THE ECHO AGAIN
The first flakes of snow, riding on the strong westerly gale, met them
as the Kremlin struck into the Upper Road coming from Middletown once
more. Before Janice dropped the Elder--and his money--at his door, the
snow was making a good showing in the frozen ruts and the fence corners.
When Marty helped her run the car into the garage, he said, with a grin:
“You can kiss your ortermobile good-bye for the winter now, Janice.
We’re a-goin’ to git it for fair, so the paper says. We’ll have a white
Christmas all right, all right.”
“And we’ll have an extra nice Christmas, I hope,” rejoined his cousin.
“Guess what you’re going to get, Marty?”
“No, I won’t!” declared the boy. “I don’t want to even think of it. I
know what I want, and if I sh’d guess right it’d just spoil Christmas
for me. Ain’t I the big kid?”
She laughed at him, happily. “That’s all the fun of Christmas morning,
I guess--not knowing what you’re going to get till the time comes.
Little Lottie is going to get a Christmas present that she’s been
longing for--Miss ’Rill. Won’t they all be happy in the Drugg house?”
“Huh!” snorted Marty. “I dunno as I’d call gettin’ a step-mother much
of a Christmas present.”
“Well, I guess,” said Janice, indignantly, “if you were a little girl
like Lottie and couldn’t remember any mother at all, that you’d be just
as glad as she is to get one like Miss ’Rill.”
“All right--all right,” grumbled her cousin. “You needn’t get
red-headed about it.”
As rapidly as the snow was gathering they did not realize that this was
more than an ordinary storm. Uncle Jason was away on a job and Marty
soon went whistling down the hill with his jacket collar turned up to
keep the snow from sifting into his neck. He was bound for the Reading
Room for a book with which to while away the long evening.
Sunset was not yet, however, although the chickens were going to roost.
Janice ran in to Aunt ’Mira, glowing in both heart and healthy body.
She did not mean to say anything to anybody about the wild ride to
save Elder Concannon’s money; but it was something to remember with
satisfaction.
Aunt ’Mira was deep, it seemed, in the rites and mysteries of some form
of heathen worship. That is what it looked like at the girl’s first
amazed glance into the sitting-room. The fleshy lady had a sheet draped
around her and she was bowing and posturing and turning her head first
over one shoulder and then the other--trying, it would seem, to look
down her own spinal column.
“Dear me, Auntie! what is the matter now?” gasped Janice. “Aren’t you
afraid you will hurt yourself doing that?”
“I know I’m hurting myself,” responded Aunt ’Mira, grimly, “but it’s
the way to keep supple, they say. And I declare for’t! I don’t know
nobody that needs sech trainin’ more’n I do.”
Janice had descried the propped-open physical culture magazine now, and
understood--in part, at least.
“But why the sheet, Auntie?” she asked, as the good lady went on with
her self-inflicted punishment.
“Wal,” panted Aunt ’Mira, at length obliged to sit down for breath, “I
jest wanted to see how I’d look in one o’ them Grecian costumes they
picter there. I’ve looked at hundreds an’ hundreds of picters of Greeks
in their draperies, and I’ve failed yet to see a _fat_ one. Janice,
don’t you s’pose there never was any fat people in them ancient times?”
“I suppose there must have been--some,” admitted Janice, much amused.
“But they don’t put them in pictures. Besides,” she added thoughtfully,
“the way the Greeks lived and exercised, and all, would naturally tend
to make perfect bodies and almost eliminate the liability of one’s
having too much flesh.”
Aunt ’Mira snorted her disgust. “I declare to man!” she cried. “If a
body’s going to be fat, they’ll be fat. That’s all there is to it, I
reckon. I’ve tried my best; and though I’m some more limber than I was,
you know yourself, Janice, I’m jest as fat as ever.
“No, Ma’am! Ye can’t tell me! They never put the fat Greeks in
picters--jest kep’ ’em in the background, same’s they try to do with
fat people nowadays. And if it’s your fate to be fat, why, ye will be,
and that’s all there is about it.
“Ye don’t suppose, Niece Janice, that I let this fat come upon me
without a struggle, do ye? I--should--say--not!” cried Aunt ’Mira, with
energy. “Why, I fought it tooth and toe-nail!”
“When me an’ Jason was keepin’ comp’ny I was afraid he’d be scare’t at
sech a mountain of flesh as I was then, and I dunno how many strings
I broke tryin’ to pull in my stays. I wonder I didn’t squeeze all my
internal consarns inter mush, I declare!
“But the more I ever done to try to take off flesh, the more I put it
on. Why, Janice, I was a fat baby, and a fat young’un. I was jest about
square--like a brick. You could ha’ set me any side up--I’d stood jest
as well one way as t’other. There warn’t no more escape for me from
flesh than there is from death when my time comes.
“You’d oughter seen me when I was a little toddler, goin’ to old Marcy
Coe’s to school. In them days there warn’t much of a public school here
in Polktown--it only kep’ three months in the year, anyway. Miss Marcy
Coe kep’ a sort of private school for the little tads, right in her own
settin’-room. When they got too big for her to punish, they graduated
to the reg’lar school.
“And believe me!” Aunt ’Mira exclaimed, with energy, “Miss Marcy Coe
sartainly was ingenious in her punishments. I’ll never forgit one thing
she useter make me do when I was bad. She was most always sewing while
she sat and listened to us readin’ out of our little lesson-books, and
her thimble was a very handy weapon.
“She sat with one leg crossed over the other,” went on the reminiscent
lady, “a-swinging of her foot for hours at a time. If I was naughty I
had to come up to her and squat a-straddle of that foot. If I rested
any weight on her foot, Marcy would rap me on the head with her
thimble.”
“Oh! how cruel!” burst out Janice.
“Mebbe it was good for the back and limbs,” sighed Aunt ’Mira; “but
it was awful tryin’. We’d hafter stay in that stoopin’ position until
sometimes we’d fall right over on the floor. And my poor head! It was
sore all over from Marcy Coe’s thimble, until I fairly squalled at
night when my mother combed my hair. She thought ’twas snarls, poor
dear.”
Aunt ’Mira chanced to look up and see the snow beating against the
windows. It drew a perfect curtain between the warm sitting-room and
the general outlook. The wind had risen, too, and was grumbling in the
deep-throated chimney and rattling the outside blinds.
“My goodness, Janice!” her aunt exclaimed, “this is a hard storm. Where
can your Uncle Jason and Marty be? They’d ought to be home early to
do the chores. If this keeps up they won’t git to the critters at all
to-night.”
“I can run out and feed the live stock and shut the hen-house door,
Aunt ’Mira,” offered the girl, getting up briskly. “All they will have
to do when they come home, then, will be to milk.”
“Wal, if you will,” agreed her aunt. “And I’ll be gettin’ a hot supper.
They’ll want it--’specially Jason--after trampin’ through this snow.”
Janice put on a short coat, her leggings and mittens, and ventured out.
The back porch was half full of snow, heaped to her waist.
“I never did see it snow so hard and so fast before,” thought the girl,
facing the storm.
As she went past the tool shed she bethought her and secured a shovel.
And it was well she did so, for when she reached the small stable door,
the snow was heaped so high against it that she had difficulty in
digging her way in.
When she finally was in the stable, the wind banged the door shut.
There was light enough for her to see, however. The ponies whinnied,
while the cows lowed gratefully at her appearance. Janice scattered
corn and oats through the feed-window into the hen-house, and heard
some of the hungry biddies scramble down from the roosts to get the
grain.
She knew just what grain to give the horses, and she mixed the mash for
each cow separately. Uncle Jason had put a pump into the barn the year
before, and it was so protected that it could not freeze. She climbed
into the mow and threw down fodder and hay for the night. All that the
men would have to do would be to milk and water the stock.
It was comfortably warm in the stable. The heat of the animals’ bodies
made it so. She went the round of the stalls and patted the nose of
each beast kindly. The horses raised their heads and looked at her;
but the cows kept on guzzling their food, their broad, rough tongues
scraping around and around in the wooden pails.
“I declare!” thought Janice. “It isn’t such a bad lot, after all, to
live in a stable. But I guess I’d better get back to the house, or the
drifts will be so deep I’ll be lost in them.”
She again buttoned her coat, turned up her collar, and drew on her
mittens. It was growing very dark in the barn, and she heard something
stirring behind the feed-box--whether a cat or a rat she did not know.
Anyway, she did not stop to investigate, for it might be a rat, and
Janice was desperately afraid of those vermin.
Coming to the door, she unlatched it and pushed. The door stuck. She
tried it again and then, with some fear, threw herself against it. It
did not yield an inch and she knew instantly what the matter was. The
snow had heaped against it--packed solid by the wind--higher than when
she entered.
Again and again Janice Day pushed against the narrow door, exerting her
strength to the utmost, while her fear grew. She was not naturally a
nervous girl, nor easily disturbed by trifles. But there was something
so terrifying in this sudden and complete mastery by the storm of
affairs that she was shaken to the soul.
Besides, there was that rustling, scraping noise in the corner beyond
the meal chest. It was the unknown that troubled her.
Of course, Uncle Jason or Marty would soon come to her rescue. She had
not been more than half an hour in the barn. Unless this snowstorm was
much heavier than any of which Janice had ever heard, the men would
surely find their way up the hillside, and Aunt ’Mira would send them
in search of her. Mrs. Day herself, however, would be sadly alarmed if
Janice did not soon return to the house.
It was useless for the girl to push against the door by which she had
entered. She was soon assured of this fact. And she did not wish to
stay alone in the stable with that rat--or what she thought was a rat.
The noise it made could be easily heard above the sounds made by the
cattle eating their supper.
“It must be a big one,” breathed Janice. “I just can’t stay here with
it!”
She rushed to the big wing doors and tried to open them. But it was
foolish to attempt that, for they were barred on the outside. There was
no way out of the barn, save through the door by which she had entered,
for the cattle entrances were all barred without.
There was the feed door into the hen-house. The thought of it instantly
came to her mind. But to get to it she must pass by the feed chest.
It seemed to Janice Day as though she could not do that. The thought of
the rat’s sharp teeth, its flaming eyes in the dark, its sleek body and
hard, wire-like tail, gave her the shivers.
“I’m a coward! I’m a coward!” she told herself, again and again.
“Perhaps it isn’t a rat at all. Maybe it’s only a cunning little
mouse--or really nothing at all. Oh, if I only had a light.”
She searched her pockets for matches. Of course she had none. The
lantern hung on a peg just inside the door which she had endeavored
unsuccessfully to open. But an unlighted lantern was of very little use
to her. And deeper and deeper grew the shadows on the barn floor.
She feared her aunt would be frightened; and neither her uncle nor
Marty came. It seemed to Janice as though much more time had elapsed
since she entered the barn than really had passed. She felt sure that
by taking off her jacket she could creep through into the hen-house;
and the hen-house door was in a corner sheltered from the wind. She
could surely get out through that.
“Janice Day!” she muttered, “you’ve just _got_ to stop being so
foolish! You must pass that meal chest and get out! Come now!”
Thus urging herself on--spurring her courage, as it were--the girl
advanced a few steps along the barn floor. Suddenly she stopped. There
were two bright specks shining in the dark. The noise of the rat’s
gnawing had ceased. It must be watching her as she advanced.
Marty always said they were afraid and ran from you; but this
particular rodent seemed to have no intention of running.
“Shoo!” gasped Janice--it must be confessed in a very weak voice.
The eyes never even winked. Morally courageous as the girl was, every
atom of physical bravery seemed to have oozed out of her now. Her
knees trembled under her; she could hardly stand.
And then, unexpectedly, there was a scrambling noise in the dark beyond
the chest, and a sleepy voice emitted a plaintive “ba-a-a! ba-a-a!” A
lamb! A cosset that had been brought in from the sheepfold the week
before and which Janice had forgotten all about, although she had been
making a pet of it every time she had occasion to enter the stable.
The unwinking eyes did not move; but the relieved girl knew what they
were now. Two shiny buttons on an old jumper of Marty’s which had been
flung down beside the meal chest and in front of the pen where the lamb
was kept.
“Ba-a-a!” again bleated the lamb, the innocent cause of all Janice
Day’s disturbance and fear.
“Ba-a-a yourself!” she cried, laughing hysterically. “What a dunce I
have been. If Marty knew it, I’d never hear the last of it. And how
foolish--and really wicked, too!” she continued thoughtfully. “I guess
that’s like half the troubles I have in this world. I see them coming
and make more of them than they really are when they arrive.
“I expect I even have no business to worry as I have about dear Father.
It seems as though I fail to trust in Providence when I am forever
disturbed and troubled about things. Everything will come out all right
of course! Father will be safe; Nelson will not disappoint me. ‘All
things work together for good’----”
She had removed her jacket while she so thought, and now crept through
the small, square window into the hen-house. There was a rustling on
the perches and the old rooster uttered a sleepy “cut, cut, ca-da-cut!”
“You be still!” giggled Janice. “I am no chicken thief, so don’t alarm
your harem. My! that was a tight squeeze! Now I’m going out--Good-night
all!” and she pushed open the outside door of the hen-pen and came out
into the blowy, snowy world again.
The storm seemed fiercer than ever; but the lights in the kitchen
window led Janice to refuge. Marty was hooting for her from the back
porch.
“Crackey!” he called, as she stumbled toward him. “You done all the
chores, Janice?”
“All but the milking,” she assured him.
“You’re some girl, you are,” declared the boy, with satisfaction. “Most
any other girl would have been afraid to go out in the storm. Don’t
take much to scare some of ’em into a conniption fit--and then they
step in it!” grunted Marty, in vast disgust, being at just that age
when the opposite sex seems to be a useless creation of Nature.
Janice refrained from telling him about the rat!
When the girl entered the house a surprise awaited her. Uncle Jason
had brought a letter for her--one all the way from Mexico and in
her father’s handwriting. Anxiously she tore it open and scanned its
contents. Did it contain more bad news?
“Oh, isn’t this lovely!” she cried, her face showing her pleasure.
“Daddy writes that matters at the mine have taken a turn for the
better. The government has acknowledged their rights and will leave
them alone in the future. Oh, isn’t it just grand!”
“I knew it would come out all right in the end, Janice,” returned Aunt
’Mira. “Wasn’t no call for to worry like ye done.”
“But I couldn’t help it,” answered Janice. “Oh, I must tell Uncle Jason
and Marty”; and she ran off to do so. It seemed as if one of the great
weights on her heart had been lifted away.
The wind blew and the snow was swept furiously across the lake and
through the streets of Polktown all that night. When morning came the
entire mountain was a mass of white, with the smoking chimneys and the
Union Church spire standing like sentinels above the white-mantled
trees.
Snow shovels were at a premium. Plows were got out and everybody was
busy making the highways, as well as the paths about the dwellings,
passable. Business was almost at a standstill that day, and it was not
until the next morning that Janice could get to her friend, Miss ’Rill,
to tell her of the good news from Mexico. Of course, she found the
pretty little maiden lady around at the grocery on the side street,
doing some kindly task for Hopewell Drugg’s little one.
As Janice had said, little Lottie was perfectly delighted at the
prospect of having “Mamma ’Rill,” as she was determined to call her
father’s new wife, “for her very own.” For although she was by no means
as lonely, now that she could see and hear and speak almost as well as
other little girls of her age, the Drugg household suffered for the
presence of capable feminine hands and a loving heart.
Lottie had been used to run to her father for everything; but she was
getting to that age now where it was a woman’s help she often needed.
Father and daughter still spent many an hour together, she with her
cheek against his shoulder, while he sawed away at his old violin. The
talent of his music-teacher father had been inherited to a degree by
Hopewell; only he had always been too busy making a living to have the
talent developed.
So he only knew the old pieces that he had learned when he was a boy
and had first found the ancient violin hidden away by his mother in
the attic. She had considered it almost a sin to play the instrument.
Her husband, she thought, had been a failure because of his devotion
to this very violin. She had looked back upon the days when they were
first married, and he had spent hours pouring out his soul to her
through the strings of the instrument, as wickedness for which she must
ever do penance in this life.
As Hopewell Drugg remembered her, his mother had been a very austere
woman and had striven to repress every tendency in him toward life or
enjoyment. But once having found his father’s old violin, and learning
that he could draw a certain kind of harmony from its strings, he
refused to give it up. It was the one conflict of their existence
together; his mother had gone to her grave without forgiving him for
his devotion to music.
His marriage to Lottie’s mother had been a strange one, and his
happiness, if there had been happiness at all, was brief. “’Cinda
Stone,” as the neighbors had always called Lottie’s mother, was sickly
and her married life had been a short one. Since then, until recently,
Hopewell’s affections had seemed to be centered entirely in little
Lottie. It was to her he played “Silver Threads Among the Gold.” And he
still played it to her when the snow kept the child indoors.
Storm after storm charged upon Polktown from over the mountain-peaks
or from across the lake. The streets had to be dug out after each
snowfall by strings of slow-moving oxen dragging the heavy snowplows.
The country roads were almost impassable. Once Janice had to remain
with Mrs. MacKay over Sunday. Archie was still engaged in the bank,
although it was closed while the finances of the institution were being
adjusted.
Janice’s absence from town increased Lottie’s loneliness. Often the
older girl had stopped on her return from school, to visit with the
storekeeper’s daughter. Lottie did not go to school herself, but had
lessons for two hours each forenoon under Miss ’Rill’s oversight.
After that the hours hung heavily on her hands. She could slide down
hill, past Mr. Cross Moore’s; but the other children were in school
and it wasn’t much fun to play alone. So, one afternoon, she left her
sled at the bottom of the hill and tramped over the hard snow to the
frozen cove, where the half-wrecked dock thrust its ice-covered timbers
out from the shore. The line of dark spruce on the farther shore--the
wall against which her voice was thrown back when she called--was
snow-covered, too. And here were more flakes falling.
But little Lottie knew no danger. She was almost in sight of home. Or
she would have been had not the snowflakes been coming down so fast and
thick between her and the hill on which she lived.
Lottie had an idea in her mind. She had had it for a long time, and now
that the cove was solidly frozen over, she could put it into execution.
Her pretty fancy of the echo living in the spruce wood over yonder had
never been explained away. She firmly believed in the existence of
some sprite who shouted to her in gentle mockery when she called to him
from this side of the cove.
“He-a! he-a! he-a!” she shrilled, standing in the softly falling snow,
and facing the wooded point which was now but a hazy outline.
“’Y-a! ’y-a! ’y-a!” The echo came flatly across the cove. It did not
sound as it usually did. “I declare! do you suppose something is the
matter with my echo?” queried Lottie, aloud.
She shouted again. The reply was quite as slow in returning, and the
sound quite as flat.
“I’m going to see what the matter is with my echo,” murmured the child,
and she set forth from the shore on the snow-covered ice. The storm was
coming from behind her, and she had no idea how swiftly the snow was
gathering, or how hard the wind blew until she was in the middle of the
cove.
Even then Lottie was not greatly disturbed. A snowstorm was fun. And
she was going to find her echo, and they would play together!
So she went on, the storm beating upon her back. Unfortunately, the
direction of the wind was not toward the wooded point for which she had
started. She drifted before it, and it drove her steadily and surely
out upon the open lake.
The cove was solidly frozen over; but the lake ice had been broken by
the weight of former snows, and there were open spots in it, perilous
indeed for the unguided feet of the little girl.
Up on the heights the strength of the coming blizzard had been marked
earlier in the afternoon. Nelson Haley had sent the smaller children
home at two o’clock. By three, when the others were released, it was
already growing dark and the poultry had sought their roosts.
The snow was falling heavily as he made his way toward Mrs. Beasely’s
cottage. He saw Miss ’Rill’s anxious face at the store door.
“Some snow!” the school teacher called, cheerily. “Guess the young ones
will have their vacation a day earlier than we intended.”
“Oh, Mr. Haley!” she cried, without replying to his observation. “See
if Lottie is with Mrs. Beasely, will you?”
“Sure,” replied Nelson quickly.
He was back in a minute, not having removed his cap and coat. “Hasn’t
been with her this afternoon, Miss ’Rill,” said Haley. “What’s the
matter? Doesn’t Hopewell know where she is?”
“He said she had gone out with her sled. I’ve been down the hill, but
it’s snowing so fast the tracks of the sled are covered.”
“Where’s Hopewell gone?” demanded Haley.
“Down to the dock. He had to go to see about some freight that was left
there the last time the _Constance Colfax_ made a trip. He and Walky
Dexter will bring it up on Walky’s pung. It’s Christmas goods and--and
other things,” and Miss ’Rill blushed, for among the “other things”
were the last purchases for her wedding outfit.
“She can’t be over to your mother’s, can she?” asked the young man,
quite serious now.
“No,” said Miss ’Rill, shaking her head. “She is not there. Maybe at
Cross Moore’s----”
“I’ll go and see,” said the teacher. “You go back into the shop and
keep out of this wind. I tell you it’s sharp!”
He plodded down the hill without an idea that he shouldn’t find the
little girl in Mr. Cross Moore’s kitchen. The selectman was fond of
little Lottie, and often brought her into the house to see his wife,
who was an invalid.
When Nelson Haley knocked at the kitchen door, the slipshod girl who
waited on Mrs. Moore answered his summons. Mr. Cross Moore was not at
home. No; the little girl hadn’t been there that day.
“But I seed her slidin’ on her sled this arternoon,” drawled the girl,
who was an output of an orphan asylum--the sort of person, because of
mental and physical deficiencies, that few people would take into their
homes.
“Where did she go, my good girl?” asked Haley, with anxiety.
“It was beginning to snow and she went right down yonder on the pond.”
“To the cove, you mean?”
“Yep. And out on the ice. Mebbe she’s fell through a hole.”
“You didn’t see her come back?”
“Nop. It begun to snow right hard then, anyway.”
“How long ago was this?”
That question was a puzzling one for the deficient intellect of Sissy.
She shook her head. “’Twas afore I rubbed Miz’ Moore’s feet the last
time,” she ventured.
Haley, exasperated, but troubled still, pursued his questioning: “Did
that take long?”
“Nop. Not long.”
“Have you done anything else since?”
“Yep. I’m allus doin’ things. I washed her tea set. That was after I
made her tea and a slice of toast, and she’d eat it.”
“Goodness!” ejaculated Haley, figuring rapidly the possible time which
had elapsed since little Lottie had been seen going down to the lake.
“What else have you done since then?”
“Shook down the sittin’ room stove an’ put coal on. Miz’ Moore is bound
ter have a coal fire, so’s it kin be kep’ all night. And then you come.”
“Maybe Lottie went along an hour ago, then?” queried Haley.
“Wal, if yeou know, Mister,” drawled the girl.
He thought he had some sort of an idea as to Lottie’s whereabouts.
If she had gone down to the cove an hour before she might be in the
shelter of the old dock, for the snow had come on swiftly. When he
reached the shore, however, no Lottie was there.
What was she likely to do? Indeed, why had she come down here? These
questions were easily answered by the young man. Lottie’s fondness for
the echo was notorious in the neighborhood. She must have come here to
shout across the cove and listen to the answer.
“And then what?” thought Haley.
She had not returned up the hill. Even in this smother of snow she
could not have missed her way coming in that direction. She was still
here in the waste of snow, over which the storm was now shrieking.
The young man made a horn of his two gloved hands and shouted Lottie’s
name, again and again. Now the echo was completely smothered and no
sound at all came back to him.
A real blizzard had swept down upon the lake. If the child had wandered
out upon the ice, what chance would there be of her ever reaching the
shore again, let alone any human habitation? And, Nelson asked himself,
how should he set about finding her in the drifting snow!