Kitabı oku: «Greenacre Girls», sayfa 7

CHAPTER XII
GILEAD'S GIRL NEIGHBORS

The breakfast hour at Greenacres was supposed to be seven-thirty, but the girls rose at about six and spent the hour before out in the garden. It was so fascinating, Helen said in her rather reserved way, to be out-of-doors in the early morning. Sometimes when the air was warmer than the ground there would be a morning mist out of which rose clumps of tree tops like little islands.

The following day at five-thirty exactly, Jean wakened drowsily to find Kit standing by her bed, booted and spurred for the fray, as one might say.

"I want you to look at this clock and be a witness that I'm up on time," she said briskly, holding up a bland, nickel-plated clock from the kitchen, a relic of the days of Tekla. "It's perfectly gorgeous outside, Jean. I don't see how you girls can lie and sleep with all nature calling."

"Nature didn't call you before, did she, Kathleen Mavourneen? Go away and let me sleep."

"Well, I get the turtles anyway. I've got them named already." She seated herself blithely on the foot of the bed, "Triptolemus and Prometheus. Like them? I'll call them Trip and Pro for short."

Jean sat up in bed and hurled her pillow at the laughing, fleeing form. From the end of the hall came a last challenge.

"I'm the early bird this morning anyway, Sleepyhead."

After breakfast though, when the little dew-spangled cobwebs were gone from the meadow grass, Jean had Honey harness Princess, and declared she was going to drive over and get Piney to accompany her on a round of calls. Kit and Doris were busy out in the kitchen garden, and Helen was helping with the dusting and upstairs work. For some reason Jean wanted to go without them on this first reconnoitering expedition.

She drove down the hill towards Gilead Green, bowed with a little rising flush of color at the group in the front of the blacksmith shop, and stopped in front of the brown and white house where the Hancocks lived. It might have been the veritable witch's house in "Hansel and Gretel," all constructed properly and comfortably out of sugar-loaf and gingercakes. The clapboards were a deep cream color and the trimmings were all of brown, scalloped and perforated with trefoils and hearts. The green stalks of tiger lilies grew in thick clusters along its picket fence, and marigolds and china asters were coming up in the long beds.

"Hello, Jean," called Piney buoyantly, beating some oval braided rugs out on the back line. "Can you stop in?"

Jean leaned forward, the reins lying in her lap.

"I wanted to see if you couldn't go driving with me. Just so I can meet some of the girls. We want to give a lawn social or some sort of a summer affair to get acquainted with our neighbors. It's too warm for a house warming, so we'll have a garden party."

"Why, the idea," Piney exclaimed, dropping her stick and pushing back her hair. "I think that's awfully nice. Wait till I ask Mother if I can go."

Jean waited and presently Mrs. Hancock stepped out on the side porch and down the steps to the carriage. She was rather like Honey and Piney, curly-haired and young appearing, with deep dimples and eyes that still held an abiding happiness in their blue depths. Her face was careworn and there were lines around her mouth that told of repressed pain, but it was the look in the eyes that held you. Luella Trowbridge may have gone through trouble, but she had married the man she loved and had been happy with him. She stretched out both hands to Jean.

"Honey's told us so much about you all up there that it seems as if I know every single one of you," she said, pleasantly. "You're Jean, aren't you? Of course Piney can go along if she wants to. Don't forget the new girl over at the old Parmelee place."

"It's funny, you're speaking of a lawn social," Piney remarked, as they drove away. "We've been wanting to give one up at the church-"

"Which church?" asked Jean. "I can see so many little white spires every time I get to a hilltop. They look like fingers pointing up, don't they?"

"I suppose so." Piney was not much given to sentiment. "Anyway, here in our part of town, we've got two. Mother belongs to the Methodist but Father was a Congregationalist, so Honey and I divide up between them. Then over at Happy Valley, three miles south, there's another Congregational church, and we wanted to give a social-"

"Who wanted to?"

"We girls up here at our Congregational church. But our folks don't get along very well with the folks at the Green church, and they say we're just dead up here, dead and buried because we never get anything up. And Mr. Collins, our minister, isn't on speaking terms with the Green minister because something went wrong when old Mr. Bartlett died. He wasn't a professor, you see-"

"What's that?" Jean's eyes were wide with interest. She was getting local data at the rate of a mile a minute.

"Didn't belong to any of the churches at all, but he was awfully nice, so when he died a year ago, Mr. Collins said he'd bury him, though the Green minister had said he wouldn't; so there you are. Then the other minister is a lady-"

"Forevermore!" gasped Jean.

"She's the best of them all, just the same," Piney said soberly. "Only the two other ministers say it isn't the place for women in the pulpit, and how on earth we're ever going to have any social and invite them all, I don't see."

Jean's eyes suddenly shone with the joy of a new idea.

"I do," she said. "Let's visit all the three parsonages first off."

So they followed the road over to the Green and stopped at the white colonial house where Mr. Lampton lived. He was tall and gray-haired, and welcomed his callers with a twinkle in his eyes. It was not customary for two girls to pay a business call at the parsonage, but Jean launched upon her subject at once. His advice and co-operation were asked, that was all. Greenacre lawn would be given for the social, and the girls would look after the refreshments and the Japanese lanterns to decorate the grounds. Ten cents could be charged for ice cream and cake, and the ladies could donate the cake. The proceeds would go to church needs.

"I didn't tell him how many churches, did I?" said Jean, when they drove away with Mr. Lampton's earnest promise to help. He was invited to attend a committee meeting at Greenacres the following Saturday.

Miss Titheradge of the Happy Valley Church was delighted with the idea. Jean liked her at first sight. She was rather plump, with wide brown eyes that never seemed to blink at all, and rosy cheeks.

"It's just what I've been telling the folks up here in these old granite hills. Get together, warm your hands at the fire of neighborly love and kindness. Have socials and all sorts of good times for your young people and your old people. Bless everybody's hearts, they only need stirring up and turning over, and the old fire burns afresh. Yes, I'll help, children."

"We're sure of Mr. Collins," said Piney, as they drove away this time. "I'll see him myself, and tell him about the committee meeting at your house on Saturday. Now we can find some of the girls."

Jean never forgot that afternoon. They drove miles together, stopping at the different houses and meeting the girls who were, to Jean at least, the new material upon which she had to work.

At the old Ames place they found the two Swedish girls, tall, blonde, and blue-eyed, working out in the onion patch with their brothers. Ingeborg was the elder and Astrid the younger, sixteen and fourteen years old. They had moved up from New York two years before, but had both gone to the public schools there and were ready for anything Jean suggested.

"Ingeborg belonged to a basket ball team," Astrid said. "I can swim and row best."

The Chapelles lived in a little gray house close to the road on Huckleberry Hill, two miles below Cousin Roxana's. Etoile was shy-eyed and graceful, smiling but non-committal, and little Tony peered around her mother's skirts at the stranger in the carriage and coquetted mischievously. But they would come, ah, and gladly, Mrs. Chapelle promised.

"They like ver' much to come, you see?" she said eagerly, trying to detach Tony from her skirt. "Ton-ee, I have shame for you, ma petite. Why you no come out, make nize bow? Etoile, go bring some lilacs, make quick!"

Etoile sped away to the tall rows of white and purple lilac bushes, and broke off two large bunches to put in the back of the wagon. Then Mrs. Chapelle remembered that she must send over to her new neighbor a pat of her butter. Such beautiful butter never anyone see, never. Jean must drive around through the lane and see the three Jersey cows browsing there in the clover field, Henriette, Desiree, and Susette.

Last of all came the Icelandic farm, and here Jean found only the hired men, two grave-faced, light-haired transplanted vikings, who eyed her curiously and silently. Hedda, the daughter, and her mother had driven over to sell two young pigs at the Finnish place.

"Oh, dear me," laughed Jean, "let's go home. I feel as if I had been riding like Peer Gynt, all over the world, just touching at countries here and there. Let's go right straight home, so I can talk to Mother and get a perspective on it all."

"Better ask the Mill girls over while you're about it," Piney suggested, so they made one last stop at the red saw-mill in the valley below Greenacres. "They're Americans. My chum lives here, Sally Peckham. She's got five sisters and three brothers, but Sally's the whole family herself."

The three brothers worked in the saw-mill after school hours, and Jean only caught a glimpse of them, but Sally sufficed. She came running out of the kitchen with a brown and white checked apron covering her up, and her red hair blowing six ways for Sunday, as Piney said laughingly afterwards. She was short and freckled and not one bit pretty, unless good health and happiness and smiles made up for beauty. But the instant you met Sally you recognized executive ability concentrated in human form.

"Billy, keep out of those lettuce beds," she called to a younger brother, strayed somehow from the mill. "How do you do, Miss Robbins-"

"Oh, call me Jean," Jean said quickly. "We're close neighbors. If we didn't hear your whistle we'd never know what time it is."

"Well, we've been intending to get up the valley to see you, but Mother's rather poorly, and all the girls are younger than me, so I help her round the house. We've got twins in our family, did Piney tell you? Piney and I named them. We thought of everything under the sun, Martha Washington and Betsey Ross, and Ruth and Naomi, and Mercy and Faith, and then we got it all at once. We've had twins in our family before, Josephine and Imogene, that's Mother and Aunt Jo, but we didn't want to repeat. Somehow, it didn't show any-any imagination." She laughed and so did Jean. "So we called ours Elva and Sylvia. We say Elvy and Sylvy for short. Anne and Charlotte are twelve and nine and the twins are only five. They're too cute for anything. Wish you'd all come down and see us Sunday afternoon."

"Sally'd ask the whole world to supper Sunday afternoon," Piney said as they finally turned up the home road. "She's just a dear, and she has to work all the time. She never has a single day to herself, and she doesn't mind it a bit. She does manage to get away to sing in the choir Sunday mornings, but that's all. And even if she isn't pretty, she's got a voice that makes gooseflesh come out all over you, and you shut your eyes and just tingle when it rises and falls. I love her, she's so-oh, so sort of big, you know. Isn't her hair red?"

"It's coppery and it's beautiful," Jean answered decidedly. "I think she's dandy. Why can't the twins and Anne and Charlotte buckle in and help, so that Sally can get away once in a while?"

"Her mother says she can't do without her."

Jean pondered over that and finally tucked it away for the consultation hour with the Motherbird, as being too deep for her to settle.

It had been a very profitable afternoon, and after she had taken Piney home, she drove into the home yard, feeling as if she really had a line on Gilead Center girls. Doris came running down to meet her as she jumped out, while Honey came to take care of Princess. Doris's eyes were shining with excitement.

"Jean Robbins, what do you suppose has happened?"

"Something's sprouted," Jean guessed laughingly. Doris spent most of her time watching to see if any of the seeds had started to sprout.

"No. It isn't that. Gypsy's got little chickens. She marched into the barnyard with ten of them, as proud as anything. And nobody knows where she hatched them at all. Isn't she a darling to attend to it all by herself?"

Jean had to go immediately to see the new brood. Gypsy had cuddled them around her in the barn on a pile of hay and steadfastly refused to be removed. If ever a hen looked nonchalant she did, quite as if she would have said, "I can do it just as well as any of these ridiculous nesters that you're so proud of, and my chicks are twice as perfect as theirs."

"They're wonderful babies, Gypsy," Jean told her. "Be careful of them now. Mothers have to behave themselves, you know. No more gallivanting off to the wildwood."

"She probably will. I'm going to have Honey put them into a little coop tomorrow and her too, and let's change her name, Jeanie. Let's call her something tender and motherly. Call her Cordelia, after the Roman Mother with the jewels, that Mother was telling us about."

So Cordelia she was, and Gypsy seemed to acclimate herself both to maternity and to her new cognomen. It only proved, as Kit remarked, what children would do for a flighty and light-minded person, and she trusted that some day Doris would have twins to occupy her mind.

Jean changed her dress and ran down into the kitchen to help get supper and tell her experiences of the day, which proved so entertaining and comical that Mrs. Robbins finally came out and asked if they were ever to have anything to eat.

"Dad's tray is all ready, Mother mine," Jean replied, sitting up on the tall wood box behind the stove, "I'm just waiting for the scones to bake, and Kit's fixing a beautiful jelly omelette. Mother, dear, you never saw anything so funny as these precious inhabitants, but they're all gold, just the same, and I like them. And we're going to have a lawn party here and invite all the warring factions. Isn't that nice? All the folks that aren't on speaking terms with each other we've asked to serve on the committee, so they'll have to come here for tea and chat sociably and neighborlike with each other."

CHAPTER XIII
COUSIN ROXY TO THE RESCUE

"We've forgotten to write Mr. McRae and tell him how much we like the house," Helen said a few days later.

"He doesn't know anything about the house, or care either," protested Kit, struggling with some raspberry canes that needed disentangling and tying back against the woodshed boards. "He's never even seen it. Do you suppose he has the least bit of sentiment for it the way we have or Piney has? I wouldn't bother to write to him."

"Oh, I would," Helen answered serenely. She was down on her knees in the clover diligently hunting four-leaved ones. "It isn't his fault that he's never seen the place. Maybe we could coax him back."

"We don't want to coax him back. It must be our one endeavor to keep him right out there in Saskatoon forever. We must tell him the cellar's damp and the roof leaks and the whole place has gone to rack. If we don't he may come East and take it away from us, and we want to save up and buy it and give it back to Piney and her Mother and Honey."

"What's Honey's real name?" asked Doris irrelevantly. "I never thought to ask him. Somehow it does seem to suit him, doesn't it?"

"He wants to study electrical engineering or else be a rancher," Kit said. "I never asked him what his real name is. You're awfully inquisitive, Dorrie."

"What do all boys see in ranches, I wonder. Back at the Cove, Otis Phelps always wanted to be a cowboy and he's got to be a lawyer, his father says."

"Maybe he'll escape West some day and be whatever he likes. I think one of the very worst things in life is to have to be something you don't want to be." Kit surveyed her work admiringly. "Of course, in the ups and downs and uncertainties, as Cousin Roxy would remark, we must be prepared for all things, but if you can dig inside of yourself and find out what you're best fitted for, then you ought to aim everything at that mark. If Honey wants to be an electrical engineer, he ought to get books now, and swallow them whole, and if he wants to be a rancher, he ought to go West-"

A voice came from midair apparently, overhead on the woodshed roof which Honey was patching with waterproof paint and tar. It was a mild and cheerful voice and showed plainly that Honey was personally interested in the conversation.

"I can't go West just now, Mother needs me; but I'm going as soon as I can."

The three girls stared up at him with laughing faces.

"Honey Hancock," exclaimed Doris, "why didn't you sing out to us before?"

"Wanted to hear what you had to say," said Honey simply. "Thought maybe I'd get some good advice. And my first name's Guilford. The whole thing's Guilford Trowbridge Hancock. I'm named for my grandfather. Piney called me Honey when I was a little shaver, so I suppose I'll be that all my life."

"Piney and Honey," repeated Helen musingly, "when you're really Proserpine and Guilford. Nicknames are queer, aren't they? I think that babies should all be called pet names till they're old enough to choose their own. Still Guilford's a good name. It's a name to grow up to, Honey. You ought to be stout and dignified, don't you know, like Mr. Pickwick."

"Guess I don't know him, do I?" asked Honey. "Piney wants to be something too, but girls can't do that. She wants to be a builder and look after land. She wants to go to the State Agricultural College too, and take the forestry course. Do you know what she does? She read some place that the chestnut trees were dying out, so she takes a pocketful of sound chestnuts with her whenever she goes out for a walk in the woods, and every once in a while she sticks her finger in the ground and plants a chestnut. What do you think of that?"

Kit drew in a deep breath.

"I think she's wonderful. We'll do that too. And acorns and walnuts. I don't see why she can't go to the State College if she likes, or why she can't take the forestry course. It isn't whether you're a boy or a girl that matters in such things. It's just whether you can do the work that counts."

"She can shut her eyes and walk through the woods and tell the name of every tree just by feeling its leaves."

Jean appeared on the back porch and called down to them to come up and wash for dinner. This noon-time wash-up was really a function after one had been working and grubbing in the garden all the morning. Honey would bring in a fresh pail of well water first. Some day Kit intended demanding water piped into the house from Mr. McRae, but now they used the well.

Just as Honey came into the summer kitchen with the pail of water, Ella Lou's white nose showed outside the door by the hitching post and Cousin Roxana's voice called to them.

"No, thanks, I can't stop," she called. "I want Betty and Jean."

Mrs. Robbins came downstairs from her husband's room, cool and charming in her black and white lawn, with her hair piled high on her head, and little close curls framing in her face.

"Why, Roxy, come in and have dinner with us," she exclaimed.

"Don't talk to me about things to eat, Betty," answered Cousin Roxana briskly. "Never had such a set-to in my life. Why, I'm so turned over I can hardly talk. The poor thing, all alone up there on that hill with nothing but woods around her. Enough to make anybody lose heart, I declare it is. Get your bonnet right on, Betty. We can't stop for anything. I wouldn't eat dinner with King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba."

"What is it? Please tell us," Jean pleaded, and all three girls crowded around the carriage.

"Don't waste time, Jean. Get your hat on. She may be dead by now. It's that little Finnish woman up on the Parmelee place where you bought your chickens. Her husband's only been dead a little while, took sick on the ship coming over and died at Ellis Island, I heard. And she's pined and pined with four children on her hands, and this morning she just tied- Oh, my land, I can't talk about it. Do come along. Thank the Lord the water wasn't very deep in the well and they've got her out. And we call ourselves church folks and Christians."

"Had I better take anything with me, Roxy?" asked Mrs. Robbins, hurrying down the porch steps with a motor cloak thrown around her. "Medicine, do you think?"

"No, I've got everything. Always keep emergency things on hand. You never can tell up around here what's going to happen. Bennie Peckham ran a big wooden splinter through his palm the other day, and didn't I have to get it out for him? And Hiram stepped square bang on a piece of glass and cut his foot so he's still going around like old Limpy-go-fetch-it. Have to be prepared for anything when you live out here. This morning Hiram stood his fishing pole up against the side of the house and the line got loose, and one of my best ducks swallowed the bait. I got it out, though. Go long there, Ella Lou, pick up your feet."

Ella Lou started away as if she knew what lay ahead. Jean sat between her mother and Cousin Roxana, listening with wide eyes as the latter's tongue rambled on. It was a beautiful day. The air was heavy with fragrance. Bluebirds preened and fluttered on nearly every fence rail, and robins hopped along the meadows, chirping mate calls. In the roadside thickets the swamp apples were all in radiant pink blossom, whole bouquets of rare color, with overhead the white dogwood flowers and wild crab-apple.

"It seems fearful that anyone should want to die a day like this," said Mrs. Robbins. "How old is she, Roxy?"

"Old enough to know better, to my way of thinking, with all those children dependent on her for love and care and upbringing," said Roxana promptly. "But that's neither here nor there. We mustn't judge another because we don't know how we'd act in their place. There are four children and her brother. The brother's been around peddling vegetables, potatoes and apples, but everybody's got all they need around here, and he didn't have the gumption to drive fourteen miles to town with them. If I'd been his sister, I'd have hitched up and taken them myself. Men folks are all right in a way and I suppose if the proper one had come along, I'd have married the same as the rest of women folks, but from what I can tell of them at a distance, they're fearful trying and uncertain."

The hill dipped into a deep valley mottled with cloud shadows. When they came in sight of the old Parmelee place, there were the four children grouped forlornly around the barn door as if the presence of tragedy at the house had frightened them away from it. Cousin Roxy waved to them and smiled.

"Come here," she called. "Yes, that tallest boy. 'Most twelve, aren't you, son? Old enough to hitch a horse. What's your name?"

"Yahn," answered the boy shyly.

"Yahn? Guess that's Johnnie in plain American, isn't it?" She jumped to the ground as nimbly as any girl, and handed him the hitch rope. "Doctor got over yet?"

Johnnie shook his head sadly, and the youngest girl broke suddenly into frantic, half-stifled sobbing.

"There's your work cut out for you, Jean," Roxana said briskly. "You amuse these children while your Mother and I go into the house."

So Jean took the three youngest for a walk over into the woods, and told them stories until the frightened, blank look left their eyes and they clung around her confidingly. Yahn and Maryanna, Peter and Rika. From Yahn, who could speak a little English, she found out that the family had only been in the wonderful new land a year, that their mother had been sad for weeks, and would never smile.

"She says she don't know nobody and nobody want to know her. Too many woods all around, too."

"Never mind, she's going to know everyone now," Jean promised hopefully.

Over in the house Cousin Roxy was promising about the same thing to the discouraged little Finnish settler. Weak and listless, she lay on the bed in the room. A morning glory vine rambled up the window casing, and framed in a view of the orchard in full bloom. Pink and white petals drifted from their boughs like fairy snow. Mrs. Robbins looked at them wistfully and remorsefully. She had only lost in worldly goods. This woman had lost husband and hope and happiness, and the old well back in the orchard had been her solution of life's problem. If little Yahn had not seen her fall into it, she would have been dead now. When her eyes opened, and Cousin Roxy questioned her, she only shook her head, and whispered: "Too tired."

"Upon my heart, Betty, I think I'll just bundle her up and take her home with me for a while to rest and feed up, and you can take a couple of the children down with you. Maybe Johnnie and the other boy could stay here with the uncle. Anyway, we'll pull her through."

When the old doctor came he agreed it was the very best thing to do. The Finnish brother had stood helplessly around in the kitchen, getting hot water ready when he was told to and eyeing the form on the bed with perplexity.

"She haf plenty to eat," he kept saying, until Cousin Roxana took him by the shoulder and almost shook him.

"Don't be so silly," she exclaimed. "Man can not live by bread alone, and neither can a woman. She needs to be heartened up once in a while. And put a cover on your old well."

Helen, Kit, and Doris were all watching for the return, and when Jean handed them out Maryanna and Rika, the two little Finns, Kit gasped.

"It's our first chance at what Mother's been telling us about," Jean declared, flushed and enthusiastic, as she turned her two charges out to play with Doris. "It doesn't matter whether your neighbor happens to be a Finn or a Feejee. He's your neighbor and it won't do to let him or his sister take tumbles into old wells because they're strangers in a strange land."