seen to that. The rectory was new and looked old, the garden was new and
looked old; even the hedge that surrounded the garden and churchyard was
tall of growth, but had been planted only a year or so. The church was
the fashionable house of worship for the fashionable new village—the
village just far enough out of town to make a convenient between-season
resting place for those favored townsfolk who could spend their time as
they spent their money—pretty much as they willed. They wanted their
church and rectory to be as beautiful and Old-World like as possible, and
they had made them so.
The rector was not one for whose idle hands his arch-enemy might find
mischief; he had come out to his piazza whistling, his hands in his
pockets; but he saw at a glance that the roses bordering his front walk
would look the better for a little trimming, and straightway he set to
work. Still whistling, busy with knife and twine, happy as a school-boy
whittling a man-o’-war, he did not notice that some one came through the
little gate, and stood quite near, behind him.
A small voice said: “Good-morning!”
The young rector turned quickly, and beheld an amazingly red little
figure. Her frock was red, her shoes and stockings were red, and her
over-large hat was red. She wore white kid gloves and carried a small
red cardcase. But her little face was not red; it was white, very white,
and framed in a mass of flying black hair; her eyes were black, too, and
large and wide opened. The rector stared at the brilliant little figure;
she might have been the picture of an elf-child, were it not for the
amusing imitations of grown-up conventionalities, the gloves and cardcase.
“Good-morning!” she said again, in just the same tone.
“Oh! I beg your pardon! Good-morning!” said the rector.
“You are the new rector, I know,” said the child. “I am Miss Torrington,
and I’ve come to call on your wife and daughters.”
The rector’s stare turned into a look of frank amazement, even
bewilderment. “My—I beg your pardon; I’m afraid I don’t quite understand!”
“I’ve come to call on your wife and daughters,” repeated the little girl.
“I’m Miss Virginia Witherspoon Torrington,” she declared convincingly,
“and I live next door to you—over there, in the big house.”
“Oh, yes, I see,” replied the rector. He was as punctiliously polite as
the occasion demanded, but his mouth twitched just a little. “I’m sure I
beg your pardon. I must be very stupid. But I regret to say that I have
no wife or daughters.”
“Are you sure you haven’t” asked Miss Torrington.
“I’m afraid I am,” said the rector, humbly and apologetically. “Won’t you
come in and call on me instead?”
Miss Torrington pondered for a moment. “I think a gentleman ought to pay
the _first_ call on a lady, don’t you?”
The rector bit his lip, but the child went on: “Maggie O’Brien certainly
told me there were three ladies in the family here!”
“Oh!” exclaimed the young rector, as if he had found something. “Why, of
course, there are! I didn’t think of that! There _are_ three ladies, and
it’s very good of you to call on them. They’ll be delighted. You see, it
was your speaking of my wife and daughters that made me forget.”
“What are they, then?” asked the child.
“One is my grandmother, and the others are my aunts.”
“Oh, really? I should think you’d like the grandmother one. You know if
you don’t have a grandmother already you can’t ever get one, and you can
get a wife and daughters.”
“That’s very true,” acknowledged the rector. “I suppose you haven’t a
grandmother yourself?”
“No, but I have a father—an only father. You know what _that_ is, I
suppose; only fathers are a great deal of care. Mine needs a lot of
looking after.”
“Well, I’ll tell you,” suggested the rector. “I’ll lend you my
grandmother once in a while! That is, if you will come over and help me
occasionally, I will. I hope you’ll have the time to come. You don’t
have to look after your father every minute, do you?”
“Oh, no,” she replied. “He’s away a good deal. But I think I ought to see
her before I borrow her, don’t you?”
“Oh, I beg your pardon,” said the rector again. “If you’ll come into the
house I’ll call her, and my aunts, too. I’m so glad you don’t mind their
not being my wife and daughters.”
He held open for her the door of the little parlor, and was starting
toward the stairs when Miss Torrington called: “Oh—er—!”
When the rector turned toward her she said: “I’d like to send up my
cards, please. I don’t often get a chance to use them, you know, and—”
The rector said, gravely: “I quite understand. I ought to have thought
of it. I never send my own cards up to them, and I suppose that’s why I
forgot.” He was about to take them in his hand, but Miss Torrington drew
them back.
“Maggie O’Brien always takes them on a silver tray. I’m very partic’lar
about it at my house.”
The rectory owned no silver tray, but there was a silver butter-dish, a
valued family heirloom, much too large and fine for every-day use. It was
kept on the sideboard in the tiny dining-room. The rector gravely brought
it; Miss Torrington seemed quite satisfied, even a little awed at its
elegance, and deposited her cards upon it.
That was the way her first visit began; it ended in ginger cookies,
and hugs and kisses from the grandmother, and tremulous tears, mixed
with laughter, from the aunts. On the second visit she went all over
the little place with the rector; together they hunted for eggs—the
younger aunt owned four hens and a rooster. They plucked delicious red
strawberries, and gathered a bunch of red roses. There were two acres of
greenhouses on the grounds of the big house—but these were really, truly
roses, roses meant to be gathered.
On her third visit she made herself at home, and from that day she owned
the rectory, the grandmother, the aunts, and the rector. In everything
but years he was as young as she, and sometimes she was as old as he. All
through the summer they played together, for the child blossomed into
rosiness, and her father came to rely more and more on the advice of the
aunts and the borrowed grandmother concerning her. She flitted between
the two houses, and that was the way she won her name. The young rector
would say:
“Come, little Ladybird, fly away home”—and home was on either side of
the hedge. The name stayed with her always, for it suited her well—the
black-eyed little elf-child in her red frocks.
The second summer brought her back early, flying through the gate into
the arms of the borrowed grandmother, hugging the aunts while they
laughed and exclaimed over her growth, and dancing up and down before
the young rector, who was far more glad to get her back than he himself
knew. They taught each other many things that summer—to fish and to climb
trees, to say rimes which some day might catch fairies, to throw stones
straight, and to make dolls into Indians and early Christian martyrs.
One day the rector, while writing a sermon, saw through his study window
an unusual movement in the hedge just opposite. His window opened to the
floor, so he went out of it, on tiptoe, to investigate. Ladybird was on
the ground, trying to manage a very large saw, and scraping away with all
her might at the trunk of one of the hedge plants. When the rector stood
over her she looked up and laughed.
“I wanted to surprise you, old parson,” she said. “I’m going to cut a
hole in the hedge; it takes too long to go around by the gates!”
The rector remonstrated, but she had her way, and before long there was a
plainly marked path from the gap in the hedge to the study window. It was
even more plainly marked during the third summer, for they began to read
together, and the study held a new world for her. There were no books at
the big house, and the rectory held more of books than of anything else,
except peace and gentleness. The next year the borrowed grandmother was
not there to welcome her, but the play and the study went on.
When she was twelve she asked him the first question concerning himself.
She was sitting on the sill of the long window, her thin little elbows on
her knees, her chin in her little claw-like hands; she was looking at the
clouds and the sunset, without seeing either. The rector could no longer
see to write, and had come to the window to watch the glowing west.
Whenever she scolded him, or was very serious, she would use his name.
After a while she asked “Mark, why do you stay in the country?”
“It’s a good place to stay in, isn’t it?” he answered.
“Yes, of course. But father said that you had been asked to go to St.
John’s in town. He said you were—you—Why do you stay here, Mark?”
The young rector stood looking over her head at the sunset and made no
reply. Ladybird looked up at him, then out toward the west again.
“I know why, Mark! _They_ wouldn’t like the town.”
“They’ve always had the country, you know,” he said simply. “They were so
happy to come here, and they love it.”
Presently he lifted her up. “Good-night, Ladybird,” he said gaily. “Fly
away home!” But she walked slowly that night, and the rector went back to
his sermon, which was on the simple life; his parishioners loved theories.
When Ladybird was fourteen, the rector found her one day weeping over a
novel. That night he talked for hours with her father and when she came
the next day she told him, delightedly and proudly, but just a little
tearfully, that she was going to boarding-school. For two summers she
did not come back, but at sixteen she took him again for her confidant,
telling him all about the boys, the flowers and notes they sent, what
she said in return, how this one had mournful eyes and that one did
dance like a dream. He enjoyed it all, and teased her, and after that
there were no further breaks in their friendship. She wrote him from
time to time, and he knew all her love affairs by heart, and laughed
immoderately over them. When she was eighteen she came back for a few
weeks, and they were weeks of delight at the rectory; she made them love
her all over again, and after she had left for Europe the rector kept the
shade of the long window pulled down, until the grass had grown up again
on the little path through the hedge.
A year or two after that her father became governor of his State, and
Ladybird became Miss Torrington indeed. She wrote long, infrequent
letters to the rector, and to the one old aunt; they heard of her
through every one, and when she came back to open the big house for a
great house-party they saw for themselves how beautiful and charming and
gracious she was, and they guessed how many people beside themselves
loved her. Even then, with all the house full, she would sometimes steal
off, toward sunset time, and flit through the gap in the hedge to the
rectory.
Then, after a year or two more, she came back to stay longer, not in red
now, but in black. The elderly cousin who lived with her took the care of
the house, and Ladybird, in her first loneliness, sought out her oldest
friend. She made him drive with her, walk with her, read with her, and he
obeyed her will by day and lay wakeful at night, with aching heart and
stricken conscience. They read over the old books together, and almost
all of their talks began with: “Oh, do you remember?” They went together
very often to the grave of the dear borrowed grandmother; Ladybird tried
to make some ginger cookies by the old recipe, but they were not very
good. They got up at dawn one day, and went fishing again, and as in the
old days Ladybird caught all the fish, and wouldn’t take them off the
hook. Their favorite walk was along the crest of the hill; there they
could look down on the church and the big house, and all the other houses
and their beautiful parks. From there they could watch the sunset best,
and there it was even cooler and quieter than in the rectory garden.
One day they sat on the rock ledge until the red glow of the setting
sun had nearly faded. Their talk had ceased. The man was sitting below
the girl, and she looked down at his head; there were gray hairs here
and there. Her lips trembled a little, and she leaned over farther. The
rector looked up; he found her face close to his.
“Mark,” she began, but he sprang up quickly and held out his hands:
“Come, little Ladybird, fly away home!” The girl did not move.
“No,” she said. “Sit down. I want to say something to you.”
He said again imperatively: “No. Come, Ladybird! It is damp here. It is
too near the clouds!” She saw how white his face had grown, and her own
flushed; they went down without speaking.
After that day the rector became very busy with parish work, and
resolutely refused to take any more walks or drives. Guests came to the
big house, and after that more guests and more. There was one who came
more often than the others, and at the end of the summer the rector
watched him drive away with Ladybird. She had come to bid him good-by,
but he had basely hidden himself upstairs!
During the winter that followed the rectory heard from her but seldom.
Rumors came of her engagement; the rumors were denied, then re-affirmed.
The old aunt declared that the child would have written at once if they
were true; the rector made no comment. In the spring he made some changes
in his garden, and when the roses bloomed he busied himself there more
than he had ever done before. One warm June day, while he way tying up
the swaying branches that bordered his front walk, and thinking of the
quaint little red-frocked elf-child who had come to him there years
before, she came through the gate and up the walk toward him, her hands
outstretched, her face all gladness and youth and beauty. “I’ve come here
first,” she cried. “I’ve come to call!”
They both laughed, and went in to see the old aunt, the lapse of all the
years bridged over between them. She begged to be allowed to stay to
tea, and declared the biscuits the most delicious that even the rectory
oven had ever baked, and the gooseberry jam as good as ever. After tea
she went, uninvited, to the rector’s study. She stood for an instant in
the doorway, looking around the familiar room; then she looked up at the
man standing beside her, and moved toward the long window. “Come with me
to the hedge, old parson,” she called, and before he could answer she
flitted through the window and toward the familiar gap.
When he reached her side he found her standing with tightly clasped
hands. She heard him come, and cried: “Oh, Mark, Mark, what is it? Who
put it there?”
The rector had no voice to answer her, and after a moment of waiting she
turned to him. “Did you put that there? Did you, did you put that there?”
Still he made no answer, and with a sob she moved off toward the gate.
Then he spoke.
“Oh, Ladybird, Ladybird, I _had_ to! Don’t go away like that!
Ladybird—see—it is a rosebush, a red rose, Ladybird. I tell you I had to!
Virginia!”
But she had run through the rectory gate, and was already on her way
to the big house. For weeks after that he did not see her. She came to
the rectory only when he was away, and again there were guests at the
big house, and again one guest who came more frequently than all the
others. The rector came upon this young man one day, down by the river.
He was looking very unhappy indeed, so evidently unhappy that the rector,
accustomed as he was to respond to all appeals for pity and mercy,
involuntarily stopped. The young man held out his hand.
“Thank you, sir,” he said, and laughed a little. “I see you know what’s
up with me. I didn’t know I was such a fool as to show it.”
“I ought not to have stopped,” said the rector. “I beg your pardon.” He
would have gone on, but the boy touched his arm.
“Please don’t say that, sir. I’d rather have seen you than any one else
I know. In fact, I was coming to the rectory—later. I thought perhaps I
could get you to help me out, sir.”
The rector winced a little at the boy’s deference, but asked: “What is
it?”
Again the other laughed, somewhat ruefully. “Oh, I’m sure you know,”
he said. “I’ve loved her ever since my freshman year, when she was at
boarding-school. She’s never done anything else but turn me down, but
she says this has got to be the last time. I thought if you could be
persuaded to say a word to her, sir, she might look at it differently.
She cares more for you than for any one else, and you’ve always been like
a father to her, sir!”
The rector looked at the honest, boyish face, and said: “I’ll do as you
ask.”
Therefore, an hour later, Ladybird was standing before him, in her own
drawing-room, her cheeks flaming with anger. “Did he ask you to come
here, or did you come of your own accord?” she demanded.
“Both, Virginia,” answered the truthful rector meekly.
“Don’t you dare to call me Virginia,” she commanded. “You know I hate it!
If you came of your own accord you are an interfering person, and if you
came because he told you to, you’re a—you’re a—”
“The boy loves you very much, Virginia, and I think he’d make you a good
husband.”
“Do you want me to marry him? Are you tired of looking at me?”
“I think he would make you a good husband.”
“Do you want to see me married?”
The rector got up, and started for the door, but she stood in front of
him. “Was that why you planted the rosebush in the hedge?” she asked.
He bowed before her, and she watched him grow pale. Then she laughed, a
little low, tender laugh, and—kissed him. The rector was dimly aware of
her swift rush from the room, and of his own going home blindly.
The next day he left his house early, to walk over the hills to the home
of a distant poor parishioner; coming home late in the afternoon he came
upon her, seated on the ledge of rock upon the hillcrest. She walked
calmly to meet him, and standing bravely before him she asked him the
question. It was then that the rector discovered that the Angel with
which he had been struggling was not, as he had believed, the Angel of
Temptation, but, indeed, the Angel of Life. As they walked down later, in
the red glow, hand in hand, he asked:
“Do you remember, Ladybird, the cards on the silver butter-dish?”
She laughed and said: “And those first ginger cookies?”
“Do you remember the day you were up in the apple tree, Ladybird, and hit
me with an apple?”
“And that was before I learned to ‘throw straight,’ too!”
“You were very repentant, so we went fishing the next day. You leaned
over the brook to see yourself, and your hair fell into the water.”
“It wasn’t very long,” she laughed.
“How long is it now, Ladybird?” he asked.
She pursed up her lips. “Oh, longer,” she said.
At the edge of the woods they stood for a last look at the churchyard
below. “Can you give up the other life, Ladybird?” he asked seriously.
“There is no other,” she replied softly.
“Oh, Ladybird, Ladybird, when will you come home?” he cried.
She shook her head at him, laughing. “Oh, parson, old parson, you
couldn’t ask one great, important question, but you’re a genius at asking
silly ones!”
THE DRASNOE PIPE-LINE
By Arthur Stanwood Pier
On a windy and sullen morning in May, 1864, a caravan of fifty wagons,
each piled high with barrels, crawled down the muddy road from the
Drasnoe oil-field. Beside the leading team of the procession walked a
one-armed man and a fifteen-year-old boy. The faces of the two were not
cheerful. That of the man was sad; the boy’s was anxious.
Behind trooped the other teamsters, shouting, cracking their long
blacksnake whips, swearing at the horses, the mud, the threatening sky.
They were always boisterous and blasphemous during the long daily haul.
The one-armed man and the boy walked together silently by preference.
“Do you suppose General Grant is done fighting by this time?” the boy
asked, at last.
His companion smiled sadly.
“I guess he won’t be done fighting for a good many months yet. But I
shouldn’t wonder if he was out of the Wilderness by now.”
“It must be a big battle,” said the boy. “Most as big as Gettysburg,
don’t you think, John?”
“Pretty nigh.”
“How long do you suppose before we hear about father—whether he’s all
right?”
“Depends on how long the battle lasts. I guess in a week.”
“That’s an awful time to wait. Your folks didn’t hear about you till ten
days after it happened, did they?” He glanced at the empty sleeve.
“I believe not. But there was a good deal to ’tend to after Gettysburg.
Maybe there won’t be so much in this battle.”
“I wish I was down there instead of hauling oil every day,” said the boy.
“You’re making more money hauling oil,” replied the teamster. The boy
glanced at him, hurt and scornful. “Yes,” continued the man, in his quiet
voice, “you’re making quite a heap of money. And as long as you’re doing
that, what’s the good of running off to fight? That’s what all that
gang behind us would tell you—and there’s mighty few of them that are
staying away from the war to support their mothers.” In his quiet voice
there brimmed suddenly the full bitterness of contempt: “Floaters—and
stay-at-homes!”
The boy thought that perhaps John Denny was hard on the men. At least
it was not cowardice that kept them hauling oil when they might be
shouldering rifles. The boy had seen too many evidences of their
courage and recklessness to believe that; he had seen also too many
rough-and-tumble fights among them to believe that a distaste for
fighting kept them in the paths of peace. Nor was it altogether greed for
the dollars that were being so lavishly squandered in the oil country in
those days that detained them; among them all there was hardly one who
was laying money by.
The boy himself, with his small farm wagon, had earned as much as seventy
dollars in a week. But what the men earned so rapidly they spent as
royally; it was the excitement of a sudden prosperity, greater than any
they had ever expected or foreseen and the joy of indulging it had made
them heedless of the call to arms.
The boy was aware that whether they liked John Denny or not—and in view
of his ill-concealed contempt it was hard for them to like him—they
yielded him position and respect.
The summer before, while the armies of North and South were battling in
one corner of Pennsylvania, in another there had sprung up excitement
over oil. John Denny had returned from Gettysburg with his right arm shot
off at the shoulder, and had found this excitement at its height.
He could make a living, one-armed as he was, on the farm. But instead,
he mortgaged the place and drilled for oil. The hole was a dry one; and
Denny faced the world in debt as well as crippled.
Fortunately, the great Drasnoe wells began to flow at about that time,
and teamsters were needed to transport the oil to the railroad eight
miles away. The prices of oil and labor were high; and after six months
of hard teaming, Denny had paid off his debt. And his fellow teamsters,
who had mostly drifted in from “outside,” yielded him grudgingly a
certain admiration. It was not diminished by the fact that he held them
all at a distance—all but the boy, Elmer Todd, who was the youngest of
the teamsters, and whom he took under his protection.
At a turn in the road they saw a wagon backed up into a field. Two men
were unloading sections of pipe. A third, a young man in high boots, such
as the teamsters wore, stood by, giving directions. He looked up at Denny
and the boy, and his face brightened pleasantly.
“Morning!” he said. “We’ll get the last of our pipe laid to-day.”
Denny stopped his team. “That so?” he said, grimly. “You expect when it’s
laid it will stay, Mr. Ross?”
The young man’s eyes narrowed together into a frown; his clean-cut face
assumed a more determined expression. “That’s what I expect,” he said.
“There’s some talk to indicate it won’t,” said Denny. He was in a black
mood, and this young superintendent, who was making his fortune instead
of hearing arms, came in for a share of his contempt.
“When you hear any such talk, Mr. Denny, discourage it,” said Ross. “The
men won’t gain by fighting with us over this matter.”
“I guess,” observed Denny, brutally, “that if you were any good for
fighting you would be elsewhere, Mr. Ross. Get up, boys!” He cracked his
whip and walked on beside his horses.
[Illustration: “THREE OF US WERE RIDING DOWN THE SLOPE OF THE GREAT,
GRASSY HILLS”—page 269
_From the drawing by W. H. D. Koerner_]
“That brought the blood to his face, didn’t it?” he said to the boy, with
a laugh.
Beside the road and up over the rising meadows ran a ridge of freshly
turned earth. “It looks,” said the boy, after a silence, “as if we
wouldn’t make many more trips.”
“Yes. Once they begin pumping oil through that pipe-line, it’s back to
the farm for you and me. Well—teaming has been a lift for me, anyway,
this winter.”
“I’ve got three hundred dollars all my own,” said the boy, proudly. “It
will start me in at college some time—when father comes home.”
“It’s more, I guess, than a good many have saved up.” Denny glanced back
along the line of wagons. “And when they’re cut off from their day’s
work—I expect there will be trouble.”