PICNICKING
"I feel like a picnic," said Mother Jess, "a genuine all-day-in-the-woods
picnic."
It was rather queer for a grown-up to say such a thing right out like
a girl, Elliott thought, but she liked it. And Aunt Jessica was
sitting back on her heels, just like a girl too, looking up from the
border where she was working. Elliott had caught sight of her blue
chambray skirt under a haze of blue larkspurs and had come over to see
what she was doing. It proved to be weeding with a clawlike thing
that, wielded by Aunt Jessica's right hand, grubbed out weeds as fast
as she could toss them into a basket with her left. Elliott was
surprised. Weeding a flower-bed when, as she happened to know, the
garden beets weren't finished did not square with her notions of what
was what on the Cameron farm. She was so surprised that she answered
absently, "That sounds fine. I think I feel so, too," and kept on
wondering about Aunt Jessica.
"We usually have a picnic at this time of year when the haying is
done," said that lady, and fell again to her weeding. "It is
astonishing how fast a weed can grow. Look at that!" and she held up a
spreading mat of green chickweed. "I have had to neglect the borders
shamefully this summer."
Elliott squatted down beside her and twined her fingers in a tuft of
grass. "May I help?" She gave a little tug to the grass.
"Delighted to have you. Look out! That's a Johnny-jump-up."
"Is it? Goodness! I thought it was a weed!"
"Here is one in blossom. Spare Johnny. He is a faithful friend till
the winter snows."
"Johnny-jump-up." Elliott's laughter gurgled over the name. "But he
does rather jump up, doesn't he? Funny little pansy thing! Funny name,
too."
"Not so odd as a few others I know. Kiss-me-in-the-buttery, for
instance."
"Not really!"
"Honest Injun, as Priscilla says."
"These borders are sweet." The girl let her gaze wander up and down
the curving lines of color splashed across the gentle slope of the
hill. "But flowers don't stand much chance in a war year, do they? I
know people at home who have plowed theirs up and planted potatoes."
"A mistake," said Aunt Jessica, shaking the dirt vigorously from a
fistful of sorrel. "A mistake, unless it is a question of life and
death. We have too much land in this country to plow up our flowers,
yet a while. And a war year is just the time when we need them most.
No, I never feel I am wasting my time when I work among flowers."
"But they're not _necessary_, are they?" questioned Elliott. "Of
course, they're beautiful; but I thought luxuries had to go, just
now."
"Flowers a luxury? Oh, my dear little girl, put that notion out of
your head quickly! American-beauty roses may be a luxury, and white
lilacs in the dead of winter, but garden flowers, never! Wait till you
see the daffodils dancing under those apple trees next spring!" And
she nodded up the grassy slope at the apple trees as though she and
they shared a delightful secret that Elliott did not yet know.
Privately the girl held a different opinion about next spring, but she
wondered why Aunt Jessica should talk of daffodils. They seemed rather
lugged into a conversation in July.
Mother Jess reached with her clawlike weeder far into the border. Her
voice came back over her shoulder in little gusts of words as she
worked. "Did you ever hear that saying of the Prophet?--'He that hath
two loaves let him sell one and buy a flower of the narcissus; for
bread is food for the body, but narcissus is food for the soul.'
That's the way I feel about flowers. They are the least expensive way
of getting beauty and we can't live without beauty, now less than
ever, since they have destroyed so much of it in France. There! now I
must stop for to-day. Don't you want to take this culling-basket and
pick it full of the prettiest things you can find for Mrs. Gordon?
Perhaps you would like to take it over to her, too. It isn't a very
long walk."
"But I've never met her."
"That won't matter. Just tell her who you are and that you belong to
us. Mrs. Gordon loves flowers, though she hasn't much time to tend
them."
"I shouldn't think any one could have less time than you."
Aunt Jessica laughed. "Oh, I make time!"
Elliott picked up the flat green basket, lifted the shears she found
lying in it, and went hesitatingly up and down the borders. "What
shall I pick?"
"Anything. Suit yourself. Make the basket as pretty as you can. If you
pick here and there, the borders won't show where you cut from them."
Mother Jess gathered up gloves and tools, and went away, tugging her
basket of weeds. Elliott, left behind, surveyed the borders
critically. To cut without letting it appear that she had cut was
evidently what Aunt Jessica wanted. She reached in and snipped off a
spire of larkspur from the very back of the border, then stood back to
see what had happened. No, if one hadn't known the stalk had been
there, one wouldn't now know it was gone. The thing could be done,
then. Cautiously she selected a head of white phlox. The result of
that operation also was satisfactory.
Up and down the flowery path she went, snipping busily. On the stalks
of larkspur and phlox she laid a mass of pink snapdragons and white
candytuft, tucking in here and there sprays of just-opening
baby's-breath to give a misty look to the basket. A bunch of English
daisies came next; they blossomed so fast one didn't have to pick and
choose among them; one could just cut and cut. And oughtn't there to
be pansies? "Pansies--that's for thoughts." Those wonderful purple
ones with a sprinkling of the yellow--no, yellow would spoil the color
scheme of the basket. These white beauties were just the thing. How
lovely it all looked, blue and white and pink and purple!
But there wasn't much fragrance. Eye and nose searched hopefully.
Heliotrope!--just a spray or two. There, now it was perfect. Anybody
would be glad to see a basket like that coming. Only, she did wish
some one else were to carry it, or else that she knew the people. It
might not be so bad if she knew the people. Why shouldn't Laura or
Trudy take it? Elliott walked very slowly up to the house, debating
the question. A week ago she wouldn't have debated; she would have
said, "Oh, I can't possibly." Or so she thought.
"How beautiful!" said Aunt Jessica's voice from the kitchen window.
"You have made an exquisite thing, dear."
Elliott rested the basket on the window ledge and surveyed it proudly.
"Isn't it lovely? And I don't think cutting this has hurt the borders
a bit."
"I am sure not." Aunt Jessica's busy hands went back to her yellow
mixing-bowl. "You know where the Gordons live, don't you?--in the big
brick house at the cross-roads."
"Yes," said Elliott, and her feet carried her out of the yard,
stopping only long enough to let her get her pink parasol from the
hall, and down the hill toward the cross-roads. It was odd about
Elliott's feet, when she hadn't quite made up her mind whether or not
she would go. Her feet seemed to have no doubt of it.
The pink parasol threw a becoming light on her face, as she knew it
would, and the odor of heliotrope rose pleasantly in her nostrils as
she walked along. But the basket grew heavy, astonishingly heavy. She
wouldn't have believed a culling-basket with a few flowers in it could
weigh so much. The farther Elliott walked, the heavier it grew. And
she hadn't gone a quarter of the way, either.
A horse's feet coming up rapidly behind her turned the girl's steps to
the side of the road. The horse drew abreast and stopped, prancing.
"Want a lift?" asked the man in the wagon. He was a big grizzled
farmer, a friend of her uncle's.
Elliott nodded, smiling. "Oh, thank you!"
"Purty flowers you've got there."
"Aren't they lovely! Aunt Jessica is sending them to Mrs. Gordon."
"That's right! That's right! Say, just look at them pansies, now!
Flowers, they don't do nothin' but grow for that aunt of yours. She
don't have to much more 'n look at 'em."
Elliott laughed. "She weeds them, I happen to know. I helped her this
afternoon."
"Did you, now! But there's a difference in folks. Take my wife: she
plants 'em and plants 'em, but she can't keep none. They up and die on
her, sure thing."
Elliott selected a purple pansy. "This looks to me as though it would
like to get into your buttonhole, Mr. Blair."
"Sho, now!" He flushed with pleasure, driving slowly as the girl
fitted the pansy in place, a bit of heliotrope nestling beside it.
"Smells good, don't it? Mother always had heliotrope in her garden.
Takes me back to when I was a little shaver."
Elliott's deft fingers were busy with the English daisies.
"Now don't you go and spoil your basket."
"No, indeed! see what a lot there are left. Here is a little nosegay
for your wife. And thank you so much for the lift."
He cranked the wheel and she jumped out, waving her hand as he drove
on. Queer a man like that should love flowers!
It was only when she was walking up the graveled path to the door of
the brick house that she remembered to compose her face into a proper
gravity. She felt nervous and ill at ease. But she needn't go in, she
reminded herself, just leave the flowers at the door. If only there
were a maid, which there probably wasn't! One couldn't count for
certain on getting right away from these places where the people
themselves met one at the door.
"How do you do?" said a voice, advancing from the right. "What a
lovely basket!"
Elliott jumped. She was ready to jump at anything and she had been
looking straight ahead without a single glance aside from a
non-committal brick front. Now she saw a hammock swung between two
trees, a hammock still swaying from the impact of the girl who had
just left it.
She was the biggest girl Elliott had ever seen, tall and fat and
shapeless and very plain. She was all in white, which made her look
bigger, and her skirt was at least three years old. There was a faint
trickle of brown spots down the front of it, too, of which the girl
seemed utterly unaware.
"You don't have to tell me where those flowers come from," she said.
"You are Laura Cameron's cousin, aren't you? Glad to know you."
"Yes," said Elliott, "I am Elliott Cameron. Aunt Jessica sent these to
your mother."
The girl's fingers felt cool and firm as they touched Elliott's, the
only pleasant impression she had yet gathered.
"They look just like Mrs. Cameron. Sit down while I call Mother. Oh,
she's not doing anything special. Mother!"
Elliott, conducted through the house to a wide veranda, sank into a
chair, conscious in every nerve of her own slender waistline. What
must it feel like to be so big? A minute later she seemed to herself
to be engulfed between two mountains of flesh. A woman--more unwieldy,
more shapeless, more oppressive even than the girl--waddled across the
veranda floor. What she said Elliott really didn't know; afterward
phrases of pleasure came back to her vaguely. She distinctly
remembered the creaking of the rocking-chair when the woman sat down
and her own frightened feeling lest some vital part should give way
under the strain.
After a time, to her consciousness, mild blue eyes emerged from the
mass of human bulk that fronted her; gray hair crinkled away from a
broad white forehead. Then she perceived that Mrs. Gordon was not a
very tall woman, not so tall as was her daughter. If anything, that
made it worse, thought Elliott. Why, if she fell down, no one could
tell which side up she ought to go--except, of course, head side on
top. The idea gave her a hysterical desire to giggle. The fact that it
would be so dreadful to laugh in this house made the desire almost
uncontrollable.
And then the big girl did laugh about something or other, laughed
simply and naturally and really pleasantly. Elliott almost jumped
again, she was so startled. To her, there was something repulsive in
the sight of so much human flesh. At the same time it discouraged her.
In the presence of these two she felt insignificant, even while she
pitied them. She wished to get away, but instinctive breeding held her
in her chair, chatting. She hoped what she said wasn't too inane; she
didn't know quite what she did say.
Just then suddenly Harriet Gordon asked a question: "Has your aunt
said anything yet about a picnic this summer?"
"I heard her say this afternoon that she felt just like one," said
Elliott.
Mother and daughter looked at each other triumphantly. "What did I
tell you!" said one. "I thought it was about time," said the other.
"Jessica Cameron always feels like a picnic in midsummer," Mrs. Gordon
explained. "After the haying 's done. You tell her my little niece
will want to go. Alma has been here three weeks and we haven't been
able to do much for her. Do you think you will go, too, Harriet?"
"I'd rather not this time, Mother."
"The Bliss girls will probably go, and Alma knows them pretty well.
She won't be lonesome."
"Oh, no," said Elliott, "we will see that she isn't lonely."
"Must you go? Tell Mrs. Cameron we will send our limousine whenever
she says the word." On the way back through the house Harriet Gordon
paused before the picture of a young man in aviator's uniform. "My
brother," she said simply, and there was infinite pride in her voice.
Elliott stumbled down the path to the road. She quite forgot to put up
the pink parasol. She carried it closed all the way home. Were they
limousine people? You would never have guessed it to look at them.
Why, she knew about picnics of that kind!--motor-car, luncheon-kit
picnics! But what a shame to be so big! Couldn't they _do_ something
about it? Good as gold, of course, and in such terrible sorrow! They
weren't unfeeling. The girl's voice when she said, "My brother,"
proved that. It seemed as though knowing about them ought to make them
attractive, but somehow it didn't. If they only understood how to
dress, it would help matters. Queer, how nice boys could have such
frumpy people! And Ted Gordon had been a perfectly nice boy. The
picture proved that. But Aunt Jessica had been right about the
flowers. The big woman and the farmer proved _that_. Altogether
Elliott's mind was a queer jumble.
"She said she'd send back the basket to-morrow, Aunt Jessica," she
reported. "Said she wanted to sit and look at it for a while just as
it was. And Miss Gordon asked me to tell you that whenever you were
ready for the picnic you must let her know and she would send around
their limousine."
"If that isn't just like Harriet Gordon!" laughed Laura. "She is the
wittiest girl! Didn't you like her, Elliott?"
Elliott's eyes opened wide. "What is there witty in saying she would
send their limousine?"
Tom snorted. "Wait till you see it!"
"Why, she meant their hay-wagon! We always use the Gordon hay-wagon
for this midsummer picnic. That's a custom, too."
Everybody laughed at the expression on Elliott's face.
"Not up on the vernacular, Lot?" gibed Stannard.
"When is the picnic to be, Mother?" asked Laura.
"How about to-morrow?"
"Better make it the day after," Father Bob suggested, and they all
fell to discussing whom to ask.
So far as Elliott could see they asked everybody except townspeople.
The telephone was kept busy that night and the next morning in the
intervals of Mother Jess's and the girls' baking. Elliott helped pack
up dozens of turnovers and cookies and sandwiches and bottled quarts
of lemonade.
"The lemonade is for the children," said Laura. "The rest of us have
coffee. Don't you love the taste of coffee that you make over a fire
that you build yourself in the woods?"
"On picnics I have always had my coffee out of a thermos bottle," said
Elliott.
"Oh, you poor _thing_! Why, you haven't had any good times at all,
have you?"
Laura looked so shocked that for a minute Elliott actually wondered
whether she ever really had had any good times. Privately she wasn't
at all sure that she was going to have a good time now, but she kept
still about that doubt.
"Aren't you afraid it may rain to-morrow?" she asked.
"No, indeed! It never rains on things Mother plans."
And it didn't. The morning of the picnic dawned clear and dewy and
sparkling, as perfect a summer day as though it had been made to the
Camerons' order. By nine o'clock the big hay-wagon had appeared,
driven by Mr. Gordon himself, who said he was going to turn over the
reins to Mr. Cameron when they reached the Gordon farm. Two more
horses were hitched on and all the Camerons piled in, with enough
boxes and baskets and bags of potatoes, one would think, to feed a
small town, and away the hay-wagon went down the hill, stopping at
house after house to take in smiling people, with more boxes and
baskets and bags.
It was all very care-free and gay, and Elliott smiled and chattered
away with the rest; but in her heart of hearts she knew that there
wasn't one of these boys and girls who squeezed into the capacious
hay-wagon to whom she would have given a second glance, before coming
up here to Vermont. Now she wondered whether they were all as
negligible as they looked. And pretty soon she forgot that she had
ever thought they looked negligible. It was the jolliest crowd she had
ever been in. One or two were a bit quiet when they arrived, but soon
even the shyest were talking, or at least laughing, in the midst of
the happy hubbub. It seemed as though one couldn't have anything but a
good time when the Camerons set out to be jolly. Alma Gordon and the
little Bliss girls were the last to squeeze in and they rode away
waving their hands violently to a short, fat woman and a tall, fat
girl, who waved briskly from the brick house's front door.
Then Mr. Cameron turned the horses into a mountain road and they began
to climb. Up and up the wagon went with its merry load, through
towering woods and open pastures and along hillsides where the woods
had been cut and a tangle of underbrush was beginning to spring up
among the stumps. And the higher the horses climbed the higher rose
the jollity of the hay-wagon's company. The sun was hot overhead when
they stopped. There were gray rocks and a tumbling mountain brook and
a brown-carpeted pine wood. Everybody jumped out helter-skelter and
began unloading the wagon or gathering fire-wood or dipping up water,
or simply scampering around for joy of stretching cramped legs.
It was surprising how soon a fire was burning on the gray stones and
coffee bubbling in the big pail Mother Jess had brought; surprising,
too, how good bacon tasted when you broiled it yourself on a forked
stick and potatoes that you smooched your face on by eating them in
their skins, black from the hot ashes that the boys poked them out of
with green poles. Elliott knew now that she had never really picnicked
before in her life and that she liked it. She liked it so much that
she ate and ate and ate until she couldn't eat another mouthful.
Perhaps she ate too much, but I doubt it. It is much more likely to
have been the climb that she took in the hot sunshine directly after
that dinner, and the climb wouldn't have hurt her, if she had ended
the dinner without that last potato and the extra turnover and two
cookies; or if she had rested a little before the climb. But perhaps,
it wasn't either the dinner or the climb; it may have been the pink
ice-cream of the evening before; or that time in the celery patch, the
previous morning, when she had forgotten her hat and wouldn't go back
to the house for it because Henry hadn't a hat on, and why should a
girl need a hat more than a boy? Or it may have been all those things
put together. She certainly had had a slight headache when she went to
bed.
Whatever caused it, the fact was that on the ride home Elliott began
to feel very sick. The longer she rode the sicker she felt and the
more appalled and ashamed and frightened she grew. What could be going
to happen to her? And what awful exhibition was she about to make of
herself before all these people to whom she had felt so superior?
Before long people noticed how white she was and by the time the wagon
reached the brick house at the cross-roads poor Elliott hardly cared
if they did see it. Her pride was crushed by her misery. Mrs. Gordon
and Harriet came out to welcome Alma home and they hesitated not a
minute.
"Have them bring her right in here, Jessica. No, no, not a mite of
trouble! We'll keep her all night. You go right along home, you and
Laura. Mercy me, if we can't do a little thing like this for you
folks! She'll be all right in the morning."
The words meant nothing to Elliott. She was quite beyond caring where
she went, so that it was to a bed, flat and still and unmoving. But
even in her distress she was conscious that, whatever came of it, she
had had a good time.