BILLIE’S FIGHTING CHANCE
It was the Friday before Easter when they arrived. Jean looked around
eagerly as she jumped to the platform, wondering which of the family
would drive down to meet them, but instead of Kit or Shad, Ralph McRae
stepped up to her with outstretched hand. All the way from Saskatoon,
she thought, and just the same as he was a year before. As Kit had said
then, in describing him:
“He doesn’t look as if he could be the hero, but he’d always be the
hero’s best friend, like Mercutio was to Romeo, or Gratiano to Benvolio.
If he couldn’t be Robin Hood, he’d be Will Scarlet, not Alan a Dale. I
couldn’t imagine him ever singing serenades.”
Jean introduced him to Carlota, who greeted him in her pretty, half
foreign way, and Mr. Briggs waved a welcome as he trundled the express
truck past them down the platform.
“Looks a bit like rain. Good for the planters,” he called.
Princess took the long curved hill from the station splendidly, and Jean
lifted her head to it all, the long overlapping hill range that unfolded
as they came to the first stretch of level road, the rich green of the
pines gracing their slopes, and most of all the beautiful haze of young
green that lay like a veil over the land from the first bursting leaf
buds.
“Oh, it’s good to be home,” she exclaimed. “Over at Cousin Beth’s the
land seems so level, and I like hills.”
“They were having some sort of Easter exercises at school, and the girls
could not drive down,” Ralph said. “Honey and I arrived two days ago,
and I asked for the privilege of coming down. Shad’s busy planting out
his first lettuce and radishes in the hotbeds, and Mrs. Robbins is up at
the Judge’s today. Billie’s pretty sick, I believe.”
“Billie?” cried Jean. “Not Billie?”
Even to think of Billie’s being ill was absurd. It was like saying a
raindrop had the measles, or the wind seemed to have an attack of
whooping cough. He had never been sick all the years he had lived up
there, bare headed winter and summer, free as the birds and animals he
loved. All the long drive home she felt subdued in a way.
“He came back from school Monday and they are afraid of typhoid. I
believe conditions at the school were not very good this spring, and
several of the boys came down with it. But I’m sure if anybody could
pull him through it would be Mrs. Ellis,” said Ralph.
But even with the best nursing and care, things looked bad for Billie.
It was supper time before Mrs. Robbins returned. Carlota had formed an
immediate friendship with Mr. Robbins, and they talked of her father,
whom he had known before his departure for Italy. For anyone to have
known and appreciated her father, was a sure passport to Carlota’s
favor. It raised them immensely in her estimation, and she was delighted
to find, as she said, “somebody whose eyes have really looked at him.”
Kit was indignant and stunned at the blow that had fallen on her chum,
Billie. She never could take the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune
in the proper humble spirit anyway.
“The idea that Billie should have to be sick,” she cried. “How long will
he be in bed, Mother?”
“I don’t know, dear,” Mrs. Robbins said. “He’s sturdy and strong, but
the fever usually has to run its course. Dr. Gallup came right over.”
“Bless him,” Kit put in fervently. “He’ll get him well in no time. I
don’t think there ever was a doctor so set on making people well. I’d
rather see him come in the door, no matter what ailed me, sit down and
tell me I had just a little distemper, open his cute little black case,
and mix me up that everlasting mess that tastes like cinnamon and sugar,
than have a whole line up of city specialists tapping me.”
Helen and Doris clung closely to Jean, taking her and Carlota around the
place to show her all the new chicks, orphans and otherwise. Greenacres
really was showing signs of full return this year for the care and love
spent on its rehabilitation. The fruit trees, after Shad’s pruning and
fertilizing, and general treatment that made them look like swaddled
babies, were blossoming profusely, and on the south slope of the field
along the river, rows and rows of young peach trees had been set out.
The garden too, had come in for its share of attention. Helen loved
flowers, and had worked there more diligently than she usually could be
coaxed to on any sort of real labor. Shad had cleared away the old dead
canes first, and had plowed up the central plot, taking care to save all
the perennials.
“You know what I wish, Mother dear,” said Helen, standing with earth
stained fingers in the midst of the tangle of old vines and bushes. “I
wish we could lay out paths and put stones down on them, flat stones, I
mean, like flags. And have flower beds with borders. Could we, do you
think? And maybe a sun dial. I’d love to have a sun dial in our family.”
Her earnestness made Mrs. Robbins smile, but she agreed to the plan, and
Cousin Roxy helped out with slips from her flower store, so that the
prospect for a garden was very good. And later Honey Hancock came up
with Piney to advise and help too. The year out west had turned the
bashful country boy into a stalwart, independent individual whom even
Piney regarded with some respect. He was taller than her now, broad
shouldered, and sure of himself.
“I think Ralph has done wonders with him,” Piney said. “Mother thinks so
too. He can pick her right up in his arms now, and walk around with her.
She doesn’t seem to mind going west any more, after seeing what it’s
made of Honey, and hearing him tell of it. And Ralph says we’ll always
keep the home here so that when we want to come back, we can. I think he
likes Gilead someway. He says it never seems just like home way out
west. You need to walk on the earth where your fathers and grandfathers
have trod, and even to breathe the same air. Mother says the only place
she hates to leave behind is our little family burial plot over in the
woods.”
In the days following Easter, while Mrs. Robbins was over at the Ellis
place helping care for Billie, Helen, Piney and Carlota formed a fast
friendship, much to Jean and Kit’s wonderment. It was natural for Helen
and Carlota to be chums, but Carlota was enthusiastic over Piney, her
girl of the hills, as she called her.
“Oh, but she is glorious,” she cried, the first day, as she stood at the
gate posts watching Piney dash down the hill road on Mollie. “My father
would love to model her head. She is so fearless. And I am afraid of
lots and lots of things. She is like the mountain girls at home. And her
real name—Proserpine. It is so good to have a name that is altogether
different. My closest girl friend at the convent was Signa Palmieri and
she has a little sister named Assunta. I like them both, and I like
yours, Jean. What does it mean?”
“I don’t know,” Jean answered, musingly, as she bent to lift up a
convolvulus vine that was trying to lay its tendrils on the old stone
wall. “It is the feminine of John, isn’t it?”
“Then it means beloved. That suits you.” Carlota regarded her seriously.
“My aunt says you have the gift of charm and sympathy.”
Jean colored a little. She was not quite used to the utter frankness of
Carlota’s Italian nature. While she and the other girls never hesitated
to tell just what they thought of each other, certainly, as Kit would
have said, nobody tossed over these little bouquets of compliment. It
was entirely against the New England temperament.
Just as Carlota started to say more there came a long hail from the
hill, and coming down they saw Kit and Sally Peckham, with long wooden
staffs. Sally dawned on Carlota with quite as much force as Piney had.
Her heavy red gold hair hung today in two long plaits down her back. She
wore a home-made blue cloth skirt and a loose blouse of dark red, with
the neck turned in, and one of her brothers’ hats, a grey felt affair
that she had stuck a quail’s wing in.
“Hello,” called Kit, “we’ve been for a hike, clear over to the village.
Mother ’phoned she needed some things from the drug store, so we thought
we’d walk over and get them. Billie’s just the same. He don’t know a
soul, and all he talks about is making his math. exams. I think it’s
perfectly shameful to take a boy like that who loves reading and nature
and natural things, and grind him down to regular stuff.”
She reached the stone gateway, and sat down on a rock to rest, while
Jean introduced Sally, who bowed shyly to the slim strange girl in
black.
“I didn’t know you had company, excepting Mr. McRae,” she said. “Kit
wanted me to walk over with her.”
“I love a good long hike,” interrupted Kit. “Specially when I feel
bothered or indignant. We’ve kept up the hike club ever since the roads
opened up, Jean. It’s more fun than anything out here, I never realized
there was so much to know about just woods and fields until Sally taught
me where to hunt for things. Do you like to hike, Carlota?”
“Hike?” repeated Carlota, puzzled. “What is it?”
“A hike is a long walk.”
Carlota laughed in her easy-going way.
“I don’t know. Not too long. I think I’d rather ride.”
“I also,” Helen said flatly. “I don’t see a bit of fun dragging around
like Kit does, through the woods and over swamps, climbing hills, and
always wanting to get to the top of the next one.”
“Oh, but I love to,” Kit chanted. “Maybe I’ll be a mountain climber yet.
Children, you don’t grasp that it is something strange and interesting
in my own special temperament. The longing to attain, the—the
insatiable desire to seize adventure and follow her fleeing footsteps,
the longing to tap the stars on their foreheads and let them know I’m
here.”
“Kit’s often like this,” said Helen, confidentially to Carlota. “You
mustn’t mind her a bit. You see, she believes she is the genius of the
family, and sometimes, I do too, almost.”
“There may be a spark in each of us,” Kit said generously. “I’ll not
claim it all. Let’s get back to the house. I’m famished, and I’ve coaxed
Sally to stay and lunch with us.”
“What good times many can have,” Carlota slipped her arm in Jean’s on
the walk back through the garden. “Sometimes I wish I had been many too,
I mean with brothers and sisters. You feel so oddly when you are all the
family in yourself.”
“Well,” laughed Jean, “it surely has some disadvantages, for every
single one wants something different at the same identical moment, and
that is comical now and then, but we like being a tribe ourselves. I
think the more one has to divide their interests and sympathies, the
more it comes back to them in strength. Cousin Roxy said that to me
once, and I liked it. She said no human beings should have all their
eggs in one nest, but make a beautiful omelet of them for the feeding of
the multitude. Isn’t that good?”
Carlota had not seen Cousin Roxy yet. With Billie down seriously ill,
the Judge’s wife had shut out the world at large, and instituted herself
his nurse in her own sense of the word, which meant not only caring for
him, but enfolding him in such a mantle of love and inward power of
courage that it would have taken a cordon of angels to get him away from
her.
Still, those were long anxious days through the remainder of April. Mrs.
Gorham and Jean managed the other house, while Mrs. Robbins helped out
at the sick room. There was a trained nurse on hand too, but her duties
were largely to wait on Cousin Roxy, and as Mrs. Robbins said
laughingly, it was the only time in her life when she had seen a trained
nurse browbeaten.
Kit was restless and uneasy over her chum’s plight. She would saddle
Princess and ride over on her twice a day to see what the bulletins
were, and sometimes sit out in the old fashioned garden watching the
windows of the room where Cousin Roxy kept vigil. She almost resented
the joyous activity of the bees and birds in their spring delirium when
she thought of their comrade Billie, lying there fighting the fever.
And oddly enough, the old Judge would join her, he who had lived so many
years ignoring Billie’s existence, sit and hold her hand in his, gazing
out at the sunlight and the growing things of the old garden, and now
and then giving vent to a heavy sigh. He, too, missed his boy, and
realized what it might mean if the birds and bees and ants and all the
rest of Billie’s small brotherhood, were to lose their friend.
Jean never forget the final night. She had a call over the telephone
from her mother about nine, to leave Mrs. Gorham in charge, and come to
her.
“Dear, I want you here. It’s the crisis, and we can’t be sure what may
happen. Billie’s in a heavy sleep now, and the old Doctor says we can
just wait. Cousin Roxy is with him.”
Jean laid off her outer cloak and hat, and went in where old Dr. Gallup
sat. It always seemed foolish to call him old although his years
bordered on three score. His hair was gray and straggled boyishly as
some football hero’s, his eyes were brown and bright, and his smile
something so much better than medicine that one just naturally revived
at the sight of him, Cousin Roxy used to say. He sat by the table,
looking out the window, one hand tapping the edge, the other deep in his
pocket. One could not have said whether he was taking counsel of Mother
Nature, brooding out there in the shadowy spring night, or lifting up
his heart to a higher throne.
“Hello, Jeanie, child,” he said, cheerily. “Going to keep me company,
aren’t you? Did you come up alone?”
“Shad drove me over. Doctor, Billie is all right, isn’t he?”
“We hope so,” answered the old doctor. “But what is it to be all right?
If the little lad’s race is run, it has been a good one, Jeanie, and he
goes out fearlessly, and if not, then he is all right too, and we hope
to hold him with us. But when this time comes and it’s the last sleep
before dawn, there’s nothing to do but watch and wait.”
“But do you think—”
Jean hesitated. She could not help feeling he must know what the hope
was.
“He’s got a fine fighting chance,” said the doctor. “Now, I’m going in
with Mrs. Ellis, and you comfort the Judge and brace him up. He’s in the
study there.”
It was dark in the study. Jean opened the door gently, and looked in.
The old Judge sat in his deep, old arm chair by the desk, and his head
was bent forward. She did not say a word, but tiptoed over, and knelt
beside him, her cheek against his sleeve. And the Judge laid his arm
around her shoulders in silence, patting her absent-mindedly. So they
sat until out of the windows the garden took on a lighter aspect, and
there came the faint twittering of birds wakening in their nests.
Jean, watching the beautiful miracle of the dawn, marvelled. The dew
lent a silvery radiance to every blade of grass, every leaf and twig.
There was an unearthly, mystic beauty to the whole landscape and the
garden. She thought of a verse the girls had found once, when they had
traced Piney’s name in poesy for Kit’s benefit, one from “The Garden of
Proserpine.” Something about the pale green garden, and these lines,
“From too much love of living,
From joy and care set free.”
And just then the old doctor put his head in the door and sang out
cheerily,
“It’s all right. Billie’s awake.”