THE TRENCHES
Molly and Edwin found themselves deeper in this agricultural scheme than
they had at first bargained for. If it was to be done at all, it must be
well done and quickly. There must be order and system. Suddenly they
awoke to the realization that if it was to be well done and quickly
done, it was up to them, the Greens, to do it.
"I am afraid, my dear, that you must be the chaperone and I must turn
farmer. This is a stupendous undertaking and for the good name of
Wellington we must see it through."
"It will mean work all summer for you, when you so need a holiday, you
poor old fellow."
"I need no more holiday than you do. You haven't been idle one minute
this whole college year. I have a feeling that this summer we have no
business with holidays anyhow. The world is too busy, too upset for any
of us, who are able, to lay off. I mean to dig and delve here at home
and do all the good I can."
"I think we ought to rent the Orchard Home for the summer, don't you?"
asked Molly, turning her head away so her husband could not see what it
cost her to make that suggestion.
"Why, Molly honey, I can't bear to think of it. It is hard enough on you
not to be able to go to Kentucky for vacation, but I don't think you
should have to think of strangers as being among your apple trees."
"It won't be bad, not nearly so bad as you think. At least, the little
brown bungalow won't be quite so lonesome as it would be empty all the
year, and we might buy tons of seed with the rent money or even take
care of some war orphans."
"I guess you are right,--you usually are. I'll write to a real estate
agent in Louisville immediately and put it on the market for the summer.
I hate to do it, though. Not that it will make so much difference to
me. Wherever you are is my Orchard Home, honey!"
The Major's farm was dubbed "The Trenches" by the members of the
agricultural club. It was a suitable name, for these girls felt that
they were in the war almost as much as the soldier boys themselves.
Early in May Molly moved to the old farmhouse to superintend
arrangements for the many girls later to be housed there. It was
decided to run the place more or less as a military camp is run, with
squads detailed for various duties.
"Only our trench digging will be in the potato fields and our drilling
in the bean patch," Billie declared.
Billie was in a state of ecstasy from the first. She was General Molly's
aide-de-camp, giving time, money, and thought to the undertaking.
"It is so splendid really to be helping! I wanted to do something to
help the Government and now I believe I am going to. I should like best
to shoulder a gun and take a crack at the Huns, but since that cannot
be, I'll shoulder a pick and take a crack at the soil."
Billie, whose post-graduate studies at Wellington were not very
important, had cut and gone to The Trenches with Molly. They had
installed themselves in a corner of the rambling old farmhouse and were
as busy as bees getting ready for the thirty girls who were to land on
them the last week in May. Katy and the two children were with them, but
Kizzie had been left in Wellington to look after the master, who was up
to his neck in work for the finals at college.
The students at Wellington had been canvassed from A to Z, and with a
deal of clerical work, all of the ones who were to join the agricultural
club had been enrolled and their time of service settled on and arranged
for. Billie had donated six Close-to-Nature houses which were to be set
up on the grassy lawn of the old farm. The cots she had wheedled out or
her uncle. Farming implements, such as hoes, rakes, spades, gasoline
ploughs and cultivators she had, as she expressed it, "blasted out of
Grandmother McKym."
"They don't understand me in the least, my uncle and my grandmother, but
they love me, I really believe, and I fancy they always hope I'll come
to my senses and marry in 'the set' some of these days. They are really
dears," Billie explained to Molly as they helped to unload the wagons
that had just arrived laden with the tents and implements.
"I think they are certainly very generous," declared Molly, pulling out
a bundle of rakes.
From the beginning these girls had determined not to be dependent upon
the merely masculine to fetch and carry for them, and Molly and Billie
had pitched in with a will to do without men if need be.
"Oh, yes, generous enough! They are glad when I let them off with
nothing more troublesome than writing checks. I believe Uncle Donald was
scared stiff that I might insist on his coming down here to help dig.
And as for Grandmother,--she would rather ante up thousands of dollars
than have to drag her silk skirts around in the wet grass here at The
Trenches. They don't see for an instant that I am kind of patriotic in
helping this way. They think I am just a faddist. Maybe I am, but
somehow I feel that I have ideals! Do you think I am just a silly goose
to think so?"
"No, indeed! I know you have ideals,--I should hate to think you
didn't,--very high ideals," said Molly, as together they wheeled the
barrow laden with hoes and rakes out to the tool house. "I reckon your
uncle and grandmother have them, too, only perhaps they are not so open
about them."
"Oh yes, they have them. Uncle Donald loves to talk about them, but
Grandmother isn't so keen on expressing herself. Sometimes I think his
ideals are mostly literary and hers sartorial. He is a great reader of
_belles lettres_ and Grandmother has an instinct for clothes that is
truly remarkable."
"You have it, too."
"Well, I do like 'em, but I like to dress other persons better than I
do myself. If I had been poor, I'd have gone into the business. I may do
it yet, but now until this war is over it seems to me it doesn't make a
bit of difference how anyone is dressed--anybody but Mother Earth. The
soil dressed with a good fertilizer is more important than silk
raiment."
"How about literature?" laughed Molly, her friend's enthusiasm amusing
her and at the same time pleasing her. "Do you think writing should stop
as well as dressing?"
"Oh, of course scribblers will scribble and anyone who has a message to
deliver will have to spout it out, war time or not, but they may not
think they are so all-fired important. A letter from the most ignorant
soldier at the front will have more real stuff in it than all of the
vaporings of the poet who only imagines gunfire."
"And here far from the strife----"
"Here we will make sonnets with hoe and rake!"
"Our lines made by the gasoline plough shall be beautiful and
harmonious!" suggested Molly.
"Our onion patch shall be worthy to be put into verse along with Eugene
Field's Onion Tart," said Billie, going Molly one better.
"Our potato field shall be as full of solid refreshment as Charles
Dudley Warner's five feet of classics. Only smell the newly-ploughed
earth! Isn't it delicious?"
The wagons were unloaded, the farming implements piled neatly in the
tool house and the Close-to-Nature houses dotted about the lawn ready
for the stupendous task of being put up. The girls were waiting for
Katy, whom they had dubbed "the powerful Katrinka," to come help them
with that job. Katy was in her element. She had been born and raised in
the country, and now that she was once more where things were growing,
where she could help them grow, she was as happy an Irish girl as there
was in all the land. Nothing was too difficult for her to do and her
great strength helped Molly and Billie out of many a quagmire of work
that seemed too heavy for them to accomplish without masculine aid.
"And now Oi'm ready for to help put oop the little play houses," she
said as she joined Molly and Billie.
"That's fine," said her mistress, "but before we begin, just let's smell
the ploughed ground a little. Don't you love it, Katy?"
"Sure! And it beats the perfumery that comes in a bottle, to my moind,"
said the girl, sniffing delightedly.
"I don't see why they don't bottle the smell of new ploughed earth just
as they have new mown hay," laughed Billie. "I know two who would want
to buy it."
"Deed and Oi'd buy a gallon of sooch smells!"
"Do you know Masefield's 'Everlasting Mercy,' Billie? You and Katy
listen while I tell you the part about ploughing and then we'll put up
the tent houses."
Very charming was the picture made by this group of girls. So Edwin
Green thought as he walked silently across the lawn of the old farm.
Katy, the sturdy Irish girl, was not without picturesque lines. Her look
was somewhat that of Bastien Lepage's peasant Jeanne d'Arc as she stood
in rapt reverie while her beloved mistress gave voice to those wonderful
lines of England's greatest modern poet. Billie looked very down-to-date
in her khaki overalls and stubby shoes, while Molly was very Mollyesque
in the blue linen blouse that was the only true Molly Brown blue.
She did not hear her husband as he stepped lightly across the green
spring grass and he motioned to Billie not to let her know he was there.
He stood silently, with bared head while she recited. Molly's voice had
always appealed to Edwin, in fact it had been the first thing that had
attracted him--and when Molly recited poetry!
"'The past was faded like a dream;
There came the jingling of a team,
A ploughman's voice, a clink of chain,
Slow hoofs, and harness under strain.
Up the slow slope a team came bowing,
Old Callow at his autumn ploughing,
Old Callow stooped above the hales,
Ploughing the stubble into wales.
His grave eyes looking straight ahead,
Shearing a long straight furrow red;
His plough-foot high to give it earth
To bring new food for men to birth.
"'O wet red swathe of earth laid bare,
O truth, O strength, O gleaming share,
O patient eyes that watch the goal,
O ploughman of the sinner's soul.
O Jesus, drive the coulter deep
To plough my living man from sleep.
"'Slow up the hill the plough team plod,
Old Callow at the task of God,
Helped by man's wit, helped by the brute,
Turning a stubborn clay to fruit,
His eye forever on some sign
To help him plough a perfect line.
* * * * *
"'I kneeled there in the muddy fallow,
That I should plough, and as I ploughed
My Savior Christ would sing aloud,
And as I drove the clods apart
Christ would be ploughing in my heart,
Through rest-harrow and bitter roots,
Through all my bad life's rotten fruits.
"'O Christ, who holds the open gate,
O Christ, who drives the furrow straight,
O Christ, the plough, O Christ, the laughter
Of holy white birds flying after,
Lo, all my heart's field red and torn,
And thou wilt bring the young green corn,
The young green corn divinely springing,
The young green corn forever singing;
And when the field is fresh and fair
Thy blessed feet shall glitter there,
And we will walk the weeded field,
And tell the golden harvest's yield,
The corn that makes the holy bread
By which the soul of man is fed,
The holy bread, the food unpriced,
Thy everlasting mercy, Christ.'"
Katy wiped her eyes and Billie winked away the tears that would gather.
Molly turned and saw Edwin standing only a few feet from her.
"Oh, Edwin, I didn't know you were there. I declare I haven't been
spouting poetry ever since we got here! We have done a lot and were
going now to put up the tent houses, but you aren't to help. I'll give
you some tea and let you rest up after your tramp. We weren't expecting
you until Saturday----"
"And don't want me now?"
"Want you! Why, Edwin Green, B. A., M. A., P. H. D.! You know I always
want you," and then Billie and Katy thought it was time to leave the
married lovers alone for a while.
"I want to help put up the houses, though," insisted Edwin as he and
Molly wended their way to a pretty little arbor covered by a crimson
rambler that gave promise, if one might judge from the many buds, of
being a glorious sight later in the season.
"But we can do it later by our lonesomes. You don't know how many things
we can do without the help of men, especially when one of us is as
powerful as Katy and one as spunky as Billie."
"And how about you?" and he pinched her rosy cheek.
"Oh, I'm not much force, I am afraid, but I have the bump of
stickativeness which is sometimes as good as strength and takes the
place of cleverness."
"Do you really think you girls could run this farm without the help of a
man?"
"Of course we could, once the heavy ploughing is done, and Katy says she
could have done that, too, if we had wanted her to. Do you want to go
off on a trip somewhere and let us try to run it without you?"
Edwin looked searchingly into Molly's blue eyes. His gaze was long and
earnest and in his brown eyes Molly read a kind of sadness she had never
seen there before.
"Edwin, dearest, what is it?"
"Molly, it isn't anything unless you want it to be."
"Tell me!"
"Would you think it right or wrong if I should try to get into the
service, military service, I mean?--I have taken an examination and am
physically fit.--I won't apply to go into training at Fort Myer unless
you approve.--It rests entirely with you, honey."
"You must go if you think it right." Molly spoke without a tremor,
although it did seem to her for a moment as though her heart would
burst. How could a heart get so big all of a sudden? And then it seemed
to her she was sounding cold and unemotional when Edwin wanted something
else. "I--I--want you to go! I think it is right for men just like you
to go--men with brains and the power of taking hold and leading--I
wouldn't have you stay behind for me for anything on earth. I--I--am
proud of you and want you to do exactly what you think is right,
and--and--I think you are right--just as right as can be--and--and--I
love you more than ever."
It seemed to both Edwin and Molly that at no time since their walk in
the forest of Fontainebleau when the eternal question had been settled
between them had any moment been so filled with love and understanding
as now when he folded her in his arms. His Molly! His own, brave, true
Molly! Her Edwin! Her honorable, courageous Edwin!
"I thought that I could content myself by digging and delving, but
somehow I have been feeling lately that if you would consent, it was up
to me to do something else. I don't feel critical in the least towards
the men of my age who are not going to the war,--not the younger ones,
either, if they do not feel called upon,--but somehow when one has been
called as I have, I think he should answer. I don't know why a staid
college professor should think it is his vocation, but I do think it,
and, oh, dearest, it is good of you to take it this way!"
"I could take it no other way. Is not my mother giving God-speed to her
sons? Is not Judy encouraging Kent? Is not Nance not only sending Andy
but going with him? Who am I that I should say you shall and you shan't
do things for your country?"
"But you see, dear girl, there are the children to take care of in
case--in case--in case I should--should--well--stump my toe."
"I can take care of them as my mother did of all of us. My father died
when I was a tiny child and still my mother raised me. But don't stump
your toe. Pick up your feet when you walk--and--and----"
Here Molly came very near shedding the tears that she felt must be shed
sooner or later, but she was determined that it should be later and that
her soldier boy should not see them. She jumped up and offered to race
him to the house where Katy was laying the tea table on the porch.
Edwin knew Molly too well not to understand that this gaiety was nothing
but camouflage to conceal emotions that she was too brave to show.
"What will your mother think?"
"She will think that I have married well," was her gay rejoinder.
"And what does my Mildred think when I tell her her daddy is going to be
a soldier?" he asked as he held the little girl close in his arms.
Mildred had been busy with a tiny hoe and shovel on a patch of ground
given over to her tender ministrations. Her hands were very grubby and
her face not much better, but Edwin seemed not to mind the general
griminess of his daughter.
"Oh, I say bully for Daddy! An' I bet if Dodo'll wake up, he'd say he
was a-goin', too. Boys is so rombustious."
* * * * *
And now we must leave Molly Brown and her College Friends at the
momentous hour when their country is plunged in a great and righteous
war. What the future holds for them is as much a mystery as what it
holds for any of us. One thing is sure: Molly is doing her duty,--doing
it cheerfully and bravely. Around her are college girls and more college
girls, each one doing her bit. And so the fields are ploughed, the crops
are planted and gathered. Fruit and vegetables are preserved and canned.
The men and boys are training for the trenches, but the women and girls
are in training, too.
Molly often thinks of that moment when she stood sniffing the up-turned
mould, with her husband standing near listening to her as she recited
the lines from Masefield; and now as the days multiply she finds comfort
in Masefield's ending to "The Everlasting Mercy":
"'How swift the summer goes,
Forget-me-not, pink, rose.
The young grass when I started
And now the hay is carted,
And now my song is ended,
And all the summer spended;
The blackbird's second brood
Routs beech leaves in the wood;
The pink and rose have speeded,
Forget-me-not has seeded.
Only the winds that blew,
The rain that makes things new,
The earth that hides things old,
And blessings manifold.'"
THE END
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Transcriber's note:
A few minor printer's errors have been corrected. Otherwise the
original has been preserved, including inconsistent spelling and
hyphenation.