It is nearly six months since I came to live with Mrs. Francis, and I like housework so well and am so happy at it, that it shows clearly that I am not a disguised heiress. My proud spirit does not chafe a bit at having to serve meals and wear a cap (you should see how sweet I look in a cap). I haven't got the fear on my heart all day that I will make a mistake in a figure that will rise up and condemn me at the end of the month as I used to be when I was book-keeping on a high stool, for the Western Hail and Fire Insurance Company (peace to its ashes!). "All work is expression," Fra Elbertus says, so why may I not express myself in blueberry pie and tomato soup?
Mrs. Francis is an appreciative mistress, and she is not so entirely wrapped up in Browning as to be insensible to a good salad either, I am glad to say.
One night after we had company and everything had gone off well, Mr. Francis came out into the kitchen, and looked over his glasses at me. He opened his mouth twice to speak, but seemed to change his mind. I knew what was struggling for utterance. Then he laid fifty cents on the window sill, pointed at it, nodded to me, and went out hurriedly. My first impulse was to hand it back—then I thought better of it—words do not come easily to him. So he expressed himself in currency. I put the money into my purse for a luck penny.
Mrs. Francis is as serene as a summer sea, and can look at you without knowing you are there. Mr. Francis is a peaceful man, too. He looks at his wife in a helpless way when she begins to explain the difference between the Elizabethan and the Victorian poets—I don't believe he cares a cent for either of them.
Mrs. Francis entertains quite a bit; I like it, too, and I do not go and cry into the sink because I have to wait on the guests. She entertains well and is a delightful hostess, but some of the people whom she entertains do not appreciate her flights of fancy.
I do not like to see them wink at each other, although I know it is funny to hear Mrs. Francis elaborate on the mother's influence in the home and the proper way to deal with selfishness in children; but she means well, and they should remember that, no matter how funny she gets.
April 18th.—She gave me a surprise to-day. She called me upstairs and read to me a paper she was preparing to read before some society—she belongs to three or four—on the domestic help problem. Well, it hadn't very much to do with the domestic help problem, but of course I could not tell her that so when she asked me what I thought of it I said:
"If all employers were as kind as you and Mr. Francis there would be no domestic help problem."
She looked at me suddenly, and something seemed to strike her. I believe it came to her that I was a creature of like passions with herself, capable of gratitude, perhaps in need of encouragement. Hitherto I think she has regarded me as a porridge and coffee machine.
She put her arm around me and kissed me.
"Camilla," she said gently—she has the softest, dreamiest voice I ever heard—"I believe in the aristocracy of brains and virtue. You have both."
Farewell, oh Soulless Corporation! A long, last, lingering farewell, for Camilla E. Rose, who used to sit upon the high stool and add figures for you at ten dollars a week, is far away making toast for two kindly souls, one of whom tells her she has brains and virtue and the other one opens his mouth to speak, and then pushes fifty cents at her instead.
Danny Watson, bless his heart! is bringing madam up. He has wound himself into her heart and the "whyness of the what" is packing up to go.
May 1st.—Mrs. Francis is going silly over Danny. A few days ago she asked me if I could cut a pattern for a pair of pants. I told her I had made pants once or twice and meekly inquired whom she wanted the pants for. She said for a boy, of course—and she looked at me rather severely. I knew they must be for Danny, and cut the pattern about the size for him. She went into the sewing-room, and I only saw her at meal times for two days. She wrestled with the garment.
Last night she asked me if I would take a parcel to Danny with her love. I was glad to go, for I was just dying to see how she had got along.
When I held them up before Mrs. Watson the poor woman gasped.
"Save us all!" she cried. "Them'll fit none of us. We're poor, but, thank God, we're not deformed!"
I'll never forget the look of those pants. They haunt me still.
May 15th.—Pearl Watson is the sweetest and best little girl I know. Her gratitude for even the smallest kindness makes me want to cry. She told me the other day she was sure Danny was going to be a doctor. She bases her hopes on the questions that Danny asks. How do you know you haven't got a gizzard? How would you like to be ripped clean up the back? and Where does your lap go to when you stand up? She said, "Ma and us all have hopes o' Danny."
Mrs. Francis has a new role, that of matchmaker, though I don't suppose she knows it. She had Mary Barner and the young minister for tea to-night. Mary grows dearer and sweeter every day. People say it is not often one girl praises another; but Mary is a dear little gray-eyed saint with the most shapely hands I ever saw. Reverend Hugh thinks so, too, I have no doubt. It was really too bad to waste a good fruit salad on him though, for I know he didn't know what he was eating. Excelsior would taste like ambrosia to him if Mary sat opposite—all of which is very much as it should be, I know. I thought for a while Mary liked Dr. Clay pretty well, but I know it is not serious, for she talks quite freely of him. She is very grateful to him for helping her so often with her father. But those gray-eyed Scotch people never talk of what is nearest the heart. I wonder if he knows that Mary Barner is a queen among women. I don't like Scotchmen. They take too much for granted.
Arthur Wemyss, fifth son of the Reverend Alfred Austin Wemyss, Rector of St. Agnes, Tilbury Road, County of Kent, England, had but recently crossed the ocean. He and six hundred other fifth sons of rectors and earls and dukes had crossed the ocean in the same ship and had been scattered abroad over Manitoba and the Northwest Territories to be instructed in agricultural pursuits by the honest granger, and incidentally to furnish nutriment for the ever-ready mosquito or wasp, who regarded all Old Country men as their lawful meat.
The honest granger was paid a sum varying between fifty and one hundred fifty dollars for instructing one of these young fellows in farming for one year, and although having an Englishman was known to be a pretty good investment, the farmers usually spoke of them as they would of the French-weed or the rust in the wheat. Sam Motherwell referred to his quite often as "that blamed Englishman" and often said, unjustly, that he was losing money on him every day.
Arthur—the Motherwells could not have told his other name—had learned something since he came. He could pull pig-weed for the pigs and throw it into the pen; he had learned to detect French-weed in the grain; he could milk; he could turn the cream-separator; he could wash dishes and churn, and he did it all with a willingness, a cheerfulness that would have appealed favourably to almost any other farmer in the neighbourhood, but the lines had fallen to Arthur in a stony place, and his employer did not notice him at all unless to find fault with him. Yet he bore it all with good humour. He had come to Canada to learn to farm.
The only real grievance he had was that he could not get his "tub." The night he arrived, dusty and travel-stained after his long journey, he had asked for his "tub," but Mr. Motherwell had told him in language he had never heard before—that there was no tub of his around the establishment, that he knew of, and that he could go down and have a dip in the river on Sunday if he wanted to. Then he had conducted him with the lantern to his bed in the loft of the granary.
A rickety ladder led up to the bed, which was upon a temporary floor laid about half way across the width of the granary. Bags of musty smelling wheat stood at one end of this little room. Evidently Mr. Motherwell wished to discourage sleep-walking in his hired help, for the floor ended abruptly and a careless somnambulist would be precipitated on the old fanning mill, harrow teeth and other debris which littered the floor below.
The young Englishman reeled unsteadily going up the ladder. He could still feel the chug-chug-chug of the ocean liner's engines and had to hold tight to the ladder's splintered rungs to preserve his equilibrium.
Mr. Motherwell raised the lantern with sudden interest.
"Say," he said, more cheerfully than he had yet spoken, "you haven't been drinking, have you?"
"Intoxicants, do you mean?" the Englishman asked, without turning around. "No, I do not drink."
"You didn't happen to bring anything over with you, did you, for seasickness on the boat?" Mr. Motherwell queried anxiously, holding the lantern above his head.
"No, I did not," the young man said laconically.
"Turn out at five to-morrow morning then," his employer snapped in evident disappointment, and he lowered the lantern so quickly that it went out.
The young man lay down upon his hard bed. His utter weariness was a blessing to him that night, for not even the racing mice, the musty smells or the hardness of his straw bed could keep him from slumber.
In what seemed to him but a few minutes, he was awakened by a loud knocking on the door below, voices shouted, a dog barked, cow-bells jangled; he could hear doors banging everywhere, a faint streak of sunlight lay wan and pale on the mud-plastered walls.
"By Jove!" he said yawning, "I know now what Kipling meant when he said 'the dawn comes up like thunder.'"
A few weeks after Arthur's arrival, Mrs. Motherwell called him from the barn, where he sat industriously mending bags, to unhitch her horse from the buggy. She had just driven home from Millford. Nobody had taken the trouble to show Arthur how it was done.
"Any fool ought to know," Mr. Motherwell said.
Arthur came running from the barn with his hat in his hand. He grasped the horse firmly by the bridle and led him toward the barn. As they came near the water trough the horse began to show signs of thirst. Arthur led him to the trough, but the horse tossed his head and was unable to get it near the water on account of the check.
Arthur watched him a few moments with gathering perplexity.
"I can't lift this water vessel," he said, looking at the horse reproachfully. "It's too heavy, don't you know. Hold! I have it," he cried with exultation beaming in his face; and making a dash for the horse he unfastened the crupper.
But the exultation soon died from his face, for the horse still tossed his head in the vain endeavour to reach the water.
"My word!" he said, wrinkling his forehead, "I believe I shall have to lift the water-vessel yet, though it is hardly fit to lift, it is so wet and nasty." Arthur spoke with a deliciously soft Kentish accent, guiltless of r's and with a softening of the h's that was irresistible.
A light broke over his face again. He went behind the buggy and lifted the hind wheels. While he was holding up the wheels and craning his neck around the back of the buggy to see if his efforts were successful, Jim Russell came into the yard, riding his dun-coloured pony Chiniquy.
He stood still in astonishment. Then the meaning of it came to him and he rolled off Chiniquy's back, shaking with silent laughter.
"Come, come, Arthur," he said as soon as he could speak. "Stop trying to see how strong you are. Don't you see the horse wants a drink?"
With a perfectly serious face Jim unfastened the check, whereupon the horse's head was lowered at once, and he drank in long gulps the water that had so long mocked him with its nearness.
"Oh, thank you, Mr. Russell," the Englishman cried delightedly. "Thanks awfully, it is monstrously clever of you to know how to do everything. I wish I could go and live with you. I believe I could learn to farm if I were with you."
Jim looked at his eager face so cruelly bitten by mosquitoes.
"I'll tell you, Arthur," he said smiling, "I haven't any need for a man to work, but I suppose I might hire you to keep the mosquitoes off the horses. They wouldn't look at Chiniquy, I am sure, if they could get a nip at you."
The Englishman looked perplexed.
"You are learning as well as any person could learn," Jim said kindly. "I think you are doing famously. No person is particularly bright at work entirely new. Don't be a bit discouraged, old man, you'll be a rich land-owner some day, proprietor of the A. J. Wemyss Stock Farm, writing letters to the agricultural papers, judge of horses at the fairs, giving lectures at dairy institutes—oh, I think I see you, Arthur!"
"You are chaffing me," Arthur said smiling.
"Indeed I am not. I am very much in earnest. I have seen more unlikely looking young fellows than you do wonderful things in a short time, and just to help along the good work I am going to show you a few things about taking off harness that may be useful to you when you are president of the Agricultural Society of South Cypress, or some other fortunate municipality."
Arthur's face brightened.
"Oh, thank you, Mr. Russell," he said.
That night Arthur wrote home a letter that would have made an appropriate circular for the Immigration Department to send to prospective settlers.
When supper was over and Pearl had washed the heavy white dishes Mrs. Motherwell told her, not unkindly, that she could go to bed. She would sleep in the little room over the kitchen in Polly's old bed.
"You don't need no lamp," she said, "if you hurry. It is light up there."
Mrs. Motherwell was inclined to think well of Pearl. It was not her soft brown eyes, or her quaint speech that had won Mrs. Motherwell's heart. It was the way she scraped the frying-pan.
Pearl went up the ladder into the kitchen loft, and found herself in a low, long room, close and stifling, one little window shone light against the western sky and on it innumerable flies buzzed unceasingly. Old boxes, old bags, old baskets looked strange and shadowy in the gathering gloom. The Motherwells did not believe in giving away anything. The Indians who went through the neighbourhood each fall looking for "old clo'" had long ago learned to pass by the big stone house. Indians do not appreciate a strong talk on shiftlessness the way they should, with a vision of a long cold winter ahead of them.
Pearl gazed around with a troubled look on her face. A large basket of old carpet rags stood near the little bed. She dragged it into the farthest corner. She tried to open the window, but it was nailed fast.
Then a determined look shone in her eyes. She went quickly down the little ladder.
"Please ma'am," she said going over to Mrs. Motherwell, "I can't sleep up there. It is full of diseases and microscopes."
"It's what?" Mrs. Motherwell almost screamed. She was in the pantry making pies.
"It has old air in it," Pearl said, "and it will give me the fever."
Mrs. Motherwell glared at the little girl. She forgot all about the frying pan.
"Good gracious!" she said. "It's a queer thing if hired help are going to dictate where they are going to sleep. Maybe you'd like a bed set up for you in the parlour!"
"Not if the windies ain't open," Pearl declared stoutly.
"Well they ain't; there hasn't been a window open in this house since it was built, and there isn't going to be, letting in dust and flies."
Pearl gasped. What would Mrs. Francis say to that?
"It's in yer graves ye ought to be then, ma'am," she said with honest conviction. "Mrs. Francis told me never to sleep in a room with the windies all down, and I as good as promised I wouldn't. Can't we open that wee windy, ma'am?"
Mrs. Motherwell was tired, unutterably tired, not with that day's work alone, but with the days and years that had passed away in gray dreariness; the past barren and bleak, the future bringing only visions of heavier burdens. She was tired and perhaps that is why she became angry.
"You go straight to your bed," she said, with her mouth hard and her eyes glinting like cold flint, "and none of your nonsense, or you can go straight back to town."
When Pearl again reached the little stifling room, she fell on her knees and prayed.
"Dear God," she said, "there's gurms here as thick as hair on a dog's back, and You and me know it, even if she don't. I don't know what to do, dear Lord—the windy is nelt down. Keep the gurms from gittin' into me, dear Lord. Do ye mind how poor Jeremiah was let down into the mire and ye tuk care o' him, didn't ye? Take care o' me, dear Lord. Poor ma has enough to do widout me comin' home clutterin' up the house wid sickness. Keep yer eye on Danny if ye can at all, at all. He's awful stirrin'. I'll try to git the windy riz to-morrow by hook or crook, so mebbe it's only to-night ye'll have to watch the gurms. Amen."
Pearl braided her hair into two little pigtails, with her little dilapidated comb. When she brought out the contents of the bird-cage and opened it in search of her night-dress, the orange rolled out, almost frightening her. The purse, too, rattled on the bare floor as it fell.
She picked it up, and by going close to the fly-specked window she counted the ten ten-cent pieces, a whole dollar. Never was a little girl more happy.
"It was Camilla," she whispered to herself. "Oh, I love Camilla! and I never said 'God bless Camilla,'"—with a sudden pang of remorse.
She was on her knees in a moment and added the postscript.
"I can send the orange home to ma, and she can put the skins in the chist to make the things smell nice, and I'll git that windy open to-morrow."
Clasping her little purse in her hand, and with the orange close beside her head, she lay down to sleep. The smell of the orange made her forget the heavy air in the room.
"Anyway," she murmured contentedly, "the Lord is attendin' to all that."
Pearl slept the heavy sleep of healthy childhood and woke in the gray dawn before anyone else in the household was stirring. She threw on some clothing and went down the ladder into the kitchen. She started the fire, secured the basin full of water and a piece of yellow soap and came back to her room for her "oliver."
"I can't lave it all to the Lord to do," she said, as she rubbed the soap on her little wash-rag. "It doesn't do to impose on good nature."
When Tom, the only son of the Motherwells, came down to light the fire, he found Pearl setting the table, the kitchen swept and the kettle boiling.
Pearl looked at him with her friendly Irish smile, which he returned awkwardly.
He was a tall, stoop-shouldered, rather good-looking lad of twenty. He had heavy gray eyes, and a drooping mouth.
Tom had gone to school a few winters when there was not much doing, but his father thought it was a great deal better for a boy to learn to handle horses and "sample wheat," and run a binder, than learn the "pack of nonsense they got in school nowadays," and when the pretty little teacher from the eastern township came to Southfield school, Mrs. Motherwell knew at one glance that Tom would learn no good from her—she was such a flighty looking thing! Flowers on the under side of her hat!
So poor Tom grew up a clod of the valley. Yet Mrs. Motherwell would tell you, "Our Tom'll be the richest man in these parts. He'll get every cent we have and all the land, too; and I guess there won't be many that can afford to turn up their noses at our Tom. And, mind ye, Tom can tell a horse as well as the next one, and he's a boy that won't waste nothin', not like some we know. Look at them Slaters now! Fred and George have been off to college two years, big over-grown hulks they are, and young Peter is going to the Agricultural College in Guelph this winter, and the old man will hire a man to take care of the stock, and him with three boys of his own. Just as if a boy can learn about farmin' at a college! and the way them girls dress, and the old lady, too, and her not able to speak above a whisper. The old lady wears an ostrich feather in her bonnet, and they're a terrible costly thing, I hear. Mind you they only keep six cows, and they send every drop they don't use to the creamery. Everybody can do as they like, I suppose, but I know they'll go to the wall, and they deserve it too!"
And yet!
She and Mrs. Slater had been girls together and sat in school with arms entwined and wove romances of the future, rosy-hued and golden. When they consulted the oracle of "Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief," the buttons on her gray winsey dress had declared in favour of the "rich man." Then she had dreamed dreams of silks and satins and prancing steeds and liveried servants, and ease, and happiness—dreams which God in His mercy had let her forget long, long ago.
When she had become the mistress of the big stone house, she had struggled hard against her husband's penuriousness, defiantly sometimes, and sometimes tearfully. But he had held her down with a heavy hand of unyielding determination. At last she grew weary of struggling, and settled down in sullen submission, a hopeless heavy-eyed, spiritless women, and as time went by she became greedier for money than her husband.
"Good-morning," Pearl said brightly. "Are you Mr. Tom Motherwell?"
"That's what!" Tom replied. "Only you needn't mind the handle."
Pearl laughed.
"All right," she said, "I want a little favor done. Will you open the window upstairs for me?"
"Why?" Tom asked, staring at her.
"To let in good air. It's awful close up there, and I'm afraid I'll get the fever or somethin' bad."
"Polly got it," Tom said. "Maybe that is why Polly got it. She's awful sick now. Ma says she'll like as not die. But I don't believe ma will let me open it."
"Where is Polly?" Pearl asked eagerly. She had forgotten her own worries. "Who is Polly? Did she live here?"
"She's in the hospital now in Brandon," Tom said in answer to her rapid questions. "She planted them poppies out there, but she never seen the flowers on them. Ma wanted me to cut them down, for Polly used to put off so much time with them, but I didn't want to. Ma was mad, too, you bet," he said, with a reminiscent smile at his own foolhardiness.
Pearl was thinking—she could see the poppies through the window, bright and glowing in the morning light. They rocked lightly in the wind, and a shower of crimson petals fell. Poor Polly! she hadn't seen them.
"What's Polly's other name?" she asked quickly.
"Polly Bragg," he answered. "She was awful nice, Polly was, and jolly, too. Ma thought she was lazy. She used to cry a lot and wish she could go home; but my! she could sing fine."
Pearl went on with her work with a preoccupied air.
"Tom, can you take a parcel for me to town to-day?"
"I am not goin'," he said in surprise. "Pa always goes if we need anything. I haven't been in town for a month."
"Don't you go to church?" Pearl asked in surprise.
"No, you bet I don't, not now. The preacher was sassy to pa and tried to get money. Pa says he'll never touch wood in his church again, and pa won't give another cent either, and, mind you, last year we gave twenty-five dollars."
"We paid fourteen dollars," Pearl said, "and Mary got six dollars on her card."
"Oh, but you town people don't have the expenses we have."
"That's true, I guess," Pearl said doubtfully—she was wondering about the boot bills. "Pa gets a dollar and a quarter every day, and ma gets seventy-five cents when she washes. We're gettin' on fine."
Then Mrs. Motherwell made her appearance, and the conversation came to an end.
That afternoon when Pearl had washed the dishes and scrubbed the floor, she went upstairs to the little room to write in her diary. She knew Mrs. Francis would expect to see something in it, so she wrote laboriously:
I saw a lot of yalla flowers and black-burds. The rode was full of dust and wagging marks. I met a man with a top buggy and smelt a skunk. Mrs. M. made a kake to-day—there was no lickens.
I'm goin' to tidy up the granary for Arthur. He's offel nice—an' told me about London Bridge—it hasn't fallen down at all, he says, that's just a song.
All day long the air had been heavy and close, and that night while Pearl was asleep the face of the heavens was darkened with storm-clouds. Great rolling masses came up from the west, shot through with flashes of lightening, and the heavy silence was more ominous than the loudest thunder would have been. The wind began in the hills, gusty and fitful at first, then bursting with violence over the plain below. There was a cutting whine in it, like the whang of stretched steel, fateful, deadly as the singing of bullets, chilling the farmer's heart, for he knows it means hail.
Pearl woke and sat up in bed. The lightning flashed in the little window, leaving the room as black as ink. She listened to the whistling wind.
"It's the hail," she whispered delightedly. "I knew the Lord would find a way to open the windy without me puttin' my fist through it—I'll have a look at the clouds to see if they have that white edge on them. No—I won't either—it isn't my put in. I'll just lave the Lord alone. Nothin' makes me madder than when I promise Tommy or Mary or any of them something and then have them frettin' all the time about whether or not I'll get it done. I'd like to see the clouds though. I'll bet they're a sight, just like what Camilla sings about:
Dark is His path on the wings o' the storm.
In the kitchen below the Motherwells gathered with pale faces. The windows shook and rattled in their casings.
"Keep away from the stove, Tom," Mrs. Motherwell said, trembling. "That's where the lightnin' strikes."
Tom's teeth were chattering.
"This'll fix the wheat that's standing, every—bit of it," Sam said. He did not make it quite as strong as he intended. Something had taken the profanity out of him.
"Hadn't you better go up and bring the kid down, ma?" Tom asked, thinking of Pearl.
"Her!" his father said contemptuously. "She'll never hear it." The wind suddenly ceased. Not a breath stirred, only a continuous glare of lightning. Then crack! crack! crack! on the roof, on the windows, everywhere, like bad boys throwing stones, heavier, harder, faster, until it was one beating, thundering roar.
It lasted but a few minutes, though it seemed longer to those who listened in terror in the kitchen.
The roar grew less and less and at last ceased altogether, and only a gentle rain was falling.
Sam Motherwell sat without speaking, "You have cheated the Lord all these years, and He has borne with you, trying to make you pay up without harsh proceedings"—he found himself repeating the minister's words. Could this be what he meant by harsh proceedings? Certainly it was harsh enough taking away a man's crop after all his hard work.
Sam was full of self-pity. There were very few men who had ever been treated as badly as he felt himself to be.
"Maybe there'll only be a streak of it hailed out," Tom said, breaking in on his father's dismal thoughts.
"You'll see in the mornin'," his father growled, and Tom went back to bed.
When Pearl woke it was with the wind blowing in upon her; the morning breeze fragrant with the sweetness of the flowers and the ripening grain. The musty odours had all gone, and she felt life and health in every breath. The blackbirds were twittering in the oats behind the house, and the rising sun was throwing long shadows over the field. Scattered glass lay on the floor.
"I knew the dear Lord would fix the gurms," Pearl said as she dressed, laughing to herself. But her face clouded in a moment. What about the poppies?
Then she laughed again. "There I go frettin' again. I guess the Lord knows they're, there and He isn't going to smash them if Polly really needs them."
She dressed herself hastily and ran down the ladder and around behind the cookhouse, where a strange sight met her eyes. The cookhouse roof had been blown off and placed over the poppies, where it had sheltered them from every hailstone.
Pearl looked under the roof. The poppies stood there straight and beautiful, no doubt wondering what big thing it was that hid them from the sun.
When Tom and his father went out in the early dawn to investigate the damage done by the storm, they found that only a narrow strip through the field in front of the house had been touched.
The hail had played a strange trick; beating down the grain along this narrow path, just as if a mighty roller had come through it, until it reached the house, on the other side of which not one trace of damage could be found.
"Didn't we get off lucky?" Tom exclaimed "and the rest of the grain is not even lodged. Why, twenty-five dollars would cover the whole loss, cookhouse roof and all."
His father was looking over the rippling field, green-gold in the rosy dawn. He started uncomfortably at Tom's words.
Twenty-five dollars!
After sundown one night Pearl's resolve was carried into action. She picked a shoe-box full of poppies, wrapping the stems carefully in wet newspaper. She put the cover on, and wrapped the box neatly.
Then she wrote the address. She wrote it painfully, laboriously, in round blocky letters. Pearl always put her tongue out when she was doing anything that required minute attention. She was so anxious to have the address just right that her tongue was almost around to her ear. The address read:
Miss Polly Bragg, english gurland sick with feverBrandon HospittleBrandon.
Then she drew a design around it. Jimmy's teacher had made them once in Jimmy's scribbler, just beautiful. She was sorry she could not do a bird with a long strip of tape in his mouth with "Think of Me" or "From a Friend" or "Love the Giver" on it. Ma knew a man once who could do them, quick as wink. He died a drunkard with delirium trimmings, but was terrible smart.
Then she stuck, under the string, a letter she had written to Camilla. Camilla would get them sent to Polly.
"I know how to get them sent to Camilla too, you bet," she murmured. "There are two ways, both good ones, too. Jim Russell is one way. Jim knows what flowers are to folks."
She crept softly down the stairs. Mrs Motherwell had left the kitchen and no one was about. The men were all down at the barn.
She turned around the cookhouse where the poppies stood straight and strong against the glowing sky. A little single red one with white edges swayed gently on its slender stem and seemed to beckon to her with pleading insistence. She hurried past them, fearing that she would be seen, but looking back the little poppy was still nodding and pleading.
"And so ye can go, ye sweetheart," she whispered. "I know what ye want." She came back for it.
"Just like Danny would be honin' to come, if it was me," she murmured with a sudden blur of homesickness.
Through the pasture she flew with the speed of a deer. The tall sunflowers along the fence seemed to throw a light in the gathering gloom.
A night hawk circled in the air above her, and a clumsy bat came bumping through the dusk as she crossed the creek just below Jim's shanty.
Bottles, Jim's dog, jumped up and barked, at which Jim himself came to the door.
"Come back, Bottles," he called to the dog. "How will I ever get into society if you treat callers that way, and a lady, too! Dear, dear, is my tie on straight? Oh, is that you Pearl? Come right in, I am glad to see you."
Over the door of Jim's little house the words "Happy Home" were printed in large letters and just above the one little window another sign boldly and hospitably announced "Hot Meals at all Hours."
Pearl stopped at the door. "No, Jim," she said, "it's not visitin' I am, but I will go in for a minute, for I must put this flower in the box. Can ye go to town, Jim, in a hurry?"
"I can," Jim replied.
"I mean now, this very minute, slappet-bang!"
Jim started for the door.
"Howld on, Jim!" Pearl cried, "don't you want to hear what ye'r goin' for? Take this box to Camilla—Camilla E. Rose at Mrs. Francis's—and she'll do the rest. It's flowers for poor Polly, sick and dyin' maybe with the fever. But dead or alive, flowers are all right for folks, ain't they, Jim? The train goes at ten o'clock. Can ye do it, Jim?"
Jim was brushing his hair with one hand and reaching for his coat with the other.
"Here's the money to pay for the ride on the cars," Pearl said, reaching out five of her coins.
Jim waved his hand.
"That's my share of it," he said, pulling his cap down on his head. "You see, you do the first part, then me, then Camilla—just like the fiery cross." He was half way to the stable as he spoke.
He threw the saddle on Chiniquy and was soon galloping down the road with the box under his arm.
Camilla came to the door in answer to Jim's ring.
He handed her the box, and lifting his hat was about to leave without a word, when Camilla noticed the writing.
"From Pearl," she said eagerly. "How is Pearl? Come in, please, while I read the letter—it may require an answer."
Camilla wore a shirt-waist suit of brown, and the neatest collar and tie, and Jim suddenly became conscious that his boots were not blackened.
Camilla left him in the hall, while she went into the library and read the contents of the letter to Mr. and Mrs. Francis.
She returned presently and with a pleasant smile said, holding out her hand, "You are Mr. Russell. I am glad to meet you. Tell Pearl the flowers will be sent to-night."
She opened the door as she spoke, and Jim found himself going down the steps, wondering just how it happened that he had not said one word—he who was usually so ready of speech.
"Well, well," he said to himself as he untied Chiniquy, "little Jimmy's lost his tongue, I wonder why?"
All the way home the vision of lovely dark eyes and rippling brown hair with just a hint of red in it, danced before him. Chiniquy, taking advantage of his master's preoccupation, wandered aimlessly against a barbed wire, taking very good care not to get too close to it himself. Jim came to himself just in time to save his leg from a prod from the spikes.
"Chiniquy, Chiniquy," he said gravely, "I understand now something of the hatred the French bear your illustrious namesake. But no matter what the man's sins may have been, surely he did not deserve to have a little flea-bitten, mangey, treacherous, mouse-coloured deceiver like you named for him."
When Camilla had read Pearl's letter to Mr. and Mrs. Francis, the latter was all emotion. How splendid of her, so sympathetic, so full of the true inwardness of Christian love, and the sweet message of the poppy, the emblem of sleep, so prophetic of that other sleep that knows no waking! Is it not a pagan thought, that? What tender recollections they will bring the poor sufferer of her far away, happy childhood home!
Mrs. Francis's face was shining with emotion as she spoke. Then she became dreamy.
"I wonder is her soul attune to the melodies of life, and will she feel the love vibrations of the ether?"
Mr. Francis had noiselessly left the room when Camilla had finished her rapid explanation. He returned with his little valise in his hand.
He stood a moment irresolutely looking, in his helpless dumb way, at his wife, who was so beautifully expounding the message of the flowers.
Camilla handed him the box. She understood.
Mrs. Francis noticed the valise in her husband's hand.
"How very suddenly you make up your mind, James," she said. "Are you actually going away on the train to-night? Really James, I believe I shall write a little sketch for our church paper. Pearl's thoughtfulness has moved me, James. It really has touched me deeply. If you were not so engrossed in business, James, I really believe it would move you; but men are so different from us, Camilla. They are not so soulful. Perhaps it is just as well, but really sometimes, James, I fear you give business too large a place in your life. It is all business, business, business."
Mrs. Francis opened her desk, and drawing toward her her gold pen and dainty letter paper, began her article.
Camilla followed Mr. Francis into the hall, and helped him to put on his overcoat. She handed him his hat with something like reverence in her manner.
"You are upon the King's business to-night," she said, with shining eyes, as she opened the door for him.
He opened his mouth as if to speak, but only waved his hand with an impatient gesture and was gone.
"We'll have to move poor Polly, if she lives thro' the night," the nurse said to the house doctor in the hospital that night. "She is making all the patients homesick. To hear her calling for her mother or for 'someone from 'ome' is hard on the sick and well."
"What are her chances do you think?" the doctor asked gravely.
He was a wiry little man with a face like leather, but his touch brought healing and his presence, hope.
"She is dying of homesickness as well as typhoid," the nurse said sadly, "and she seems so anxious to get better, poor thing! She often says 'I can't die miss, for what'll happen mother.' But for the last two days, in her delirium, she seems to be worrying more about her work and her flowers. I think they were pretty hard people she lived with. 'Surely she'll praise me this time,' she often says, 'I've tried my 'ardest.' The strenuous life has been too much for poor Polly. Listen to her now!"
Polly was singing. Clear and steady and sweet, her voice rang over the quiet ward, and many a fevered face was raised to listen. Polly's mind was wandering in the shadows, but she still sang the songs of home in a strange land:
Down by the biller there grew a green willerA weeping all night with the bank for a piller.
And over and over again she sang with a wavering cadence, incoherently sometimes, but always with tender pleading, something about "where the stream was a-flowin', the gentle kine lowin', and over my grave keep the green willers growin'."
"It is pathetic to hear her," the nurse said, "and now listen to her asking about her poppies."
"In the box, miss; I brought the seed hacross the hocean, and they wuz beauties, they wuz wot came hup. They'll be noddin' and wavin' now red and 'andsome, if she hasn't cut them. She wouldn't cut them, would she, miss? She couldn't 'ave the 'eart, I think."
"No indeed, she hasn't cut them," the nurse declared with decision, taking Polly's burning hand tenderly in hers. "No one could cut down such beauties. What nonsense to think of such a thing, Polly. They're blooming, I tell you, red and handsome, almost as tall as you are, Polly."
The office-boy touched the nurse's arm.
"A gentleman who gave no name left this box for one of the typhoid patients," he said, handing her the box.
The nurse read the address and the box trembled in her hands as she nervously opened it and took out the contents.
"Polly, Polly!" she cried, excitedly, "didn't I tell you they were blooming, red and handsome."
But Polly's eyes were burning with delirium and her lips babbled meaninglessly.
The nurse held the poppies over her.
Her arms reached out caressingly.
"Oh, miss!" she cried, her mind coming back from the shadows. "They have come at last, the darlin's, the sweethearts, the loves, the beauties." She held them in a close embrace. "They're from 'ome, they're from 'ome!" she gasped painfully, for her breath came with difficulty now. "I can't just see them, miss, the lights is movin' so much, and the way the bed 'eaves, but, tell me, miss, is there a little silky one, hedged with w'ite? It was mother's favourite one of hall. I'd like to 'ave it in my 'and, miss."
The nurse put it in her hand. She was only a young nurse and her face was wet with tears.
"It's like 'avin' my mother's 'and, miss, it is," she murmured softly. "Ye wouldn't mind the dark if ye 'ad yer mother's 'and, would ye, miss?"
And then the nurse took Polly's throbbing head in her strong young arms, and soothed its restless tossing with her cool soft touch, and told her through her tears of that other Friend, who would go with her all the way.
"I'm that 'appy, miss," Polly murmured faintly. "It's like I was goin' 'ome. Say that again about the valley," and the nurse repeated tenderly that promise of incomparable sweetness:
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil, for thou art with me, thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
"It's just like 'avin' mother's 'and to 'old the little silky one," Polly murmured sleepily.
The nurse put the poppies beside Polly's face on the pillow, and drawing a screen around her went on to the next patient. A case of urgent need detained her at the other end of the ward, and it was not until the dawn was shining blue in the windows that she came back on her rounds.
Polly lay just as she had left her. The crimson petals lay thick upon her face and hair. The homesickness and redness of weeping had gone forever from her eyes, for they were looking now upon the King in his beauty! In her hand, now cold and waxen, she held one little silky poppy, red with edges of white. Polly had gone home.
There was a whisper among the poppies that grew behind the cookhouse that morning as the first gleam of the sun came yellow and wan over the fields; there was a whisper and a shivering among the poppies as the morning breezes, cold and chill, rippled over them, and a shower of crystal drops mingled with the crimson petals that fluttered to the ground. It was not until Pearl came out and picked a handful of them for her dingy little room that they held up their heads once more and waved and nodded, red and handsome.