“Nor stir the fire and close the shutters fast;Let fall the curtains;Wheel the sofa round;And while the bubbling and loud-hissing urnThrows up a steamy column, and the cupsThat cheer, but not inebriate, wait on each,So let us welcome cheerful evening in.”
“Nor stir the fire and close the shutters fast;Let fall the curtains;Wheel the sofa round;And while the bubbling and loud-hissing urnThrows up a steamy column, and the cupsThat cheer, but not inebriate, wait on each,So let us welcome cheerful evening in.”
The very furnishings of this library were intellectually and spiritually appetizing. A large desk, off one side, bespoke brain work; a solid center-table, strewn with books and magazines, made one long for the glow of the big lamp and the leisure of the evening, while Constance's grand piano seemed to stir the very air with a dream of harmony. The room was lined with low book-cases; above Shakespeare stood his bust; above the many volumes on musical themes, busts of Beethoven and Wagner; pictures—not costly paintings, but engravings, photo-gravures, and etchings, scenes from other lands, sweet spiritual faces, suggestionsof great lives—looked down from the walls; while over all, as a frieze to the oaken room, ran the words: “'Tis love that makes the world go round.”
To Steve Loveland this home seemed more like Paradise than mortal abode. He watched its building and making with as intense an interest as Randolph's and with far more of sentiment. Marriage to him meant Elysium—the inexpressible, the unattainable; more so than ever now. But whatever yearnings the sweet little nest awoke in the breast of this lonely outsider, his duty and purpose remained fixed.
In the fall of the year, when the grapes hung in luscious bunches on the slender vine; when country by-lanes were mellow with a wealth of sumach and maple coloring; when Nature was saying farewell in her own sweet way, at once so festive and so melancholy, then Constance and Randolph turned their backs on the din and confusion of the city, and seeking the happy woodlands, entered their own little home.
On that very same day Steve received a summons to his sister, who lived with her mother in the little country town. There he was witness to a short, sharp contest with pneumonia; then came a defeat; and then a quiet burial in the village churchyard; next a sinking from hour to hour of the invalid mother whose prop and stay had been taken from beneath her; a second calling of friends to the stricken home; and ere two weeks of absence had been told, Steve found himself alone in the world, as far as any near of kin were concerned.
His grief was quiet, but very poignant. The old bachelor lodgings became unendurable. Randolph had gone to a home of his own, and Steve could not sit there alone, listening to the clods of earth as they fell on mother and Mary.
Both Randolph and Constance stretched out tender, sympathizing hands to the lonely man, and would have been glad had he consented to widen their fireside circle by his presence, but beyond an occasional visit Steve did not feel that hecould go to them. He had long been independent—he was over thirty now, and he was not ready to merge his life into the life of another household. Still less was he willing to intrude his continued presence upon a newly married couple. The life there was sacred to him, and although he felt himself next of kin, almost, to its inmates, he shrank from robbing them of their right to be alone.
Go somewhere he must, however, so he gathered a few of his effects and prepared for a flitting—where he hardly knew when he set out, but he chanced to alight in the domicile of some elderly friends, who were delighted to give him house and table room in their rather solitary home.
It chanced that Steve's new rookery (he was in the fourth story) was quite near Mrs. Lamont's handsome house, and Mrs. Lamont was the aunt of Nannie Branscome—bewitching, provoking, maddening Nannie Branscome; uncured, unbaked, indigestible little Nannie Branscome—and they met, to quote from KateDouglas Wiggin, “every once in so often.”
Careless, irresponsible Nannie Branscome! growing wild in the garden.
But the cook was near at hand and the fire was lighted.
What manner of cook? Achefor a stupid mixer of messes?
Who knows?
Itwas bleak and drear. A raw, angry wind came out of the north and went raging through the woods, tearing the pretty clothing of the trees to pieces and rudely hurling the dust of the street in one's face. The sun got behind the clouds and in grief and dismay hid his face while this dismal looting went on unrebuked and unrestrained. But Nature is fickle, possibly because she is feminine. At all events, she can change both mind and conduct, and in short order. So ere long she came out of her November rage and sat down in still, mellow sunshine, and gathering her children about her, whispered beautiful stories in their ears; warmed them with her love and brightness; soothed their care-lined brows and filled their hearts with a sense of the nearness of the Giver of all good.
It was on one of these days of Indian summer that Steve cut loose from work and started off on a tramp. He worked in town; he rested in country.
He had put something like five miles of woodland and late fall meadow between himself and the distractions of city life, when looking adown a path that sloped gently to a brook he saw, sitting on a tree that lay athwart the stream and paddling her white feet in the sunny water, Nannie Branscome. His surprise robbed him of his reserve and he hastened to her.
“Are you lost, Miss Branscome?”
“Yes,” she answered calmly.
She still sat there, paddling her feet, with nothing of consternation or perplexity in her face or manner. All around her were the browns of a summer that had come and gone; heaps of dead leaves nestled close to the trees, mute witnesses of a lost beauty; while here and there an ox-eyed daisy glowed from out its somber company as a firefly shines through the dusk of twilight. In the midst of all this sat Nannie in her pretty suit trimmedin scarlet, looking like a bird of paradise amid a flock of sparrows and other soberly clad creatures. Indeed, she reminded one of a bird, with her head cocked on one side and her air—not bold, but saucy.
Steve stood on the bank of the creek, perplexed for a moment. Then he asked with a slight smile:
“What are you going to do about it?”
The girl lowered her head a trifle and looked out at him from 'neath her curls, but she said nothing.
“Let us go home, Miss Branscome.”
She continued looking at him without a word, and he returned her gaze as he stood there with a gentle dignity that had its effect upon her.
“Barefooted?” she asked.
“No. I am going to explore this creek for a little distance, and you can get ready while I'm gone.”
“But suppose my shoes and stockings have floated down the stream? What then?”
Steve was dismayed, but he maintained his quiet air.
“Suppose,” persisted Nannie.
Just then Steve caught a glimpse of a tiny shoe at the foot of a near tree.
“And suppose,” he said, “they have not, but are awaiting their owner over yonder?”
Nannie laughed and looked around and Steve walked on.
When he returned she was ready, and they set off together toward town.
“Were you really lost?” asked Steve.
“Yes. I've been wandering around for at least two hours.”
“How came you to go out there?” he asked.
“I was expected to go somewhere else,” she answered with one of her elfin looks.
Steve was silent. Mentally he was wondering if this was the mainspring of conduct in all women. He thought very likely it was. Mary often asked his advice and then always took her own way, and it was invariably opposite to the course he had indicated.
They had not gone much further,when, happening to look around for something, Nannie caught a glimpse of her dress skirt and saw that it was creased and stained with mud.
“There now! I've just ruined my gown!” she exclaimed, and then burst into passionate tears.
“Miss Branscome! don't!” said Steve, who was fairly startled out of his usual quiet into something akin to excitement. “Don't! I beg of you. Nannie! don't cry, my dear!”
He failed to notice how he had spoken; so did she, apparently.
“We can make it all right, I know,” he continued, but for a time she refused to be comforted.
“You would cry too, I guess, if you were in my place and would get such an awful scolding at home.”
“No doubt I would,” assented Steve in deep distress.
“I wish I were dead and buried under a landslide,” sobbed Nannie.
In the depth of her sorrow she wanted to delve deep into mother earth.
“Oh, no. Don't wish that! What should we do without you?” said Steve earnestly.
“Oh, you needn't to worry,” replied Nannie pettishly, the violence of her grief having spent itself. “Nothing so good as that is going to happen. I shall live to get home and have my head taken off, and stalk around as a torso ever afterward.”
“Now do let me see if I can't set things to rights,” said Steve. “You've no idea how handy I am in such matters.”
He proved the truth of his words by going to work upon the injured gown, and after patient effort bringing it out of its dilapidated condition in such shape that only a keen eye would detect any sign of mishap.
Nannie was delighted and, stimulated by the excitement attendant upon her rapid change of fortunes, became quite talkative.
“I wouldn't have minded it so much, but I have on one of my best gowns, and Aunt Frances makes such a fuss everytime she has to buy me anything. She says it's of no use to spend on me. It don't amount to a row of pins.”
Steve looked at her inquiringly. In actual time he was many years her senior, but Nannie had been in society for a season now, and even young girls age fast there—too fast, by far.
“She means I don't bid fair to get married off well. I'm not very popular, you know.”
Still Steve was silent. Nannie was speaking in a language of which he was ignorant.
“I dressed this morning to go to Joe Harding's breakfast, but I hate him, and I went walking instead. Now I've got to see some of the girls who went and make up a lot of stuff about it at home, or Aunt Frances'll be awfully mad.”
Steve looked into the beautiful face of the young girl who was talking in this repellent fashion. Then he took her gently by the hand and said in a firm, kindly tone:
“Nannie, you must come out of all this.”
“How can I?” she asked. “I have no mother or father—no one who really cares. I suppose I'll marry Joe Harding some day. He wants me, and Aunt Frances keeps at me about it eternally, but I hate him.”
“You must not marry him,” said Steve firmly. “He is not a good man.”
“And he's awfully ugly, too, but he's rich, and he's one of the swell set. Ugh! but I do hate him!”
“Why are you going to marry him?”
“Why?” she asked, looking at him with straight, frank surprise. “I've got to. Nobody else wants me.”
The pettish look had passed from her face; so also had the world-wise expression. There was something in her present naïve frankness that prevented it from seeming bold.
As he looked at her swift images of love and marriage flitted across his brain. Somehow his loneliness was borne in upon him, and with this realization there came as a sudden flash the consciousness that he could marry. Long ago he hadput all this one side, and in his grief over the loss of mother and sister it had never once occurred to him that he was free. The knowledge almost overwhelmed him now, and in his bewilderment for the moment he lost sight of his ideal. Like most reticent men, he cherished an ideal. Since meeting Constance Leigh, unconsciously to himself that ideal had grown very like her. But now he was sitting beside a fascinating young girl—for fascinating she was to Steve, even in her brusqueness and plainness of speech; a mere child, as it were, who was without home and without the protection of love and parental care, and as he looked into her eyes, still wet with tears, he felt his heart go out to her.
“Listen to me, Nannie,” he said, taking her hand once more. “I am a very lonely man. I need a wife——”
“Come, ducky, come and be killed,” flashed through Nannie's mind.
“I think you need me and I'm sure I need you.”
“How?” thought Nannie; “fricasseed or boiled?”
“If you would let me I would take you and try——”
“Fry, you mean,” said Nannie mentally as he hesitated.
Then with a sudden whirl, peculiar to her gusty temperament, she said to herself:
“He's proposing, and I needn't marry that hideous creature!”
She caught her breath and pressed her hands together.
“Oh, if only I could escape from Joe Harding!” she exclaimed.
Something very holy in Steve's nature came up then and changed the man. No longer shy, no longer reserved, he bent toward Nannie without touching her and said:
“My dear, marriage is a gate at once solemn and beautiful. When it is used as a door of escape it opens into a dark forest abounding with terrible wild beasts and hideous crawling things, but if one opens it with love's key, I can't tell you what it leads to, for I have never been there, but I believe it is the gateway to theElysium fields that lie just on the hither side of heaven.”
Nannie looked up into the grave eyes and saw something of tenderness, something of reverence there that was new to her. She had stepped into an unknown world and was awed. As she sat there all mockery and levity faded from her face, and in its place there crept a look of deep admiration and deep respect for this man, and something awoke in her soul.
She said not a word—she had no words for such as this—but by and by she put her hand into Steve's.
“For life, Nannie?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said, and burst into tears.
A lover'secstasy is ofttimes cut short by the reflection that he has yet to face that awful bugbear—the old folk. There is something terrible about age, it would seem, not only to its possessor, but even to those who must encounter it second hand, and Steve was not without his qualms. Although in his wooing he had not for one moment lost his gentle self-possession, he had entirely forgotten about the ordeal of an interview with Nannie's guardians until she reminded him by saying with an impish chuckle:
“Won't Aunt Frances be happy when she hears of this!”
“Is she anxious that you should marry?” asked Steve with some wonder.
Nannie looked at him with wide eyes for a moment. It seemed hardly possible that one could be so dull of comprehension,and yet there was no doubting Steve's grave, earnest expression.
“Yes,” was her only reply, but inwardly she was convulsed with laughter as she looked ahead and in thought rapidly sketched a scene.
And so Steve walked up to his task with but a faint conception of its magnitude.
“I have called, Mrs. Lamont,” he said in his easy, gentlemanly way, “to ask for the hand of your niece. Nannie and I have had a little talk about it and understand each other, I think, and now we await your consent.”
“You surely don'texpectmy consent,” said Mrs. Lamont.
Steve's shyness and gentleness seemed to return to him.
“I really,” he said hesitatingly, “had not thought of any reason why we should not have it.”
“Mr. Loveland—well, this is intensely trying to me. You've no idea, I am sure, how I dislike to be so plain; butcanyou not understand that you are hardly a suitablematch for Nannie? You are very poor, I believe.”
“Why, no,” said Steve gently.
He had a good position on a daily paper and his mother's little property had been disposed of to advantage, so that he had several thousand in bank now. To him, with his small needs and quiet tastes, this seemed like wealth.
“Oh, why will you force me to such brutal plainness!” exclaimed Mrs. Lamont impatiently. “Really this interview will make me ill.”
“It may indeed,” said Steve.
He had no thought of sarcasm.
“Mr. Loveland, this is a business matter. We must understand each other. You have property, I suppose?”
“Not now; it was sold.”
“What do you own, may I ask? Oh, isn't it fearful to have to talk so! But I must lead you to see things clearly.”
“I have forty-five hundred dollars in bank and a good situation,” said Steve, with a feeling that he was turning his life inside out under a stranger's gaze, andhad returned to barbarism and was buying Nannie.
“Bringing you what, may I ask?”
“A hundred and twenty-five a month.”
Mrs. Lamont gave a short laugh.
“Why, my dear sir—excuse me, but that would not suffice to keep Nannie's carriage, let alone herself.”
“Must she have a carriage?” asked Steve with a lengthening face.
“As a matter of course! Would you expect her to walk?”
Several things flashed through Steve's bewildered brain. Until to-day he had always met Nannie in her own or some other parlor. She had walked to-day, it is true, but perhaps she ought not to have done so. He remembered that when he saw her feet as she was paddling in the brook he thought them wonderfully small. He also recalled the fact that Chinese women of rank have very small feet and cannot walk; possibly Nannie was in a similar predicament.
“Is she deformed?” he gasped.
And then Mrs. Lamont put her handkerchiefto her face and wept for vexation.
Meanwhile Steve sat there, bewildered and distressed. He had come to expect this sort of conduct from women in general, but it was harrowing. His poor invalid mother often wept; Mary had cried now and then, poor worn-out girl; and last week, when he was at her house, even Constance had burst into tears when Randolph tried to explain something to her; Nannie had cried that day, and now Mrs. Lamont was weeping. No doubt it was a sort of melancholy punctuation mark in vogue with the sex.
“Evidently we speak different languages, and it is an almost hopeless task to try to explain,” said the lady at length; “but Nannie's interests are at stake, and I must attempt it.”
She knew only too well how futile it would be to try to influence Nannie. If this affair were ended it must be by Steve.
“Can you not see,” she continued, emphasizing every word and speaking in a hard, metallic tone, “that Nannie's positionin society calls for certain expenditures which are far beyond your means? As a woman of fashion she will be obliged to keep a carriage and maintain a style of living which would eat up your monthly salary in half a day. She has a suitor of abundant means, a millionaire several times over—Mr. Harding. He is infatuated with her and he will give her everything she can desire.”
“But he is a very bad man,” said Steve simply.
“Oh, well—really, Mr. Loveland, please don't push me into a discussion of such matters. Few men are saints, and I think he'll make a good husband. He is very rich and he moves in the best circles.”
“Does Nannie love him?” asked Steve, and his voice and manner had changed. He spoke very firmly.
“Mr. Loveland, youexhaustme! Some of us who have reached maturity have the good sense to provide for material advantages and take the rest for granted.”
“If Nannie loves Mr. Harding and wishes me to withdraw in his favor, I will do so.”
“I don't!” said a curt voice, and looking around with a start, Mrs. Lamont beheld her dutiful niece between theportières.
For a moment nothing was said, but Nannie's appearance did not portend peace. Her eyes looked out wickedly from beneath her curls, and her impish mouth was pursed up in an expression already familiar to her aunt.
“Leave the room instantly!” cried Mrs. Lamont at last with rising anger.
“I won't!” said Nannie shortly.
“Then I will teach you that I also can be firm. I command you to break off this foolish, insane affair at once.”
“I won't!” said Nannie.
“Ungrateful minx!” cried Mrs. Lamont. “Here I have dressed you all these years and gone to no end of other expense, and this is how you repay me.”
“It is,” said Nannie.
Now, Mrs. Lamont was a shrewd, worldly woman, and she took in the situationfully. She realized that Nannie would hold to her own course. She also realized that arguments such as hers were without weight with Steve. These two, then, would marry for all she could say or do, for Nannie was just come of age. Now she had already strained her means to provide for the fashionable necessities of Nannie'sdébutand society life, and she dreaded her wedding. Had the child married well, however, all the monetary effort attendant upon the occasion could have been repaid afterward—all that and more; but now to have an outlay and no return—that was too much! She would avert it.
“I can do nothing with this saucy, impudent girl, this ungrateful creature, but I appeal to you,” she said to Steve, “to let her come to her senses.”
It was Mrs. Lamont, he thought, who was worse than mad to try to force a young girl into an odious marriage, and Nannie's rebellion seemed justifiable to him, unused though he himself was to defying any one.
“Nannie and I have decided,” he said quietly. “I regret that you feel so.”
“You shall never be married from this house!” cried the aunt.
“We can go elsewhere,” said Steve, not realizing that he was walking into a net.
“And you may expect a bitter time after this conduct, miss,” she added.
“Mrs. Lamont,” said Steve, stepping forward and taking Nannie's little hand in his, “you will force us to an earlier marriage than we had contemplated.”
And now Steve was well in the toils of the net, and this was how it happened that Mrs. Lamont was spared further expense for her willful niece, and that Steve all but took Randolph's and Constance's breath away by inviting them to a very quiet wedding which was to take place at a church one morning about a week after this stormy scene, and society buzzed like a bee over the elopement, as it called it, and so forth, and so on, and all at once in the midst of the distractions Nannie caught her breath and cried out:
“Why, goodness me! I'm married!”
And Steve received the news with almost equal dismay.
Really, if the Shah of Persia had presented this gentleman with a white elephant, with long flowing trunk and two tails—three or four tails, in fact—and this little gift had been brought up to his room on a silver salver (always supposing that were possible) he could not have felt much more nonplussed as to its proper disposal and care than he did when he suddenly came out of a dream to realize he had a wife on his hands.
“Where do you wish to live, my dear?” he asked in a tone that might imply that he had all Europe and America to draw from as a place of residence.
He was rather expecting Nannie to say that she wished to reside on Calumet Avenue and to have a coach and four purchased that very day.
But nothing could surprise him now, so he received her abrupt answer calmly.
“I want to live in the country, near Mrs. Chance.”
Happily this wish was not impossibleof fulfillment, so Steve at once consulted his friends, and after much walking about (Nannie could walk) and much discussion, the four agreed upon a small dovecote of a place about a mile from Randolph's and Constance's home—a dear little cottage with enough land about it to raise anything and everything.
Nannie was like a child with a new toy, and her delight lent her a hundred little airs and graces that would only have provoked Mrs. Lamont had she seen them. She always said that the child was rude and stupid in society where she should have done her best, and only fascinating with people who could be of no earthly use to her.
And now the little kitchen was set up, the fire was burning briskly, the cook was at hand, and the delectable, indigestible material was ready for the spit.
Whypeople born and bred for city lifewilltake to the woods; why people shapen, as it were, for the plow will fly to town, and men built for a naval gait will attempt to sit in high places on shore, is one of those elusive problems that are forever defying solution. We only know that such things exist, and a few of us come up and have a crack at them, as it were, and fail to make the slightest impression on their thick skulls. And still the wonder grows. Now it is a naval hero come ashore from seas where he was master of the situation, laden with honors and refulgent with glory sufficient for the lifetime of ten reasonable men, who straightway begins to covet a chair of whose very shape and proportions he is ignorant, and in which he can only be conspicuous as a melancholy misfit. O Heroism!why failest them to reach the judgment? O Glory! why canst thou not touch up the common sense? Anon we have a yeoman who has struck oil and has been thrown up on high by its monetary power, forsaking the obscure nook for which nature shaped him and attempting to sit in our drawing-room, eat at our dinner-table, and obtrude his rich vulgarity upon gentler guests.
It was in accordance with this lamentable fashion of undertaking that for which they have no gift; this rushing in of certain folk where angels fear to tread, that Steve turned farmer. Not that he gave up his situation on the paper. Ah, no! He tried to be that which no man could be successfully without supernatural aid—journalist and farmer both. His work in the city had for some time been such that he could do much of it in his room if he chose; indeed, there were times—a day, occasionally—when it was not necessary to go near the office. Consequently when he repaired to the country with his unique wife, he thought his affairs were admirably adapted to a dual existence.
It was in the merry month of April when they landed. I use the latter term advisedly, for they were indeed upon a foreign shore. All about them Nature was giving evidence of a present awakening from her long nap. With her quickening circulation there was increased warmth, and in this the snow speedily slipped away. A chorus of songsters came out to greet the newly wedded pair, and sang so sweetly of love that Steve's delicate, sensitive nature thrilled in response. Nannie listened and looked at them askance, but to her they spoke, like our opera singers, in a foreign tongue.
Now, this breaking Steve from off his natural tree and grafting him upon an alien bough occasioned some changes. From being cheerful, slow, and gentle he suddenly became anxious, hasty, and at times dictatorial.
“You must have a garden,” one of his neighbors said.
Steve went to work like a galley slave upon his spare days, and dug, and raked, and planted.
“You must keep bees,” said another of the neighbors.
Steve bought two hives at once.
“You must keep chickens,” said another neighbor, a sort of two-edged woman, who dwelt over across the swamp and whose scolding voice could be heard for miles.
So Steve bought thirteen hens and a rooster.
“You must have a cow,” said a fourth neighbor, and he promptly sold Steve a cantankerous beast that wanted to rival him in authority, and indeed for a time ran the place.
“You must have a cat,” said an old woman who wanted to get rid of an unamiable Thomas, and Steve brought him home in a sack caterwauling all the way.
“You must get a dog,” said a man who had a bull terrier for sale.
“I've got one!” bawled Steve—the man was deaf.
“Bull terrier?”
“No, Scotch! and he's all I want!” and Steve closed the front door with needless vigor.
“What did you buy those nasty hens for?” asked Nannie, who did not like chickens.
“Oh, they'll give us something good to eat. It will be so nice to go out every morning and bring in some new-laid eggs for breakfast. You'll like to do that, Nannie.”
“I guess you'd better,” she said with a peculiar look.
So the next morning Steve tiptoed out, through the wet grass, to the hen-house, in his dressing-gown and slippers, he was so eager to pluck this new fruit.
He came in empty-handed, but cheerful.
“We could hardly expect them to lay the first day; they have got to get their bearings.”
Every morning before breakfast Steve took this little walk. There was soon a well-beaten track between the back door and the hen-house. He always returned empty-handed, and Nannie watched with an impish smile from an upper window.
One morning she came upon him in the act of taking off a white door-knob.
“Whatareyou doing?” she demanded.
He looked guilty, but answered with a fair show of spirit:
“I'm going to put this in one of the nests. You see, they must think a hen has been there and laid it.”
Nannie burst into a laugh.
“Well, I wouldn't waste time eating the eggs of hens that would be such fools as to think any poor old chicken had laid that door-knob!”
But Steve put it in, nevertheless.
And still morning after morning, with lowered head and dragging footstep, he returned to the house alone—still alone; not so much as a single egg as companion.
Then it was that a pair of imp-like, black eyes danced 'neath the careless ringlets above them.
“How would you like your door-knob this morning—hard or soft?”
This raillery went on day after day until even Steve—gentle, patient Steve had enough.
He looked up at the window and said quietly, but firmly:
“There, Nannie, drop it, if you please.”
“On toast?” she screamed, and Steve went into the house.
But his triumph was near at hand, for one morning, about four weeks after he had bought the chickens, he discovered something besides the door-knob in one of the nests, and forthwith came strutting toward the house, holding the egg on high that Nannie might see it from the window of her room.
Hearing no noise he looked up. Was she dead? Ah, no! There she sat, straining her eyes through a field-glass to see the yield of his first month.
“Mix well,” she called to him, “thirteen hens, one rooster, one door-knob, and one month, and you'll have a delicious egg.”
And again Steve got into the house.
He was obliged to come out again later on, for there were many things upon this miniature plantation which were clamoring for attention. Indeed, Steve was slowly coming to believe in communities, such associations meaning in his mind a body of men banded together to run asmall acre of ground; one man attending to the chickens, one to the fruit trees, one to the vegetable garden, one to the horse, several to the cow, and so on. It will be seen later on why, in this distribution of labor, Steve always assigned several men—able-bodied at that—to the cow. It has already been mentioned that he was persuaded early in his matrimonial career to buy a beast of this variety. This beautiful animal (for she was handsome, unless she be judged by the homely rule that regulates beauty by conduct) he immediately presented to Nannie. Whether she was originally vicious (and this her former owner vehemently denied) or was affected by the nature of her mistress, no one knows. Suffice it to say that upon Nannie's flying out of the house to gaze upon her new possession, the latter lowered her head, raised her tail like a flagstaff, and galloped to meet her, and it was only by the execution of a sort of double-barreled backward somersault that Nannie saved her life.
“Most extraordinary conduct,” said Steve. “Threatening from both ends.”
Nannie was in no wise dismayed, and either by reason of her fearlessness or because of a secret bond between their natures, she and Sarah Maria—for so she named her after a troublesome neighbor—became comrades after a fashion. Between Sarah Maria and Brownie, however, there was always war from horn to heel, and nothing could effect a reconciliation. The danger of this enmity was clearly demonstrated on a Sabbath morning, otherwise peaceful, when Nannie started out with Brownie (the former carrying a milk pail, for some reason best known to herself, since she knew nothing of milking) and went down to the pasture for Sarah Maria. The latter was awaiting them at the bars, and, as it appeared, was ready for the business of the day. No sooner was she liberated from the bondage of the pasture than she made a bold charge upon Brownie, who promptly took to cover behind his mistress, barking the while in a manner both rasping and aggravating to one of Sarah Maria's irritable nervous system. The bovine's attentionbeing now drawn to Nannie, it behooved the latter to clear the path, and in short order, and Steve, who came running to the scene, attracted by the din of battle, beheld with horror-stricken sight a confused medley consisting of wife, dog, Sarah Maria, milk pail—all going head over heels into the nearest ditch.
By some miracle no one was hurt, and an energetic use of the milk pail—a use unforeseen by the manufacturers—restored quiet to the agitated district.
It was soon after this escapade that Jacob, the man about the place thought himself called to some other profession than farming, and accordingly left. As Sarah Maria remained, it was necessary to secure a milker. This difficulty was happily surmounted about eleven o'clock the first morning, when a man selling rustic chairs appeared upon the scene and good-naturedly consented for the time to step within the breach made by Jacob's disappearance.
Later on it was borne in on Steve's consciousness that he was the man to whomSarah Maria must look for relief. The situation was a critical one, but Steve's was not a nature to shirk responsibilities or shun sacrifices. Accordingly, arming himself with a hatchet and a club, on the end of which latter instrument he suspended the milk pail, he set out, and in this new business worked with such gentle deliberation that at the end of an hour he could have shown a quart of milk for his pains had not Sarah Maria testified to her respect for the day of small things by lifting the aforementioned pail on high.
By the end of a week, however, Steve succeeded in bringing his milking lessons to a favorable conclusion, and was ready to take his place not among the best, it is true, but still among the milkers of the world. He must have prosecuted his education with remarkable ardor, for his overalls had given out in spots, and one industrious day Nannie took it into her head to patch them. Having no suitable material at hand—such is the misfortune of the newly wedded, with everything whole about them—she utilized someScotch plaid pieces left over from a tea gown. But hardly was the patch well set than she began to reflect that its rather conspicuous beauty would no doubt catch the eye of Sarah Maria, and might occasion nothing less than Steve's death if he were taken unawares when his back was turned. To extract the patch was not to be thought of for a moment, since it was a wonderful triumph of art for Nannie, nor could she consent, wicked though she was, to let Steve walk forth arrayed in all its glory. A bottle of shoe polish solved the problem and made a somewhat stiff but subdued foundation, upon which Steve rested with more or less insecurity.
Onemorning Nannie was out in the garden, not at work as she should have been (she left all that to Steve), but walking around in a sort of lordly way, after the fashion of many idlers in this world who without scruple appropriate the results of industry.
She had often noted an old codger whose place backed up on hers, but had never held any converse with him. This morning, however, he seemed inclined to break the ice, as it were, for as she strutted about he leaned on the fence and said cheerily:
“Good-morning, neighbor.”
Nannie gave one glance at his old broad-brimmed straw hat and rusty overalls, and then said with a certain winning sauciness all her own:
“Good-morning, old Hayseed.”
The man laughed. He had a rotund, jovial countenance, which even his smoked glasses could not plunge into gloom. His every feature had an upward turn, and there was something strong and good about the face that made one feel that his heart also curved upward.
“So ye're gard'nin', be yer?” he remarked by way of introduction.
“No, I ain't,” said Nannie curtly. “Steve gardens, and you know it. You've seen him bent like a bow over these beds ever since we came here.”
“Yes, that's so.”
“And I've held myself as straight as an arrow.”
“Now thet's so, too,” and the old man laughed. “Ye're cute, yer air.”
“I can see right ahead of me. I don't wear smoked glasses,” said Nannie with a pretty little grimace.
“There's a deal goes on ahind smoked glasses sometimes,” said the old fellow with a laugh.
“How do you keep house?” askedNannie with an abrupt change of subject. “You haven't any wife or daughter.”
“I don't keep it; jest trust it. Don't turn no key nor nothin' on it, an' I ain't never knowed it to stray outside ther yard. Ther's a heap in hevin' faith in things.”
Nannie's face grew thoughtful.
“Yer kin 'most b'lieve a man inter bein' honest, an' I reckon it acts ther same on wimmin, though they be a leetle different.”
Nannie looked up from under her curls with a glance half inquiring, half defiant.
“When wimmin's young they be like a colt—it's hard ter keep 'em stiddy. When they git older they be somethin' like a mule—it's hard ter start 'em up now an' agin.”
“I guess men are the same. They belong to the same stock—all the world's akin, you know,” said Nannie mischievously.
“All the world's akin, eh?” said the old man slowly, turning this thought over in his mind. “Well, now, mebbe thet's so,but if it is ther's a deal of difference atween ther cousins.”
Again Nannie's face grew thoughtful. Then she raised her eyes and pointed, with a little laugh, to a passer-by.
“There goes one kind of a cousin, I suppose.”
“He's a coon,” said the old man. “Him an' his mother, they live off yonder nigh ther swamp. They used ter own this 'ere place ye're on, an' then it passed ter ther datter, an' then her husban' bought it. She's in ther insane asylum now, an' these rel'tives claim she ain't crazy, but thet she was put in by ther malice of her husban'. An' they claim he's got ther place wrongful, an' hadn't a right ter sell ter you folks.”
“That's why they're bothering us so?”
“Thet's why,” said old Hayseed.
“Well, they'll find we'retwomany for them.”
Then with a sudden burst of laughter she exclaimed:
“Oh, I'm going to egg Steve on to a fight! Wouldn't it be fun! I wonder if Steve could fight!”
“Reckon he could,” said the old man with a gleam in his eye that seemed to pierce the darkness of his glasses. “He don't look it exact an' his manners don't promise it, but ther may be fight in him somewhere. Ther be men, yer know, can't talk even about ther weather without shakin' a fist in yer face. He ain't thet kind.”
“No. If he were he would have murdered Sarah Maria long ago.”
“He would thet, fer a fact. Then ther's others thet air so afeard—so skeart thet a two-year-old bootblack or ther shadder of publick derishion could put 'em ter flight. Be thet his kind?”
“I guess not!” blazed Nannie. “Steve's afraid of nothing, living or dead.”
“No, he ain't afeard. I kin see thet; but he's peaceable.”
Just at this moment Nannie glanced down the sloping sides of the ravine and saw Hilda Bretherton panting her way up toward the house. Now, these two had not met since Hilda married and started off on her wedding trip to France, shortlybefore Nannie became engaged. True to the usual direction of her popularity, Hilda had married a small man, beside whom she looked the good-natured giantess she indeed was, but he was enormously rich, and in her particular set she was accounted one of fortune's favorites.
Since casting her lot in the country Nannie had been into town but little. For society as she had known it she cared nothing. Then, too, marriage had entered the magic circle of the Young Woman's Club and changed its membership, so that Nannie felt herself an alien. She was not consciously lonely in the country, but yet there was something so significant in the glad cry she uttered when she caught sight of Hilda, and the unusual warmth of her greeting, that old Hayseed looked on from his side of the fence with a meditative air.
“The colt's a-yearnin' fer somethin' without knowin' it,” he said to himself as Nannie dragged Hilda into the house.
“I ought not to sit down,” Hilda panted. “Oh, dear! Let me get mybreath! Do you see how awfully fat I am? and my husband don't weigh but a hundred and twenty—think of that! A sparrow for a protector! If ever I wanted to get behind him to escape a mouse or anything, what should I do?”
“Where is he?” asked Nannie.
“What—the mouse?” screamed Hilda.
“No,” said Nannie, “the husband;” and then the two fell a-laughing in the old foolish way.
“Husband! Oh, I thought you'd have something of that kind around, and one would be enough for to-day.”
“No, really! Where is he?”
“Over on the other side of the ravine. You see, we missed the road and got entangled in the forest. Ye gods! how literally you've taken to the woods, Nannie! Well, DeLancy didn't feel he was equal to a climb, so I came alone, presumably to find the road, but I couldn't go on without seeing you, so I've stolen a visit.”
“You'd better!” said Nannie. “If ever you pass me by I'll haunt you!”
“I know that. I always was afraid ofyou. I always said you were a little——”
“Sh-h!” said Nannie, imitating Prudence Shaftsbury's air and manner.
“Dear old Prue!” said Hilda. “I saw her the other day. I believe she's really happy. She don't say much, but she looks it. She's awfully swell, too. Why, you hear Mrs. Ralph Porter on all sides. She leads everything. That girl has more tact and diplomacy than any one I ever saw. Awfully nice girl, too. Here I am, always putting my foot in it. DeLancy says I fling a rope around my neck so surely as I open my mouth, and with each succeeding word I give it a jerk. Oh, dear me! I ought to be going. He'll be wild! Why, you don't look any too well. What's the matter with you, Nan? Aren't you happy, child?”
“Yes. Mind your business!” said Nannie in the old defiant way.
“Bless me! bless me! You haven't changed a mite! I thought marriage would improve you. Oh, do you knowEvelyn Rogers was married the other day?”
“No,” said Nannie with quickened interest.
“Yes—not at her home. She was visiting her aunt in New York, and there she married her villainous-looking professor, and would you believe it? I heard they went right off to the slums on a wedding trip, taking a thief, and an anarchist, and a murderer with them, as chaperons, I suppose. Oh, I ought to be going!”
“To the slums?” asked Nannie.
“No, no. I ought to get out of here. DeLancy is insane by this time, I know! Imustrun!”
“Hilda, you sit still and cool off! You've just been in a stew ever since you came.”
“I'm in one all the time. Do you remember what some of you girls said of me at that first meeting of the club—I'd be kept in a continual stew? Never were truer words spoken. Oh!” and she groaned loudly.
“Why don't you get done—with it?” asked Nannie.
“I can't,” said Hilda coolly. “I'm in for it now and must go on to the bitter end. It's too late to chew the cud of reflection.”
“Don't count on the end,” laughed Nannie, looking at her friend's rotund figure. “There's no end to you, Hilda. You're an all-round woman.”
“Indeed I am! If you could only see the number of offices I fill. I'm nurse, doctor, valet, messenger, and on cross days general vent for the humors.”
“Is he really ill?”
“Oh, I don't know. He has dyspepsia. I guess he don't feel any too well, and nothing pleases him. He took a notion that a sea voyage would cure him, and it didn't. He snarled and snapped all the way, and oh, I was so sick—ugh! and I had to drag myself around after him. Then next he tried the German baths. He's tried everything, and now—oh, now,” she continued with a groan, putting her handkerchief to her face, “he says that society is injurious to him. And what do you suppose he has done?” she asked,raising her voice and peering from above the handkerchief which she had pressed to her face. “He's rented a lonely cabin in the Adirondacks for a year—a year! and there I'm to live! Imagine me, my dear! I shall grow so rusty that when I return to civilization I shall only be able to hang on the back door and creak while others are talking. Mercy upon us! there's DeLancy! He'll find me visiting! I'll never hear the last of this as long as I live! Where can I go? What can I get under? Oh, there's nothing big enough in all the world to cover me! Woe is me! I must always remain in the open!”
“Lie down there,” said Nannie authoritatively. “I'll cover you.”
“You!” screamed Hilda. “You! Oh, you elf! you brownie! you mite—you widow's mite! What could you cover?”
“Lie down! Be quick! The enemy approaches!” cried Nannie, convulsed with laughter.
Hilda gave one glance from out the window and then fell flat on the divan.
“I am lost!” she groaned.
“I'll defend you,” said Nannie bravely.
“You! Oh, you atom! you molecule! you microbe! What can you do?”
“Be quiet. You are dead—do you hear? You'redead—dead as a doornail; dead as a mummy—the mummy that walked the streets of Thebes when Moses was a young man.”
“Nannie!”
But Nannie did not hear, for she was running to meet the enemy, a bit of a man who looked like a woodland sprite as he walked along the edge of the ravine. In contrast with the big figure that lay prone upon the divan, his size was really ridiculous. Had his pettiness been merely external, that would not have mattered. Small men have been known to tower as giants before us. Luther was called the little monk, and the Corsican who altered the world's map was of still smaller proportions.
This little creature, however, was the reverse of Julia Ward Howe's youthful daughter, who announced to an offendingvisitor that she was “big inside,” inasmuch as he was made on a small pattern, within as well as without.
His petty face was all puckered up when Nannie encountered him, and his rasping voice was at its most irritating pitch.
The moment he was within hailing distance he began his complaint, heedless even of the courtesy of a greeting. He declared he was too exhausted to take another step; that he had lost his wife, and he asked if Nannie had seen her.
“Oh, Mr. Seymour! Hilda—Hilda—is—at my house—dead.”
“Dead!” he fairly screamed.
“No, dying.”
He started toward the house with the speed of the wind, but Nannie stopped him.
“Don't!” she exclaimed. “Wait! Oh, I'm so excited I'm all mixed up! She's had an awful spell, but she's better now; but you mustn't startle her. Something's the matter with her heart. It was beating like a sledge-hammer—an awful spell.”
“Oh, if she dies, who'll take care of me? What shall I do?”
And he wrung his weak little hands.
“She won't die, I guess, if we take good care of her. Oh, it's awful to have anything of this kind happen when you're out in the country miles from a doctor.”
“And I have been crazy enough to rent a cottage in the Adirondacks!”
Nannie looked at him solemnly and said:
“Oh!”
“I'll let it stand idle! Hilda might die up there! I never thought of such a thing, she looks so well. AndImight be taken worse,” he gasped as one who suddenly realized a still more awful possibility. “It would never do for us to go up there.”
Nannie looked still more solemn and said:
“Oh, no.”
By this time they had reached the house, and Mr. Seymour was tiptoeing about, getting out one remedy after another for his prostrate wife, who feeblyassured him she was better. By the time he had given her smelling salts, a little port, a whiff of ammonia, some soda and water, a smell of camphor, and had bathed her forehead in Florida water, alcohol, witch-hazel, and rubbed it with camphor ice and a menthol pencil, the case began to look really serious, and Hilda was honestly ill.
She lay on the divan, perspiring and uncomfortable, uneasy in conscience and timorous as to results, until near evening, when her husband, with many a misgiving, took her away in a carriage—not to the Adirondacks.
Nannie watched until they were out of sight, and when she turned she saw Steve coming, and in her swift way contrasted him with DeLancy Seymour.
That evening after dinner, without a word of explanation to her husband, Nannie walked off to the house of her cousin, Mr. Misfit. Now, Steve was by this time somewhat accustomed to her eccentric ways and seldom questioned them, nor did he realize that they were eccentric.He had grown up knowing very little of women and regarding them as a peculiar class, which no doubt they are. Indeed, his rural experiences, not only with his wife, but also with the hens and with Sarah Maria, had tended toward the inclusion of the entire sex under the head incomprehensible, and he was inclined to treat them like difficult words, which we point at from a distance without attempting to grapple.
He might have maintained this let-alone attitude indefinitely but for a growing sense of the total depravity of vegetable sins and a realization of his miserable insufficiency as a combatant. Naturally, in looking about him for assistance he thought of her who should be his help-meet, and mentally began to question her continual absence from home. This evening he was feeling a little more tired than usual, and an ill-selected luncheon in town had depressed him. When he found that the weeds were likely to overpower him he arose and decided that Nannie must be called upon. She was not athome, but he could fetch her. To be sure that might not be easy, but Steve was now fully roused. Prolonged warfare had developed in his nature a trace of pugilism hitherto unsuspected by his nearest friend. Every man has more or less of the warrior within him. It may be asleep, but it is there, and Steve was no exception.
A short walk brought him to the house of Nannie's cousin, and there he found the lady for whom he was seeking.
“Are you going home now, Nannie?” he asked in his usual gentle way.
Nannie looked into his face and saw something new, and it roused her opposition.
“No,” she said.
Now, Steve had read Ian Maclaren's story of the wretched beadle who, newly inflated, but not profited, by his lonely wedding journey to a Presbyterian synod, resolved to experiment in the exercise of authority upon his bride. But, alas! he had read to his destruction. He remembered with what majesty the beadle said:
“Rebecca, close the door.”
But he did not remember what Rebecca did, and hence had no better sense than to say this evening, with a quiet firmness new to his domestic use:
“I should like to have you go home now, Nannie. There are matters that need your attention.”
Nannie rose at once and walked home without a word, Steve accompanying her. By the time they got there a young moon was sinking in the west, and with the curiosity common to extreme youth it strained its eyes to see through the trees what Nannie would do.
“The radishes and lettuce need weeding,” said Steve when they reached the garden, and Nannie walked directly to these beds and went to work, while Steve occupied himself at a little distance.
Before long old Hayseed came up and leaned upon the fence.
“Well, neighbor,” he said, “what are ye doin' by moonlight?”
Nannie stood erect and looked at him. Her black eyes fairly scintillated and herlips were compressed. All around her were scattered the uprooted weeds, and the lettuce and radishes lay with them.
“What crop air ye raisin' now?” he asked.
“I'm raising Cain!” she said.