THE FAITH THAT MOVETH MOUNTAINS
When supper was over and Pearl had washed the heavy white dishes Mrs.
Motherwell told her, not unkindly, that she could go to bed. She would
sleep in the little room over the kitchen in Polly's old bed.
"You don't need no lamp," she said, "if you hurry. It is light up
there."
Mrs. Motherwell was inclined to think well of Pearl. It was not her
soft brown eyes, or her quaint speech that had won Mrs. Motherwell's
heart. It was the way she scraped the frying-pan.
Pearl went up the ladder into the kitchen loft, and found herself in a
low, long room, close and stifling, one little window shone light
against the western sky and on it innumerable flies buzzed unceasingly.
Old boxes, old bags, old baskets looked strange and shadowy in the
gathering gloom. The Motherwells did not believe in giving away
anything. The Indians who went through the neighbourhood each fall
looking for "old clo'" had long ago learned to pass by the big stone
house. Indians do not appreciate a strong talk on shiftlessness the way
they should, with a vision of a long cold winter ahead of them.
Pearl gazed around with a troubled look on her face. A large basket of
old carpet rags stood near the little bed. She dragged it into the
farthest corner. She tried to open the window, but it was nailed fast.
Then a determined look shone in her eyes. She went quickly down the
little ladder.
"Please ma'am," she said going over to Mrs. Motherwell, "I can't sleep
up there. It is full of diseases and microscopes."
"It's what?" Mrs. Motherwell almost screamed. She was in the pantry
making pies.
"It has old air in it," Pearl said, "and it will give me the fever."
Mrs. Motherwell glared at the little girl. She forgot all about the
frying pan.
"Good gracious!" she said. "It's a queer thing if hired help are going
to dictate where they are going to sleep. Maybe you'd like a bed set up
for you in the parlour!"
"Not if the windies ain't open," Pearl declared stoutly.
"Well they ain't; there hasn't been a window open in this house since
it was built, and there isn't going to be, letting in dust and flies."
Pearl gasped. What would Mrs. Francis say to that?
"It's in yer graves ye ought to be then, ma'am," she said with honest
conviction. "Mrs. Francis told me never to sleep in a room with the
windies all down, and I as good as promised I wouldn't. Can't we open
that wee windy, ma'am?"
Mrs. Motherwell was tired, unutterably tired, not with that day's work
alone, but with the days and years that had passed away in gray
dreariness; the past barren and bleak, the future bringing only visions
of heavier burdens. She was tired and perhaps that is why she became
angry.
"You go straight to your bed," she said, with her mouth hard and her
eyes glinting like cold flint, "and none of your nonsense, or you can
go straight back to town."
When Pearl again reached the little stifling room, she fell on her
knees and prayed.
"Dear God," she said, "there's gurms here as thick as hair on a dog's
back, and You and me know it, even if she don't. I don't know what to
do, dear Lord--the windy is nelt down. Keep the gurms from gittin' into
me, dear Lord. Do ye mind how poor Jeremiah was let down into the mire
and ye tuk care o' him, didn't ye? Take care o' me, dear Lord. Poor ma
has enough to do widout me comin' home clutterin' up the house wid
sickness. Keep yer eye on Danny if ye can at all, at all. He's awful
stirrin'. I'll try to git the windy riz to-morrow by hook or crook, so
mebbe it's only to-night ye'll have to watch the gurms. Amen."
Pearl braided her hair into two little pigtails, with her little
dilapidated comb. When she brought out the contents of the bird-cage
and opened it in search of her night-dress, the orange rolled out,
almost frightening her. The purse, too, rattled on the bare floor as it
fell.
She picked it up, and by going close to the fly-specked window she
counted the ten ten-cent pieces, a whole dollar. Never was a little
girl more happy.
"It was Camilla," she whispered to herself. "Oh, I love Camilla! and I
never said 'God bless Camilla,'"--with a sudden pang of remorse.
She was on her knees in a moment and added the postscript.
"I can send the orange home to ma, and she can put the skins in the
chist to make the things smell nice, and I'll git that windy open
to-morrow."
Clasping her little purse in her hand, and with the orange close beside
her head, she lay down to sleep. The smell of the orange made her
forget the heavy air in the room.
"Anyway," she murmured contentedly, "the Lord is attendin' to all that."
Pearl slept the heavy sleep of healthy childhood and woke in the gray
dawn before anyone else in the household was stirring. She threw on
some clothing and went down the ladder into the kitchen. She started
the fire, secured the basin full of water and a piece of yellow soap
and came back to her room for her "oliver."
"I can't lave it all to the Lord to do," she said, as she rubbed the
soap on her little wash-rag. "It doesn't do to impose on good nature."
When Tom, the only son of the Motherwells, came down to light the fire,
he found Pearl setting the table, the kitchen swept and the kettle
boiling.
Pearl looked at him with her friendly Irish smile, which he returned
awkwardly.
He was a tall, stoop-shouldered, rather good-looking lad of twenty. He
had heavy gray eyes, and a drooping mouth.
Tom had gone to school a few winters when there was not much doing, but
his father thought it was a great deal better for a boy to learn to
handle horses and "sample wheat," and run a binder, than learn the
"pack of nonsense they got in school nowadays," and when the pretty
little teacher from the eastern township came to Southfield school,
Mrs. Motherwell knew at one glance that Tom would learn no good from
her--she was such a flighty looking thing! Flowers on the under side of
her hat!
So poor Tom grew up a clod of the valley. Yet Mrs. Motherwell would
tell you, "Our Tom'll be the richest man in these parts. He'll get
every cent we have and all the land, too; and I guess there won't be
many that can afford to turn up their noses at our Tom. And, mind ye,
Tom can tell a horse as well as the next one, and he's a boy that won't
waste nothin', not like some we know. Look at them Slaters now! Fred
and George have been off to college two years, big over-grown hulks
they are, and young Peter is going to the Agricultural College in
Guelph this winter, and the old man will hire a man to take care of the
stock, and him with three boys of his own. Just as if a boy can learn
about farmin' at a college! and the way them girls dress, and the old
lady, too, and her not able to speak above a whisper. The old lady
wears an ostrich feather in her bonnet, and they're a terrible costly
thing, I hear. Mind you they only keep six cows, and they send every
drop they don't use to the creamery. Everybody can do as they like, I
suppose, but I know they'll go to the wall, and they deserve it too!"
And yet!
She and Mrs. Slater had been girls together and sat in school with arms
entwined and wove romances of the future, rosy-hued and golden. When
they consulted the oracle of "Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, rich
man, poor man, beggar man, thief," the buttons on her gray winsey dress
had declared in favour of the "rich man." Then she had dreamed dreams
of silks and satins and prancing steeds and liveried servants, and
ease, and happiness--dreams which God in His mercy had let her forget
long, long ago.
When she had become the mistress of the big stone house, she had
struggled hard against her husband's penuriousness, defiantly
sometimes, and sometimes tearfully. But he had held her down with a
heavy hand of unyielding determination. At last she grew weary of
struggling, and settled down in sullen submission, a hopeless
heavy-eyed, spiritless women, and as time went by she became greedier
for money than her husband.
"Good-morning," Pearl said brightly. "Are you Mr. Tom Motherwell?"
"That's what!" Tom replied. "Only you needn't mind the handle."
Pearl laughed.
"All right," she said, "I want a little favor done. Will you open the
window upstairs for me?"
"Why?" Tom asked, staring at her.
"To let in good air. It's awful close up there, and I'm afraid I'll get
the fever or somethin' bad."
"Polly got it," Tom said. "Maybe that is why Polly got it. She's awful
sick now. Ma says she'll like as not die. But I don't believe ma will
let me open it."
"Where is Polly?" Pearl asked eagerly. She had forgotten her own
worries. "Who is Polly? Did she live here?"
"She's in the hospital now in Brandon," Tom said in answer to her rapid
questions. "She planted them poppies out there, but she never seen the
flowers on them. Ma wanted me to cut them down, for Polly used to put
off so much time with them, but I didn't want to. Ma was mad, too, you
bet," he said, with a reminiscent smile at his own foolhardiness.
Pearl was thinking--she could see the poppies through the window,
bright and glowing in the morning light. They rocked lightly in the
wind, and a shower of crimson petals fell. Poor Polly! she hadn't seen
them.
"What's Polly's other name?" she asked quickly.
"Polly Bragg," he answered. "She was awful nice, Polly was, and jolly,
too. Ma thought she was lazy. She used to cry a lot and wish she could
go home; but my! she could sing fine."
Pearl went on with her work with a preoccupied air.
"Tom, can you take a parcel for me to town to-day?"
"I am not goin'," he said in surprise. "Pa always goes if we need
anything. I haven't been in town for a month."
"Don't you go to church?" Pearl asked in surprise.
"No, you bet I don't, not now. The preacher was sassy to pa and tried
to get money. Pa says he'll never touch wood in his church again, and
pa won't give another cent either, and, mind you, last year we gave
twenty-five dollars."
"We paid fourteen dollars," Pearl said, "and Mary got six dollars on
her card."
"Oh, but you town people don't have the expenses we have."
"That's true, I guess," Pearl said doubtfully--she was wondering about
the boot bills. "Pa gets a dollar and a quarter every day, and ma gets
seventy-five cents when she washes. We're gettin' on fine."
Then Mrs. Motherwell made her appearance, and the conversation came to
an end.
That afternoon when Pearl had washed the dishes and scrubbed the floor,
she went upstairs to the little room to write in her diary. She knew
Mrs. Francis would expect to see something in it, so she wrote
laboriously:
I saw a lot of yalla flowers and black-burds. The rode
was full of dust and wagging marks. I met a man with
a top buggy and smelt a skunk. Mrs. M. made a kake
to-day--there was no lickens.
I'm goin' to tidy up the granary for Arthur. He's
offel nice--an' told me about London Bridge--it hasn't
fallen down at all, he says, that's just a song.
All day long the air had been heavy and close, and that night while
Pearl was asleep the face of the heavens was darkened with
storm-clouds. Great rolling masses came up from the west, shot through
with flashes of lightening, and the heavy silence was more ominous than
the loudest thunder would have been. The wind began in the hills, gusty
and fitful at first, then bursting with violence over the plain below.
There was a cutting whine in it, like the whang of stretched steel,
fateful, deadly as the singing of bullets, chilling the farmer's heart,
for he knows it means hail.
Pearl woke and sat up in bed. The lightning flashed in the little
window, leaving the room as black as ink. She listened to the whistling
wind.
"It's the hail," she whispered delightedly. "I knew the Lord would find
a way to open the windy without me puttin' my fist through it--I'll
have a look at the clouds to see if they have that white edge on them.
No--I won't either--it isn't my put in. I'll just lave the Lord alone.
Nothin' makes me madder than when I promise Tommy or Mary or any of
them something and then have them frettin' all the time about whether
or not I'll get it done. I'd like to see the clouds though. I'll bet
they're a sight, just like what Camilla sings about:
Dark is His path on the wings o' the storm.
In the kitchen below the Motherwells gathered with pale faces. The
windows shook and rattled in their casings.
"Keep away from the stove, Tom," Mrs. Motherwell said, trembling.
"That's where the lightnin' strikes."
Tom's teeth were chattering.
"This'll fix the wheat that's standing, every--bit of it," Sam said. He
did not make it quite as strong as he intended. Something had taken the
profanity out of him.
"Hadn't you better go up and bring the kid down, ma?" Tom asked,
thinking of Pearl.
"Her!" his father said contemptuously. "She'll never hear it." The wind
suddenly ceased. Not a breath stirred, only a continuous glare of
lightning. Then crack! crack! crack! on the roof, on the windows,
everywhere, like bad boys throwing stones, heavier, harder, faster,
until it was one beating, thundering roar.
It lasted but a few minutes, though it seemed longer to those who
listened in terror in the kitchen.
The roar grew less and less and at last ceased altogether, and only a
gentle rain was falling.
Sam Motherwell sat without speaking, "You have cheated the Lord all
these years, and He has borne with you, trying to make you pay up
without harsh proceedings"--he found himself repeating the minister's
words. Could this be what he meant by harsh proceedings? Certainly it
was harsh enough taking away a man's crop after all his hard work.
Sam was full of self-pity. There were very few men who had ever been
treated as badly as he felt himself to be.
"Maybe there'll only be a streak of it hailed out," Tom said, breaking
in on his father's dismal thoughts.
"You'll see in the mornin'," his father growled, and Tom went back to
bed.
When Pearl woke it was with the wind blowing in upon her; the morning
breeze fragrant with the sweetness of the flowers and the ripening
grain. The musty odours had all gone, and she felt life and health in
every breath. The blackbirds were twittering in the oats behind the
house, and the rising sun was throwing long shadows over the field.
Scattered glass lay on the floor.
"I knew the dear Lord would fix the gurms," Pearl said as she dressed,
laughing to herself. But her face clouded in a moment. What about the
poppies?
Then she laughed again. "There I go frettin' again. I guess the Lord
knows they're, there and He isn't going to smash them if Polly really
needs them."
She dressed herself hastily and ran down the ladder and around behind
the cookhouse, where a strange sight met her eyes. The cookhouse roof
had been blown off and placed over the poppies, where it had sheltered
them from every hailstone.
Pearl looked under the roof. The poppies stood there straight and
beautiful, no doubt wondering what big thing it was that hid them from
the sun.
When Tom and his father went out in the early dawn to investigate the
damage done by the storm, they found that only a narrow strip through
the field in front of the house had been touched.
The hail had played a strange trick; beating down the grain along this
narrow path, just as if a mighty roller had come through it, until it
reached the house, on the other side of which not one trace of damage
could be found.
"Didn't we get off lucky?" Tom exclaimed "and the rest of the grain is
not even lodged. Why, twenty-five dollars would cover the whole loss,
cookhouse roof and all."
His father was looking over the rippling field, green-gold in the rosy
dawn. He started uncomfortably at Tom's words.
Twenty-five dollars!