his brown skin.
"All the difference in the world," he answered in a low voice. Then he
looked as if he were going to say something else, but shut his lips
tight together and didn't. One wouldn't dare speak out the truth like
this, to a rich man one might be supposed to be trying to marry; I
remember enough of what Mother and Vic have told me about proper
behaviour in a debutante, to know that. But I've never wanted to talk
in such a way to any man except Mr. Brett, which is lucky, as he always
understands me; and that's one reason why it's pleasanter to be with
him than any other person I've ever met yet.
XVI
ABOUT THE VALLEY FARM
After all, Mr. Brett's ticket was different from mine again, but I
suppose he couldn't arrange to have the same kind and see something of
me on the journey, because, as I'd asked him, he would have done it if
possible. We went back part of the way we had come the night before, in
the same grand kind of train, as far as Cleveland, which we reached in
the morning, quite early. We got out there, for no fine trains like
that stop at the village near which Mr. Brett's cousins live, and he
said the best thing we could do would be to drive to the farm in a
motor car. It was about forty miles away, but with a good car which he
could easily get, we wouldn't be more than two hours, allowing for bad
roads. If we didn't take a motor, we should have to wait half the
morning for a slow train, and then have a drive at the end, of six or
seven miles in some kind of a country conveyance.
When I hesitated, thinking of expense, Mr. Brett explained that among
his many other occupations, he had once acted as a chauffeur,
therefore, knowing the tricks of the trade and being a sort of
professional himself, he could always hire a motor at a nominal price.
This settled my doubts. We drove in a cab to a hotel, where he left me,
with Vivace, while he went to search for a car. Presently he came back
with a smart grey thing which matched my clothes; and not only was
there a grey chauffeur to go with it, but a grey holland coat for me,
and a grey silk hood with a lace curtain. I do think they do things
well in America.
Mr. Brett wanted to know if I would like a short run about Cleveland
before starting, so I said yes, as I love seeing new things; and it was
beautiful. I don't remember learning Cleveland on the map of the States
when I did geography, so I hadn't realised that it could be important.
But Bournemouth and Folkeston and Harrogate rolled into one wouldn't
fill it, and Cleveland is a great deal grander than any of them. Even
Bellevue Avenue in Newport is hardly handsomer than Euclid; but what an
odd name to give a street! But to me the names of streets in America
don't sound as interesting and individual as ours do.
I looked forward to seeing the country between Cleveland and Aristo
(which is the name of the town nearest to the Valley Farm) because
except for the drives I had had near Newport, I knew nothing at all of
the real country in America. I had an idea that we should pass some
fine country houses and see a number of pretty little nestling
villages.
The name of Aristo was rather impressive and classical sounding, I
thought, and I had visions of meeting on the way pretty girls driving
or riding, and good-looking, well-groomed men such as I had met always
in the country round Newport. But as we went on and on, I was
disappointed. The scenery itself was lovely, rich, and peaceful, with
groves of maple trees which would have been quite new to me if I hadn't
seen a few in the East; but the villages were blots rather than beauty
spots, and we saw only peasants and farm people.
Mr. Brett was driving the car with me beside him, while the chauffeur
sat behind, and I made some such remark to him before I stopped to
remember that his relatives were farm people. I could have bitten my
tongue then, but he didn't seem to be offended.
"Outside the towns in the West there are few of what _you_ would call
gentlefolk," said he, with just the faintest emphasis of good-natured
scorn for English prejudice; "nor are there any 'country houses' as you
understand the name in England. Here people live in the country to till
the land and to live by tilling it; yet they don't call themselves
'peasants,' either. It isn't that they're snobbish and want to seem to
be what they are not, don't think that for a moment. But they--well, I
won't try to describe them. Many people from the Old World would never
understand what they really are, or their point of view; but you will,
Lady Betty. You are quick, and sympathetic, and intelligent; and when I
ask you to define for me the difference between the farmers of Ohio, as
typified by my cousins and their neighbours in Summer County, I shall
be surprised if you don't exactly hit the nail on the head. They'll
surprise you a little at first, I warn you, and for about ten minutes
maybe you won't know what to make of them. But I count on you to see
the point in spite of all your traditions."
"What have my traditions got to do with it?" I asked.
"Wait and see."
I laughed. "Well, I only wish I knew what my traditions are," said I.
"I suppose I ought to know, but I don't think I do."
"You may feel them prickling up and down your spine for a bit, while
you're getting used to a new order of things at the Valley Farm,"
answered Mr. Brett. "And yet I don't know. I shall be enormously
interested in watching the effect upon you, before I--have to say
good-bye."
I forgot everything else he had been saying when I heard that last
sentence.
"Will you have to say good-bye soon?" I asked in a crestfallen voice.
He didn't speak for a minute, perhaps on account of a series of bumps
in the road which, though so pretty, was much worse for driving than
any I have seen at home. I don't believe Englishmen would stand it.
They would keep writing to _The Times_ and signing their letters
"Motorist," or "Sportsman," or "Mother of Ten Cyclists," till somebody
was forced to do something.
At last he said, "To tell you the truth, Lady Betty, I should like to
stop and pay my cousins a little visit, but--I don't know if I have a
right to."
"Oh, why not?" I asked. "Wouldn't they be delighted to keep you?"
"Perhaps. I hope so. But what about you?"
"If it depended one bit on me, you'd make a _long_ visit."
"Wouldn't you really mind seeing me hanging around--sometimes? Just at
meals, you know--or to take you a drive once in awhile?"
I looked at him merrily through my talc window, for I felt happy and
light-hearted, and the world seemed such a very nice place to live in
at that moment.
"Do you truly need to have me answer that question?" I asked. "If you
do, we can't be real friends as I thought, after all."
"You say that because you are kind--too kind to have reflected enough,
perhaps. An accident--the happiest accident in the world for me--has
given me a chance to see something of you, Lady Betty; but do you
understand that only by an accident could a rough fellow like me have
any place at all in your life, no matter how small or temporary? I
don't want to take advantage of that sweet kindness of yours, which is
partly all your own, and partly the essence of your youth and
innocence."
"Now you are making me very cross," said I. "I won't hear you talk so.
You may laugh at me, because we've known each other such a short time,
but really and truly you are the best friend I've ever had. I wouldn't
lose you for anyone or anything in the world, and _I_ don't mean to,
unless you get tired of me--so, there!"
"Tired of you! Good heavens, I tired of you!"
"Very well, then," said I flippantly, "so far as I'm concerned you
needn't say 'good-bye' to the Valley Farm till you feel the first
symptoms coming on."
"Lady Betty," remarked Mr. Brett, "I wonder if there's another girl
like you in the world?"
"According to my Mother, there isn't another so vexing," I replied.
We both laughed; and then he suddenly said, "Here is Aristo."
I stared about wildly. "Where, where?" I asked.
He laughed a great deal more. "Why, you're looking right at the
postoffice and the grocery and drygoods store."
Sure enough, there was a brown wooden building at the top of a dusty
hill we were just climbing; but there was nothing else anywhere, except
a clear brown creek, and some sweet-smelling meadows with a white horse
gazing in a bored way over rather a queer fence, and some cows asleep
under a clump of maple trees on our side of a young birch grove.
"Where's the rest of it?" I went on. "Where are the other shops, and
the houses, and the people?"
"Oh, the other shops and the houses aren't built yet, but they may be
any time; and then the people will come. But the fact that they haven't
come yet doesn't prevent this from being Aristo. The slow trains from
Cleveland stop just behind that hill, several times a day, which is
very convenient for the farmers in the neighbourhood, otherwise they
would have to go all the way to Arcona, twelve miles away. But you
mustn't think this is the only place you will have to do your shopping
when you're at the Valley Farm. Wait till you see Hermann's Corners.
There's a great Emporium there, and you'll ruffle the feelings of half
the ladies of Summer County if you don't fall in love with it, and its
proprietor, Whit Walker. Promise you'll let me be the first one to
introduce you to both?"
I promised, and wanted to be prepared for what I must expect to find;
but Mr. Brett would tell me nothing. He said that neither the great
Whit Walker nor Hermann's Corners Emporium could possibly be described
for the comprehension of a foreigner.
We were in a sweet and gracious country now. It looked as if Mother
Nature would never allow any of her children who obeyed her, to be poor
or unhappy here. As we whizzed along the up and down road between
billowing meadows of grain, we could see here and there a farm house
showing between trees, or peering over the brow of a rounded hill; but
there was none where I longed to stop until we came in sight of a dear,
old, red-brick house--_really_ old, not what some Americans call old.
It was set back several hundred yards from the road, and an avenue of
magnificent maples--each one a great green temple--led up to the
comfortable, rose-draped porch which sheltered the door. There was an
old-fashioned garden on one side, with a running flame of hollyhocks
hemming it in; the background was a dark green oak and maple grove; and
in a clover meadow beyond the garden was a colony of beehives. It
looked an ideal, storybook place, and I wished it might be the Valley
Farm, but thought such a thing too good to be true. When one is going
to stop at a house one has never seen, as Vic says, it usually turns
out to be the one of all others you like least.
So I was delighted when we turned in at the open gate with its guardian
apple tree on either side. We sailed up the avenue under the maples,
but instead of making for the front entrance, turned off into a farm
road which led round the side of the house, and the tooting of our horn
brought three women smiling and waving to a door under a long, narrow
verandah before we stopped.
One was a tall, thin, middle-aged woman, with grey-brown hair pulled
away from her forehead and done in a knob at the back of her head. Her
skin was sunburned; she wore a black and white print frock, without so
much as a ruffle or tuck, and her sleeves were rolled up over her
sun-browned arms above the elbow; she had no real pretensions to being
pretty, and yet, somehow, she was one of the nicest-looking women I
ever saw. She had the sort of expression in her eyes, and in her smile,
you would like your mother to have, if you could have had your mother
made to order exactly according to your own ideas.
On her right stood a very pretty girl with a dazzling white complexion,
all the whiter for a gold-powder of freckles; black eyes rather deep
set, dimples, and a quantity of curly, bright-red hair wound in a crown
of braids round her head. She was in print, too, but it was blue, and
very becoming.
On the tall woman's left was another girl, also pretty, though in a
florid way, with great blue eyes, a full mouth, and a mouse-coloured
fringe down to her eyebrows. She was more elaborately dressed than the
others, with a lot of coarse lace on her blouse, and a pink skirt. But
she hadn't the look of simple refinement which the first two had in
spite of their plain clothes and rolled-up sleeves. All three waved
something excitedly. One had a huge kitchen spoon, another a book, and
the third a towel.
"Howdy, Cousin Jim!" cried the nice woman with the expression, as Mr.
Brett stopped the car in front of the door. "We're mighty glad to see
you again. This is the young Lady Bulkeley, isn't it? We're mighty glad
to see her, too, and we're going to try to make her as happy as we
can."
"I knew you would, Cousin Fanny, or I wouldn't have brought her to
you," said Mr. Brett, jumping out and helping me down. "But she's Lady
Betty."
"I thought that would be a little too familiar to begin with," said the
dear woman, with a perfectly angelic smile, and a pleasant American
accent with rather more roll of the "r" than I'd heard in the East.
"But you shall be called just what you like best, my dear."
"Shall I? Then I should like you to call me Betty," said I, shaking
hands hard with Mr. Brett's Cousin Fanny, and my heart warming to her
for her own sake as well as his. There was a good smell about her of
linen dried on the grass and of freshly-baked cake. I can never smell
those smells, I know, without remembering her.
She smiled, and pressed my hand. "Why, you are just like an American
girl, my dear," she exclaimed. "Not a bit stiff and English like we
supposed you would be. We all thought we were going to be afraid of
you, but I guess we won't, will we, Patty and Ide?"
I saw that I was expected to take this as an introduction. I smiled and
bowed to the two girls, and when they put out their hands I put mine
out too. They didn't lift my hand up high to shake, as people do at
home a little, and as they do in New York and Newport a great deal
more, but just thumped it up and down cordially in about the longitude
of their waists.
"I'm very happy to know you," said Patty, the pretty, red-haired one.
"How _do_ you do?" enquired Ide, the one with the fringe.
I fancied that they must both be Mrs. Trowbridge's daughters, but she
continued the ceremony of presentation by saying:
"Patty is Miss Pinkerton; and Ide is Miss Jay. They generally stay with
Mr. Trowbridge and me pretty nearly all the year round. Patty takes
music lessons in Arcona twice a week, and keeps up her other studies,
and Ide helps me look after the house and the milk. I should have hard
work to get along without either one of them, it seems to me; and I
expect I shall be feeling just the same way about you before you leave
us. Here comes Mr. Trowbridge, now. See, Cousin Jim, here comes your
Cousin Hezekiah. He's been hiving a swarm of bees; that's why he's got
that mosquito net veil around his hat. Something like your automobile
one, Lady Betty."
A man of fifty or more, in white duck trousers and a bluish shirt with
a turned-down collar a little open at the neck, was coming towards the
house from the direction of the beehive colony. He had on no coat; in
fact, I think a grey linen thing hanging over a wooden rocking-chair on
the verandah must have been his. His battered straw hat, with the
"mosquito-net veil" which Mrs. Trowbridge had mentioned, was on the
back of his head, and when he saw us, he snatched it off and waved it
as his wife had waved her spoon and Ide her towel. From a distance he
looked just an ordinary farmer, but when he came near enough for me to
make out his features I saw that he was very far from ordinary. He had
a splendid head, the head of a statesman, and his face was clear and
intellectual, with keen, kind eyes. It had a remarkable resemblance to
lots of pictures I had seen since coming to the States, of the Father
of his Country, General Washington.
He shook hands, too, with me and Mr. Brett, but first he wiped some
honey from his fingers, on the side of his trousers. As he did it, it
was a dignified and laudable act. There was no reason why he should
have been glad to see me, a perfect stranger, but he seemed to be so
honestly pleased that it warmed my heart, and made me feel already at
home in the sweet, old, red-brick farmhouse, which reminded me, in its
soft colours, of a great bunch of wall flowers.
"I reckon we're going to be real good friends," said he. "If we'd known
just how you was coming, Jim, I'd have liked to meet you and her little
ladyship--the first ladyship we've had in these parts. You didn't give
us any idea, though, and now I see why. But look here, Mother, you
might have had the front door open. I'm afraid the young lady from
England will think we're mighty informal."
"I shouldn't wonder if that's just about what she'll like to think,
Father," said Mrs. Trowbridge, with her smile that was so motherly and
friendly at the same time. "Miss Woodburn would have been over to see
you if she could; she was just ready to jump for joy when Patty ran
across to tell her you were coming; but Mis' Randal is pretty sick, and
Sally felt she couldn't leave her yet awhile. So she sent you her love,
and she'll be along the minute she can git away."
Just for an instant it struck me as odd to hear this simple farm woman
in her straight print calmly calling my charming, dainty friend
"Sally," as if there could be no shadow of doubt in anyone's mind of
their perfect social equality. But in another second I could have boxed
my own ears for my denseness and snobbish stupidity. Already--even in
these few minutes--I was beginning faintly to understand some of the
"points" at which Mr. Brett had hinted.
"Maybe you'd like to go and have a look at your room," went on Mrs.
Trowbridge. "Patty and Ide have picked you some flowers, and I hope
you'll find everything right----"
"Oh, Mis' Trowbridge, do let me take her," exclaimed Patty.
"Me too!" cried Ide.
"They're just like children. I guess we'll have to humour them this
once," laughed Mr. Brett's Cousin Fanny.
When I smiled at Patty, she cuddled her arm round me, and then Ide
promptly did the same. Thus interlaced, the procession moved into the
house.
The door of the verandah opens into a cosy sitting-room. There is
nothing which you could point out as pretty in the furnishing, and
decoration there is none; but the room has a delicious, welcoming look,
and makes you want to live in it.
There is the queerest carpet on the floor, with irregular stripes of
different colours mingling indistinctly with the grey groundwork, and
all has faded into a pleasant indefiniteness of tint. There's a
high-backed sofa upholstered with black horse-hair, and the springs
have evidently been pressed by generations of Trowbridges who have been
born, and reared, and died in the old Valley Farmhouse. The big, ugly
clock, too, with the pendulum showing through a wreath of flowers on
its glass door, has attained the dignity of age, and earned a right to
its place on the crowded mantelpiece by ticking out the years for these
same generations. There are patchwork cushions and others embroidered
with worsted and beads, on the sofa and in the great horse-hair-covered
armchair, and the two or three hospitable-looking chairs with rockers.
Curious shells, and wax flowers under a glass case, adorn a carved
wooden bracket; and there are family portraits, enlarged in crayons
from old photographs, hanging on the quaintly-papered wall. Between two
windows stands a "secretary bookcase," with a propped-up shelf spread
with writing materials and files of paper. In the middle of the room is
a round table with a homemade fancy-work cover, scarcely showing under
its great bowl of mixed country flowers, and its neat piles of books
and magazines. As I went in, the sun blinds were bowed for the summer
heat, and the room was filled with a cool, sea-green light.
Suddenly I thought of Mrs. Ess Kay's magnificent palace in New York,
with its fountain court and splendid drawing rooms. I saw her "little
cottage" at Newport, and the other "cottages" and castles I had grown
accustomed to there; but somehow the startling contrast between these
pictures and this only made me more content with my present
surroundings.
"What a nice room!" I exclaimed to the girls, pausing for a glance
around.
They looked surprised.
"Do you think so?" asked Patty. "We were afraid maybe you wouldn't. The
things you're used to must be a good deal handsomer. Everything's so
old here."
"I love old things," said I. "Our house at home is very old, and I
wouldn't have anything changed for worlds, even if it were to be made
better."
"Why, that's kind of the way _I_ feel, too!" exclaimed Patty, giving my
waist a sympathetic squeeze. "I _like_ this living-room. But Ide
doesn't admire it a little bit."
"If I was Mis' Trowbridge I'd always sit in the parlour," said Ide,
"instead of keeping it shut up, except for best, just because Mr.
Trowbridge's ma did before her. It's a _real_ pretty room. There's a
Brussels carpet with roses on the floor, and a handsome suite of red
velvet furniture, and a piano, and a marble table. Patty practises her
music there, but aside from that none of us see the room, only to sweep
and dust, till Thanksgiving and Christmas, when the relations come, or
when Mis' Trowbridge has company to tea in winter. Would you like to
see it? You can if you want."
I thanked her, but thought we had better put off the treat until
another time, as we were on our way to my room. I was wondering how to
define the difference between Patty and Ide. I saw that it was very
marked, yet I didn't quite understand. The two girls appeared to be on
the same footing in the house, I said to myself, but Ide was far more
showy than Patty, seeming to put herself forward, as if she were afraid
of not being noticed, and then she was dressed so much more
elaborately. Perhaps, I thought, Patty was poor, and in a more
dependent position than Ide.
The stairway, very steep and narrow, leads straight up from the
"living-room," which is apparently in the centre of the house and fills
the place of a hall. There are no balusters, but a whitewashed wall on
either side, and only one person can go up at a time. At the top is a
landing, with a bare, painted floor, and doors opening from it. One of
the doors is mine; and as they showed me in I could see that Patty and
Ide both waited breathlessly for my verdict, their faces looking quite
strained and anxious until I exclaimed:
"How fresh and pretty it is here!"
I meant it, too. It is a dear room, with something pathetic about its
simple sweetness, and the kind thought to give me pleasure which shows
in every little innocent detail. The floor is covered with a white
straw matting, and there are no two pieces of furniture that match.
There's a wide, wooden bed of no particular period that I can
recognise, yet with an air of being old-fashioned, and there are stiff,
square shams to hide the pillows and turn down over the top of the
sheet, with fluted frills round the edges. There's a thing covered with
a veneer of mahogany, which I should call a chest of drawers, if Patty
and Ide hadn't mentioned it as a "bureau." A mirror divided into two
halves hangs over it, with a white crocheted cover to protect the gilt
frame from flies; there's a crocheted pin-cushion, too; and in vases
painted by home talent bloom the sweetest grass-pinks I ever smelled.
There are little blue summer houses with pink children and brown dogs
in them, matched all wrong at the edges, on the wall paper; there is a
wash-handstand and a table with a white cover and more flowers; and
that's all except a basket rocking-chair and some hanging shelves; but
the white muslin curtains are tied with blue ribbons, and there's a
hand-braided rug before the bed, and there are little lace mats under
the vases. The scent of dried rose leaves and lavender mingles with the
perfume of the pinks; and some of the summer house pagodas on the wall
are hidden with old-fashioned steel engravings and photographs in
home-made frames.