Читать книгу Oldfield: A Kentucky Tale of the Last Century - Nancy Huston Banks - Страница 9

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A rosy mist often floated between Miss Judy and the bare, brown things of life. She knew it, realizing fully how many mistakes she made in seldom seeing things as they actually were. She had never been able to trust her own eyes, and now they were not even as strong as they used to be, although they were as blue as ever. The japonica bushes were only a few paces distant, the front yard being but the merest strip of earth; yet the ground was very wet, and Miss Judy was wearing prunella gaiters. They were the only shoes she had; they were also the only kind she had ever known a lady to wear. Shoes made of leather, however fine, would have seemed to Miss Judy—had she known anything about them—as much too heavy, too stiff, and altogether too clumsy for the delicate, soundless step of a gentlewoman.

Moving out on the sunken stone of the door-step, she was still unable to tell with certainty whether the japonicas were actually budding. She stood peering helplessly, almost frowning in her effort to see. It was really important that she should know as soon as possible. The coming of spring was important to everybody in the Pennyroyal Region, where every man was a farmer—the merchant, the lawyer, the doctor, and even the minister; and where every woman had a garden, large and rich like old lady Gordon's, or small and poor as Miss Judy's was. And the buds of the japonica were the gay little heralds of the spring, coming clad all in scarlet satin, while the rest of nature wore dull and sombre robes. Flashing out from their dark hiding-places at the first touch of the sun, the sight of them stirred the ladies of Oldfield as nothing else ever did. The men, too, always noticed this first sign of spring's approach. But it was the burning of the tobacco-beds on the wooded hillsides, the floating of long, thin banners of pale blue smoke across a wintry sky, which moved the men. It was only in the breasts of the gentle gardeners of Oldfield that the bursting forth of the japonica buds, these vivid points of flame, always fired a perennial ambition. For the housewife who could send a neighbor the earliest cool, green lettuce, or the first warm, red radishes might well be a proud woman, and was a personage to be looked up to and to be envied during all the rest of the year. And was it not rather a pretty ambition and even a laudable one? Have not most of us noted pettier ambitions and far less laudable ones in a much larger world?

Aside from this public and universal interest and anxiety concerning gardening time, Miss Judy had good private reasons for wishing to get an early start. Early vegetables were more profitable than late ones in Oldfield as elsewhere. Of course Miss Judy never thought of selling any of the things that grew in her little garden. She would have been shocked at the suggestion. No one in Oldfield ever sold anything, except Mr. Pettus, who kept the general store, and who sold everything that the Oldfield people needed. It is true that Miss Judy had a regular engagement with Mr. Pettus to exchange green stuff for sugar or knitting materials, or a yard of white muslin to make Miss Sophia a tucker, or a bit of net to freshen her cap, and occasionally even some trifle for herself. That, however, was an entirely different matter from vulgarly selling things. Mr. Pettus understood the difference quite as clearly as Miss Judy did, and he always took the greatest pains to show his appreciation of her thoughtful condescension in letting him have the vegetables. He was always most generous too in these delicate and complicated transactions. It upset Miss Judy somewhat, at first, to find him willing to give more sugar for onions than for genteeler vegetables, especially in the spring. But it was never hard for Miss Judy to give up when no real principle was involved; and necessity makes most of us do certain things which we disapprove of. So that, sighing gently, Miss Judy squeezed her heartsease and mignonette into a smaller space, and planted more onion-sets.

She was thinking about those onion-sets as she looked at the japonica bushes, trying to see whether they were actually budding. She could not, as a lady, admit even to herself how largely her sister's living depended upon the ignoble bulbs even more than upon the refined produce of the little garden. Her own living also depended upon this bit of earth; but that was not nearly so important, from her point of view. Miss Sophia came first in everything, even in the annual consideration of the problem of the onion-sets. Miss Judy, thinking that the house in which gentlewomen lived should never smell of anything but dried rose leaves, asked Miss Sophia if she did not think the same. Miss Sophia, who had thought nothing about it, and who objected to the odor of onions only because it made her very hungry, answered "Just so, sister Judy," very promptly and very decisively, as she always answered everything that Miss Judy said. Consequently the tidy calico bag containing the onion-sets was banished to the kitchen for the winter, to become a source of secret uneasiness to Miss Judy the whole season through. Merica, the cook, was not so dependable a personage as Miss Judy could have wished her to be. There was indeed something disturbingly uncertain in her very name. Miss Judy always thought it must be A-merica, but Merica always stoutly insisted that her whole real true name was Mericus-Ves-Pat-rick-One-of-the-Earliest-Settlers-of-Kentucky, and Miss Judy gave up all further discussion of the subject simply because she was overwhelmed, not because she was convinced.

Remembering that the onion-sets had been quite safe when she last looked at them, Miss Judy felt a renewed anxiety to know certainly whether the japonicas were budding. And the only way to know was to get her fathers far-off spectacles. These were privately used by both the little sisters upon great emergencies, such as this was. But they had never been put on by either in public; and Miss Judy was much startled at the thought of putting them on at the front door. Moreover, they were always kept carefully hidden in the left-hand corner, at the very back of the top drawer of the chest of drawers in the little sisters' room, and Miss Sophia was still asleep. Miss Judy could tell by the way the sun touched the sunken stone of the door-step that it wanted two or three minutes of the time when she always rolled the cannon-ball which held the door open, as a polite hint to Miss Sophia to get up. Under the unusual circumstances, however, Miss Judy felt justified in rolling it at once. It was a big ball weighing twenty-five pounds, and it was a good deal battered by distinguished service. It had come indeed from the battle-field at New Orleans, and there was a tradition that it was the identical cannon-ball which had killed the British general. Miss Judy, however, could never be brought to entertain any such dreadful belief. She was quite content and very, very proud to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that many of those gallant Kentuckians who rushed in at the last desperate moment—travel-worn, starving, ragged, and armed only with hunters' rifles—to do such valiant service in turning the tide of that momentous battle, were true sons of the Pennyroyal Region. Miss Judy was aware of the strange and unaccountable misstatement concerning the conduct of the Kentuckians, made by General Jackson in his report of the battle. But she was also aware that the general—who was not as a rule very quick to take things back—had corrected that misstatement so promptly and so thoroughly, that it had not been necessary for General Adair to ride from Kentucky to New Orleans to fight a duel with him about the slander, although that gallant Kentuckian was all ready and eager to go.

And was there not also that remarkable song, celebrating the part taken by "The Hunters of Kentucky" in the battle of New Orleans? Everybody was singing it when Miss Judy was a girl; and although she could not sing she had often hummed the ringing chorus:—