THE Deacon had been afraid to telegraph directly to his wife that he was
bringing the boys home. He knew the deadly alarm that would seize
mother and daughters at the very sight of the yellow telegraph envelope
directed to them. They would interpret it to mean that Si was dead, and
probably in their grief fail to open the envelope and read the message.
So at Jeffersonville he sent a message to Sol Pringle, the agent and
operator at the station. The Deacon remembered the strain the former
message had been on the young operator's intelligence, besides he
himself was not used to writing messages, and so, regardless of expense,
he conveyed his thoughts to Sol in this wise:
Deer Sol: put yore thinkin' cap on, and understand just what
Ime sayin'. I want you to send word out to the house at once
that Ime comin' home this evenin' on the accommodation
train, and bringing the boys. Be keerful and doant make a
fool of yourself and skeer the wimmin fokes.
Respectfully yores, Josiah Klegg.
Sol had plenty of time to study that dispatch out, and he not only sent
word as desired, but he communicated the news to all who came to the
station. The result was there was quite a crowd of friends there to
greet the home-comers.
The reception of the message had thrown the household into a flurry of
joyful expectancy. It was far better news than the Deacon's last letter
had led them to anticipate. After a few moments of tearful ejaculation
and mutual kissing over it, mother and daughters began to get everything
in readiness to give the returning ones the warmest, most cheerful
welcome. Abraham Lincoln was summoned in from his rail-splitting, which
he had been pursuing quite leisurely during the Deacon's absence, and
stirred to spasmodic energy under Maria's driving to cut an additional
supply of dry wood, and carry it into every room in the house, where
little Sammy Woggles, the orphan whom the Deacon and Mrs. Klegg were
bringing up, built cheer-shedding fires. Mrs. Klegg had her choicest
young chickens killed, and after she and Amanda had robbed every other
room of whatever they thought would add to the comfort of Si's, she set
herself to work preparing a supper which would outdo all her previous
efforts.
Hours before the train was due Maria had Abraham Lincoln bring out the
spring-wagon and hitch the horses to it. Then he had to lay in a bed of
clean straw, and upon this was placed a soft feather bed, blankets and
pillows. Maria decided that she would drive to the station herself.
"Never do in the world," said she, "to trust them skittish young horses,
what hain't done a lick o' work since Pap went away, to that stoopid
darky. They'd surely run away and break his neck, which 'd be no great
loss, and save lots o' provisions, but they'd smash that new wagon and
break their own necks, which are worth more'n $200 apiece."
"Maria, how can you talk so?" said the gentle Mrs. Klegg reprovingly.
"It's a sin to speak so lightly o' death o' a feller-creature."
"Well, if he's a feller-creature o' mine," returned the sprightly
Maria, "the Lord made a slack-twisted job of him some dark night out o'
remnants, and couldn't find no gumption to put in him. He gave him
an alligator's appetite instid. And ain't I tryin' to save his life?
Besides, I'm nearly dead to see Si. I want to be the first to see him."
This aroused Amanda, but Maria stood on her rights as the elder sister,
had her way, as she usually did, and drove away triumphantly fully two
hours before train-time.
Upon her arrival at the station she quickly recognized that she was the
central figure in the gathering crowd, and she would have been more than
a young woman if she had not made the most of her prominence.
Other girls were there with their fathers and mothers who had brothers
who had been in the three months' service, or were now in three years
regiments, or who had been discharged on account of disability, or who
had been in this battle or that, but none of them a brother who had
distinguished himself in the terrible battle about which everybody was
now talking, who had helped capture a rebel flag, who had been wounded
almost to death, who had been reported dead, and who was now coming
home, a still living evidence of all this. No boy who had gone from Bean
Blossom Creek neighborhood had made the figure in the public eye that
Si had, and Maria was not the girl to hide the light of his achievements
under a bushel. She was genially fraternal with those girls who had
brothers still in the service, affable to those whose brothers had been
in, but were now, for any reason, out, but only distantly civil to those
whose brothers had not enlisted. Of these last was Arabella Widgeon,
whose father had been one of the earliest immigrants to the Wabash, and
was somewhat inclined to boast of his Old Virginia family. He owned
a larger farm than the Deacon's, and Arabella, who was a large, showy
girl, a year or two older than Maria, had been her schoolmate, and,
Maria thought, disposed to "put on airs" over her. Arabella's brother
Randolph was older than Si, but had chosen to continue his studies at
Indianapolis rather than engage in "a war to free the niggers." But
Arabella had developed an interest in the war since she had met some
engaging young gentlemen who had come through the neighborhood on
recruiting duty, and was keeping up a fitful correspondence with two or
three of them.
"It must be very nice, Maria," said Arabella, with a show of cordiality,
but which Maria interpreted as an attempt to patronize, "to have your
brother back home with you again."
"It certainly will be. Miss Widgeon," answered Maria, with strictly
"company manners." "One who has never had a brother exposed to the
constant dangers of army life can hardly understand how glad we all feel
to have Si snatched from the very jaws of death and brung back to us."
"That's a little love-tap that'll settle several scores with Miss
Frills," Maria chuckled to herself. "Partickerly the airs she put on
over all us girls when she was running around to singing-school and
church with that Second Lieutenant, who ain't got across the Ohio River
yet, and I don't believe he intends to. Sol Pringle tells me all his
letters to her are postmarked Jeffersonville."
Arabella took no seeming notice of the shot, but came back sweetly:
"I am awfully glad that your brother was not hurt so badly as at first
reported. He couldn't be, and be able to come home now. These papers
do magnify everything so, and make no end of fuss over little things as
well as big ones, I was very much alarmed at first, for fear Si might be
really badly hurt."
This was too much for Maria. Her company manners slid off like a drop of
water from a cabbage leaf, and she answered hotly:
"I'd have you know. Miss Widgeon, the papers don't magnify the matter.
They don't make a fuss over nothing. They don't begin to tell all the
truth. None o' them can. My brother was nearer dead than any man who
ever lived. Nothing but the favor of God and Klegg grit pulled him
through. It'd killed a whole house full o' Randy Widgeons or that Second
Lieutenant. I remember Randy Widgeon turning pale and a'most fainting
when he run a fish-hook in his finger. If it ain't nothing, why don't
Randy Widgeon go down there a little while, with the rest o' the boys,
and do his share?"
"My brother disbelieves in the constitutionality of this war, and
denies that we have any right to take away other people's slaves," said
Arabella loftily. "I s'pose he's a right to his opinions."
"A poor excuse's better'n none," retorted Maria. "I noticed that he
didn't turn out last Summer to keep John Morgan from stealing our
people's horses, and robbing their stores and houses. S'pose he thought
it unconstitutional to let a nasty rebel gorilla shoot at him. It's
very convenient to have opinions to keep you from doin' things that
you're afraid to do."
The dialog was approaching the volcanic stage, when a poorly-dressed,
sad-faced woman, with a babe in her arms, edged through the crowd to
Maria, and said timidly, for she had never been accounted by the Kleggs
as in their set:
"Miss Maria, I don't s'pose you know me, but I do so want to git a
chance to speak to your pap as soon as he gets here, and before all
these people gits hold of him. Mebbe he's found out something about poor
Jim. I can't believe that Jim was killed, and I keep hopin' that he got
away somehow, and is in one o' them hospitals. Mebbe your pap knows. I
know you think Jim was bad and rough, but he was mighty good to me,
and he's all that I had. I'm nearly dead to hear about him, but I can't
write, nor kin Jim. I've bin tryin' to make up my mind to come over to
your house, and ax you to write for me."
"Of course, you can, you poor, dear woman," said Maria, her mood
changing at once from fierceness to loving pity. "You shall be the first
one to speak to Pap and Si after me. Why didn't you come over to see
us long ago. We'd only bin too glad to see you, and do all we could for
you. Yes, I know you.
"You're Polly Blagdon, and live down by the sawmill, where your husband
used to work. You look tired and weak carrying that big baby. Let me
hold him awhile and rest you. Sit down there on that box. I'll make Sol
Pringle clear it off for you."
[Illustration: "ARABELLA CURLED HER LIP AT SEEING MARIA TAKE THE BABY."
87]
Arabella curled her nose, at seeing Maria take the unwashed baby in her
arms, to the imminent danger of her best gown, but Maria did not notice
this, and was all loving attention to the baby and its mother.
It seemed an age until the whistle of the locomotive was heard. The
engine had to stop to take water at the creek, several hundred yards
from the station, and Maria's impatience to see Si and be the first to
speak to him could not brook the delay.
"Come along, Mrs. Blagdon," she called, and with the baby still in her
arms, she sped down the cinder track to the pumping station, and then
along the line of freight cars until she recognized her father's face
looking from the caboose, which was still beyond the bridge. She shouted
joyously at him.
"Maria's out there, waitin' for us, and she's got a baby in her arms.
What do you suppose she thinks we want a baby for?"
"'Spect she's been practicin' on it, so's to take care o' us, Si," said
Shorty. "I believe we've been more trouble to your father than we wuz to
our mothers when we wuz teethin'."
"I've bin repaid for all, more'n repaid for all," said the Deacon;
"especially since I'm once more back home, and out o' the reach o' the
Sheriffs o' Tennessee. I'll stay away from Chattanoogy till after the
Grand Jury meets down there. If it does its dooty there'll be several
bills with Josiah Klegg's name entirely too conspicuous."
"I want to be able to git out to the next covenant meetin', Pap," said
Si with a grin, "and hear you confess to the brethren and sisters all
that you've bin up to down at Chattanoogy."
"Well, you won't git there," said the Deacon decisively. "We don't allow
nobody in there who hain't arrived at the years o' discreetion, which'll
keep you out for a long time yit."
The train pulled over across the bridge, and handing the baby to its
mother, Maria sprang in, to recoil in astonishment at the sight of
Annabel's blushing face.
"You mean thing," said Maria, "to steal a march on me this way, when I
wanted to be the first to see Si. Where in the world did you come from,
and how did you find out he was comin' home on this train? Si, you
didn't let her know before you did us, did you?"
She was rent by the first spasm of womanly jealousy that any other woman
should come between her brother and his mother and sisters.
"Don't be cross, Maria," pleaded Annabel. "I didn't know nothin' of it.
You know I've been down to see the Robinses, and intended to stay till
tomorrer, but something moved me to come home today, and I just happened
to take this train. I really didn't know. Yet," and the instinctive
rights of her womanhood and her future relations with Si asserted
themselves to her own wonderment, "I had what the preachers call an
inward promptin', which I felt it my dooty to obey, and I now think it
came from God. You know I ought to be with Si as soon as anybody," and
she hid her face in her hands in maidenly confusion.
"Of course you ought, you dear thing," said Maria, her own womanhood
overcoming her momentary pique. "It was hateful o' me to speak that way
to you."
And she kissed Annabel effusively, though a little deadness still
weighed at her heart over being supplanted, even by the girl she liked
best in all the world after her own sister.
If the young folks had not been so engaged in their own affairs they
would have seen the Deacon furtively undoing his leathern pocket-book
and slipping a greenback into the weeping Mrs. Blagdon's hand, as the
only consolation he was able to give her.
There were plenty of strong, willing hands to help carry Si from the
caboose to the wagon. It was strange how tender and gentle those strong,
rough farmers could be in handling a boy who had been stricken down in
defense of his country. Annabel's face was as red as a hollyhock over
the way that everybody assumed her right to be next to Si, and those who
could not get a chance at helping him helped her to a seat in the
wagon alongside of him, while the dethroned Maria took her place by her
father, as he gathered the reins in his sure hands and started home.
Maria had to expend some of the attentions she meant for Si upon Shorty,
who received them with awkward confusion.
"Now, don't make no great shakes out o' me, Miss Maria," he pleaded. "I
didn't do nothin' partickler, I tell you. I was only along o' Si when
he snatched that rebel flag, and I got a little crack on the head, which
wouldn't 've amounted to nothin', if I hadn't ketched the fever at
Chattanoogy. I'm a'most well, and only come back home to please the
Surgeon, who was tired seein' me around."
They found the house a blaze of light, shining kindly from the moment
it came in sight, and there was a welcome in Towser's bark which touched
Si's heart.
"Even the dogs bark differently up here. Shorty," he said. "It's full
and honest, and don't mean no harm. You know that old Towser ain't
barkin' to signal some bushwhackers that the Yankees 's comin'. It
sounds like real music."
It was Mrs. Klegg's turn to receive a shock when she rushed out to greet
her son, and found Annabel by his side. It went deeper to her heart than
it had to Maria's; but, then, she had more philosophy, and had foreseen
it longer.
After everything had been done, after she had fed them her
carefully-prepared dishes, after the boys had been put to bed in the
warmed room, and she knew they were sleeping the sound sleep of deep
fatigue, she went to her own room to sit down and think it all over.
There Maria found her, wiping away her tears, and took her in her arms,
and kissed her.
"It's right. It's all right. It's God's ways," said the mother.
"A son's a son till he gets a wife;
But a daughter's a daughter all her life."