"Say, Miss Nancy, what do you think of this here purple to set me off?"
asked Mr. Spain, as he held up the garment of his wife"s desire. "Betty says it"ll match out her dimity, and I "low to match Betty as long as I can."
"It"ll be the very thing, Mr. Spain," I said, as I controlled my horror at the flaring-colored coat and reminded myself that harmony of domestic relations is greater than any harmony of art.
"Now, pick your coats and slip "em on, all of you, so Nancy can judge you,"
commanded the general. In a very short time each man had got out of his overall jumper and into his heart"s desire.
A stalwart, comely, clean-eyed group of American men they were as they stood on parade, clothed for the most part in seemly raiment, chosen with Uncle Silas"s quiet taste, except in the case of Mr. Spain, where he had let his experience of the past lead his taste.
"Please, dear G.o.d, don"t let them ever have to be put into khaki," I prayed with a quick breath, for I knew, though they did not seem to recognize the fact, that this rally of the rural districts in the city hall was a part of the great program of preparedness that America was having forced upon her. I knew that the speech of the governor would be about the State militia and I knew that Evan Baldwin would talk to them about the mobilization of their stocks and crops. Quick tears flooded across my eyes, and I stretched out my hands to them.
"You all look good to me," I faltered in some of Matthew"s language, because I couldn"t think of anything else to say but the prayer in my heart, and I didn"t want to repeat that to them.
"Now, you have all pa.s.sed your city examinations, so you can get back to work. Remember, that day after to-morrow is the junket, and one day won"t be any too much to bank up your fires to run until you come back," said Aunt Mary in the way of dismissal.
"Talk about vanity in women folks? The first peac.o.c.k hatched out was of the male persuasion," she remarked as we stood at the emporium door and watched the men dispersing, their bundles under their arms, each one making direct for his own front door. "Every woman in Riverfield will have to put down needle and fry-pan and b.u.t.ter-paddle to feed them so plum full of compliments that they"ll strut for a week. Bless my heart, honeybunch, we have all got to turn around twice in each track to get ready, and as I"m pretty hefty I must begin right now." With this remark, Aunt Mary departed from the back door to her house on the hill and sent me out the front to Elmnest opposite.
"I thought that there was some reason why Pan and I both chose to wear Roycroft clothes. Mr. and Mrs. Spain are in love after eight children," I remarked to myself happily. "I am in agony in any shoes Pan doesn"t make. I wonder if any woman ever before was as much in love with a man about whom she knew so little--and so much as I do about Adam."
"I don"t want to know about him--I want to love him," I answered myself as I walked up the long elm avenue. Afterwards I recalled those words to myself, and they were bitter instead of sweet.
CHAPTER X
Friday, the twenty-first of April, I shall always remember as the busiest day of my life, for, as Aunt Mary had said, it takes time to bank fires enough to keep a farm alive a whole half day even if it is not running. I did all my usual work with my small folk, and then I measured and poured out in different receptacles their existence for the last half of the next day. After breakfast on Sat.u.r.day I finally decided upon Uncle Cradd as the most trustworthy person of the three ancients, one of whom I was obliged to depend upon for subst.i.tution. Rufus, I felt sure, would compromise by feeding every ration to the hogs, and I knew that he could persuade father to do likewise, but Uncle Cradd, I felt, would bring moral force to bear upon the situation.
"Now, Uncle Cradd, here are all the different feeds in different buckets, each plainly marked with the time to give it. Please, oh, please, don"t let father lead you off into Egypt or China and forget them," I said as I led him to the barn and showed him the mobilization of buckets that I had shut up in one of the empty bins.
"Why not just empty it all out on the ground in front of the barn, Nancy, my dear, and let them all feed together in friendly fashion. I am afraid you take these pretty whims of yours too seriously," he said as he beamed affectionately at me over his large gla.s.ses.
"Because p.e.c.k.e.rwood Pup would eat up the Leghorn babies, and it would be extermination to some and survival to the most unfit," I answered in despair. "Oh, won"t you please do it by the directions?"
"I will, my child, I will," answered Uncle Cradd, as he saw that I was about to become tearful. "I will come and sit right here in the barn with my book."
"Oh, if you only will, Uncle Cradd, they will remind you when they are hungry. Mr. G. Bird will come and peck at you when it is time to feed his family, and the lambs and Mrs. Ewe will lick you, and p.e.c.k.e.rwood Pup will chew you, so you can"t forget them," I exclaimed in relief.
"That will be the exact plan for action, Nancy. You can always depend upon me for any of the small attentions that please you, my dear."
"I can depend on the fur and feathers and wool tribes better than I can on you, old dear," I said to myself, while I beamed on him with a dutiful, "Thank you, sir."
Then as Bud Corn-ta.s.sel had arrived to begin to hitch up the moth-eaten steeds to the ark, I ascended to my room to shed my farmer smocks, for the first time since my incarnation into them, and attire myself for the world again. The only garb of fashion I possessed, having sold myself out completely on my retirement, was the very stylish, dull-blue tailor suit in which I had traveled out the Riverfield ribbon almost three months before.
But as that had been mid-February, it was of spring manufacture, and I supposed would still be able to hold its own.
"It"s perfectly beautiful, but it feels tight and hampering," I said as I descended to enter the coach Bud had driven around to the front door.
"Will you give me a guarantee that you aren"t just a dream lady I"ll lose again in the city, Miss Nancy?" asked Bud, as he handed me into the Grandmother Craddock coach with great ceremony. Gale Beacon couldn"t have done any better on such short notice.
"I"ll be in smocks at feeding-time in the morning, Bud, just as you will be in overalls," I answered laughingly.
"My, but you are a sight!" said Mrs. Tillett, as she handed up Baby Tillett to me, with such a beaming countenance that I knew she meant a complimentary construction to be placed upon her words. "Now, just take up them little girls and set "em down easy, Mr. Bud, on account of their ruffles, and ram the boys in between to hold "em steady. Now, boys, if you muss up the girls I"ll make every one of you wear your shoes all day to-morrow to teach you manners. Go on, Mr. Bud."
Thus nicely packed away, we started on down the Riverfield ribbon at the head of the procession, followed by Uncle Silas driving Aunt Mary"s rockaway, with his beautiful, dappled, shining, gray mules. .h.i.tched to it, and beside him sat Mrs. Addc.o.c.k in serene confidence in being driven by a man who could drive a bank and a post-office and a grocery. Mamie and Gertie Spain were spread out carefully on the back seat, with only one small masculine Spain for a wedge. The Buford buggy, all spick and span from its first spring washing and polishing, came next, with Mr. and Mrs.
Buford cuddling together on the narrow seat. They were a bride and groom of very little over a year"s standing, and the blue-blanketed bundle that the bride carried in her arms was no reason, in Mr. Buford"s mind, why he shouldn"t drive with one hand while he held a steadying and affectionate arm around them both. Buford Junior was less than a month old, but why shouldn"t he begin to adventure out in the big world? Parson and Mrs.
Henderson came next, he with snow-white flowing beard, and she, beside him, in a gray bonnet with a pink rose, while beside her sat his mother, Granny Henderson, now past eighty, but with a purple pansy nestled in her waterwaves.
Others followed, and the remainder waited on the steps of the emporium, with Aunt Mary and Polly, for Matthew and Bess to come for them. It was hard for them to realize that the powerful engines in both cars would take them into town in little over an hour, when the journey as they before had made it had always consumed six, and they were becoming impatient even before we left. So when we met Bess and Matthew half an hour later down the Riverfield ribbon, I hurried them back. I afterwards learned that they had had to persuade Mrs. Spain to reclothe herself in the pink foulard, because she had decided that they were not coming and had gone back to work.
In reality I didn"t draw a perfectly free breath until I saw the entire population of Riverfield seated in advantageous seats on the middle aisle in the town hall at six-thirty, and beginning to get out their lunch-baskets to feed themselves and the kiddies before the opening of the convocation at eight o"clock.
According to the advice of Mrs. Addc.o.c.k and Mrs. Tillett herself, I had taken a stuffed egg, a chicken wing, and a slice of jelly-cake for my own supper, along with Baby Tillett"s bag of hard biscuits, over on a side aisle, and from that vantage-point I could see the whole party.
"They are lovely--the loveliest of all, mine are," I said to myself as I surveyed them proudly and compared them with other lunching delegations, which I knew to be from Providence and Hillsboro and Cloverbend.
Baby Tillett crowed a proud a.s.sent as he stuck a biscuit in his mouth and looked at the lights with the greatest pleasure. I took off his new cap with its two blue bows over the ears, unb.u.t.toned his little pique coat, which I had almost entirely built myself, and which was of excellent cut, and settled down to dine with him in contentment.
Then it happened that I was so weary from the day of excitement that I had hardly finished my supper before I snuggled Baby Tillett closer in my arms, as I felt him grow limp very suddenly, and with him I drifted off into a nap. I was sitting in a corner seat, but I don"t yet see how I slept as I did and cuddled him too unless it was just the force of natural maternal gravitation that held my arms firmly around him, but the first thing I knew I opened my eyes on the whole hall full of people, who were wildly applauding the governor as he stepped forward on the platform. Hurriedly straightening my drooping head and looking guiltily around to see if I had been caught napping, I discovered Matthew Berry at my side in a broad chuckle, and I immediately suspected his stalwart right arm of being that force of gravitation.
"He"s dead to the world; let him lie across your knees and listen to the governor"s heroics of introduction to Baldwin," said Matthew as he settled the limp baby across my lap with his bobbing head on my arm. And he adjusted his own arm less conspicuously along the seat at my back.
"I was up at four," I whispered, as the applause died away and the governor began to speak.
The Governor of the State of Harpeth is a good and substantial man, who was himself born out on Paradise Ridge, and he had called in all of his people from their fields to talk to them about a problem so serious that the world of men, who had hitherto considered themselves as competent to guide the great national ship of state through peaceful waters, had been impelled to turn and call to council the men from the plows and reapers, to add their wisdom in deciding the best methods of safeguarding the nation. His speech was a thoughtful presentation of the different methods of preparedness which the whole of America was weighing in the balance. He explained the army policy, the Congressional policy, and then that of the State guard, and he asked them to weigh the facts well so that if it should come to the vote of the people of the nation, they would vote with instructed wisdom.
There was a strained gravity on all the listening faces, and I could see some of the women in the groups of farmer folk draw nearer against the shoulders of the men, who all sat with their arms along the back of the seats as Matthew sat beside me. Young Mrs. Buford held the precious, limp, blue bundle much closer in her arms, and hid her head on the broad shoulder next her own, but on Mrs. Spain"s comely face I saw a light beginning to dawn as she proudly surveyed the four st.u.r.dy sons with shining faces who flanked her and Mr. Spain.
"And now," said the governor, "I have asked you here to-night to introduce formally to you one of the great sons of Old Harpeth, who has come back from the world, with his wealth and honors and wisdom and science, into his own valley, to show us how to make the plowshare support the machine-gun with such power that the world will respect its silence more than any explosion. A year or more ago he came home and asked me for his commission, and since then he has lived among you so as to become your friend, in hopes that he might be your chosen leader in this food mobilization. Gentlemen and ladies of the Harpeth Valley, I present to you Mr. Evan Baldwin, who will speak to you to-night on the "Plowshare and the Machine-gun." Friends, Evan Adam Baldwin."
For a second there was expectant silence, and then from the back of the platform from behind a group of State officials stepped--my Pan!
For a long second the whole hall full of people held their breath in a tense uncertainty, because it was hard to believe in the broadcloth and fine linen in which he was clothed, but the brilliant hair, the ruffling crests, and the mocking, eery smile made them all certain by the second breath, which they gave forth in one long masculine hurrah mingled with a feminine echo of delight. For several long minutes it would not be stilled as he stood and smiled down on them all and mocked them with his laugh mingling with theirs.
Finally Aunt Mary, the general, could stand it no longer, and forgetful of her Saint Paul, she arose with all the dignity of her two hundred pounds and raised her hand.
"All be still, neighbors, and let Adam tell us the same things he"s been saying for these many months, and then we"ll let him shuck his fine clothes and come on home in my rockaway with us."
"No, with us!" fairly yelled Cloverbend in unison of protest with Providence.
"Thank you, Aunt Mary," said Pan in the fluty tenderness with which he had always addressed her. "The governor doesn"t know it, but I can"t make a speech to you to-night. I am going to catch that ten o"clock train for Argentina, to get some wheat secrets for all of us, and I want all of you to begin right away to plow good and deep so you"ll be ready for me when I get back in a few months. We"ll have to inoculate the land before we sow.
Only here are just one or two things I will say to you before I have to start."
For about ten minutes Adam stood there before those farmer folk and, with his fluty voice and the fire glow in his eyes, led them up upon a high mountain of imagination and showed them the distant land into which he could lead them, which, when they arrived, they would find to be their own.
The baby on my lap stirred, and I lifted him against my throbbing breast as I listened to this gospel of a new earth, which might be made into the outposts of a new Heaven, in which man would nourish his weaker brother into a strength equal to his own, so that no man or nation would have to fight for existence or a place in the sun. Then while we all sat breathless from his magic, Pan vanished and left us to be sent home rejoicing by the governor.
Sent home rejoicing? Suddenly I realized that when Evan Adam Baldwin had gone, my Pan had also vanished without a word to me. What did it mean? His eyes hadn"t found me sitting apart from my delegation with another woman"s baby in my arms. Would there be a word for me in the morning?