Kitabı oku: «The Little Colonel's Holidays», sayfa 6

CHAPTER IX
LEFT BEHIND

Every evening for a week, at the Cuckoo's Nest, a fire had been kindled on the sitting-room hearth, for the autumn rains made the nights chilly. Here until half-past eight the boys could play any game they chose. Hop-scotch left chalk marks on the new rag carpet, and tag upset the furniture as if a cyclone had swept through the room, but never a word of reproof interrupted their sport, no matter how boisterous. Lloyd wondered sometimes that the roof did not tumble in around their ears when she and Betty and Molly joined the five boys in a game of blind man's buff.

"It is nice to have old furniture and stout rag carpets," she confided to Betty, in a breathless pause of the game. "We couldn't romp in the house this way at Locust. I like the place now, it doesn't seem a bit queah. I wouldn't care if mothah would write for us to stay heah anothah week."

But the summons to leave came next day. A howl went up from all the little Appletons as the letter was read aloud. It had been the most exciting week of their lives, for Betty and the Little Colonel were on the friendliest terms with Molly, and the three together introduced new games into the Cuckoo's Nest with an enthusiasm that made the evening playtime a delight. The charades and tableaux and private theatricals were something to enjoy with keen zest at the moment, and dream of for weeks afterward.

"We will have one more jolly old evening together, anyhow," said Bradley. "I'll go out and get the firewood now." But when supper was over, and the two trunks stood in a corner, packed and strapped for their morrow's journey, nobody seemed in a mood for romping. The boys squatted on the hearth-rug as solemnly as Indians around a council-fire. As the shadows danced on the ceiling, Betty reached down from the low stool where she sat, to stroke the puppy stretched across her feet.

"What do you all want me to bring you from Europe?" she asked, playfully. "Pretend that I could bring you anything you wanted. Only remember the story of Beauty and the Beast, and don't anybody ask for a white rose. Molly, you are the oldest, you begin, and choose first."

Molly's gray eyes gazed wistfully into the embers. "Oh, you know that there is only one thing in the whole world that I ever wish for, and that is Dot. But of course she isn't in Europe."

"You don't know," interrupted Lloyd. "I've read of stranger things than that. I have a story at home about a boy that was kidnapped, and yeahs aftah he was found strollin' around in a foreign country with a band of gypsies. They'd taken him across the ocean with them."

"And there's a piece in my Fourth Reader," added Scott, eagerly, "about a child that was stolen by Indians when she was so young that she soon forgot how to talk English. She grew up to look just like a squaw. When the tribe was captured, her own mother did not recognise her. Her mother was an old white-haired woman then. But there was a queer kind of scar that had always been on the girl's arm, and when her mother saw that she knew it was her daughter, and she began to sing a song that she used to sing when she rocked her children to sleep. And the girl remembered it, and it seemed to bring back all the other things she had forgotten, and she ran up to her mother and put her arms around her."

"Dot has a scar," said Molly. "I could tell her anywhere by that mark over her eye where the stick of wood hit her."

"S'pose Betty should find her somewhere abroad," said Lloyd, her eyes shining like stars at the thought. "S'pose they'd be driving along in Paris, and a little flower girl would come up with a basket of violets, and Eugenia would say, 'Oh, papa, please stop the carriage. I want some of those violets.' And while they were buying them Betty would talk to the little flower girl, and find out that she was Dot. Of co'se Cousin Carl would take her right into the carriage, and they'd whirl away to the hotel, and aftah they'd bought her a lot of pretty clothes they'd take her travellin' with them, and finally bring her back to America just as if it were in a fairy tale."

"Or Eugenia might find her in New York before we leave," suggested Betty. "You know she wrote that she is hunting, and that her father promised to ask the police force to look, too."

"Joyce is lookin', too," said Lloyd. "Dot is as apt to wandah west as east. There's so many people interested now in tryin' to find her. I do wondah who'll be the one."

"Godmother, most likely," said Betty. "Wouldn't it be lovely if she should? Suppose she'd find her about Christmas time, and she'd send word to Molly to hang up two stockings, because she was going to send her a present so big that it wouldn't go into one. And Christmas morning Molly would run down here to the chimney where she'd hung them, and there would be Dot standing in her stockings."

"Oh, don't!" said Molly, imploringly, with a little choke in her voice. "You make it seem so real that I can't bear to talk about it any more."

There was silence in the room for a little space, and only the shadows moved as the flames leaped and flickered on the old hearthstone. Then Lloyd, leaning forward, took hold of one of Betty's long brown curls.

"Tell us a story, Tusitala," she said, coaxingly. "It will be the last one before we go away."

"Why did you call her that?" asked the inquisitive Bradley.

"Tusitala? Oh, that means tale-teller, you know. That is the name the Samoan chiefs gave to Robert Louis Stevenson when he went to live on their island, and that is the name we gave Betty when we thought she was going blind, the time we all had the measles."

"Why?" asked Bradley again.

"Because mothah said Betty writes stories so well now, that she will be known as the children's Tusitala some day. Besides, she told us the tale about the Road of the Loving Heart, and Eugenia gave us each a ring to help us remembah it. See? They are just alike."

She laid her hand against Betty's a moment, to compare the little twists of gold, each tied in a lover's knot, and then slipped hers off, passing it around the circle, that each might see the name "Tusitala" engraved inside. "Tell them about it, Betty," she insisted.

"There isn't much to tell," began Betty, clasping her hands around her knees. "Only Stevenson was so good to those poor old Samoan chiefs, visiting them when they were put in prison, and treating them so kindly in every way he could think of, that they called him their white brother. They wanted to do something to show their appreciation, for they said, 'The day is not longer than his kindness.' They had heard him wish for a road across part of the island, so they banded together and began to dig. It was hard work, for the heat was terrible there in the tropics, and they were weak from being in prison so long; but they worked for days and days, almost fainting. When it was done, they set up an inscription over it, calling it the Road of the Loving Heart that they had built to last for ever."

Betty paused a moment, twisting the little ring on her finger, and then repeated what she had confessed to Joyce, the afternoon that she thought she must be blind all the rest of her life.

"I wanted to build a road like that for godmother. Of course I couldn't dig one like those chiefs did, and she wouldn't have wanted it even if I could; but I thought maybe I could leave a memory behind me of my visit, that would be like a smooth white road. You know, remembering things is like looking back over a road. The unpleasant things that have happened are like the rocks we stumble over. But if we have done nothing unpleasant to remember, then we can look back and see it stretched out behind us, all smooth and white and shining.

"So, from the very first day of my visit, I tried to leave nothing behind me for her memory to stumble over. Not a frown or a cross word or a single disobedience. Nothing in all my life ever made me so happy as what she said to me the day I left Locust. I knew then that I had succeeded."

There was nothing preachy about Betty. She did not apply the story to her hearers, even in the tone in which she told it; but the silence that followed was uncomfortable to one squirming boy at least.

Bradley remembered the fishing-worms, and was in haste to change the subject. "Say, Betty, what are you going to do with Bob when you go away?"

"I have been trying for some time to make up my mind," said Betty. "First I thought I would take him back to Locust, and let him stay with his brothers; but I'll be away so long that he won't know me when I come back, and this afternoon I decided to give him to Davy."

"Oh, really, truly, Betty?" cried the child, tumbling forward at her feet in a quiver of delight, for he had loved the frolicsome puppy at first sight, and had kept it with him every waking moment since it came.

"Really, truly," she repeated, picking up the puppy and dropping him into Davy's arms. "There, sir! Go to your new master, you rascal, and remember that your name isn't Bob Lewis any longer. It is Bob Appleton now."

Davy squeezed the fat puppy so close in his arms that his beaming face was nearly hidden by the big bow of yellow ribbon. He had never been so happy in all his life. The road that Betty had left in her godmother's memory was not the only one that stretched out white and shining behind her. No matter how long she might be gone from the Cuckoo's Nest, or how the years might pile up between them, in Davy's heart she would be the dearest memory of his childhood. With Bob she had given him its crowning joy, a reminder of herself, to live and move and frisk beside him; to keep pace with every step, and to bring her to his loving remembrance with every wag of its stumpy tail, and every glance of its faithful brown eyes.

Again it was early morning, with dew on the meadows, as it had been when Betty first ventured out into the world. Now she fared forth on another and a longer pilgrimage, but this time there was no lonely sinking of the heart when she waved good-bye to the group on the porch. She was sorry to leave them, but the Little Colonel was with her, her godmother was to meet them at the junction, and just beyond was the wonderland of the old world, through which Cousin Carl was to be her guide.

It was one o'clock when they reached Louisville. The afternoon was taken up in shopping, for there were many things that Betty needed for her voyage. But by six o'clock the new steamer trunk, with all the bundles, was aboard the suburban train, and Betty, with the check in her purse, followed her godmother and Lloyd into the car for Lloydsboro Valley.

Then there were three more nights to go to sleep in the white and gold room of the House Beautiful; three more days to wander up and down the long avenue under the locusts, arm in arm with the Little Colonel, or to go riding through the valley with her on Lad and Tarbaby; three more evenings to sit in the long drawing-room where the light fell softly from all the wax tapers in the silver candelabra, – and Lloyd, standing below the portrait of the white-gowned girl with the June rose in her hair, played the harp that had belonged to her beautiful grandmother Amanthis. Then it was time to start to New York, for Mr. Sherman's business called him there, and Betty was to go in his care.

It seemed to the Little Colonel that the week which followed, that last week of September, was the longest one she had ever known. Since the beginning of the house party she had not been without a companion. Now as she wandered aimlessly around from one old haunt to another, not knowing how to pass the time, it seemed she had forgotten how to amuse herself. She was waiting until the first of October to start to school.

At last Betty's steamer letter came, and she dashed home from the post-office as fast as Tarbaby could run, to share it with her mother. The letter was dated "On board the Majestic," and ran:

"DEAREST GODMOTHER AND LLOYD: – Everybody is in the cabin writing letters to send back by the pilot-boat, so here is a little note to tell you that we are starting off in fine style. The band is playing, the sun is shining, and the harbour is smooth as glass. I have been looking over the deck-railing, and the deep green water, rocking the little boats out in the harbour, makes me think of the White Seal's lullaby that godmother sang to us when we had the measles.

 
"'The storm shall not wake thee,
Nor shark overtake thee,
Asleep in the arms of the slow-swinging seas.'
 

"I know that I shall think of that many times during the passage, and am sure we are going to enjoy every minute of it. Eugenia sends lots of love to you both. She is writing to Joyce. The next time we write it will be from Southampton. If you could only be with us I should be perfectly happy. Good-bye, till you hear from me from the other side.

"Lovingly, BETTY."

There was a hasty postscript scribbled across the end. "Be sure you let me know the minute you hear anything from Dot. If anybody finds her, Cousin Carl says cable the word 'found,' and we will know what you mean."

For a few minutes after the reading of the letter, the Little Colonel stood by the window, looking out without a word. Then she began:

"I wish I'd nevah had a house party. I wish I'd nevah known Joyce or Eugenia or Betty. I wish I'd nevah laid eyes on any of them, or been to the Cuckoo's Nest, or – or nothin'!"

"What is the trouble now, Lloyd?" asked her mother, wonderingly.

"Then I wouldn't be so lonesome now that everything is ovah. I despise that 'left behind' feelin' moah than anything I know. It makes me so misah'ble! They've all gone away and left me now, and I'll nevah be as happy again as I've been this summah. I'm suah of it!"

 
"'Tis the last rose of summer left blooming alone.
All her lovely companions are faded and gone,'"
 

sang Mrs. Sherman, gaily, as she came and put an arm around Lloyd's drooping shoulders. "Every summer brings its own roses, little daughter. When the old friends go, look around for new ones, and you'll always find them."

"I don't want any new ones," exclaimed the Little Colonel, gloomily. "There'll nevah be anybody that I'll take the same interest in that I do in Betty and Joyce and Eugenia."

Yet even as she spoke, there were coming toward her life, nearer and nearer as the days went by, other friends, who were to have a large part in making its happiness, and who were to fill it with new interests and new pleasures.

CHAPTER X
HOME-LESSONS AND JACK-O'-LANTERNS

It was hard for the Little Colonel to start back to school after her long holiday. Hard, in the first place, because she was a month behind her classes, and had extra home-lessons to learn. Hard, in the second place, because a more gorgeous October had never been known in the Valley, and all out-doors called to her to come and play. In the lanes the sumach flamed crimson, and in the avenues the maples turned gold. In the woods, where the nuts were dropping all day long, the dogwood-trees hung out their coral berries, and every beech and sweet gum put on a glory of its own.

"Oh, mothah, I can't study," Lloyd declared one afternoon. "I don't care whethah the Amazon Rivah rises in South America or the South Pole; an' I think those old Mexicans were horrid to give their volcanoes an' things such terrible long names. They ought to have thought about the trouble they were makin' for all the poah children in the world who would have to learn to spell them. I nevah can learn Popocatepetl. Why didn't they call it something easy, like – like Crosspatch!" she added, closing her book with a bang. "That's the way it makes me feel, anyhow. It is going to take all afternoon to get this one lesson."

"Not if you put your mind on it. Your lips have been saying it over and over, but your thoughts seem to be miles away."

"But everything interrupts me," complained Lloyd. "The bumble-bees an' the woodpeckahs an' the jay-birds are all a-callin'. I'm goin' in the house an' sit on the stair steps an' put my fingahs in my yeahs. Maybe I can study bettah that way."

The plan worked like a charm. In less than ten minutes she was back again, glibly reciting her geography lesson. After that all her home-lessons were learned on the stairs, where no out-door sights and sounds could arrest her attention.

She was in the midst of her lessons one afternoon, her book open on her knees, and her hands over her ears, when she felt, rather than heard, the jar of a heavy chair drawn across the porch. Dropping her hands from her ears, she heard her mother say: "Take this rocker, Allison. I'm so glad you have come. I have been wishing that you would all afternoon."

"Oh, it is Miss Allison MacIntyre!" thought Lloyd. "I wish I didn't have to study while she is heah. I love to listen to her talk."

Thinking to get through as soon as possible, she turned her attention resolutely to her book, but, after a few moments, she could not resist stopping to lift her head and listen, just to find out what subject they were discussing. Although Miss Allison was her mother's friend, Lloyd claimed her as her own especial property. But all children did that. Such was the charming interest with which she entered into comradeship with every boy and girl in the Valley, that they counted her one of themselves. A party without Miss Allison was not to be thought of, and a picnic was sure to be a failure unless she was one of the number.

The two little knights, Keith and Malcolm, were privileged, by reason of family ties, to call her auntie, but there were many like Lloyd who put her on a pedestal in their affections, and claimed a kinship almost as dear. Presently Lloyd caught a word that made her prick up her ears, and she leaned forward, listening eagerly.

"Sister Mary's children are coming out next Saturday. I was lying awake last night, wondering what I could do to entertain them, when it popped into my head that Saturday will be the last day of October, and of course they'll want to celebrate Hallowe'en."

"Sister Mary's children," repeated Lloyd to herself, with a puzzled expression, that suddenly turned to one of joyful recollection. "Oh, she means the little Waltons! I wondah how long they've been back in America?"

Her geography slipped unnoticed to the floor, as she sat thinking of her old playmates, whom she had not seen since their departure for the Philippines, and wondering if they had changed much in their long absence. There were four of them, Ranald (she remembered that he must be fourteen now, counting by his cousin Malcolm's age) and his three younger sisters, Allison, Kitty, and Elise. Some of the happiest days that Lloyd could remember had been the ones spent with them in the big tent pitched on the MacIntyre lawn; for no matter how far west was the army post at which their father happened to be stationed, they had been brought back every summer to visit their grandmother in the old Kentucky home.

Lloyd had not seen them since their father had been made a general, and they had gone away on the transport to the strange new life in the Philippines. Although many interesting letters were sent back to the Valley, in which the whole neighbourhood was interested, it happened that Lloyd had never heard any of them read. Her old playmates seemed to have dropped completely out of her life, until one sad day when the country hung its flags at half-mast, and the black head-lines in every newspaper in the land announced the loss of a nation's hero.

Lloyd remembered how strange it seemed to read the account, and know it was Ranald's father who was meant. She thought of them often in the weeks that followed, for Papa Jack could not pick up a newspaper without reading some touching tribute to the brave general's memory, some beautiful eulogy on his heroic life, but somehow the strange experiences her little playmates were passing through seemed to set them apart from other children in Lloyd's imagination, and she thought of them as people in a book, instead of children she had romped with through many a long summer day.

As she listened to the voice on the porch she found that Miss Allison was talking about her sister, and telling some of the interesting things that had happened to the children in Manila. It was more than the Little Colonel could endure, to sit in the house and hear only snatches of conversation.

"Oh, mothah, please let me come out and listen," she begged. "I'll study to-night instead, if you will. I'll learn two sets of lessons if you'll let me put it off just this once." There was a laughing consent given, and the next moment Lloyd was seated on a low stool at Miss Allison's feet, looking up into her face with an expectant smile, ready for every word that might fall from her lips.

"I was telling your mother about Ranald," began Miss Allison. "She asked me how it came about that such a little fellow was made captain in the army."

"Oh, was he a really captain?" cried Lloyd, in surprise. "I thought it was just a nickname like mine that they gave him, because his father was a general."

"No, he was really a captain, the youngest in the army of the United States Volunteers, for he received his appointment and his shoulder-straps a few weeks before his twelfth birthday. He'll never forget that Fourth of July if he lives to be a hundred; for those shoulder-straps meant more to him than all the noise and sky-rockets and powder-burns of all the boys in America put together. You see he had been under fire at the battle of San Pedro Macati. He had gone out with his father, a short time after they landed in Manila, and the general in command invited them out on the firing line. Before they realised their peril, they suddenly found themselves under a sharp fire from the enemy. One of the staff said afterward that he had never seen greater coolness in the face of as great danger, and all the officers praised his self-possession. For a little while the bullets whizzed around him thick and fast. One hit the ground between his feet. Another grazed his hat, but all he said as one hummed by was, 'Oh, papa, did you see that? It looked like a hop-toad.'

"It was a terrible sight for a child's eyes, for he saw war in all its horrors, and his mother did not want him to take the risks of any more battle-fields, but he was a true soldier's son, and insisted on following his father wherever it was possible for him to go. At the battle of Zapote River he was in no danger, for he had been put in a church tower overlooking the field. But that was a terrible ordeal, for all day long he stood by the window, expecting any minute to see his father fall. All day long he looked for him, towering above his men, and whenever he lost sight of him for awhile, he leaned out to watch the litters the men were carrying into the church below where they brought the dead and dying. It was always with the sickening dread that the still figure on some one of them might be that of his beloved father. Sister Mary sent me a copy of the official announcement, that gave him the rank of captain. It mentions his coolness under fire. You may imagine I am quite proud of that little document, for I always think of Ranald as he was when I had him with me most, a sensitive little fellow with golden curls and big brown eyes, as silent and reserved as his father. You see I know that his courage has no element of daring recklessness. So many things he did showed that, even when he was a baby. It is just quiet grit that takes him through the things that hardier boys might court. That, and his strong will.

"At first he was appointed aide-de-camp on his father's staff, and went with him on all his expeditions, and rode on a dear little Filipino pony. The natives called him the Pickaninny Captain. He was under fire again at the capture of Calamba, and soon after he was made an aide on Gen. Fred. Grant's staff. Once while under him he was ordered back in charge of some insurgents' guns that had fallen into the hands of the Americans, to be turned in at headquarters. So you see he was a 'really' captain as you called him."

"Oh, tell some more, Miss Allison," begged Lloyd, thinking that the subject might be dropped, when Miss Allison paused for a moment.

"Well, I hardly know what else to tell. His room is full of relics and trophies he brought home with him, – shells and bullets and bolos – great savage knives with zigzag two-edged blades – flags, curios, – all sorts of things that he picked up or that the officers gave him. His mother can tell you volumes of interesting experiences he has had, but he is as shy and modest as ever about his own affairs, and maybe he'll never speak of them. He'll tell you possibly of the deer which the English consul gave him, and the pet monkey that followed him everywhere, even when it had to swim out through a rice swamp after him; maybe he'll mention the Filipino pony that the officers gave him when he came back to America, but he rarely speaks of those graver experiences, those scenes of battle and bloodshed."

"It doesn't seem possible that it is Ranald who has seen and done all those things," said the Little Colonel, thoughtfully. "When you play with people and fuss with them, and slap their faces when they pull your hair, or throw away their marbles when they break your dolls, as we did, when we were little, it seems so queah to think of them bein' heroes."

Miss Allison laughed heartily. "That's a universal trouble," she said. "We never can be heroes to our family and neighbours. Even brass buttons and shoulder-straps cannot outshine the memory of early hair-pullings."

"Tell about the girls," said Lloyd, fearing that if a pause were allowed in the conversation Miss Allison would begin talking about something less entertaining than her nephew and nieces. "Do they still love to play papah dolls and have tableaux in the barn?"

"Yes, I am sure they do. They didn't have as exciting a time as Ranald, for of course they stayed at home with their mother in the palace at Manila. But it was interesting. It had queer windows of little sliding squares of mother-of-pearl, that were shut only when it rained. They could peep through and see the coolies in their capes and skirts of cocoa-nut fibre, and the big hats, like inverted baskets, that made them look as if they had stepped out of Robinson Crusoe's story.

"On one side of the palace was the Pasig River, where the natives go by in their long skiffs. On the other side were the sights of the streets. Sometimes it was only an old peanut vendor whom they watched, or a man with fruit or boiled eggs or shrimps or dulce. Sometimes it was the seller of parched corn, squatting beside the earthen pot of embers which he constantly fanned, as he turned the ears laid across it to roast. And sometimes the ambulances went by on their way to the hospital, reminding them that life on the island was not a happy play-day for every one. I am sure that the Lady of Shalott never saw more entertaining pictures in her magic mirror than the panorama that daily passed those windows of mother-of-pearl.

"Time never dragged there, you may be sure. Sometimes they were invited to spend an afternoon on the English war-ship, and the young officers gave them a spread and a romp over the ship. Allison still keeps an old hat with the ship's ribbon on it for a hat-band, which a gallant little midshipman gave her to remind her of the good times they had had together on the vessel. The English consul and vice-consul frequently invited them to tiffin or to parties, and their garden of monkeys was open to their little American neighbours at all times.

"Coming home the transport stopped in a Japanese harbour for a week. The faithful old Japanese servants, Fuzzi and her husband, who had lived with them in California and followed them to the Philippines, were with them on the transport. This place where they stopped happened to be their native town, so they took the children on land every day and gave them a glimpse behind the scenes of Japanese life, which few foreigners see.

"Then Allison had a birthday, while they were homeward bound, away out in the middle of the Pacific, and the ship's cook surprised her by making her a magnificent birthday cake with her name on it in icing. Oh, they've had all sorts of unusual experiences, and many, no doubt, that I have never heard of, although they have been back in America a year. But now that they have taken a house in town I expect to have them with me a great deal. And that brings me to the matter I came up to see you both about. They are coming out Saturday, and I want you to help me give them a Hallowe'en party."

"Another holiday!" exclaimed Lloyd, clapping her hands. "I had forgotten that there was anything to celebrate between Fourth of July and Thanksgiving. I never went to a Hallowe'en party in my life, but it sounds as if it would be lots of fun."

"Do you remember the old house at Hartwell Hollow that has been vacant so long?" asked Miss Allison. "The coloured people say it is haunted. Of course we do not believe such foolish things, or any of the foolishness of Hallowe'en in fact, but as long as we're going to resurrect the old superstitions, it is appropriate to have a haunted house for the purpose. The landlord says that it is that report which keeps it vacant. I saw him this morning, and got his permission to use it for the party. I think we can make an ideal spot of it. I'll have it swept and cleaned, and on Saturday afternoon I want you both to come and help me decorate it."

"Of course the only lights must be Jack-o'-lanterns," said Mrs. Sherman, entering into the plan as heartily as if she had been Lloyd's age. "The corn-field is full of pumpkins. Walker can make lanterns all day if necessary. It will take nearly a hundred, will it not, Allison?"

"I think so, although we will light only the down-stairs rooms, but there ought to be some large ones on the porches. We'll try all the old charms that we tried when we were children; bake a fate cake, melt lead, bob for apples, and observe every silly old custom that we can think of. The house is unfurnished except for an old stove in the kitchen, but I can easily send over enough tables and chairs."