This etext was transcribed by Les Bowler
[Picture: Book cover]
[Picture: Azalea and Carin and Annie Laurie]
ANNIE LAURIE
AND AZALEA
BY
ELIA W. PEATTIE
* * * * *
_Illustrations by_
_Joseph Pierre Nuyttens_
* * * * *
[Picture: Publisher’s logo]
* * * * *
The Reilly & Britton Co.
Chicago
* * * * *
Copyright, 1913
by
The Reilly & Britton Co.
* * * * *
_Annie Laurie and Azalea_
* * * * *
_Annie Laurie and Azalea_
_beg to be presented to_
_Loraine_, _Catherine_, _Elizabeth and Bernice_
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I TWO AND ONE MAKE—HOW MANY? 11
II ANNIE LAURIE PACE 30
III TRIAL WITHOUT JURY 47
IV A RAINY NIGHT 68
V THE SUMMERS 87
VI SUNDAY 100
VII THE SIGNAL 119
VIII THE MYSTERY 128
IX THE DISBROWS 147
X SAM 167
XI MARCHING ORDERS 181
XII “THE DOLL LADY” 198
XIII THE LONG RED ROAD 217
XIV HI’S HOUN’ DOG 231
XV THE VOICE IN THE MIST 247
XVI GOOD FOR EVIL 261
XVII AZALEA’S PARTY 281
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
Azalea and Carin and Annie Laurie _Frontispiece_
Carin stood awaiting them, her hands outstretched 64
Back and forth went her lantern, saying: “All is 122
well! All is well!”
“But you’ve come back, son, to face the music.” 192
“Come in,” she said in a strange voice 266
CHAPTER I
TWO AND ONE MAKE—HOW MANY?
The long red clay road, winding down from the cabin where the McBirneys
lived on their high shelf of Tennyson mountain, was frosted delicately
with white, and by the roadside the curious frost flowers lifted their
heads, as airy-fine as fern. From the half-hidden cabins all around the
semicircle of mountains that skirted the valley of Lee, shafts of smoke
arose, showing that the people were about the business of the day.
Straight, gray and shadowy these smoke-shafts lifted through the
lilac-tinted air; and below in the little town, other shafts of smoke
ascended as if in friendly answer.
Azalea McBirney, in her dark riding skirt and bright knitted cap and
reefer, came running from the cabin with the manner of a girl very much
behindhand.
“Ain’t he there yet, Zalie?” a voice called from the cabin. “Ain’t Jim
brought them ponies around yet?”
“No, mother,” Azalea answered over her shoulder, starting toward the
stable. “Maybe the ponies have been naughty again. I’ll go see.”
“You just stay where you be,” commanded James Stuart McBirney from the
stable. “You’ve got all your work done, ben’t you? Well, that’s all you
have to think about. This here is my job and I mean to do it whatever
comes, though these here ponies certainly do act up on a morning like
this.”
“Well, I _would_ just as soon get my breath for a moment,” Azalea
remarked to nobody in particular, seating herself on the bench by the
side of the door. “As Hi Kitchell’s mother says, ‘I bin goin’ like a
streak o’ lightnin’ since sunup.’”
Her cheeks were, indeed, a trifle over-flushed, and forgetting for a
moment how time was hastening along, and that she and Jim ought already
to be on the road to school, she leaned her head against the side of the
cabin and looked about her contentedly. She loved the scene before her;
loved the pines with their light coating of hoarfrost; loved the
waterfall with its gleaming icicles; loved the scent of the wood-smoke
and the sight of “Molly Cottontail” scampering through the bushes.
Moreover, the kiss of Mary McBirney lay warm on her lips—Mary McBirney
who had taken her in when she was a motherless and friendless girl, and
whom she found it sweet to call mother. “Mother” was a longer word than
Jim—otherwise James Stuart McBirney, the true son of the house—found it
convenient to use when he spoke of the woman who was the background of
his world. “Ma” was the term he chose, and Mary McBirney would not have
cared to have him try any other.
For Jim was just Jim—her own freckled, shy, plucky fellow. He went down
to the district school, riding on the pony the Carsons had given him,
while beside him, quite as if she were his own sister, rode Azalea, who
trusted him to see her through any danger of the road, who laughed as
much as anybody could wish at his “hill billy” jokes, and who never,
never forgot how he had welcomed her into his home, to share all he had,
though there never had, at any time, been very much to share.
Yet, though she had been only the “child wonder” of a wandering “show”
when she came to the McBirney’s—her own poor little mother lying dead in
one of the wagons—it was she, and not Jim, the carefully reared boy, who
had the grand little ways. Jim was a country boy, with a country boy’s
straightforward, simple manners. But about Azalea there was
something—well, something different. So different was she from the
McBirneys that she seemed like a cardinal bird which had been
storm-driven into one of the martin gourds that hung in the high
cross-trees before the McBirney’s door.
All that was easily understood by the few who knew her story. Her
grandfather had been Colonel Atherton, the richest, the proudest, and the
most elegant gentleman in all the countryside. He had owned great
plantations in the old slave days, and had built the beautiful manor
house which their new, wonderfully kind neighbors, the Carsons, recently
had bought. Azalea’s mother had exiled herself by a marriage with a man
of whom no parent could approve, and as misfortune drove her ever lower
and lower, she came at length to be a performer in the miserable roadside
show with which she had come, in her last hour, to the scene of her
father’s old home. That home had long since passed into other hands, and
concerning it Azalea’s mother had told her daughter nothing. It had been
by an accident that she later learned the truth.
When Mr. and Mrs. Carson, the friends who had from the first of their
acquaintance with her endeavored to add to her happiness, learned her
story, they asked her to come into their home to be a sister to their own
girl, Carin. And Azalea in her secret heart had longed to go—more than
she ever would have told, she longed to be with these accomplished and
gracious friends, whose wealth made it possible for them to do almost
anything they pleased, and who seemed pleased to do only interesting
things. But when she remembered the welcome that had been given her by
Mary McBirney, and indeed, by all of the McBirney family, and how she
had, in a way, taken the place of their little dead Molly, she was able
to put temptation from her; and the hour in which she had made her choice
and been gathered in “Ma” McBirney’s arms was the happiest she ever had
known.
So, though she was born Azalea Knox, the granddaughter of Colonel
Atherton, she was now known as Azalea McBirney, the waif the McBirneys
had taken into their cabin to grow up side by side with their son James
Stuart. And all over the Valley of Lee an interest was felt in her;
partly because of her being an orphan, and a child of quaint and lovable
ways, and partly because of a strange happening. Not long after she had
come to live with the good mountain folk, the owner of the show with
which she had once traveled had kidnapped her, and the search for her had
been long and anxious.
When she was rescued and brought back to the home where she was so
welcomed and loved, all of the neighbors had a protective feeling for
her, and rejoiced that the Carsons, who had come down from the North, and
who seemed so eager to be of help to everybody, should have taken her in
to be taught with their daughter. Never had there been such neighbors as
the Carsons in Lee. They made goodness their business, it seemed.
Through them the mountain folk were finding a market for their homemade
wares—their woven cloth and their counterpanes, their baskets and chairs,
and comfort had come into many a home where hitherto there had been cruel
poverty.
But there on the bench by the doorway in the nipping morning air sits
Azalea, with her nose and ears growing redder and redder!
“Jim,” she called, awakening from her reverie, “we’ll be late as sure as
anything.”
“Coming right along now, sis,” answered the boy as he came running from
the stable with the two ponies. “Hop into the saddle, Zalie, and we’ll
just pelt it down the mountain. Here, I’ll hold him. There you are.
Hi—they’re off.”
They surely were. Pa McBirney, busy in his little smithy, heard the
clatter of hoofs and thrust his head from the door.
“Watch out, you two!” he warned.
“We will,” they called in chorus as they dashed on.
“My sakes,” said pa, coming in from the shop and wiping his hands on his
leathern apron, “I trust to luck ma didn’t see ’em going off. Them young
uns are getting too much spirit in ’em to suit me; and as for the ponies,
I think they ought to be cut down on their feed.”
But neither Azalea nor James Stuart was wanting anyone to cut down on
anything. As the firm-footed ponies took the cut-offs, minding neither
curve nor steep, the children shouted with delight.
“Late?” yelled Jim mockingly. “Who said late? We couldn’t be late if we
tried.”
They reached the parting of their ways, and Azalea, who was leading,
turned in her saddle to wave to Jim.
“Good-bye, boy,” she called.
“So long, sis,” he answered, and turned to follow the creek, and then to
mount the hill at the top of which stood the district school. But Azalea
kept on along the low-winding road till she came to The Shoals, from
whose four tall chimneys the smoke mounted into the tinted air.
Benjamin, the polite black boy, was at the horse-block to help her
dismount and to lead away Paprika, her pony; and Tulula Darthula, the
maid, opened the door to welcome her. Azalea spoke a laughing word of
greeting and ran on down the corridor to the schoolroom.
It was a small room, semicircular in shape, opening on the wintry garden.
The rounding portion of the wall was all of glass, which in summer time
gave way to screens, so that it then seemed an actual part of the garden.
Now, the polished panes reflected the flames leaping in the fireplace,
and revealed the frost-fringed hemlocks without. Before the fire sat
Miss Parkhurst, the quiet, gray-eyed governess, and with her, Carin, the
friend whose approval was more to Azalea than anything else in the world
save the love of the new “mother.”
“Oh, here I am, late!” cried Azalea contritely. “Please forgive me,
ma’am.”
Helena Parkhurst gave a pardoning smile.
“I really think we’re ahead of time this morning—Carin and I. Take off
your things, child, and come up to the fire. We’ve been trying to have
it at its best when you came.”
But Azalea’s fingers, stiffened with holding the bridle reins, made sorry
work with her buttons, and Carin flew to her aid.
“You smell like winter, Azalea,” she laughed, sniffing; “all cold and
clean.”
Azalea laughed happily. Whatever this blue-eyed, golden-haired friend of
hers did seemed right to her—nay, better than merely right—complete. It
warmed Azalea more than the glow of the room to have Carin snatch her cap
from her, and pull her reefer off, and tumble her with affectionate
roughness into the chair before the blaze.
“Colonial history again this morning,” said Miss Parkhurst after a time.
“We’re to read about the Delaware and the Virginia Colonies, since
Carin’s ancestors came from the first and Azalea’s from the second.”
“Well, they’ll be different enough, won’t they?” remarked Carin. “They
were different sort of folk before they crossed the Atlantic, and their
differences grew after they settled here. And yet here Azalea and I are,
as alike as can be.”
“But I don’t think the differences of the colonists grew, Carin,” said
Azalea, “and I’m terribly afraid you and I aren’t alike. I couldn’t be
like you if I tried for ever and ever.” She gave a wistful sigh, and
Miss Parkhurst, watching her without seeming to do so, saw the light of
hero-worship in her eyes. She knew that Azalea was one of those who are
born to love hungrily, and to live eagerly; and she was thankful that,
having so hungry a heart, she was able, when it came to a matter of
opinion, to form her own ideas, and to hold to them. Azalea’s heart was
in leading strings to Carin, but her excellent little brain went on its
independent way, though Carin had traveled and studied, and been all her
life with charming and cultivated people, and Azalea had been tended no
more than a patch of wayside daisies.
Miss Parkhurst brought the books they were needing from the library, and
Carin taking hers, sighed happily: “Isn’t it beautiful to be here by
ourselves—just the three of us? No one else would fall into our way of
doing. How nice it is of you, Miss Parkhurst, to let us follow up
whatever idea we’re interested in, and to help us learn all we can about
that subject, instead of making us dash from one thing to another, till
we haven’t a notion what we are trying to learn. I’d never get anywhere,
studying in the old-fashioned way, jumping from subject to subject, and
having to wait for a whole class of stupid creatures to come tagging
along.”
“But you might be the stupid one, you know, Carin,” smiled Miss
Parkhurst. “I’m afraid it doesn’t do to go around the world supposing
yourself to be the cleverest one.”
Carin shrugged her pretty shoulders.
“I don’t think that,” she said. “I always think Azalea the cleverest
one. I’m only saying that we three understand each other, and that we
don’t have to spend half our time explaining, and that we’re just as
contented together as mortals can be.”
And just then the door opened and Mrs. Carson came into the room. Her
face had lost something of the look of transparency it had worn when she
first came to Lee, when she had been fresh from a terrible sorrow, but it
was still pale and strangely tender to Azalea’s admiring eyes.
“I do hope you’ll excuse me, Miss Parkhurst,” she said in her soft voice,
“for breaking into the study hour. But I’ve something important to talk
over, and so I’ve come while all the members of the academy are
together.”
She shook hands with Azalea as she spoke, and patted Carin caressingly on
the shoulder.
“I’ve come,” she went on, “to talk to you about taking in another girl.”
“Another girl!” cried Carin in dismay. “What girl, please, mamma?” She
had sprung to her feet, and stood before her mother with the color
sweeping over her face; but Azalea, keeping her thoughts to herself, grew
paler, and pinched the edge of the table in her effort to keep the tears
of vexation and disappointment from coming to her eyes.
Another girl! And this perfect possession of Carin would be taken from
her, and there’d be, as Carin put it, need to “explain” all of the time.
How could Mrs. Carson spoil such a perfect thing as their association
there? Who else would love to study, and to write, and paint and sing
the way they did? Who else would make a game out of it all, and long to
get to the schoolroom in the morning and hate to leave at night?
“It’s Annie Laurie Pace,” went on Mrs. Carson, apparently taking no heed
of their misery. “Have you met her? Perhaps not, since she goes to the
Baptist Meeting House, and you, Azalea, are such a faithful young
Methodist, and Carin goes with me to the Episcopal Church. But anyway, I
think you must have seen her—a tall girl, with red hair. She’s been
helping me some at The Mountain Industries rooms, and I’ve become well
acquainted with her. She’s ahead of anything she can get at the district
school. Of course I don’t mean that she couldn’t do more mathematics and
that sort of thing, but I am convinced that she has a strength and
originality of thought which is very unusual. She came here this morning
to borrow some books I had offered to lend her, and I have been talking
with her for the last hour. I am so convinced that the work here under
Miss Parkhurst and with you two shining little stars will give her
precisely what she is hungering for, that I have invited her to join
you.”
“But, mamma,” expostulated Carin, “we’ll be wretched with her! She’s a
nice enough girl, I’m sure, and no doubt she’s bright, but she’ll never
be able to really understand Azalea and me, will she, Azalea?”
Azalea said nothing. She was dreadfully embarrassed. She was wondering
if Mrs. Carson had some secret reason for forcing another girl in with
them? Could it possibly be that she—Azalea—who had been a wandering
child, traveling with coarse people in a low circus, was, without knowing
it, doing harm to Carin? Perhaps. Carin was so fine, so gay, so sweet,
so “like a flower” as the song had it which Mrs. Carson sang, that very
likely she seemed no more than a weed beside her.
“Probably that is all I am—a horrid, stupid weed,” said Azalea to herself
bitterly as her thoughts flashed this way and that like troubled birds,
seeking for what was wrong.
“You can see how Azalea hates the idea, mamma,” said Carin. “And as for
me, if that girl comes in here, my education will be ruined.”
She looked a haughty and determined young person as she stood there, her
chin lifted and her blue eyes darting cold fires. Mrs. Carson had a
twinkle in her eye as she surveyed her. Carin had been a gentle princess
in the schoolroom, with Miss Parkhurst for her willing guide and Azalea
her adoring servitor. The truth was, the two girls had become so bound
up in each other that they saw nothing beyond their own horizon. The
dark-eyed girl from the mountain cabin, with her strange, romantic
history, and the blue-eyed one from the mansion, loving romance above all
imaginable things, had made a compact of undying friendship; and
unconsciously, they had also determined to exclude the rest of the world.
“It may seem a little hard for you and Azalea to take Annie Laurie in
just at first, Carin,” Mrs. Carson went on, with no show of
yielding—indeed, quite as if everything were settled—“but she desperately
needs the schooling, and I believe that, without realizing it, you need
her. What do you think, Miss Parkhurst; am I right?”
To the increasing dismay of the friends, Helena Parkhurst nodded her nice
little head.
“One of the chief reasons why a girl should go to school,” went on Mrs.
Carson, smilingly, “is to learn to get along with other girls. You and
Azalea are so wrapped up in each other that you actually don’t see other
girls as they pass you on the road, and it never seems to occur to you to
visit their homes, or to ask them here. It has been borne in upon me for
some time that if I don’t watch out, you’ll become a pair of horrid
little snobs. Of course you wouldn’t know that you were, and equally of
course I wouldn’t admit it to anybody else. But such would be the case,
I feel sure.”
“Oh, mother, we wouldn’t, we wouldn’t!” protested Carin. “Just try us a
little longer and see.”
But at that moment there came a knock at the door, and Mrs. Carson arose
to open it. The girls could see without in the hallway the figure of
Annie Laurie Pace, the red-haired, surprisingly tall girl whom they had
occasionally seen in town; and now it occurred to each of them that they
had not particularly wished to know her.
“Did you say I was to come down here, Mrs. Carson, after I had found that
book?” she asked shyly.
“Why, no,” said Mrs. Carson impulsively, “I didn’t say that, Annie
Laurie, but now that you are here, come in and meet my daughter and her
friend.”
She entered with a quiet dignity, and it took but one second for Carin
and Azalea to see that here would be no timid imitator of their whims.
If “follow-my-leader” was played, it was not at all certain that they
would be in the fore.
“Carin,” said Mrs. Carson, recovering herself from a moment’s
embarrassment, “make your new schoolmate welcome. Annie Laurie Pace,
Azalea McBirney.”
Carin held out a chilly white hand.
“How do you do?” she said stiffly.
Azalea arose and gave her hand to the new girl. She had been a stranger
herself—had many a time been among men and women unknown to her, waiting
wistfully to see if she would be welcomed—and she understood, as Carin
could not possibly, what brought the veiled look in the new girl’s eyes.
Yet she could not venture to offend Carin—her own Carin, whose ways
always seemed charming to her.
“How do you do?” she echoed. “I—I hope you are well, Annie Laurie.
This—this is a very—pleasant school.”
The words stuck in her throat, and she was ashamed to find how much she
wanted to cry.
The new girl looked toward Mrs. Carson.
“Ought I to stay, ma’am?” she asked. “You know I could manage at the
other school some way. Wouldn’t it be better if—”
“You will do us a favor if you stay with us,” Mrs. Carson said. And:
“Yes, stay, my dear,” urged Helena Parkhurst, making the girls realize
for the first time that Annie Laurie had not been presented to Miss
Parkhurst, and that the two must have been acquainted before. How long,
the girls wondered, had this conspiracy been in the air? Had it really
been decided only that morning?
“Will you take up your studies to-day, then, Annie Laurie?” Miss
Parkhurst asked. “Mrs. Carson, do you think her father would object?”
“I can telephone him,” Mrs. Carson replied. “We already have had some
conversation about the matter. He has been thinking of sending Annie
Laurie away to school, but to do such a thing, he said, would leave him
very, very lonely, since Annie Laurie is his only child.”
“Oh, it could be managed,” the girl broke in. “I know it could, but—”
Mrs. Carson raised a white hand.
“It will be quite all right,” she said with gentle firmness. “Miss
Parkhurst, you have three pupils.”
She withdrew smilingly; and in spite of the leaping flame in the
fireplace, and the sunshine stealing like pale gold in at the window, a
chill settled down over the room. It crept into the farthermost corners,
and gleamed cold as little bergs from the eyes of the three girls.
The three girls?
There were two girls—and one girl. And the sum was not yet three.