THINGS HAPPENING
ONE of the delights of leaving home is coming back, at least so I always
felt about my beloved Bracken. I indulged in many little jaunts during
the summer but each home-coming was as pleasant as the trips. First
there had been the house-party at Maxton, which had been so full of good
times, then a short stay at home and almost before I had settled myself,
a hurry call from the Tuckers to go to a mountain camp run by some very
spunky girls from Richmond, the Carters.
Those days in camp were a delightful experience and quite an eye-opener
as to what girls can do if it is up to them. The Carter girls had been
brought up in extravagant luxury, but when their father had a nervous
breakdown and they suddenly found themselves with no visible means of
support, they jumped in and ran a week-end boarding camp on the side of
a mountain in Albemarle, and actually supported the whole family and
made some money besides.
They were the busiest people I ever saw, but they managed to tuck in a
lot of fun along with it. I certainly hope to see more of those girls,
as they interested me tremendously. Douglas was the oldest; she seemed
to be the balance wheel for the family. I never saw such poise in a
young girl,--not a bit "society," either. She had given up college and
was going to stay at home and help. Helen was the next, a stylish
creature with more clash and swing to her than even my beloved Tweedles.
She was the one who directed the cooking as though she had been catering
to boarders all her life, and I was told that she had never thought of
such a thing until the spring before, when her father got ill. She
evidently had no head for money and I am afraid had an extravagant way
with her that gave poor Douglas some trouble.
Then came Nan, a perfect love of a little thing, all poetry and charm
but with a conscience that made her do her duty in spite of preferring
to live in the clouds. Lucy was the youngest girl and showed promise of
being perhaps the best-looking of all the very handsome sisters, but she
was too young to say for certain. At any rate, she was a very attractive
child. Then there was Bobby, the little brother, an _enfant terrible_
and a perfect little duck.
Mr. Carter was the most pathetic figure I have ever seen: a big, strong
man, accustomed to action and power, reduced to letting his daughters
make a living for him. He seemed to have lost the power of
concentration, somehow. Mr. Tucker said he thought he would get well but
it was going to take a long time. He had worked beyond mental endurance
trying to keep his family in luxury.
Mrs. Carter was the kind of woman who reconciles one to being a
half-orphan, not that my little mother would ever have been that kind,
but I mean it is better to be motherless than to have the kind she was.
I thought she was very pretty, very gracious, with a wonderful social
gift, but the kind of woman who flops at the first breath of disaster.
Those Carter girls will have her on their hands just like a baby until
the end of time. Whenever she was crossed, she simply went to bed in a
ravishing boudoir cap and bed sacque and there she lolled until she
carried her point.
The Carters were so interesting to me that I should like to tell more
about them but they really should be in a book all to themselves, they
and their week-end camp. I had never been right in the mountains before,
but after my stay among them I felt that I liked it even better than the
seashore. Father said that the last wonderful thing I saw was always the
most wonderful thing in the world. He also said that that was just as it
should be. That when persons begin to look backward all the time instead
of forward, the sutures of their skulls are too firmly knit together and
all of their pleasures have to be of memory. New things make no
impression on their brains. He said he intended to keep his skull in a
semi-pliable state like a baby's and go on looking at the world as a
rattle for him to have a good time with.
I had often thought that my dear father spent a terribly humdrum
existence for a man of his ability and intense interest in current
events. While I loved the country in general and Bracken in particular,
I also loved to get out into the world occasionally and get a new
outlook, a different view-point as it were; get somewhere where things
were happening. Nothing much ever seemed to me to happen in the country.
One day I said as much to him. He smiled and drew me to him.
"Why, honey, things are happening all the time in the country just as
much as in town. I like to get away occasionally, too, but not because I
want to be where things are happening,--in fact, I like to get away from
so many things happening at once as they do in my life here as a country
doctor. The things that happen in cities I feel more impersonal about."
"But you like to read about the things that happen in cities."
"Yes, and city people like to read about the things that happen in the
country, too. Aren't all the popular magazines filled with stories of
rural life?"
"Ye-s! But they are romances that are made up."
"But not made up out of whole cloth! Come and go with me to-day on my
rounds."
"Oh, I'd love to, but Miss Pinkie Davis has come to sew for me and I
have to be here to help."
"Let her stay and we will give her a holiday. Poor Miss Pinkie has
precious few holidays. She can read all the new magazines and rest her
busy fingers."
Of course Miss Pinkie was agreeable to the arrangement. She did have
very few holidays and no time to read the romances she craved. We left
her ensconced in a hammock on the shady porch with a pile of magazines
beside her and a beatific smile on her paper doll countenance. Something
interesting was already happening in the country, at least something
interesting to Miss Pinkie.
It was a wonderful day in late September. The winter corn had been cut
and stacked in shocks that always reminded me of Indian wigwams. The
tobacco had been housed the week before and now from each tobacco barn
arose a mist of blue smoke. Groups of men could be seen standing around
every barn gathered there to take part in the sacred rite of curing the
green tobacco. A steady fire must be kept up day and night, and all the
men in the countryside seemed to feel it could not be done without the
personal supervision of each and every one of them.
"Suppose the women had some important steady cooking to do where the
fire had to be kept up day and night, do you think they would have to
call in all the other women in the county to assist?" laughed Father.
"Men are funny animals."
"The tobacco crop was pretty good, wasn't it?" I asked.
"Fine! Never saw a better. I guess many a poor soldier in the trenches
will be thankful that it is so. They say this war is being fought on
the wheat and tobacco crops." I thought Father gave me a sly glance,
but when I asked him what he was looking at he said nothing much, he
only thought my nose was growing a little.
Everybody had a word of greeting for Dr. Allison as we drove by. We were
stopped again and again, sometimes for a word of advice from the family
physician as to Jim's sore throat or Mary's indigestion; sometimes to
prescribe for a hog or cow that was indisposed, and once to decide if
San Jose scale had attacked a peach orchard. We could not stop long with
each person as we were on a hurry call, but Father always had a moment
to spare; and then the colt had to make up for lost time and was given
free rein at every good stretch of road.
The colt was the colt by courtesy and habit. He had long ago passed the
skittish age, but his spirit was one of eternal youth and his ways so
coltish that no other name seemed to suit him. One could as soon think
of Cupid's growing up to be an old gentleman as the colt's ever becoming
a safe, steady nag. Enough things happened in the country for him, and
he thought that each thing that happened was something for him to dance
and prance about. A flock of belated blackbirds twittering in an oak
tree was enough to make him get the bit in his teeth and run a quarter
of a mile. A rabbit running across the road was something to shy
over,--and I agree with the colt in that. As many times as I have seen
it, there is something about a Molly Cottontail as she lopes across the
road that always startles me. She bobs up so suddenly from nowhere and
disappears as rapidly into the nowhere.
Driving the colt was an excitement in itself that must have kept life
from becoming dull to my dear father. There could be no loafing on that
job. Reins had to be well up in hand and the driver must be fully
cognizant of things that the imaginative animal no doubt looked upon as
possible enemies. Sometimes I think he was playing a game with himself
and making excitement to keep his existence from being humdrum. At any
rate, it was great fun to be behind the spirited animal on that crisp
September morn. No one could drive so well as Father. He had a sure,
steady, gentle but firm touch on the rein that soothed the most nervous
horse. Father's driving always reminded me of Zebedee's dancing.
Our hurry call was to a young farmer's wife. The gates were wide open as
though we were expected and no obstacles were to delay us. The husband,
Henry Miller, was waiting for us at the stile block. His face was drawn
and white and great tears were rolling down his weather-beaten cheeks.
"She's awful bad off, Doctor. I'm afraid she's gonter die," he whispered
huskily.
"Oh no, my son! I have no idea of such a thing. Maybe you had better
unhitch my horse. He is not much on the stand. Page, you help him,
please."
Now Father knew perfectly well that I could look after the colt by
myself, but he simply wanted to occupy Mr. Miller. Silently we undid the
straps and led him to the stable. I realized he was feeling too deeply
to listen to my chatter, so I kept very quiet. When we started back to
the house I told him he must not bother about me,--that I had a book and
would just make myself at home out in the summer-house.
"I will come, too," he faltered. "Looks like I'll go crazy if I have to
stay alone."
"Oh, do come! Maybe you would like me to read to you."
"No, Miss Page! Just let me talk to you. You see I feel so bad about
Ellen because she ain't been back to see her folks. I didn't know she
wanted to go, but it seems she did and didn't like to say so. I ought to
have known about it. If I hadn't have been a numskull I would a-known.
I've been so happy just to be with her that I never thought she wasn't
just as happy to be with me."
"Why, Mr. Miller, I am sure she was. Everybody is always saying how
happy Mrs. Miller is. Only the other day I heard Sally Winn declare she
never saw such a contented young married woman. Sally says lots of
young married women are not happy; that it takes a long time for them
to get used to husbands instead of sweethearts; but that your wife
didn't have to do that because you seemed just like a sweetheart all the
time."
"Did she say that,--did she truly? I wonder what made her think it."
"Something your wife told her, I reckon!"
"Oh, thank you! Thank you for that! She could have gone to her mother if
I had known she wanted to."
"Of course she could, but maybe she did want to go to her mother and
didn't want to leave you. I bet that was the reason she didn't tell you
she wanted to see her mother. She knew you would insist upon her going,
and then she would have had to leave you."
Now the poor anxious young man was smiling. He wiped his eyes and
grasped my hand.
"You are powerful like Doc Allison, Miss Page. He knows how to cure a
sick spirit just as well as a sick body, and you sure can comfort a
fellow, too."
There was the creak of a screen door being hastily opened on the side
porch of the farmhouse and an old colored woman came running out. Henry
Miller jumped to his feet but could not go to meet her. Fear seemed to
grip him. What news was she bringing?
"Marse Hinry, it's a boy! It's a boy!"
"A boy?"
"Yassir, a boy, an' jes' as peart as kin be, an' Miss Ellen----"
"Is she dead?"
"Daid! Law, chile, she is the livinges' thing you ever seed an' what's
mo' she is a-axin' fer you jes' lak she can't stan' it a minute longer
'thout she see you. Baby cryin' fer you, too!" and sure enough we did
hear a faint squeaky cry issuing from an upstairs room.
The newly-made parent sprinted to the house as though he were in a
Marathon race, and the old colored woman and I looked at each other and
wiped the tears off that would roll down our cheeks.
"Young paws allus is kinder pitable," she remarked, and then hastened
back to her labors.
Father came out soon, his lean face beaming with smiles, his arm thrown
around the shoulders of the ecstatic Henry. We were to stay to dinner at
the farmhouse, much to the delight of the old colored cook. It was
deemed a great privilege in the county to have Doc Allison stop for
dinner.
"I done made a dumplin' fer Marse Hinry," she said, as we were sitting
down to the hospitable board. "In stressful times men-folks mus' eat or
they gits ter broodin' on they troubles, an' whin men-folks gits ter
broodin' if'n they ain't full er victuals fo' yer know it they is full
er liquor."
As Henry Miller was a most respectable, church-going young man this
amused Father very much.
"That's so, Aunt Min, so you feed him up. He had better look out,
anyhow, because before you know it that young man upstairs will be
whipping him."
This delighted the negress, who chuckled with glee as she passed the
dumplings.
"I is glad it's a boy 'cep'n' they is been so many boys born here lately
that this ol' nigger is beginning ter s'picion that these here battles I
hear 'bout is goin' ter spread this-a-way. In war time all the gal
babies is born boys."
"Oh, I hope not, Aunt Min," said Father gravely.
"Yassir! An' the snakes! I never seed the like of snakes this summer
gone by. That means the debble is busy an' the debble is the father of
war."
"True, true!" sighed the doctor. "Well, I hope it won't come to us until
the youngster upstairs is able to help defend us."
While we were at dinner, Father was called up on the Millers' telephone.
Mrs. Reed, an old lady on the adjoining farm, was very ill and the
doctor must leave his dumpling unfinished and fly to her. The colt was
harnessed with the expedition used in a fire engine house and we were on
our way in an incredibly short time.