Читать книгу Treasure Valley - Mary Esther Miller MacGregor - Страница 6

Sing a song of loving!

Let the seasons go;

Hearts can make their gardens

Under sun or snow;

Fear no fading blossom,

Nor the dying day;

Sing a song of loving

That will last for aye!

—ELIZABETH ROBERTS MACDONALD.

The village of Elmbrook had the finest situation for seeing what its neighbors were about of any place in the Province of Ontario. It stood on the crest of a high ridge, from which the whole earth fell away in beautiful undulations. From almost any house in the village one could see for miles down the four roads that wound up to it, and there was always a brisk competition in progress as to who should be the first to spy an approaching traveler.

Mrs. William Winters, who was the smartest woman in the township of Oro, made it her boast that many a time she had sighted a buggyload of her Highland relatives coming down from the MacDonald settlement above Glenoro, when there wasn't a bite to eat in the house, and she had fried the liveliest rooster in the barnyard and slapped up a couple of pies before they drove up to the gate.

For many years she easily maintained first rank among the Elmbrook sentinels, and might have done so to the end of her life had not one family taken an unfair advantage by calling in the aid of machinery. Silas Long, the postmaster, was a great student of astronomy, and could talk like a book on comets and northern lights, and all other incomprehensible things that sailed the heavens. So no one objected when he bought a telescope—in fact, the minister had advised it; but before long every one knew that while Si studied the celestial bodies at night the female portion of his family kept the instrument turned on objects terrestrial during the day. Old Granny Long, Silas' mother, was the one who put Mrs. Winters in the background. She was a poor, bedridden body, but lay there, day after day, happy as a queen, with her bed pulled up to the window, and the telescope trained on the surrounding country; and there was little went on between Lake Simcoe and the northern boundary of the township that she did not see. She knew the precise hour of a Monday morning at which the family washings were hung out, and which was the cleanest. It was she who made truancy an impossible risk, for no matter in what out-of-the-way place one might go nutting or swimming, Granny Long was sure to see, and report to the schoolmistress. It was from her, also, that her grandson received the heart-breaking intelligence that young Malcolm Cameron had kissed Marjorie Scott, the minister's oldest girl, at the jog in the road, on the way to prayer-meeting one evening, and if it had not been for her vigilance probably no one would have discovered that Sawed-off Wilmott, who managed the cheese factory down on the Lake Simcoe road, allowed his pigs to run in and out of the factory at will. Indeed, as the deposed and indignant Mrs. Winters often declared, a body didn't dast blow their nose inside the township without Granny Long hearing it through that everlasting spyglass.

But on this particular early May morning a hostile army might have marched up and seized Elmbrook unobserved. For there were great doings inside the village that demanded concentrated attention. All the bustle and activity of the place seemed to be gathered at one small house. In the lane, by the side door, stood a team of farm horses hitched to a large double buggy. A big, lumbering lad of about fifteen, half asleep, on the front seat, was holding the reins in his limp hands. But he was the only creature on the premises, except the horses, that was not acutely awake and supremely busy. Even the hens and geese, scratching and squawking about the garden, seemed to know that something unusual was in progress, and gathered about the door in excited groups. Inside the house there was a tremendous clatter; dishes rattled, feet ran hither and thither, voices called frantically. Every few moments a woman would dart out of the doorway, sending a startled whirl of chickens before her, deposit something in the back of the vehicle, and dash back again.

There seemed to be but one man on the premises, a big, benevolent-looking fellow, whose placid face wore an unaccustomed expression of nervous tension. He came stumbling out of the house, and walked abstractedly around the horses. He was making strange motions with his head, strongly indicative of a tendency to strangulation, and ever and anon he clutched his white collar and looked toward the house with an air of desperation. He made three aimless pilgrimages around the equipage and then paused, and addressed the goose and gander that had been following him: "We'll miss that train as sure as blazes," he remarked, stonily.

A slim little woman, in a faded lilac gown that matched her fading beauty, came staggering down the steps with a heavy basket. The big man put out one brawny arm and lifted it, without an effort, into the back of the vehicle. "We'll miss that train, Arabella, just as sure as blazes," he repeated.

The sound partially awoke the young man on the front seat. He turned and contemplated the basket with an injured air. "What in thunder are they taking a set of dishes for, Arabella?" he asked, wearily.

"It's jist a basket o' things Hannah put up. She's afraid the orphan might get hungry on the road home; and besides, she wanted to take some cookies an' cheese to Jake's folks in town."

The man was making another circuit of the buggy, followed closely by Isaac and Rebekah, the pet goose and gander. They came to a standstill in front of the steps, and he raised his face to the morning skies and shouted, as though invoking some higher power, "Hannah! Hannah! Are ye 'most ready?"

A woman's face shot out between the starched lace curtains of an upstairs window. It was a perfectly circular face, framed in thin, fair hair, which was parted in the middle, and brushed down so smooth and shiny that it looked like a coat of dull yellow paint. The face had the same good-humored, benevolent expression as the man's, mingled with the same strained air of desperate resolve. "'Most ready, Jake!" she mumbled through a mouthful of pins, "'most ready! Arabella! Arabella! Did you put in the bottle of raspberry vinegar?"

"Yes, yes, Hannah! Don't you worry?" cried the little faded lilac woman, reassuringly.

"An' the cookies, an' the pound cake, an' the home-made cheese?"

A third woman bounded down the steps, and charged through the chickens with a bundle of wrappings. She was a smart, tidy little body, with a sharp face and a determined manner. At the sight of her the big man's gloomy face took on an expression of hope.

"Susan! Susan Winters! D'ye think you could get us off?" he implored. "We'll miss that train as sure as blazes!"

She paid not the slightest attention. "Ras'berry vinegar!" she shrieked. "Hannah Sawyer, don't you know that there orphant may be an infant in arms, an' if it is, it'll die of colic on the road home if you fill it up with such stuff!"

The face which had disappeared from between the curtains came into view again, red and alarmed. "Mercy me, Susan! I didn't know. I'll give it to Jake's cousin. Arabella, did you put in the pound cake and the home——" The words died away amid the curtains.

"Couldn't you get us off somehow, Susan?" besought the big man again, looking down, helplessly, at the small woman, much as a becalmed frigate might at a noisy little tug.

"Well, Jake Sawyer, if half them trollops o' weemin in there would clear out and leave me alone, I'd 'a' had you at the station by this time. Hannah!" she addressed the window peremptorily, "you hurry up there an' come down, whether you're ready or not! I never agreed to this wild-goose chase after an orphant, but now that you're half ready you've got to go!"

There was another fleeting vision of the face between the curtains, and a choking voice gasped something about being "jist ready."

"What that orphant's got to have is a bottle o' fresh milk!" cried Mrs. Winters, darting back into the kitchen. A tall young lady, with a high pompadour, was striving to squeeze two large lemon pies into a small basket. She glanced up half apologetically as the village martinet entered.

"Hannah said last night she didn't know whatever she'd do if it cried on the road home, so ma thought I'd better bring over these pies. They keep awful well, and the basket'll easy slip under the seat in the train. When our Wes was a baby there was nothing would quiet him like a piece o' lemon pie."

"Well, Ella Anne Long, there won't be no orphant to bring home if you folks has your way!"

The exasperated little woman darted down the cellar steps, her voice coming up from the cool depths, indistinct, but plainly disapproving: "Lemon pie an' ras'berry vinegar! If Providence hasn't given folks children, it's a sign they didn't ought to have any! An' it's jist goin' clean against nature for them to go an' adopt one, that's what I'll always say!"

The young lady with the pies glanced irresolutely toward a stout woman who had just entered the back door, carrying a crock of butter. "You put them pies in, if Hannah wants them," whispered the newcomer, looking apprehensively toward the cellar, "an' say no more about it. Half the mischief in the world's done by talking about things." She hurried out to the vehicle and planted her contribution beside the bundle of wrappings.

"That there butter's for the children at the Home, Jake. Don't forget to give it to them poor things. Like as not they give 'em lard or someth'n'."

"Davy!" she called to the young man on the front seat.

"What, maw?"

"For pity's sake don't forget to call us when the train hoots for Cameron's Crossin'. 'Cause they've jist got to start then."

The boy in the buggy opened his eyes, stretched and yawned.

"I will, if it hoots good 'n' loud," he remarked, indifferently.

The maelstrom of hurry and bustle surged around Master David Munn, leaving him placid and undisturbed, but to the rest of the gathering the affair was of no small moment. Had the Sawyers been setting out on a polar expedition it is doubtful if Elmbrook could have been more exercised. For ten years, ever since their only baby had brightened their home for one week, and then gone back to heaven, Jake and Hannah Sawyer had wanted to adopt a child. That they had not done so long before was not their fault, but because the village in general, and Mrs. Winters in particular, who ruled the village, could never be brought to consent. For already the Sawyers were about as great a burden as Elmbrook could shoulder. They were the orphan children of the village themselves, and needed to be perpetually adopted. They were as good-hearted and lovable a pair as it was possible for man and woman to be; all the stray dogs and hungry cats and needy tramps found their way to the Sawyer house by unerring instinct, and Jake was never to be seen on his way to or from his mill without a troop of children climbing all over him. Nevertheless, he and his wife were a great care to their neighbors. Not once had Hannah Sawyer got through her spring house-cleaning or her fall pickling and preserving without help. Never yet had the two arrived in time at church or prayer-meeting, and they could not even go to town of a Saturday to do a half day's marketing without Mrs. Winters' eye on them. As for Jake's flour mill, if his partner, Spectacle John Cross, hadn't been a capable man, and an honest one, every one declared it would have gone up in smoke long ago.

So, naturally, the village was reluctant about adopting a third orphan; but Jake and Hannah had pleaded so, that the minister had advised Mrs. Winters to yield. And so the day had arrived when they were to take the train to a neighboring town, near which was an orphan home, and there they were to secure their long-yearned-for prize.

Of course, it was out of the question to suppose that the Sawyers could get up and catch the six-thirty train without assistance; so the Camerons had loaned their team, and the Longs their buggy, to take them to the station; Davy Munn was detailed to drive them, and all the rest of the village to get them ready.

Jake had just returned from a despairing march to the gate. "We'll miss that train, Harriet Munn, as sure as blazes!" he cried, with the air of one who has a disagreeable formula to recite at stated intervals, and is relieved to get it off his mind. He tramped back again with an agonized glance at the upstairs window.

The boy in the buggy stirred to life once more.

"Say, maw!"

"What, Davy?"

"What on earth's Hannah scratching 'round upstairs so long for? That orphant'll be growed up before they get it."

"She's jist ready," remarked his mother, hopefully, "an' there's no use talkin' about it, either. It jist wastes time. Jake!" she called, anxiously. "Are you sure you're all ready now?"

The man turned a desperate face toward her.

"I think so, Harriet. But if this collar don't bust soon an' give me a breath, I'll choke."

"Did you find your pipe?"

Mr. Sawyer dived absently into his coat pockets. "We'll miss that train as sure as—— Where in the nation's that pipe o' mine got to?" He rummaged despairingly. "Oh, I forgot! Susan Winters said I wasn't to take it, for fear the smoke might be bad for the orphant's eyes. D'ye think it would, Harriet?" he inquired, wistfully.

"Tuts!" she cried, disdainfully, "not a bit. Davy, there, was brought up on smoke. You go and get that pipe and put it in your pocket."

Mr. Sawyer started hopefully for the kitchen door. Davy Munn might not be exactly a bright and shining example to set for the bringing up of the orphan, but at least he looked healthy, and Jake was even more than usually helpless when bereft of his pipe. He paused on the way indoors to make one more despairing appeal to the power above. "Hannah! Aren't you 'most ready?"

Hannah's face, round and red, like the full moon, appeared for an instant from its cloudy curtain. "Harriet! Harriet Munn!" she called, "and you, Arabella, could you run up here a minit an' pin on these blue cuffs o' mine? An' I can't find my Sunday gloves, high nor low, nor my——"

The rest was lost in the curtains, but the two friends had already disappeared inside, and were charging up the stairs. Mrs. Winters, who was emerging from the kitchen door with the bottle of milk, turned and darted after them. "She ain't goin' to put them blue cuffs on that black dress!" she screamed.

"Ella Anne," whispered Jake, sidling up to the young lady with the high pompadour, "could you take a look 'round, and see if you can find my pipe? I can't seem to think where I've laid it."

Miss Long strolled around the kitchen, casting an absent eye here and there.

"Davy!" called a sharp voice from the upstairs window. "Davy Munn! Don't you dast to forget to call when the train hoots for Cameron's Crossing!"

The only calm person on the premises glanced up with half-closed eyes. "Hoh!" he ejaculated, planting his feet upon the dashboard and expectorating disdainfully in the direction of Rebekah's head, "Gabriel's trump'll hoot 'fore this shootin' match goes off! Gosh blame, if here ain't another one!"

A tall woman was coming up the lane. She was a stately, severe person, with iron-gray hair and a stern gray eye, behind which a kindly twinkle hid itself carefully from view. She had a commanding way, which, combined with the fact that she had taught the Elmbrook school for twenty years, and was the only woman in the village who neither feared Mrs. Winters nor regarded Granny Long's telescope, had earned her the title of the Duke of Wellington.

"Are you not away yet, David?" she demanded; and the boy sat up as though he had received an electric shock.

"N-no, but we're jist startin'," he said, apologetically. She passed him to where Mr. Sawyer stood in the doorway wrestling with his collar.

"Do you remember this, Jake?" she asked, holding up a baby's rattle. "I bought it for your little Joey, and put it away in my desk till he would be big enough to use it, and it's been there ever since. Maybe the new baby'll like it."

The man's eyes grew misty as he took the little toy and gazed at it tenderly. The woman's face had lost all its sternness; her gray eyes were very kind.

"Well, well, well," he stammered, with masculine dread of giving expression to anything like sentiment. "It—it looks quite—new." He hesitated, then his face brightened as he found himself once more on familiar ground. "Say, d'ye think you could help them weemin folks in there to find my pipe? It seems to have got laid away somewheres, an' I'm afraid we're goin' to miss that train as sure as—anything." He ended up lamely, making the polite alteration out of respect for the Duke's dignity.

Miss Weir marched into the kitchen. It was a scene of wild disorder.

"Hello!" giggled Miss Long. "We're having an awful time. Hannah ain't ready, of course."

"Isn't ready, Ella Anne."

"Well, isn't or ain't, it's all the same; she's not started yet. An' mind you, Mrs. Munn's upstairs helping, too, and her expecting the new doctor any minit. Say, Miss Weir, when she comes down, ask her whether he's married or not, aw, do. She's the closest creature. I can't get anything out of her."

Before the schoolmistress could rebuke Miss Long's undue curiosity regarding the young doctor Mrs. Winters came flying down the stairs, having successfully routed the blue cuffs.

"Good-morning, Miss Weir. We're here yet, you see. If these folks ain't a caution, and no mistake! Davy! Davy Munn! Are you listening for that there train?"

"Did ye look on the pantry shelf?" whispered Jake, cautiously, putting his head in at the door, and avoiding Mrs. Winters' eye. "Sometimes I leave it there."

"Just like you," grumbled the tidy schoolmistress, rummaging among the cans of spice and pickle bottles.

"Perhaps it's in the sewing-machine drawer," suggested Mrs. Munn, who had come panting down the stairs. "Hannah's jist ready, Jake," she added, hopefully.

"What'll you do if the new doctor comes on this train?" asked Miss Long, peeping at her pompadour in the little mirror above the sink.

"I dunno," answered the new doctor's housekeeper. "It's no use talkin' about it, anyhow. There's more harm done by talkin' over things than anything else in the world."

Miss Long shrugged her shoulders impatiently. That was Mrs. Munn's invariable answer. She had been old Dr. Williams' housekeeper for ten years, and had met all questions regarding his private affairs by the vague formula, "I dunno." A close woman was Mrs. Mum, as the village called her; a treasure of a woman, old Dr. Williams had said, when he recommended her to his young successor.

Ella Anne sighed. "That pipe must 'a' fell down the well," she remarked, with an accent of despair that was not all caused by the supposed catastrophe.

"Is he going to have them three downstairs rooms for his offices, or only two?" she ventured again.

Mrs. Munn stared vacantly. "I dunno," she said. "Mebby he is."

"There! If there isn't that troublesome pipe right under your nose, Ella Anne!" cried Miss Weir, pouncing upon it where it lay on the window-sill. "Your head is so full of the new doctor you can't see straight. Here, Jake!"

She started for the door, but before she reached it a great many things happened. First, Mrs. Sawyer, gowned, bonneted and shawled, though the sun promised to be blazing hot before it set, came down the stairs at a reckless pace. She was followed by Miss Arabella Winters, half hidden beneath a bundle of coats and wraps suited for children of all ages. As the two ran for the door, Mrs. Winters with a bottle of milk, Miss Long with a forgotten pie, and Mrs. Munn, who had snatched up a basket of newly laundered clothes, under the mistaken idea that they, too, were for the orphan, all rushed at the same instant for the same portal, and jammed together between the door-posts. The Duke of Wellington, still grasping the rescued pipe, threw herself upon the human wedge and drove it, helter-skelter, down the steps; and simultaneously there arose, loud and clear, not from Cameron's Crossing, some miles distant, but just from the ravine bridge, scarcely a quarter of a mile away, the shrill whistle of the train.

The six women turned and looked at each other in an instant's paralyzed dismay. Jake Sawyer opened his mouth and gave forth a slight variation of his despairing motto, "We've missed that train, as sure as blazes!"

No one had courage to deny the assertion. When the Lakeview & Simcoe Railroad Company laid a line across the township of Oro they had treated Elmbrook in a shabby fashion by placing the station a mile from the village. The inconvenience of this arrangement was largely obviated, however, by the obliging ways of Conductor Lauchie McKitterick. For if any one in the village was late in starting for the station, all one had to do was to wave a towel at the back door as the train slowed up over the ravine bridge, and Lauchie would wait at the station. Of course, it was understood that the belated traveler was already on the way thither, taking the path across McQuarry's fields. But of what use to wave all the bed-sheets in Elmbrook this morning? For though a delay of half an hour or so was neither here nor there to the Lakeview & Simcoe Limited Express, it was impossible to expect even so neighborly a body as Lauchie to wait until the big, heavy buggy and Cameron's farm team should be driven along the cross-road and down the concession. And as for Hannah Sawyer's 185 pounds being transported across the fields and over the fences in less time—not to speak of all the orphan's clothes and the pies and the pound cake and the crock of butter—well, there was no use thinking about it!

But Mrs. Winters, the indomitable, rose to even this emergency. She sprang to the buggy and began dragging out the baskets. "We'll stop him at the bridge!" she screamed. "We can run down the back lane! Davy Munn, you jump out of that rig an' run ahead! No—Miss Weir, you go! Lauchie'll have to stop if you tell him!"

It was the first time in her life Mrs. Winters had ever paid a tribute to the Duke of Wellington's power. Though it was wrung from her by the exigencies of the case, the schoolmistress accepted it. She snatched a white garment off the clothes-line, darted through the barnyard, and ran at top speed down the back lane toward the track, waving it on high, all unconscious that it was Jake's white mill overalls. Close upon her flying footsteps came the orphan-adopting expedition: Mrs. Winters, the bottle of milk leaving a white-sprinkled trail behind her; Jake, dragging the heaps of wraps and the basket of provisions, with which little Miss Arabella was vainly trying to assist him; Ella Anne Long, the basket of pies on her arm, the forgotten one in her other hand; Mrs. Munn, with the crock of butter; poor Hannah herself far behind; and lastly, Isaac and Rebekah, their necks outthrust, their wings wide, streaming along like a pair of comets, with a long, spreading tail of hens, all noisily hopeful that this unusual commotion meant an unusual meal.

Down the lane zigzagged the swift procession, Hannah floundering farther and farther in the rear. She raised her voice once in a despairing protest: "Oh, Jake! Jake!" she wailed, "I've forgot my false teeth!"

Her husband, desperately intent on his destination, did not hear the appeal, but the little woman who was generaling the flying column did, and realized that this sign of giving way must be peremptorily crushed.

"You'll jist have to gum it, Hannah!" she shrieked relentlessly over her shoulder. "Come on, come on!"

Master Davy Munn, still enthroned calmly upon the front seat of the useless vehicle, contemplated the tumultuous line with supreme contempt. Mr. Munn never hurried. Should all Elmbrook have risen up one morning and gone hurtling down to Lake Simcoe, it would have left him seated alone, undisturbed, on its vacated ridge.

He turned leisurely and chirped to the horses. "Jim Cameron lent yous to haul that outfit to the station," he complained, as they lumbered out through the gateway, "but I'll be darned if I promised to run 'em there, so yous kin git home."

Meantime, the vanguard of the Orphan Rescue Expedition had reached the railroad track. Just on the outskirts of the village lay a deep ravine, spanned by a bridge. Over this the train moved slowly, and here, with his eye on the lookout for white signals, the conductor spied the Duke of Wellington in the middle of the track, waving a white banner. Being an Elmbrook man, Lauchie took in the situation at once. Jake and Hannah were late, of course; too late even to run across the fields while he waited at the station. He gave the signal, and the train slowed down, the snorting engine coming to a standstill within a foot of the flaunting garment.

Engine Driver Nick Boyle, who would have willingly stopped at Elmbrook every day in the week, to talk over the back fences with the pretty girls, but who objected on principle to all that his chief did, poked his head out of his black box, grimy and disapproving. "What in thunder's Brass Buttons up to now?" he demanded. Miss Weir, who had thrashed Nick times without number in his youth, fixed him with her steady gray eye.

"He stopped because I signaled him to, Nicholas Boyle," she said tartly.

The Duke was still standing in the middle of the track, waving the overalls, as though the train were a wild animal to be kept quiet by having its attention diverted. The sight tickled the engineer.

"Golly, it must be a weddin'," he remarked, facetiously. "Who's gettin' hitched? You, Miss Weir?"

"Hold your tongue!" she commanded, and the abashed young man collapsed into his box.

By this time Hannah had arrived, and was being helped aboard. The wraps, the pies, the bottle of milk, the crock of butter, the basket of provisions, and her husband, were bundled after her. The group of friends stood waving good-by with sunbonnets and aprons, the schoolmistress, still holding Jake's forgotten pipe, and still faithfully brandishing the overalls, stepped off the track to let the train start, and the expedition was just drawing a breath of relief, when they were suddenly thrown back into their former state of consternation. Conductor Lauchie leaned down from the platform, and, with his thumb pointing over his shoulder, announced in a loud whisper, "Losh keep us, I would be forgetting! He'll be aboard, Harriet Munn! Your new pill-mixer'll be aboard!"

Mrs. Munn stared at him in dismay. "Not him! Not the new doctor!"

The conductor looked abashed, as though he had brought the wrong parcel from town. "Och, he would be as fine a lookin' young man as you'll see in Oro!" he whispered, apologetically. "Will I jist be puttin' him off here?"

"Don't you dast to do such a trick, Lauchie McKitterick!" cried Mrs. Winters, shaking her fist in his face. "Harriet's been up helpin' Hannah all mornin', an' she ain't ready for him. Take him on to the station, an' we'll run up an' help her red up before he comes. An' mind you go slow!"

The conductor hastily acquiesced. He was a native of Elmbrook, and knew his place when Susan Winters was giving orders. "Awl aboard!" he shouted.

The group gave one final, farewell flourish toward the train, and then turned and sped up the lane to meet the new emergency. Jake and Hannah, their faces settled once more into their accustomed expressions of good-humored placidity, leaned from their windows and waved their hands. Hannah smiled a toothless but happy smile, and Jake's eyes beamed a great content as he sat back in his seat, and, holding the rattle between his teeth, fumbled happily for a match. He looked across at his wife, and their eyes met in a rapturous smile; for at last, after years of striving and longing, they were on their way to the fulfilment of their great ambition; they were to have a child of their very own!

And so, as the train sped in one direction, and the group of women in another, no one noticed the stooped, gaunt man who dropped from the rear end of the baggage car, and, creeping down the bank of the ravine, disappeared into the green tangle of underbrush.