
“But somethin’ may have happened to him. If he tries to cross the Rocky
Fork now, he’s sure to get drownded! Uncle Abram says he feels uneasy.
Looky there, now! Mebbe that’s his hat comin’ down the run!”
Bluebell suspended a great sob and watched the black object
approaching. It reeled nearer and nearer--it looked _so_ much like
father’s black hat: she saw the band: she saw the brim dip--
“Ho!” cried Doctor Garde’s little girl triumphantly, “that’s just a
chunk o’ burnt wood, Miss Tildy Banks, and my father ain’t any more
drowned than you are!”
Tildy, who felt herself more drowned than she wished to be, and
decidedly uncomfortable--for there is a difference between sky-water
and run-water--merely responded, “Huh, Madam!”
Bluebell started back to pick up her stockings and shoes. She heard a
long ringing neigh from the lane.
“There!” she cried, shaking a shoe at Tildy, “there’s my own father
come home to my house this very minute! I’m going right to the bars,”
she added, thrusting her tender feet into the shoes after wiping them
on her stockings, “and I’ll tell him all the mean things you said. And
I won’t ask him to give you the medicine, so I won’t.”
“I don’t want it,” responded Tildy: “he hain’t got any but nasty stuff.”
Doctor Garde’s little girl did not stay to argue. She scampered to
the lower bars, flung over them, and splashed across the puddles to
the upper bars. Ballie’s glossy, tossing head appeared around the
barn-corner. But her saddle was empty and turned to one side, the
pill-bags dangling, her bridle hung loose, and as soon as she saw the
little girl, she uttered a neighing scream.
CHAPTER XIII
ABRAM HAS A THEORY
The Arabian mare’s long cry reached Liza’s ear, also. She was putting
her chickens in the basket, and having covered them, went toward the
bars.
“There’s something wrong, the way that horse whinnies,” said Liza
aloud. “Why, look at her now! He’s been thrown!”
Ballie was walking from one end of the bars to the other, resenting the
saddle and dangling saddle-bags, resenting the bridle which hung to her
feet, but more than all distressed by the absence of her master. As
soon as she saw Liza she uttered another interrogative wailing cry.
A pair of small stockings hung across the fence: Bluebell’s figure was
flying down the lane at the foot of the pine hill.
“O my gracious!” cried Liza, smiting her hands. “Now _she’ll_ go off
and get killed. Come back, Bluebell! come back here! She runs right on
and doesn’t hear me!”
Ballie heard intelligently, and jerked her bridle from under foot,
seeming, as she did so, to fling a wail after Bluebell.
Liza got over the bars and mechanically relieved the mare, unfastening
the pill-bags and saddle, and turning the bridle back over her neck.
Leaving her tied to the post, Liza flung her apron over her head and
started running towards Abram’s house. It was a mile to Abram’s. When
she had passed the orchard and was nearly across the east meadow, she
remembered Miss Calder had been left with only Rocco in the house,
unconscious of what had happened. Still running, Liza dipped into a
gulch-like hollow which divided the stony meadow in halves. It was oozy
and slippery, and she climbed the other side nearly out of breath.
Abram’s house appeared beyond its orchard.
When Liza had scaled the orchard fence, and recovering breath a little,
came running towards the front of the house, she found Abram and his
wife talking with a man in the road.
Bounce, the house-dog, had barked all the way up the orchard, but they
had never turned their heads.
“Oh, Abram!” she cried. At this Abram looked around, and showed a face
as distressed as her own.
“We’ve just heard the doctor’s been drowned,” said Samantha solemnly.
Liza was not prepared for this statement. Her burning face bleached.
“Who says so?” she exclaimed aggressively.
“The g’ography-teacher and him both tried to cross the Rocky Fork at
the ford, and his horse acted up some way and got him off.”
Liza groaned.
“I don’t believe it,” she said next: “why didn’t you help him?”
The geography-teacher was splashed and muddied from head to foot. His
face looked haggard, and on Pancost’s tall gray horse he appeared
singularly gruesome. Liza despised him at first sight. She longed to
pull him from his uncertain seat, and have him punished for this
trouble for which she unreasonably held him accountable.
“I couldn’t help him, ma’am. I just escaped with my own life, and rode
as hard as I could to the first house I saw, to give the alarm.”
“There’s four houses between this and the ford! His horse just came to
the bars! Abram! Why don’t you stir yourself? Go and help him! He isn’t
drowned, I know. Why, he can swim like a fish! If you’d only stopped to
be of some account!” she cried, flashing her excited eyes up and down
the geography-teacher.
“Liza,” said Abram, “I’m startin’ to the stable for a horse. But you
hain’t heard the particulars.”
He cantered away, and Samantha, who had gone into the house, came out
with a camphor-bottle. She bathed Liza’s face, while that good spinster
held to the fence and denounced Mr. Runnels.
“Where’s your particulars, now? If you’d stood by him like a man, as
he ’a’ stood by you! Where is he? What did he do after he got into the
water?”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about, ma’am,” said Mr. Runnels,
avoiding her eyes, and speaking in a dejected way without heat. “His
horse got to plunging and the saddle slipped. The current was so strong
we were both carried away below the ford, and when I got out, his horse
had kicked him loose.”
“Ballie kick _him_! She never kicked him!”
“I can’t help that. She was climbing the bank and a heavy log hit him
and he went under. I called for help, but nobody came. Then I put my
horse to a gallop and rode as hard as I could to the first house I saw.”
“Sit down, Liza,” begged Samantha, pushing her upon a stool they used
in picking fruit. Liza sat down. “There goes Abram to the ford fast
as he can go. And if he don’t find anything he’ll warn out all the
neighbors. Don’t take on so!” sobbed Samantha in her own apron.
Mr. Runnels turned his horse and followed Abram. Dripping and wretched
and in need of hospitality as he certainly was, it had not occurred to
either of the women to offer him anything. He faded from their view
merely as the bearer of bad tidings.
But a capable woman like Liza could give up to smelling camphor for a
moment only. Within half an hour she had created a revolution in her
own house. The sitting-room was turned into a hospital ward, with every
appliance for restoring wounded or half-drowned people. A fire made the
black chimney-piece sparkle. Miss Melissa followed her around, awed
and colorless, but anxious to help. She did marvels of lifting and
carrying, scarcely knowing it. A chill struck through the air as the
day closed. Only the baby, who sat in the big rocker with Georgiana
and the soles of her own feet broadside to the fire, could sing with
any enjoyment of life. The unusual bustle and the climbing fire seemed
things of good cheer. Unconscious of any trouble and feeling in a
musical mood, Rocco improvised recitative, crescendo and diminuendo,
knitting her fine eyebrows with an artist’s concentration.
“O--my--GOOD--GWacious! Jawgeanno!--I neva’ turn back any mo’. An’ it
WAINED: AND Juicy-crucy-fied ’im. Cap in my father’s HAN’! An’ the’
was a little guyl had a nice dolly b’ronged to her sisser B’uebell. O
Jawge-ANNO!”
Liza-Robert came tiptoeing in on her heavy shoe-soles. She had got
the news some way, and going nearly a mile up the run, found a narrow
place where she could get across by the aid of rails and so reach the
troubled house. She had been crying on the way, and when she saw Rocco
toasting her soles with such musical satisfaction, the poor woman
buried her face in her apron.
“Poor little innocent!” she said, passing her hand down Rocco’s head;
“poor little innocent!”
Rocco was accustomed to Liza-Robert’s widowed expression, and laughed
up in her face.
“Dreat big doll,” she said importantly, turning Georgiana for
inspection.
Then, as if a peg had slipped in the music-box of her little chest, she
straightway struck off again:
“On Missus--JORDAN STORMY Banks’s house, I cast a Rishful EYE!”
Miss Melissa came in from the banistered porch where she had been
watching, and Liza from the kitchen.
“Did you see or hear anything?” inquired Liza. Her plump,
well-preserved face looked shrunken.
“Nothing,” replied Miss Melissa, spreading her transparent, trembling
hands to the fire.
“I’ll make you acquainted with my cousin’s widow, Miss Calder,” said
Liza.
Miss Calder bowed to the raw-boned, sad woman. Liza-Robert inclined her
head.
“How do ye do, ma’am?” Then she wiped off a rolling tear with her
apron. There was a natural majesty in her which fully appreciated
culture and delicacy in another; but now she met this lady without a
thought of the difference between them.
“He stayed by me night and day when I had the lung fever, and the other
doctors give me up to die. If it hadn’t been for him I wonder who’d be
carin’ for my children now! I’m just a hard-workin’ woman that’s had
trouble, but he always was as good as an angel to me and mine.”
Liza went to the door; then to the bars. The day was gone: she was
startled to find it so near twilight.
Presently she came back with an heroic air, patted the prepared bed
and laid it open, turned a stick on the fire-dogs over, and hurriedly
brought in a candle.
“I thought I heard some one comin’,” she said.
It seemed to be the tramping of another horse at the bars. Ballie,
still tied to the ignominious post, neighed to it interrogatively.
Abram came striding in.
“Where is he?” said Liza.
Abram looked at the three women piteously.
“I don’t know. We ain’t found him.”
“Who’s lookin’?” cried Liza with a sharp tone.
“All on this side the Fork. The men goin’ home from the Furnace all
turned in.”
“I thought mebby ’twas only that curly-headed g’ography-teacher,” said
Liza. She burst out sobbing in her apron again. Miss Calder sat down.
Rocco was frightened, and got down with Georgiana hanging across her
shoulder, to stare at Abram.
“We did get his hat,” said Abram, swallowing as if his very prominent
Adam’s apple were choking him. “And I have a kind of a theory now.”
He proceeded, without much encouragement, to explain his theory:
“Mr. Runnels says a log hit him and he went down right by the ford.
They’re gettin’ Ridenour’s canoe and ’ll drag over that spot. But I hev
a kind of theory--I don’t know whether I’m right or not--”
The three women lifted their heads expectantly.
“My theory is, it didn’t stop there.”
The pronoun sent a shudder through his hearers.
“It’s down below the Narrows, and I’m goin’ to Mary Ann and warn out
the men for a search there.”
At this hopeless view of the case, Liza walked the floor in a transport
of grief, and Liza-Robert tried to repress her own sorrow and attend
to Miss Calder, who seemed fainting.
“Oh, the poor boy! And him so noble-hearted! Night after night, day
after day, through rain and shine and cold and heat he’s rode! And it
made no difference whether it was to the rich or the poor! They was all
alike to him if they needed doctrin’--and he never expected to get pay
for half he done!”
Here Rocco raised her voice and howled.
“He was good to me,” said Abram. “I never knowed a man I thought more
of.”
“Honey,” said Liza, coming to the baby, and trying to control herself,
“Liza’ll put you to bed now.”
“I don’t want to go,” howled Rocco. “I want B’uebell to sit in the
chair and wock me.”
Liza flashed a glance all around the room. Then a recollection ran over
her face leaving it more faded.
“Oh, didn’t that child come back? She ran down the lane to hunt him.
Abram, where’s Bluebell?”
CHAPTER XIV
BLUEBELL HAS NO THEORY
When Doctor Garde’s little girl started down the unfenced lane, she
acted on an impulse given by terror. She ran with all her might at
the side of the lane, tangling her feet in fragrant pennyroyal, and
bounding over bunches of ground-cherries, so that it seemed a whole
year before she reached the place where it joined its mud to that of
the main road. This was a steep, stumpy place: young saplings had been
ridden down, and bent their bruised backs to draggle torn tops on the
ground. On the black hill above, all those pines were whistling softly
between their teeth, as father did. Hundreds of odd thoughts rushed
pell-mell through the little girl’s mind.
Ballie’s track here melted into others; but as Bluebell had not
thought of tracing Ballie’s course, she did not pause on account of
losing the clew. She stood still an instant and looked back toward the
house. She was so little. Grown-up folks would know better what to do.
The house was almost out of sight among trees. She had no distinct
idea except that father was certainly in danger somewhere and must be
found. The primrose light was fading out in the west. If she went on
and nobody knew where she was, she might slip over the Narrows and be
killed, and against this her sound flesh and wholesome blood rebelled
utterly. Still, her pause was only an instant long: she laced up
the leather strings of her shoes and tied them firmly, waded around
mud-holes, and ran on toward the entrance of the Narrows.
Just here the Rocky Fork burst upon her sight. Bluebell held to the
flint wall feeling giddy. She had never seen such an expanse of water.
It covered nearly the whole of a wide meadow, and on the side next the
Narrows licked at the earthen cliff, crumbling it by slow handfuls. She
felt it was climbing step by step to grab her as she started on.
There was a current like a mill-race over the hidden bed of the Rocky
Fork. Logs, brush, rails, whole trees, skated along on it. The child
could not keep her fascinated gaze off this current, and it made her so
dizzy she was obliged every few moments to stop, reeling against the
hill-wall and hugging its stones with her hands. She was going in the
direction of the current. Just as Bluebell entered on this narrow track
she heard violent galloping begin of a sudden behind her. She thought
of Billy Bowl, and seizing a root above her head, made herself as flat
as possible against the wall. She thought also of the loose horse which
met father and her upon the Narrows, and turned desperately to frighten
it back. But this horse was a lean gray one and had a rider, and both
were dripping from head to foot; the rider looked wildly toward the
Narrows and wheeled his horse away from them. Then he flew away as fast
as the animal could gallop on a sled road, arching by through the pine
woods which led to the road past Abram’s, but was seldom used except by
wood-cutters. He had not noticed Bluebell.
“It’s the g’ography-teacher,” said she hurrying on. “And _he’s_ fell in
the water and wet all his nice clothes, and he looked _just like Billy
Bowl_!”
Nothing else happened in her dizzy, long journey around the Narrows.
Midway she could not look at the waters, but their sound filled all the
country silence. Bluebell’s road remained in light after the shadows
settled on them. A huge hole was left over the gutter where Table Rock
had hung: the earth was broken all around. Bluebell got by it as well
as she could. When she reached the Furnace the day-workmen were about
to start to their homes.
All the way around, though Doctor Garde’s little girl had been showing
as much Irish pluck as she could muster, her chin had shaken with sobs
and her heart felt bursting with a mighty homesickness for father. She
looked into the Furnace now, unreasonably expecting to see him on a
bunch of coats or wamuses, tended as they had tended Eli Ridenour.
She saw glittering eyes and smutted faces, and heard a line of song
roared out.
“Where’s my father?” she cried to the nearest Furnace-man.
Several came to her at once.
“It’s Doc. Garde’s little girl.”
“What’s the matter, sissy?”
“Is my father here?”
“No. He hasn’t been past the Furnace since night before last. What’s
the matter?”
“He’s got hurt someway,” wailed Bluebell, the tears dropping to her
breast. “The horse came home with her saddle all turned, and I can’t
find him.”
The Furnace-men looked at each other, and the alarm flashed around.
“Which way was he ridin’?”
“I don’t know. I thought maybe he fell over like Eli Ridenour and you’d
brought him here. Oh, if you don’t find my father, I can’t stand it at
all!”
“He must have been trying to ford the Fork,” exclaimed the biggest of
all the Furnace-men. “We’ll go down there.”
They swarmed around each other in what appeared a scarlet confusion of
unbelted wamuses, then trooped in a hurry to the Narrows. They forgot
the child. She stood crying beside a brick pillar, too overwhelmed with
trouble to think of anything but its pain. Where _was_ father? And was
he badly hurt?
CHAPTER XV
THE FORD
In an hour the banks about the place where the country road forded the
Rocky Fork in low water, were studded with what seemed from a distance
large, unblinking fireflies. And on the stream itself two or three
other fireflies in a cluster moved back and forth, here and there. Bad
news need not be telegraphed in the country. It flies faster than the
wind. The whole neighborhood on each side the Rocky Fork knew that
Doctor Garde had been carried down in the Rocky Fork, and men of all
ages turned out in the search.
The Furnace-men brought dried pine sticks for torches. Three people
paddled Ridenour’s canoe about, trailing light on the muddy water.
The trees took on a weird appearance as these torches lit up the
inner mystery of their branches, and some sleepy birds that had just
comfortably settled for the night, chirped inquiringly. Overhead the
stars appeared by ones and groups through a clear sky, from which the
trailing mists were blown away.
The men in the canoe had a log-chain and hook which they trailed along
the bottom. Others followed the banks down stream, being obliged to
go around deep bogs and back-waters which nearly covered what had
been grape-vine thickets. Doctor Garde’s felt hat had been found in
a thicket by one of the boys, and Abram had ridden off home with it:
but when he got there he had not had the heart to carry the soaked and
dreadful token in, but had laid it in a corner of the porch while he
entered to tell about it and state his convictions.
Mr. Runnels remained by the ford, walking his borrowed steed here and
there, and stretching fearfully toward every object which attracted
notice.
“They say Pancost come nigh losin’ his old gray,” said Mr. Willey
grimly, laying his hand on the neck of this steed.
“I barely got out,” replied Mr. Runnels. “It seemed as if we were both
to go.”
“What possessed ye to try the Rocky Fork when it’s so high?”
“I wanted to carry around word to all my pupils on this side that the
lessons would be stopped till the water went down. I was about to turn
back, but Doctor Garde was just venturing in, and I thought a man might
follow where he went.”
“Oh, but Doctor Garde wouldn’t turn back from anything! And he had the
prettiest piece o’ horse-flesh in the whole country. She could swim
like a duck, and take a straight up-and-down bank, and in the darkest
night he could give her the bridle and go to sleep. The trouble with
Doctor Garde, sir, was that he didn’t know danger when he saw it. This
is a rough piece o’ country, but he’d cut right across the hills, and
once he got his eyelid cut open riding against a branch, and it hung
down to his cheek. But he goes home and sews it up himself, and keeps
on ridin’ as if nothing had happened. Ain’t many men could stand what
he could.”
“I should think not.”
“No, sir. I couldn’t. And he was the best doctor, sir, I ever had in
my family. There’s Hall over yonder. His mill went with these high
waters, but I believe he feels a sight worse about the doctor.”
The men with the grapple-chain hooked something. It was no easy matter
to keep out of the current and the course of limbs and various flotsam
from wood-cutters’ piles. They got into a still place scummed over with
powdered rotten-wood, and here they carefully drew in the laden hook.
Men on the opposite bank called to each other and came running to the
verge, while those by the scummy bay knotted together and held their
lights down.
“Have you got anything?” they called.
Those around the hook fell back and looked up:
“No, nothing but a little stump.”
CHAPTER XVI
A TRIO AND CHORUS
The homesickness for father grew to agony in Doctor Garde’s little
girl. She stood just outside the Furnace pressing her hands together.
When she was a smaller girl she dreamed once that father was dead.
It was a smothering dream. Her heart weighed her down so she thought
she could never skip or play blackman again. Driven by unendurable
loneliness which nothing but the presence of father could cure, she
persistently hunted him till she came to an enormous mansion which was
heaven. Here she asked for him, and was told that he had just passed
into another apartment, which she entered just in time to see the last
fold of his garment disappearing through an opposite door. So from one
vast room to another she still followed, calling him as she ran; but he
never heard, and she never touched even the hem of his robe. The place
grander than any town, was full of carvings, pictures and nameless
elegances, such as Bluebell could not remember ever having seen before.
Then she was in a forest where a wind-storm had passed. Fallen trees
made a limitless bridge from her feet into the horizon, and there was
the most brilliant moonlight over the whole visible world. She was
crying to herself, hopeless of ever seeing father again, when he came
walking over that endless corduroy bridge toward her. He came walking
in a long white robe which covered him with light and trailed on the
logs, his square serious face full of concern about her. He did not
seem pleased to find her crying there, though he picked her up and
soothed her! Then he told her she must be kind to the baby and be a
good girl; and without her being able to detain him, he turned and
trailed again out of sight across the moonlit logs.
This dream had made such a painful impression on Bluebell that she
never had forgotten it. It always came across her mind at serious
times. It seemed to belong to the same class of untold terrors as her
superstition about Billy Bowl. But now it came up before her like
reality. Or perhaps the reality which the child was facing stood before
her like that dream.
The Fork’s roar came up through humid dusk which was thickening every
minute to darkness. Some whippoorwills in the trees below the road
were uttering their cry almost under her feet, so that she heard the
guttural which preceded it:
“G’--whippoorwill,
G’--whippoorwill!”
But presently out of the intermingled sounds of whippoorwills, water
and frogs, there came something else very different.
It was not at first distinct; but when Bluebell listened intently, she
did hear a voice calling:
“Hillo!”
The little girl ran along the road toward Mary Ann until she came to
where the Narrows broadened to a hilly shoulder which sloped gradually
to the Fork. Bluebell knew nothing about the descent. Within this hill
and along under the Furnace, John Tegarden’s coal-fires were supposed
to be perpetually burning. But her eyes were accustomed to the dark,
and there was a fine starlight overhead.
It did seem dreadful to come down to the very edge of the Rocky Fork.
Flecks of foam showed on it like threatening teeth. Black objects were
continually passing down, out in the current. Sometimes these fish
etched their fins on the low sky on the other side, when you saw that
there were twigs and limbs of a floating tree.
When Bluebell had climbed down almost to a level with the Rocky Fork,
she held on to a bush, and listened.
“Hillo!” called the voice again.
It was farther from her, and must be just under the Narrows opposite
the Furnace.
“Father! Is father there?”
“Hillo! somebody come and help me!”
“Oh, father, are you drownin’! Oh, what shall I do?”
“Is that you, Bluebell? Who’s with you?”
“Nobody, father, but just myself! I can’t get to you, father--the
water’s so deep!”
“Don’t think of trying to come to me!”
There was a pause. The Rocky Fork, the frogs, and the whippoorwills
uttered their voices. Bluebell thought she heard a groan contributed to
the chorus.
“Oh, father! _are_ you drownin’? Can’t you get out somehow?”
A horse’s feet made heavy thuds overhead: they sounded so loud she was
not sure he heard her.
“Father! what must I do?”
“Bring somebody here.”
“But you’ll drown while I’m gone!” cried Bluebell, adding a blubbering
sob by way of period.
“No, I sha’n’t.”
His little girl’s nerves were not equal to facing the bare possibility,
and she sent up a wail.
“Don’t make a fuss,” came father’s voice, somewhat sternly.
“Who’s that down there!” called a voice from the road overhead;
“Bluebell?”
“Sir?” She held to her bush and looked up: there was a blurred man on
horseback against the deeper background of hill.
“Is that Bluebell Garde?”
“Yes, sir. My father’s here in the Rocky Fork, and I don’t know how to
get him out!”
The man made his horse’s feet clatter, and he could be heard
immediately afterwards, making his way down the bank himself.
“Who’s that?” called the doctor from his invisible position.
“It’s me, Abram Banks. I don’t seem to make you out, doctor.”
“I’m here in the shadow on a log.”
The Rocky Fork and the frogs and whippoorwills came in with a full
chorus while Abram paused and caught his breath.
“Can you hold on a bit longer?”
“I think so. The water’s quiet. But my arm’s broken, and I can’t help
myself, and it may turn me faint pretty soon, again. I’ve nearly
fainted several times.”
“If you could hold on till I gallop back and get Ridenour’s canoe.”
Bluebell sobbed in her dress-skirt.
“Can’t you get a rope up at the Furnace, Abram? If I had one end of a
long rope I could fasten it to the log, and then you could tow me to
where you are.”
“Is it a big tree?”
“No, rather small. I managed to get it out of the current--broke off
some branches and paddled.”
“Bluebell,” said Abram, deliberately pulling off his wamus and boots,
“you go up the bank and see what my horse’s doin’. I tied him in such a
hurry he may get loose, and then we’d be in a box for a way to git your
father home.”
The little girl scrambled up, holding to the grass in places, and
before she reached the top, she heard a plunge which told Abram had
taken to the water.
Abram’s horse was tied to a sapling across the road, and was stretching
his neck to browse.
The breathing of the Fork and the frogs was interrupted by splashings
and half-exclamations. Bluebell was reassured by hearing her father’s
voice more plainly. The log was being pushed cautiously out of its
harbor. He directed Abram not to turn it towards the current, but to
steer it against another log. Abram’s replies were interspersed with
grunts.
It was not a very long time before they struggled up the hill, Abram
helping the doctor. His own hair was sending little streams of water
down his wamus, but Doctor Garde was dripping from head to foot. When
the light from the Furnace fell on him, he showed in a ghastly plight.
“Have you got a knife, Abram?” asked the doctor.
Abram groped in his homespun and brought out what he called a
jack-knife.
“Now, cut my sleeves open, will you?”
This was done. The doctor took his coats off.
“That rubber sleeve compressed it, or seemed to. It’s considerably
swollen.” He examined his right arm. Bluebell could see him closing his
lips.
“Just git on the horse now and I’ll put sissy up behind you. Or can’t
you manage it?”
The doctor took the horse’s bridle in his left hand, and placing one
foot in the stirrup, leaped up as he did on his Arabian. But this time
he sank back and leaned on the plough-horse’s neck.
“Afraid I can’t do it, Abram. A few ribs a little out of normal
condition, too.”
“Can’t you step on that rock, father?” said Bluebell, caressing his
sound elbow. In her comfort at having him again, she would have been
his stepping-stone herself.
The faintness passing away, he followed Abram and the horse to a rock
and succeeded in mounting from that. The farmer flung up Bluebell
behind him, and took the bridle. This small cavalcade started at once.
“It’d be safer to go the long way around the hill,” suggested Abram.
“They’re a-huntin’ you b’low at the ford, and we might meet ’em with
lights or somethin’, and this horse might cut up. She’s always simple
along the Narrows.”
“The nearest way will be the safest to-night. I want to get home,
Abram.”
So they passed the Furnace in a quick walk and entered the Narrows.
The night-workmen were busy inside, and probably speculating about the
recovery of Doctor Garde’s body.
“Father,” cried Bluebell, hugging him carefully below his arms, “Ballie
came home with the saddle all turned over!”
She laid her cheek against his dear wet back, ashamed to make louder
demonstrations of joy. Now that he was out of the water, the whole
disaster seemed a mere extension of that painful dream.
“And you started out to find where she left me, did you?” said father
in a bantering tone which indicated that he was touched.
“Yes, sir, and I thought you fell over the Narrows.”
“Did you say they were searching at the ford?”
“Got out Ridenour’s canoe and draggin’ with a log-chain.”
“Who?”
“The whole neighborhood, nigh about. That g’ography man he first
brought word to me, and the Furnace-hands heard, and they come. But it
wasn’t my theory that it--that you’d stop there. I felt pretty clear
you’d went with the current. Liza, she come runnin’ to tell me some
mischance had happened to you. The g’ography-teacher, he looked scared
out a year’s growth,” said Abram, having recourse to the time-honored
humor of his region.
“He was badly scared.” The young doctor’s face shone with a
phosphorescent smile. “If I had left him to his fate he couldn’t have
stood it, perhaps, as well as I can. It was folly in him to try the
Fork, any way. But he plunged in because I did, and I felt bound to
help him over.”
“He told us,” remarked Abram slowly, “that you was kind of took off by
the current and your horse kicked you, and you sunk.”
The doctor laughed.
“Well, he certainly was scared out of his sense. Why, I had crossed
the current, diagonally, as the mare always takes a swift current, and
was just at the opposite bank, when he yelled to me. He had come in
holding his horse’s head down, and it was about to drown; they spun
around in the current and started down stream. When I got to him I
seized his bridle and tried to lead him out, and then the horse began
to struggle, and the first thing I knew I was dropped off and thrashed
around, and his gray gave me a few kicks which might have been fatal
out of the water, and I saw Ballie spinning along the road with her
gearing half off, and the young man getting safely out on his horse. I
tried to swim, but my best arm was so numb I couldn’t use it, so I just
kept out of the way of drift as well as I could, and finally found a
log I could crawl upon. I think he called me once or twice, but I found
it necessary to fix my whole mind on what I was doing. When I got on
my log and as far as the Narrows, it took hard work to get out of the
current. Can’t we move on a little faster, Abram?”
The horse’s pace was quickened. Bluebell had not listened for the
crumbling of earth below, nor did she much mind the gutter under Table
Rock hole. Her soul was given up to indignation.
“He didn’t act the man, apparently,” pronounced Abram, having turned
all the incidents over.
“I’ll never go to his g’ography school again!” cried Bluebell from a
bursting heart.
[Illustration: “I SEIZED HIS BRIDLE AND TRIED TO LEAD HIM OUT.”--_Page
183._]
“Tut!” said father, “little girls should be seen and not heard.
Abram, would you mind trotting? I think I could stand it.”
They trotted.
Bluebell’s face intensified behind the wet back. Her imagination
rehearsed a scene. She put Mr. Runnels before the geography school, and
especially before Mr. Pitzer’s spectacles, and pointing to him said,
“He is just as bad as Billy Bowl, for he let my father get pushed into
the Rocky Fork after my father had helped to pull him out! Old Billy
Bowl! Old Billy Bowl!”
CHAPTER XVII
DOCTOR GARDE LISTENS TO REASON
The run had gone down, and the Rocky Fork was within its banks and
falling every hour. Hall, with a number of his neighbors, was raising
another mill on the site of the old one, and Mr. Pitzer’s boys went
down at recess and noon to watch the process and get in the way.
Wreaths of drift on the play-ground showed where the water had been,
and the lower logs of the school-house had threads of green springing
in their cracks and knot-holes.
Everybody had heard how Doctor Garde got into and out of the Rocky
Fork, and the geography-master met some rough bantering which he
answered as best he could. The young men in his night school talked
in knots in the graveyard about tar and feathers for him; but tar and
feathers were a favorite subject with them, principally because they
had never seen any and had some curiosity about the effect of such a
combination. Mr. Runnels did his best to remove the prejudice against
him, and he was so amusing, they forgave him, especially as Doctor
Garde had nothing more to say about the matter.
Doctor Garde was badly hurt; and one of the other country doctors
who set his bones made sad work with the swollen arm. The whole
neighborhood on the safe side of the Fork got upon their plough-horses
and came to see him, according to custom. Healthy as his physique
was, so many strains and annoyances brought on fever, and Liza-Robert
hovered mournfully around the kitchen, taking Liza’s place, while
Liza nursed him past the worst days. Miss Calder took charge of the
children, though one of the doctor’s fancies was to have them both
placed on the foot of his bed where he could see them while they sang
to him. With one hand propping up his head, he watched them through
half-smiling eyes.
Ballie neighed long and frequently in her stable. Bluebell fed her
standing on the barn floor, and smoothed her velvet nose, telling her
minutely all that had happened, and whether father was better or worse.
Still, Ballie felt lonesome; and as there was no stable boy to groom
her down, Liza at last turned her into the meadow, where she sailed
like a lark.
On Saturday afternoon Tildy Banks, bare-footed, slipped into the
kitchen.
The doctor was very much better. She edged to the room where he lay,
and looked in. It was warm, dazzling weather, and all the doors stood
open.
Father was having his dinner. Bluebell and Rocco camped beside him,
occasionally getting a bit, and finding the invalid fare a great deal
nicer than their own unlimited dinner.
“There’s Tildy!” said Bluebell; “come in Tildy: Rocco’s telling father
a story. And take a chair.”
“I don’t want to,” responded Tildy, briefly.
The doctor turned his head and asked her how Jacob the soap-boiler was.
Tildy’s eyes snapped; for Jacob the soap-boiler was an imaginary person
whom the doctor placed before Tildy’s mind as a possible future tyrant.
He found the children one day playing a very stately play, with much
curtsying and singing:
“Here come three lords just out of Spain
A-courting of your daughter Jane.”
“My daughter Jane she is too young
To listen to the wiles of a flattering tongue.”
Tildy was especially serious in the performance; and he at once put in
a plea for another and absent lord, by title, Jacob the soap-boiler who
desired his loyal duty to Matilda instead of to Jane.
“He’s about as well as usual,” she returned with a stoical countenance,
but her nails felt quite long.
“The’ ain’t any soap-boiler,” now pleaded Bluebell, making coaxing
faces to her father. “And then what happened next, Poppetty?”
The baby leaned her head towards one shoulder and then the other in a
bashful pause.
“I guess there isn’t any more of it,” suggested Bluebell.
“Yes, the’ is, too! ’Nen,--’nen--’nen they eat haws and forn-berries
and winter-dreens, and ’ey didn’t have good honey and bwed and
chickun--’tause the’ wasn’t any. An’ the boy say to his sisser,
‘Don’t try: I git a gun I shoot!’ And birds put leaveses all over
’em. ’Nen they laid down on drown’; an’ the ole bad mans go off and
fight wizsor-ruds an’ ’ey git killed. An’ the’ wasn’t any church-house
or anyfing. Thus’ trees all ’roun’. An’ the babies didn’t have any
krunnel-bed, nor any nice drurio wiz drors to keep the’ Sunday clo’es
in. An’ the birds put leaveses all over ’em. An’ they rished they was
to their house. An’ they bofe died. ’Nen they touldn’t go any furver
’tause they was so tired! They thus’ laid them down and _di-de_!”
Rocco folded her claws and fixed her black eyes impressively on
father’s face.
“An’ birds put leaveses all over ’em,” she repeated.
“Yes,” said father, “that’s a very mournful tale. Now, if you’ll kiss
me very carefully you may both get down and run out to play. I ought to
get a nap.”
They both kissed him very carefully and went out with Tildy.
Tildy dug her toes into the soil, and made the following remark:--
“Come, and go to ’r house.”
“Well, if Liza’ll let us.”
“She told mother you could come to-day. Mother sent me over to fetch
you. They don’t want you ’round while your father’s so sick.”
“He ain’t so sick! He’s ’most well.”
Tildy looked fixedly at her toes:
“He looks awful bad.”
“Well, I guess you would, too, if your ribs and your arm was broke!
That day we played down by the run you said he was going to get
drowned, but he didn’t!”
“He come nigh it,” observed Tildy, with satisfaction.
“Well, he didn’t get _clear_ drowned, nor he ain’t goin’ to, for all o’
you!” retorted Bluebell with stinging asperity.
Tildy dug her toes into the soil, ploughing quite a furrow.
“My father’s got a pretty verse on his tombstone,” she said,
suggestively. “It says:
“‘Remember, friends, as you pass by,
As you are now, so once was I:
As I am now, so you must be--
Prepare for death and follow me.’”
“That’s on ’most all of ’em in the graveyard!”
“And it’s what they’d put on your father’s.”
“Tildy Banks, I don’t like ye!”
“The’ ain’t no love lost betwixt us,” observed Tildy; and she turned
toward home.
Bluebell felt bruised and astounded. Rocco stood by, gazing up through
the tunnel of her sun-bonnet.
“You’ll feel sorry when I’m gone off to live somewheres else!”
Tildy pursued her way deafly, straight as an Indian.
“Tildy!”
The distance widened.
“Tildy, what did you go and get mad for? Are you leavin’ us? I don’t
think that’s a nice way to mind your mother!”
Tildy paused near the bars, and turned, but without any intention of
stooping to parley.
“Melissy Garde, if you’re goin’ to ’r house you better come on.”
Roxana’s sister came on, hurrying her by the hand. It was such a grief
to be at variance with anybody, and especially with Tildy, who must
indeed love her, they had played together so long.
Tildy helped the baby over the bars, and they all proceeded down the
meadow in silence. Ballie was scouring across the flank of the hill,
making the woods echo with her whinneys. Whatever was green looked
densely so, and the shade was black against the light. The more distant
landscape seemed to vibrate in the heat. Grasshoppers fled from their
approach in every direction, and down the run Pidey and Rose stood up
to their knees in a deep place, chewing their cuds and switching their
tails. On such a summer day Nature is a tender mother: the outdoor
world is better than the best fairy-books.
“You ought to see my doll Aunt Melissa brought me,” began Bluebell in a
conciliatory tone. “Her face kind of melted.” At this moment Bluebell
felt she could bear that sad change in Georgiana if it would only
mollify Tildy.
“She’s wax, you know, and Rocco held her too near the fire, and one
cheek run, like she cried the red off.”
“She did try!” exclaimed Rocco, in distress.
“Liza tried and I tried and Jawgeanus tried--_I_ didn’t hurt her,
B’uebell!”
“No, honey, you didn’t. Aunt Melissa says she thinks she can paint it
over.”
Tildy stalked ahead, helping to lead the baby.
“Did you go to school yesterday, Tildy?”
“I gener’ly go to school!”
“Did you get the head-mark?”
“Your dear Printh’ Pancost got that.”
Doctor Garde’s little girl looked piteously at the uncompromising
sun-bonnet.
“I wish you’d got it, Tildy.”
“_I_ don’t care about head-marks.”
“But I’d rather you’d have the prize than anybody else if I go ’way.
We’ve always been cronies, you know.”
Tildy’s sun-bonnet turned its mouth toward her, and the scrutinizing
gray eyes focused themselves on their affectionate minion.
“If you’d been some folks’ young one you’d had to go to school every
day after the water went down.”
“Well, Tildy, I felt too bad to go when my father was so sick. And I
guess he isn’t goin’ to send me any more. We’re goin’ to move away!”
Tildy’s countenance softened by degrees to actual wistfulness. Still
she combated the assertion.
“That’s just talk. My mother says he won’t leave the Rocky Fork.”
“Oh, but Liza and Aunt Melissa and him say it’s so. Aunt Melissa wants
us to live at her house, and she knows lots of people that will let my
father doctor them. And maybe I’ll go to a seminary,” said Bluebell
with awe. “That’s a grand, very fine school, Tildy, where you learn to
play on a py-anna, and paint flowers, and everybody studies big books!
Aunt Melissa says, ‘You are running too many risks, Maurice, and how
are you going to educate the children?’ And he says, ‘I thought of the
children when I was in the water.’ Liza she cried on her apron, and
Aunt Melissa took her handkerchief out of her reddycule and cried on
that, and father looked very solemn and says, ‘They owe everything
to you, Liza.’ Then Liza says she won’t stand in anybody’s light, and
she’s seen it all along. So they talked a good many times. And every
time, they talked more like we’s goin’ away. Liza has begun to knit my
speckled white-and-red winter stockings.”
They had now reached the run. Tildy took Roxana up and lifted her
across the stones. On the other side, it was her proposal to make a
saddle to carry the baby up the slope. So Bluebell grasped one of her
own wrists, palm downward, and Tildy grasped one of her own, and with
their free hands they then grasped each other’s free wrists, thus
forming a square and substantial seat on which Rocco sat down when they
stooped for her. She held to Tildy’s shoulder and Bluebell’s neck as
they went on. Riding on this kind of saddle is most exhilarating. If
your bearers stumble you have the chance of alighting on your feet, yet
you see the world from an elevated position and at your ease.
They heard the loom before they entered the house. Mrs. Banks was
weaving, and Teeny was sitting on the doorstep in the shade, sewing
quilt-pieces. Teeny was quite devoted to this industry. She had a very
young-womanish air. Her hair was twisted in a knob with some pinks in
it, and her mother’s largest apron was tied around her plain-waisted
dress.
The floors were all bare at Liza-Robert’s house, though she wove
endless carpets for her prouder neighbors. The children went into the
loom-room, which was nearly filled by that huge frame. There were
threads stretching diagonally and crossing each other in front of her,
between which she shot a shuttle from side to side; then she pulled an
overhanging frame-work twice, and it sent the bobbin-thread, which was
called a filling, home to its place in the web, with a not unmusical
sound. The web this time was a linsey cloth with variegated threads
through it, intended for the girls’ winter dresses.
She took Rocco up on her lap, let her struggle to guide the shuttle
through, and made believe that the baby pulled the frame-work.
“Little innocent!” said Liza-Robert; “it’ll be the only stroke she’ll
ever weave. They have things different in fine towns.”
“I want a drink,” said Tildy. She went out, followed by her faithful
Bluebell. They ran down to that spring-house spared by the late flood,
and opened the door into its coolness. The ground was clear again,
and the yellow-faced crocks stood in their accustomed places with the
overflow of the spring purling around them. The spring itself was so
clear and cold and alive to its duty that there was pleasure in only
hanging over it to see your face below. Tildy broke off leaves from
peppermint stalks, and bending them so they could be pinned with stems,
made cups for Bluebell and herself. They dipped and emptied these
thimble-sized cups until the breasts of their dresses were wet, utterly
ignoring the gourd which hung on a nail just at hand.
CHAPTER XVIII
BLUEBELL AND TILDY
Then they went behind the garden and along the eastern hill-slope, and
gathered unto themselves large families of elders.
A little girl who has never played with these woods-babies cannot
realize the delight there is in them. Warm from the sun and freshly
green, they seemed more _alive_ than the most complete doll. It always
gave Bluebell a heartache to come upon a pile of withered elders left
from a former play. She would dig out Rosa, or Lilly, or Alice, and
look sorrowfully at the crackling drapery and shrunken body of that
departed companion.
The elders were in bloom, so Tildy and Bluebell “p’tended” the white,
fragrant smear made of so many little cups was a daughter’s white
skirt hanging below her green gown; for it was quite the thing then
for a child’s embroidered skirt to show its rich hand-work below the
short dress. The girls plunged into the midst of the elder thicket,
surrounded by its incense, and came out with rustling armloads. To make
an elder doll, you break it smoothly from the parent stem, and how
beautifully the pith shows in the top of its head! then you leave arms
at a suitable distance below--the elder’s branches spring on exactly
opposite sides--and strip all the leaves from these, except three at
the extremities, which are hands. And last, you give the darling a
length of bare stem for waist, and place her before you to admire the
delicate brown bark of her face, which has an expression individual and
distinct from the faces of her sisters.
Tildy and Bluebell sought their favorite play-houses up the hill, their
arms loaded, and each leading an active young elder by the hand. The
play-houses were some distance from their school-path.
“We ain’t been here for so long,” remarked Bluebell, panting up the
steep with her family; “I wonder if anything’s broke our acorn dishes?”
Tildy’s house was a big rock cropping out of the soil. She had
“up-stairs and down-stairs,” for it was easy to go around behind and
step on the top of the rock. Her down-stairs was well rugged with moss,
but the gray floor up-stairs stood bare and cool in the wood-shadows.
Bluebell’s residence was a mighty stump, cut clean and smooth at the
top. She had dragged a fragment of rock near for a doorstone, and lived
on that smooth, many-ringed floor. She had a back kitchen, of course,
behind the stump, where her acorn delft was stored on little shelves
made of bark, propped with pebbles from the run. A fleece of vivid
moss, finer than the most gorgeous Persian rug, covered this kitchen.
The late storm had only brightened this; but alas! her shelves and
acorn cups were all to be built and stored again.
They placed themselves in their respective dwellings, surrounded by
daughters, and talked across.
“Now, le’s play _Thinks-I-to-Myself_!” said Bluebell; “it’s such a
funny book; and there’s Miss Mandeville, and Robert, and Miss Twist,
and old Mrs. Creepmouse--ain’t that a queer name, Tildy! I read it all
through, and skipped the parts where it was long. You have one of your
dolls be Robert, and I have one of mine be Emily Mandeville.”
Tildy allowed this to be done. The hero of _Thinks-I-to-Myself_ was
made of a very jaunty elder switch; and the girls put themselves into
parts and at the same time moved their puppets. Robert sent a valentine
of a grape-vine leaf to Miss Mandeville; and Miss Mandeville used the
language which she did in the book; and Miss Twist appeared at the ball
pinned all over with flounces of her natural bloom, while an emerald
chain of grass graced her neck. It was very interesting; but when they
came to the marriage of the hero and heroine, the movers of the drama
were at a loss for a suitable ceremony. They had never seen a wedding.
“Just join their hands,” said Tildy, “and I’ll say
‘Bow-wow-whiddle-ink--Bow-wow-whiddle-ink!’ That will do as well as
anything.”
So the three-leaved palm of Miss Emily was laid in the three-leaved
palm of gallant Robert, and twisted together, and the couple propped by
a tree. Overhead great branches were rocking with a musical rustle,
and further up the hill a squirrel barked. Ants crept up the drapery of
the bride-expectant, and a bunch of ferns moved as if to fan her.
Tildy took her stand in front, and Bluebell stood by, grouped around
with the other characters in _Thinks-I-to-Myself_, such of them as
could not stand lying gracefully on their backs. Tildy opened her mouth
and said “Bow--” when Teeny, leading the baby, appeared on the scene.
“Didn’t you hear me call you to supper?” she asked.
“No, we didn’t hear anything.”
“What you doing?”
“Ain’t doin’ anything,” returned Tildy, somewhat shamefaced. Her
weakness for elders was something Teeny failed to appreciate.
“We’ve played a story out of a book,” explained Bluebell, “and now
they are standing up to get married, and Tildy is going to say
‘Bow-wow-whiddle-ink!’”
“No, I ain’t!”
“Oh, Tildy, please go on. And old Mrs. Creepmouse died, and we buried
her under grass, with bushes for stones at her head and feet.”
Teeny gurgled in her throat. She was a real grown young woman, you
know, who sewed quilt-pieces and had one “Rising Sun” and “Pride of the
West” done and quilted in shell-pattern and laid away. Still she did
not laugh out loud, and kindly volunteered to help the bridal party out
of their predicament.
“You can marry them by the old Connecticut law.”
“How, Teeny! Oh, you do it!”
So Teeny approached and said:
“By the old Connecticut law,
I marry this Indian to the squaw;
Kiss her and take her for your bride:
Now I pronounce you man and wife
All your life.”
“Oh, how beautiful that was!” sighed Bluebell. “It doesn’t make any
difference ’cause they _wasn’t_ Indians, does it? Now le’s put ’em in
the houses, and cry ‘good-by.’ Everybody in the book _cries_ when they
talk. I don’t see what made ’em cry when they just say something. It
says ‘cried my father,’ ‘cried Miss Mandeville.’ I s’pose they felt
bad.”
Rocco helped to pile the elder-people, who had served their time and
must lie shrivelling to-morrow, upon the rock and the stump. Then the
human dolls who would have so many stories to play in their lives, went
down hill chattering together, and sat on split-bottomed chairs around
Liza’s table. Rocco was lifted by _Josephus_ and the other available
books in the house. Their most luxurious dishes were custard and red
currants; and the yellow faces of some of the crocks had yielded up
their rich wrinkles, and they had cookies, which Liza indulgently let
them crumble in the cream.
“Don’t go home yet,” commanded Tildy, when the first star was trembling
out of the evening light and the household gathered outside the door
on chairs or step. “I’ll take you clear to the bars, so you won’t be
’fraid if it’s dark.”
“I ain’t a coward,” remarked Doctor Garde’s valiant little girl.
Doctor Garde’s baby sat by Liza-Robert’s knee. The evening milking
was strained away in the spring-house, and the day’s tasks were
told. Teeny had pieced a dozen blocks; the mother folded her bony and
work-worn hands, and looked toward the horizon with patient, meditative
eyes.
“Hush!” said Tildy; “if you’d hear mother tell about the child in the
blackberry patch, it ’ud make you a coward!”
CHAPTER XIX
THE CHILD IN THE BLACKBERRY PATCH
“Tell it,” begged Bluebell.
Liza-Robert removed her eyes from the horizon and shook her head at
Tildy. Her own girls were companions, to whom she freely imparted the
most eldritch tales and wonders; but Doctor Garde objected to having
his children’s imaginations tinctured with the folklore of the region.
She was so tender and indulgent, however, that no child need plead with
her long. All gathered closer around her knees to hear the story of the
child who wandered in the blackberry patch.
“It was just after I was married,” said Liza-Robert, “and long before
Christeeny was born, that Robert come home one night from the Furnace
and told us he had heard something in the blackberry patch. That was
before we bought this land, and we lived in part of the old homestead
and Abram’s folks lived in the other part. It was a good three miles
to the Furnace, but Robert walked there and back every day, and usually
got home after dark. This was a summer night, and drizzlin’ rain. He
said it was yellow in the west, and the last thing the sun did as it
went down was to make a rainbow, and that rainbow stood with one foot
across the Rocky Fork, and the other away up in the laurels. Robert he
crossed the blackberry patch about dusk.”
“I know the blackberry patch,” said Bluebell. Her mind mapped and
tinted it. A high, undulating place terraced around with hills, and
a large notch of sky showing in the west; blackberry thickets were
grouped over it; there the katydids and cicadæ sang unceasingly, and
grasshoppers thumped all over you, penetrating to the tightest part of
your clothing, apparently seeking to be crushed, or to be relieved of a
leg, while their bulging eyes expressed sulky reproach. It was a very
lonesome place, full of echoes, and rank with grass, in which some of
the boasted copperheads of the region had been killed.
“But it was lots wilder then,” pursued Liza. “Part o’ the bushes have
been grubbed out since that time. But there was a sort of path some o’
the men livin’ on the east road had worn right straight through it.
“So Robert he was about the middle of the patch when he hears a child
begin to cry like its heart was breaking. Thinks he, somebody has been
here pickin’ berries to-day, and left a child behind. So he begun to
call to it and tell it not to be afraid, Bob Banks was there, and he’d
take it home. He waded into the grass and looked in different places
for it. Now it seemed right at his hand, and now it would sound away
off up the hills. It was the most mournful crying he ever heard; but
hunt as he might he couldn’t get sight of the child. So, after waitin’
till it got too dark to see, he came home, and was for going back with
Abram and a lantern to find that child.
“They got the lantern and went back and hunted that patch high and low,
but never saw any child nor heard any cheep of it, and their wamuses
was ready to wring out when they got home.
“Next day was Sunday, and we all went to mornin’ meetin’. The neighbor
women hadn’t any of ’em been blackberryin’ the day before, and hadn’t
heard of any lost child. So we’d have laughed at Robert if Eli Ridenour
hadn’t come past the Furnace Monday with _his_ story. _He’d_ heard the
child in that patch. He was coming through there about midnight Sunday
night, when the most sorrowful cryin’ anybody ever heard begun right
close to him. Eli was always cowardly, and he took to his heels. He
said it sounded like a woman swishin’ through the grass with her long
dress, and cryin’ lonesome-like. But Robert stuck to it, it was more
like a child scared half to death.
“People begun to think there was something wrong with that patch. Some
said it was a gang of bad men that wanted to steal and had a cave
somewhere near the patch; for there was a gang took in a cave ’way up
the Rocky Fork when I wasn’t much older than this baby. Mother Banks
often told about it. And some said it was a child brought there to be
lost and wander ’round till it died--”
“Like the babes in the woods,” murmured Bluebell.
--“By folks that wasn’t as good as they ought to be. And all kinds of
stories were told. Some saw it settin’ ’way up in a tree all in white,
and some heard it under the ground, as if it was buried up and couldn’t
get out. Mr. Willey offered to go before a ’squire and make affidavit
that he saw its eyes through the bushes, and they looked like live
coals.
“So the neighbor men got together and stayed in the patch at night;
they was bound and determined to find that child. They didn’t hear
a thing of it, and along in the night all of ’em fell asleep except
Robert and Mr. Willey. They were all lying on the grass by a lot of
blackberry bushes, and several of the men had their guns, for there was
all kinds of suspicions, you know. And Robert said all of a sudden that
crying begun again, up the hill at the back of the patch, and it was
enough to melt a heart of stone. Mr. Willey and Robert they takes their
guns, and they slips along--”
The children clustered closer to Liza’s knee. Rocco opened her mouth;
her black eyes scintillated through the dusk; and Bluebell threw a
glance at the dark woods above the house.
“So they slips along and along, close to the ground. It was starlight
enough to make things out pretty well. And what do you think they came
across right at the edge of the woods?”
“Oh, a little lost baby!” cried Doctor Garde’s little girl, “just like
Mr. Post in the First Reader! I always loved that story.”
Tildy puffed in derision.
“It was somethin’ with great big shinin’ eyes--”
“Oh,” pleaded Bluebell, “it _wasn’t_ the thing that came after Peggy’s
Gold Leg?”
“No,” said Liza, laughing; “it was an animal a good deal bigger than a
dog; and it was all ready to spring off of a limb at them when Robert
fired his gun, and over it rolled!”
“’Twas a painter!” announced Tildy, with a flourish of triumph.
Bluebell crouched in her seat. Had Tildy pronounced it “panther,”
this would have meant little to her. But a “painter!” The Rocky
Fork colloquialism bristled with terrors. A “painter” had degrees
of ferocity which even a bear could not attain. Lions were the only
superiors to “painters,” and, after all, the name of lion had not that
hollow, frightful sound to be found in “painter!”
“O my!” breathed Bluebell.
Roxana hid her head under Liza’s apron.
“They skinned it,” said Liza; and this enabled the children to breathe
more freely. A skinned “painter” cannot be as formidable to the mind
as one with his robes on. “And we’ve got the skin yet. I’ve heard tell
painters would cry like women or children to draw folks near so they
could eat them. But that’s the only one shot on the Rocky Fork since
this country was new. We always called it ‘The Child in the Blackberry
Patch.’”
There were those dear elder dollies lying in the play-houses up hill.
All night they must hear the trees whisper--now low, as if just
dropping asleep; now loud, and breathing deeply, as if startled by
something more than a fresh breeze: they must hear the mysterious
crackling of twigs, the fall of some crumbling part of a rotten log,
the hoot of night-owls, the rattle of the tree-frog, and the dense cry
of insects which made the air one unbroken sheet of sound; the dew
would gather on their barky faces. Of course they were nothing but
elders--but were they at all afraid?--or telling “painter” stories
among themselves? Hour by hour their juices would dry, and to-morrow
the bright and blooming Emily Mandeville and the bedizened Miss Twist
would be old and withered elders, and day after to-morrow you might
grind them to powder!
A voice calling from the lower bars with a horn-like rise and fall--a
homely, but a comfortable sound--summoned not Rose and Pidey, but the
children, to come home.
“Ah!” sighed Bluebell, as she rose reluctantly. She was very loath to
ask, but she wanted to know so badly. “That painter’s _dead_ now, ain’t
it, Liza?”
“Why, honey, it was killed long before Teeny was born!” This was indeed
a relief.
CHAPTER XX
THE LAST TIME
When everything was settled, the Rocky Forkers said they were not
surprised that Doctor Garde was going to move. A man always ought to
better himself; but they hoped he _would_ better himself. The Rocky
Fork was rough and hilly, but some towns might be worse.
Miss Calder was to take the children home with her; but the doctor,
able to ride about with his arm in a sling, had to collect fees and
settle his business before departing to a new field.
So Bluebell came the last time to the log school-house. She might not
see it again.
“The children shall visit you every summer, Liza,” said the young man.
“And you must come to see them,” urged Miss Melissa. But Liza knew the
old time was forever broken up. And Bluebell knew that when she came
back the school-house would not be her school-house, nor Mr. Pitzer,
if he still reigned, her master; yet in her bustle and anticipation,
regrets were crowded to a corner of her mind, and she felt important
on this last day. Mr. Pitzer had written a beautiful parting address
to her on half a tall foolscap sheet, in his fairest hand, upstrokes
light and downstrokes artistically shaded, with such wonderful turning
W’s and other capitals, throwing fantastic vines all around. He had
ornamented the top with a bird and a fish in red and green inks, each
being deftly finished by a continuous flourish without the pen having
been lifted from the paper. The address began, “Dear Youth;” and went
on to describe life as a stream, and a child as a young voyager who was
bidden to beware of quicksands, whose sky your old friend hoped might
be ever free from storms. In concluding he said, “How touching is a
young and interesting mind just unfolding its petals to the sunlight!
Whoever shall bring it to perfect flower, it will always be a source of
pleasure to your old friend to remember that he was the first to lead
it in the ways of knowledge. May heaven bless and richly endow my young
friend!
“Your schoolmaster,
“THOMAS PITZER.”
Bluebell folded the paper reverently. She could not read many of the
words; it was necessary to add more years to her life before this
production could be appreciated in its magnitude. But she was very
grateful for such a testimonial, and some odd tender string began
vibrating in her little heart. Oh, dear Mr. Pitzer! and dear old
benches that smelled like the chest carved by Antony of Trent! The
very dunce-cap was a thing of joy when she thought of it! How funny it
looked on a blubbering little boy who would not repent of his misdeeds
until he was stood in the middle of the floor with that paper cone on
his head! Should she ever know again the hungry smell of a reticule
that has a few stale crumbs in it? She had her way all day. She
visited, and when she and Tildy asked to go after the water, not a soul
in school would have been a rival candidate for the same office.
They brought back bunches of honeysuckle from Langley’s well, and the
smell of that flower became forever associated in Bluebell’s mind with
worm-eaten benches, clay-chinked walls and the stirring air of the
hills. She wore her best blue calico, and felt so dressed up as to
have lost part of her identity. So Tildy rested the pail-handle on a
stick, and silently carried the short end herself. And when they put
the water-pail on its bench in the corner, Joe Hall got permission to
pass it around (another fat office in primitive school-life), and not
one mouth within those walls could refuse to press the dripping gourd
when it presented itself, splashing cold drops on bare feet, or sending
delicious shudders through thinly covered limbs. When Joe Hall reached
Bluebell, he dropped in her lap not only a thumb-paper bearing her
name, but a lot of birds ingeniously folded in the pattern generally
accepted by the school.
Perintha Pancost had her pocket so bulging full of new apples that
it weighed her down, and all the scholars on her bench swallowed
expectantly. But, one after the other, they were passed to Bluebell,
through hands which only stopped them on the way for a smell; so
Bluebell’s pocket bulged, and she and Perintha exchanged the most
amiable and confiding smiles. Mr. Pitzer was so busy mending pens that
he perhaps saw no occasion for bringing out and reading that article of
the rules which forbade eating “_apples, condiments, and nuts, or going
to dinner-bags in school hours_.”
How kind all those boys and girls were! John Tegarden showed her the
“Death of the Flowers,” in the Fourth Reader, which he was learning
to speak before summer school was out, for the “last day;” and, as it
had a melancholy tone, Bluebell felt vaguely complimented. She would
be away off in Sharon on that day; she would not even see the prizes
distributed, to say nothing of missing that spelling-prize herself.
Some of the parents who were not too busy harvesting, would be there in
their Sunday clothes; the children themselves would appear in different
character, all shod in stiff shoes or jaunty slippers; the fortunate
girls in white dotted swiss, or book muslin, with rosettes of ribbon
in their tightly braided hair, the poorer ones in starched calico; the
boys dressed exactly like their fathers, and looking like little old
men, very much subdued by the calamity of clothes.
But still there probably were grander gala days in Sharon.
Amanda Willey would have Bluebell stand next to her in the ring at
noon when they played “_I lost my glove yesterday, found it to-day_.”
Of course Tildy stood on the other side, and Perintha, who went
around with the glove--which was simply and solely an empty reticule,
there being no glove in the entire school wardrobe--dropped it behind
Bluebell. They abstained from “_Drown the Duck_,” because she hated the
tiresome ins and outs, and was sure to be drowned by dashing straight
at the leader.
Even the boys left “_Bull in the Pen_,” and “_Mad Dog_,” to say nothing
of “_Base_” and “_Three Old Cat_,” and condescended to play for once
with the girls, if the girls would play that variation of “_Hide and
Seek_” known to them as “_Hickamy-dickamy_;” and to Bluebell was
reserved the right of repeating the cabalistic formula by which the
panting and eager crowd was narrowed down to the one party who had to
hide his eyes. With dipping forefinger she went the rounds, rejoicing
in the liquid roll of the words:
“Hickamy-dickamy, aliga-mo;
Dick slew, aligo-slum;
Hulkum, pulkum, peeler’s gum:
France--you’re out!”
The lot fell on Minerva Ridenour, that little baby-faced thing who was
always standing about with her mouth open, as if perpetually astonished
at the world, and who could not even eat an apple without showing how
her white first-teeth made cider of the fruit. There were plenty of
places to hide: behind logs and trees, behind the school-house and the
school-house door. Before she had counted a hundred, with her eyes
hid against the base, not a bobbing head or glint of calico could be
seen in the landscape; and when, rubbing the smear which darkness had
made, off her sight, she wandered cautiously a few yards from the base,
lo! there were a half a dozen long-legged fellows patting it, having
swooped from overhanging branches or from behind logs. Forms appeared
everywhere, and the little Black Man ran valiantly, but overtook
only one or two at the base, where she patted excitedly, calling the
individual names of the entire school, until she was checked, and
reminded if she called anybody’s name before he appeared, that party
could “come in free.” Joe Hall and John Tegarden remained out when all
the rest stood in a scarlet and perspiring group! and it was ludicrous
to see Minerva fly back to the base as if drawn by an elastic rope
which she had stretched, every time an alarm rose behind her or she
saw a suspicious spot. On the other hand, the found majority shouted
warning or encouragement to the invisibles:
“Lay low, Joe!”
“Run, John, now’s your time! Run! run! run!”
John had hid in the hollow towards the Rocky Fork, and his long legs
at his distance were pretty equally matched against Minerva’s tardier
feet at her distance. It was an exciting moment, in which the majority
patted its hands and knees and shouted with all its might. Minerva came
in gallantly, but John reached over her at the last instant and patted
the base: “One, two, three!” And then his impetus carried him sprawling
on the ground. It was John’s nature to throw his entire sensitive soul
into what he undertook, and he did not enjoy the girls’ laughing and
the boys’ hooting as he scrambled upon “all-fours.” He did not know
he was to do martial service for his country and to die the death
of a soldier. The noble possibilities of the boy were at that time
only apparent in his tenderness of heart. It was an aggravation to an
awkward fellow like John to see Joe Hall sail in and encircle the base
while Minerva was farthest from it, as if Mercury’s wings grew on his
neatly moving heels; pat it triumphantly, and step back with his head
up, as if graceful success was a matter of course for him.
Oh, they had so much fun! If there was anything in the world more
exhilarating than running right through when the Black Man calls,
Doctor Garde’s little girl had yet to encounter it. Then there was
that similar play, with a shiver in it:
“How many miles to Barley-bright?”
“Three score and ten.”
“Can I get there by candle-light?”
“Yes, if the witches don’t catch you!”
But the school-day ended. Bluebell put her reader and spelling-book
into her reticule. She got one last head-mark. And the lessons the
higher classes had read that afternoon, made a background of thought
in her mind--the magnificently worded “Con-fla-gra-tion of an
Am-phi-theatre,” and that rousing story of a son’s return, beginning,
“It was night. The widow of the Pine Cottage had laid on her last
fagot.”
One by one the boys and girls went out, bowing or curtsying to the
master, and he laid special emphasis on the “_Good_-evening” which he
gave Bluebell.
How soon it was all over! And how soon the very evening before her
departure had come! The clothes she was to wear on the journey were
laid out on a chair, and her mother’s trunk brought down from the
garret, repaired and packed. After all, it was decided to let Roxana
stay with Liza until her father was ready to depart. In her own
flutter, Bluebell scarcely anticipated missing the baby.
Tildy came over to stay all night, and they played until late. She
brought her John Rogers’ Primer as a parting gift for Bluebell to
“remember her by.” Its frontispiece represented the martyr, John
Rogers, burning at the stake, surrounded by soldiers with axes, and his
numerous family, in very short-waisted gowns or mature-looking coats.
The delightful rhymes within its covers almost repeated themselves:
“Time cuts down all,
Both great and small.”
“In Adam’s fall
We sin-ned all.”
“Zaccheus he
Did climb a tree,
His lord and master
For to see;”
and many others with an old-fashioned tang like that of a winter apple
kept far into the spring. And there was, besides, John Rogers’s
address to his children. On receiving this precious pamphlet, Bluebell
drew from her own stores her oldest and dearest book, the “_Hymns
for Infant Minds_,” in pink pasteboard covers. There was this prime
favorite:
“My father, my mother, I know,
I cannot your kindness repay;
But I hope as the older I grow,
I shall learn your commands to obey.
You loved me before I could tell
Who it was that so tenderly smiled;
But now that I know it so well,
I should be a dutiful child.”
And there, too, was Mr. Pitzer’s battle piece:
“Let dogs delight,” &c.,
And,
“I thank the goodness and the grace
Which on my birth has smiled;”
with dozens of other gently stimulating hymns which Bluebell had long
known by heart. In giving this book to Tildy, she gave as nearly a part
of her identity as could be separated from herself.
Morning came--early, but moist and shady among the hills. The girls
were up before anybody else in the house. Tildy hooked Bluebell up with
maternal care, and combed the tangles out of her hair with an energy
which came near straining their friendship at that last moment.
Then Liza bustled about breakfast, and the baby waked in the unusual
stir. Miss Melissa moved out of her chamber in the dignified habit
which she had laid aside after her arrival at the Rocky Fork. Father
did not ride away until the party was ready to start. Abram with his
spring-wagon was to drive them to the station: father was still a
left-handed horseman.
The last, and almost the very best, breakfast of Rocky Fork life was
just over, when Robert’s Liza and Teeny came trailing up the meadow,
their dresses deeply touched with dew. Teeny brought her rough-coated
china lamb as a parting gift; she had outgrown such toys; but Bluebell
could only give her a kiss in return, for all her treasures were under
lock and key.
Then a rattling was heard along the lane, and Abram appeared with his
horse and spring-wagon. He had two split-bottomed chairs for his
travellers, but for himself, a board across the wagon was good enough.
He let down the bars, and drove in to take on the trunks. And then
Bluebell realized that she was going away from home!
Does the child leave you so lightly, old weather-beaten house! Never
mind. Years will bring you your revenge: you will live in her mind
forever, a symbol of joy which does not come when we are older.
She is squeezing the little sister, responding to Tildy’s stoical
hug--and Tildy starts straight to the lower bars, her brimming eyes
turned from the company. Liza-Robert is caressing her with some pious
words, and now she is tight in Liza’s arms, just realizing how soft
and comfortable and dear they have been. She hangs to Liza while Miss
Melissa makes her adieux, and Teeny gives her another pat as Abram
hoists her into the vehicle.
Father is ready on his Arabian to ride beside them as far as Mary Ann
post-office. They will take the long way around the hills.
The bars are put up behind them. Bluebell looks back and sees her
group of friends moving into the house, and hears Rocco’s voice--like
the voice of the old house--calling persistently:
“Good-by, B’uebell, good-by! Good-by, B’uebell!”
CHAPTER XXI
THE FIRST RAILROAD TRAIN
“Father,” said Doctor Garde’s little girl, when she saw the branching
road ahead on which he must ride away from her, “you won’t get into the
Rocky Fork again, _will_ you?”
“If I do, it will barely reach my saddle-girth now,” replied father,
smiling.
“But you’ll be careful, won’t you, father?”
“Yes, I’ll be careful.”
Both his horse and Abram’s wagon were checked when the roads separated,
while a few adieux were said. He shook hands with Miss Melissa and
kissed his little girl. In a few moments he was cantering away, and
Bluebell felt launched on the unknown world by herself. There was
Abram, however, a figure to whom she had been accustomed so large
a part of her life. And though he seemed nothing but a figure
now, driving silently and looking straight ahead, for Abram was a
reticent man, he was most significant of home. It was a long drive
to the railroad station. Mary Ann post-office was quite back in the
wilderness, and Bluebell had always thought it a suburb of the great
world.
They stopped in the woods far from any house, and had their dinner.
Liza had put up the best of lunches and plenty of cold tea. Abram
unhitched his horse and led it to a stream to drink; then he took a
sack of feed from the space behind the trunks, and fed it. Miss Calder
and Bluebell sat on their chairs, but Abram took his dinner resting on
the grass. When they had stopped half an hour by Miss Calder’s time,
he hitched the horse again, and they moved briskly forward lest they
should be too late at the station for the afternoon Baltimore and Ohio
passenger train.
As they came down a slope. Doctor Garde’s little girl saw what she
thought was an immense long boat sliding across a grassy plain with
a roar which terrified her. It was as strange a sight as a blue or
scarlet moon in the sky.
“Oh, look at that!” she cried: “what is it?”
“That’s the east-bound passenger,” said Miss Melissa. “Our train will
be down soon now.”
So that strange vision was “the cars.”
She had heard of their rapid motion, and was prepared to see them shoot
like a meteor; they were a little disappointing in that respect. But
the smoke, the noise! And the possible danger! Suppose that train had
changed its direction, and had run up the slope straight at Abram’s
wagon! Bluebell had no doubt the mysterious sliding power could move
where it pleased. But when they alighted at the station, she saw
stretching in front of it, and as far as eye could see on each side
until the parallel lines became points or disappeared behind hills,
iron rails laid on a prepared road. This was the railroad; the flying
boat could not leave it for a turf track and prosper. Here was matter
for congratulation; but a new fear arose in the little girl’s mind
which she would not on any account have betrayed. If the cars ran on
wheels, as Aunt Melissa explained that they did, how _could_ those
wheels keep from slipping off the polished tops of the rails? and if
they departed ever so little, Bluebell knew what must follow. Her
vision of riding on the cars began to take a lurid nimbus. Still, other
people had ventured and lived.
The station was a small, lonely building, but several handsome
farm-houses could be seen in the landscape. There were two rooms
inside, in one of which a little machine clicked all the time. There
were poles all along the railroad, with wires stretched along their
tops, and Bluebell noticed that these wires came down through a window
to this machine. She knew what that was. It was the telegraph. She had
heard things went more quickly over that than over the railroad.
“I hope father and Rocketty will ride on that when they come to Aunt
Melissa’s house,” she thought. “Wouldn’t the baby’s eyes pop when they
went spinning along so fast! But what do folks do when they get to the
poles? I should think the tops of the poles ’ud hit ’em. I guess they
just swing round the poles and go on. I don’t believe I could go very
fast if they _was_ telegraphin’ me.”
Miss Melissa sat on a bench in the station. Abram had attended to the
tickets and had the trunks marked for delivery at Newark. He then drove
his horse some distance away, and having secured it, came back to see
his party off.
Bluebell slipped her hand into his and stood by him on the platform.
“You’ll soon be off now,” said he.
“Yes, sir.”
“Are you glad to get away from the Rocky Fork?”
“Oh, _no_, sir! But I want to learn at a big seminary.”
“That’s a fact,” said Abram, as if deliberation had convinced him of it.
“Mr. Banks, I s’pose you’ll see Tildy?”
“It’s likely I will; yes, it’s pretty likely.”
“If you do see her, I wish you would please tell her to write to me; I
forgot to ask her.”
“I don’t know’s she can write.”
“But Teeny can. And Tildy said she was going to have a copybook as soon
as her mother bought her some foolscap paper. I am going to learn to
write. I am going to play music, too, Mr. Banks.”
“Yes, it’s likely you’ll learn a heap of fine things.”
“Don’t you s’pose Teeny would write a letter _for_ Tildy?”
“That don’t seem onreasonable,” admitted Abram. “Christeeny writes
a fair hand. Robert, he was a good scholar. He read the Bible and
Josephus clear through.”
“Yes, sir. And Joe Hall said they were singin’ so nice at g’ography
school now.”
“That’s good learning,” said Abram, drolly; “but ther’s many another
thing a man’d better know than singin’ g’ogr’phy. F’rinstance: how to
ford a creek!”
Before Doctor Garde’s little girl could do complete justice to
this pleasantry, which she and Abram, of all persons, were able to
appreciate, the air was rent with a scream that turned the whole
landscape for one instant into a nightmare.
“That’s the cars,” said Abram; “don’t you see the smoke comin’ round
the hill?”
Miss Calder came out on the platform. The glittering monster of the
rails bore down upon them as if determined to have their lives. The
station agent stood ready to attend to baggage or express matter.
Before Bluebell could get her breath evenly, she was being helped
up steps after Miss Calder, was walking along a long narrow room
with windows on each side, and being seated beside Aunt Melissa on a
velvet-upholstered seat. Red, bright velvet, gayer than Rocco’s best
flowered winter dress which Liza made of a remnant of brocaded velvet
among mother’s things. The seats were very soft and spongy, too.
Bluebell furtively bounced up and down while Miss Melissa was settling
comfortably. She sat on a seat facing her. A man obligingly turned
it over for them. All at once the station began to slide backwards;
and before she could recover from this, the woods and hills gently
slipped away as if they had grown tired of such everlasting rest. The
train was moving! What was a wagon or a horseback ride compared to
this! Teetering on a sapling, or on a board stuck through the fence,
or swinging in a grape-vine, must forevermore be secondary methods of
motion. But where was Abram? She stretched her head out of the open
window, and Miss Melissa nervously pulled her in just in time to save
her flat from a flight.
But Bluebell had seen Abram far back, plodding up the road behind the
station.
“I didn’t bid him good-by,” she thought ruefully, as this last symbol
of her country home vanished from sight. She felt a momentary pang,
such as maybe shoots through a little plant torn from its cherishing
ground to be transplanted.
But there was Aunt Melissa sitting up so grand, her veil over her face
and her delicate gloved hands enclosing her vinaigrette, ready for the
headache which threatened her when travelling. She was a symbol of that
larger life opening before the child.
Miss Calder was suffering a peculiar martyrdom. In every fibre of her
sensitive nature she felt that she had robbed the lonesome spinster
among the hills, who had not half her resources. But, on the other
hand, she had but performed her sacred duty to the dead and the living.
She knew she was considering the welfare of the children more than her
own wishes. It was a waste for the refined young doctor to spend his
life and energies at the Rocky Fork when by her influence she could
help him to a position better suited to him. He was so humble and
sorrowful himself, he had not considered that he owed a future to his
dead wife’s children.
Still Miss Melissa felt she had performed a very painful duty, and
regretted that she had not done it years before; for anything neglected
brings with it long arrears of interest.
But Bluebell was in a fever of delight. Every object seen on that
journey was stamped upon her mind for life.
When they slid into Newark, at which point their trip by rail ended,
the city glamour enveloped her. To be sure, they passed squalid houses,
worse than the most illy kept cabins about the Rocky Fork; and she got
swift glimpses of dirty children and pens of back yards,--in short, of
all the unsavory sights which spot the outskirts of a city. But these
seemed picturesque. The folks must have a good time living “in town.”
If the children were filthy, they could have candy every day, probably,
and walk on sidewalks. Teeny said folks in Fredericktown never soiled
the soles of their shoes. And oh, how beautiful the tall buildings
were, when the slowly moving train, ringing its bell in state, gave
glimpses of them! Streets stretching far as eye could see, carpets, dry
goods, immense windows, people hurrying about dressed in their Sunday
clothes and looking as if they felt the importance of living in town;
carts rattling, long painted and gilded carriages with a man riding on
top, appearing and disappearing around corners; and more than all, the
roar of human life! How grand was a city! She even loved the smell of
it, which consisted principally of escaping gas, not in good odor with
more experienced noses.
Doctor Garde’s little girl was in a nervous hurry to follow Aunt
Melissa out of the train when it stopped. She remembered its
imperceptible starting, and what should she do if it carried her off
by mistake? A man in blue clothes lifted her down from the last high
step, and she kept close to Miss Calder. From the dingy brick dépôt
came a light-haired, smiling man in very neat clothes. He carried a
whip in his hand.
“How do you do, Archibald?” said Miss Calder with great affability.
“Have you got the carriage here?”
Archibald took off his hat and bowed, smiling all the time in the most
laughter-provoking way, and replied that he was quite well, and hoped
he saw Miss Calder looking well. The carriage was on the other side of
the dépôt.
Miss Calder said she was in excellent health, but felt threatened with
a headache and would be glad to get home. She hoped everything had gone
well.
Archibald assured her everything had moved as usual, except the house
didn’t seem the same; and he would put her trunk up behind the carriage
immediately if she could wait one minute.
“There are two trunks,” said Miss Calder: “that one beside mine which
that man is pulling out of the way, is Melissa’s.”
Archibald applied himself to loading the baggage on a rack behind the
carriage. Then he made haste to open the door, let down the steps,
and help his mistress and her charge in. The carriage was roomy and
comfortable, and drawn by two fat sleepy-looking horses, black as coal
and groomed until they glittered. They seemed on the best of terms with
Archibald, who called them Coaly and Charley.
Miss Calder leaned back with a satisfied sigh as they started. The
cushions were easy and the stuffed back supported one to the shoulders.
It was quite sunset when they left Newark behind and drove towards
the yellowing west. The three or four miles intervening between the
railroad town and Sharon was a succession of lovely landscapes, and
seemed one of those suburban extensions which rich men love to beautify
with their villas. There was no ruggedness like that about the Rocky
Fork. The hills rose in majestic proportions but softened outlines. In
the afterglow left by sunset the country had an unearthly beauty. The
road constantly broadened; villa after villa appeared, each standing in
spacious grounds. They reached the top of an ascent, and saw Sharon
set below, surrounded by hills and glittering like a huge topaz in
the evening light. As they descended they lost sight of her. She was
drowned from view among her abundant foliage. Bluebell began to think
the road had turned aside from her, when they came sweeping around a
curve and past an artificial lake, and were in Sharon’s main street,
so broad that many carriages like Miss Melissa’s could drive there
abreast. The street was quite lively with carriages, and Miss Calder
exchanged greetings with numbers of people. One tall white building was
beginning to glitter with lights from roof to ground. She knew it must
be an important place, and asked with awe what it was.
“That’s the seminary,” replied Miss Calder.
Doctor Garde’s little girl felt almost dizzy as she was obliged to
withdraw her eyes from the great mill of learning.
They drove far up this wide street and turned down another. The
carriage stopped. Archibald opened a gate and drove half-way around a
sweep under tall trees, and brought them to the steps of a large old
house. It was brick. Bluebell could see vines massed over one whole end
of it. There was a tall pillared veranda extending along the entire
front.
The hall-door was open, and within, a globe of light hung suspended
from the ceiling. Bluebell thought of the Discontented Cat who went to
live with the Countess Von Rustenfustenmustencrustenberg, as she was
ushered into this hall and the double parlors which opened from it.
She walked on bouquets of velvet flowers as large around as a tub. The
lofty rooms appeared to Bluebell one vast collection of treasures. She
did not know there were such pictures, such chairs and ornaments and
lounges and curtains in the world.
In this house three or four generations of Calders had lived and died.
It was the first fine house built in Sharon by one of the Massachusetts
colonists when the country was new. It had been remodeled and added to,
and its furniture changed with the family tastes or fortunes. But the
Calders never destroyed an old thing. Its former belongings were sure
to be preserved in some way.
Miss Melissa entered her own room which, opened from the back parlor,
and took off her wraps, bidding Bluebell take off hers also. And again
Doctor Garde’s little girl was astonished by the sumptuousness of her
surroundings. Then Aunt Melissa opened a door into a bathroom, and
refreshed herself by bathing her hands and face at a marble stand, and
called Bluebell to do likewise.
CHAPTER XXII
MISS BIGGAR
But in spite of its beauty and spaciousness, this seemed rather a
lonely house, Bluebell thought, when she was ready for tea, and had
nothing to do but gauge her surroundings. Aunt Melissa floated about,
showing fatigue in every motion, but anxious to examine into the state
of her house. Doctor Garde’s little girl wished for Rocco, or that
Tildy would walk in, poking her toes into the pile of the carpets.
Wouldn’t Tildy be s’prised! About this time, she and Teeny were sitting
on the front steps. And the wind from around the hill was rustling
through the elders--dear elders! Rose and Pidey were standing to be
milked. There was moonlight all over the Rocky Fork--but not like this
lonesome-looking moonlight sifting through Aunt Melissa’s trees. Maybe
that big white seminary wasn’t half as nice as the log school-house
when you came to find out. And what master could be kinder or know any
more than Mr. Pitzer? O Rocky Fork, how this little heart ached for
you! Maybe father would get hurt again. Oh, this pain of homesickness
for what you love! If she could just hug the baby one blessed minute,
or feel Liza’s fostering hand tying up the ends of her auburn braids!
“Why, my dear!” exclaimed Miss Melissa moving back from a closet, “what
can be the matter? Is it possible I hear you crying?”
She stooped and put her hand under Bluebell’s chin. The child smeared
her face vigorously with her palms.
“I guess it’s only some water runnin’ out of my eyes,” she said with
heroism and a hiccup.
Miss Melissa seated herself on a sofa and drew her charge’s head to her
thin shoulder.
“You feel lonely. But plenty of nice little girls will come to call on
you; and think! your father and little Roxana will be here soon.”
“Yes’m,” struggled Bluebell, smothering down her sobs. This was no way
to show Irish pluck.
Miss Melissa trembled slightly.
“This place seems strange to you. But your mother used to play all over
this house. She sat in this very room and sewed and talked with me many
an afternoon.”
Bluebell looked about, feeling less repelled. Her mother’s presence had
touched this and that, and in some sense still lingered there for her.
“I am growing to be an elderly lady, and all my relatives are distant
or dead. The warmest friendship of my life was formed for your mother,
and I could not help wanting to bring her children into my house, that
I might do all I can for them.”
“Yes’m,” responded Bluebell, having conquered her sobs and shut them
below her throat with a large lump laid on their heads.
“And I did hope you might be happy, that maybe you would want to make
your old auntie happy--”
“Oh, Aunt Melissa, you ain’t old!”
“Old enough to feel very lonely.”
This touched Bluebell, in her present mood, more deeply than anything
said before. She put one arm around Aunt Melissa’s narrow waist; the
lady patted her.
“There, now, well try to be cheerful. I presume you are hungry and
tired, and the tea-bell has been ringing while we were talking.
When you have something to eat and are rested you will feel a great
deal better. Run and bathe your face, and then we will go into the
dining-room.”
In the dining-room a real fairy feast was set forth. As for the silver
and china, Bluebell had never imagined its like. The table was round
and cosy, and though she sat opposite Aunt Melissa, they seemed quite
near together. The neatest and plumpest of women came in to wait on
them. This was Maria, who had been with Miss Calder a dozen years.
Maria looked pleased and rosy as she exchanged greetings with the lady
of the house.
“I hope you found everything right when you came in, ma’am. I had some
cake in that I daren’t leave a minute.”
“Everything seems in excellent order, Maria. Were there any letters?”
“A good many papers. I put them on the libr’y table.”
“That was right.”
Maria went out, and Bluebell went on carefully with her supper. Eating
and drinking were made beautiful. It was a joy to sip her milk--with a
little hot tea poured into it as a tonic for her spirits, which Miss
Calder approved of--from a cup so transparent that it seemed too strong
a breath must blow it away; to watch the tall, shining urn and chased
tray, and even the carved wooden clock on the wall, from which, while
Bluebell watched it, there suddenly dipped out a little bird, calling,
“Cuckoo!” eight distinct times.
Before his last note quite ceased, a sharp pat of slipper-heels came
flying through the hall, and a small person appeared at the dining-room
door.
“Oh, that’s you, is it, Libbie? I was just hoping you would come in.”
“When did you get home?” cried Libbie in a clear, high voice.
“About a half-hour ago. Is your grandmamma well?”
“She is very well, I thank you.”
Libbie was taking an inventory of the little girl opposite Miss Calder.
“Melissa,” said Miss Calder, in the formal manner which she considered
it requisite to use even towards children, “let me present Miss Libbie
Biggar. Miss Libbie, my namesake, Melissa Garde.”
Miss Libbie stepped back, placing the toe of her right foot across the
heel of her left, and made a graceful bow. She did it evidently without
thought. Her manner was perfectly easy. Bluebell struggled to get up,
and dropped a poor little half-curtsy.
“I hope you are well,” said Miss Biggar.
Bluebell replied that she was _tolerably_ well. This young lady, no
older than herself, confused and humbled her. She admired Miss Libbie’s
air and composure, her low-necked and short-sleeved white dress, her
small slippers, the ribbon around her waist, and the tiny ring on
her hand. But her head--it was the most wonderful head Bluebell had
ever seen. Its heavy dark hair was shingled close, “like a boy’s,
only cut shorter!” The effect was fine. Bluebell despised her own
auburn braids. And Miss Libbie had black eyes, a short nose, and a
few charming dots of freckles sprinkled over her altogether piquant
face. She came towards Miss Calder, and took that lady’s hand within
her dimpled fingers, and on invitation sat down to have a bit of cake.
Every motion was watched by Doctor Garde’s little girl. How hopeless
her own bashful awkwardness seemed! Wouldn’t Tildy be s’prised to see a
little girl act so much like a grown-up lady!
CHAPTER XXIII
A DUCK AMONG SWANS
After tea was over they went into the back parlor; and here Bluebell
noticed for the first time a large, shining object standing on carved
and claw-footed legs. The top was partially covered by an embroidered
cloth. But Miss Libbie Biggar was perfectly familiar with it. She tried
to move the front of it, and Miss Melissa finally opened a folding lid
for her, disclosing a long row of brilliant black and white ivory keys.
“Do you play on the piano?” inquired Miss Libbie politely, turning to
her new acquaintance.
“Melissa is going to take lessons at once,” replied Miss Calder for her.
This, then, was a py-anna! Oh, wonderful instrument! While yet
voiceless, it threw its glamour over Doctor Garde’s little girl. She
at once resolved to master its harmonies. Some stray poetic instinct,
of which she was half-ashamed, made her love the irregular tinkle
of a cow-bell among the hills, the echoing ring of a blacksmith’s
hammer; and she had often followed a bird, called at the Rocky Fork a
“medder-lark,” with her head upturned and her breast thrilling, till
her unguided feet perhaps betrayed her to the run or some mud-hole.
Miss Libbie climbed upon the music-stool, ready without invitation to
make a display of what she had superficially learned. But from the
instant her fingers touched the key-board, one listener sat rapt almost
beyond expression. The richness of the instrument was wonderful to
Bluebell. Its harmonies, which the young performer could not even hint
at, yet suggested themselves to the silent child. Miss Libbie’s hands,
and the dimple each finger showed at its root when lifted to strike a
note, seemed most admirable. Oh, to be so accomplished! The performer
played some little march, and such various exercises as she could
remember. While she played, Bluebell was struggling with a dumb sense
of having been defrauded thus far in her life. She ought not to be so
behind that little girl. What had gone wrong? Was it her own fault? How
could she learn music at the Rocky Fork? Still, she was conscious of
grief and shame, and many other unreasonable sensations.
“What pieces do you like best?” inquired Miss Libbie in a general way,
wishing to be agreeable to this queer little girl.
“Oh, I like them all so much!” exclaimed Bluebell. Then a sob followed
her voice. She ran to Miss Melissa, and was folded to that lady’s
shoulder. This spontaneous action helped the sore little heart, and she
was able to stop her crying before it became a freshet.
“O dear!” said Libbie, turning around on the music-stool, “what’s the
matter? Have _I_ done anything?”
“Everything is strange to her,” murmured Miss Melissa; “she has never
been away from her father before. She must go right to bed, and she
will feel better in the morning.”
Bluebell tried to smile over her shoulder at the caller.
“I think it’s the music makes me cry!”
[Illustration: THE PERFORMER PLAYED SOME LITTLE MARCH.--_Page 253._]
Libbie descended from the music-stool, evidently not flattered.
“Because I like it so much!” stammered Doctor Gardens little girl,
ashamed of the confession thus wrung from her.
Miss Melissa patted the auburn head.
“Indeed! Well, you shall have all the music you want, my dear, and
before you get through you may cry in another key over some difficult
exercise.”
Bluebell was marched up-stairs, overstrung and humiliated by her
_début_ into her new home. Libbie chose to follow, though her
grandmother’s domestic had been sent in to call her home.
Miss Calder perhaps had a little speech ready as she opened the door
of the room Bluebell was to occupy. But she merely said with a tremor,
“Your mother often occupied this room, Melissa.”
And again the child felt that invisible presence which seemed to open
such great vistas to her. The room itself was so sumptuous she dreaded
damaging it.
Libbie gravely perched herself upon a chair, and watched while Miss
Melissa laid out a nightgown from Bluebell’s trunk which stood near the
closet door waiting unpacking.
Doctor Garde’s little girl undressed herself with tremulous hands and
crept humbly into the unadorned cotton gown Liza had made. Then she
said her prayers, and Aunt Melissa tucked her under the cover, and
reached up to turn off the gas.
“Are you coming down now, Libbie? Your grandmamma wants you.”
“Yes’m, in a minute.”
The little girl in bed thought, “She doesn’t mind very well, anyhow;”
and this was the first debit she found for Miss Libbie Biggar.
“Well, don’t keep Melissa awake long to-night,” said Miss Calder. She
left the gas burning and hastened down-stairs, for the knocker made a
mighty clang on the front door, and she knew some neighbor had come to
welcome her back.
Miss Biggar sat up and looked at Doctor Garde’s little girl, evidently
interested in her. Bluebell turned her bashful face down on the pillow.
“Are you going to cry again?” inquired Miss Biggar. “Do you cry all the
time?”
“I ain’t crying,” responded Bluebell, showing her face with some
asperity.
“Your nose looks all swelled on the end. Why don’t you have your hair
shingled?”
“I don’t know how,” replied Bluebell, bewildered.
“Why, just go to a barber, and he’ll shingle it. Grandma let me have
mine done if I’d have my tooth pulled out so another could grow in. How
old are you?”
“Goin’ on nine.”
Miss Libbie considered.
“What makes you say ‘goin’ on’?”
Bluebell might have replied that it was the custom of the country where
she came from. But she could not explain her provincialisms.
“I don’t know.”
“_Is_ your name Melissa?” inquired Libbie, with a compassionate
emphasis.
“Yes, it’s Melissa Garde; but they always call me Bluebell.”
“_Well._ That’s a _great_ deal better than Melissa. I wouldn’t be
called Melissa!”
“What’s your name?”
“Elizabeth Biggar. I live with my grandma. My papa and mamma are both
dead.”
“My mother’s dead.”
“Have you got all her rings and jewelry?”
“No-o,” replied Bluebell. “I don’t believe she had any.”
Libbie gave the speaker a long, compassionate stare. Then she turned to
contemplating her own case.
“_Oh!_ I have the _loveliest_ things, and a gold watch in a satin case,
and diamond ear-rings; but I have to wait till I’m eighteen years
old before I can wear them, grandma says. Once we had a children’s
party and I wore my blue silk dress, and grandma let me put on the
_handsomest_ locket! I wish I would hurry and be eighteen.”
“That’s very old, isn’t it?” said Bluebell.
“Yes. I’ll be a young lady then.”
Doctor Garde’s little girl cast her eyes on the wall, and wondered if
she would ever be a young lady. Teeny Banks was only a young woman. She
could discern the difference, but her convictions were very strong that
she could never become such an ornamental being as Miss Libbie Biggar.
So, leaving this perplexity, she turned back for information.
“What do they do at a party?”
Miss Libbie stared again.
“Who?”
“Why, the children.”
“Why, don’t you know?”
Bluebell shook her head. She had “stayed all night” at Tildy’s,
marched, and spoken pieces at school, but her experience never
comprehended a party.
“Well, didn’t you ever go to a party?”
Doctor Garde’s blushing little girl acknowledged her shortcoming.
“O my! Why, where did you use to live?”
“At the Rocky Fork.”
“And didn’t the children have birthday or Christmas parties there?”
Another shake of the auburn head.
“Well, that is the queerest thing!”
“But what do the children do at a party?”
“Why, they do just like grown people at their parties,” replied Miss
Biggar satisfactorily; and Bluebell sat up in bed and thought it over.
“Only,” explained the young lady, “they go in the afternoon instead of
evening. When my cousin came from Newark”--thrice happy Miss Libbie to
have a cousin who lived in a city!--“to visit me, I had a lovely party,
about twenty girls and ’most as many boys, and we had ice-cream at
supper.”
“What’s that?”
Libbie rose from her chair, walked to the bedside, and seriously looked
over her interlocutor.
“Vanilla ice-cream. Didn’t you ever eat any?”
Doctor Garde’s little girl felt that she was about to be routed with
great slaughter. She had alighted upon a new world where the customs
of the people were all strange to her, and it behooved her, she had at
last the tact to perceive, to be more circumspect than to betray her
ignorance so openly.
She changed the subject, and also her companion’s attitude from the
offensive to the defensive.
“Do you go to school?”
“Yes, I go to the seminary.”
“I’m going there too. What do you study?”
“Music and Mental ’Rithmetic; and we print, and I’m going to take
drawing lessons.”
“And what do you read in?”
“The First Reader.”
“Ho!” ejaculated Bluebell; and a shade of uneasiness came over Miss
Libbie’s face.
“What do _you_ read in?” she inquired.
“I can read in ’most anything,” replied Doctor Garde’s little girl.
“I’m in the _Second_ Reader, pretty near to the Third. How far have you
got in spelling?”
Libbie looked mystified.
“Can you spell in-com-pre-hen-si-bil-i-ty?”
“I don’t want to.”
“I can spell all the big words in the spelling-book.”
This educated creature began to assume a formidable aspect in the eyes
of Miss Biggar.
A rap on the door heralded Maria’s head.
“Miss Libbie,” said she, “your grandma says for you to come right home
this minute. She’s got something nice for you, and it won’t keep.”
“I’m coming now. I know what it is. It’s ice-cream. You say I’m coming,
Maria.”
Maria withdrew her head.
“I live in the very next house,” continued Libbie to Bluebell. “You
must come and see me.”
“I will,” promised Bluebell.
“I’ll bring some of the girls to call on you.”
Bluebell did not know what to reply to this formidable proposal, so she
said nothing.
Libbie’s hand was on the door-knob; she had said good-night and
received a response, but came running back with a most charming,
childish impulse. She climbed on the bed and dabbed a quick soft kiss
on Bluebell’s lips. The door banged after her, and her slipper-heels
clattered like a goat’s feet on the padded stairway.
“She’s a nice little girl, and she just reads in the First Reader,
after all,” thought Bluebell, dozing off, and not comprehending that
this was a beginning in her life of finding wonderful images and
proving them to be human.
CHAPTER XXIV
MISS MELISSA DROPS A FEW HINTS
When Bluebell waked in the morning she heard the cherry-tree whispering
in her ear, and saw Liza’s dresses hanging on the opposite wall. But
the windows were misplaced, and everything swam after she got her eyes
open, until the change in her habitation occurred to her. Then the
Rocky Fork receded and this new home came forward with half-painful
reality.
Before the child was dressed a tap at the door announced Aunt Melissa.
Aunt Melissa came in, looking delicate in a white trailing wrapper, and
kissed her namesake good-morning. Then she unpacked the trunk, putting
everything in its place, and pushed the small inconvenient thing
outside the door for Archibald to carry up garret.
She left out Bluebell’s best calico dress, and the little girl put
it on, feeling that a perpetual but very serious holiday had come.
That dress was good enough to wear to Sunday-school at the Rocky Fork.
Tildy and Teeny’s best dotted robes did not look any better. She liked
it much better than her white. That white was such an unlucky dress.
When she had it on she felt so extremely dressed that it distracted
her attention from all the pleasant things in life. The first time she
wore it she felt her importance expanding to the horizon all around;
Tildy and Teeny in their dotted calicoes were mere maids of honor on
her royal progress to church. But a man came along the deep-rutted road
in his farm-wagon, and as Bluebell stepped out of his way, the wheel
sank with a chug into a hole filled with mud preserved especially for
bespattering the proud. Bluebell was splashed from head to foot; even
her open-work stockings shared the eruption. The saddest part of such a
humiliation is, that nobody in the least shares the heartbreak of it.
Teeny said she was sorry, but there was no time to stop to scrape the
mud off. It would dry as they went along. Her manner plainly implied
that in the case of very little girls like Bluebell, it made no
difference at all if they looked like frights at church.
“You better run back home,” said Tildy, holding her parasol-handle
across her shoulder, much as a woodman carries an axe, though the sun
was making her wrinkle her freckled nose frightfully. Tildy considered
that she knew the proper poise for parasols, and if the sun did not
accommodate himself to that, it was his fault and not hers. Bluebell
stood crying.
“You better run back home,” said Tildy again, patronizingly.
“Won’t you go back with me?” begged the victim.
But Tildy remembered her stiff-necked and conscious demeanor at the
outset. Besides, _she_ was not spattered, and she wanted to go to
meeting. She declined going back. Doctor Garde’s little girl was
smitten with consternation that her own familiar friend refused to
share her affliction. She went crying alone through the pine lane. And
though the white dress came immediately to the wash-tub, still that
recollection clung to it like a stain, and she liked the blue calico
much better. It “dressed her up,” but raised no wall of separation
between her and her fellow-mortals. It simply relieved her of all
anxiety about the appearance of Bluebell Garde, and left her the free
use of her muscles. The blue dress had a broad belt and a very short
skirt, a low neck and short puffed sleeves. Miss Melissa made it more
ornamental by a fine mull ruffle around the neck.
“Shall I put on my black-silk apron too?” inquired Bluebell, as she
stood to be hooked up, full of desire to bring herself up to her
surroundings.
“I don’t think I should,” said Miss Melissa gently. Her hands were very
soft and cool. She unfastened the pig-tails of auburn hair. “I have
some pieces of old blue silk which I think we can turn into a very
pretty bodice that you will like to wear better than an apron. Libbie
Biggar has a pink silk bodice which is very becoming. I notice there is
very good velvet on the apron. With some lace I have, it will make you
lovely bretelles.”
Bluebell’s head swam. If she could be spoiled by clothes, Miss Melissa
was in a fair way to spoil her. A seamstress was to come that very
day to fit the child out, and Miss Melissa looked forward with gentle
excitement to this dressing of a living doll. Blue silk bodices and
bretelles! But with that ready acceptance of beautiful things as a
right which characterizes all children, and grown people too, until
their fairy-faith is broken by accumulated loads of care, this little
girl was able in a few moments to contemplate her prospects with
serenity.
“But what are bretelles, Auntie?”
“Ornamental straps or ladders which little girls wear over light
dresses.”
With a happy sigh. Bluebell gave up the black-silk apron; it occurred
to her to regret she had not worn it more. We do not realize that
our good things in this world are all transitory, and to be enjoyed
promptly, each in its season.
They went down-stairs to breakfast. The table was laid as exquisitely
as the night before; in fact, the best things about the house seemed to
be used every day, without any reference to company.
“I am going to give you”--here Aunt Melissa paused in pouring coffee to
adjust something about the service, and Bluebell waited with a bit of
buttered roll poised half-way to her mouth--“a little party, in a few
days, to introduce you to your little associates.”
“Me?” said Bluebell, stretching up her thin neck and opening her eyes
quite wide.
“Yes, my dear.”
“I never had a party! The little girl that came in last evening, Miss
Libbie Biggar, said she’d had lots of ’em. I don’t know any more about
havin’ parties than about playin’ music.”
“You may begin your music soon. The seminary vacation lasts some weeks
yet. I noticed they had the seminary lighted up last evening for
trustees’ reception. But you need not wait until school opens, Melissa,
my dear.”
Miss Calder lifted a bit of steak very delicately with her fork: the
forks were sterling silver, and very different from those to which this
little girl had been accustomed.
“You are forgetting to eat with your fork, my dear.”
Bluebell crimsoned. “Why, Liza always told me to eat with my knife!”
“But that is not the custom in good--here. I mention it,” said Miss
Melissa delicately, “because your little associates would probably
notice it; and besides, you want to form your manners, don’t you, my
dear?”
Bluebell was so anxious to form her manners that she longed for a fairy
wand to change herself into just what she ought to be. With native
diffidence, however, she concealed this intense desire for perfection,
and merely nodded her blushing face, saying, “Yes, ma’am.”
“I notice that you are very observing. If you watch others and do
as they do, your manners may be formed easily. And Melissa, my
dear,”--again Auntie paused, and altered the arrangement of something
on the table with her sensitive hands--“when little boys or girls are
introduced to you--”
“O my! do they introduce little boys in Sharon?”
“Why, certainly; little gentlemen and ladies should be presented to
each other as such. I was suggesting, when you are introduced to any
one in fact, it has become the fashion to bow instead of to curtsy.”
Bluebell wondered if she could do anything so boyish. But remembering
Miss Libbie Biggar’s model bow, her mind was fired with emulation.
CHAPTER XXV
EVENTS
Sunday came.
Doctor Garde’s little girl was richer by one music lesson, which
Miss Melissa herself gave her; and by a blue shirred silk bonnet and
muslin-gingham dress, as well as long black mitts, the like of which
she had never seen before. Sunday was an important day in Sharon. This
old Massachusetts colony retained many Puritan customs. All day the
various church bells rang--for Sunday-school, for forenoon, afternoon
and evening services. Miss Melissa and Bluebell moved on crowded
sidewalks on their way to church. The little girl was astonished by the
architecture which she saw around her. The church they entered seemed a
sublime pile. They ascended a flight of broad steps, and passed through
a matted vestibule into the vastest and whitest place Doctor Garde’s
little girl had ever seen. The aisles were carpeted, many of the seats
were cushioned, the pulpit was a sumptuous small parlor by itself, and
music, so full and mighty that it made the air shudder with delight,
came from some invisible place. She followed Miss Melissa’s rustling
clothes up the central aisle, and was placed beside her in one of the
most comfortably padded pews, with footstools under foot, and books in
the racks. The tremendous congregation spread on every hand. There were
no men’s side and women’s side! Families sat in their own seats. The
bald head of a father might be seen beside the dancing, bonneted head
of his daughter. Everybody seemed solemn but exceedingly comfortable;
and when the music ceased nothing but a whisper of fans could be heard.
Through a door at one side of the pulpit came a saint-faced man, who
ascended and opened the Bible. He looked very nice, and not a bit like
that Mr. Joel Clark at the Rocky Fork who cruelly mortified her one
Sunday when she ventured to peep between the leaves of her book while
he was preaching in very loud and long-sounding words. Her eye had
just caught an old English wood-cut--possibly one of Bewick’s--when it
seemed the world was tumbling about her ears! She could not believe
her senses. Mr. Clark was pointing his finger at _her_, and sinking her
in seas of shame.
“That little girl,” said he, “who is reading there, had better close
her book and listen to the sermon.”
Then the whole congregation looked at her as if they had always known
she was a wretch. Perintha Pancost and Minerva Ridenour, who were just
going to look into their books, sat up and appeared virtuously wrapped
in the discourse, while Mr. Clark went on as if it were just right to
crush a shrinking child by the way. And may be it _was_ right. How did
Bluebell know? He was a grown-up, good man, and a preacher, and she a
little girl, of no account except in her relationship to Doctor Garde.
She held the tears back with heroic struggles, but her face burned with
hot blood; a mark was set upon her; and whenever Mr. Clark came around
on the circuit, she could not bear to pass under his eye; and if he
made an address to the Sunday-school, she cowered down behind the tall
seats. This preacher in the Sharon church did not look as if he would
point out little girls: therefore Bluebell liked him. The congregation
stood up and turned around to sing, and then she saw the source of the
music: two or three key-boards like a treble piano, on which a young
man played, and a great row of pipes in a mass of woodwork which she
did not understand. There were some people who stood in a class holding
singing-books, and this singing-school was up in a high place like a
slice of a second story, and this second story extended also around the
sides of the church.
Miss Libbie Biggar sat in a pew the other side of a partition, in the
most beautiful cherry silk bonnet, tied under her chin with ribbon. It
was made like Bluebell’s, with a slight flare. What else Miss Libbie
wore, was concealed by the high partition. Beside her sat an old lady
as fair as a lily, in mourning clothes. But that her hair was as white
as dandelion-down. Bluebell must have believed her young; for nowhere
in the church could be found a smoother, more delicate face. An old
woman, according to Bluebell’s observation, was a bent, brown person,
wrinkled like a withered apple, like Granny Ridenour.
The two little girls exchanged glances; then the people stood up;
they sang out of books instead of having their hymns lined two lines
at a time by the minister, which Bluebell thought a great improvement
herself.
Libbie took advantage of this new position to lean over the partition
and whisper:
“I’m going to call on you to-morrow. We went to Newark, so I couldn’t
come before. Orpha and Orrell are coming too.”
“Yes,” nodded Bluebell in trepidation, making signs, for the minister
seemed looking over people’s heads at them. She wanted to ask what made
him lay a pile of writing on the pulpit beside the Bible. The people
suddenly kneeled, and Bluebell hurried to drop to her footstool as she
saw Aunt Melissa do. It was all beautiful, and made her feel good; but
Libbie Biggar reached over the partition to whisper again:
“You’ve got a pretty bonnet.”
Her grandmother pulled her dress as she subsided, and Bluebell could
hear her industriously turning over hymn-book leaves. Then everybody
resumed his seat; and the music which had so pleased her glad ear at
first, began again triumphantly, and the people in the class up-stairs
sang a very beautiful piece, which never afterwards quite left
Bluebell’s mind. She learned in time to know it as the Te Deum.
“There’s Orrell,” whispered Libbie again, indicating a flossy-haired
child at the side of the church.
“Oh, don’t!” begged Bluebell; “he mightn’t like it.” She cast her eye
at the pulpit.
“Our minister don’t care. I like him. He takes tea at our house. His
boy whispers and squirms all the time. Look at him up there.”
Bluebell looked at the boy in a front pew, and felt thankful to see him
twisting very restlessly. He was a handsome little fellow; but, as Mr.
Cook would say, not in harmony with his environments.
The sermon began, and Libbie’s grandmother moved nearer to her.
“I don’t have to come at evening, do you?” said Libbie to Bluebell,
when service was over.
“I don’t know,” said Bluebell.
They moved out in different streams of people, and did not see each
other again.
After dinner. Aunt Melissa brought out her good books and instructed
her namesake. They read some poems; and, before the gas was lighted,
had a long talk, sitting with their arms around each other, in which
the duties of guardian and charge were discussed.
On Monday morning Bluebell practised her music lesson while Aunt
Melissa was shopping. After dinner she put on the muslin-gingham, for
in this town people frequently wore their Sunday clothes on common
days!--and sat down by her auntie to learn herring-bone stitch.
The French clock on the mantel ticked: it was black marble, with a
shepherd leaning across the top; the piano stood open; when Bluebell
had stitched a strip or two, she might practise again. Afternoon
checker-work moved on the porch, and shadows chased each other up and
down the pillars. Bluebell felt like some grand little girl in a story,
who had a fairy godmother. How pleased father would be to see her
learning to be such a lady! Probably at that moment the scholars in the
log school-house were just mopping their faces after recess. What fun
they had had!--but how different the log school-house was from Aunt
Melissa’s drawing-room! Bluebell’s polish at this period began to have
a vulgar, varnishy odor. She wondered if it was the proper thing to
have gone to school in a log school-house. Libbie Biggar had evidently
never done such a thing, and that pretty, fluff-haired girl at church
could not understand how the benches had a queer, foreign smell, and
Mr. Pitzer let them have such good times. Doctor Garde’s little girl
was noting the differences in externals, and the refining influence
of beautiful surroundings; and in her anxiety to improve, she was in
danger of forgetting what she owed to the country hills.
The knocker was lifted and came down with a boom, ushering in the
prettiest and most laughable bit of comedy. Miss Libbie Biggar
introduced her friends Misses Orrell Pratt and Orpha Rose, and the
three diminutive ladies sat down in large chairs, and acted grown-up.
They had on all their ornaments, and their white dresses were distended
with the hoops which at that time were coming into vogue. Sweet and
kissable in their ribbons and bright bonnets, they were a charming
study as to manners. Orrell held her little sunshade in her crossed
hands, and drooped her eyelids prettily, as she inquired about Miss
Melissa’s health, and delivered her mamma’s compliments. Bluebell, at
a signal from Miss Calder, had put her work out of hands, and she too
sat up, trying to reflect as faithfully as a mirror these pinks and
patterns of juvenile society.
Miss Orpha had difficulty with the small wire frame-work, known as a
skeleton, which surrounded her person, but she managed it with a great
deal of tact.
“How do you like Sharon?” inquired Miss Biggar, as if she had never
done so rude a thing as to talk across partitions in church.
“Oh, I think it’s beautiful!” exclaimed Bluebell, with immediate
consciousness that enthusiasm was out of place in the presence of such
well-balanced ladies.
“Where did you live before you came here?” inquired Miss Orpha.
Bluebell blushed! When she was older she blushed to remember that she
blushed. But these girls seemed so finished, and she was so little in
accord with their past, that her beginnings looked raw and humble.
“It was a very hilly place called the Rocky Fork.”
“There are a great many hills here,” remarked Miss Orrell.
“Yes; they are very pretty.”
Bluebell’s nerves twitched, she was on such a strain of propriety.
If the conversation flagged, the young ladies sat looking at each
other and their young hostess, or Miss Calder, with calm, unchildlike
nonchalance, which threw Doctor Garde’s little girl almost into
despair. Her former standard of being agreeable was to talk much and
fluently; a pause was a breach of politeness, and put pins and needles
into her flesh. How then could she ever hope to attain to such silent
self-possession? Afterwards, at school, she discovered that Orrell
was naturally dull, and Orpha not half as charming and amiable as
first acquaintance seemed to warrant. She asked them about their dolls
without arousing much maternal enthusiasm. As they went away, however,
their voices could be heard in quick chatter along the street. Timidity
had not ruled them in the least. They had simply been making a proper,
dressed-up call, like their mammas did.
Then followed, in due course, that great day of the party. Bluebell was
nearly worn out with anticipation before afternoon came. She had a new
fluffy dress of a material called tarletan, spread over innumerable
skirts and a skeleton. Aunt Melissa became her maid, and filled the
office with the greatest care. The little girl’s hair was braided
loosely and tied in two ropes with long satin ribbon. Miss Melissa was
guilty of shoeing her in white satin slippers, but they were heelless.
This vision of little girl paraded up and down before the long glass
in the parlor, overlooking her thin arms, and delighted with her fairy
disguise. Promptly at four o’clock, some ladies and gentlemen began
to arrive, some under the chaperonage of mothers or elder sisters, but
the majority in twos, or covies like partridges. Bluebell, previously
instructed, and much awed by the good company, did not run to meet her
future playmates and ask them to go to the play-house, or up-stairs to
the garret for a play; even the luxury of a chicken funeral was far
from her mind. She stood by Aunt Melissa, and each little girl and
boy, on emerging from the dressing-room and entering the parlor, was
presented to her. There was a dressing-room up-stairs for the boys;
the girls took off their hats and laid down their parasols in Aunt
Melissa’s room. And they had doting elders who stood by and retwisted
their curls or adjusted the “set” of their hoops.
When everybody had arrived, the parlors swam with sweet faces, white
full-blown tarletan flowers, white pants and black jackets. The boys
had not the ease of the girls: it drew Bluebell’s heart to them to see
their awkward postures and attempts at behaving. The boys intended to
come out strong at tea-time.
The older people who came along started games; the children played
“Hunt the Slipper,” and this created some real noise and scrambling.
Then they played “Forfeits” and “Consequences;” and just before supper
a grown young lady in enormous crinoline sat down at the piano and
cried, “Partners for a French Four.”
Immediately certain little couples took their places on the floor, and
Johnny Pratt, evidently prodded by his sister, stepped up to Bluebell.
“Come on,” said Johnny.
“What they going to play?”
“Goin’ to dance a French Four.”
But Doctor Grarde’s little girl hung back, full of dismay.
“Come on!” exclaimed Libbie Biggar, “it’s your party and you have to
lead off. Isn’t that the way, Miss Ann?”
The young lady at the piano turned half-way around and said she
believed it was. She looked at Doctor Garde’s disconcerted little girl
with a kind smile.
“What’s the trouble?”
Oh, it was dreadful to have the room full of children and several
irreproachable grown-up folks looking at her as if she were some
peculiar savage.
“Why don’t you come on?” cried Libbie with an impatient stamp.
“But I don’t know how. I sha’n’t mind if somebody else plays in my
place.”
Somebody else would not do, in the eyes of a few sticklers; so Bluebell
was pushed and huddled through the figures, and merrily laughed at.
And it seemed the most dreadful performance she had ever heard of, and
mortified her sadly. She was consumed with a desire to step and act
gracefully; the motion was exhilarating; but how could she put her toe
out just so, and remember which hand to give every time! The others
made precise steps with which she was unacquainted, and to imitate them
in her timid way was to make a caricature of herself.
Aunt Melissa came in from the dining-room like a friendly sail to a
half-wrecked sailor, and made a few smiling excuses for her little
friend. Then she marshalled the children out, and their guardians
looked in at the dining-room door to see what a charming company they
made. Admiring mothers assisted Aunt Melissa in serving refreshments,
and from the first biscuit to the last dish of pink ice-cream there
were exclamations of delight over the table.
After supper they played in the grounds until sunset; other games in
the parlors followed; and by eight o’clock the last little girl was
going home saying she had had a lovely time.
And all these things made a deep impression on Doctor Garde’s little
girl. She felt elated notwithstanding the French Four, and kissed Aunt
Melissa with quite the air of Libbie Biggar. Miss Calder was delighted
with the pleasure she had given. Her own individuality was very slight:
to be amiable and appear as well as the best Sharon people was her
standard of manners, and she was glad to see her charge conforming to
them.
Still, the sap of the woods is strong, and will rise in veins which it
has nurtured. After all this civilized excitement, Bluebell fell asleep
late, and dreamed a wordless and rhymeless dream which had no beginning
or end, but chimed along, bringing the smell of ferns and oak-leaves,
sweet-brier and sassafras, and the very breath of trees, all around
her. Nobody sings the full expression of dreams: if this dream had been
sung, perhaps it would have sounded--
Oh, there was a very funny little pink-eyed man;
His hair stood out as only silk of dandelion can;
He whistled up the morning, and down the afternoon,
And slept inside a hollow tree all covered up with moon;
His dress was made of moss-hair that greener branches studs.
And fringed around with catkins of palest willow-buds;
He drove a sled of oak-leaf with katydids a span--
Oho! this world is rosy to a pink-eyed man!
His feet he bathed in violets; he tapped the big paw-paw,
And sucked, astride May-apple forks, each apple that he saw;
Peppermint and pennyroyal, sheep’s-sorrel had he,
Spicewood and sassafras, and nuts from nutty tree;
His pockets sagged with dewdrops so bright they shone like sparks,
And he teetered on a grass-blade and threw the cores at marks.
He made a spider spin him a gray hammock on her plan,--
Sing, oh, this world is rosy to a pink-eyed man!
He made a brook-stone chimney within his little garth,
And piled a heap of fireflies to sparkle on his hearth;
All overhead were carvings of ancient wormy sort;
He tied up ants in couples and made them hunt for sport;
He had a little long-bow of throstle-quill; for string
He tore a strip of bat-leather out of a gray bat’s wing;
And when he shot one June-bug, why, twenty others ran,--
Aha! this world is rosy to a pink-eyed man!
His boat was half a butternut all scooped and polished clear;
He had a crew of water-skates, and he need only steer;
He always wore an acorn-cap for fear his hair might burn;
And he sat upon a toadstool and fanned him with a fern;
Or in an empty bird’s nest he piped whole afternoons;
The gnats would dance by thousands to hear such merry tunes;
The long sweet time in honey-drops of amber clearness ran,--
And oh, this world is rosy to a pink-eyed man!
CHAPTER XXVI
MISS BIGGAR’S POSSESSIONS
Every afternoon the knocker clanged on Miss Calder’s door, calls for
her _protégée_ being plentifully sprinkled among the visits of older
ladies to her. Doctor Garde’s little girl enjoyed driving out to make
calls with Aunt Melissa. In a town the size of Sharon, in those days,
calling on your intimate neighbor with state and ceremony was a moral
duty. The afternoons dreamed. Slow embroidering and careful hand-sewing
were enlivened by rapid talk. It was delightful to be roused from a
drowsy state by a pageant of friends in great bravery whose manners
accorded with their clothes. The people of southern cities will have
their _Mardi gras_ mummery in spite of fever and famine: so, at that
period, the ladies of large villages found their principal diversion in
careful toilets and stately calling.
But the best thing after all at Aunt Melissa’s was the library.
Bluebell was overwhelmed by her riches in that. Her own _Cat Book_
paled by the side of _One Thousand Fairy Tales_ and the _Arabian
Nights_. There were books of travels, and piles of _Graham’s Magazine_,
_Sandford and Merton_, Abbott’s _Rollo Books_, _Robinson Crusoe_, whole
shelves of poets, immense cyclopædia volumes, and even a few gilt
annuals, books of beauty, etc. Walter Scott and Irving inhabited one
long shelf with Cooper. O world of books, what a great world thou art,
and how large a part of many people’s lives is projected into thee!
Miss Melissa herself was a gentle student. She felt her early relish
revived by the fervor with which this child seized on the library. She
directed Bluebell occasionally, but let her forage at will.
Doctor Garde’s little girl calculated that this feast of books would
last until she was quite old--almost twelve, in fact.
One pictured tome, called Shakspeare, hard to lift from the shelf, and
very queer and hard to understand in some parts, had yet a fascination.
She was delighted to find this the source from which came some of the
best _Fourth Reader_ pieces: Shylock at the trial; Prince Arthur and
Hubert. She toiled carefully through both plays, and would not for
anything have confessed to a grown person that she felt real sorry
for poor old Shylock, though he was bad. It seemed so naughty of his
daughter to carry off the ring he prized,--the one he had from his wife
Leah,--and so dreadful for him to lose all his prop:--prop, Bluebell
considered, must be short for property. But Portia and the caskets were
great fun, and Antonio a man almost as lovely as her own father. She
devoutly wished Hubert had taken Arthur away off into the country,--to
some place like the Rocky Fork,--and had never told the king he still
lived. Wasn’t it nice the old bad king got so scared at those moons! He
was as bad as the uncle in _Babes of the Wood_.
But the very loveliest of everything was Midsummer Night’s Dream. What
could be cuter than Puck, or more delicate than Titania! With a natural
instinct for pronouncing, the little girl got nearly all the names
right, though she branded Theseus as The-ze-us, unconscious of the
Greek diphthong’s shortness, and never in her life could she alter the
charmed sound.
_Plutarch’s Lives_ was delicious in spots, but rather tough.
Shakspeare, on the other hand, was never, never tough. She missed old
and deep meanings intended for adult senses. Titania’s infatuation with
the weaver was so funny that she chuckled heartily. But the finer aroma
of the plays was never missed once.
There were some copies of Dickens on the shelves too; but she happened
on them late, for Dickens did not appear an attractive name.
Libbie Biggar came flying in and found Bluebell with her head supported
by her hands and a fat volume propped open on the table.
“Come on!” exclaimed the shingled young lady; “Miss Calder said you
might go to my house and stay the afternoon.”
Doctor Garde’s little girl looked up, absent and half distressed.
“Sit down and take off your hat,” she murmured, with a glimmer of
polite solicitude.
“I sha’n’t stop a minute. What are you reading?”
“Oh, it is the nicest story! Oh, his mother was so sweet, and Mr.
Murdstone was so mean, and so was Miss Murdstone. But I could hug
Peggotty: she’s as good as Liza was. And I almost wish Davy would go
away off and visit his funny old aunt that flattened her nose against
the window.”
“Well, come on. I don’t care anything about that. You’re always
reading. Orpha Rose says you went and huddled down in a corner with a
book when she had you to her house to tea.”
“It was Undine,” pleaded Doctor Garde’s little girl, turning red. “I
did want to know so badly what became of her.”
“I don’t think it’s nice to be reading all the time.”
That settled it. Libbie Biggar, who had been carefully brought up
from birth, ought to know what was nice. Still, Doctor Garde’s little
girl felt her individuality too strong for her in spots. She inwardly
decided that it was nice, too!
“But I don’t read all the time. I began Davy last week, and I’ve only
read a little piece, about little Em’ly and the boat-house and all,
and where Mr. Murdstone whipped him, and Davy bit him--oh, good!”
“Well, if you’re coming to my house to play little dinner, come on. I
don’t see any fun in just reading and reading and reading.”
Miss Biggar spoke with a tang of injury; and with a similar tang on her
part, Bluebell marked her place in Davy and hid the book lest somebody
else might appropriate it. To be hauled by the ears all the way from
a distant country called England, to play even such a fine play, was
sudden. But there was no appeal. Doctor Garde’s little girl must
always be under the dictation of some companion. She followed Libbie
as obediently as if the latter were Tildy, and the stage of action the
Rocky Fork. How far she would bear dictation the dictator never knew
until he experimented and her swift and complete rebellion apprised
him. But, after all, what little girl would not for the time prefer
Libbie Biggar’s playroom to all the libraries collected since and
including that of Ptolemy Philadelphus?
It looked like a toy-shop. There were animals standing on wheels to be
drawn by a string; animals which nodded their heads quite like life;
cats that mewed, dogs that barked; rabbits and squirrels sitting up in
plaster-of-Paris immobility; a whole Noah’s Ark with a cargo of wooden
survivors--Mrs. Noah, Mrs. Ham, and Mesdames Shem and Japhet in red or
blue or yellow or green dresses of bright paint, and Noah to the life,
looking so like the rest of his family that you could only distinguish
him by his broader hat. As for dolls, Georgiana, who had come in
Bluebell’s arms, sat down in despair and felt nobody at all! There was
a baby doll in a cradle, with real bald head and fat hands, wearing a
long dress and baby cap. A very much dressed mother-doll sat by it in
one chair of a satin and mahogany parlor-set. A negro doll dressed in
bright calico leaned against the head of the cradle to signify that
she was the most faithful of nurses. Various insignificant dolls with
mashed _papier-maché_ faces lounged about in faded finery, or sprawled
staring at the ceiling as if counting flies. A wax lady as large as
Libbie could handle--so immense in fact that she wore a little girl’s
shoes, and sat in an arm-chair.
Oh, Georgiana! when thy doting relative felt that mighty doll’s floss
and saw her walk across the floor, and heard her cry “mamma!” instead
of the inarticulate noise which was all thou couldst make in thy chest,
didst thou not slide down and roll up thine eyes and decide that life
was not, after all, worth living!
But what were the dolls beside the cooking furniture of that magic
room! In those days every little girl had not a complete toy household
at her command. Conveniences for cooking dolls’ meals were rare, and
many a doll sat down to a cracker on triangles of broken dishes, and
thought herself well served.
But under the black mantel on the brick hearth of Libbie Biggar’s
playroom stood the completest little iron stove, with Liliputian lids,
pots, pans, skillets, oven, tea-kettle. It was not to be looked at, but
cooked with. In the left-hand corner by the fireplace was a cupboard,
bearing a tea-set, and not the kind which will barely fit your finger
with thimbles of cups, but large enough to eat with. And a round table
was drawn cosily near it; a table just large enough to spread above
little girls’ laps when they sat up to it on low chairs.
What a kingdom to come into! They set about kindling a fire in the
stove with sticks prepared for that purpose, and very soon the little
monster was roaring away, the pipe sending up small clouds to the
chimney, the tea-kettle blowing out steam, and coals of actual fire
grinning between the steel bars!
Mrs. Biggar, the floss-haired grandmamma, came in, smiled indulgently
at their zest, and exhorted them not to set themselves on fire. She
was going out, and if they wanted anything they might get it from the
kitchen. After she was gone, the domestic, probably set to watch the
fire, looked in once or twice, and left some goody each time.
CHAPTER XXVII
DINNER IN DOLL-LAND
Libbie brought up dabs of dough made for her special baking, and rolled
them out for biscuits, with a rolling-pin the size of her middle
finger, cut them, and baked them in a pan on the bottom of the oven.
Bluebell cut a potato into bits and boiled it in a pot. They made tea
and laid the table. The cook donated preserves, cake, rice-balls and
cold meat: these were mere side-dishes, not to be compared with what
they cooked themselves.
Georgiana and the imported wax lady were placed at the table opposite
each other, where they half-rolled up their eyes, and refused to be a
bit sociable. The other dolls were laid in a hungry circle with their
feet to the table, as if to draw in sustenance through the soles.
The biscuits were burnt; but, eaten with butter and preserves, they
tasted better than any grown-up biscuit was ever known to do; and
though the potatoes came up saltless and without any dressing, they
were too mealy for anything. And the feasters drained the teapot dry.
The wax ladies were generously helped, and ate in an invisible way,
though what was before them frequently slid toward the head and foot of
the table, guided by a plump white hand or a short brown one.
Outside, the cicada’s summer song kept the air full of a pleasant
monotone. Scarcely a breeze stirred. The afternoon was so slumbrous one
could pretend or make-believe almost anything. Occasionally a passer’s
foot sounded on the brick pavement. Doctor Garde’s little girl, who sat
in range of the street, often turned from the interest in hand to look,
with the expectation that Someone was coming from Somewhere to her. Not
exactly a nabob, or an elephant, or a fairy in gauze wings; but some
herald from the wonderful future into which she seemed to be entering.
Miss Libbie Biggar’s fancy reared itself only on substantial
foundations.
“Mrs. Garde,” she observed, leaning forward to fix her bead-black eyes
on the shrinking Georgiana, “your daughter looks as if she had the
mumps on one side of her face. I had the mumps once, and made grandma
give me some pickle, and it hurt--oh, you can’t think how it hurt me!
Mrs. Garde, if your daughter has the mumps, you shouldn’t brought her
into my large family.”
“Oh, Mrs. Biggar, it isn’t mumps at all. She got too near the fire once
when she was crying very hard, and her cheek began to run down with the
tears, and forgot to run back. Mrs. Biggar, does your daughter take
music-lessons?”
“O dear, yes! She can play the _Battle of Prague_ clear through without
looking at her notes.”
“I s’pose you send her to the seminary to school?”
“Yes; but her health will not allow her to be confined too much.” Mrs.
Biggar was quoting from her seniors.
“I am going to send my daughter to the seminary. She loves to go to
school. Her health is very stout. I will have to hold her back instead
of pushing her ahead.” Mrs. Garde also was quoting from her seniors.
“Won’t you have something more, Mrs. Garde?”
“No, thank you, Mrs. Biggar.”
“Children will any of you be helped to something more?”
The prostrate dolls, who camped with their heels to the repast, and
were supposed to be seated in a rosy circle around the general table,
all responded in different tones that they didn’t want any more, thank
you. So the ladies ceremoniously rose.
Mrs. Biggar led the way to the parlor-set. All the dolls, except the
wax ones and the blackamoor, were sent outdoors to play in a corner,
but told they could not go on the sidewalk. The colored doll was
directed to clear the dinner away, which she industriously did by
leaning on her stomach across the table. The fire had gone down to
white ashes in the stove.
Mrs. Biggar invited Mrs. Garde to take a seat upon the sofa. But as
the sofa was only a little too large for Mrs. Garde to put in her
pocket, that lady only pretended she sat upon it, while her real and
substantial support was the ingrain carpet.
“My daughter will play on the piano for you,” observed the hostess.
“You ought to say you’d be delighted.”
“I’d be delighted, Mrs. Biggar.”
“This is the piano.”
Mrs. Garde could see no key-board. And it stood square and boxlike
without legs: a small dark polished case. Even when the tall wax doll
was prevailed upon to favor them, she did not open the instrument. Her
mamma applied a key to it; but a vast amount of coaxing was necessary
to overcome the young lady’s reluctance.
“Come, my dear, give us some music,” said Mrs. Biggar briskly.
“Mamma,” replied a voice much thinner, but in other respects strangely
like the maternal tones, “Don’t ask me. You know I don’t play.”
“You urge her,” suggested Mrs. Biggar to the guest.
“What’ll I say?”
“Why, you say, ‘Oh do,’ and ‘Now don’t disappoint us,’ and ‘You play
_so_ well,’ just as big folks do when a young lady acts that way.”
“Oh, do play. Miss Biggar,” pressed Mrs. Garde, “now don’t disappoint
us; you do play so well!”
“Mrs. Garde,” responded the thin voice, though that wax doll sat gazing
serenely forward, and never so much as wagged a curl, “please excuse
me: I can’t play a bit, and my throat is so sore I don’t know what to
do!”
“Now you know you can play ever so many pieces right straight along
without stopping,” said Mrs. Biggar reproachfully.
“Oh, do!” chimed Mrs. Garde. Her mind flashed back to the time when
pianos were an unseen mystery to her and she wanted to play on one so
badly that a piece of sheet-iron binding sticking from a box became
a make-believe piano, upon which she thumped with rapture. But these
retrospections were not imparted to the Biggar family, and Miss Biggar
suddenly yielded to pressure, seated herself before, and suffered her
hands to be laid upon the polished box.
“Ah!” cried Mrs. Garde when the music started without visible
assistance, “a----h! How _can_ she do it? What kind of a piano is that!”
“That’s a music-box, goosie,” replied Libbie, descending from
make-believe for an instant. “My grandma brought it to me when she went
over the ocean. Didn’t you ever see one?”
“No, I didn’t.”
It played _Home, Sweet Home_, caught its breath, played _Old Uncle
Ned_, caught its breath again, gave a Tyrolese melody, again clicked,
played _Hail Columbia_ and stopped.
“That’s all,” said Libbie. “Four tunes.”
“Play your pieces over, Miss Biggar.”
The music-box was put through its performance again.
“Now that’s enough,” said Libbie decidedly; “le’s play something else.
Dolls is so old.”
“We might go out and run.”
“No, I don’t want to do that.”
“There’s somebody knocked at the door.”
“It’s just our cook.--What you want?”
“Miss Calder’s sent for the little girl that’s playing with you.”
“For me?” Bluebell ran and opened the door.
“Yes; Archie’s down-stairs and says she wants you.”
“I’ve got to go, Libbie.”
“That’s mean!”
“He says,” added the messenger, “that somebody’s come to your house.”
CHAPTER XXVII
SOMEBODY ARRIVES
Archie was standing at the foot of the stairs. Bluebell thought him a
most agreeable man. He always treated her with deferential indulgence.
“Did Aunt Melissa send for me?” cried Bluebell, running down-stairs
with Georgiana on her shoulder.
“Yes, ma’am, she did.”
“And who’s come, Archie? Oh, is it father and the baby?”
“It is a very fine gentleman, and a little girl considerable smaller
than you.”
“Good-by, Libbie. My father’s come!”
Doctor Garde’s little girl made rapid progress to the gate which united
Mrs. Biggar’s and Miss Calder’s grounds. Archie kept at her heels.
“Did they just get there, Archie?”
“Just a minute ago. And besides the gentleman and little girl there
was”--
“Oh, it’s Liza! Liza’s come too! It was Liza’s house where we used to
live, you know.”
“No, there wasn’t any lady.”
“Then it’s somebody else; and maybe it isn’t my father and the baby,
either?”
She paused in disappointment.
“Oh, the gentleman’s your father. I heard Miss Calder call him. Mr.
Doctor Garde is the gentleman’s name,” said Archie, punctiliously.
Bluebell plunged up the side veranda. But here her new manners seized
on her. What would father say if she ran in and grabbed him around the
neck? And there was Rocco. She had learned enough to be a great pattern
and example to Rocco.
The doctor was sunk in a haircloth chair in the dim parlor. Roxana sat
on Miss Melissa’s knee, half afraid of her in this new place which
imaged its wonders in her swelling black eyes.
Through the open folding-doors came a correct figure in cool
muslin-gingham; the bare brown arms and collar-bones looked natural,
but the face had a new expression.
“Is this Bluebell?” said father, extending his hand.
“Yes, sir.”
The young lady took his hand and kissed him. She did give the silent
Rocco an extra squeeze, but her back was towards father and the fervor
was hid from him. She drew her chair quite close to him, too, but in
every other respect preserved the strictest propriety.
“And you rode all the way on horseback with the baby,” said Miss Calder
in a pleased flutter. “That must have been charming at this season of
the year.”
“Yes,” said father. “I boxed the movables and had them sent by railway.”
“I am so glad you are here, Maurice.” Miss Melissa reached for her
handkerchief. “You have no idea how much brighter the house has been
since I brought Melissa home with me.”
The doctor looked pleased. He also looked faintly disturbed.
“And I am sure you will not regret the change in--as to--I mean from a
financial point of view, for all our friends are prepossessed in your
favor already.”
“As to that,” said the young man, “I’ll have to prove myself able to do
something, as I did at the Rocky Fork.”
“Yes; and I am sure you will indeed.”
“Papa, how is Liza?”
The doctor started, and looked queerly at his little girl.
He said, however, “She’s quite well.”
“I am learning to play the piano.”
His little girl made this announcement with the exact accent and
expression of Miss Libbie Biggar.
“Are you?”
“Yes, sir.”
He rubbed a finger across his forehead and looked at Miss Melissa. The
delicate lady smiled.
“Don’t you think she has improved very much?”
“Ye-es,” said the doctor, “certainly.”
He looked at his little girl.
“You may entertain your father awhile if he will excuse me, Melissa,”
said Miss Calder, putting Rocco down. “I want to have a few changes
made about tea. And if you want to go to your room, Maurice, Melissa
knows where it is.”
So Aunt Melissa went out, and Bluebell longed so much to tangle and
squeeze Roxana that she was fain at least to draw her seat beside Miss
Calder’s vacant arm-chair, into which the baby had mounted on all-fours
and wiggled about into a sitting posture.
“Are you glad to see B’uebell, Rocco?”
“Uh--uuh,” responded Roxana, still trying to take her bearings in these
strange waters.
“You mustn’t say that--it isn’t polite,” said Bluebell, shaking her
head.
Father’s square, serious face set itself to study her. His clothes
looked plain compared to the clothes she had seen gentlemen wear in
Sharon. They really had a woodsman look. But who could see father’s
resolute chin over his black neckcloth and not instinctively love
him? His little girl did not state the matter in these words. Her
impressions were instantaneous and languageless. The baby did look so
funny, too. Bluebell wished one of her new dresses was small enough for
the little sister. It was only that she did not want them to be behind
herself in advantages.
“Have you been real well, papa?”
“That isn’t polite,” said father slowly.
His little girl turned red. She was beginning to think his steady look
meant disapproval, after all, when she had tried _so_ hard to learn
deportment.
“What! To ask if you have been well?”
“To call me ‘papa’ when you know I want to be called ‘father.’”
Bluebell’s face and ears tingled.
“Libbie Biggar always says papa and mamma when she talks about her
father and mother. They’re dead.”
“Who’s Libbie Biggar?”
“Oh, she is such a nice little girl! She lives next door, and has the
most toys you ever saw. A little stove and dolls and dishes, and a
music-box that plays four tunes.”
“Do you like her better than you do Tildy?”
“I don’t believe I do. But she has such _pretty_ manners, and she is
_so_ ladylike!”
Father smiled.
“Her grandma is very good to her. And there are lots of other little
girls. I had a party.”
“I’m afraid Miss Melissa has been spoiling you.”
“Oh, no! She wanted me to get acquainted. Some of them wore _beautiful_
dresses. We had ice-cream. Do you know what ice-cream is, father?”
“I have tasted it.”
“Well, we had ice-cream. And Libbie Biggar just stamped her foot
because I didn’t want to dance a French Four. I didn’t know how.”
“She must have pretty manners,” said father.
Bluebell colored again.
“Oh, she has. She knows how to do so much better than I do.”
“Come here,” said father, extending his hands.
CHAPTER XXIX
DOCTOR GARDE’S LITTLE GIRL
Bluebell approached father’s knee with her heart swelling.
“Where’s my little girl?” said he.
His long light locks and serious face seemed to hang on the outer
surface of her tears. The tears were filling her eyes so fast; she
struggled to hold them still, but a splash came down on one of the
hands with which he was holding her waist.
“Why, I’m here!”
“I don’t seem to find you.”
“Why, father, I don’t know what you mean!”
The cry was under full headway now. Her figure quaked. She groped
piteously for her handkerchief, her eyes held in a charmed gaze by his.
He drew her upon his knee. At that Roxana descended from her position
and claimed a right on the other knee.
Sitting opposite her afflicted sister, she stroked the muslin-gingham
dress.
“Don’t t’y, Bluebell. _I’ve_ tum to your house.”
“I would like to have my little girl stay a little girl,” said father,
“until Nature turns her into a woman. I don’t say I am altogether
right.”
He paused, conscious that a child will accept its elder’s dictum
without question, and believe a thing to be unalterably good or evil,
according to the decision of the adult who happens to be over it in
authority. “But I don’t like young ladies in short clothes.”
“I thought you’d be pleased to see me learning fine manners,” wailed
Bluebell.
“_Don’t_ t’y,” begged Rocco, puckering in sympathy.
“Fine manners are very nice,” said the doctor. “But you seem to be
imitating somebody else. I can’t think it is a good thing to form
yourself after other people. I may be wrong; but I like to see
everybody live out his own nature.”
“Don’t you want me to learn to be a little lady?”
Father looked perplexed.
“I want you to learn everything which goes to make up a finished woman.
Yes, I want you to be a lady, but”--with a pathetic tone in his voice
which had vibrated only once or twice in her lifetime--“I wouldn’t give
my honest, simple-hearted little girl for all the fine airs and graces
in the world.”
Bluebell hugged him around the neck.
“That’s all I mean. Perhaps there’s a better way to bring up girls.”
“Father, I just want to be your way. And I tried to do like the
rest, for fear you’d be ’shamed of me ’side of Libbie and Orrell.”
The water-flow began to subside. Doctor Garde wiped its straggling
droppings away with the hand which had supported his little girl. Then
she leaned on his shoulder, nearer than she had ever been, and the arm
was replaced.
“They always lived in Sharon, and I thought they knew better’n I did
how to behave. Their hoops never stick out, and mine just act so mean!”
The doctor smiled again.
“Must you wear hoops?”
“Oh, yes, indeed, father! I _have_ to wear them. Folks would laugh at
you on the street if you didn’t.”
“Don’t think,” continued father carefully, “that I am finding fault
with Miss Calder’s kindness, or your trying to improve.”
“I thought you’d think it was nice for me to sit up and talk like grown
folks. But, father, I won’t do it any more. Did anybody come with you,
father?” added his little girl in the next breath.
“Nobody came but Rocco and me.”
“On Ballie?”
“On Ballie.”
“Are Tildy and Teeny well?”
She was asking with bright interest now, without aping anybody’s
manners.
“Very well. Tildy sent you a letter.”
“Oh, father! Where is it?”
“I think Liza packed it in my trunk. That’s probably at Newark with
the other baggage.”
Bluebell resigned herself to waiting with a deep sigh.
“Did they all go to g’ogr’phy school?”
“I believe so. The geography school is out.”
“Father, are you glad you came here?”
He looked deeply at the two on his knees.
“I shall always be glad if it proves a great benefit to my children.”
“I have read ever so much. Libbie Biggar don’t like reading.” She put
her head on one side and blushed. “Would you mind--?”
“Mind what?”
“Would you mind if I gave you an awful hard hug, little father? because
I’ve missed you so, and couldn’t get along just right without you.”
It was some time after tea that Archie was favored by visitors at the
stable,--Bluebell, Rocco and Georgiana.
“I want to see her,” said Doctor Garde’s little girl. “Which is her
stall, Archie?”
“Your father’s mare, ma’am?”
“Yes. And you said somebody else came with them. There was nobody but
father and Rocco.”
“There was this very elegant creature, ma’am. Here she is in this
stall. If you stand on the barn floor you can see her across the
manger.”
Bluebell took that position with the little sister, and then climbed
into the manger among Ballie’s oats to pat her tremulous nostril.
“Do you know me?”
The Arabian’s soft whinny answered her.
“Oh, Archie, I do think so much of her! She fell off the Narrows all
but her fore feet, and jumped up again and kept father and me from
being killed.”
Archie was duly astonished. He polished her satin surface, and declared
she was the finest piece of horse-flesh that ever came into the stables.
“Charley and Coaly are fine animals, but they are too fat and too lazy.
Now this here mare is all life; and look at them ears!”
“Oh, Archie, I’m so glad you like her! She’s so kind.”
“She’s most genteel,” said Archie.
Bluebell did not like the word, though it was then commonly current.
She had heard Aunt Melissa use it. She had tried herself to be very
genteel.
“I wouldn’t say she was genteel, Archie. I would just say she was
Doctor Garde’s own horse; and that’s enough.”
“Your father’s a very fine gentleman,” declared Archie, smiling in his
excessive amiability. “And your little sister, she’s quite a little
lady.”
“Rocco,” said Bluebell to the baby when she got her between house and
barn among the shrubbery, “I like you _real_ well, and better’n anybody
in the world except father. Old honey-dew!”
CHAPTER XXX
TWO LETTERS
I.--THE ROCKY FORK TO SHARON
Respected frend,
i take my pen in hand to let you know i am well and hope These few
lines Will find you enjoyIng the same blessing....
Christine is Writen this for me. the (Elders) is all ripe do you mind
when we plade and Teny married them | the goggerfy school is out mr
runNels brot his Wife which made the big girls feel Bad but Teeny
sais that aint so....
Printhy pancost she got the most Headmarks so she got the prize Teeny
got the prize in Spelin in the big class | We marched the last day
and i spoke mary had a little Lamb there was 6 dialogues.
+------------------------------+
| If you Love me as i love |
| you no nife can cut our love |
| into. |
+------------------------------+
jo hall is Well and sends his reSpecks.... When are you coming back
Eliza is Lonesome.... i am learning to write but cant make no out
yet.... mr pitzer give a treat the last Day we got three sticks of
Candy apiece The big boys did not threaten to Lock him out he done
it of his own accord i am going to send you some
+--------------+
| Mountain Tea |
+--------------+
Mother is well uncle Abram is well John Tiggard said his long piece
the Death of the flowErs Amandy Willey sent her Respecks
excuse Mistakes Mother has got her weavin Most all done.... the Run
has not been up since So no more at present Goodbye
Matilda Banks.
Teeny would not wright Half I wanted her to. Mother puts this on. I
got Ferns pressin in the memoiry of Florence Kidder, write and Tell
us how you get on, our sweetins is getting Ripe. don’t you wish you
was here.
remember frends as you pass by
as you are now so once was i
as I am now So you must be
Prepare For deth and follow me.
i thought I would end with some Poetry.
II.--SHARON TO THE ROCKY FORK
SHARON THE 21
SEPTEMBER
DEAR TILDY
I HAD TO WAIT TILL I LEARNED TO PRINT. ALL OF THEM LEARN TO PRINT
AT THE SEMNARY PREPARATORY DEPARTMENT. THERE IS A LETTER BOOK BUT
THE LETTERS AINT TO YOU. I THOUT YOUR LETTER WAS VERY NICE; THE
MOUNTAIN TEA WAS SO GOOD. ALL THE GIRLS WANTED SOME. THERE WAS
ELIZABETH BIGGAR AND ORRELL PRATT AND ORPA ROSE AND OTHERS TOO
NUMEROUS TO MENTION. I STUDDY THE 2ND READER SPELLING GEOGRAPHY AND
MENTAL ARITHMETIC AND PRINTING. I LEARNED HOW TO PUT MARKS IN YOUR
WRITING. THEY PUT THEM IN BOOKS. TILDY, DID YOU KNOW SHYLOCK IS IN
SHAKESPEARE? AND GINEVRA IS A MAN NAMED MISTER ROGERS.
AUNT MELISSA IS VERY NICE, SHE MAKES SO MUCH OF US, BUT I LOVE LIZA
TOO. GIVE MY LOVE TO LIZA. ROXANA SENDS HER LOVE. SO DOES ALL THE
FAMILY. THANK YOU FOR THE MOUNTAIN TEA. BALLIE IS WELL. FATHER RIDES
HER TO SEE SICK FOLKS. WE RIDE IN THE CARRIDGE. ROCKKO HAS A NEW
WHITE AND A NEW PINK AND SOME GINGHAMB DRESSES. O TILDY, DONT YOU
REMEMBER GOING FOR WATER AND BLACKMAN AND THE SPELLING AND GETING
FERNS AND ALL THE GOOD TIMES? AND THE TIME YOU AND ME CHURNED PRINTHY
PANCOST! GIVE MY LOVE TO PRINTHY AND MANDY WILLEY AND JO HALL AND
JOHN TEGARDEN AND NERVY RIDEANHOUR AND TEENY AND ALL THE BIG BOYS AND
GIRLS. GIVE MY LOVE TO MR. PITZER. MY TEACHER IS A LADY. TELL HIM I
CAN MOST READ THE BEAUTIFUL LETTER HE GAVE ME. TILDY, YOU MUST COME
AND SEE US. LIZA MUST COME. SO MUST YOUR MOTHER AND TEENY. I HAVE
GOOD TIMES, BUT I DONT FORGET THE ELDER DOLLS AND ALL.
MY HAND IS GETTING TIRED. GIVE MY LOVE TO YOUR MOTHER. I LOVE ALL
YOU FOLKES AT THE ROCKY FORK. TILDY, I AM COMING TO SEE YOU WHEN THEY
BRING ME. I SPOSE POOR MISS EMILY MANDEVILLE IS WITHERD TO DUST. I
WISHT YOUD GOT THE PRIZE.
I WAITED TILL MY HAND GOT RESTED. MY ROOM IS PRETTY. IT HAS PICTURES
AND A BLUE CARPET. I WISHED YOU WAS TO MY PARTY. DONT YOU REMEMBER
THE BIG STORM, TILDY, WHEN FATHER FETCHED ME HOME? DO THE NARROWS
LOOK JUST THE SAME? THEY DONT HAVE SUNDAY SCHOOL BOOKS LIKE WE DID.
THESE HAVE NICE STORIES. FLORENCE KIDDER WAS NOT A BIT GOOD EXCEPT
THE PICTURE. I AM GOING TO PUT IN MY PICTURE THAT AUNT MELISSA HAD
TAKEN. IT IS ON PAPER. IT IS NOT LIKE MY MOTHERS DAGARTYPE. THIS KIND
IS A NEW KIND. THEY CALL IT PHOTGRAPH. I HAVE ONE FOR LIZA TOO. AUNT
M WILL SEND IT. ROCCO WOULD NOT HOLD STILL. THEY WILL TAKE HERS NEXT
TIME. MY HAND IS REAL TIRED. GOODBYE.
BLUEBELL GARDE.
DR. GARDES LITTLE GIRL.
[Illustration]
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.
Perceived typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.
Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.
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