"I can take my car over to Spring Hill in less than an hour,

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[Illustration: "I GOT A CALL--A LAND CALL THAT I HAD TO ANSWER."]

PARADISE RIDGE

A ROMANCE

BY

MARIA THOMPSON DAVIESS

AUTHOR OF

"THE MELTING OF MOLLY" ETC.

ILLUSTRATED

TO

BERNICE LANIER DICKINSON

CONTENTS

CHAP.

I. THE BOOK OF FOOD

II. THE BOOK OF SHELTER

III. THE BOOK OF LAUGHTER

IV. THE BOOK OF LOVE

ILLUSTRATIONS

"I GOT A CALL--A LAND CALL THAT I HAD TO ANSWER"

THE BYRD WAS ATTIRED IN MINIATURES OF SAM'S OVERALLS

OVER PARADISE RIDGE

I

THE BOOK OF FOOD

Nobody knows what starts the sap along the twigs of a very young,

tender, and green woman's nature. In my case it was Samuel Foster

Crittenden, though how could he have counted on the amount of

Grandmother Nelson that was planted deep in my disposition, ready to

spring up and bear fruit as soon as I was brought in direct acquaintance

with a seed-basket and a garden hoe? Also why should Sam's return to a

primitive state have forced my ancestry up to the point of flowering on

the surface? I do hope Sam will not have to suffer consequences, but I

can't help it if he does. What's born in us is not our fault.

"Yes, Betty, I know I'm an awful shock to you as a farmer. I ought to

have impressed it on you more thoroughly before you--you saw me in the

act. I'm sorry, dear," Sam comforted me gently and tenderly as I wept

with dismay into the sleeve of his faded blue overalls.

"I can't understand it," I sniffed as I held on to his sustaining hand

while I balanced with him on the top of an old, moss-covered stone wall

he had begged me to climb to for a view of Harpeth Valley which he

thought might turn my attention from him. "Have you mislaid your

beautiful ambitions anywhere?"

"I must have planted them along with my corn crop, I reckon," he

answered, quietly, as he steadied his shoulder against an old oak-tree

that grew close to the fence and then steadied my shoulder against his.

"It is just for a little while, to get evidence about mud and animals

and things like that, isn't it?" I asked, with great and undue

eagerness, while an early blue jay flitted across from tree-top to

tree-top in so happy a spirit that I sympathized with the admiring lady

twit that came from a bush near the wall. "You are going back out into

the world where I left you, aren't you?"

"No," answered Sam, in an even tone of voice that quieted me completely;

it was the same he had used when he made me stand still the time his

fishhook caught in my arm at about our respective sixth and tenth years.

"No, I'm going to be just a farmer. It's this way, Betty. That valley

you are looking down into has the strength to feed hundreds of thousands

of hungry men, women, and children when they come down to us over

Paradise Ridge from the crowded old world; but men have to make her

give it up and be ready for them. At first I wasn't sure I could, but

now I'm going to put enough heart and brain and muscle into my couple of

hundred acres to dig out my share of food, and that of the other folks a

great strapping thing like I am ought to help to feed. I'll plow your

name deep into the potato-field, dear," he ended, with a laugh, as he

let go my hand, which he had almost dislocated while his eyes smoldered

out over the Harpeth Valley, lying below us like an earthen cup full of

green richness, on whose surface floated a cream of mist.

"It just breaks my heart to see you away from everything and everybody,

all burned up and scratched up and muddy, and--and--" I was saying as he

lifted me back into the road again beside my shiny new Redwheels that

looked like an enlarged and very gay sedan-chair.

"Look, look, Betty!" Sam interrupted my distress over his farmer aspect,

which was about to become tearful, and his eyes stopped regarding me

with sad seriousness and lit with affectionate excitement as he peered

into the bushes on the side of the road. "There's my lost heifer calf!

You run your car on up to my house beyond the bend there and I'll drive

her back through the woods to meet you. Get out and head her off if she

tries to pass you." With which command he was gone just as I was about

to begin to do determined battle for his rescue.

I did not run my car up to his farm-house. I "negotiated a turn" just as

the man I bought it from in New York had taught me to do; only he

hadn't counted on a rail fence on one side, a rock wall just fifty feet

across from it, and two stumps besides. It was almost like a maxixe, but

I finally got headed toward Providence Road, down which, five miles

away, Hayesboro is firmly planted in a beautiful, dreamy, vine-covered

rustication.

"Oh, I wonder if it could be a devil that is possessing Sam?" I asked

myself, stemming with my tongue a large tear that was taking a

meandering course down my cheek because I was afraid to take either hand

off the steering-gear for fear I would run into a slow, old farm horse,

with a bronzed overalled driver and wagon piled high with all sorts of

uninteresting crates and bales and unspeakable pigs and chickens. As I

skidded past them I told myself I had more than a right to weep over Sam

when I thought of the last time I had seen him before this distressing

interview; the contrast was enough to cause grief.

It had happened the night after Sam's graduation in June and just the

night before I had sailed with Mabel Vandyne and Miss Greenough for a

wander-year in Europe. Sam was perfectly wonderful to look at with his

team ribbon in the buttonhole of his dress-coat, and I was very proud of

him. We were all having dinner at the Ritz with two of Sam's classmates

and the father of one, Judge Vandyne, who is one of the greatest

corporation lawyers in New York. He had just offered Sam a chance in his

offices, together with his own son.

"You'll buck right on up through center just as you do on the gridiron,

old man, to the Supreme bench before you are forty. I'm glad the

governor will have you, for I'll never make it. Oh, you Samboy!" said

Peter Vandyne, who was their class poet and who adored Sam from every

angle--from each of which Sam reciprocated.

And all the rest raised their glasses and said:

"Oh, Samboy!"

The waiters even knew who Sam was on account of the last Thanksgiving

game, and beamed on him with the greatest awe and admiration. And I

beamed with the rest, perhaps even more proudly. Still, that twinkle in

Sam's hazel eyes ought to have made me uneasy even then. I had seen it

often enough when Sam had made up his mind to things he was not talking

about.

"The ladies and all of us," answered Sam to Peter's toast, as he raised

his glass and set it down still full, then grinned at me as he said, so

low that the others couldn't hear, "Will you meet me in Hayesboro after

a year and a day, Betty?"

I don't see why I didn't understand and begin to defend Sam from himself

right then instead of going carelessly and light-heartedly to Europe and

letting him manage his own affairs. I didn't even write to him, except

when I saw anything that interested or moved me, and then I just

scribbled "remind me to tell you about this" on a post-card and sent it

to him. You can seal some friends up in your heart and forget about

them, and when you take them out they are perfectly fresh and good, but

they may have changed flavor. That is what Sam did, and I am not

surprised that the rural flavor of what he offered me out there in dirt

lane shocked me slightly. I didn't think then that I liked it and I also

felt that I wished I had stayed by Sam at that wobbling period of his

career; but, on the other hand, it was plainly my duty to go to Europe

with Mabel and Peter Vandyne and Miss Greenough. The inclination to do

two things at once is a sword that slices you in two, as the man in the

Bible wanted to do to the baby to make enough of him for the two

mothers; and that is the way I felt about Peter and Sam as I whirled

along the road. I am afraid Sam is going to be the hardest to manage. He

is harder than Peter by nature. If Sam had just taken to drink instead

of farming I would have known better what to do. I reformed Peter in one

night in Naples when he took too much of that queer Italian wine merely

because it was his birthday. I used tears, and he said it should never

happen again. I don't believe it has, or he wouldn't have got an act and

a half of his "Epic of American Life" finished as he told me he had done

when I dined with him in New York the night I landed. I missed Peter

dreadfully when he left us in London in June, and so did Miss Greenough

and Mabel, though she is his sister. We all felt that if he had been

with us it wouldn't have taken us all these months of that dreadful war

to get comfortably home. Peter said at the dock that he hadn't drawn a

full breath since war had been declared until he got my feet off the

gang-plank on to American soil. He needn't have worried quite as much

as that, for we had a lovely, exciting time visiting at the Gregorys' up

in Scotland while waiting for state-rooms. And it was while hearing all

those Scotchmen and Englishmen talk about statesmanship and

jurisprudence and international law that I realized how America would

need great brains later on, more and more, as she would have to

arbitrate, maybe, for the whole world.

I smiled inwardly as I listened, for didn't I know that in just a few

years the nation would have Samuel Foster Crittenden to rely on? Sam is

a statesman by inheritance, for he has all sorts of remarkable Tennessee

ancestry back of him from Colonial times down to his father's father,

who was one of the great generals of our own Civil War. And as I

listened to those splendid men talk about military matters, just as

Judge Crittenden had talked to Sam and me about his father, the general,

ever since we were big enough to sit up and hear about it, and discuss

what American brains and character could be depended upon to do, I

glowed with pride and confidence in Sam. I'm glad I didn't know then

about the collapsed structure of my hopes for him that Sam was even then

secretly unsettling. At the thought my hand trembled on the wheel and I

turned my car hastily away from two chickens and a dog in the road and

my mind from the anxiety of Sam to further pleasant thoughts of Peter.

I don't believe Judge Vandyne's thoughts of Peter are as pleasant as

mine, for Peter doesn't go to the office at all any more; he spends his

waking moments at a club where players and play-writers and all men

play a great deal of the time. I forget its name, but it makes the judge

mad to mention it.

"The dear old governor's mind is gold-bound," said Peter, sadly, after

we came away from luncheon with the judge down in Wall Street. "Why

should I grub filthy money when he has extracted the bulk of it that he

has? I must go forward and he must realize that he should urge me on up.

I ought not to be tied down to unimportant material things. I must not

be. You of all people understand me and my ambitions, Betty." As he said

it he leaned toward me across the tea-table at the Astor, where we had

dropped exhaustedly down to finish the discussion on life which the

judge's practical tirade had evoked.

"But then, Peter, you know it was a very great thing Judge Vandyne

showed his bank how to do about that international war loan. In England

and Scotland they speak of him with bated breath. It was so brilliant

that it saved awful complications for Belgium."

"Oh, he's the greatest ever--in all material ways," answered Peter, with

hasty loyalty and some pride, "but I was speaking of those higher

things, Betty, of the spirit. The things over which your soul and mine

seem to draw near to each other. Betty, the second act of 'The

Emergence' is almost finished, and Farrington is going to read it

himself when I have it ready. He told me so at the club just yesterday.

You know he awarded my junior prize for the 'Idyl.' Think of

it--_Farrington_!" And Peter leaned forward and took my hand.

"Oh, Peter, I am so glad!" I said, with a catch of joy in my breath, but

I drew away my hand. I knew I liked Peter in many wonderful ways, but in

some others I was doubtful. I had only known Peter the three years I've

been away from Hayesboro, being finished in the North, and even if I did

room with his sister at the Manor on the Hudson and travel with her a

year, it is not the same as being born next door to him, as in the case

of Sam, for instance. But then I ought not to compare Peter and Sam.

Peter is of so much finer clay than Sam. Just thinking about clay made

me remember those unspeakable boots of Sam's I had encountered out on

the road, and again I determinedly turned my thoughts back to that

wonderful afternoon with Peter at the Astor a few short days ago. Miss

Greenough kept telling Mabel and me all over Europe to look at

everything as material to build nests of pleasant thoughts for our souls

to rest in, as Ruskin directed in the book she had. I've made one that

will last me for life of Peter, who is the most beautiful man in the

whole wide world; also of the yellow shade on the Astor lamp, the

fountain, and the best chicken sandwich I ever ate. It will be a warmer

place to plump down in than most of the picture-galleries and cathedrals

I had used for nest-construction purposes at Miss Greenough's direction.

Yes, I drew my hand away from Peter's, but a little thing like that

would never stop a poet; and before the waiter had quite swept us out

with the rest of the tea paraphernalia to make way for that of dinner he

had made me see that I was positively necessary to his career,

especially as both his father and Mabel are so unsympathetic. It is a

great happiness to a woman to feel necessary to a man, though she may

not enjoy it entirely.

"Oh, I know I can write it all--all that is in my heart if I feel that

it is--is for you, dearest dear Betty," was the last thing that Peter

said as he put me on a train headed for the Harpeth Valley that night.

I didn't answer--I don't know that I ever did answer Peter anything, but

he never noticed that when he thought of how my loving him would help

out with the play.

Just here I was musing so deeply on the intricacies of love that I

nearly ran over a nice, motherly old cow that had come to the middle of

the road with perfectly good faith in me when she saw me coming. And as

I rounded her off well to the left again my thoughts skidded back to Sam

and the way he had treated me as less than a heifer calf after _I_ had

not seen him for a year, and _she_ had just seen him that morning at

feeding-time.

"Head off that saucy young cow, indeed!" I sniffed, as I ran the car

into the side yard between my home and the old Crittenden house.

"I wonder if he really expected me to be waiting there in that lane for

him?" I questioned myself. And the answer I got from the six-year-old

girl that is buried alive in me was that Sam did expect me to do as he

told me, and that something serious might happen if I didn't. As I

turned Redwheels over to old Eph, who adores it because it is the only

one he ever had his hands on, I felt a queer sinking somewhere in the

heart of that same young self. I always had helped Sam--and suppose that

unspeakable animal had got lost to him for ever just because I hadn't

done as he told me! I reached out my hand for the runabout to start

right back; then I realized it was too late. The night had erected a

lovely spangled purple tent of twilight over Hayesboro, and the

all-evening performances were about to begin.

Lovely women were lighting lamps and drawing shades or meeting the

masculine population at front gates with babies in their arms or

beau-catcher curls set on their cheeks with deadly intent. Negro cooks

were hustling suppers on their smoking stoves, and one of the doves that

lives up in the vines under the eaves of my home moaned out and was

answered by one from under the vines that grow over the gables at the

Crittendens'. I haven't felt as lonesome as all that since the first

week of Sam's freshman year at college. As I looked across the lilac

hedge, which was just beginning to show a green sap tint along its gray

branches, I seemed to see my poor little blue-ginghamed, pigtailed self

crouched at Judge Crittenden's feet on the front steps, sobbing my

lonely heart away while he smoked his sorrow down with a long brier

pipe, and the Byrd chirped his little three-year-old protest in concert

with us both. Most eighteen-year-old men would have resented having a

motherless little brother and a long-legged girl neighbor eternally at

their heels, but Sam never had; or, if he did, he gently kicked the Byrd

and me out of the way, and we never knew that was what he was doing. We

even loved him for the kicks. Then as the tears misted across my eyes a

woman with a baby in her arms came out and called in two children who

were playing under the old willow-tree over by the side gate--the willow

that had belonged to Sam and me--and my eyes dried themselves with

indignant astonishment.

"Who are those people over at the Crittendens', mother?" I asked, in a

stern voice, as I walked in and interrupted mother counting the

fifteenth row on a lace mat she was making.

"Why, the Burtons bought the place from Sam after the judge's death.

Don't you remember I wrote you about it, Betty dear?" she answered, with

the gentle placidity with which she has always met all my tragic

moments. Mother raised seven boys before she produced me, and her

capacity for any sort of responsive excitement gave out long before I

needed it. After her sons a woman seems to consider a daughter just a

tame edition of a child. Mother has calmly crocheted herself through

every soul-storm I have ever had, and she is the most dear and

irresponsible parent an executive girl would wish to have leave her

affairs alone. As for daddy, he has always smiled and beckoned me away

from her into a corner and given me what I was making a stand for. My

father loves me with such confidence that he pays no attention to me

whatever except when he thinks it is about time for him to write my name

on a check. His phosphate deals have made him rich in an

un-Hayesboro-like way, and all the boys are in business for him in

different states, except the oldest one, who is Congressman from this

district, and one other who is in a Chicago bank. Yes, I know I have the

most satisfactorily aloof family in the wide world. I can just go on

feeding on their love and depend upon them not to interfere with any of

my plans for living life. However, if anything happens to me I can be

sure that their love will spring up and growl.

Now, when I stalked into the room and asked about the Crittenden home,

daddy reared his head from his evening paper and immediately took notice

of whatever it was in my voice that sounded as if something had hurt me.

"Daddy," I asked him, with a little gulp, "did Sam--Sam sell his

ancestral home even to the third and fourth generation and go to farming

just for sheer wickedness?"

"No, madam, he did not," he answered, looking at me over his glasses,

and I could see a pain straighten out the corners of his mouth under his

fierce white mustache. "The judge's debts made a mortgage that nicely

blanketed the place, and Sam had only to turn it over to the creditors

and walk out to that little two-hundred-acre brier-patch the judge had

forgot to mortgage."

"Then Sam can sell it for enough to go out and take his place in the

world," I said, with the greatest relief in my voice.

"He could, but he won't," answered daddy, looking at me with keen

sympathy. "I tried that out on him. Just because that brier-patch has

never had a deed against it since the grant from Virginia to old Samuel

Foster Crittenden of 1793 he thinks it is his sacred duty to go out and

dig a hole in a hollow log for Byrd and himself and get in it to

sentimentalize and starve."

"Oh, I think that is a beautiful thought about the land, and I wish I

had known it earlier! But could they be really hungry--hungry, daddy?" I

said, with a sudden vacant feeling just under my own ribs in the region

between my heart and my stomach.

"Oh no," answered daddy, comfortably. "They both looked fat enough the

last time I saw Sam coming to town in a wagon with Byrd, leading a

remarkably fine Jersey calf. We'll go out in that new flying-machine you

brought home with you and pull them out of their burrow some day when

you get the time. Fine boy, that; and, mother, when is that

two-hundred-pound black beauty in your kitchen going to have supper?"

I didn't tell daddy I had gone to the ends of the earth to hunt for Sam

in less than thirty-six hours after I had landed in Hayesboro, but I

went up to my room to slip into something clean and springy, walking

behind a thin mist of tears of pure sentiment. That was the third time

in about seven hours I had been crying over Sam Crittenden, and then I

had to eat a supper of fried chicken and waffles that would have been

delicious if it hadn't been flavored by restrained sobs in my throat. I

was so mad at my disloyal thoughts about a beautiful character, which

Sam's reverence for his ancestral land proves his to be, and so afraid

of what I had done to him about the calf, and so hungry to see him, that

by the time the apple-float came on the table I thought it would have to

be fed to me by old Eph. Mother made it worse by remarking, as she put a

lovely dab of thick cream right on top of my saucer:

"Did you hear, father, that all of Sam's cows had been sick and that he

has lost his two finest calves?"

I couldn't stand any more. I gulped the cream, remarked huskily on how

warm the April night was, and escaped down the front walk to the old

purple lilac-bush by the gate where up to my seventh year I had always

kept house with and for Sam whenever he would enter into the bonds of an

imaginary marriage with me for an hour or two. Sam made a good father of

a hollyhock doll family whenever he undertook the relation, and provided

liberally for us all in the way of honey, locusts, and grass nuts.

"And I, maybe, let him lose the last calf he has when he is noble and

poor and alone," I sobbed into my silk sleeve, which was so thin that I

shivered in the cool April moonlight as I leaned against the gate and

looked away out at the dim blue hills that rim the Harpeth Valley, at

the foot of one of which I seemed to see Sam's and Byrd's hollow log.

"Hello, Bettykin! Out putting our hollyhock family to bed?" laughed a

crisp, comforting, jolly voice right at my elbow as a big, rough hand

ruffled my beautifully smoothed hair and then gave a friendly shake to

my left shoulder. "How do you find all our children after a three-year

foreign sojourn?"

"I told you five years ago, when I put it up on my head, to stop ruffing

my hair, Sam Crittenden; and did you find that cow?" I answered, with

both defiance and anxiety in my voice.

"I did," answered Sam, cheerfully, "but how did I lose you in the

shuffle? I tied her up in the shack with a rope and then beat it in all

these five miles, partly by foot and partly by a neighbor's buggy, to

find and--er--rope you in. I am glad to see you are standing quietly at

the bars waiting for me, and as soon as I've greeted your mother and Dad

Hayes and got a little of the apple-float that I bet was the fatted calf

they killed for your prodigal return, I'll foot it the five miles back

in a relieved and contented frame of mind."

"How did you happen to let your cows get sick, Sam?" I demanded,

sternly, instead of putting my arms around his neck to tell him how

noble I had found out he was, and how glad I was that he had come all

that way to see me, and not to be mad at me because I didn't obey him

out in the lane.

"I don't know, Betty, I just don't know," answered Sam, as he lit a

corn-cob pipe and leaned closer to me in a thoughtful manner. "Cows are

such feminine things and so contrary. I don't know what I will do if I

lose any more. I--I may get discouraged."

"Have you had a doctor?" I asked, briskly and unfeelingly, though I did

take his big rough hand in my own and hold on to it with a sympathy that

was not in my voice.

"No, I've sorter doctored them by a book I have. The only good

veterinary doctor about here lives way over by Spring Hill, and it would

take him a day to drive over and back, besides costing me about ten

dollars. Still, I ought to get him. Buttercup is pretty sick," answered

Sam, and I could see that his broad shoulders under his well-cut blue

serge coat of last season seemed to sag with the weight of his animal

responsibilities.

"I can take my car over to Spring Hill in less than an hour, get the

doctor, and have you and the doctor out to those animals by ten. This

moon will last all night; and you go get the apple-float from mother

while I make Eph run out the car and jump into my corduroys. Come on,

quick!" And as I talked I opened the gate, drew him in, and started

leading him up the front walk by the sleeve of his coat.

"Not if I know myself, Betty, will I let you undertake such a red-cross

expedition as that. They'll have to wait. I came in to call on you and

whisper sweet nothings to you in the parlor while you tell me--"

"Eat the float in a hurry if you want it," I interrupted him, as I

deposited him beside mother, who was still sipping a last cup of coffee

with her jelly-cake, and went for my room and my motor clothes.

And it was one grand dash that Redwheels and I made out Providence Road

and over Paradise Ridge down to Spring Hill in less than thirty-five

minutes. In the moonlight the road was like a lovely silver ribbon that

we wound up on a spool under the machine, and a Southern spring breeze

seemed to be helping the gasoline to waft us on more rapidly in our

flight as it stung our faces with its coolness, which was scented with

the sap that was just beginning to rise against bark and bud in the

meadows and woods past which we sped.

"It will be great to die together, won't it, Betty?" said Sam once as

Redwheels ran a few yards on two wheels, then tried the opposite two

before it settled back to the prosaic though comfortable use of four as

we took a flying leap across a little creek ditch.

"We can't die sentimentally; we've got to get back to those suffering

cows," I answered him, firmly, as I whirled into Spring Hill and stopped

Redwheels, panting and hot, in front of the dry-goods, feed, and drug

store. There I knew we could find out anything we wanted to know about

the whereabouts or profession of any of the fifteen hundred inhabitants

of the little old hamlet which has nestled under the hills for a hundred

years or more. "Ask where the cow physician lives. Quick!"

And at my urge Sam sprang out and across the old, uneven brick pavement

that lay between us and the store door. Then in less than two minutes he

appeared with a round, red-faced, white-headed old man who wheezed

chuckles as he talked.

His fear of the car was only equaled by his fascination at the idea of

the long ride in it, which would be the first motor-driven sortie he had

ever made out into life.

"Air ye sure, little missie, that you can drive the contraption so as

not to run away with us? Old folks is tetchy, like a basket of pullet

eggs," he said, as Sam seated him in the back seat and sprang to my

side.

"I wish I had a rope to tie him in," he muttered, as he sank into his

seat. "If you run as you did coming, we'll sure lose him. He'll bounce

like a butter-ball."

"I'm not taking any risks," I answered, and it was with greatest

mildness that we sauntered up Paradise Ridge and started down the other

side. And as I drove along carefully my mind began to work out into the

byways of the situation. I don't see how my athletic and executive

generation is going to do its appointed work in its day if we are going

to go on using the same set of social conventions that tied up our

mothers. As we neared the cross-road that turned off to Sam's

brier-patch I began to wonder how long it would take me to rush back

into Hayesboro, bundle mother into Redwheels, and get back to the cows.

It was just a quarter after nine o'clock, but I knew she would be sleepy

and would have to be forced to come with me very gently and slowly.

Still, I didn't see how I could go on out into the woods with only Sam

and the Butterball which was wheezing out cow conversation to Sam that I

was intensely interested in and ought to have been listening to rather

than wasting force on foolish proprieties. I was about to turn and take

Sam's advice on the matter when he suddenly laid his fingers on my arm

and said:

"Stop a minute, Betty. What's that roosting on that stone wall?" And as

he spoke he peered out toward a strange, huge bird sitting by the side

of the road.

I stopped just about opposite the object and Sam sprang out.

"You, Byrd Crittenden, where did you come from?" I heard Sam demand of

the huddled bundle as he lifted it off the wall. It was attired in

scanty night-drawers and a short coat, and shivered as it stood, first

on one foot and then on the other.

"I ain't a-going to stay in no country with a hoot-owl, Sam. I'm going

to somewhere that a lady lives at, too." And the manful little voice

broke as the bunch shivered up against Sam's legs.

"Honest, Byrd, I thought you were asleep and wouldn't wake up till

morning. You never did before; but when I go--go gallivanting, have I

got to take you or not go?" And Sam's voice was bravely jocular.

"Bring him here to me, Sam," I cried out, quickly. "Come in here with

Betty, Byrd." And I cuddled his long, thin, little legs down under my

lap-blanket beyond the steering-gear. "You didn't forget Betty while she

was away, did you?" I asked, as we snuggled to each other and I started

the motor, while Dr. Chubb chuckled and Sam still stood in the middle of

the moonlit road as if uncertain what to do next.

"Yes, I forgot you," answered Byrd, candidly, though I had adored him

since his birth; "but I like to go see Mother Hayes and eat jelly-cake.

Can I go home with you?"

"No. I'm going as fast as I can with you to your home to keep you from

freezing to death," I answered, quickly adopting this recovered old

friend in the double capacity of an excuse and a chaperon. "Just sit

here in the seat by me and watch me get us all back to your house in a

hurry. You sit with the doctor, Sam."

"Oh no, Betty," answered Sam, quickly. "It is only a little over a mile

now, and the doctor and Byrd and I can walk it all right. You come out

in the morning and--"

"I'm going on with the doctor to those cows, Sam, and if you want to go

with us, get in quick," I answered, in a tone of voice I have used on

Sam once or twice in our lives with great effect. He hopped in and I

started at top speed.

"Hic-chew! Fine goer that," wheezed the doctor, and I didn't know

whether he alluded to me or Redwheels. But there was evident relish of

real pace in his voice, so I speeded up and shot away from the main road

into the hard dirt lane in good style.

"I'm a bird--I'm a bird!" shouted the picked fledgling at my side as we

whizzed under dark cedar boughs that waved funereal plumes over our

heads, and over stumps and stones with utter disregard of the heavy new

tires. One of the lessons I learned early is that men are timid of a

woman's driving them in any vehicle, and I was surprised that I at last

rounded the bend and drew up beside a long, low shed which Sam had

calmly pointed out to me, without having had a single remonstrance from

the back seat.

"Moo," came in a gentle, sad voice from the depths of the shed as we all

began to disembark at the same time.

"Well, one is alive, anyway," said Sam as he set Byrd on the ground and

held up his arms to me. "It's good to have you back, Betty," he

whispered, in an undertone, as he turned me against his shoulder to set

me down. "It 'll all go right now that you are here to--"

"Now tell us what to do, Doctor." I interrupted him determinedly,

because I felt that it was not the occasion for friendly

sentimentalities.

If at any time in the three years that preceded that night I had

foreseen the way I was to spend it I would have been justified in flatly

refusing to carry out my horoscope. Suppose, for instance, while I was

in the midst of the wonderful dinner Peter Vandyne's cousin, Count Henri

de Berssan, gave me in Brussels, a week before the storm broke that

carried him before cannon and bayonet, I had seen a mental picture of

myself six months from that minute, out in the woods on the side of a

Harpeth hill under an old cedar-pole shed with my jacket off, my

embroidered blouse sleeves rolled to the shoulder, filling a tin can,

which had a long spout to be poked down a cow's throat, with a vile,

greasy mixture out of a black bottle, at the directions of a

shirt-sleeved little man and a red-headed farmer in blue overalls, while

a wisp of a boy writhed in and out and around and under a pathetic old

Jersey cow, who was being rescued from the jaws of death. Now I wonder

just what I would have done to escape such an experience? Slated myself

for Belgian widowhood, perhaps, as a kinder fate, or stayed right there

in New York to help Peter on "The Emergence." I wonder if Peter ever saw

a dear, big-eyed, trustful old Jersey cow have medicine poured down her

throat. It is called "drenching." I wish he could see it before he

finishes that play. The sight produces a peculiar kind of emotion that

might be worth recording in an all-comprehensive drama of American life.

In fact, I know that what I felt at the end was worth recording in any

kind of literature, by any kind of a poet--if we were equal to it. Old

Dr. Chubb leaned breathlessly against a rough post, I staggered down on

an upturned bucket, and Sam reached out his long, blue-overalled arms

and embraced Buttercup's neck and buried his head on her patient

shoulder, just as a faint streak of April dawn showed behind the

oak-trees, for we realized then that the dreadful cramp was gone and

that she could chew the wisp of hay offered by Byrd.

"Hic-chew! All out of the woods," wheezed Dr. Chubb, as he looked at old

Buttercup and the two other young cows we had been working over all

night, with as fine an exaltation of achievement as any I ever saw, not

excepting that of an American man of letters I witnessed take his degree

at Oxford.

But Sam's head was still bowed on old Buttercup's back and I went and

stood beside him.

"Will I ever learn how to take care the right way of--of life?" he said

under his breath, as he stood up straight and tall with the early light

streaming over his great mop of sun-bronzed hair and the bare breast

from which his open shirt fell away.

"I'll help you," I said, as I came still nearer and leaned against

Buttercup's warm, yellow side so closely that she looked around from her

meal from the Byrd's hand and mooed with grateful affection plus

surprise to find us still standing by her so determinedly. "That is,

if--if--I can learn myself."

"You haven't found out you are a woman yet, have you, Betty?" answered

Sam, with a laugh that embarrassed me. I would have considered it

ungrateful if it hadn't sounded so comfortable and warm out in the cold

of the dawn--which had come before I realized that midnight had passed,

about which time I had intended to go home. But how could a person feel

guilty while playing Good Samaritan to a cow? I didn't.

Then, as the streak of new day widened into a soft pink flush over the

tops of the bare trees that etched their fine twigs into an archaic

pattern against a purple sky lit by the gorgeous flame of the morning

star retreating before the coming sun, we all collected buckets and rags

and bottles and sponges. In Indian file we were led by Sam around the

hill, up a steep path that was bordered by coral-strung buck-bushes and

rasping blackberry brush, and to his little farm-house perched on a

plateau almost up to the top of the hill. It was long and low, with a

wide red roof that seemed to hover in the whitewashed walls and green

shutters; while white smoke from an old gray-rock, mud-daubed chimney

melted away among the tree-tops into the lavender of the coming day. It

looked like a great brooding white hen setting in a nest of radiant

woods, and I felt like a little cold chicken as Sam led the way through

the low, wide door for me to creep under the sheltering wings. In about

two seconds we were all sheltered in complete comfort. At a huge fire

that was a great glow of oak coals old Mammy Kitty, who had

superintended Sam's birth and childhood, as well as "neighbored" mine,

was gently stirring a mixture that smelled like the kind of breakfast

nectar they must have in heaven, while she also balanced a steaming

coffee-pot on a pair of crossed green sticks at one corner of the

chimney. In the ashes I could see little mounds which I afterward found

to be flaky, nutty com-pones, and I flew to kneel at her side with my

head on her gaudy neckerchief.

"Dah, dah, dah, child," she crooned, as she smiled a queer, loving, old

smile that showed me how glad she was to see me, but never another word

did she utter. I almost never remember hearing Mammy say an articulate

word; but all children and those grown up who have any child left in

their hearts can understand her croon. It is cradle music--to the

initiated.

"Mammy's rheumatism is mighty bad, but she can still shake up corn ash

cake and chicken hash with the best," said Sam, coming over to warm his

hands and tower above us, while Byrd volunteered to lead Dr. Chubb out

to what he called the wash-up bench on the back porch.

I looked up at Sam as he stood above me in a mingling of fire-glow and

the early morning light with his low-beamed, deep-toned humble home as a

background, and he--he loomed.

"I--I love this place," I positively gasped, as I moved still closer to

Mammy and stirred the spoon in the pot of hash.

"Shelter, fire, a chicken in the pot, and a woman crouched on the hearth

stirring it--what more could any man want or get, no matter how he

worked?" answered Sam, as he looked down at me with the smolder in his

blue-flecked hazel eyes to which Peter had once written a poem called

"On the Gridiron."

"Yes, but what would you do if you didn't have Mammy?" I ventured back,

as I bent across Mammy's knee and began to stir more vigorously while

she shook up her coffee-pot and raked a few last coals over the cakes

for their complete browning. "You always were a good provider, Sam," I

added, under the excitement of the bubbling over of the coffee.

"Yes, locusts for hollyhock children and the wife of a summer day who--"

"Whew-shk! but my stomick have got a breakfas' notice," interrupted Dr.

Chubb. He and the Byrd had come into the room as hungry as ravening

wolves.

While Mammy stirred and shoveled off ashes I fed all three men to the

point of utter repletion, feeding myself from Sam's plate as I brought

the food back and forth. He didn't want me to wait on them, and I

suppose that is the reason I insisted on it, and partly ate his

breakfast while doing it, just as an act of defiance.

"You taught me to eat out of your hand, even when it was unspeakably

dirty, and you had only saved me about two good bites and the core," I

answered one of his remonstrances.

"But think of the pain it was to save even a third of a tea-cake in

your pocket when your stomach was so near it," he answered as he

finished the bottom half of a pone I had spread thick with the juicy

hash before I had greedily eaten the upper crust.

"I'd rather eat my breakfast out of my own plate and let ladies eat

they's. Sam has to tie up cows that eat out of other's stalls, and the

old white rooster has to be put in a coop 'cause he gobbles the hen

feed; but 'cause you are company he lets you do it," the Byrd remarked,

all in one breath between two pieces of his pone. At which Dr. Chubb

wheezed and chuckled delightedly and Sam roared.

"Women critters ain't ever so free with vittels as men; they have to

kinder toll 'em along to nibble feed, and life, too," remarked the

doctor of distressed animals as we all rose from the table just as the

sun burst in on the situation from over Paradise Ridge.

And while he and the Byrd went to again look at the invalids, and Mammy

Kitty removed the dishes into a little cupboard that served as butler's

pantry and storeroom, Sam showed me the rest of his house--which

consisted of his own room, that "leaned-to" the long living-room

opposite that of Mammy Kitty, and a back porch. That little room made me

feel queer and choky. It was neat and poor; and a narrow, old mahogany

bed, that had always been in the Crittenden nursery, was pushed back

under the low side. It had a shelf or two with a curtain of dark chintz

under which farm clothes hung, a gun in the corner, a jolly little wood

stove, and close beside Sam's bed was the young Byrd's cot with its

little pillow my mother had made for him before he was ushered into the

world on the day his mother left it. I could almost see the big rough

hand go out to comfort the little fledgling in the dark. I choked still

further, and turned hurriedly out on to the low, wide old porch that ran

all the way across the back of the house and which apparently was

bath-room, refrigerator, seed-rack as to its beams, and the general

depositing-place of the farm; but not before I had remarked, hanging by

his door, a grass basket I had woven for Sam to bring locust pods to the

hollyhock family. Then I fled, only stopping to squeeze Mammy over her

dish-pan and get my hat off the cedar pegs that stuck out of the side of

the old chimney to serve just such a purpose.

I found Dr. Chubb and the Byrd, who was now attired in overalls of the

exact shade and cut of Sam's, standing by Redwheels with their mouths

and eyes wide open in rapture.

"Well, 'fore I die I've saw a horse with steel innards and rid it,"

remarked the old doctor. "Machines is jest the common sense of God

Almighty made up by men, 'ste'd er animals made up by His-self. But I

must git on, missie, or some critter over at Spring Hill will have a

conniption and die in it fer lack of a drench or a dose."

I left Sam and the Byrd standing in the sunshine at the gate of cedar

poles that Sam had set up at the entrance of his wilderness, and I

don't believe I would have had the strength of character to go until I

had been introduced to every stick and stone on the farm if I hadn't

wanted so much to find out all about cows from Dr. Chubb. I drove slowly

and extracted the whole story from his enthusiastic old mind. What I

don't know about the bovine family now is not worth knowing, and I

believe I would enjoy undertaking to doctor a Texas herd. We parted with

vows of eternal mutual interest, and I expect to cherish that

friendship. It is not every day a girl has the chance to meet and profit

by such wisdom as a successful seventy-year-old veterinary surgeon is

obliged to possess.

As I went up the stairs to my room I met mother coming down to her

half-after-eight breakfast, and she was mildly surprised that I had not

come home at a proper time and gone to bed; but when she heard that I

had been with Sam's sick cows all night she was perfectly satisfied,

even pleased. Mother rarely remembers that I am a girl. She has thought

in masculine terms so long that it is impossible for her to get her mind

to bear directly on the small feminine proprieties.

"That's right, Betty, be a doer, no matter whom you do, even if it is

Sam's cow," said daddy, when I had finished my eulogy of Dr. Chubb and

beautiful old Mrs. Buttercup. Then he kissed mother and me and went on

down to his office, while she followed him to the gate, crocheting and

quite forgetting me.

Completely exhausted, but feeling really more effective in life than I

ever had before, even at the Astor tea-table (because Peter had been

perfectly well and Sam's cows hadn't), I took a magazine with an

entrancing portrayal of a Belgian soldier apparently eleven feet tall on

the cover and went out on the side porch to sit in the cool spring

sunshine and pick up the pieces of myself. When I put myself together

again I found that I made something that looked like an illustration to

a farm article rather than the frontispiece to an American epic. Still,

if for a friend I could grasp a farm problem with that executive

enthusiasm, had I any reason to doubt that I would have any trouble in

helping along an epic of American life? I decided that I would not, and

settled down to find out about the eleven-foot Belgian before I crept

off for a nap, when an interruption came and I had to prop my eyes open.

It was Eph with a letter and the information that Redwheels had shed a

bolt in its flight last night. I settled the bolt question with a

quarter and turned to the letter. It was from Peter, and I knew by the

amount of ink splashed all over the envelope that it must contain a high

explosive splashed on the inside.

Peter Vandyne really is a wonderful man, and he will enrich American

letters greatly after he has had time to live a lot of the things he has

planned to write. Farrington, the great producer and dramatist, had read

the first act of his epic and said good things about it, Farrington is

not a friend of Peter's sister, Mabel, nor does he own or want to buy

any of Judge Vandyne's stock in railroads or things. He's just really

the dean of the American stage. Could anybody blame Peter if he had used

ten pounds of paper, if paper comes by the pound, and a quart of ink

telling about it? But he didn't; about five of the seven pages were all

about me and Farrington. I never was so astonished. The morning I got

home I had written Peter about how all my friends had been glad to see

me, and the way the different ones had shown it, and Peter had read that

part to Mr. Farrington and he had said that Peter ought to get me to

supply some of the human comedy that Peter's play lacked. Peter knows so

much about life from his literary researches that it goes off and hides

from him when he sets out in search for it, and I understood immediately

what the great dramatist meant, though Peter probably did not.

So weave some of your heart spells for me, dearest dear

Betty [Peter wrote], I am sending you the manuscript of

Act I and part of Act II, and I know you will read them carefully

and let me know fully what you think of them. Criticize

them from your splendid human viewpoint. The dear old

governor has been rather hard on me of late, and I may have

to go into the office yet. Death! Help, rescue me, dear,

for to put a play across will be my salvation from his prejudices.

I must do it this summer, and then--then by the new year

perhaps I can lay the gems of success at your feet. May I

come down and talk to you soon about it all? No one knows

what's in my heart but you, my own Betty. May I come?

PETER.

I was extremely happy and excited over the poetical way in which Peter

was calling on my common sense to help him in his crisis, but I felt

weighted down with the responsibility. Yes, I understood the great

Farrington. He felt as I did--that Peter's genius needed to see and help

old Dr. Chubb drench Buttercup with a can of condition-mixture. Now,

could I supply all that, or enough of it to keep Peter from being

murdered in his father's office? The inky bundle at my side began to

look as if it weighed a ton, but my loyalty and affection for Peter made

me know that I must put my back to the burden and raise it somehow. If

it had been a simple burden, like three sick cows, it would have been

easier to take upon my shoulders. Then suddenly, as I was about to be in

a panic about it all, the thought of the cows reminded me of Sam, and

immediately, in my mind, I shared the weight of the manuscript with him

and began to breathe easier. The way Sam and Peter love each other

inspires positive awe in my heart, though Mabel says it is provoking

when they go off to their fraternity fishing-camp for week-ends instead

of coming to her delightful over-Sunday parties out on Long Island.

Judge Vandyne feels as I do about it, and he loves Sam as much as Peter

does, though I don't believe that he has any deeper affection for Peter

than Sam has. I've been intending to read up about David and Jonathan,

but I feel sure, from dim memories, that their histories about describe

Peter and Sam. I couldn't for the life of me see why any woman should

resent "a love that passes the love of" her, and I am sure she wouldn't

if one of them was a poet born to enlighten the world. Yes, I breathed

easier at the thought of Sam's affection for Peter, and went back to the

case of the giant Belgian, though I don't think the artist quite

intended him to be taken that way.

Just as I had turned the front page I was interrupted by Clyde Tolbot,

who came whistling down the street and broke out all over with smiles

when he saw me out sunning myself.

"Gee! Betty, but it is good to see you at home!" he said.

They wore almost the exact words Sam had used, but they sounded

different. The sound is about all that is different in any of the things

men say to girls when they like them a lot. Tolly and I are very

appreciative of each other, and always have been.

"You are going to settle down and have a royal good time, aren't you,

Betty? I learned a new foxtrot up in Louisville last week I'm dying to

teach you, and now that Sue Bankhead has got a great big dance machine

we can fox almost every night. Will you come with me this evening?"