It is beautiful how sometimes deserving courage is rewarded if it just goes
on deserving long enough. After about an hour's hand-to-saw bout with the
old plank I was just chewing through the last inch of the last of the four
sides of nest number two when I suddenly stopped and listened. Far away to
the front of the house I heard hot oaths being uttered by the engine in a
huge racing-machine with a powerful chug with which I was quite familiar.
While I listened, the motor in agony gave a snort as it bounded over some
kind of obstruction and in two seconds, as I stood saw in hand, with not
enough time to wipe the sweat of toil from my brow, the huge blue machine
swept around the corner of the house, brought up beside the family coach,
which was still standing in front of the barn, and Matthew flung himself
out of it and to my side.
"Holy smokers, Ann, but you look good in that get-up!" he exclaimed as he
regarded me with the delight with which a person might greet a friend or
relative whom he had long considered dead or lost. "Why, you look just as
if you had stepped right out of the 'Elite Review.' And the saw, too, makes
a good note of human interest."
"Well, it's chicken interest and not human, Matthew Berry," I said,
answering his levity with spirit. "And I'm sorry I can't be at home for
your amusement to-day, but my chickens are laying while I wait, and the
least I can do is to get these nests ready for 'em. You'll excuse me, won't
you, and go in to talk with father and Uncle Cradd?"
"They're not producing dividends already, are they, Ann? Why, you only
started the Consolidated Egg Co. yesterday!" exclaimed Matthew, with
insulting doubt of my veracity in his voice.
"Look there!" I said, as I pointed to my two large pearls, which I had
carefully put in the soft felt hat I had purchased to go with the smocks
for fifteen dollars at Goertz's.
"Well, what do you know about that?" exclaimed Matthew, with real
astonishment, as he sat down on his heels and took the two treasures into
his highly manicured hands. "Gee, they are right hot off the bat!" he
exclaimed, as he detected some of the warmth still left in them, I suppose.
"Yes, and I've got to get these nests done right away so as to be ready to
catch the rest of them," I said and began to saw furiously, as if I were
constructing a bucket to catch a deluge.
"Say, gimme the saw, Ann, and you get the fodder and things to put in the
bottom of them to keep them from smashing as they come," said Matthew, as
he flung off his coat, jammed his motor-cap on the back of his head, and
took the saw from my unresisting hand.
"I'll get the whitewash and whiten them as you finish them," I said, as I
hurriedly consulted the torn piece of wrapping-paper I took from one of
the huge pockets of my smock.
"All right, but you had better hump yourself, for I believe I'm going to be
some carpenter. This saw has a kind of affinity feeling to my hand," said
Matthew, as he put his foot on one end of the plank and began to make the
saw fly through the wood like a silver knife through fluffy cake. If saws
were the only witnesses, the superiority of men over women would be
established in very short order. "And say, Ann, I wish you would be
thinking what you are going to charge for a half interest in this business.
Law and real estate look slow to me after these returns right before my
eyes," he added, as he stopped to move the pearl treasures farther out of
the way of a possible flying plank.
"I'm going to give you one of them to take home with you, Matt," I
answered, with a most generous return of his appreciation of these
foundation pebbles of my family fortune. Then I went to appeal to Rufus for
the whitewash.
"They's a half barrel uf lime and a bucket and bresh in the corner uf the
barn what Mas' Adams made me git, he did; but it's fer the hawgs and can't
be wasted on no chickens," he said, answering my very courteous request
with a great lack of graciousness.
"The chickens will pay it back to the hogs, Rufus," I answered airily as I
ran back to the barn, eager for the fray.
And a gorgeous fray it was, with Matthew whistling and directing and
pounding and having the time of his very frivolous life.
Now, of course, nobody in these advanced times thinks that it is not
absolutely possible, even easy, for a woman to live any kind of
constructive life she chooses entirely without assistance from a man, but
she'll get to the place she has started for just about a year after she
would have arrived if a man had happened along to do the sawing. The way my
friend Matthew Berry cut and hammered off one by one the directions on that
piece of paper in my smock pocket would have proved the proposition above
stated to any doubtful woman. And while Matthew and I had had many happy
times together at balls and parties and dinners and long flights in our
cars and at the theatre and opera, also in dim corners in gorgeous clothes,
I am sure we had never been so happy as we were that morning while we
labored together in the interest of Mr. G. Bird and family. We went beyond
the paper directions and delved in my book and hammered away until, when
Rufus, with stately coldness, announced some time after noon that dinner
was served, we both declared that it was impossible, though Matthew was at
that moment performing the last chore commanded by dusting the medicated
ashes under the last wing of the last Lady Leghorn, held tenderly in my
arms. The mash had been concocted and heated in the cleansed whitewash
bucket over a fire improvised by Matthew between two stones beside the
barn, because I did not dare disturb Rufus again, and the model nests were
all in place and ready for the downpour of pearls that we expected at any
time, and there was nothing left to do that we could think of or read about
in the book.
"Let's go in and get a bite with Father Craddock and the twin, and then
we'll read things to do this afternoon in the book where you got those
directions," said Matthew as he started towards the house in the wake of
Rufus' retiring apron.
I hadn't broken Pan to Matthew, and I didn't know exactly why. Perhaps I
didn't quite believe in the red-headed Peckerwood myself just then, and
felt unable to incarnate him to Matthew.
Uncle Cradd's welcome to Matthew was very stately and friendly when we went
in and found him and father in their high-back chairs on each side of the
table, waging the classic argument that Rufus had reported them to have
discontinued at an early hour of the morning. Father was delighted with the
package of books that Matthew had brought out with him in his car, because
father considered them too valuable to be transported in the wagon which
was to bring the rest of the library.
"Just a little of the cream of the collection, Cradd," he said as he
unwrapped a small leather-covered volume which Matthew had transported in
the pocket over his heart.
"Just five hundred dollars' worth of cream," whispered Matthew to me, with
a whimsical look at the small and very ancient specimen of Americana. "It
is a good thing that Senator Proctor has only Belle and let her have the
six thousand cash for the Chauvenaise, and Bess wanted your little Royal in
a hurry, though she got a bargain at that. Still the library is really
worth five times what you paid."
"Sh--hush!" I said as I led the way before the parental twins into the old
dining-room. Father hadn't even questioned how he was to have the library
saved for him, and of course Uncle Cradd knew nothing at all about the
matter.
After seating me with the same ceremony he had employed since my arrival
into the family, though with hostility bristling psychologically for my
plebeian intrusion into his traditions of the Craddock ladies, Rufus
appalled me by offering me for the third time since my arrival at Elmnest
roasted ribs of the hog, muffins and coffee. Only my training in the social
customs of a world beyond the ken of Rufus kept me from exclaiming with
protest, but I came to myself to discover that Matthew was devouring huge
slabs of the roasted bones and half a dozen batches of the corn bread in a
manner that was ravenously unconventional. I remembered that the last time
I had seen him at repast, just about forty-eight hours past, he had speared
a croquette of chicken with disdain, and I decided not to apologize for the
meal even in the most subtle way. Also the spectacle of father polishing
off the small bones, when I remembered the efforts of devoted Henri to
tempt his appetite with sophisticated food, filled me with a queer
primitive feeling that made it possible for me to fall upon my series of
the ribs with an ardor which I had thought I was incapable of.
"I call that some food," sighed Matthew, as he regarded the pile of bones
in his plate with the greatest satisfaction in his appeased eyes. I felt
Rufus melt behind me as he passed the muffins again.
"The native food of the Harpeth Valley nourishes specially fine men--and
very beautiful women," answered Uncle Cradd, with a glance of pride, first
at me and then at father in his spare, but muscular, uprightness and
finally at Matthew, with his one hundred and eighty pounds of brawn packed
on his six-foot skeleton in the most beautiful lines and curves of strength
and distinction.
"Oh, that reminds me, Mr. Craddock, and you, too, Father of Ann," said
Matthew, as he reached into his pocket and hurriedly drew out a huge
letter. "I have a proposition that came to the firm this morning to talk
over with you two gentlemen. Ann thought I came out to help her settle the
Bird family comfortably, and for a while I forgot and thought so too, but
now I'll have to ask you two gentlemen to talk business, though I must
confess the matter puzzles me not a little."
"The art of dining and the craft of business should never be commingled;
let us repair to the library," said Uncle Cradd, thus placing the spare
ribs in an artistic atmosphere and at the same time aiming an arrow of
criticism, though unconscious, at the custom of the world out over Paradise
Ridge of feeding business conditions down the throat of an adversary with
his food and drink, specially drink.
"I don't know why, but I'm scared to death now that I'm up against it,"
Matthew confided to me as he first took a legal-looking piece of paper from
his pocket and then hastily put it back as he and I followed the parental
twins down the hall and into the library.
"Will you rescue me, Ann?" he whispered as he ceremoniously seated me in
my low chair and took a straight one beside father as Uncle Cradd stood
tall, huge and towering on the old home-woven rug before the small fire in
the huge rock chimney.
"Yes," I answered as I settled back in the little chair and took one
passionately delighted look around the old room, which I was seeing in the
broad light of day for the first time. I am glad that the old home which
had been the stronghold of my foremothers and fathers was thus revealed to
me in half lights and a little at a time; I couldn't have stood the ecstasy
of it all at once. The room was the low-beamed old wonder that I had felt
it to be in the candle-light the night before, only now the soft richness
of the paneling, which held back into the gloom the faded colors of the
books that lined the walls, the mellowed glow of the rough stone of the
chimney, and the faded hand-woven rugs on the floor made it all look like
one of Rembrandt's or Franz Hals' canvases. But in a few seconds I came
back from the joy of it to a consciousness of what Matthew Berry was
saying.
"You see," he was explaining with enthusiasm, "that this new form of office
for the state commissioner of agriculture is really a part of the great
program of preparedness that has been evolving here in America since the
Great War began, and nobody knows just what to expect of it as yet. The
request from the President for the appointment of Evan Baldwin to take the
portfolio in the State of Harpeth has made everybody see that the President
means business with the States, and that America is to be made to produce
her own food and the food of the rest of the world that needs it. When a
scientist like Baldwin, worth millions and with experiment stations of
hundreds of acres in most states in the Union, which are coining more
millions with their propagation output, steps out and stands shoulder to
shoulder with Edison in working to get the United States prepared to feed
the world as well as to fend off any of that world that menaces it, the
rest of us have got to get up and hustle, some with a musket and some with
a plow."
"And some with an egg-basket," I added, as my cheeks began to glow with
something I hadn't ever felt before, but which I classified as patriotism.
"My country has only to call us and we'll answer to the whole of our
kingdom, William and I. We were lads too young to carry muskets against her
in the Civil war, but we, with Rufus, plowed these acres with children's
strength, and the larger portion of our products went to feed hungry
soldiers both blue and gray. I say, just let my country call William and
me!" As Uncle Cradd spoke, his back straightened, and I saw that he must
have been every inch of six feet three in his youth. "William?"
"With you, Cradd," answered father quietly, and I felt that that formula
was the one by which they had lived their joint youth.
"Well, that is about what they are asking of you, Mr. Craddock," said
Matthew, his cheeks red with the glow of the blood Uncle Cradd had called
up in his enthusiastic heart. "The new State secretary of agriculture has
asked our firm to undertake negotiations for the purchase of Elmnest, for a
recruiting station for the experts who are to take over the organizing of
the farming interests in the Harpeth Valley, which is the central section
of the State of Harpeth. They offer three hundred dollars an acre for the
whole tract of two hundred acres, despite the fact that some of it is worn
almost to its subsoil. They consider that as valuable, because they wish to
give demonstrations and try experiments in land restoration, though very
little of that is needed here in the valley. It's a pretty big thing, Mr.
Craddock and Father William, sixty thousand dollars will provide all the--"
"Did I understand that this proposition is put to us in the form of a
demand of our Government upon our patriotism?" asked Uncle Cradd in a
booming voice, while father only looked uncertain and ready to say, "With
you, Cradd." I sat speechless for a moment, with a queer pain in my heart
that I did not for the first second understand.
"Well, not exactly that, Mr. Craddock, but something like it in a--"
Matthew was beginning to say in a judicial way.
"That is enough, Matthew Berry, son of the friend of my youth. If the
United States needs Elmnest for national defenses, I am willing to give it
up--indeed insist on presenting it to the Government except for a small
part of the sum mentioned, which is needed for the simple and declining
lives of my brother William, Rufus, and me, and my niece Nancy. Will you so
convey our answer, William?"
"With you, Cradd," came the devoted formula with which father slipped back
finally into the dependence of his youth.
"Good, Mr. Craddock," exclaimed Matthew, and I could see visions of Ann
Craddock reclaimed from her farmer's smock in a ball-gown upon the floor
of the country club in the fleeting glance of triumph he gave me. "Of
course, about the price--"
Then in that counsel of the mighty arose Ann Craddock, farm woman in the
stronghold of her worn-out acres.
"Is it or is it not true, Uncle Cradd, that no deed to this property can be
made without my consent?" I asked calmly.
"Why, yes, Nancy," answered Uncle Cradd, indulgently. "But this is a matter
for your father and me to decide for you. I am sure you cannot fail in
patriotism, my child."
"I don't," I answered. "I am going to be more patriotic than any woman ever
was before. I am not going to sell my Grandmother's rosebushes in their
gardens or the acres that have nourished my family since its infancy in
America long before this Evan Baldwin ever had any family, I feel sure, for
sixty thousand dollars to go back and sit down in a corner with. I am going
to demonstrate to the United States what one woman can do in the way of
nutriment production aided by one beautiful rooster and ten equally
beautiful hens, and when they begin to take stock of the resources of this
Government, we women of the Harpeth Valley will be there with our
egg-baskets. Just take that answer to your Mr. Evan Baldwin, Matthew Berry,
and I'll never forgive you for this insult."
"Nancy!" ejaculated Uncle Cradd with stern amazement.
"Can't do a thing with her when she looks like that, Cradd," said father,
as he comfortably lighted a cigar and drew the small leather-covered book
towards him with hungry fingers.
"Now, Ann," began Matthew, in the soothing tone of voice he had seen fail
on me many times, "you don't understand entirely, and your situation is
pretty desperate in--"
"I do, I do understand that when I refuse this offer I am assuming enormous
obligations, Matthew Berry," I answered, with my head in the air and
absolute courage in my heart.
"I ask you to bear witness, Matthew, to what my answer to the demand of my
country would have been if I alone could have answered, but Nancy is within
her rights, and I protect the rights of a woman before those of any man,"
said Uncle Cradd, and there was not a trace of relief in his fine old face
that he was to be saved from a parting with the land that had been the love
of his life, but one of affectionate regard and admiration for me. "Also
say to the secretary of agriculture that a Craddock woman is as good as her
word, and that the Harpeth Valley can be depended upon to lead the United
States in the production of eggs in--when shall I promise, Nancy?"
"About--about a year," I answered, searching in my mind for some data from
the huge red book as to when wealth from the hen could be expected to roll
in in response to the "good management" I felt even then capable of
displaying. Even now I can't blame myself for over-confidence when I think
of the two white pearls in my hat on the table beside father's book.
"Better make it two," advised Matthew cautiously, but with a gleam of
enthusiasm as he also glanced at the eggs. That gleam was what earned my
forgiveness for his daring to come upon me with such a mission.
"Say eighteen months. That will be the end of the second season," I
answered with decision. "And it is about time for me to give the last
feeding of my hostages to the United States and Mr. Evan Baldwin. You'll
excuse me, Matthew?" I asked politely, but cruelly, for I knew he intended
to follow me immediately.
"Now here is your line of dispute, Cradd, just as I said," exclaimed
father, who had opened his leather treasure and been hunting through its
pages even before my heroics had completely exploded. And before Matthew
and I had left the room, they were off on a bat with some favorite Ancient.