A rustling indicated that the caller, her errand accomplished, had risen to go. She shot her last tiny, poisoned arrow. "Of _course_ I said to Cyrus _all_ of us on the Island know all that poor Miss Leavitt"s _had_ to stand, what with her brother and _then_ her sister!
And _that"s_ why, I said to Cyrus, Miss Leavitt _ought_ to know about these goings on, or else something _else_ would come down on your poor head! I must run along, now, "Manthy came in to watch my jam. That Carroll girl I got over at Greenfield isn"t worth her keep--you have to watch her _every_ moment!"
All the pride of generations of Leavitts must have come to Miss Sabrina"s rescue at that moment! She met the final thrust with calm dignity.
"My niece is only making me a very short visit, Mrs. Eaton. It is hardly worth while for me to interfere with her conduct."
Nancy was struck dumb with amazement. What did Aunt Sabrina mean--that _this_ silly little affair ended her stay at Happy House? What _would_ Anne think? Oh, _what_ a mess she had made of everything! Of course she had expected that something might happen any moment; after one day had safely pa.s.sed, she had always thought it might be the next; had she not told Anne that she was certain to make some dreadful blunder? But it was a shame to go away in disgrace when she had not really done anything, after all!
Indignation of the most righteous sort began slowly to master Nancy"s consternation. Well, if she did have to go she would allow herself, just once, the sweet satisfaction of telling Miss Sabrina what she thought of the Leavitts and their sense of honor! She rushed headlong into the sitting-room.
"I heard what that--that creature said," she blurted out. "I don"t _know _why G.o.d makes women like that! What would you _think_, Aunt Sabrina, if you"d seen her take a whip and lash those children across their bare bodies? And that wouldn"t have been as bad as what she really _did_ do, for those hurts would have healed, and the way she hurt their spirits wouldn"t _ever_ heal! She is cruelly unjust--and unkind!"
Poor Miss Sabrina looked very old and very tired--far too tired to meet this impetuous attack! Something in the unyieldingness of her expression drove Nancy to utter abandon.
"Oh, I suppose I"ll have--to go away! But I"m glad--everything is all wrong at Happy House. There"s no happiness here--at all.
Fath--someone I love used to tell me that happiness comes to you as you _give_ happiness, and that"s what"s the matter here--you don"t give happiness! You live--apart--and you just wrap yourself round with the traditions of the Leavitts and all that--tommyrot! I"m glad I"m not--a--I"m glad I"m the--the other branch. I guess the golden rule is better than any family honor and that it doesn"t matter at _all_ what all the people who are dead and gone"ve done--it"s what the people who are _living_ are doing--that counts!"
Breathless from her outburst and frightened by its daring, Nancy burst into tears and rushed from the room.
In the aftermath of calm that followed the storm, Nancy woefully faced the consequences of what she had done. How silly it would all sound to Anne when she heard it! Anne would tell her, of course, what _she_ would have done--but then, Anne had always been able to control every word and every action.
Nancy, staring about at the four walls of her room in very much the same way she had done that first day of her coming to Happy House, realized that they were not so ugly, after all. Their height gave a sense of coolness and s.p.a.ce; the branches of an old cherry tree brushed her windows; from below came all sorts of sweet smells out of Jonathan"s garden; the incessant twittering of birds and the humming of insects made the summer air teem with busy, happy life. It was pleasant, she sighed--much pleasanter than a flat in Harlem in July!
"Well, I won"t pack until I get my dishonorable discharge, and I can"t get away until Webb"s stage goes, anyway! I"ll take Miss Milly once more to the orchard."
Miss Milly went to the orchard so often now that it had become a part of almost every day"s routine, and it was no longer necessary that B"lindy and Jonathan should make up the party, though they went more often than not. This day Aunt Milly declared everything particularly nice, but she thought it was because she and Nancy were alone--she could not know that Nancy had been doing her best to make it an afternoon Aunt Milly would never forget--"because it"s probably the last!"
They lingered in the orchard until almost supper-time. Then Nancy sought the kitchen. She liked to drop in on B"lindy, help her in some small way in the preparation of the evening meal, and chat at the same time. She was astounded, now, to find Aunt Sabrina, with a very red face, bending over the kitchen stove.
B"lindy, sitting very straight in the chair by the window, gave the explanation--resentfully.
""Pears to be hash ain"t good enough for supper. Had it all fixed for the cookin" and I guess it"s fair "nough for anyone to eat and I can"t abide left-overs hangin" "round. But Miss S"briny says the supper to-night"s got to be extry nice and Miss Anne"s got to have waffles and _she"ll_ cook "em herself, seein" how old B"lindy that"s cooked "em nigh onto fifty years, can"t cook "em _good_ "nough for Miss Anne!"
Miss Sabrina"s face was bent over the waffles--Nancy could not see it.
The moment was too solemn to permit her to so much as smile. She said very gravely, almost reprovingly:
"You _know_, B"lindy, that you _can"t_ make waffles as good as Aunt Sabrina can and I"ve been hungry for days for waffles!"
Nancy knew that, after that night, waffles would always mean something more to her than merely a concoction of food stuffs particularly dear to her palate--they"d mean the momentary triumph of reason and justice, the defeat of the Mrs. Eaton-kind, and the pitiful attempt of a very old and a very proud woman to "give happiness."
CHAPTER XV
GUNS AND STRING BEANS
"Claire darling--
"Almost two weeks since I wrote to you. Will you love me any more?
"As I write I am all alone on the edge of a very little pool of light reflected from my little lamp that was only intended to see me into bed and not to burn half the night through while I write to my pal.
"Is this summer night as perfect where you are, Claire? (Tush--you"ve probably been playing tennis and dancing and flirting until you are too exhausted to care about anything except the breakfast bell disturbing you.) But up here it"s _wonderful_! The sky is blue-black velvet, all studded with stars that seem suspended--they are so very close. And the air just caresses you! And there are the sweetest smells, gra.s.sy and earthy and all fragrant of roses. There are queer little noises, too--as though the night was full of fairy creatures. And I heard a whip-or-will! And a screech-owl, way, way off.
"Since I wrote to you last I have "put my foot in it" again! Terribly!
It"s too long a story to write to you--there isn"t nearly oil enough for that--but I skated over the thin ice and reached safety--in other words, I am still here! And, Nancy, I know, now, even Aunt Sabrina is beginning to like me! Do you know why? Because I lost my head and told her what I thought was the matter with her and Happy House and I don"t suppose anyone _dared_ to tell her that before. (I called her Leavitt traditions tommy-rot.) And I think she _enjoyed_ the sensation! Anyway, she seems to treat me now like Somebody and she said something the other day about how lovely the autumns were on the Island, as though she took it for granted I"d be here then!
"Claire, what if I can _never_ get away? Did I dream, when I took Anne"s shoes (to speak in figures) and put them on, where they"d lead me? And sometimes I think that I will not see the end of the trail for a long time. I"m not crazy to see it, either, for it _must_ end in Disaster!
"I am beginning to understand these people, too. I--in my usual way, judged them too quickly! One must know their history to know them--know what a splendid background they have. Aunt Sabrina has taken up Ezekiel where she left off and tells me stories about the Champlain Valley. Of course, I know she is doing it, because I called the Leavitt glories "tommy-rot" and when I read, in B"lindy"s book (gotten up, of course, to bait tourists) what these Islanders _have_ done, I feel cheap and small and insignificant beside all these people who have such heroic grandfathers and great grandfathers.
"I suppose, all over the world, Island people must be different from people whose lands lie directly contingent with other lands and people.
The very waters that shut away these precious Hero Islands wash their lives back upon themselves--they live in--they can"t help it. The world that rushes on so fast for us, living in the big cities, scarcely stirs them here! These folks talk about Ethan Allen and Remembrance Baker as though it was only yesterday they walked down under the elms of the village street! They all eat off from very old china and sit in very old chairs--precious because some hero dear to the Island has sat in them!
"(All of this is not original with me--The Hired Man said it.)
"So just as I finished grandly saying to Aunt Sabrina that it didn"t matter at _all_ what the people, who are dead and gone, have done, I"m beginning to see--like a picture opened before my eyes--that it _does_ matter--quite a little! They, these dead and gone people, leave us what they have done; if it"s bad, we have to pay for it, some way or other--if it"s n.o.ble, we have to be worthy of it! _That_ philosophy is all mine and not the Hired Man"s.
"There are a great many things about the aforesaid Hired Man (I never think of him as that) that perplex me. He is a great big riddle. He is more interesting than any one I ever met before. I wish you were here so we could talk him over the way we used to the Knights of the Pink Parlor. That he is good looking is not what seems so queer, because I suppose there _are_ good-looking hired men as well as good-looking street car conductors or undertakers. He is so understandable--he is like you and Anne and Dad. And he knows so much about everything! He must have gone to college--he talks just like a college man. But once when I hinted he smiled and told me that he was "still a student in the college of Experience, where after all one could learn more than at even the great universities."
"He is Mysterious. After I"ve been with him I plan it all out--what he must have been and why he fell to the level of this sort of work; then the next time I see him he says something that makes me change all my ideas. I am sure he is concealing something--he simply will not say one word about himself! I don"t believe it"s anything as bad as murder or forgery or--anything like that, because he has such honest eyes, and they look right straight through you. It"s probably some sorrow or--or disappointment. Sometimes his eyes look very tired, as though they had seen some terrible tragedy, though mostly always they"re just jolly.
"He"s wonderful with Nonie and Davy--they adore him. He thinks of so many nice things for them to do. He says once he was a scoutmaster in the Boy Scouts. I think he almost gave something away then, for, after he said it, he looked so funny and wouldn"t say another word.
"He treats me as though I was another boy just a little older than Davy. And after the silly men we knew in college it"s a relief to find anyone like Peter Hyde, even though he is a hired man. I suppose it"s because he"s probably had a hard time--has had to make his way, he"s had all the nonsense knocked out of him! I am sure, if one could teach him to dance and then set him down in the middle of your mother"s living-room you"d all go crazy over him. Now isn"t that some Hired Man? Dear me, I spend more time wondering about him! Then I laugh at myself. Do you remember the Russian who came to college last year--how we all thought he must be a Russian prince and then we found out he"d been born on the Lower East Side?"
There were other doubts concerning Peter Hyde that Nancy did _not_ confide to Claire. For the past two years and more, in Nancy"s honest soul, all men between twenty-one and forty were divided into two cla.s.ses; those who had gone over to France and those who had not. If Peter Hyde _had_ gone there was nothing in any act or word that signified it; if he had _not_ gone, why not? Was _that_ what he was hiding?
She had resorted, feeling very contemptible as she did so, to little traps to draw him out, but he had invariably escaped them--sometimes changing the subject abruptly, other times openly laughing and saying nothing. Very much against her will she felt growing within her a contempt for him; almost a dislike of his personal appearance, so obviously healthy and able to have fought for his country! And yet, loyalty had kept her from confiding this to Claire.
A sense of fairness, too, urged her to give Peter the benefit of the doubt until she knew. "I"ll just ask him," she decided resolutely.
"I"ll ask him right out--the very first chance I get!"
The opportunity to learn the truth had come on the very afternoon following the night she had written to Claire. Nonie and Davy had not appeared for a swim, so Peter had suggested a walk. He wanted Nancy to go over, with him, the new work he had started on the Judson ten-acre piece, the improvements in the barns, the rotary gardens.
It was the first time that Peter Hyde had talked much about his work.
Nancy, who would have said turnips grew on bushes, for all she knew, found herself, under his instruction, suddenly absorbed in the scientific growing of beans and corn and potatoes; in the making of one strip of garden produce three different food products in rotation; in irrigation and drainage; in sanitary stables and electrically lighted chicken houses.
"You know there"s poetry in these growing things," Peter cried, waving his hand out over the tender stalks of corn. "You get all the Art you want! Can you find anywhere a more wonderful picture than that waving field of oats--pale green against that sky? And in a few weeks it"ll be yellow. See that lettuce green, too. And music--you can stand in a field of corn when the wind is blowing a little and you will hear a symphony!"
Nancy, surprised, watched his glowing face with interest Here was indeed a new side of the Hired Man! He went on:
"And business, say, there"s a practical side to this farming that ought to satisfy any man. Wits, science, strategy, instinct, plain common-sense--it"s all as necessary right here as in the biggest business concern in the world. And if a fellow wants a _fight_--well, he has it when he goes up against Mother Earth. We"re used to thinking of her as kindly, generous, lavishing her favors! I"ve had another picture--she"s worse than a Czar! She"s exacting, she"s moody, she"s undependable, at times. I suppose she does it to try out her children--but anyway, the farmer has to fight every minute!"
He stopped suddenly. "I"m boring you to death, maybe!" He laughed apologetically. "It"s always been a hobby of mine--this working with the earth. I never thought I"d do anything with it--until the war!
Then I realized how much a nation"s prosperity depends upon how its soil is used. And that"s where our government"s been short-sighted.