Kitabı oku: «The Ranch Girls and Their Great Adventure», sayfa 5

CHAPTER VIII
SEVERAL MONTHS LATER

FRIEDA read a letter she had just received and laughed.

Laughter was not frequent at Kent House those days, so that Jack and Olive looked up from the work they were doing. Olive was rolling bandages and Jack was writing notes at her desk. The three of them were in Jack's private sitting room where, only a few moments before, the afternoon mail bag had been brought in.

"What is it, Frieda?" Jack asked, turning her head to glance over her shoulder in some surprise at her sister. She wondered if Frieda realized that she was fully aware of the way in which she had been watching the mail for these past few months. For Frieda had watched in vain for the particular letter which certainly she seemed to expect; even if she did not greatly desire it.

"Oh, I have just received a note from a young soldier to whom I sent the first pair of socks I ever made," she returned. "He may not have originated the poem, but it is almost worth the trouble and the time I took on the socks. Do listen:"

 
"Thanks, dear lady, for the socks you knit;
Some socks, some fit.
I used one for a hammock and the other for a mitt.
I hope I meet you when I've done my bit,
But where in the h… did you learn to knit?"
 

Then Frieda dropped the letter to wave another long grey sock, shot through with shining knitting needles. It was somewhat narrow in the ankle and bulged strangely at the heel.

"I wonder if I am improving?" she inquired anxiously. The utilitarian nature of Frieda's occupation contrasted curiously with the general fluffiness of her appearance. For no amount of inward anguish could ever keep Frieda from the desire to wear pretty clothes and to make herself as attractive as possible. However, no one had any right to say she was unhappy, except as every one else was, through sympathy with the added troubles which the war had lately brought upon the world.

Like most of the other women in the larger part of Europe and also in the United States, Jack and Olive were devoting all their energies to the work of the war. They had both taken short courses in Red Cross nursing and had organized clubs and classes in the neighborhood for every kind of relief work, while Frank had turned over several of his houses to the Belgian refugees.

Therefore, only Frieda remained more or less on the outside of things. She had undertaken to learn to knit for the soldiers, but insisted that since her name meant peace and was a German name as well, she would do nothing more. The truth was she seemed not to wish to go out or mix with society a great deal, which was odd, as one of the reasons she had given for her unhappiness in her own home was that her husband wished to spend too much time there, so that she had become bored.

However, Frieda had agreed to visit the poor people on the estate and in the neighboring village, in order to relieve Jack from this one of her many duties.

Moreover, she enjoyed the odd types of old men and women, so unlike any other people whom she had ever before known, and she became a great favorite with them. Instead of giving her money for war purposes Frieda preferred bestowing it on these same queer old persons and the children who had been left behind.

This afternoon, after she had finished reading the second of her two letters, the latter from Jean in Wyoming, Frieda got up from her chair.

"Jimmie and I are going to drive down to the village to see old Dame Quick," she announced, "I promised to read to her this afternoon." 'Dame Quick' was the title Frieda had borrowed to give to the oldest woman in Granchester, because she was so extraordinarily lively.

"What will you do with Jimmie while you read? He will never keep still," Jack called, as Frieda moved toward the door.

Frieda paused. "Oh, he and nurse will return back in the governess cart. I want to walk home. Don't worry if I am a little late," and before Olive or Jack would speak, she had disappeared.

"I hope Frieda won't be too long. She does not know this country as I do," Jack murmured afterwards, but not thinking of the matter seriously.

Frieda and Jimmie had a way of jogging in the little governess cart on many afternoons, sometimes taking the nurse with them and more often not. Jimmie was rather a troublesome small boy of an age when he was into every kind of mischief, and Frieda was not fond of children. Therefore, her family had wondered why she appeared to desire so much of Jimmie's companionship. Frieda might have answered that he asked so many questions that she did not have time to think of other things; however, she had never said this, even to herself.

The governess cart was a little wicker carriage swung low on two wheels, with an ancient, shaggy pony, who never moved out of a slow trot.

That afternoon, like all the great ladies in the English novels, Frieda stored away under the seat of her cart as much jelly and jam as her sister's housekeeper would allow her. At the nearest grocery shop she bought a package of tea, some tins of biscuits and a half pound of tobacco. For the truth was that Frieda's old woman liked a quiet smoke. This habit was not common among the villagers, but Dame Quick whose real name was "Huggins" was so very old that she allowed herself certain privileges.

It was a dismal late fall afternoon, but English people and particularly English children do not stay indoors because of bad weather.

Frieda wore a blue rain proof coat and a soft hat which she pulled down over her yellow hair, to keep the soft mist out of her eyes as well as she could. Jimmie and his nurse were also enveloped in mackintoshes.

But the rain was not actually falling. There was only a November haze and a pervading dampness, making Jimmie's cheeks redder than ever and bringing more color than was usual to Frieda's face.

On the way to the village Jimmie and his aunt, whom he regarded as of his own age, sang "America" in not a particularly musical fashion, but with a great deal of earnest effort, since Frieda was trying to teach the British Jimmie to be more of an American.

Jimmie, of course, wished to go into Mrs. Huggins' cottage with his aunt, but on that point Frieda was resolute. She had a fancy for seeing her old friend alone this afternoon. Actually she had a reason which had been developing in her mind for the past twenty-four hours, although Frieda herself considered her reason nonsensical.

In answer to her knock the old woman came to the door. She looked like one of the pictures one remembers in the Mother Goose books, and also like one of them, "she lived alone, all in her little house of stone."

Dame Quick's cottage of two rooms was set in the middle of a long row of little stone houses, in one of the half a dozen streets in Granchester. Frieda always felt a shiver as she went inside, since the floor was of stone and there was a dampness about the little house as if it had never been thoroughly warmed inside by the sun.

Yet Mrs. Huggins had managed to live there in contentment for about seventy years. She had come there as a bride before she was twenty and was now "ninety or thereabouts," as she described herself.

When Frieda entered she bobbed up and down as quickly as an old brown cork on a running stream.

"Sure, I've been waitin' and longin' for the sight of you these two hours," she said, taking Frieda's packages, or as many as she could get hold of, as if she thought them too burdensome for the young woman to carry.

Frieda laughed and slipped out of her rain coat, which she hung carefully on a small wooden chair. Then she also laid her hat on the chair and, as a matter of habit, fluffed up her pretty hair which the rain and her hat had flattened, and then followed her old hostess.

"You know you have had half a dozen visitors during the two hours you say you have been waiting, Mrs. Huggins," Frieda returned. For it was true that the tiny house and the old woman were the center of all the gossip in the village. "I expect you to tell me a lot of news."

The old woman nodded.

"It is true these are news days in England and elsewhere. Times were, when the days might be dull without a birth or a death, or a mating. But now one wakes up to something stirrin' every day – a lad goin' off to the war, or maybe one gettin' killed; and the girls coomin' in to tell me their troubles; some of them just married, and some of them not married at all yet. But all of them worryin' their hearts out. Sure, and if war is goin' on forever – and it looks like it is – I'm for the women goin' into battle along with their men."

While she was talking Frieda had followed her hostess back into her kitchen – the room in which she really lived and had her being. It was also of stone, but the floor had a number of bright rag rugs as covering and the walls were lined with pictures cut from papers and magazines, and with picture postcards. One could have gotten a pretty fair knowledge of English history at the moment by studying Mrs. Huggins' picture gallery. She had on her walls a photograph of nearly every British officer then in command of the army or navy. She had replicas of innumerable battleships and also of statesmen. But in the place of honor over a shelf that held her Bible and a tiny daguerreotype of the late, lamented Mr. Huggins, hung a picture of England's big little man – Lloyd George. The aged woman received the old age pension which Lloyd George had given to the poor of England a few years before the outbreak of the present war.

Frieda sat down on a little chair which lovers of antiques would have given much to possess. There was a small fire burning in the tiny stove, and its red coals looked more cheerful than the great log fire at Kent House.

Frieda knew that Dame Quick would wish to prepare the tea herself.

She had rather a happy feeling as she watched Mrs. Huggins, as if she had been a little girl who had gone out one day and grown suddenly tired and forlorn, and then been unexpectedly invited into the very gingerbread house itself. But a gingerbread house presided over by a good spirit, not an evil one.

Her own little Dame Quick looked like a child's idea of an ancient good fairy. She may not have been so small to begin with, but at ninety she was bent over until she seemed very tiny indeed. Her face was brown and wrinkled and her eyes shone forth as black as elderberries in the late gathering time.

She placed a small wooden table in front of Frieda and not far from the fire and her own chair. Then she got out some heavy plates and two cups and saucers. And whatever the difference in elegance, tea is never so good served in a thin cup as in a thick one. Afterwards she opened the package containing Frieda's biscuits and jam and finally poured boiling water into her own brown stone tea kettle.

Then she and Frieda, sitting on opposite sides of the tea table, talked and talked.

Several times, as she sat there, Frieda thought that if she had been an English girl she would like to have had just such an old nurse or foster mother as Mrs. Huggins. For she might then have been able to confide a number of things to her – matters she could not talk about even to her sister, since she was not clear enough how she felt concerning them herself, and so Jack might get wrong impressions.

"But you have not told me any special news this afternoon," Frieda protested, having lifted her cup for a second helping of tea, and making up her mind that she could not think of herself while visiting, as she usually did at home. "My sister and brother always expect me to know something interesting after a visit to you."

Dame Quick poured the tea carefully.

"I don't care for gossip," she returned, "yet it seems as if they like it as much in big houses as in little." Her eyes snapped, so that Frieda found herself watching them, fascinated.

"Since you came in I've been wonderin' whether certain information should be sent to Lord and Lady Kent. I don't think much of it myself, as there has been such a steady stream of spy talk these months past. But they are tellin' in Granchester that there is a man there who has taken a house a short distance from the village, on the road to Kent House. It seems he keeps to himself too much to please the village. He says he has been ill, and I'm sure has a right to a mite of peace if he wants it. It's only the village that's talking. Those higher up must know things are what they should be, since they don't bother him."

Frieda was scarcely listening. Mrs. Huggins' news was often uninteresting in itself. It was only that she so much enjoyed repeating it.

She had already finished her second cup of tea and was looking down at the collection of tea leaves in the bottom of her cup.

"Suppose you tell my fortune," she suggested rather shyly. For some time past she had been thinking of just this. "Didn't you say you sometimes told the fortunes of the boys and girls in Granchester, and that a great many things you predict come true?"

The old country woman looked at Frieda sharply.

"I tell the fortunes, child, of boys and girls whose grandfathers and grandmothers I once knew. That isn't difficult fortune telling. I know certain tricks in the faces, I remember what their own people thought and did long before their day. Like father, like son; or maybe like mother, like son; and like father, like daughter. But you – " The old woman shook her head. "I know nothing about you, child; or your country, or your people, or what you have made of life for yourself with that pretty face of yours."

Still Frieda held out her tea cup.

"Oh, well; just let the tea leaves show you a little," she pleaded, in the spoiled fashion by which Frieda usually accomplished her purpose.

Still the old peasant continued to look, not at the tea leaves but at her young companion. Perhaps she saw something with her fine, tired old eyes, that were too dim to read print, which even Frieda's own family did not see.

"You have had too many of the things you wish without ever having to work for them, or to wait, little lady," she repeated slowly. Then she glanced down into the extended tea cup. "I think I see that you will have to lose something before you find out that you care for it. I also see a long journey, some clouds and at last a rainbow."

Frieda put down her cup and laughed a little uncertainly.

"Oh, the Rainbow Ranch is the name of my own home. I wonder if I have ever told you that?" she inquired. "But you are mistaken if you think I have had the things I wish." For, of course, Frieda did not believe she had been a fortunate person. So few people ever do believe this of themselves, until misfortune makes them learn through contrast.

Later, she read a chapter in the Bible and the war news from one of the morning papers. Then, before six o'clock, she started to return to Kent House.

Frieda walked quickly as the distance was not short. Moreover, she had never entirely recovered from the fright of her unexpected encounter with her husband several months before. Yet, since then, she had not only never seen him again, but never heard anything about him, except the scant information of his departure to France, which she had acquired through Frank Kent.

Frieda did think – no matter what the difference between them – that her husband might have let her know that he was at least alive and well. Of course she was a selfish, cold-hearted person, as her family and undoubtedly her own husband believed her to be. However, one could be interested in the welfare of even a comparative stranger in war times.

Later, after Frieda left the village, she passed by the little house which her old friend had tried to involve in a mystery in order to supply her with gossip. The house was set in a yard by itself. The lights were lighted and the curtains drawn down, but, as she hurried by, either a woman's or a man's figure made a dark shadow upon the closed blind.

CHAPTER IX
CHURCH AND STATE

THE family and a number of the servants from Kent House were on their way to the small Episcopal church at the edge of the estate.

Jack and Frank were walking in front, with Olive and Frieda strolling a little more slowly behind them, and the rest of the company followed in scattered groups.

At the beginning of her marriage the English Sundays had been a trial to Jack. They were so much more quiet, so much more sedate than those of her rather too unconventional girlhood in Wyoming. Then they had sometimes held church in the open air, or if they wished to go into the nearest town, a big wagon was loaded with as many persons as could be persuaded from the ranch, and ordinarily they stopped on the way back and had lunch somewhere. Now and then Jack even remembered having ridden on her own broncho to the church door and fastened it on the outside, while she went in to the service in a costume which was an odd cross between a riding habit and a church outfit.

But now, although the walk across Kent Park was only a short one, Jack was as correctly attired as if she were in London. Beside her brown velvet costume which was very smart and becoming, she wore a hat with feathers, which she particularly disliked. The hat was of the kind affected by Queen Mary of England, who always wears feather-trimmed hats.

However, the mere matter of her hat would not have made Jack feel out of sorts, if she had not had another more potent reason. Frank was nearly always cross on Sunday mornings and this morning was no exception.

It is strange that Sunday should have this effect on many persons, when one should be more cheerful than usual, and yet it does.

Frank was really worn out with all his worries and responsibilities, Jack decided to herself, as she had a number of times recently. It was a privilege many people take advantage of, by saving their bad humors for their families.

"But, Frank, I don't think you understand the situation in the United States," Jack argued, speaking good naturedly. "You see, we represent so many nationalities, so many differences of opinion and training, that we can't all think alike. The President is supposed to represent everybody."

"Nonsense," Frank interrupted his wife not too politely. "The United States has been thinking about nothing but getting rich. They are a nation of shirkers, willing to stand back and let others do the work and suffer the loss."

"There are a good many millions of us for us all to be shirkers, Frank," Jack answered, still speaking quietly, although her cheeks had flushed and her eyes darkened.

Really she and Frank tried very hard not to discuss any differences of opinion they felt concerning the war. During the last few years the marriages between men and women of different nationalities have had a great strain put upon them. At present, Frank as an Englishman, thought that the United States should immediately have gone in upon the side of the Allies, while Jack did not; and now and then they unfortunately fell into a discussion of the subject.

Therefore, when they entered church this Sunday morning, neither Jack nor Frank were in a good humor toward each other. Jack felt that, as she was doing all she could in the service of his country, he should have made no unkind criticism of hers. Frank did not think at all, except to wish that Jack would refrain from argument. Certainly a man wished for peace in his own home when it was nowhere else. But it did not occur to Frank that it takes two to keep peace as well as two to make a quarrel; nor did he begin to realize how trying he had been at home during the past few months.

As a matter of fact Frank was spoiled, as many Englishmen and some American men are. He had been an only son who was to inherit the family title, and his mother and sisters had always put him first in all things. It was true that when he came to the United States he had fallen in love with Jacqueline Ralston because, for one reason, she did not treat him differently at the beginning of their acquaintance from any cowboy on her ranch. That is, she was perfectly polite to him, when she remembered his existence; but then she was polite to everybody and recognized no social distinctions. She liked her own freedom, allowed other people theirs, and went her way untroubled by the opinion of others.

But, at present – as is often the case with men after they marry – the very things in Jack which had attracted Frank before marriage annoyed him now. He believed she ought to be more influenced by his views. Of course, she ordinarily gave in to his wishes. However, he seldom felt as if she were convinced, but believed she yielded through sheer sweet temper.

Moreover, Frank's irritability continued all day, so that several times after their return home, Jack found herself mortified before Olive and Frieda. Not that she minded so much about Olive, since Olive and Frank had always understood each other. But, as Frieda had announced herself as being disappointed with marriage, Jack did not wish her to think that her own was also a failure.

After their midday luncheon on Sunday it was always Lord and Lady Kent's custom to walk over their estate during the afternoon, visit the stables and see as much of the condition of the place and the people on it as was possible.

This Sunday afternoon Frank arose and started to go on his usual rounds without suggesting that Jack accompany him.

However, she paid no attention to this, but followed him. Outdoors he changed into a better mood.

There were not many horses left in the stables, as most of them were being used by the army. But when Jack and Frank went into the kennels, which adjoined the stables, a dozen great dogs began leaping over them at once.

Frank drew a little aside to watch his wife.

Jack stood in their midst laughing and protesting a little when one big hound stuck its great head, with wide open jaws and lolling tongue, too near her face. Yet she managed to make them all happy and quiet again by patting and stroking each one, or by calling each dog by name.

"You are not afraid of anything in the world, are you, Jack?" Frank remarked admiringly, as they again got safely away from the kennels, Jack finding it necessary at the last moment to remove two large paws from her shoulders in order to settle a dispute between two of the other dogs.

Jack laughed. "Goodness, Frank, what an extraordinary opinion you and a few other people have of me! I am one of the biggest cowards in the world about the things I am afraid of. I simply don't happen to be afraid of animals, as so many women are. And that is not a virtue, but because I was brought up with them."

"I should like to know what you do fear, then?" Frank demanded.

Instead of answering at once Jack slipped her arm inside her husband's.

"I am dreadfully afraid of the people I care about being angry with me, though you and the rest of my family may not believe it, as I am supposed to have once been a wilful person," she returned unexpectedly. "Sometimes I wonder, Frank, just how much of a coward I would be, if I had either to give up what I thought was right or else to have some one seriously angry with me. I have not the courage of my convictions like Frieda."

In response Frank uttered a half growl, which was not very complimentary to Frieda or her convictions. However, Jack went on almost without pausing.

"I wonder, Frank, if it is fair to Frieda not to let her know what has happened to Professor Russell? Sometimes I have thought she has worried more over his silence than we imagine."

Frank shook his head.

"Frieda deserves whatever may come to her. It is an old-fashioned axiom, dear, but all the more true for that reason: Frieda has made her bed; now let her lie upon it."

"But Frieda is hardly more than a child," Jack protested. "Besides, that is a pretty hard rule to apply to people. I don't think you and I would like to have it applied to us if we were ever in any difficulty."

As it struck Frank as utterly impossible that he and Jack ever could have a disagreement, which could not be settled amiably in a few hours, he paid no attention to her last statement. Nevertheless he added:

"After all, Jack, it is not for us to decide anything concerning Frieda and her husband. That is for them. We are simply doing what Professor Russell has requested of us."

"Yes, but Frieda," Jack expostulated more weakly.

"Frieda is receiving just what she asked for – silence. But you must not worry over Frieda. She will solve existence happily for herself soon enough. Almost any man would do anything and forgive anything in behalf of such blue eyes and yellow hair as Frieda's to say nothing of her Professor. I may pretend to be severe but I should probably forgive her as readily."

"Sooner than you would me?" Jack inquired and laughed. "Oh, of course, you would. Everybody always has as long as I can remember."

Frank looked more closely at his wife and his face softened until his eyes held their old expression of boyish admiration. Always he had been pleased by her intense loyalty to the people she cared for. It had made him forgive her in the past when she had some mistaken idea of loyalty toward Olive.

"I am afraid you have had to do the forgiving recently, Jack. I expect I have been difficult. But I feel so torn these days wanting to be over in France doing the real work with fellows like Bryan, and at the same time wanting to be here with you and the babies and knowing I am perhaps more useful in London than I would be elsewhere."

Jack's clear grey eyes were full of the spiritual understanding that had made her always so valuable a friend, and a woman must be a friend to her husband as well as other things.

"I know, Frank," she answered, "but you are doing the right thing. If I didn't think so, no matter how I should suffer, do you believe for a moment that I would stand in your way?"

And catching her look, Frank replied.

"No, Jack, I don't; but I thank you for understanding."

There were no letters delivered at Kent House on Sunday, but on each Sunday afternoon one of the men drove over to the post-office, which was open for an hour, and returned with the mail. It was important that Lord Kent should be kept in touch with every situation that arose, as there might be grave and tragic developments in the course of the hours he sometimes spent away from London.

As he picked up the mail which was lying on the table in the hall as they entered, Frank extended a letter to his wife.

"This is from Bryan, I believe, Jack. Do tell me what he says."

They went into the library where Frieda and Olive were already waiting for tea to be served.

Jack walked over to the fire and, before taking off her hat, read her letter through quietly.

Then she looked up happily.

"Bryan says he is all right and sends his love to the family, but more especially to his Lady Vive. He asks us all to write to him oftener if we can manage it, as we are his adopted family and he has no other. Frieda, he says your gift of socks is the most wonderful in all France. I actually believe Bryan is almost having a good time; but if he is not he is awfully brave."

Making no effort to conceal her emotion, Jack's eyes suddenly filled with tears.

"Gracious, Jack," Frieda exclaimed. "As long as there is nothing the matter with Captain MacDonnell, I wouldn't shed any tears over him. You so seldom cry, it always makes me wretched when you do. I'll bet Jack has never shed any tears over you, Frank."

Frieda was not like a kitten in appearance alone. She had also soft little claws with which she scratched a tiny bit now and then. She had been entirely conscious that her brother-in-law considered that she was to blame in a large measure for her trouble with her husband, although he had never said so to her. Yet she had a desire to get a little bit even with him now and then.

Frank's face did flush slightly, although he smiled good humoredly.

"Oh, I am nothing but a civilian these days and Bryan is a soldier. I can't expect the same interest to be bestowed upon me, even by my own wife."