RALPH’S HOMELAND
At the bend of the road the land sloped suddenly straight for the river
brink. A quarter of a mile below was the dam, above Mr. Rudemeir’s red
saw mill. Little River widened at this point, and swept in curves around
a little island. There were no buildings on it, only broad low lush
meadows that provided a home for muskrats and waterfowl. Late in the
fall fat otters could be seen circling around the still waters, and wild
geese and ducks made it a port of call in their flights north and south.
As Ella Lou started into the water, Carlota asked just one question.
“How deep is it?”
“Oh, it varies in spots,” answered Cousin Roxy, cheerfully; her chin was
up, her firm lips set in an unswerving smile, holding the reins in a
steady grasp that steadied Ella Lou’s footing. To Jean she had never
seemed more resourceful or fearless. “There’s some pretty deep holes,
here and there, but we’ll trust to Ella Lou’s common sense, and the
workings of divine Providence. Go ’long there, girl, and mind your
step.”
Ella Lou seemed to take the challenge personally. She felt her way along
the sandy bottom, daintily, and the wheels of the two seated democrat
sank to the hubs. Out in midstream they met the double current, sweeping
around both sides of the island; and here for a minute or two, danger
seemed imminent. Cousin Roxy gave a quick look back over her shoulder.
“Can you swim, Jean?” Jean nodded, and held on to the cats and Cynthy,
grimly. It was hard saying which of the two were proving the more
difficult to manage. The wagon swayed perilously, but Ella Lou held to
her course, and suddenly they felt the rise of the shore line again.
Overhead, there had flown a vanguard of frightened birds, flying ahead
of the smothering clouds of smoke that poured now in blinding masses
down from the burning woods. The cries and calls of the men working
along the back fire line reached the little group on the far shore,
faintly.
As the mare climbed up the bank, dripping wet and snorting, Cousin Roxy
glanced back over her shoulder at the way they had come. Cynthy gave one
look too, and covered her face with her hands. The flames had swept
straight down over her little home, and she cried out in anguish.
“Pity’s sakes, Cynthy, praise God that the two of us aren’t burning up
this minute with those old shingles and rafters,” cried Mrs. Ellis,
joyfully. “I could rise and sing the Doxology, water soaked as I am, and
mean it more than I ever have in all of my life.”
“Oh, and Miss Allan, not one of the cats got wet even,” Jean exclaimed,
laughing, almost hysterically. “You don’t know what a time I had holding
that bag up out of the water. Do turn around and look at the wonderful
sight. See, Carlota!”
But Carlota had jumped out of the wagon with Cousin Roxy, and the two of
them were petting and tending Ella Lou, who stood trembling in every
limb, her eyes still wide with fear.
“You wonderful old heroine, you,” said Carlota, softly. “I think we all
owe our lives to your courage.”
“She’s a fine mare, if I do say so, God bless her.” Cousin Roxy unwound
her old brown veil and used it to wipe off Ella Lou’s dripping neck and
back. If her own cloak had been dry she would have laid it over her for
a cover.
The flames had reached the opposite shore, but while the smoke billowed
across, Little River left them high and dry in the safety zone.
“I guess we’d better be making for home as quick as we can,” said Cousin
Roxy. Except for a little pallor around her lips, and an extra
brightness to her eyes, no one could have told that she had just caught
a glimpse of the Dark Angel’s pinions beside that river brink. She
pushed back her wisps of wavy hair, climbed back into the wagon, and
turned Ella Lou’s nose towards home.
The Judge was watching anxiously, pacing up and down the long veranda
with Billie sitting in his reed chair bolstered up with pillows beside
him. He had telephoned repeatedly down to Greenacres, but they were all
quite as anxious now as himself. It was Billie who first caught a sight
of the team and its occupants.
Kit had gone out into the kitchen to start dinner going. She had refused
to believe that any harm could come to Cousin Roxy or anyone under her
care, and at the sound of Billie’s voice, she glanced from the window,
and caught sight of Jean’s familiar red cap.
“Land alive, don’t hug me to death, all of you,” exclaimed Cousin Roxy.
“Jean, you go and telephone to your mother right away, and relieve her
anxiety. Like enough, she thinks we’re all burned to cinders by this
time, and tell her she’d better have plenty of coffee and sandwiches
made up to send over to the men in the woods. All us women will have our
night’s work cut out for us.”
It was the girls’ first experience of a country forest fire. All through
the afternoon the fresh relays of men kept arriving from the nearby
villages, and outlying farms, ready to relieve those who had been
working through the morning. Up at the little white church, the old bell
rope parted and Sally Peckham’s two little brothers distinguished
themselves forever by climbing to the belfry, lying on their backs on
the old beams, and taking their turns kicking the bell.
There was but little sleep for any members of the family that night.
Jean never forgot the thrill of watching the fire from the cupola
windows, and with the other girls she spent most of the time up there
until daybreak. There was a fascination in seeing that battle from afar,
and realizing how the little puny efforts of a handful of men could hold
in check such a devastating force. Only country dwellers could
appreciate the peril of having all one owned in the world, all that was
dear and precious, and comprised in the word “home,” swept away in the
path of the flames.
“Poor old Cynthy,” said Jean. “I’m so glad she has her cats. I shall
never forget her face when she looked back. Just think of losing all the
little keepsakes of a lifetime.”
It was nearly five o’clock when Shad returned. He was grimy and smoky,
but exuberant.
“By jiminitty, we’ve got her under control,” he cried, executing a
little jig on the side steps. “Got some hot coffee and doughnuts for a
fellow? Who do you suppose worked better than anybody? Gave us all cards
and spades on how to manage a fire. He says this is just a little flea
bite compared with the ones he has up home. He says he’s seen a forest
fire twenty miles wide, sweeping over the mountains up yonder.”
“Who do you mean, Shad,” asked Jean. “For goodness’ sake tell us who it
is, and stop spouting.”
“Who do you suppose I mean?” asked Shad, reproachfully. “Honey Hancock’s
cousin, Ralph McRae, from Saskatoon.”
Jean blushed prettily, as she always did when Ralph’s name was
mentioned. She had hardly seen him since his arrival, owing to Billie’s
illness, and Carlota’s visit with her. Still, oddly enough, even Shad’s
high praise of him, made her feel shyly happy.
The fire burned fitfully for three days, breaking out unexpectedly in
new spots, and keeping everyone excited and busy. The old Ames barn went
up in smoke, and Mr. Rudemeir’s saw mill caught fire three times.
“By gum!” he said, jubilantly, “I guess I sit out on that roof all night
long, slapping sparks with a wet mop, but it didn’t get ahead of me.”
Sally and Kit ran a sort of pony express, riding horseback from house to
house, carrying food and coffee over to the men who were scattered
nearly four miles around the fire-swept area. Ralph and Piney ran their
own rescue work at the north end of town. Honey had been put on the mail
team with Mr. Ricketts’ eldest boy, while the former gave his services
on the volunteer fire corps. The end of the third day Jean was driving
back from Nantic station, after she had taken Carlota down to catch the
local train to Providence. The Contessa had sent her maid to meet her
there, and take her on to Boston. It had been a wonderful visit, Carlota
said, and already she was planning for Jean’s promised trip to the home
villa in Italy.
Visions of that visit were flitting through Jean’s mind as she drove
along the old river road, and she hardly noticed the beat of hoofs
behind her, until Ralph drew rein on Mollie beside her. They had hardly
seen each other to talk to, since her return from Boston.
“The fire’s all out,” he said. “We have left some of the boys on guard
yet, in case it may be smouldering in the underbrush. I have just been
telling Rudemeir and the other men, if they’d learn to pile their brush
the way we do up home, they would be able to control these little fires
in no time. You girls must be awfully tired out. You did splendid work.”
“Kit and Sally did, you mean,” answered Jean. “All I did was to help
cook.” She laughed. “I never dreamt that men and boys could eat so many
doughnuts and cup cakes. Cousin Roxy says she sent over twenty-two
loaves of gingerbread, not counting all the other stuff. Was any one
hurt, at all?”
“You mean eating too much?” asked Ralph, teasingly. Then more seriously,
he added, “A few of the men were burnt a little bit, but nothing to
speak of. How beautiful your springtime is down here in New England. It
makes me want to take off my coat and go to work right here, reclaiming
some of these old worked out acres, and making them show the good that
still lies in them if they are plowed deep enough.”
Jean sighed, quickly.
“Do you really think one could ever make any money here?” she asked.
“Sometimes I get awfully discouraged, Mr. McRae. Of course, we didn’t
come up here with the idea of being farmers. It was Dad’s health that
brought us, but once we were here, we couldn’t help but see the chance
of making Greenacres pay our way a little. Cousin Roxy has told us we’re
in mighty good luck to even get our vegetables and fruit out of it this
last year, and it isn’t the past year I am thinking of; it’s the next
year, and the next one and the next. One of the most appalling things
about Gilead is, that you get absolutely contented up here, and you go
around singing blissfully, ‘I’ve reached the land of corn and wine, and
all its blessings freely mine.’ Old Daddy Higginson who taught our art
class down in New York always said that contentment was fatal to
progress, and I believe it. Father is really a brilliant man, and he’s
getting his full strength back. And while I have a full sense of
gratitude towards the healing powers of these old green hills, still I
have a horror of Dad stagnating here.”
Ralph turned his head to watch her face, giving Mollie her own way, with
slack rein.
“Has he said anything himself about wanting to go back to his work?” he
asked.
“Not yet. I suppose that is what we really must wait for. His own
confidence returning. You see, what I’m afraid of is this: Dad was born
and brought up right here, and the granite of these old hills is in his
system. He loves every square foot of land around here. Just supposing
he should be contented to settle down, like old Judge Ellis, and turn
into a sort of Connecticut country squire.”
“There are worse things than that in the world,” Ralph replied. “Too
many of our best men forget the land that gave them birth, and pour the
full strength of their mature powers and capabilities into the city
mart. You speak of Judge Ellis. Look at what that old fellow’s mind has
done for his home community. He has literally brought modern
improvements into Gilead. He has represented her up at Hartford off and
on for years, when he was not sitting in judgment here.”
“You mean, that you think Dad ought not to go back?” asked Jean almost
resentfully. “That just because he happened to have been born here, he
owes it to Gilead to stay here now, and give it the best he has?”
Ralph laughed, good naturedly.
“We’re getting into rather deep water, Miss Jean,” he answered. “I can
see that you don’t like the country, and I do. I love it down east here
where all of my folks came from originally, and I’m mighty fond of the
west.”
“Oh, I’m sure I’d like that too,” broke in Jean, eagerly. “Mother’s from
the west, you know. From California, and I’d love to go out there. I
would love the wide scope and freedom I am sure. What bothers me here,
are those rock walls, for instance.” She pointed at the old one along
the road, uneven, half tumbling down, and overgrown with gray moss; the
standing symbol of the infinite patience and labor of a bygone
generation. “Just think of all the people who spent their lives carrying
those stones, and cutting up all this beautiful land into these little
shut-in pastures.”
“Yes, but those rocks represent the clearing of fields for tillage. If
they hadn’t dug them out of the ground, they wouldn’t have had any cause
for Thanksgiving dinners. I’m mighty proud of my New England blood, and
I want to tell you right now, if it wasn’t for the New England blood
that went out to conquer the West, where would the West be today?”
“That’s all right,” said Jean, a bit crossly for her, “but if they had
pioneered a little bit right around here, there wouldn’t be so many run
down farms. What I would like to do, now that Dad is getting well, is
make Greenacres our playground in summertime, and go back home in the
winter.”
“Home,” he repeated, curiously.
“Yes, we were all born down in New York,” answered Jean, looking south
over the country landscape, as though she could see Manhattan’s
panoramic skyline rising like a mirage of beckoning promises. “I am
afraid that is home to me.”