it; come out, Marjory Daw, and listen to this;” and Billy rushed to open
the screen door and fairly pulled his wife back to her chair, upon the
arm of which he perched.
“Would you like I should wash up all that load of dishes, Mis’is Kent? I
thought, as I lit out so sudden, I’d come back and offer,” said a voice
from the darkness, and Sapphira stumbled up the steps.
“All what dishes, and who is this?” asked Billy.
“It’s part of a little joke that I’ve asked your wife to keep quite
between ourselves for the present,” said the wife of the Head of the
Firm, tucking Marjory’s hand into her arm; “and if the Junior Partner is
willing to protect us, I feel quite like walking down to see Cousin
Martin Cortright and Lavinia.”
VIII
THE ADOPTION OF ALBERT AND VICTORIA
=AUGUST=—THE CORN MOON
It all happened in August, the limp and lazy month of the year abhorred
by Martha Saunders, born Corkle. It surely requires a certain amount of
natural philosophy, adaptability to fruit and salad lunches, and an
aptitude for lounging in shady places and watching the grass grow, or
gazing through the trees skyward from the depth of a hammock, to make
August even a mildly pleasurable month. Night is August’s strong point;
her full moon sheds a placid coppery light, making the glistening green
of the cornfields, heavy in ear, look wet and cool; but in the daytime,
the Harvest Fly proclaims the heat insistently, mould born of heavy dew
invades the pantry, and the milk is curdled by the shock of frequent
thunder.
All the defects of the month sink into her soul, but for none of the
assuasions does English-born Martha care. She would not effect even a
temporary compromise with her sturdy red-meat diet; she considers
lounging of any kind a sin, and the very sight of a hammock calls up
most unpleasant memories.
The year that she married Timothy and left our house for the cottage at
the poultry farm on the hill above, I gave her one of these offending
articles to hang in the shade of some apple trees overlooking the coops,
thinking it would be a point of vantage for her. But no, the thing was
barely put in place and swaying in the breeze, when her substantial form
came from the house and stood before us, arms folded, head erect, but
eyes closed: “Mrs. Evan,” she said, moistening her lips conspicuously,
“I thank you kindly for your wish, but if it please you, Timothy shall
take _it_ down again, for those things are more than I can stand for.
Oh, yes, I’ve tried one, and when I was in it, I was minded of the ship
the morn after the third night out, which being a storm, the ’atches
were down and the smells not working out, took a good clutch on the
stummick, so that a fine cup of tea couldn’t find lodging there, the
ship still heaving short all the time; and no disrespect intended, Mrs.
Evan.”
As Martha came from a county in old England of peculiarly equable
climate, she lacked her usual energy in the New England August, and a
sort of mental prickly heat usually settled upon her, more trying than
the bodily variety. In fact, the most strenuous part of the season’s
labour was over: the early chicks were already broilers; the next group
were firm on their feet, and the late ones not yet to be set; while the
old hens spent all their time kicking up the dust and moulting with a
thoroughness sometimes embarrassing to the beholder.
By this time also the jam and jelly gamut had been run through
strawberries, currants, gooseberries, raspberries, and the rest, leaving
only peaches, the spicy beach plums, and quinces for the future, so that
Martha’s capable hands were fairly empty, save for the bit of housework,
and what was that with a husband as canty and well-drilled as Timothy?
Thus it came about that, into what should have been Martha’s vacation
time, unrest entered, and each year she managed to worry herself and
prod Timothy into the pursuit of some new scheme which, fortunately,
generally came to an end with the first cool day of autumn.
“The woman’s harvest spells” were what Timothy called this mild sort of
summer madness, and in speaking of it to father, he once said: “Of
coorse ye ken, Dochtor, that some weemen are mickle like their own
settin’ hens: when busy season’s over, they’r nae content to scratch
beetles in the bonny fresh grass in the pasture, and moult quiet like,
but they must raise up dust and maak the feathers fly. Hecht! Dochtor,
ye ken, ye ken, and naught said, I see it in yer eye!”
In one of these temporary summer periods, Martha had become a convert to
Christian Science, but backslid before winter, because she continued to
have the nosebleed, for which she had paid no small sum to be cured by
absent treatment, and about the failure of this method she expressed her
mind freely.
“Tush, tush, woman, and dinna fash yoursel,” said Timothy, with
twinkling eyes. “Doubtless they meant ye weel, but their minds was na
pooerful enoo to send the healin’ through sic braw oak trees as we hae
hereaboot! Man has to stick up poles like birds’ twigs to catch this new
no-wire telegraph, so mebbe had we a braw toor on the hoose to draw it
down, yer nose might catch the benefit o’ their far-away healin’!”
Then Martha sniffed and eyed her spouse dubiously, for his Scotch birth
should have made it impossible for him to joke, even though constant
contact with father and Evan had inoculated him with the tendency.
The next August it was the Salvation Army that stirred Martha’s
religious conscience, for she had two of these useful articles,—one
that guided her actions as regards life in general, and another that was
wholly devoted to the interests of her beloved Mr. Evan and his family.
She took this second conversion in a very matter-of-fact way, but
insisted that Timothy should go with her to some round-up meetings over
in Bridgeton. For a few weeks matters went well; Martha sewed violently
all through the sweltering days on shirts for reformed convicts, until
one evening a pretty lassie, young enough twice over to be his daughter,
had innocently asked Timothy to take part in a street service, at the
same time showing him how to pound and twirl a tambourine.
“I’ll not have my man made a monkey of, hussy! He’s as knowin’ as any of
your officers, if his figure is a bit warped,” she proclaimed, and
straightway left for home, declaring, as she crossed the threshold,
“Them as can’t hold to and be content with the Established Church of
England had better do without benefit of Gospel;” and Timothy, Dissenter
as he was, had cautiously responded “Amen!”
But this particular and unforgettable August, a far more serious
distemper had fallen upon Martha Corkle Saunders: the race suicide idea
had not only penetrated her brain, but had therein incubated to such an
extent that not only was Timothy’s peace of mind destroyed, but the
unrest of the situation enveloped us as well.
All normal women are more or less fond of children; and Martha, being no
exception to the rule, had alternately spoiled and ruled my Ian and
Richard until they had escaped from her as full-fledged schoolboys, it
being shortly after this time that the hysterical screed appeared.
Suddenly Martha fell into an attitude of melancholy self-reproach; she
was childless; and so was Timothy, and she immediately saw, as mirrored
in themselves, the extinction of the English race. In vain did I remind
her that as her first husband, “not being durable,” as she expressed it,
had lived but a short time, while she was well faced toward sixty when
she married Timothy, no reproach could be attached either to her
maternal instinct or to her race loyalty. My words fell unheeded. “Our
Queen,”[1] she replied, “had nine all by one marriage; she would expect
something of me,” and straightway fell to crying, a thing that Martha
had never been known to do before under any stress, either of joy or
grief.
“But what can you do?” I gasped; then an idea struck me; “it isn’t
possible that you are thinking of adopting a child at your age?”
“That’s my very mind, Mrs. Evan, that is, leastways, _children_, young
children, two at the very least, following out your own idea that an
only child is quite unfortunate, and no disrespect intended.”
“But do you realize what it means?” I pursued relentlessly; “your whole
life changed, broken rest, no more quiet meals for Timothy, sickness and
teething, amusements to be supplied as well as schooling. When children
are born to us we are always, at least, comparatively young, and
everything seems natural and a matter of course; but you and dear old
rheumatic, set-in-his-ways Tim! I think it would be cruel. The sun must
be affecting your brain.”
“Cruel it may be, Mrs. Evan; duty is cruel, and so is death itself, but
my mind is made up.”
“And, pray, how will adopting some one else’s children prevent race
suicide in your particular case?”
“It won’t be my _family_, to be sure, Mrs. Evan, but they must be
_English_ children, and no other; that is the race part of it. I’ve
spoken to Dr. Russell, Mrs. Evan, to see what he can do about it, mayhap
in Bridgeton or at the hospital.”
“What did Timothy say when you told him?” I ventured weakly, after the
long pause had become awkward, Martha standing, as she was, erect yet
respectful, the drops of sweat upon her forehead, above which the pink
bow of her cap quivered, it seemed, with imparted nervousness.
“Timothy Saunders quoted Scripture, Mrs. Evan, as a right-minded man
should in solemn moments; he says, humble like, ‘The Lord gave and the
Lord hath taken away: blessed be the name of the Lord!’ I’m not quite
minded what he fits the words to, but the spirit o’ resignment is right
and dutiful.” So saying, Martha dropped a melancholy courtesy and left
me under cover of rescuing a very fat and apoplectic Plymouth Rock hen,
who, having worked her way partly through a hole in the fence, was
trying to back out against the grain of the feathers that securely
anchored her.
“Poor Timothy!” I said to myself; “I wonder what you meant; is it your
comfortable home, won so late in life, that you fear you are in danger
of losing, or were your remarks merely spoken on general principles?”
That night I talked the matter over with father. Yes, Martha had spoken
to him, and all he could do was to postpone the event as long as
possible by failing to find suitable children. He had tried to
compromise the matter by suggesting a pretty little orphan girl of ten,
who came of good American people, but was homeless. No, this would not
do. Two children of English parentage, if English birth was impossible,
not necessarily babies, but young enough to have no recollections—this
was what Martha demanded.
* * * * *
Early one morning, of the second week of August, Effie, Timothy’s niece,
who had been our waitress for some years, came knocking at our bedroom
door long before the usual hour, at the same time saying something that
I did not understand. I answered that I was awake, thinking that she had
merely mistaken the time; but the knocking and talking continued, and I
went to the door with a feeling of apprehension lest father might be
ill, or something have happened to the boys, who were spending a few
days up at the Bradfords’.
There stood the usually reticent Effie, hands clasping and unclasping
nervously with half-suppressed excitement, while her tongue flew so fast
that I had to listen keenly to catch even an idea of her meaning.
“Nobody’s ill, ma’am, only there’s twins left up at Uncle Timothy’s,
fine big ones, a boy and a girl, ma’am.”
“What?” I managed to say, going into the hall and closing the door
behind me.
“It came about this way: Aunt Martha didn’t rest well last night, as I
make out, and she went into the sitting-room and lay on the lounge. Just
as it was coming light, she was minded to get up and turn off some work
before the sun heated her head, as it’s been doing lately, but somehow
she dozed off again. Then wagon wheels going up the Bluffs road stirred
her, and she says to herself, ‘Those lazy Polack milk pedlers above are
late this morning,’ three o’clock being their time of starting for
Bridgeton.
“Howsomever, the next minute she thought she heard a step on the porch,
and then, raising the blind, she saw a man hurry out of the yard.
“Going back to the bedroom to call Uncle Timothy, she heard and saw that
which made her stand still and let out a yell that uncle said nigh
stopped his heart, for on the floor right under the open window was two
babies sprawlin’ about as if just waked, and when they set their eyes on
her, they began to cry both together (which was small wonder, ma’am,
seeing the figger aunty is in her nightcap), until she fell back quite
weak in her chair.
“Uncle Timothy shook on some clothes, and came over for me to stay with
aunty while he hitched up.
“‘Where are you going?’ says I, thinking the doctor had an early call
out.
“‘To take the brats down to the constable on their road to the Orphan
House at Bridgeton,’ he growled, ‘Timothy Saunders’ hoose being no dump
for gypsy strays.’
“But when I gets over to aunty’s, she’d picked herself together, and the
two babies were sitting up among the pillows, crumbing crackers into the
bed, she chirping to ’em, looking at ’em as if she couldn’t unglue her
eyes from theirs.”
“Sitting up! How old are these babies, pray?” I asked.
“Oh, a matter of a year or more, I’m thinking, ma’am, reading by the
teeth and the way they can pull to their feet,” said Effie, catching her
breath in the short interval.
“Then aunty turns to me and fairly wizzles my stummick with her next
words. ‘Look, Effie,’ says she, ‘see the doings of the Lord, a boy and a
girl, and English-born, no doubt, if but from the red of their cheeks
and their noses, shaped strong and high like our blessed Queen’s, and no
disrespect intended.
“‘Come next Sunday, moreover, I’ll have them baptized Albert and
Victoria to give them a fair start, even if their poor dead parents as
is dead and gone did see to it, as most like they did, being English;
twice will only set the colour better.’
“‘Are their parents dead? Did they fetch a note?’ said I.
“‘Are ye a silly,’ snapped aunty; ‘would living parents spill such angel
hinfants into strangers’ windows, think ’ee? Don’t stand there gapin’ at
me, but trot down and ask Mrs. Evan for the kindness of a few of her
lads’ old slips if she’s any laid by, for I mistrust from the smell of
those they’ve on that they’ve been a long journey from soap, and when
I’ve had the bonnies in a tub, I’ll trim them up fresh. Why don’t ye
budge, lass? Are ye rooted?’
“For, ma’am, I couldn’t stir, thinking aunty had gone clean daft, and
while I was sort of getting wind to start, Uncle Timothy came in with a
straw clothes-basket.
“‘Here, woman, put a quilt in this; it will make a good coop for yon
strays,’ he said, reaching over to the peg where hung his top-coat.
“‘They’re well enough where they be until I can get a proper cradle
rigged,’ said aunty, trying to make friendly with them, which they
mistrusted.
“‘Cradle! They’ll need no cradle!’ said uncle. ‘I’m harnessed now to
take them to the Orphan House. Come ye along wi’ me, Effie; they may be
awkward freight; ye’ll be back again before your leddy’s up.’
“‘Orphan House! Bridgeton! and that’s where they’ll _not_ go. Don’t ye
sense, man, that the Lord has sent them to us to teach us our bounden
duty? They’ll be our children by adoption quick as the law allows it,
man. Orphan House, Bridgeton, indeed!’
“I got a swift squint at Uncle Timothy’s face then, ma’am, and I’ve
never seen him look so dour since the day he married and I helped him
into his tight new boots; it was juist awful!
“‘Dinna ye heap disrespect upon the Lord, woman,’ he said at last;
‘’twas not he put them in here; he doesn’t sneak babes in windows of the
aged; his work is seen of men and in the open. Some rogue has put upon
us for a pair of old fules, and I’ll not have it.’
“‘But ye know, Timothy, I’ve spoken lately to the doctor about a pair of
bairns, and ye never gainsaid me,’ said aunty, beginning to cry, and a
bit overcome for the time by his flow o’ words, for uncle never speaks
much.
“‘Taking the known born with our eyes open is one thing, but a grab in
the dark, pushed into the hand by others, is another. Ha’ ye looked in
their bundle?’ said he, rolling over with his foot a paper parcel that
had fallen under a chair. ‘Open it, Effie, lass.’
“My fingers could scarce untie the string for hurry, but all there was
within was a few ragged bits of coarse clothes and some biscuits like
the ones that they were crumbing.
“‘Dry food for bairns,’ said Uncle Timothy, picking up one and twirling
it between his fingers. ‘It’s time for the milking now. I’ll speak to
the dochtor and question around a bit before I take the youngsters over;
that’ll be after deenner, gin I find no trace of those that brought
them. A small, dark man, say you, but you saw naught of his face? It’s
going to be michty hot this forenoon,’ continued uncle, weakening, when
he saw how Aunt Martha was taking on. Then I slipped out and ran down to
tell you, ma’am, and ask for the clothes.”
Promising to hunt up some garments, I returned to Evan, considerably
dazed by Effie’s recital. We had all hoped that Martha’s “Harvest spell”
would vanish before the infants filling her numerous requirements should
appear, but we had foolishly reckoned without considering the
unexpected, which is always quite sure to happen.
“Don’t worry,” said Evan the cheerful; “the town authorities will be
only too glad to be relieved of the charge of the waifs, as a matter of
course, but at least an attempt will be made to find where they came
from; and though there’s nothing to prevent Martha’s having them
christened, the matter of legal adoption will require more time, and
something may turn up. Don’t you realize, Barbara, that it is a most
unusual thing for children a year old or more to be abandoned?
Foundlings are usually a few hours, or at most a few weeks, old. It’s to
the credit of human nature that few of even the lowest people will give
up their cubs when once they’ve learned to know them.”
“Perhaps, however, these are orphans, and it is the people who have them
second-hand that wish to get rid of them,” I said.
“That may be; but there was a certain method in the place chosen for
leaving them that makes me think near-by people, possibly in Bridgeton,
had a hand in it; if so, it will leak out.”
So, angry as I was at Martha’s total lack of common sense, but
remembering all she had been to me and my boys in the past dozen years,
I made up a bundle of such things as the needy hospital had not claimed,
and after breakfast took it up to the chicken farm, where I found that
father had preceded me.
It is useless to tell a woman over thirty that men are lacking in
curiosity! Father asked two questions to my one. However, he pronounced
Albert and Victoria sound of limb and lungs, but seemed to regard the
whole matter as a joke, even going so far as to admire their pronounced
Guelph noses, and was not as judicious as I had expected in the advice
he gave to Martha.
The doings of the next three weeks I will give as recorded in my
Experience Book. It had been a long time since anything had occurred
worthy of record, so I resorted to it to relieve my feelings.
_August 9._ The investigation as to the origin of Albert and Victoria
has proved a complete failure; no one can be found who saw a horse and
wagon driven by a strange, small, dark man on the day of their arrival
or the night before. Already Martha’s neat cottage has suffered a
change, and the sitting-room looked this morning like a ship’s deck
swept by a hurricane; all objects that could be hung up or stowed away
on mantel-shelf or in cupboard had been removed, and the chairs were
huddled together in a corner. The twins move about in a very lively
manner: Victoria, creeping on her hands and right knee, uses her left
leg as an oar; while Albert, not content with this method, pulls himself
slowly upon his feet and totters forward a few steps on a run, only to
topple over, catching at anything within reach.
This morning, according to Effie, he caught at the cloth that covered
the pan of evenly risen bread dough that Martha was about to mould into
loaves, upset it, falling backward into the wreck that made a most
comfortable air-cushion.
Timothy’s bed has been moved upstairs, as the children have never been
“trained rightly to sleep in their beds,” as Martha expresses it, and
the process is painful to a listener, who, as Martha says of Timothy, is
“a bachelor boiled through, and hasn’t maternal instinks!”
_August 12._ The twins babble away at a great rate between themselves,
and Martha, anxious to find meaning in their utterances, called me in to
translate. “It sounds to me like broad Yorkshire they do be trying for,
Mrs. Evan,” she said in perfect earnest; “but then, again, it mought be
Lancaster; that talk is so overlappin’ ’tis hard to reach.”
To my ear, even with the echo of Ian and Richard’s baby talk in it, the
sounds are wholly alien and barbaric, a fit match for the carnal
appetites of the youngsters. All in a minute, when Martha’s back was
turned, Victoria hastily devoured the contents of the dish wherein food
had been put on the stoop for the hounds, while Albert howled and kicked
with symptoms of a fiendish temper because he was not quick enough to
get any of the scraps.
Victoria will be ill to-morrow!
“The ’ounds make too free!” ejaculated Martha, wrathfully (she who had
raised many a fall litter by tiding them over cold days in the corner of
our spotless kitchen). “Timothy must keep them off and fodder them at
the stables and not put temptation in the way of Christian babes!”
By the way, I had almost forgotten to record that the twins were
christened down at the Rectory yesterday afternoon. There was a
difficulty about their second name that threatened to disrupt Martha’s
plans.
Timothy, who has been strangely mild and unassertive of late, crossing
Martha in nothing, refused to lend the honoured name of Saunders to what
he persists in calling “the aliens.” Martha argued, but to no purpose;
his name, he said, was his own; if he had shared it with her, she had no
right to peddle it outside the family.
This, even the Rector was obliged to agree was just. Then an inspiration
seized Martha. If not Saunders, why not Corkle? The late Corkle could
raise no objection, and it would be a sort of belated compliment, and at
the same time a delicate way of keeping his name in the ears of his
successor!
13. Victoria was _not_ ill; Martha is, however, beginning to look
fagged; ten maternal days are leaving marks I do not like to see; the
wholesome rosy cheeks look dark and veiny. Also some of her cast-iron
theories as to the management of infants (which, by the way, she has
never attempted to practise upon mine) are disintegrating like a paper
bag that has fallen into a water barrel, until only a semblance remains.
Martha’s chief local aversion is a Polish family named Potowski who,
unknown to the neighbourhood, unfortunately, leased the land adjoining
us on the north, a couple of years ago. Against these people, sellers of
blue milk, and as she expresses it, “Sabbath-hoed vegetables,” more than
suspected of being Hebrews, she set her face and has full cause, for
scarcely a day passes but one of the ten Potowski children overflow into
our chicken farm and seldom retreat empty-handed, anything being
acceptable at home, from an egg to a fistful of oats or an armful of
hay.
So what was my surprise this afternoon to see Albert and Victoria crawl
unchidden across the grass plot between the rear porch and dividing
fence, and exchange much unintelligible gossip with a group of young
Potowskis on the other side, while the new Martha sat under the bell
pear tree fashioning some small creeping aprons with fingers that
trembled strangely, too worn out either to chide or follow.
The new Martha, in contrast to the old, was rather dishevelled; no
collar and brooch topped her tightly buttoned blue and white calico
bodice; the parting in her brown hair was decidedly on the bias, and not
only did the hair itself lack the usual polish, but suggested that coal
ashes and not brushing had been its portion that day. While the tasty
cap, the crowning glory of the mature British matron, of and below, a
certain class, was altogether lacking.