Friday, the twenty-first of April, I shall always remember as the busiest
day of my life, for, as Aunt Mary had said, it takes time to bank fires
enough to keep a farm alive a whole half day even if it is not running. I
did all my usual work with my small folk, and then I measured and poured
out in different receptacles their existence for the last half of the next
day. After breakfast on Saturday I finally decided upon Uncle Cradd as the
most trustworthy person of the three ancients, one of whom I was obliged to
depend upon for substitution. Rufus, I felt sure, would compromise by
feeding every ration to the hogs, and I knew that he could persuade father
to do likewise, but Uncle Cradd, I felt, would bring moral force to bear
upon the situation.
"Now, Uncle Cradd, here are all the different feeds in different buckets,
each plainly marked with the time to give it. Please, oh, please, don't let
father lead you off into Egypt or China and forget them," I said as I led
him to the barn and showed him the mobilization of buckets that I had shut
up in one of the empty bins.
"Why not just empty it all out on the ground in front of the barn, Nancy,
my dear, and let them all feed together in friendly fashion. I am afraid
you take these pretty whims of yours too seriously," he said as he beamed
affectionately at me over his large glasses.
"Because Peckerwood Pup would eat up the Leghorn babies, and it would be
extermination to some and survival to the most unfit," I answered in
despair. "Oh, won't you please do it by the directions?"
"I will, my child, I will," answered Uncle Cradd, as he saw that I was
about to become tearful. "I will come and sit right here in the barn with
my book."
"Oh, if you only will, Uncle Cradd, they will remind you when they are
hungry. Mr. G. Bird will come and peck at you when it is time to feed his
family, and the lambs and Mrs. Ewe will lick you, and Peckerwood Pup will
chew you, so you can't forget them," I exclaimed in relief.
"That will be the exact plan for action, Nancy. You can always depend upon
me for any of the small attentions that please you, my dear."
"I can depend on the fur and feathers and wool tribes better than I can on
you, old dear," I said to myself, while I beamed on him with a dutiful,
"Thank you, sir."
Then as Bud Corn-tassel had arrived to begin to hitch up the moth-eaten
steeds to the ark, I ascended to my room to shed my farmer smocks, for the
first time since my incarnation into them, and attire myself for the world
again. The only garb of fashion I possessed, having sold myself out
completely on my retirement, was the very stylish, dull-blue tailor suit in
which I had traveled out the Riverfield ribbon almost three months before.
But as that had been mid-February, it was of spring manufacture, and I
supposed would still be able to hold its own.
"It's perfectly beautiful, but it feels tight and hampering," I said as I
descended to enter the coach Bud had driven around to the front door.
"Will you give me a guarantee that you aren't just a dream lady I'll lose
again in the city, Miss Nancy?" asked Bud, as he handed me into the
Grandmother Craddock coach with great ceremony. Gale Beacon couldn't have
done any better on such short notice.
"I'll be in smocks at feeding-time in the morning, Bud, just as you will be
in overalls," I answered laughingly.
"My, but you are a sight!" said Mrs. Tillett, as she handed up Baby Tillett
to me, with such a beaming countenance that I knew she meant a
complimentary construction to be placed upon her words. "Now, just take up
them little girls and set 'em down easy, Mr. Bud, on account of their
ruffles, and ram the boys in between to hold 'em steady. Now, boys, if you
muss up the girls I'll make every one of you wear your shoes all day
to-morrow to teach you manners. Go on, Mr. Bud."
Thus nicely packed away, we started on down the Riverfield ribbon at the
head of the procession, followed by Uncle Silas driving Aunt Mary's
rockaway, with his beautiful, dappled, shining, gray mules hitched to it,
and beside him sat Mrs. Addcock in serene confidence in being driven by a
man who could drive a bank and a post-office and a grocery. Mamie and
Gertie Spain were spread out carefully on the back seat, with only one
small masculine Spain for a wedge. The Buford buggy, all spick and span
from its first spring washing and polishing, came next, with Mr. and Mrs.
Buford cuddling together on the narrow seat. They were a bride and groom of
very little over a year's standing, and the blue-blanketed bundle that the
bride carried in her arms was no reason, in Mr. Buford's mind, why he
shouldn't drive with one hand while he held a steadying and affectionate
arm around them both. Buford Junior was less than a month old, but why
shouldn't he begin to adventure out in the big world? Parson and Mrs.
Henderson came next, he with snow-white flowing beard, and she, beside him,
in a gray bonnet with a pink rose, while beside her sat his mother, Granny
Henderson, now past eighty, but with a purple pansy nestled in her
waterwaves.
Others followed, and the remainder waited on the steps of the emporium,
with Aunt Mary and Polly, for Matthew and Bess to come for them. It was
hard for them to realize that the powerful engines in both cars would take
them into town in little over an hour, when the journey as they before had
made it had always consumed six, and they were becoming impatient even
before we left. So when we met Bess and Matthew half an hour later down the
Riverfield ribbon, I hurried them back. I afterwards learned that they had
had to persuade Mrs. Spain to reclothe herself in the pink foulard, because
she had decided that they were not coming and had gone back to work.
In reality I didn't draw a perfectly free breath until I saw the entire
population of Riverfield seated in advantageous seats on the middle aisle
in the town hall at six-thirty, and beginning to get out their
lunch-baskets to feed themselves and the kiddies before the opening of the
convocation at eight o'clock.
According to the advice of Mrs. Addcock and Mrs. Tillett herself, I had
taken a stuffed egg, a chicken wing, and a slice of jelly-cake for my own
supper, along with Baby Tillett's bag of hard biscuits, over on a side
aisle, and from that vantage-point I could see the whole party.
"They are lovely--the loveliest of all, mine are," I said to myself as I
surveyed them proudly and compared them with other lunching delegations,
which I knew to be from Providence and Hillsboro and Cloverbend.
Baby Tillett crowed a proud assent as he stuck a biscuit in his mouth and
looked at the lights with the greatest pleasure. I took off his new cap
with its two blue bows over the ears, unbuttoned his little piqué coat,
which I had almost entirely built myself, and which was of excellent cut,
and settled down to dine with him in contentment.
Then it happened that I was so weary from the day of excitement that I had
hardly finished my supper before I snuggled Baby Tillett closer in my arms,
as I felt him grow limp very suddenly, and with him I drifted off into a
nap. I was sitting in a corner seat, but I don't yet see how I slept as I
did and cuddled him too unless it was just the force of natural maternal
gravitation that held my arms firmly around him, but the first thing I knew
I opened my eyes on the whole hall full of people, who were wildly
applauding the governor as he stepped forward on the platform. Hurriedly
straightening my drooping head and looking guiltily around to see if I had
been caught napping, I discovered Matthew Berry at my side in a broad
chuckle, and I immediately suspected his stalwart right arm of being that
force of gravitation.
"He's dead to the world; let him lie across your knees and listen to the
governor's heroics of introduction to Baldwin," said Matthew as he settled
the limp baby across my lap with his bobbing head on my arm. And he
adjusted his own arm less conspicuously along the seat at my back.
"I was up at four," I whispered, as the applause died away and the governor
began to speak.
The Governor of the State of Harpeth is a good and substantial man, who was
himself born out on Paradise Ridge, and he had called in all of his people
from their fields to talk to them about a problem so serious that the
world of men, who had hitherto considered themselves as competent to guide
the great national ship of state through peaceful waters, had been impelled
to turn and call to council the men from the plows and reapers, to add
their wisdom in deciding the best methods of safeguarding the nation. His
speech was a thoughtful presentation of the different methods of
preparedness which the whole of America was weighing in the balance. He
explained the army policy, the Congressional policy, and then that of the
State guard, and he asked them to weigh the facts well so that if it should
come to the vote of the people of the nation, they would vote with
instructed wisdom.
There was a strained gravity on all the listening faces, and I could see
some of the women in the groups of farmer folk draw nearer against the
shoulders of the men, who all sat with their arms along the back of the
seats as Matthew sat beside me. Young Mrs. Buford held the precious, limp,
blue bundle much closer in her arms, and hid her head on the broad
shoulder next her own, but on Mrs. Spain's comely face I saw a light
beginning to dawn as she proudly surveyed the four sturdy sons with shining
faces who flanked her and Mr. Spain.
"And now," said the governor, "I have asked you here to-night to introduce
formally to you one of the great sons of Old Harpeth, who has come back
from the world, with his wealth and honors and wisdom and science, into his
own valley, to show us how to make the plowshare support the machine-gun
with such power that the world will respect its silence more than any
explosion. A year or more ago he came home and asked me for his commission,
and since then he has lived among you so as to become your friend, in hopes
that he might be your chosen leader in this food mobilization. Gentlemen
and ladies of the Harpeth Valley, I present to you Mr. Evan Baldwin, who
will speak to you to-night on the 'Plowshare and the Machine-gun.' Friends,
Evan Adam Baldwin."
For a second there was expectant silence, and then from the back of the
platform from behind a group of State officials stepped--my Pan!
For a long second the whole hall full of people held their breath in a
tense uncertainty, because it was hard to believe in the broadcloth and
fine linen in which he was clothed, but the brilliant hair, the ruffling
crests, and the mocking, eery smile made them all certain by the second
breath, which they gave forth in one long masculine hurrah mingled with a
feminine echo of delight. For several long minutes it would not be stilled
as he stood and smiled down on them all and mocked them with his laugh
mingling with theirs.
Finally Aunt Mary, the general, could stand it no longer, and forgetful of
her Saint Paul, she arose with all the dignity of her two hundred pounds
and raised her hand.
"All be still, neighbors, and let Adam tell us the same things he's been
saying for these many months, and then we'll let him shuck his fine
clothes and come on home in my rockaway with us."
"No, with us!" fairly yelled Cloverbend in unison of protest with
Providence.
"Thank you, Aunt Mary," said Pan in the fluty tenderness with which he had
always addressed her. "The governor doesn't know it, but I can't make a
speech to you to-night. I am going to catch that ten o'clock train for
Argentina, to get some wheat secrets for all of us, and I want all of you
to begin right away to plow good and deep so you'll be ready for me when I
get back in a few months. We'll have to inoculate the land before we sow.
Only here are just one or two things I will say to you before I have to
start."
For about ten minutes Adam stood there before those farmer folk and, with
his fluty voice and the fire glow in his eyes, led them up upon a high
mountain of imagination and showed them the distant land into which he
could lead them, which, when they arrived, they would find to be their own.
The baby on my lap stirred, and I lifted him against my throbbing breast
as I listened to this gospel of a new earth, which might be made into the
outposts of a new Heaven, in which man would nourish his weaker brother
into a strength equal to his own, so that no man or nation would have to
fight for existence or a place in the sun. Then while we all sat breathless
from his magic, Pan vanished and left us to be sent home rejoicing by the
governor.
Sent home rejoicing? Suddenly I realized that when Evan Adam Baldwin had
gone, my Pan had also vanished without a word to me. What did it mean? His
eyes hadn't found me sitting apart from my delegation with another woman's
baby in my arms. Would there be a word for me in the morning?
"In Baldwin emerges the new American," said Matthew, with a light in his
face I had never seen before, as we all rose to go.
"Do you blame every woman in the world for being mad about him when you saw
that look in his eyes when he held out his hands and chanted that food
plea to us? I'm glad he doesn't beckon to me, or I am afraid Owen Murray
and Madam Felicia would be disappointed about that June decision of mine,"
said Bess as she and Owen helped Bud pack the Tilletts and me into the ark
for our return trip.
"Will there be word for me in the morning?" the old wheels rattled all the
way out the Riverfield ribbon, and I thought an old owl hooted the question
at me from a dead tree beside the road, while I felt also that a
mocking-bird sang it from a thicket of dogwood in ghostly bloom opposite.
"Will there be word in the morning?"
The next morning I awoke with the same question making a new motive in the
chant on my heartstrings.
"Uncle Cradd will bring his letter when he comes back from the post-office,
and I know he'll send a message to you, Mr. G. Bird," I said happily, as I
watered and fed and caressed and joyed in the entire barn family. "I hate
him for being what he is and treating me this way, but I love him still
more," I confided to Mrs. Ewe as I gave her an extra handful of wheat out
of the blouse-pocket which I kept filled for Mr. G. Bird from pure
partiality.
Uncle Cradd did not bring a letter from the post-office for me. The blow in
the apple orchard and the purple plumes on the lilac bushes looked less
brilliant in hue, but the tune on my heartstrings kept up a note of pure
bravado. I weeded the garden all afternoon, but stopped early, fed early,
and went up-stairs to my room before the last sunset glow had faded off the
dormer windows. Opening my old mahogany chest, I took out a bundle I had
made up the day after the advent of Mother Cow and the calf, spread it out
on the bed, and looked it over.
In it was an incredible amount of lingerie, made of crêpe de chine and
lace, folded tightly and tied with a ribbon into a package not over a foot
square. A comb and a brush of old ivory, which had set in its back a small
mirror held in by a silver band, which father had purchased in Florence
for me under a museum guaranty as a genuine Cellini work of art, were
wrapped in a silk case, and a toothbrush and soap had occupied their
respective oil-silk cases along with a tube of tooth paste and one of cold
cream. Two pairs of soft, but strong, tan cotton stockings were tucked
underneath the ribbon confining the lingerie, and a small prayer-book with
both mine and my mother's name in it completed the--I hadn't exactly liked
to call it a trousseau. It was all tied up in one of Adam's Romney
handkerchiefs, which he had washed out one day in the spring branch and
left hanging on a hickory sapling to dry, and which I had appropriated
because I loved its riot of faded colors.
"It is just about the size of his," I had said to myself as I had tied up
its corners that day after my love adventure in the orchard under the
chaperonage of Mother Cow, and I had laughed as I imagined Pan's face when
he discovered that I had been so entirely unfemininely subservient to his
command about light traveling. Suddenly I swept the bundle together and
back in the chest, while a note of genuine fear swept into the song in my
heart.
"He'll write from New Orleans--he doesn't sail until to-morrow," I
whispered as I quieted the discord and went down to prayers.
"I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures:
he leadeth me beside the still waters.
He restoreth my soul:"
intoned Uncle Cradd, and somehow the tumult in my heart was stilled for the
night, and I could as usual take Pan into my prayer arms and ask God to
keep him safe. I wonder how many women would really pray if there weren't
men in the world to furnish them the theme!
Also I wonder how it is possible for me to write about that following first
week of May when I had to feel the chant die out of my heart and still
live and help a lot of other live creatures, both people and animals, to go
on breathing also.
Each day Uncle Cradd failed to bring me a letter from the post-office, and
after a week I ceased to look for one. I knew that Evan Adam Baldwin was on
the high seas and that if he had not written before he sailed he never
intended to write. My common sense kindly and plainly spoke this truth to
my aching heart: Pan had been simply having a word adventure with me in
character.