IN UNTRODDEN FIELDS
"You don't want to have much to do with that fellow," said Stannard,
when Bruce Fearing had gone on about whatever business he had in
hand.
"Why not?" Elliott's tone was short. She had wanted to hear what Bruce
was going to say.
"Oh, he is all right, enough, I guess, but nobody knows where he came
from. He and that Pete brother of his are no relations of ours, or of
Aunt Jessica's either."
"How does he happen to be living here, then?"
"Search me. Some kind of a pick-up, I gathered. Nobody talks much
about it. They take him as a matter of course. All right enough for
them, if they want to, but they really ought to warn strangers. A
fellow would think he was--er--all right, you know."
Stannard's words made Elliott very uncomfortable. She thought the
reason they disquieted her was that she had rather liked Bruce
Fearing, and now to have him turn out a person whom she couldn't be as
friendly with as she wished was disconcerting. It was only another
point in her indictment of life on the Cameron farm; one couldn't tell
whom one was knowing. But she determined to sound Laura, which would
be easy enough, and Stannard's charge might prove unfounded.
But sounding Laura was not easy, chiefly for the reason Stannard had
shrewdly deduced, that the Robert Camerons took Peter and Bruce
Fearing in quite as matter-of-fact a way as they took themselves.
Laura even failed to discover that she was being sounded.
"Who is this 'Pete' you're always talking about?" Elliott asked.
"Bruce's older brother--I almost said ours." The two girls were
skimming currants, Laura with the swift skill of accustomed fingers,
Elliott more slowly. "He is perfectly fine. I wish you could know
him."
"I gathered he was Bruce's brother."
"He's not a bit like Bruce. Pete is short and dark and as quick as a
flash. You'd know he would make a splendid aviator. There was a letter
in the 'Upton News' last night from an Upton doctor who is over there,
attached now to our boys' camp; did you see it? He says Bob and Pete
are 'the acknowledged aces' of their squadron. That shows we must have
missed some of their letters. The last one from Bob was written just
after he had finished his training."
"This--Pete went from here?"
"He and Bob were in Tech together, juniors. They enlisted in Boston,
and they've kept pretty close tabs on each other ever since. They had
their training over here in the same camps. In France, Pete got into
spirals first, 'by a fluke,' as he put it; Bob was unlucky with his
landings. But, some way or other, Bob seems to have beaten him to the
actual fighting. Now they're in it together." And Laura smiled and
then sighed, and the nimble fingers stopped work for a minute, only to
speed faster than ever.
"I haven't read you any of their letters, have I? Or Sid's either?
(Sidney is my twin, you know. He is at Devens.) But I will. If
anything, Pete's are funnier than Bob's. Both the boys have an eye to
the jolly side of things. Sometimes you wouldn't think there was
anything to flying but a huge lark, by the way they write. But there
was one letter of Pete's (it was to Mother), written from their first
training-camp in France after one of the boys' best friends had been
killed. Pete was evidently feeling sober, but oh, so different from
the way any one would have felt about such a thing before the war
began! There was plenty of fun in the letter, too, but toward the end,
Pete told about this Jim Stone's death, and he said: 'It has made us
all pretty serious, but nobody's blue. Jim was a splendid fellow, and
a chap can't think he has stopped as quick as all that. Mother Jess,
do you remember my talking to you one Sunday after church, freshman
vacation, about the things I didn't believe in? Why didn't you tell me
I was a fool? You knew it then, and I know it now.' That's Pete all
over. It made Mother and me very happy."
Elliott felt rather ashamed to continue her probing. "Have they always
lived with you," she asked, "the Fearings?"
"Oh, yes, ever since I can remember. Isn't Bruce splendid? I don't
know how we could have got on at all this summer without Bruce."
Then Elliott gave up. If a mystery existed, either Laura didn't know
of it, or she had forgotten it, or else she considered it too
negligible to mention.
The girl found that for some reason she did not care to ask
Stannard the source of his information. Would Bruce himself prove
communicative? There could be no harm in finding out. Besides, it
would tease Stannard to see her talking with "that fellow," and
Elliott rather enjoyed teasing Stannard. And didn't she owe him
something for a dictatorial interruption?
The thing would require manoeuvering. You couldn't talk to Bruce
Fearing, or to any one else up here, whenever you felt like it; he was
far too busy. But on the hill at sunset Elliott found her chance.
"I think Aunt Jessica," she remarked, "is the most wonderful woman
I've ever seen."
A glow lit up Bruce's quiet gray eyes. "Mother Jess," he said, "is a
miracle."
"She is so terrifically busy, and yet she never seems to hurry; and
she always has time to talk to you and she never acts tired."
"She is, though."
"I suppose she must be, sometimes. I like that name for her, 'Mother
Jess.' Your--aunt, is she?"
"Oh, no," said Bruce, simply. "I've no Cameron or Fordyce blood in me,
or any other pedigreed variety. My corpuscles are unregistered. She
and Father Bob took Pete and me in when I was a baby and Pete was a
mere toddler. I was born in the hotel down in the town there,--Am I
boring you?"
"No, indeed!" Elliott had the grace to blush at the ease with which
she was carrying on her investigation.
He wondered why she flushed, but went on quietly. "Our own mother died
there in the hotel when I was a week old and we didn't seem to have
any kin. At least, they never showed up. Mother was evidently a widow;
Mother Jess got that from her belongings. She stopped overnight at
Highboro, and I was born there. She hadn't told any one in the hotel
where she was going. Registered from Boston, but nobody could be found
in Boston who knew of her. The authorities were going to send Pete and
me to some kind of a capitalized Home, when Mother Jess stepped in.
She hadn't enough boys, so she said. Bob and Laura and Sid were on
deck. Henry and Tom came along later. Fordyce was the one that died;
he'd just slipped out. Mother Jess was feeling lonely, I guess.
Anyway, she took us two; said she thought we'd be better off on the
farm than in a Home and she needed us--bless her! Do you wonder Pete
and I swear by the Camerons?"
"No," said Elliott. "Indeed I don't." She had what she had been
angling for, in good measure, but she rather wished she hadn't got it,
after all. "Haven't you had any clue in all these years as to who your
people were?"
"Not the slightest. I'm willing to let things rest as they are."
"Yes, of course," thought Elliott, "but--" She let it go at "but."
Oughtn't somebody, as Stannard said, to have warned her? These boys'
people might have been very common persons, not at all like Camerons.
The fact that no relatives appeared proved that, didn't it? Every one
who was any one at all had a family. Bruce did not look common: his
gray eyes and his broad forehead and his keen, thin face were almost
distinguished, and his manners were above criticism. But one never
could tell. And hadn't he been brought up by Camerons? The very
openness with which he had told his story had something fine about it.
He, like Laura, seemed to see nothing in it to conceal.
Well, was there? Elliott could quite clearly imagine what Aunt
Margaret, Stannard's mother, would say to that question. She had never
especially cared for Aunt Margaret. As Elliott looked at Bruce
Fearing, one of the pillars of her familiar world began to totter.
Actually, she could think of no particularly good reason why, when she
had heard his story, she should proceed to shun him. His history
simply didn't seem to matter, except to make her sorry for him; and
yet she couldn't be really sorry for a boy who had been brought up by
Aunt Jessica.
Perhaps the Cameron Farm atmosphere was already beginning to work.
"I think you and your brother had luck," she said.
"I know we did," answered Bruce.
Elliott turned the conversation. "I wish you could tell me what you
were going to say, when we were interrupted yesterday, about a
person's having no choice except how he will do things--_you_ having
had only that kind of choice."
"I remember," said Bruce. "Well, for one thing, I suppose I could get
grouchy, if I chose, over not knowing who my people were."
"They may have been very splendid," said Elliott.
Bruce smiled. "It's not likely."
"In that case," she countered, "you have the satisfaction of _not_
knowing who they were."
"Exactly. But that's rather a crawl, isn't it? Of course, a fellow
would like to know."
The boy bent forward, and, with painstaking care, selected a blade
from a tuft of grass growing between his feet. He nibbled a minute
before he spoke again.
"See here, I'm going to tell you something I haven't told a soul. I'm
crazy to go to the war. Sometimes it seems as though I couldn't stay
home. When Pete's letters come I have to go away somewhere quick and
chop wood! Anything to get busy for a while."
"Aren't you too young? Would they take you?"
"Take me? You bet they'd take me! I'm eighteen. Don't I look twenty?"
The girl's eye ran critically over the strong young body, with its
long, supple, sinewy lines. "Yes," she nodded. "I think you do."
"They'd take me in a minute, in aviation or anything else."
"Then why don't you?"
"Who'd help Father Bob through the farm stunts? Young Bob's gone, and
Pete and Sidney. They were always here for the summer work. Henry's a
fine lad, but a boy still. Tom's nothing but a boy, though he does
his bit. As for the Women's Land Army, it's got up into these parts,
but not in force. Father Bob can't hire help: it's not to be had.
That's why Mother Jess and the girls are going in so for farm work.
They never did it before this year, except in sport. We have more land
under cultivation this summer than ever before, and fewer hands to
harvest it with. But Mother and the girls sha'n't have to work
harder than they're doing now, if I can help it. Could I go off and
leave them, after all they've done for me? But that's not it,
either--gratitude. They're mine, Father Bob and Mother Jess are, and
the rest; they're my folks. You're not exactly grateful to your own
folks, you know. They belong to you. And you don't leave what belongs
to you in the lurch."
"No," said Elliott. With awakened eyes she was watching Bruce. No boy
had ever talked of such things to her before. "So you're not going?"
"Not of my own will. Of course, if the war lasts and I'm drafted, or
the help problem lightens up, it will be different. Pete's gone. It
was Pete's right to go. He's the elder."
"But you _are_ choosing," Elliott cried earnestly. "Don't you see?
You're choosing to stay at home and--" words came swiftly into her
memory--"'fight it out on these lines all summer.'"
Bruce's smile showed that he recognized her quotation, but he shook
his head. "Choosing? I haven't any choice--except being decent about
it. Don't _you_ see I can't go? I can only try to keep from thinking
about not going."
"You being you," said the girl, and she spoke as simply and soberly as
Bruce himself, though her own warmth surprised her, "I see you can't
go. But was that all you meant"--her voice grew ludicrously
disappointed--"by a person's having a choice only of how he will do a
thing? There's nothing to that but making the best of things!"
Bruce Fearing threw back his head and laughed heartily.
"You're the funniest girl I've ever seen."
"Then you can't have seen many. But _is_ there?"
"Perhaps not. Stupid, isn't it?"
"Yes," she nodded, "I'm afraid it is. And frightfully old. I was
hoping you were going to tell me something new and exciting."
The boy chuckled again. "Nothing so good as that. Besides, I've a
hunch the exciting things aren't very new, after all."
Elliott went to sleep that night, if not any happier, at least more
interested. She had looked deep into the heart of a boy, different, it
appeared, from any boy that she had ever known; and something loyal
and sturdy and tender she had seen there had stirred her. It was odd
how well acquainted she felt with him; odd, too, how curious she was
to know him better, even though he hadn't the least idea who his
grandfather had been. "Bother his grandfather!" Elliott chuckled to
realize how such a sentiment would horrify Aunt Margaret. Grandfathers
were very important to Aunt Margaret and Aunt Margaret's children.
Grandfathers had always seemed fairly important to Elliott herself
until now. Was it their relative unimportance in the Robert Camerons'
estimation, or a pair of steady gray eyes, that had altered her
valuation? The girl didn't know and she was keen enough to know that
she didn't; keen enough, too, to perceive that the change in her
estimation of grandfathers applied to a single case only and might be
merely temporary.
However that might be, she was not ready yet to do anything so
inherently distasteful as make the best of what she didn't like,
especially when nobody but herself and two boys would know it. When
one makes the best of things, one likes to do it to crowded galleries,
that perceive what is going on and applaud. The Robert Camerons,
Elliott was quite sure, wouldn't applaud. They would take it as a
matter of course, just as they took her as a matter of course. They
were quite charming about it, as delightful hosts as one could
wish--if only they lived differently!--but Elliott wasn't used to
being taken for granted. She might have been these new cousins' own
sort, for any difference she could detect in their actions. They
didn't seem to begin to understand her importance. Perhaps she wasn't
so important, after all. The doubt had never before entered her mind.
The fact was, of course, that among these busy, efficient people she
was feeling quite useless; and she didn't like to appear incompetent
when she knew herself to be, in her own line, a thoroughly able
person. But it irked her to think that she had been forced into a
position where in self-defense she must either acquire a kind of
efficiency she didn't want or do without. At the same time it troubled
her lest this reluctance become apparent. For they were all loves and
she wouldn't hurt their feelings for worlds. And she did wish them to
admire her. But she had a feeling that they didn't altogether, not
even Priscilla and Bruce.
Nevertheless, the next day when Laura asked whether she would take her
book out to the hay-field or stay where she was on the porch, Elliott
looked up from "Lorna Doone" and said, with the prettiest little
coaxing air, "If I go, will you let me pitch hay?" And Laura answered
as lightly, "Certainly." "I don't believe you," said Elliott. "You may
ride on the hay-load," smiled Laura. "That won't do at all," Elliott
shook her head. "If I can't pitch hay, I'll stay here." Laura laughed
and said: "You certainly will be more comfortable here. I can't quite
see you pitching hay." And Elliott retorted: "You don't know what I
could do, if I tried. But since you won't let me try--"
It was all smiling and gay, but it was a crawl, and Elliott knew it
and knew that Laura knew it, and she felt ashamed. Wasn't Stannard's
frank shirking better than her camouflaged variety? But hadn't she
picked berries all the morning in a stuffy sunbonnet under a broiling
sun, until she felt as red as a berry and much less fresh and sweet?
"It's a shame," said Laura, "that this is just our busy season; but
you know you have to make hay while the sun shines. Father thinks we
can finish the lower meadows to-day. Then to-morrow we begin cutting
on the hill. It's really fun to ride the hay-rake. I mostly drive the
rake, though now and then I pitch for variety."
She looked so strong and brown and merry, as she talked, that Elliott,
comfortably established with "Lorna Doone," felt almost like flinging
her book into the next chair, slipping her arm through Laura's, and
crying, "Lead on!" But she remembered just in time that, as she hadn't
wished to come to the Cameron Farm, it would ill become her to have a
good time there. Which may seem like a childish way of looking at the
thing, but isn't really confined to children at all.
So the hay-makers tramped away down the road, their laughter floating
cheerfully back over their shoulders; and Elliott sat on the big shady
veranda and read her book.
She might have enjoyed it less had she heard Henry's frank summary at
the turn of the lane, when his father inquired the whereabouts of
Stannard.
"Beau Brummell hiked over to Upton half an hour ago. I offered him the
other Henry, but he doesn't seem to care to drive anything short of a
Pierce-Arrow. Twins, aren't they?" and Henry nodded in the direction
of the veranda.
"Sh-h!" reproved Laura. "They're our guests."
"Guests is just it. Yes, they're _guests_, all right."
"Mother says they don't know how to work," Priscilla observed.
"That's another true word, too."
Mother turned gaily in the road ahead. "Who is talking about me?" she
called.
Priscilla frisked on to join her, and Henry fell back to a confidential
exchange with Laura. "Beau wouldn't be so bad if he could forget for a
minute that he owned the earth and had a mortgage on the solar system.
But when he tries to snub Bruce--gee, that gets me!"
"Aren't you twanging the G string rather often lately, Hal?--Stannard
can't snub Bruce. Bruce isn't the kind of fellow to be snubbed."
"Just the same, it makes me sick to think anybody's a cousin to me
that would try it."
Laura switched back to the main subject. "We didn't ask them up here
as extra farm hands, you know."
"Bull's-eye," said Henry, and grinned.
What she did not know failed to trouble Elliott. She read on in lonely
peace through the afternoon. At a most exciting point the telephone
rang. Four, that was the Cameron call. Elliott went into the house and
took down the receiver.
"Mr. Robert Cameron's," she said pleasantly.
"S-say!" stuttered a high, sharp voice, "my little b-b-boys have let
your c-c-cows out o' the p-p-pasture. I'll g-give 'em a t-t-trouncin',
but 't won't git your c-c-cows back. They let 'em out the G-G-Garrett
Road, and your medder gate's open. Jim B-B-Blake saw it this mornin'!
Why the man didn't shut it, I d-d-dunno. You'll have to hurry to save
your medder."
"But," gasped Elliott, "I don't understand! You say the cows--"
"Are comin' down G-Garrett Road," snapped the stuttering voice, "the
whole kit an' b-b-bilin' of 'em. They'll be inter your upper m-medder
in five m-m-minutes."
Over the wire came the click of a receiver snapping back on its hook.
Elliott hung up and started toward the door. The cows had been let
out. Just why this incident was so disastrous she did not quite
comprehend, but she must go and tell her uncle. Before her feet
touched the veranda, however, she stopped. Five minutes? Why, there
wouldn't be time to go to the lower meadow, to say nothing of any
one's doing anything about the situation.
And then, with breath-taking suddenness, the thing burst on her. She
was alone in the house; even Aunt Jessica and Priscilla had gone to
the hay-field. The situation, whatever it was, was up to her.
For a minute the girl leaned weakly against the wall. Cows--there were
thirty in the herd--and she loathed cows! She was afraid of cows. She
knew nothing about cows. She was never in the slightest degree sure of
what the creatures might take it into their heads to do. For a minute
she stood irresolute. Then something stirred in the girl, something
self-reliant and strong. Never in her life had Elliott Cameron had to
do alone anything that she didn't already know how to do. Now for the
first time she faced an emergency on none but her own resources, an
emergency that was quite out of her line.
Her brain worked swiftly as her feet moved to the door. In reality,
she had wavered only a second. When Tom went for the cows, didn't he
take old Prince? There was just a chance that Prince wasn't in the
hay-field. She ran down the steps calling, "Prince! Prince!" The old
dog rose deliberately from his place on the shady side of the barn and
trotted toward her, wagging his tail. "Come, Prince!" cried Elliott,
and ran out of the yard.
Luckily, berrying had that very morning taken her by a short cut to
the vicinity of the upper meadow. She knew the way. But what was
likely to happen? Town-bred girl that she was, she had no idea. A
recollection of the smooth, upstanding expanse of the upper meadow
gave her a clue. If the cows got into that even erectness-- She began
to run, Prince bounding beside her, his brown tail a waving plume.
She could see the meadow now, a smooth green sea ruffled by nothing
heavier than the light feet of the summer breeze. She could see the
great gate invitingly open to the road and oh!--her heart stopped
beating, then pounded on at a suffocating pace--she could see the
cows! There they came, down the hill, quite filling the narrow roadway
with their horrid bulk, making it look like a moving river of broad
backs and tossing heads. What could she do, the girl wondered; what
could she do against so many? She tried to run faster. Somehow she
must reach the gate first. There was nothing even then, so far as she
knew, to prevent their trampling her down and rushing over her into
the waving greenness, unless she could slam the gate in their faces.
You can see that she really did not know much about cows.
But Prince knew them. Prince understood now why his master's guest had
summoned him to this hot run in the sunshine. The prospect did not
daunt Prince. He ran barking to the meadow side of the road. The
foremost cow which, grazing the dusty grass, had strayed toward the
gate, turned back into the ruts again. Elliott pulled the gate shut,
in her haste leaving herself outside. There, too spent to climb over,
she flattened her slender form against the gray boards, while, driven
by Prince, the whole herd, horns tossing, tails switching, flanks
heaving, thudded its way past.
And there, three minutes later, Bruce, dashing over the hill in
response to a message relayed by telephone and boy to the lower
meadow, found her.
"The cows have gone down," Elliott told him. "Prince has them. He will
take them home, won't he?"
"Prince? Good enough! He'll get the cows home all right. But what are
you doing in this mix-up?"
"A woman telephoned the house," said Elliott. "I was afraid I couldn't
reach any of you in time, so I came over myself."
"You like cows?" The question shot at her like a bullet.
The piquant nose wrinkled entrancingly. "Scared to death of 'em."
"I guessed as much." The boy nodded. "Gee whiz, but you've got good
stuff in you!"
And though her shoes were dusty and her hair tousled, and though her
knees hadn't stopped shaking even yet, Elliott Cameron felt a sudden
sense of satisfaction and pride. She turned and looked over the fence
at the meadow. In its unmarred beauty it seemed to belong to her.