THE SUMMERS FAMILY
The Rev. Mr. Absalom Summers, pastor of the Methodist church at
Barrington, N. C., got up out of his bed singing. He went to his bath
singing, and singing he hastened to the kitchen to build the fire for
breakfast.
“A mighty fortress is our Lord,” he shouted to the clear, bright morning.
“A bulwark nev-ev-er fail-ll-ing.”
He did not even stop singing when he knocked his head against the shed
door. Indeed, he would have felt a little lonesome if he had not hit it
against that jamb, for that battering of his blond head was a part, so to
speak of the morning ritual. He loomed six feet three in his knitted
hose, and as the door was only six feet in height, difficulties of one
sort or another were unavoidable. As yet, the door casing had resisted
all attacks. All the Rev. Absalom said was “Ouch! Giminy cricket!” And
then with increased vigor he continued:
“Our helper he, amid the flood
Of mortal ills pre-vail-ll-ing.
For still our ancient foe,
Doth seek to work us woe—”
The song died—not on the lips of the reverend gentleman, for to say that
he sang with his lips would be to do him an injustice. The song died in
his resounding throat and his massive lungs, it faded away in his deep
diaphragm, and he stood frankly gasping.
The morning being so fair, it had called to him, and even with his arms
laden with good “light wood,” he could not resist the temptation to step
out on the little porch to look at the lacy clouds winding over an azure
sky, and the delicate scarfs of mist fluttering from the shoulders of the
mountains. And then he saw just what papa bear and mamma bear and baby
bear saw when they came back to their home. He saw Golden-locks, or
rather Hazel-locks, asleep in the little couch. She was smiling as if
she were dreaming of happy things, but for all of that she looked very
worn and uncared for. The shoes that stood beside the cot had almost no
soles to them, and the soiled white frock that lay tumbled at the foot of
the bed, was a mere rag. Her long hair was uncared for, and the deep
rings beneath her eyes were not all from fatigue.
“Well,” said he under his breath, “the poor little thrush—the little
storm-blown thrush!”
And then he rushed away, because he felt a great need upon him, which was
to tell his wife Barbara what had happened. It was nothing less than a
pain to him to know anything that Barbara did not know. So he emptied
his arms of the wood, and dashed back to the bedroom.
“Come!” he commanded. “Come!” His greenish eyes were shining with the
loving light that was almost always to be seen in them, his face, as
quick with expressions as an actor’s, was literally beaming, and he was
gesticulating with his large hands. “Just come, mamma, quick,” he
pleaded. “Please don’t stop to do your hair.”
“Me go too! Me go too!” piped the insistent, high-pitched voice of the
young person in the cradle. So without more ado, the Rev. Absalom
gathered his son in his arms, and the three Summers made an excursion to
the back porch. There they stood—at least there two of them stood, and
there the third, safe under his dad’s arm, wriggled—and looked at the
little forlorn, sleeping beauty. Then, because Mrs. Barbara had a way of
finding the right word, she sighed happily:
“How winsome!” And then “How forlorn!”
“Clean beat out,” agreed the Rev. Absalom. Barbara put a finger on her
lips.
“Let her sleep,” she said. “She shall sleep as long as she can, and
after that, we’ll see what’s to be done. Best lock the shed door, dear,
so she can’t get away without our knowing it. She might be frightened,
you know.”
Her husband smiled his broadest smile.
“I don’t believe she’d be very much frightened,” he said. “She’s got too
much sense. Now, if I was lost, or had run away from home, I’d never
have the sense to nose out a bed and get into it. Not I. I’d be lying
out in the rain groaning and sighing.”
“Yes, I see you groaning and sighing,” retorted his wife, pinching his
arm as she took the baby from him. “You’d take a crowbar and break in
the front door of the first house you came to, and then you’d bless all
the people in the house and crawl in the best bed and go to sleep.”
She ran with the baby in her arms, away from his pretended anger, and he
turned his attention once more to the kitchen fire, singing under his
breath:
“And though this world with demons filled,
Should threaten to undo-oo-oo us—”
The world might be filled with demons, but it was quite evident that they
had not succeeded in breaking into the house of the Rev. Absalom Summers.
They had not put their clutches on his little brown wife nor on his
golden-haired baby son. They were not in the bright little kitchen,
where she hastily prepared the morning meal, and they did not sit down at
the table with the family while the head of the house said grace in clear
and decisive tones which could leave no chance for any inattention on the
part of Providence.
“Oh, dear Master of the World and of this little house,” prayed the good
man, “we thank Thee for this bright morning and for the flowers and
clouds and birds which have helped to make it beautiful. We thank Thee
that we, here beneath this roof, love each other with whole hearts. We
thank Thee for the little child that sits here at our board, and for his
health and smiles, and from the bottom of our hearts we pray Thee to give
us wisdom to lead him in the paths of goodness. And we thank Thee for
the little wanderer who sleeps a stranger in our house. If she be
motherless, give us joy in mothering her; and if she be fatherless, we
commit her to Thy all knowing care—beg for her Thy abounding love and
mercy. May no fear come in her heart when first she looks upon us. May
she see at once the tenderness we feel for her. And if it be Thy will
that she shall unite her life with ours, may we have heart of grace to
take her as a gift from Thee. Amen.”
“Amen,” breathed Mrs. Barbara, wiping her eyes.
“Amen,” laughed baby Jonathan.
And then they all fell to and ate with the best of appetites.
Then, while they lingered over their meal, and the Rev. Absalom talked
about the ride he ought to take to Sessions to see old Mrs. Underwood,
who had cancer, and while Mrs. Barbara decided that perhaps she’d better
not start her blue chally that day when she was likely to have so much on
her mind, and while baby Jonathan was wondering when, _when_ he would be
let down on the floor to crawl after that nice hairy caterpillar, there
came a great knocking at the door.
“Old Bill Jones!” cried the preacher. “What a fist the man has! Who can
it be, Barbara?” It was no easy matter for the master of the house to
uncoil his long legs and get them out from under the table. So it was
little Mrs. Barbara who opened the door to admit a man quite as tall as
her own Absalom—a man with no hat and a great shock of hair, and a fiddle
under his arm. He nodded to Mrs. Summers, but looked over her head at
the man and shouted:
“Neighbor, I’m getting up a posse to hunt a little girl that’s been lost.
It’s mighty important that we get under way inside of an hour at the
farthest. Will you join us?”
“Now you just make up your mind I will, man. But first I want to know
why she’s lost, and who wants her, and what’s to be done with her after
she’s found. I’ve known of cases where it was better to be lost than
found. What say?”
“I say what you say is true, sir! It would be a heap better for that
there little girl to die on the mountains alone than to be picked up by
the folks she’s run away from. But I don’t want them to get her, and I
don’t want her to die on the mountain side, for there’s happiness
a-coming to her if only I can put my hands on her and take her back to
them that’s waiting for her.”
Mr. Summers was at last untangled from the table and he came forward
holding out that great hearty hand which had put faith and hope into many
weary hearts.
“Now, neighbor, you do me the honor to enter and be seated, if you
please. I want to get the rights of this story before I do anything.
And don’t think you’re wasting time, for I give you my word that you’re
saving it, and that as soon as I find this is a thing we all ought to
enlist in, I’ll have the whole town about us—baying at our heels, sir—and
it will be view and halloo with us.”
Haystack Thompson shifted his violin to his other arm, and ran a long
tongue over his lips. Then he looked over his man.
“You the preacher?” he asked.
“Right you are.”
He came in then, and at Mrs. Summer’s invitation to draw his chair up to
the breakfast table, did so, and ate while he told his story. From time
to time the Rev. Absalom consulted his wife Barbara. He had a way of
lifting an eyebrow or half closing an eye, that was a code of signals in
itself; and she had her own swift ways of answering. So that by the time
Haystack was through with his story, both Mr. and Mrs. Summers had
decided what to do.
“You show him,” said Mr. Summers. So Mrs. Barbara arose and beckoned
their visitor.
“There’s no need of a searching party, sir,” she said. “Come see what we
found this morning.”
And then, just as the two of them stepped out onto the porch, Azalea
opened her weary eyes and blinked at the light.
“Well, praise the Lord!” broke from Haystack’s lips when he saw her.
“Amen!” shouted the Rev. Absalom, and in spite of some effort to restrain
himself he broke out with:
“The Prince of darkness grim,
We tremble not for him;
His rage we can endure,
For lo! his doom is sure.
One little word shall fell-ll-ll him.”
Azalea sat up on her cot with the bedclothes drawn up to her chin, and
stared about her with eyes too full of surprise to be troubled. Then,
with a rush, she comprehended.
“Oh, Mr. Thompson, dear!” she gasped. “Is it really you? Oh, Mr.
Thompson!” She forgot her uncovered arms and her straggling hair, and
sprang from her couch into the old fiddler’s outstretched arms, and wept.
It was not a mere summer shower, but a cloudburst—a freshet. And
Haystack Thompson wept too, and mopped his eyes on his red bandana; and
the Rev. Absalom Summers mopped his on the roller towel; and little Mrs.
Summers dried hers delicately on the hem of the baby’s frock. But,
however, it became necessary to bring all this to an end, and Haystack
found the courage to do it. He set the little girl down firmly in a
chair and shook a warning finger at her.
“Storm’s all over!” he announced; and he helped Mrs. Summers to wrap her
pink knitted shawl around the girl’s shoulders.
“I’m off,” he announced, “to send word to the folks at home.”
“And I’m with you,” declared the preacher.
Mrs. Summers ran to the window to see the two tall men making their way
down the street, and then hastened back to her strange guest. Azalea had
arisen and came forward with the pink shawl dragging behind her.
“Oh, ma’am,” she pleaded, both hands extended, “Please don’t think me
bold and horrid. I’m not bold, honest I’m not. I want to tell you all
about it.”
“I know all about it now, my dear, and I understand everything. I don’t
think you are bold, and I’m very thankful that you came here. And now,
my child, you will find some clean clothes laid out on the bed—for you
and I are just about of a size, though I’m a married person and you’re a
little girl. And here’s a glass of milk to go on, so to speak, while you
are making yourself fine. By the time you are ready, there’ll be more
porridge cooked for you. You like porridge, don’t you—with cream? And
do you like muffins with raisins in them? I can cook some in no time.
And bacon—shall it be bacon—and a few fried potatoes?”
But Azalea had fled to make her toilet. It was, after all, not so
quickly made as she might have hoped. As she stood in the simple, dainty
room, with the pretty toilet table and the delicately perfumed soap and
the great soft towels, all her longing for the cleanliness of the Ma
McBirney days came over her, and when she emerged, at last, the muffins
were as brown as nuts on top, and the bacon was done to a crisp.
“Well!” cried Mrs. Summers when she saw the girl in her starched pink
gingham, with smooth braids and “shining morning face” standing in the
doorway. “Well!” The word seemed to mean much. It meant among other
things that Mrs. Barbara liked the looks of her unexpected guest, and
Azalea felt a pleasant wave of “homeyness” gently rippling over her.
“And now for breakfast,” said little Mrs. Barbara. But at that moment
Azalea saw what she thought was the sweetest thing her eyes ever had
beheld. Baby Jonathan was in his tub down before the fire, and he was
splashing with hands and feet till the water flew all about him on the
blue oilcloth.
“Oh, the little deary dear!” squealed Azalea, forgetting all about
breakfast and dropping on her knees beside the rosy baby. “Oh, the
little lovey, ducky, honey-pot!” She dropped a kiss at the back of his
neck, and then deposited one in each of his moist, rosy palms. She
twisted his golden, silk-fine ringlets about her finger, and counted his
toes and his fingers to the immemorial rhyme of the little pig that went
to market.
“But, my dear,” protested the baby’s mother, “your breakfast is getting
cold.”
“Oh, I know, Mrs. Summers. But I like it cold. I do, really, ma’am.
And then I’ve had ever so many breakfasts—Oh, ever and ever so many in my
time. But I never saw a baby before, close too, and like this. I didn’t
know they were so sweet. Why, he’s the very loveliest thing I ever saw.
Are all babies as nice as this one?”
Mrs. Barbara beamed, and her dark eyes looked deeper and sweeter than
ever.
“Well, I don’t think there are any quite as nice,” she said blushing
beautifully. “But so far as I’ve seen they’re all more or less nice.”
“I should think everybody would have ’em!” cried Azalea. “I certainly
shall.”
“I would,” said little Mrs. Barbara tenderly. “And now come, you starved
child, and eat your breakfast.”
While Azalea ate, she and Mrs. Summers exchanged confidences. Azalea
told her the full story of her “strange life” as she called it; and Mrs.
Summers told her about her happy girlhood, and her days away at boarding
school, and how her parents had wished her to marry a young man who lived
near them, and whom she had known all her life, and who was rich and of
high social position, and how she had just had to marry Absalom Summers
who had no money, and who didn’t know—or care—what you meant when you
talked about a social position.
“And I’m so happy,” said the clergyman’s little wife, “in this dear funny
little house—”
“And with that dear funny little baby,” broke in Azalea.
“That I really can’t be thankful enough,” concluded Mrs. Summers.
“Well,” said Azalea, “you’d be surprised if you could know of the
perfectly lovely people I’ve been meeting these days.”
“Not Bet Bowen and her son?” teased Mrs. Summers.
Azalea flushed a little. “But really and truly, they had their good
side, Mrs. Summers,” she said earnestly. “They weren’t half as bad to me
as they might have been.”
“You dear child! I’m sure they weren’t. And perhaps in their hearts
they are glad you got away.”
Azalea clasped her hands and swung them up over her head with a curious,
excited gesture. “You can make up your mind that I’m glad, Mrs. Summers.
Just think, I’m really free again, and I’m going back to Ma McBirney, and
Carin and all the rest.”
The baby had been taken from its bath and clothed in fresh garments, and
now its mother made herself comfortable in a low rocking chair, and drew
the fuzzy head against her shoulder.
“I’m going to rock him to sleep,” she explained. “So we’ll have to stop
talking a while.”
Azalea smiled till all of her teeth gleamed.
“I’ll try,” she said, “but I know it will be hard. Honest, I never
talked so much before in my life. I’ve always been afraid of people a
little, or thought it wasn’t polite to talk like this. But someway—you
don’t mind my saying it, do you, Mrs. Summers?—you seem almost like my
own sister. I couldn’t _help_ talking to you. You may be married and
older than I am, but you’re no bigger. And then you’ve been so good—so
good I couldn’t say.”
“Sh, dear,” murmured the little mother. And she crooned the baby to
sleep while the girl, sitting on a hassock near, watched her with
admiring eyes.
Then, when baby was quiet, the two worked together about the little house
till all was tidy and as it should be, and little Mrs. Summers made her
confession too.
“I get dreadfully lonely at times,” she said. “The people here are good
as good can be, but they’re different from the people I’m used to. I
can’t seem to make myself feel quite free with them. Why, I’ve told you
more, Azalea, than I have them, and I’ve only known you such a little,
little few minutes.”
“It’s queer, isn’t it?” said Azalea softly. “It’s very queer. I know
this: I’ll have you for my kin as long as I live. You see I’ve no real
kin, so we’ll be pretend kin.”
“Cousins!” cried Mrs. Barbara. “Make it cousins!”
“Cousins!” cried Azalea in turn. And they smiled at each other from
across the bed that they were making together.
So Haystack Thompson, still somewhat troubled and flustered, came back to
find his charge as happy as a bird. And it was arranged that they should
take the train for Lee that afternoon.
“You’re to wear the things you have on, Azalea,” said Mrs. Summers. “And
my blue sunshade, and you can send them back to me when you get ready.
I’ve ten times as many clothes as I have any occasion to wear here.”
But there were still several hours that these so sudden friends could
spend together; so Azalea was shown the garden and the chickens and the
cow and the one lazy white horse, and she was present when Jonathan
awoke. She saw him dewy from his sleep, and thought him lovelier than
ever. So it was not quite easy to say goodbye when the time came. But
it was agreed that Mrs. Summers was to write to Azalea and that Azalea
was to answer, and that they were to address each other as “My dear
Cousin.”
The four o’clock train bore Haystack Thompson and Azalea away from the
little huddled town and up through the purple mountains, and dropped
them, after hours of unexpected delay, down into the village of Lee.