It is only right. I am willing. Where were the neighbors to the Keatses that they didn"t--And I was about to be dissolved in a sea of sentiment when Sam"s voice hauled me to the surface as he shouted:
"Hi, Betty, get out and sight this end for a right angle-drop, as I showed you. Wait! Back, boys!"
And after that I held the metal square and sighted until I felt as if I had eaten a right angle, while Sam"s crew heaved and raised and dropped and rolled, until all four of the low walls were fitted into the notches, log for log, and the roof-poles were laid just as the sun began to quit his job and get on toward China.
"No four of their young Virginia pioneer ancestors who came over the wilderness trail did it any quicker or better, Colonel," said daddy, as he walked around to the back of the cabin and then again to the front.
As he spoke he laid his arm across Sam"s shoulder--and I knew that the breach was healed until the next time daddy tried to help him financially.
All the log-raisers went home by twilight, and daddy and I were the last. The Byrd had insisted on showing daddy nine little curly-tailed pigs taking their evening repast at the maternal fount, which they were shyly late in doing because the fledgling perched so near them on the fence to exhibit and direct the repast.
This left me to help Sam gather up his tools and pick up the fragrant cedar chips for Mammy"s vesper fire.
"Now, the chimney next and Pete"s housed," said Sam, as he sat down on a log right where I was crouching, filling the basket with the chips. "Are you happy, Bettykin?"
"Sam, when I know that Peter is tucked in that little old bed that matches yours that mother gave you out of our garret I am going to breathe so deep that maybe I"ll--I"ll break my belt," I answered, as I picked a chip from under one of his big farm shoes. "I couldn"t stand him on my mind much longer."
"Let him stay comfortably in your heart and don"t get him on your mind,"
answered Sam, as he calmly got out the cob pipe, filled and lighted it.
"Pete"s great enough to fill both for any woman." And Sam"s face took on that devout young prophet-look it always does when he looks at his land or mentions Peter--the look which then began to irritate as well as impress me, I don"t exactly know why.
"My mind"s not very big and my heart is smaller," I snapped, as I upset part of the basket of chips and had to begin to pick them all up again.
"You"re young--you"ll grow up--to Pete," said Sam, as he roughed my hair worse than he had ever done since I had forbidden him, picked up my basket and started to the house, leaving me to follow, squaw-fashion and perfectly furious. Now if I don"t know whether my troth is plighted to Peter, and Peter doesn"t know, I am certain that I can"t see why Samuel Foster Crittenden should be so sure of it; and he and I parted anything but friends, a fact over which I could feel daddy chuckle as he sat wedged beside me in the car, though he didn"t dare smile. I would wager my first mess of peas that he winked at Sam. I had seen them act that way about me only too often in my infancy. I felt that I hated the whole world until I had to except the fledgling, who rode down to the gate on the running-board just over my left shoulder, while Sam came along to hold him on.
"Betty, you is the prettiest lady they is if your eyes do crinkle when you laugh, and ain"t blue. I"d let you kiss me anywhere I"m clean enough, if you bring me just one pigeon that will lay eggs for little ones," he said, as I slowed up for him to climb down to open the gate.
"She could get one cheaper than that, Byrd," said Sam, as he got down to open the gate, while for a second I snuggled the fledgling, whom I always hated to leave out in the woods in the dark, even with Sam"s rough hand so near his pillow.
"Thank you," I said, pleasantly, as I drove through the gate, without stopping another ten minutes to chat, as I knew daddy wanted to. I"m glad Samuel Foster Crittenden will never know just exactly what I was cross about, as I wasn"t sure myself. It is strange how you can hate a person for whom you have the deep regard I have for Sam, when he has done nothing at all to offend you.
That night I fought it all out with myself about Peter. I felt that Sam had brought the sore spot in my heart to head and I would have to operate and find out what was really there. Accordingly, after I had safely anch.o.r.ed myself in the middle of my old four-poster bed I slashed myself. This is what I found. That I had made up my mind to marry Peter just as soon as he wanted me to, which I knew would not be until after the play was finished down in Sam"s wilderness. I had two reasons for my intention. n.o.body in the world ever loved and depended on me as Peter has always done since he read me the winning poem that he sent in for his Junior Prize. Peter needs me, and n.o.body else in the world does.
What could love be but giving and cherishing the beloved? By the test of how I longed to do all that to Peter I found out how I loved him. That was the reason I openly admitted, but I am afraid that I was afraid of Sam if I should fail his young David-Keats in any way. He had already warned me what I must be to him, and I felt as I did about that heifer I let get by me the first day I went to dig Sam out of the hollow tree to which he has now had to build a new crotch in order to take in Peter.
This time I would head off his calf for him, though I didn"t mean to call Peter that, even in the heat of debate with myself. Oh, I could take such good care of Peter and Judge Vandyne, and Mabel would be so glad! My spirits rose at the thought of their joy, and as I felt better, I luxuriated in the thought of Sam"s approbation. I would give Peter the answer he had begged for in every letter, help him with the play until it was finished, and then have a glorious wedding, with Edith and Sue and Julia and all the girls. I must have fallen asleep then, for I dreamed that Julia was the bride at my wedding and that I couldn"t get there. When I woke from that nightmare I decided to let Sam have the happiness of hearing Peter tell him of my submission to their wishes; and that time I sobbed myself to sleep.
From that fatal night until the afternoon of Peter"s arrival, I saw Sam only three times, and those when there were many others with us. I was so sweet and submissive to him that I saw I alarmed him greatly.
Peter arrived according to schedule and was met in the manner planned by our friends. As he stood on the train platform just behind a woman and a baby, I saw his great dark eyes, that seem fairly to glow out of his beautiful face, eagerly race over the crowd. When they rested on me they lit with what I thought was perfect joy until I saw them find Sam a few seconds later. That was the real thing, and I never loved Peter better than when I saw him hold Sam"s hand in his while he was greeting me in a suppressed, lover-like way and was being introduced to people.
Sam was also radiant. Peter and Sam and I are the eternal triangle that Peter is always talking into plots for plays--only Sam is the apex instead of me. Isn"t it beautiful to have it that way?
III
THE BOOK OF LAUGHTER
Hayesboro took Peter into its heart of hearts and then sighed for more to give him. This town is like the old man"s horse whose natural gait is running away when it is not asleep. Peter woke it up and it took the bit in its mouth and bolted with him, while Peter clung to the saddle and had the time of his young poetic life.
Mother accepted Peter with her usual placidity. She took him into her room and I suppose she examined him physically, for I saw her give him a dose of sarsaparilla tea every morning he was with us. I bought her five spools of the finest silk thread, ranging in shade from gray to lavender, to begin on a crocheted tie and pair of socks for him. Daddy was as good as gold to him and fell immediately into Judge Vandyne"s att.i.tude toward him. I knew he would. Eph maintained the dignity of the haphazard family at meal-times, and waited on Peter worshipfully at all others. The black beauty in the kitchen was heard to remark to the house-girl:
"I hope that white man"s skin will stretch, for I sh.o.r.e am going to stuff it. He am a insult to any respectable skillet or pot." She did, and at times I trembled for the poet.
He read to Miss Henrietta Spain"s school the poem on "s.p.a.ce" which the _Literary Opinion_ had copied; and he was the greatest possible success.
Most of it I feel sure the school didn"t understand. But just as he finished the last two lines--those lines the magazine had called "as perfect in winged lyric quality as any lines in the English language could be"--the Byrd, whom Sam had groomed carefully and brought in from the brier-patch for the occasion, rose, and, with his freckles black with the intensity of his comprehension of the poem, spread his little arms and said:
"I fly! I fly!"
"I fly! I fly, too!" A little chubkin in a blue muslin dress just behind him jumped to her feet and echoed him before they could be repressed.
"That was the most perfect tribute I shall ever receive," Peter said, that night out on the porch, after Sam had gone home, carrying the exhausted Byrd, who even in sleep held in one hand the handle of a full basket he had begged from mother, and in the other tightly grasped a sack in which were two "little ones" daddy had got for him. These treasures happened to be young rabbits, and Sam said he would charge daddy with the damages.
"Good old Sam," said Peter, as we stood at the gate by the old lilac, who was beginning to beplume himself more richly than any of his compatriots in Hayesboro--in honor of Peter, I felt sure--and watched Sam and the Byrd jog away in the wagon down Providence Road. "He"ll make his mark on his generation yet, Betty. This is just a temporary eclipse of the effulgence of a young planet that will shine with the warm light of humanity when the time comes. There is no man like him. O Samboy!"
"Oh, I love you, Peter, for feeling that way," I exclaimed, heartily, as I grasped his arm with enthusiasm. "You are so wonderful, Peter."
"Dear, dearest Betty," said Peter, as he put his arm through mine, and we both began to swing back and forth on the gate. "It is so marvelous to have a woman respond to your every mood as you do to mine. It is like having in one"s possession an angel incarnate in her own harp."
"Oh, Peter you _are_ wonderful!" I again exclaimed, because I felt that way and had no other feeling to draw another remark from. It is so satisfactory to love a man with no variations. I cannot see why girls like to tremble and blush and chill and glow and get angry and repentant about the men they love, as Edith does about Clyde Tolbot. I wish I could make them all understand the great calmness of true love like mine for Peter.
The five days that Peter stayed with mother, Hayesboro did many other things to him. The mayor got up a barbecue in his honor, and they had nine political speeches and two roast pigs and a lamb. Peter came home pale, but we decided before we went to bed to let the hero of "The Emergence" get beaten up a little in the strike before he made his great speech to the capitalist. I felt so happy for the play.
But the next day Peter took tea alone with Miss Editha Morris Carruthers, and he was so charmed with her that he almost decided to let the whole play end in separation.
"But it is so lonely for a woman to be a heroine of a separation, Peter," I pleaded with him as we sauntered up and down the long porch.
"Under such stress souls grow, Betty," he answered, gloomily. "Together lovers feed on the material; apart, on the immaterial. Can we say which is best for the final emergence of the superman and--" Just here Julia came across the street and into our front gate, looking like a ripe peach, in a pink muslin gown, with a huge plate of hickory-nut b.u.t.ter-candy in her hand, and we all three proceeded to material nourishment. I left them for a few minutes while I went up to my room and took out Grandmother Nelson"s book. I wanted to be sure that not a single thing would bloom before I got back to The Briers. Peter had insisted that he should not go forth into the wilderness until he could do it dramatically to stay, so I hadn"t been out for five days or more and I was wild--simply mad. To have a garden and be separated from it at sprouting and blooming time is worse than any soul separation that ever happened to any woman. Of that I feel sure.
Sue Bankhead was as nice and lovely to Peter as could be, and even Billy Robertson"s contentment with himself was slightly ruffled with the way she took him out horseback with her every morning, but her crowning attention was a dance for him. Sue has the loveliest dances in Hayesboro because of her own charm and the fact that the double parlors in the old Bankhead house are sixty-two feet long and forty-six feet wide. The girls were as lovely as a bunch of spring blossoms, and Julia looked like the most gorgeous, pink, fragrant, drooping cabbage-rose as Peter danced with her again and again. I was so glad, because he is as tall as she is, and she is such a good dancer that it must have been as soothing to his tired nerves as a nice wide rocking-chair with billows of blue mull cushions. It was easy to see what she thought of him from the way she looked at him, and poor Pink took me out in the moonlight and swore at me in polite language.
"Why don"t you feed your sick poet your own self, Betty, and not let him loose to eat up my girl?" he stormed.
"Oh, Pink, how can you be so ungenerous, when you know how wonderful he is and how wonderful his play will be if you and everybody are kind and good to him while he is writing it," I chided him.
"Well, he had better not put Julia into it without me," he answered, somewhat mollified at my reproof.
"He won"t, I know he won"t," I hastened to a.s.sure him. "Especially if you are nice to him, as you promised. You know, Pink, you are an awfully interesting man in some ways, and I know it is going to do Peter a lot of good to be friends with you; you are so--so substantial."
"That"s it; slap my fat! Everybody does," he answered, gloomily.
"It was the mules I was talking about, not you, Pink," I answered, hurriedly, for I know how sensitive he is.
"Well, call me a mule then," he again said, with the deepest depression.
"Now don"t be stupid, Pink, and--"
"I am stupid, too!"
"Pink Herriford, will you please tell my friend, Peter Vandyne, about your heroism in stopping the stampede of those thousand mules you were shipping to France in time to save the lives of all of them and about ten men? I seem to have to speak to you in words of two syllables to-night." I could feel my cheeks burn with temper as I spoke and Pink came immediately out of his grouch and into his own happy personality.