THE UNEXPECTED HAPPENS
April flew by on the wings of the migrating birds, and it was almost the
last week, that brought the fragile wind flower to the wood edges and
the swallows to the old barn, before Brooke realized that the month had
fairly begun. For not more relentless is the rush of the city itself than
life on a farm in the springtime, when the power that drives is the vital
force of Nature herself, while a day dropped at this time slips back
beyond recall.
One morning, in herding a refractory hen, who had strayed with her brood
out among the young oats, Brooke had found herself close by the spot
where Henry Maarten was planting potatoes, and, half laughing and wholly
out of breath, she called to him for help, which call he answered by
catching the clucking, scratching hen, while she gathered the brood in
her apron, and he followed her silently back to the chicken yard at a
respectful distance.
Having put the chicks safely in a coop, Brooke pointed out a shorter
way across the flower garden by which Maarten might return to his
work. Seeing that he paused by the straggling clumps of early tulips
and daffodils that were already in bloom, and thinking they might be
reminding him of some other garden for which he was homesick, she bade
him gather as many as he wished, asked him if he was fond of flowers,
and whether he would not like some roots, seeds, or cuttings for his
little place, saying in a friendly way, to put him at his ease, for he
always seemed to dread her presence, “They tell me you are painting and
repairing to make a home at the Bisbee place for some one who is coming
over in the autumn. Nothing is so homelike to a woman as growing flowers.”
Pulling his hat over his eyes with a gesture of embarrassment rather than
because the sun was bright, he said, in carefully pronounced musical
English, with a decided foreign accent: “And they told you that I make a
home for a sweetheart who comes? Yes, I had thought to; but if she comes
not, what then?”
“But why should she not come? Surely she will if she has promised, and
knows that you work for her,” said Brooke, insensibly adopting his
pronunciation and speaking with ready confidence in the faith of woman
born of her own temperament.
“She has not promised it,” he faltered, looking down at the tulips and
again pulling his hat betwixt himself and his young questioner, as if he
feared that if she saw his eyes she might penetrate too far into his
innermost feelings.
“She knows you are working for her?”
“No, not even that.”
“At least she believes that you care?” persisted Brooke, too direct and
sympathetic to realize at once that she might be probing a wound.
“I once dared to think so, but since I have come away, the word has
travelled that perhaps her liking may be for another.”
“Why, doesn’t she know her own mind?” said Brooke, half to herself, all
at once becoming the self-appointed champion of her farmer-on-shares,
and not realizing until after the words had left her lips that she was
herself too young a woman to be a safe adviser to so young a man, and she
blushed hotly.
Turning to the flowers to aid her in an unforeseen situation by which
she found herself much moved, she spied the great clump of white bridal
roses, now putting out green shoots, that had spread from a single bush
almost to a hedge, and which Miss Keith had pointed out in its winter
leafless state as a much-cherished family possession. “Cut a root from
this with your knife, carefully, for its thorns are long and sharp, and
plant it by your porch, for the saying is that it brings luck to new
homes,” she said quickly. As she watched him she thought of the verses in
her letter, and all unconsciously repeated them half aloud, “‘Then mine
at worst is everlasting hope—’” but a sharp exclamation from the man, who
with back toward her was tugging at the rose root, stopped her; his hand
had slipped, and the sharp thorn pierced his thumb to the bone.
It was the pieman’s day, and promptly at noon his cart turned into the
barnyard. Mrs. Lawton, as well as Brooke, had come to look forward to
the break made by his visits, for embodied cheerfulness must always be a
welcome guest. This time, however, he was bustling with importance, and
laid a pink envelope, with an embossed violet in the place of a seal,
upon Brooke’s lap as she sat on the porch step waiting for him to settle
and unfold his budget.
The envelope contained a painfully written letter from his wife’s sister,
Sairy Ann, inviting Brooke to take the long-promised drive on the “Friday
route,” and pass the night at her farm, “to see the early birds in the
morning.” The sincerity of the invitation was so evident and the promised
experience so tempting, that, after thinking it over a moment, Brooke
went indoors to write an answer of acceptance, realizing that after the
Sign of the Fox should be hung in its place there could be no holidays.
“Going, bean’t you?” smiled the pieman, when she returned.
“Yes,” she nodded gayly, “that is, if I can persuade Mrs. Peck to keep
mother company. You see I have hunted far and wide for a young girl to
help in our new venture,” of which, by the way, the pieman most heartily
approved, and had been heralding it like the most persistent advance
agent along the entire course of both his town and country routes.
“Never mind, suthin’ may turn up yet,” he advised soothingly; “you’ve
got a week to spare and the Lord can raise up a heap o’ good as well as
trouble in that time, and sometimes waitin’ fer Providence after you’ve
done your best is advisable, and not to be jedged like settin’ and
waitin’ before you’ve done aught, and leaning, which is not faith, but
the devil’s yeast of laziness.”
In the early afternoon, after the pieman had gone on his way, Brooke
wheeled her father into the garden, while she planted the seeds of
mignonette, bluets, sweet-sultan, and China pinks, and the second
planting of sweet peas of Miss Keith’s saving, in the long rows that she
had advised, for now there would be a double reason for having jugs of
fragrant flowers on the table of the honeysuckle-screened south porch,
which Brooke had christened the Tea House.
Tatters was worried. Indoors he stayed by his master, outdoors he
followed his mistress—under the present circumstances, what was his duty?
First he licked Adam Lawton’s hand persistently, and then followed
Brooke along the line she had carefully marked with stick and string,
according to Stead’s gardening instructions, until he was made to
understand that his footprints in the newly turned earth were not things
to be desired; then he returned to the chair.
There could be no question that physically Adam Lawton was in every way
improving. The use of his hand was gradually returning, and with the
aid of a cane he could move slowly from the bed to his chair; he could
also play a game of checkers, and though he spoke slowly the words were
finished, not broken as at first. Still his thoughts were of the past and
lacked connection.
A sudden shower of potent April rain fell with sharp sound on Brooke’s
seed packages. Gathering them together hastily, she pushed the chair up
the sloping platform through the kitchen door that had been widened, and
as she did so the fishing pole that the Cub had mended fell clattering to
the floor. Stooping to pick it up she noticed that it caught her father’s
eye, and as she held it toward him, he grasped it eagerly, saying softly
to himself, “My new pole; to-morrow I’ll go fishing, if Enoch Fenton will
play hookey too.”
The rain increased and by five o’clock had promised to settle into
a steady pour that drew a curtain across the river, cut ruts in the
roadway, and gullied the soft fields,—a class of storm dreaded in spring
in a hillside country, and entirely the reverse of the traditional
growing rain.
The Cub came in and hung his coat to drip in the porch, and even the
water that ran from Pam’s grotesque and stubby tail made a puddle on the
floor.
“I turned the cows out and shut the gate, because Mr. Fenton said I ought
to from now on,” said the Cub, looking at the rain, and then gauging the
wind, as it tore downhill, like a veritable native. “I guess I’ll go back
and let ’em in again, just this once. No, I don’t want an umbrella, it’ll
only go bust,” he added, as he stepped out the door, closing it with much
difficulty against the rising tide of wind and rain.
Brooke, who had proffered the umbrella, stood watching him through the
glass half-door, and then a dark object coming up the cross-road drew her
attention. At first she could not make out whether it was man or woman;
then, while she was still in doubt, the screening umbrella broke loose
from its fastenings and, turning completely inside out, showed that its
carrier was a woman.
“Mother, please come here and see if you can tell me who this is
struggling up the road. Can it be Mrs. Peck? She is the only human being
hereabouts who does not keep a horse!” But the figure proved to be too
tall and straight to belong to the widow, who not only had settled and
gone to flesh, but was somewhat listed as well.
“When she reaches the house, whoever she may be, I would ask her in.
It may be some one who has come up by the trolley on the lower road
expecting to be met; better go and open the front door,” said Mrs.
Lawton, hastening to light the lamps, which were her special care.
Brooke started to act upon the suggestion, but as she gave a final look
she saw that the woman had already turned into the barn lane, and, though
evidently almost spent, was coming across to the kitchen door with a
directness that betokened familiarity. So Brooke returned to the side
door and, opening it a crack, held it against the racking wind. As the
gust swept through the house, Tatters, who had been lying in the hallway,
arose, gave a growl, then a sniff, and, with his tail beginning to swing
in a circle, nosed open the door, in spite of his mistress’s effort to
stop him, and threw himself violently against the dripping figure coming
up the cobbled path, who seemed to grapple with him.
“Back, Tatters! come back!” called Brooke, letting go her hold of the
door, which swung back with a clatter, as she clapped her hands to
attract the dog’s attention.
“Down, bad dog! Why, he will tear the woman to pieces. Quick! blow the
horn for Adam; I never dreamed he could act so!” cried Mrs. Lawton.
Brooke raised her hand to take the ram’s horn from its hook, still
calling and whistling to the dog, whose actions seemed to be wholly
unaccountable. As she looked, her hand dropped; the woman was hugging
Tatters, not buffeting him, while at the same instant the wind gave her
hat a final twist, breaking it from its moorings and carrying with it
the short veil whose modish black dots clung soddenly, like concentrated
tears, and the woman’s face was revealed.
“It is Cousin Keith!” gasped Brooke, dashing into the rain to lend a
helping hand, for the water-soaked skirts had finally wound themselves
into a bandage around the poor woman’s legs and effectually prevented her
from lifting her feet to the steps, upon which she sank, chancing into
the biggest puddle she possibly could have chosen.
Mrs. Lawton came to the door with hands extended, and a totally
bewildered expression on her face, while the same ideas were crowding the
brain of both mother and daughter. Had Keith West gone out of her mind,
or had a letter telling of her coming miscarried, and was her plight
wholly the result of not having been met and having miscalculated the
strength of the storm? Probably by this time she was no longer Keith
West, but Mrs. James White. If so, where was the First Cause? Had there
been a railway accident, or had she been “abandoned at the altar,” as the
newspapers put such matters?
“No, not into the kitchen,” expostulated Miss Keith, as Brooke would have
led in; “let me stand here and drip a bit—that is, unless you can set
down the little starch tub for me to stand in,” she added, as a shiver
went up her spine, making her teeth chatter.
“Nonsense, water cannot hurt oil-cloth, and you must go close to the fire
while I take off these sopping things at once,” said Brooke, decidedly,
pushing Miss Keith resolutely over the threshold and closing the door,
thinking, as she afterward said, that if she had a lunatic upon her
hands, she must neither hesitate nor argue.
Meanwhile the Cub had returned from the barn and, throwing open the door,
came upon the apparition of his tall and somewhat angular kinswoman, who
three months before had gone away in such brave array, being rapidly
divested of her outer garments by his mother and sister. Her sandy hair,
usually trigly coiled about her crown, had fallen down and stuck to her
face in gluey strings, suggesting, to his boyish fancy, seaweed clinging
to the figurehead of some shipwrecked vessel that at last view had swept
proudly from port, all sails set.
Giving vent to a long-drawn “wh-e-w,” the Cub began to laugh; it wasn’t
nice of him, but the scene was irresistibly funny. Not a word was
spoken, Miss Keith as yet offering no explanation whatever; and while
she managed to keep her usual poise, erect as a ramrod, she only moved
her legs and arms to release or put on garments as Brooke guided, like
a marionette. His laugh died away unheeded, and it was not until he
whispered “What’s up?” in a somewhat awe-struck tone in Brooke’s ear
that either of the women noticed him; and then Miss Keith gave a shriek,
and snatching one of the stockings that Brooke had but just succeeded
in peeling off, wrapped it around her neck, while Brooke said over her
shoulder, “We don’t exactly know, but won’t you _please_ go and stay
with father and coax Tatters with you,” for the dog was not a respecter
of clothes, and his joy at seeing his old friend was more emphatic than
convenient.
Seated in an arm-chair before the stove, enveloped in the Cub’s striped
blanket wrapper, her hair pushed out of her eyes, and her slippered feet
resting on the oven ledge, Miss Keith looked about the kitchen and then
at Mrs. Lawton, who had quietly taken a seat beside her as if expectant
of some new sort of outbreak, while Brooke went for a stimulant, and
mixing some whiskey and water, held it to the thin, teetotal lips, that
at first sipped dubiously and then quaffed eagerly, as she felt vitality
returning in the wake of the draught.
“Are you not better, and will you not tell us what has happened?” asked
Mrs. Lawton, in the precise, deliberate staccato speech by which the
calmest people often show that they are nervous.
“Did you write us that you were coming? And why, pray, did you not take
Bisbee’s hack from the station, instead of risking such a walk in a storm
like this?”
“Because I am a fool!” jerked Miss Keith; “I wanted to get here without
being seen; I hoped you would let me hide for a few days until I could
think out where to go and what to do! I came on the train as far as
Stonebridge, and when I boarded the trolley it promised to clear off. If
I’d taken Bisbee’s hack, the talk of me would have been all over town and
into prayer-meetin’ to-night. This is Wednesday, isn’t it?”
“No, Tuesday,” replied Brooke, soothingly, exchanging an anxious glance
with her mother, which as much as said, “Yes, the poor soul is deranged,”
while at the same time she was revolving in her mind how she could
manage, without attracting attention, to send Adam for Dr. Love, a young
physician of Dr. Russell’s recommending, who had lately established
himself in Gilead, hitherto the people of the River Kingdom having been
obliged to send either to Stonebridge or Gordon. Swift as the glance was,
Miss Keith, who was rapidly recovering herself, caught it in passing and,
moreover, read its full meaning.
“I’m not crazy, nor coming down with typhoid, nor dying from justice!”
she announced in a tone of suppressed excitement that was far from
reassuring. “In that I have proved scripture (not that it needed
proving), my visit of the last three months has been a success. Pride
goeth before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall. My pride is
gone and I have fallen—”
“Oh, Keith!” said Mrs. Lawton, faintly.
“In spirit, from my high aspirations,” she continued, not heeding the
interruption nor the sudden painful colour that suffused Mrs. Lawton’s
face. “Also a fool and his money are soon parted, likewise my money and
me. So I am, as I said before, a fool, but one who would like a few days
to review her folly before the minister and the neighbours feel called
upon to wrestle with her about it.”
Light was beginning to dawn upon Mrs. Lawton and Brooke, though as yet
the clouds were by no means lifted.
“Would you not rather rest until after supper or have a night’s sleep
before you pain yourself by telling us? We do not wish to force any
confidence, only naturally we feared that you were ill. Your room, by
chance, was aired to-day, and the bed-making is only a minute’s work,”
said Mrs. Lawton, rising and laying her hand soothingly upon Keith’s
shoulder, as a hint that she might perhaps like to retire, which would
have been an unspeakable relief. Not she! Keith West’s nature, blended
curiously as it was of Scotch and New England granite, was softest and
most retiring in triumphant, happy moods, but in adversity, unsparing and
unflinching.
“What I have to tell won’t improve by keeping,” she said by way of
answer. “To begin with, I ought to have known better, after all my
farming experience, than to buy a pig in a poke, a cow over seven, or a
horse without knowing its age, and expect a bargain.”
“You seemed to be having a delightful time in Boston when you last
wrote,” ventured Brooke, quietly, in an endeavour to hasten and focus the
explanation, which, being epigrammatically expressed, acquired vagueness
thereby.
“Yes, I did at first, until I found out that my friend Mrs. Dow was
charging her car fare up to me when she took me about, and that her
company, with which the house was so full that I had to take a third
story back, were boarders, and I was charged double rates because I’d
only come for what she called the ‘cream of the season.’ I didn’t find
all this out until the first month’s payday, and then I overlooked
it because I know learned men never get big salaries and I felt for
Judith’s pride. The next shock was that Mr. Dow, who I supposed was at
the very least a professor or something in the museum and, as they say,
‘counted an honourable position above high pay,’ was only the janitor!
One day when I was out alone I called on him, and the door man said the
only person of that name about the place was tending the furnace in
the cellar. As I stood on the sidewalk, hesitating, wondering if I had
mistaken the place, up popped Dow’s head through the coal-hole!
“Why hadn’t I guessed it before? I don’t know why, except that you don’t
judge a man by his looks or his clothes in Boston, only by his language,
and Mr. Dow certainly had a choice and entertaining flow. I meant to
speak of it to Judith, but I let that pass by too. Thinking of being
married so soon myself made me feel sympathy for a woman who wanted
the man of her choice to appear to advantage. All the same I felt like
shortening my stay as much as possible, and I wrote to James White to
that effect, he replying by return mail. He said that only one thing
stood in the way of his coming on the first of April, instead of waiting
until May; a small mortgage of three thousand dollars was due on the
farm, so that he must wait and arrange for it, as he wished to use the
money he had in hand for our journey and improving the place to suit me.
He hinted that money cost more out in Wisconsin than it does East, but he
guessed that he’d have no difficulty in renewing the mortgage at ten per
cent.”
Here Miss Keith paused for breath, clenched her hands, and set her
teeth, as if taking a fresh grip on herself before she continued the
confession. The expression on her face was that of a martyr, not only
refusing to recant, but rather insisting upon punishment. This time,
however, there was a third auditor, the Cub, who was standing in the
hallway, concealed by the door niche, his rather small, deep-set, gray
eyes fairly sparkling with mischief.
“As I said before, a fool and his money are soon parted, and here is
where I parted from mine. I don’t excuse myself and say that I was
overpersuaded, for I wasn’t—I was hallucinated and avaricious all in one.
My twenty years’ savings, four thousand dollars, only drew four per cent
in the savings-banks where I’d put it. If I took up that mortgage at
seven even, I should really be owning my own home, favouring my husband,
and being well paid for so doing, besides having something left over, for
even then a long experience in peddling eggs had learned me not to put
them all in one basket.
“So I wrote James White, and after a little of what seemed natural
hesitation, he took my offer, told me how to forward the money, and said
he’d bring the mortgage on with him, as it would be safer than in the
mails. Also that he would be on in ten days and bring his youngest girl
with him, as she was piney and he wanted her to see a Boston doctor, and
she’d be company for me if I felt strange in going back. He did write
real considerate,” and Miss Keith paused a moment, as if she could not
yet wholly forget her hopes.
“I lived well at Judith Dow’s those last ten days,—ice-cream every night
and as much real clear coffee as I could drink; and Mr. Dow brought home
three reserved-seat tickets to a Boston Symphony concert, but there was a
blizzard that night and the electrics got fouled, so we didn’t get there,
which was probably lucky, as I now firmly believe he found the tickets in
the street, or else in the museum, and the owner might have faced us down.
“Judith helped me with my shopping, and I was ready even to my bonnet
(yes, that very one lying annihilated over there) the last week of March.
James wrote that he would be on by the first week of April, and he was,
the first _day_, as it chanced. It was just before supper that night when
Judith came running up all those three flights of stairs and only had
strength left to say ‘they’ve come,’ and ask me wouldn’t I rather meet
James alone before they all came in to tea, adding that her little niece
was very weary and so she had gone to bed. I thought Judith looked rather
queer and pale, but I laid it to the stairs and a weak heart, and having
my new blue waist on, I went straight down.
“Judith opened the door of the parlour to let me pass, but as there was
nobody in it but a lean old man with a loose, close-shaven upper lip and
chin whiskers, I backed out again, thinkin’ she’d made a mistake, and
James was in the livin’ room where we ate; but she held the door, and I
said, thinking she didn’t notice, ‘Mr. White isn’t here!’
“‘Yes, he is,’ said she; ‘James, this is Keith West, your affianced!’
“‘You’re not James White!’ I said, getting as cold as clams, ‘I have his
picture; he is dark, and stout, and personable, with a heavy beard, and
but a little turned of fifty!’
“‘So I was, twenty years ago, when that picture was took,’ said the
horrid old man, grinning and wobbling his chin as he came forward, and
before I knew what he was doing he put his arm around my waist.
“‘How dared you both lie to me so!’ I cried, turning to Judith.
“‘I didn’t send you any picture; it was sister,’ said he.
“‘I didn’t lie—you deceived yourself, you never asked when the picture
was taken! You are fifty and he was a grown man when you were in the
primary,’ said Judith, sharp as a knife. And when I came to think of it I
never had thought of this, or worked out his age.
“‘Give me back my money and I’ll leave this house to-night!’ I said, but
even then Judith persuaded me to sleep over it and that things might look
differently in the morning.
“They did—only worse—for that night one of the oldest boarders, a third
cousin of theirs, crept in and told me that James White was already four
times a widower, his farm being in a feverish sort of country, and that
the girl—belonging to his second wife—who had come with him was really
twenty, though she had never grown since she was ten, and had epileptic
fits.
“I never slept a wink, but packed my trunks and slipped out for an
expressman as soon as it was light, and moved to a woman’s temperance
hotel that I had noticed not many blocks away.
“James White and his sister followed me hot-foot after breakfast, and
words passed on both sides, Judith doing more talking than her brother,
who it then seemed to me was somewhat lacking and wouldn’t have fought
back without being egged on.
“I said that I would sue for my money, and she said that he would sue
me for breach of promise, which he had in writing and signed plainly! I
stayed at that hotel until yesterday, wrestling with my pride, and then
I grew so homesick, the money I’d taken dwindled, and you know, Brooke,
you said that you’d be glad to see me if I ever came back, and so here
I am. I’ll work my board out, if you’ll let me, until I can look about
and perhaps rent a little place and go to raise chickens—if only you’ll
forget all that I’ve told and not repeat it except to Dr. Russell. Just
say I’ve changed my mind, for if Enoch Fenton got hold of this there’d
be no rest for me short of Middletown Asylum,” and Keith, relaxing at
last, began to sob just as she had the day that she had answered James
White’s first letter, using Tatters’ head (he had stolen in again) for a
pillow.
Both Brooke and Mrs. Lawton, remembering her kindly welcome home in their
trouble, said all in their power to reassure her, and the younger woman
gave her a rapid sketch of her new business plans, saying that if her
hopes were realized fair pay would also be a part of the coöperative
living. Something else she was about to add, for with all her sentiment
Brooke was far-sighted, but her inborn delicacy stopped her, for the idea
seemed harsh and brutal when put in words.
But the third listener read his sister’s thoughts and did not hesitate.
Striding into the room, he stood before his astounded kinswoman, towering
above her, and said, with an apparently genial smile and hands in
pockets: “I’ll make a bargain with you, Cousin Keith, fair and square
over the right. I’ll forget all about your trip to Boston, and help you
do the same, _unless_ you forget that sister is mistress here, that
I’m her backer, and mother the dowager duchess! In which case I shall
_remember_, and with _trimmings_!” And strange to say, the boy’s unasked
championship was possibly the only thing that could have clarified the
situation and made the coöperative household a possibility without
embarrassment or bitter feeling.