It was October--the carnival time of the year,
When on the ground red apples lie
In piles like jewels shining,
And redder still on old stone walls
Are leaves of woodbine twining.
When comrades seek sweet country haunts,
By twos and twos together,
And count like misers, hour by hour,
October's bright blue weather.
On a lovely afternoon our travelers were driving leisurely along through
partially cleared woodland. The doctor had proposed that they take this
trip in the new automobile. But Mary had declined with great firmness.
"I will not be hurled along the road in October of all months. What
fools these mortals be," she went on. "Last year while driving slowly
through the glorious Austrian Tyrol fairly holding my breath with
delight, one machine after another whizzed by, the occupants fancying
they were 'doing' the Tyrol, I dare say."
Mary looked about her, drinking in deep draughts of the delicious air.
The beautifully-tinted leaves upon every tree and bush, the blue haze in
the distance and the dreamful melancholy over all, were delightful to
her. The fragrance of wild grapes came to them as they emerged from the
woods and Mary said, "Couldn't you wait a minute, John, until I go back
and find them? I'll bring you some."
"If you were sick and had sent for a doctor would you like to have him
fool around gathering grapes and everything else on his way?"
"No, I wouldn't. I really wouldn't."
They laughed as they sped along the open country road, skirted on either
side by a rail fence. From a fence corner here and there arose tall
sumac, like candelabra bearing aloft their burning tapers. The poke-weed
flung out its royal purple banners while golden-rod and asters were
blooming everywhere. Suddenly Mary exclaimed, "I'm going to get out of
the buggy this minute."
"What for?"
"To gather those brown bunches of hazelnuts."
"Mary, I positively will not wait for you."
"John, I positively don't want you to wait for me," said Mary, putting
her foot on the step, "I'm going to stay here and gather nuts till you
come back. See how many there are?" and she sprang lightly to the
ground.
"It will be an hour or more before I can get back. I've got to take up
that pesky artery."
"It won't seem long. You know I like to be alone."
"Good-bye, then," and the doctor started off.
"Wait! John," his wife called after him. "I haven't a thing to put the
nuts in, please throw me the laprobe." The doctor crushed the robe into
a sort of bundle and threw it to her.
She spread the robe upon the ground and began plucking the bunches. Her
fingers flew nimbly over the bushes and soon she had a pile of the brown
treasures. Dear old times came trooping back. She thought of far-off
autumn days when she had taken her little wagon and gone out to the
hazel bushes growing near her father's house, and filled it to the top
and tramped it down and filled it yet again. Then a gray October day
came back when three or four girls and boys, all busy in the bushes,
talked in awed tones of the great fire--Chicago was burning up! Big, big
Chicago, which they had never seen or dreamed of seeing--all because a
cow kicked over a lamp.
Mary moved to another clump of bushes. As she worked she thought if she
had never known the joy of gathering nuts and wild grapes and
persimmons, of wandering through woods and meadows, her childhood would
have lost much that is beautiful and best, and her womanhood many of its
dearest recollections.
"You're the doctor's wife, ain't ye?"
Mary looked around quite startled. A tall woman in a blue calico dress
and a brown gingham sunbonnet was standing there. "I didn't want to
scare ye, I guess you didn't see me comin'."
"I didn't know you were coming--yes, I am the doctor's wife."
"We saw ye from the house and supposed he'd gone on to see old man
Benning and that you had stopped to pick nuts."
"You guessed it exactly," said Mary with a smile.
"We live about a quarter mile back from the road so I didn't see the
doctor in time to stop him."
"Is some one sick at your house, then?"
"Well, my man ain't a doin' right, somehow. He's been ailin' for some
time and his left foot and leg is a turnin' blue. I come to see if you
could tell me somethin' I could do for it. I'm afraid it's mortifyin'."
Mary's brown eyes opened wide. "Why, my dear woman, I couldn't tell you
anything to do. I don't know anything at all about such things."
"I supposed bein' a doctor's wife you'd learnt everything like that."
"I have learned many things by being a doctor's wife, very many things,
but what to do with a leg and foot that are mortifying I really could
not tell you." Mary turned her face away to hide a laugh that was
getting near the surface. "I will have the doctor drive up to the house
when he gets back if you wish," she said, turning to her companion.
"Maybe that would be best. Your husband cured me once when I thought
nothing would ever get me well again. I think more of him than any other
man in the world."
"Thank you. So do I."
She started off and Mary went on gathering nuts, her face breaking into
smiles at the queer errand and the restorative power imputed to herself.
"If it is as serious as she thinks, all the doctors in the world can't
do much for it, much less one meek and humble doctor's wife. But they
could amputate, I suppose, and I'm sure I couldn't, not in a scientific
way."
Thus soliloquizing, she went from clump to clump of the low bushes till
they were bereft of their fruitage. She looked down well-pleased at the
robe with the nuts piled upon it. She drew the corners up and tied her
bundle securely. This done she looked down the road where the doctor had
disappeared. "I'll just walk on and meet him," she thought. She went
leisurely along, stopping now and then to pluck a spray of goldenrod.
When she had gathered quite a bunch she looked at it closely. "You are
like some people in this world--you have a pretty name and at a little
distance _you_ are pretty: but seen too close you are a disappointment,
and more than that you are coarse. I don't want you," and she flung them
away. She saw dust rising far down the road and hoped it might be the
doctor. Yes, it was he, and Bucephalus seemed to know that he was
traveling toward home. When her husband came up and she was seated
beside him, she said, "You are wanted at that little house over yonder,"
and she told him what had taken place in the hazel bushes. "You're
second choice though, they came for me first," she said laughing.
"I wish to thunder you'd gone. They owe me a lot now they'll never pay."
"At any rate, they hold you in very high esteem, John."
"Oh, yes, but esteem butters no bread."
"Well, you'll go, won't you? I told the woman you would."
"Yes, I'll go."
He turned into a narrow lane and in a few minutes they were at the gate.
The doctor handed the reins to Mary and went inside. A girl fourteen or
fifteen years old with a bald-headed baby on her arm came out of the
house and down the path.
"Won't you come in?"
"No, thank you. We will be going home in a minute."
The girl set the baby on the gate-post. "She's the smartest baby I ever
saw," she said. "She's got a whole mouthful of teeth already."
"And how old is she?"
"She was ten months old three weeks ago last Saturday."
As today was Thursday, Mary was on the point of saying, "She will be
eleven months old in a few days then," but checked herself--she
understood. It would detract from the baby's smartness to give her
eleven months instead of only ten in which to accomplish such wonders in
the way of teeth. The doctor came out and they started. Just before they
came out to the main road they passed an old deserted house. No signs of
life were about it except the very luxuriant life in the tall jimsons
and ragweeds growing about it and reaching almost to the top of the low
doorway, yawning blackly behind them.
"I think the longest night of my life was spent in that house about
sixteen years ago. It's the only house I was ever in where there was
nothing at all to read. There wasn't even an almanac."
Mary laughed. "An almanac is a great deal better than nothing, my dear.
I found that out once upon a time when I had to stay in a house for
several hours where there was just one almanac and not another printed
page. I read the jokes two or three times till they began to pall and
then set to work on the signs. I'll always have a regard for them
because they gave me a lift through those tedious hours."
They were not far from the western edge of the piece of woodland they
were traversing and all about them was the soft red light of the setting
sun. They could see the sun himself away off through the straight and
solemn trunks of the trees. A mile farther on Mary uttered a sudden
exclamation of delight.
"See that lovely bittersweet!"
"I see, but don't ask me to stop and get you some."
"I won't, but I'll ask you to stop and let _me_ get some."
"I wouldn't bother about it. You'll have to scramble over that ditch and
up the bank--"
"I've scrambled over worse things in my life," she said, springing from
the buggy and picking her way down the intervening ditch. The bright red
berries in their flaring yellow hoods were beautiful. She began breaking
off the branches. When she had gathered a large bunch and was turning
toward the buggy she saw a vehicle containing two women approaching from
the opposite direction. There was a ditch on either side of the road
which, being narrow at this point, made passing a delicate piece of
work. The doctor drew his horse to one side so that the wheels of the
buggy rested on the very brink and waited for them to pass; he saw that
there was room with perhaps a foot or two to spare.
On came the travelers and--the front wheels of the two vehicles were
locked in a close embrace. For a minute the doctor did some vigorous
thinking and then he climbed out of the buggy. It was a trying position.
He could not say all of the things he wanted to--it would not be polite;
neither did he want to act as if it were nothing because Mary might not
understand the extent of the mischief she had caused and how much out of
humor he was with her. It would be easier if she were only out of
hearing instead of looking at him across the ditch with apologetic eyes.
The doctor's horse began to move uneasily but the other stood perfectly
still.
"He's used to this sort of thing, perhaps," said the doctor with as
little sarcasm as possible.
"Yes, we have run into a good many buggies and things," said one of the
women, cheerfully.
"Women beat the devil when it comes to driving," thought the doctor
within himself. "They'll drive right over you and never seem to think
they ought to give part of the road. And they do it everywhere, not only
where there are ditches." He restrained his speech, backed the offending
vehicle and started the travelers on. While he was doing so his own
steed started on and he had a lively run to catch him.
Mary had thought of turning back to break off another spray of the
bittersweet but John's profanity was rising to heaven. Diplomacy
required her to get to the buggy and into it at once. This she did and
the doctor plunged in after her.
"Forgive me for keeping you waiting," she said gently. She held the
bittersweet out before her. "Isn't it lovely, John?"
A soft observation turneth away wrath. The doctor's was oozing away
sooner than he wished.
They drove on for a while in silence. The soft, still landscape dotted
here and there with farm houses and with graceful elm and willow trees,
was lit up and glorified by the after-glow. The evening sky arching
serenely over a quiet world, how beautiful it was! And as Mary's eyes
caught a glittering point of light in the blue vault above them, she
sang softly to herself:
"O, thou sublime, sweet evening star,
Joyful I greet thee from afar."
For a while she watched the stars as one by one they twinkled into view,
then drawing her wraps more closely about her, she leaned back in the
carriage and gave herself up to pleasant reflection, and before she
realized it the lights of home were twinkling cheerily ahead.