you laugh, and ain't blue. I'd let you kiss me anywhere I'm clean
enough, if you bring me just one pigeon that will lay eggs for little
ones," he said, as I slowed up for him to climb down to open the gate.
"She could get one cheaper than that, Byrd," said Sam, as he got down to
open the gate, while for a second I snuggled the fledgling, whom I
always hated to leave out in the woods in the dark, even with Sam's
rough hand so near his pillow.
"Thank you," I said, pleasantly, as I drove through the gate, without
stopping another ten minutes to chat, as I knew daddy wanted to. I'm
glad Samuel Foster Crittenden will never know just exactly what I was
cross about, as I wasn't sure myself. It is strange how you can hate a
person for whom you have the deep regard I have for Sam, when he has
done nothing at all to offend you.
That night I fought it all out with myself about Peter. I felt that Sam
had brought the sore spot in my heart to head and I would have to
operate and find out what was really there. Accordingly, after I had
safely anchored myself in the middle of my old four-poster bed I slashed
myself. This is what I found. That I had made up my mind to marry Peter
just as soon as he wanted me to, which I knew would not be until after
the play was finished down in Sam's wilderness. I had two reasons for my
intention. Nobody in the world ever loved and depended on me as Peter
has always done since he read me the winning poem that he sent in for
his Junior Prize. Peter needs me, and nobody else in the world does.
What could love be but giving and cherishing the beloved? By the test of
how I longed to do all that to Peter I found out how I loved him. That
was the reason I openly admitted, but I am afraid that I was afraid of
Sam if I should fail his young David-Keats in any way. He had already
warned me what I must be to him, and I felt as I did about that heifer I
let get by me the first day I went to dig Sam out of the hollow tree to
which he has now had to build a new crotch in order to take in Peter.
This time I would head off his calf for him, though I didn't mean to
call Peter that, even in the heat of debate with myself. Oh, I could
take such good care of Peter and Judge Vandyne, and Mabel would be so
glad! My spirits rose at the thought of their joy, and as I felt better,
I luxuriated in the thought of Sam's approbation. I would give Peter the
answer he had begged for in every letter, help him with the play until
it was finished, and then have a glorious wedding, with Edith and Sue
and Julia and all the girls. I must have fallen asleep then, for I
dreamed that Julia was the bride at my wedding and that I couldn't get
there. When I woke from that nightmare I decided to let Sam have the
happiness of hearing Peter tell him of my submission to their wishes;
and that time I sobbed myself to sleep.
From that fatal night until the afternoon of Peter's arrival, I saw Sam
only three times, and those when there were many others with us. I was
so sweet and submissive to him that I saw I alarmed him greatly.
Peter arrived according to schedule and was met in the manner planned
by our friends. As he stood on the train platform just behind a woman
and a baby, I saw his great dark eyes, that seem fairly to glow out of
his beautiful face, eagerly race over the crowd. When they rested on me
they lit with what I thought was perfect joy until I saw them find Sam a
few seconds later. That was the real thing, and I never loved Peter
better than when I saw him hold Sam's hand in his while he was greeting
me in a suppressed, lover-like way and was being introduced to people.
Sam was also radiant. Peter and Sam and I are the eternal triangle that
Peter is always talking into plots for plays--only Sam is the apex
instead of me. Isn't it beautiful to have it that way?
III
THE BOOK OF LAUGHTER
Hayesboro took Peter into its heart of hearts and then sighed for more
to give him. This town is like the old man's horse whose natural gait is
running away when it is not asleep. Peter woke it up and it took the bit
in its mouth and bolted with him, while Peter clung to the saddle and
had the time of his young poetic life.
Mother accepted Peter with her usual placidity. She took him into her
room and I suppose she examined him physically, for I saw her give him a
dose of sarsaparilla tea every morning he was with us. I bought her five
spools of the finest silk thread, ranging in shade from gray to
lavender, to begin on a crocheted tie and pair of socks for him. Daddy
was as good as gold to him and fell immediately into Judge Vandyne's
attitude toward him. I knew he would. Eph maintained the dignity of the
haphazard family at meal-times, and waited on Peter worshipfully at all
others. The black beauty in the kitchen was heard to remark to the
house-girl:
"I hope that white man's skin will stretch, for I shore am going to
stuff it. He am a insult to any respectable skillet or pot." She did,
and at times I trembled for the poet.
He read to Miss Henrietta Spain's school the poem on "Space" which the
_Literary Opinion_ had copied; and he was the greatest possible success.
Most of it I feel sure the school didn't understand. But just as he
finished the last two lines--those lines the magazine had called "as
perfect in winged lyric quality as any lines in the English language
could be"--the Byrd, whom Sam had groomed carefully and brought in from
the brier-patch for the occasion, rose, and, with his freckles black
with the intensity of his comprehension of the poem, spread his little
arms and said:
"I fly! I fly!"
"I fly! I fly, too!" A little chubkin in a blue muslin dress just
behind him jumped to her feet and echoed him before they could be
repressed.
"That was the most perfect tribute I shall ever receive," Peter said,
that night out on the porch, after Sam had gone home, carrying the
exhausted Byrd, who even in sleep held in one hand the handle of a full
basket he had begged from mother, and in the other tightly grasped a
sack in which were two "little ones" daddy had got for him. These
treasures happened to be young rabbits, and Sam said he would charge
daddy with the damages.
"Good old Sam," said Peter, as we stood at the gate by the old lilac,
who was beginning to beplume himself more richly than any of his
compatriots in Hayesboro--in honor of Peter, I felt sure--and watched
Sam and the Byrd jog away in the wagon down Providence Road. "He'll make
his mark on his generation yet, Betty. This is just a temporary eclipse
of the effulgence of a young planet that will shine with the warm light
of humanity when the time comes. There is no man like him. O Samboy!"
"Oh, I love you, Peter, for feeling that way," I exclaimed, heartily, as
I grasped his arm with enthusiasm. "You are so wonderful, Peter."
"Dear, dearest Betty," said Peter, as he put his arm through mine, and
we both began to swing back and forth on the gate. "It is so marvelous
to have a woman respond to your every mood as you do to mine. It is like
having in one's possession an angel incarnate in her own harp."
"Oh, Peter you _are_ wonderful!" I again exclaimed, because I felt that
way and had no other feeling to draw another remark from. It is so
satisfactory to love a man with no variations. I cannot see why girls
like to tremble and blush and chill and glow and get angry and repentant
about the men they love, as Edith does about Clyde Tolbot. I wish I
could make them all understand the great calmness of true love like mine
for Peter.
The five days that Peter stayed with mother, Hayesboro did many other
things to him. The mayor got up a barbecue in his honor, and they had
nine political speeches and two roast pigs and a lamb. Peter came home
pale, but we decided before we went to bed to let the hero of "The
Emergence" get beaten up a little in the strike before he made his great
speech to the capitalist. I felt so happy for the play.
But the next day Peter took tea alone with Miss Editha Morris
Carruthers, and he was so charmed with her that he almost decided to let
the whole play end in separation.
"But it is so lonely for a woman to be a heroine of a separation,
Peter," I pleaded with him as we sauntered up and down the long porch.
"Under such stress souls grow, Betty," he answered, gloomily. "Together
lovers feed on the material; apart, on the immaterial. Can we say which
is best for the final emergence of the superman and--" Just here Julia
came across the street and into our front gate, looking like a ripe
peach, in a pink muslin gown, with a huge plate of hickory-nut
butter-candy in her hand, and we all three proceeded to material
nourishment. I left them for a few minutes while I went up to my room
and took out Grandmother Nelson's book. I wanted to be sure that not a
single thing would bloom before I got back to The Briers. Peter had
insisted that he should not go forth into the wilderness until he could
do it dramatically to stay, so I hadn't been out for five days or more
and I was wild--simply mad. To have a garden and be separated from it at
sprouting and blooming time is worse than any soul separation that ever
happened to any woman. Of that I feel sure.
Sue Bankhead was as nice and lovely to Peter as could be, and even Billy
Robertson's contentment with himself was slightly ruffled with the way
she took him out horseback with her every morning, but her crowning
attention was a dance for him. Sue has the loveliest dances in Hayesboro
because of her own charm and the fact that the double parlors in the old
Bankhead house are sixty-two feet long and forty-six feet wide. The
girls were as lovely as a bunch of spring blossoms, and Julia looked
like the most gorgeous, pink, fragrant, drooping cabbage-rose as Peter
danced with her again and again. I was so glad, because he is as tall as
she is, and she is such a good dancer that it must have been as soothing
to his tired nerves as a nice wide rocking-chair with billows of blue
mull cushions. It was easy to see what she thought of him from the way
she looked at him, and poor Pink took me out in the moonlight and swore
at me in polite language.
"Why don't you feed your sick poet your own self, Betty, and not let him
loose to eat up my girl?" he stormed.
"Oh, Pink, how can you be so ungenerous, when you know how wonderful he
is and how wonderful his play will be if you and everybody are kind and
good to him while he is writing it," I chided him.
"Well, he had better not put Julia into it without me," he answered,
somewhat mollified at my reproof.
"He won't, I know he won't," I hastened to assure him. "Especially if
you are nice to him, as you promised. You know, Pink, you are an awfully
interesting man in some ways, and I know it is going to do Peter a lot
of good to be friends with you; you are so--so substantial."
"That's it; slap my fat! Everybody does," he answered, gloomily.
"It was the mules I was talking about, not you, Pink," I answered,
hurriedly, for I know how sensitive he is.
"Well, call me a mule then," he again said, with the deepest depression.
"Now don't be stupid, Pink, and--"
"I am stupid, too!"
"Pink Herriford, will you please tell my friend, Peter Vandyne, about
your heroism in stopping the stampede of those thousand mules you were
shipping to France in time to save the lives of all of them and about
ten men? I seem to have to speak to you in words of two syllables
to-night." I could feel my cheeks burn with temper as I spoke and Pink
came immediately out of his grouch and into his own happy personality.
"Holy smoke! Betty, but that was some stunt! First I saw a big red mule
lift his hind legs in ugly temper, and let fly right and left just as--"
"Oh, wait Pink, let me get Peter!" I exclaimed, as I heard the dance
that Pink and I had been arguing out, instead of sitting or dancing out,
stop to get breath.
Pink was a wonder as he stood in the center of everybody that I had
gathered around him to hear in particular what they had all been talking
about in general. We were all spellbound, for it was a really exciting
and tremendous recital, and even Julia came out of her daze over Peter
to listen with rapt attention, though I imagine she had heard it before.
"Immense!" exclaimed Peter, with his pale, thin face in a perfect flame
of excitement just as Pink threw his own body right in front of the
largest mule and turned his neck and--
"What?" said Pink, as he glared at Peter suspiciously.
"Perfectly great," said Peter, laying his arm on Pink's. "And I don't
see--"
Just here I slipped out onto the porch and sat down on the steps in the
starlight to get my breath while the tale of heroism went on from the
reassured hero.
And as I stood on the front steps, just out of the noise of "Too Much
Mustard" that had again begun its syncopated wail in the house, I began
to worry about all my flower children in the country. Sam had not been
in for three days, and he had sent word by one of his neighbors that he
couldn't get to the dance because he had to cup up potatoes to plant. He
had explained to Byrd and me all about how you cut out each little eye
with some potato around it for moisture and nourishment while it takes
root in the earth, and the Byrd had been especially interested in all
the potato-peels ever since. He had almost worn the life out of Mammy
begging her not to cut through any of the "little ones" with her knife
until she had taken to boiling them whole. And as I sat and pictured
them all sitting on the back porch with the big lamp lighted, just
cutting away, maybe Byrd still up for the emergency, the whole dance
seemed to put on a mask of grinning foolishness and resolve itself, with
its jiggy music, into a large bunch of nothing, with me included. I was
in a bad way for the best dancer in Hayesboro, not to sound like
boastful Billy.
"Well, hello! Can this be Betty the wall-flower?" called a voice from
over the fence. It was so out of sight that it might have come from the
hollow log out on Old Harpeth if it hadn't been so near. "Won't anybody
dance with you, honey-bunch?"
"Nobody; unless you will," I answered, running down toward the voice.
And as I came nearer the hedge I saw that a wagon and mule were drawn up
in the shadow behind a man. "It's fine for you to come in, after all,
Sam. Peter will be so happy."
"Overalls are not invited," answered Sam, as he gave my hair the usual
rough with his big horny hand while I reached up and grasped his sleeve,
too glad to see him to remonstrate. "I came in for Pete's things, and I
brought a load of new peas and ten dozen eggs at the same time, so I
couldn't dress for the dance, or have time to dance if I did. Six
seventy-five a barrel, and five barrels; how's that for wealth,
Bettykin?" As he spoke Sam reached down in his overalls pocket, brought
up a big fistful of all kinds of money, and poured it into my tunic of
embroidered mull that I held up for it.
"It is the most beautiful money I ever saw," I said, and I had to
swallow hard to keep out of my voice the sentiment I knew Sam would not
like. I knew how hard he had worked for every cent of it.
"I'll give you that bright new quarter if you think it is so pretty," he
said, and of course it couldn't have been emotion that cut his voice off
so indistinctly.
"Come on, then, and let me dance for it," I answered. Then myself and
money and mull dress,--that came all the way from New York with a
three-figured bill--I threw into the blue-jeans arms. And out on the
smooth, hard turnpike Sam and I had one glorious fox-trot with only the
surprised mule looking on.
"Bring Pete out at about eleven. Your first pea is due to pod about
noon. No, I must go now or never," said Sam as he shook me off when I
clung and begged for another dance. He climbed up in the wagon. "Good
night," he called.
For a long time I stood and watched him standing bolt upright in the
wagon and clattering away with his great ugly old mule in a lurching
trot; then I went in to the dance. I didn't tell anybody that Sam had
been there, because they would all have been disappointed. The way Sam's
home town loves him and disapproves of his farming is pathetic. Five
miles is a long way for anybody that knows Sam to be separated from him,
at least that is the way I felt as Peter slid and skidded and dipped me
around while he told me how proud he was of my beauty and the lovely and
worthy friends I possessed. He mentioned Julia and Pink and the mules in
detail. I think Peter Vandyne has the most grateful, appreciative,
sympathetic nature I ever encountered, and I told him so as we walked
home across the lawn while the stars were beginning to grow pale and
flicker with no more night to burn.
"My heart is full, full, dear, dearest Betty, with you and--and the
work. The vision becomes clearer," Peter said, with his great dark eyes
looking up at the retreating stars. And as we walked up the steps he
told me another struggle he had thought up for the hero to have with his
conscience about the poor little waiting heroine. The mule story hadn't
done him one bit of good, and I went to bed as cross as two sticks.
"Oh, Samboy! I'm glad you are there and that you are Peter's next of
friends or first or--Good night!" I muttered, as I closed my eyes on my
favorite glimpse of Old Harpeth.
The next morning at about nine-thirty occurred Peter Vandyne's
introduction into real life. He took it gallantly with his head up and
swimming for shore.
The day was one of young May's maiden efforts offered with a soft smile
of tender sunshine and in a flutter of bird wing and apple-blow. Of
course, Sam had told me not to bring Peter out to The Briers until about
eleven o'clock, because he wanted to do some farm housekeeping, as I
afterward found out. But half past nine was the very limit of my
endurance, and I sat and fidgeted with the wheel while mother and Eph
packed us up with the inevitable basket for Byrd plus the also
inevitable "little ones" that daddy somehow managed to find for him.
These young were three small kittens, attended in their blindness by a
black-and-white-spotted mother cat, all safely laced into a large basket
and by that time resigned to their fate. I didn't mean to be
disrespectful to dear Peter in my thoughts, but somehow they reminded me
of him as he was led to farm life; and I laughed outright as Eph gave
Peter a parting pat and Redwheels and me a shove, while mother called
after us not to forget the sarsaparilla.
As long as I live I shall remember that journey along old Providence
Road with a lovely nature like Peter's. He glowed with his inward flame
there at my side, until I felt that it would be bad for him. Peter has
seen all kinds of wonderful scenery all his life; but of course, there
is none in the world anything like the Harpeth Valley. All the other in
the world is either grand or placid or swept and garnished and tended or
brilliant or moist, but this valley under Paradise Ridge is different.
Peter expressed it so that my throat tightened and I had to hold
steadier to the wheel as we passed an old farm wagon.
"It's the hollow of God's hand in which He has gathered His children and
their homes, Betty," he said, huskily. "Look at that white-haired old
grand dame in her frilled frock with the string of chickens following
her and the two kiddies bringing up the rear. And look at that old
red-gray brick house. England has nothing finer."
"That is old Mrs. Georgetta Johnson," I answered, as I waved my hand and
got a stately wave in return. "She is the fifth generation to live in
that house, and the two kiddies are the eighth. Her mother danced with
Lafayette, and she is over eighty-five. I'll take you to see her some
day."
"Betty," said Peter, with positive awe, "I have never seen such homes
and furniture and people as I have found here. What is it that makes it
so--so satisfying?"
"It must be that everything has had time to root here, people and all,"
I answered as I again avoided a farm wagon and a negro driving two fine
milk-cows with cow babies wobbling along at their flanks.
"Yes," answered Peter, thoughtfully--"yes, I should say that 'rooted'
would about express the life, and I am wondering--" But just here we
turned off into Brier Lane, and Peter went up in the air and began to
float among the tree-tops, only being able to take in the high-lights
like the gnarled old cedars that jutted out from the lichen-covered
stone wall and hung over the moss-green snake-rail fences, or the old
oaks which were beginning to draw young, green loveliness around them,
or the feathery buckbushes and young hackberries that were harboring all
varieties of mating birds who were wooing and flirting and cheeping baby
talk in a delightfully confidential and unabashed manner. Peter had
become wildly absorbed in a brilliant scarlet cardinal that followed the
car, scolding and swearing in the most pronounced bird language, all for
no fault of ours that we could see, when we turned in the cedar-pole
gate of The Briers and began to wind our way up through the potato and
corn field on one side and the primeval forest on the other. It was
difficult to get Peter past the old thorn-tree view of the Harpeth
Valley we had come through, and he wanted to get out and stay for ever
at the milk-house; but I finally landed him in a Homeric daze up in
front of the house, which stood with its hospitable old door wide open
but deserted.
"Sam! Byrd! Mammy!" I shouted at the top of my lungs, while Peter sat
paralyzed at the sight of Sam's farm-house. Peter had got the old
Crittenden house and all the others where he had been entertained in
his mind's eye, and that Sam's present residence was a shock to him I
could see plainly. That was the beginning.
"Hi, Betty, come here quick--I need you!" came in Sam's most
business-like voice from the barn up on the hill, while I could hear
wild and excited cheeps from the Byrd and disturbed clucks from Mammy.
Leaving Peter to disembark as he recovered himself, I sped around the
house and up to the barn.
"Here, Betty, this blamed mule has kicked old Jude, and I must have
somebody to hold the edges together while I sew it up. Mammy's hands
aren't steady enough. Now press the edges together and never mind the
blood on your hands. Hold the halter, Mammy. You get that can of lime
ready to dust it, Byrd." Thus in dirty, blood-stained overalls, with his
hair on ends and an earth smudge as usual right across his face like a
Heidelberg scar, Sam was commanding his forces of nature.
"Ugh--uu--ow, Sam," I shivered; but I came up under his arm and tried to
push one dripping section of old-roan hide until it joined the other,
though I couldn't quite make it. Over my shoulder Sam began to sew it
across with a huge crooked needle, helping me push the edges together as
best he could. At this auspicious moment the poet appeared at the barn
door in an absolutely dazed condition.
"Here you, Pete, too!" Sam commanded, without looking up. "Get here on
the other side and press the hide together as Betty is doing. This is
an awful long cut, but I can manage it, thanks to seeing Chubb sew up
Bates's mule. Whoah, Jude, old girl! Hold her steady, Mammy! Now, Pete,
press hard; never mind the blood!"
At Sam's determined reiteration of the word blood, my senses reeled, and
if it had been anybody but Sam sewing over my shoulder, I would have
gone down in a crumpled heap. Also I was stirred by one glance at
Peter's lovely long oval face with its Keats lock of jet-black hair
tossed aloft, and I remained conscious from astonishment.
This was a new Peter. His eyes burned in his face with determination. He
squared his legs, clad in his elegant idea of farming corduroys, at the
exact angle at which Sam's were set; then his long, white hands pulled
the bloody old hide together exactly in place.
"That's it, Pete, hold it there. You slip out, Betty, and hold Jude
while Mammy gets the hot water ready to wash it when it is finished.
Now, Pete, an inch farther along! Whoah, Jude!" And with his long needle
Sam began rapidly to draw the gaping wound together.
"Here, Byrd, you hold Jude," I said, suddenly; and giving the halter to
the dirty fledgling, who was snubbing tears in his distress over the
accident to his old friend, I quit the scene of the operation and fled
to the woods to faint down on a log and be as ill as I wanted to. It was
rather bad; and it lasted about a quarter of an hour.
Then, with my head turned determinedly away from the barn, I sought
distraction in an interview with my garden.