When I came out with a bucket of the new wheat in my hand, I heard Bess and
her car departing, with Uncle Cradd's sonorous speech mingling with the
puff of the engine.
"We are all alone, Mr. G. Bird, and we love it, because then we can talk
comfortably about our Mr. Adam," I said to the Golden Bird as he followed
me around the side of the barn where a door had been cut by Pan himself to
make an entry into my improvised chicken-house.
Suddenly I was answered by a very interesting chuckling and clucking, and I
turned to see what had disengaged the attention of Mr. G. Bird from me and
my feed-bucket. The sight that met my eyes lifted the shadow that had lain
between the Golden Bird and me since the morning I had taken him in to see
his newly arrived progeny and had not been able to make him notice their
existence. Stretching out behind me was a trail of wheat that had dripped
from a hole in the side of the bucket, and along the sides of it the
paternal Bird was marshaling his reliable foster-mother, Mrs. Red Ally's
and all his own fluffy white progeny. With exceeding generosity he was not
eating a grain himself, but scratching and chortling encouragingly.
"I knew you were not like other chicken men, Mr. G. Bird, 'male indifferent
to hatches,' as the book said," I exclaimed as he caught up with me and
began to peck the grains I offered from my hand. "You are just like Owen
and Matthew and Mr. Tillett and--and--" but I didn't continue the
conversation because the chant began rending my heartstrings again. "Oh,
Mr. G. Bird, it is an awful thing for a woman to have an apple orchard and
lilac bushes in bloom when she is alone," I sighed instead, as I went on
to my round of feeding, very hungry myself for--a pot of herbs. Later I,
too, was fed.
Long after the twin fathers had had supper and were settled safely by their
candles, which were beacons that led them back into past ages, I sat by
myself on the front doorstep in the perfumed darkness that was only faintly
lit by stars that seemed so near the earth that they were like flowers of
light blossoming on the twigs of the roof elms. In a lovely dream I had
just gone into the arms of Pan when I heard out beyond the orchard a soft
moo of a cow, and with it came a weak little calf echo.
"Somebody's cow has strayed--I wish she belonged to me and could help me
with this nutrition job," I said to myself as I rose and ran down under the
branches of the gnarled old apple-trees, which sifted down perfumed blow
upon my head as I ran. Then I stopped and listened again. Over the old
stone wall that separated the orchard from the pasture I heard footsteps
and soft panting, also a weak little cow-baby protest of fatigue.
"I'll get over the wall and see if there is any trouble with them," I said
and I suited my actions to my words. I suppose in the dark I forgot that
cows have horns and that I had never even been introduced to one before,
for with the greatest confidence and sympathy I walked up near the large
black mass that was the cow mother, with a very small and wavering body
pressed close at her side.
"Did you call me, Mother Cow?" I asked softly.
The question was taken from my lips as Pan came out of the darkness behind
her and took me into his arms.
"Yes, she called you. I didn't think I'd see you. I was just going to leave
her for you and go my way; but trust women for secret communication," he
said as my arm slipped around his bare throat.
"Not see me?" I questioned.
"I never wanted to see you again until I came for you, Woman. I didn't
think I could stand it--to put you out of my arms again. I can't take you
with me to-night. I came miles out of my way to bring her to you, and I've
hurried them both cruelly. The calf is only two days old, but you do need
her badly to feed the chickens. Milk-fed chickens show a gain of thirty per
cent. over others. You can churn and get all the butter you need and feed
them the buttermilk."
"Do you suppose I can learn to milk and churn her?" I asked as I shrank a
bit closer in his arms from this new responsibility.
"Milk her and churn the milk," laughed Pan as he bent my head forward on
his arm, set his teeth in the back of my neck, and shook me like Peckerwood
Pup shakes the gray kitten when I'm not looking.
"Will you show me in the morning?"
"Woman, I have to run ten miles through the forest before daybreak, and I
don't know when I can come back to you. I know I ought to tell you things,
but I--I just can't. I demand of life that I be allowed to come for you and
take you into the woods with only your Romney bundle. Will you be here
ready for me when I come, and keep the bundle tied up?"
"Yes," I answered as I drew his head down and pressed it to my breast,
hoping that he might hear the chant on my heartstrings. I think he did
hear.
"I am thy child.
I am thy mate.
Come!"
he made response, as he slipped from my arms and away into the darkness,
leaving me alone with only the mother now for company. She licked my arm
with a warm, rough tongue, and I came back into my own body and led her to
the barn and supper.
There are two kinds of love, the cultivated kind that bores into a woman's
heart through silk and laces in a hot-house atmosphere and brings about
all kinds of enervating reactions until operated upon by marriage; the
other kind a field woman breathes into her lungs and it gets into her
circulation and starts up the most awful and productive activity. I've had
both kinds. I moped for months over Gale Beacon, and made him and Matthew
and father completely unhappy, lost ten pounds, and was sent to a rest-cure
for temper. The next morning after Adam gave me the cow and calf and
passionate embraces out in the orchard I began to work like six women, and
what I did to Elmnest not ten women could have accomplished in as many
days.
I weeded the whole garden and I picked three bushels of our first peas,
tied up sixty bunches of very young beets with long, tough orchard grass,
treated fifty bunches of slender onions the same way, half a dozen of each
to the bunch, and helped Bud Corn-tassel load a two-horse wagon with them
and everything eatable he could get out of Aunt Mary's garden. Then I got
up at two o'clock in the night and fed the mules so Bud could start at
half-past two in order to be in the market at Hayesville long before the
break of day, so as to sell the truck at the very top of the market to the
earliest greengrocers. I gave Bud coffee and bread and butter and drove the
team down to the gate while he went ahead to open it. I stood up while I
drove, too, because Bud had not had room to put a seat in for himself and
expected to stand up all the way to town. Talk about Mordkin and Pavlova!
To stand up and drive a team hitched to a jolt-wagon over boulders and
roots requires leg muscles! I hope I will be able to restrain myself from
driving the team into market some day, but I am not sure I can. With the
eggs and the "truck" Bud brought back sixteen dollars, eleven of which were
mine. I bought a peck of green peas for myself from myself and ate most of
them for dinner by way of blowing in some of the money. Then the chant on
my heartstrings speeded me up to white-washing all the chicken
paraphernalia on the place, and I dropped corn behind Rufus' plow for a
whole day, even if it was to produce food for the swine. I went to bed at
night literally on time with the chickens. I could only stay awake to kneel
and reach out the arms of prayer and enfold Pan to my heart for a very few
seconds before I vaulted into the four-poster and tumbled into the depths
of sleep.
My activities were not in any way limited by the stone walls that surround
Elmnest, but they spread over entire Riverfield, which had very nearly quit
the pursuit of agriculture and gone madly into a social adventure.
Everybody was getting ready for the trip into the capital city to answer
the governor's invitation, and clothing of every color, texture, and sex
was being manufactured by the bolt. For every garment manufactured I was
sponsor.
"I sure am glad you have come down, Nancy," said Mrs. Addcock, with almost
a moan; "that Mamie there won't let me turn up the hem of her dress without
you, though I say what is a hem to a woman who has set in six pairs of
sleeves since day before yesterday!"
"I want shoe-tops and Ma wants ankles," sniffed Mamie Addcock. "Polly
Beesley wears shoe-tops and she's seventeen and goes to the city to dance.
And Miss Bess' and yours are shoe-tops, too."
"Now you see what it is to raise a child to be led into sin and vanity,"
said Mrs. Addcock, looking at me reproachfully from her seat upon the floor
at the feet of the worldly Mamie.
"I'll turn up the hem just right, Mrs. Addcock, while you get the collars
on little Sammie's and Willie's shirts," I said soothingly as I sank down
beside her at Mamie's feet.
"I had to cut Sammie's shirt with a tail to tuck in, all on account of that
Mr. Matthew Berry's telling him that shirt and pants ought to do business
together. And there's Willie's jeans pants got to have pockets for the
knife that Mr. Owen gave him. I just can't keep up with these city notions
of my children with five of 'em and a weak back." As she grumbled Mrs.
Addcock rose slowly from her lowly position to her feet.
"I'll make Willie's trousers, Mrs. Addcock, this afternoon, if he'll come
and help me feed and bed everything at Elmnest," I offered, with my mouth
full of pins.
"No, child, but thank you for your willing heart. Mrs. Spain told me how
you made Ezra's pants so one leg of him came while the other went, and I
guess a mother is the only one to get the legs of her own offspring to
match. I'll work it out myself now that Miss Mamie is attended to."
"But now I know how to trouser boys normally. I turned Joe Tillett out in
perfect proportion as well as in strong jeans," I answered, without the
least offense at finding my first efforts as a tailor thus becoming the
subject of kindly village gossip.
"Well, I hope this junket will turn out as Mary Beesley expects, with
enjoyment for everybody. However, I'm going to risk my back with Mr.
Silas' mules rather than with that Bessie Rutherford's wheels that are not
critter-drawn. I only hope she don't spill all my children, that I've had
such a time getting here on earth, back into Kingdom Come."
"Would you rather go in my carriage with Mrs. Tillett, and let me go with
Bess to hold in the children?" I asked with unconcealed eagerness.
"No, I don't believe so," answered Mrs. Addcock, cannily. "Sallie Tillett
is having her dress made buttoned up in the back, and she has been in the
habit of feeding the baby whenever he cries for it, though he can 'most
stand alone. She is going to depend on you and a bag of biscuit to manage
him through the show, and I'd rather not take your place."
"No; perhaps you would enjoy it more behind Uncle Silas and the mules," I
answered cheerily, feeling perfectly capable of handling Baby Tillett and
his bag of biscuits, because the memory of the times his little head with
its tow fuzz had cuddled down on my linen smock, when I had carried him
back and forth for long visits in the barn to the Peckerwood Pup so his
mother could have a little vacation from his society, accelerated the
movement of the chant on the cardiac instrument in my breast. "He stays
hours and hours with me in a basket in the barn and is perfectly satisfied
with the biscuits."
"All the same I told Sallie I could make that dress by another pattern, and
you'd better sit with him a good distance during the show," said Mrs.
Addcock, as I finished shoe-topping Mamie and picked up my pink-lined white
sunbonnet, which had been a present from Mrs. Addcock herself and was
astonishingly frilly and coquettish emanating from such a source, and began
to depart.
"I'll take him on the other side of the auditorium," I answered, with
respect for advice that I knew must be good through experience.
And thus that pink and white, cooing, obstreperously hungry baby was made
an instrument of cruel fate and--
"Come over and see the little cap I've made Bennie so as to do you honor,"
called rosy Mrs. Tillett as I went down the street towards the grocery.
"I ain't got but six more yards of gingham to sew up for the two littlest,"
Mrs. Spain called cheerily as she looked past a whirring sewing-machine out
through a window that was wreathed with a cinnamon rose-vine in full bloom.
"Want any help?" I called from the gate, which was flanked on both sides by
blooming lilacs.
"No; you go on down to the store. Mr. Silas have brought out ten suits of
clothes for the men to pick from, and they are a-waiting for your taste.
Persuade Joe Spain to get that purple mixed. I do love gay colors, and
it'll go with my pink foulard."
The scenes into which I entered in the post-office-bank-grocery was comedy
in form, but serious in interpretation. The counter was piled high with
men's garments of every color that is bestowed upon woolen cloth in the
dyers' vats. Uncle Silas stood behind it with his glasses at a rampant
angle on his nose, and Aunt Mary stood in the center of a shuffling,
embarrassed, harassed group of farmers in overalls. Before her stood Bud,
attired in a light gray suit of aggressively new clothes, and she was using
him hard as a dummy upon which to illustrate her vigorous and persuasive
remarks.
"Now, I am glad you have come down, honeybunch," she exclaimed at sight of
me. "Here's a bale of clothes and a bale of men, and nobody can seem to
match 'em up suitable. I have at last got Bud Beesley here into a dead
match for his beauty, if I do say it of my own son. Just look at him!" As
she spoke she stood off from him and folded her plump hands across her wide
waist in motherly rapture.
And Bud, with his violet eyes and yellow shock, _was_ beautiful in the
"custom-made," fifteen-dollar gray cheviot, despite his red ears. All the
Harpeth Valley farmer folk have French Cavalier, English gentle, and Irish
good blood in them, with mighty little else and, as in the case of Bud and
Polly Corn-tassel, when clothed in garments of the world, it comes to the
surface with startling effect. Bud could have put on a gray slouch hat with
either a crimson or an orange band and walked into any good Eastern college
fraternity or club he might have chosen.
"Shoo, Mother," said Bud as he turned around for my admiration, not
surfeited with that of his mother.
"I only hope some town girl won't catch him like your mother did William,"
said Aunt Mary, with a laugh that ended in a little sigh that only I heard.
Somehow I _will_ feel psychically akin to Bud and Polly.
[Illustration: And Bud was beautiful in the "custom-made" fifteen-dollar
gray cheviot with his violet eyes and yellow smock, in spite of his red
ears]
"Town girls are all movie-struck and don't want a man if a butter-paddle
goes along with him," said Bud, with a laugh that was echoed from the
overalled group.
"Yes, but Miss Nancy here has outsold any woman in Riverfield for cash on
eggs and chickens before May first," said Mr. Spain as he picked up a gray
purple coat from the top of the pile on the counter.
"She'll marry and go away in a big car, too," said Bud, as he looked down
and flecked an imaginary speck from the sleeve of his new coat. Something
in his voice made me determine to introduce Belle Proctor's little
sixteen-year-old sister to Bud in the near future. The kiddie spends half
her time away from school in Bess's conservatory with Mr. G. Bird's
non-resident family, and I think it will do her good to come out in the
field and play with Bud. She is frail and too slight.
"Say, Miss Nancy, what do you think of this here purple to set me off?"
asked Mr. Spain, as he held up the garment of his wife's desire. "Betty
says it'll match out her dimity, and I 'low to match Betty as long as I
can."
"It'll be the very thing, Mr. Spain," I said, as I controlled my horror at
the flaring-colored coat and reminded myself that harmony of domestic
relations is greater than any harmony of art.
"Now, pick your coats and slip 'em on, all of you, so Nancy can judge you,"
commanded the general. In a very short time each man had got out of his
overall jumper and into his heart's desire.
A stalwart, comely, clean-eyed group of American men they were as they
stood on parade, clothed for the most part in seemly raiment, chosen with
Uncle Silas's quiet taste, except in the case of Mr. Spain, where he had
let his experience of the past lead his taste.
"Please, dear God, don't let them ever have to be put into khaki," I prayed
with a quick breath, for I knew, though they did not seem to recognize the
fact, that this rally of the rural districts in the city hall was a part
of the great program of preparedness that America was having forced upon
her. I knew that the speech of the governor would be about the State
militia and I knew that Evan Baldwin would talk to them about the
mobilization of their stocks and crops. Quick tears flooded across my eyes,
and I stretched out my hands to them.
"You all look good to me," I faltered in some of Matthew's language,
because I couldn't think of anything else to say but the prayer in my
heart, and I didn't want to repeat that to them.
"Now, you have all passed your city examinations, so you can get back to
work. Remember, that day after to-morrow is the junket, and one day won't
be any too much to bank up your fires to run until you come back," said
Aunt Mary in the way of dismissal.
"Talk about vanity in women folks? The first peacock hatched out was of the
male persuasion," she remarked as we stood at the emporium door and watched
the men dispersing, their bundles under their arms, each one making direct
for his own front door. "Every woman in Riverfield will have to put down
needle and fry-pan and butter-paddle to feed them so plum full of
compliments that they'll strut for a week. Bless my heart, honeybunch, we
have all got to turn around twice in each track to get ready, and as I'm
pretty hefty I must begin right now." With this remark, Aunt Mary departed
from the back door to her house on the hill and sent me out the front to
Elmnest opposite.
"I thought that there was some reason why Pan and I both chose to wear
Roycroft clothes. Mr. and Mrs. Spain are in love after eight children," I
remarked to myself happily. "I am in agony in any shoes Pan doesn't make. I
wonder if any woman ever before was as much in love with a man about whom
she knew so little--and so much as I do about Adam."
"I don't want to know about him--I want to love him," I answered myself as
I walked up the long elm avenue. Afterwards I recalled those words to
myself, and they were bitter instead of sweet.