"Why, I didn't know that—" the old parson began to splutter while a murmur of surprise and question began to arise among the hitherto hypnotized wedding-guests. Judge Rutherford stood apart with the twin parents showing them some book treasure he had unearthed for father, and I don't think that either one of my natural guardians was at my wedding except in body.
At the critical moment dear old Matt did rise to the occasion, as did Polly also, with a crimson glow coming into her drenched cheeks, pallid only a second before, and a light like sunrise on a violet bank coming into her eyes.
"She's always intended to marry Baldwin. I knew all about it. Go on!" Matthew commanded, as he supported Polly in her blankets on wobbly bare feet.
During the resuscitation of Polly, Owen Murray, true to his new passion for the Leghorn family, had been reviving Mr. G. Bird and now with regard for decorum, he set him quietly upon his feet. Did the Golden Bird run like a coward from the scene of the catastrophe of his making? He did not. He deliberately stretched his wings, gave a mighty crow, and walked over and began to peck in my smock-pockets at corn that had lain there many long weeks for him.
"Go on, Parson," commanded Pan again, impatiently, and then standing together in the fading sunlight, Pan, Mr. G. Bird, and I were married.
Did Pan allow me to stay and make satisfactory explanations of my conduct to my friends and enjoy the wedding festivities so carefully copied out of the "Review" by Polly and Matthew? He did not. Immediately after the ceremony he picked up his two bundles and turned to all of our assembled friends.
"We'll be back in a few weeks, and then I'll show you what I learned in Argentina. We have to hurry now to get across the valley. Some of the fine sheep over at Plunkett's are down with foot rash, and I want to be there by noon. Luck to you all." With these words Pan led me around the corner of the house, through the old garden, and out into the woods, Mr. G. Bird still following at the smock-pocket.
"We'll have to go back and lock him up; he'll follow me," I said, as I paused and took the Golden Bird's proud head in my hand and let him peck at a dull gold circle on my third finger, which, I am sure, Pan himself had hammered out of a nugget for me.
"No, let's take him. I want to show him over at Plunkett's and then in Providence and Hillsboro, to grade up their poultry. I doubt if there's his equal in America," answered Pan as he went on ahead of me to break the undergrowth into which he was leading me underneath the huge old trees.
"I didn't write you to let that fool Belgian prune the whole place like that," Pan remarked as we paused at old Tilting Rock and looked down upon the orderly and repaired Elmnest in the sunset glow.
"Write?" I murmured weakly, while my mind accused Uncle Cradd, and rightly too, as I learned later after a search in his pockets.
"Wasn't any use sending any letter after that New Orleans one, because I traveled on the return trip all the way myself. Still you did pretty well to get the wedding and all ready at the hour I set, even if you did make that awful flummery mistake. I'll forgive you even that after I get over the shock of seeing you look that way."
"The hour you set?" I again murmured a weak question.
"I thought of writing you to get ready by nine o'clock in the morning, but I knew I'd have to stop in Hayesville for that bit of red tape, so I said five o'clock and had to hustle to make it. I knew you'd be ready. Now you'll have to travel, for we have five miles to go and it takes the pot two hours to simmer. Are you hungry?"
I hadn't the strength to answer. I had just enough to pad along behind at his heels with Mr. G. Bird at mine. However, as I padded, I suddenly felt return that strength of ten women which I had put from me the morning I fled from the empty Elmnest, and I knew that it had come upon me to abide.
I needed every bit of the energy of ten ordinary women to keep up with Pan's commands, as I helped him make camp beside a cool spring that bubbled out of a rock in a little cove that was swung high up on the side of Paradise Ridge. I washed the bundle of greens he had brought to the wedding and set them to simmer with the inevitable black walnut kernels in a pot that he produced from under a log in the edge of the woods, along with a couple of earthen bowls like the ones he kept secreted in the spring-house at Elmnest.
"Got 'em all over ten States," he answered, as I questioned him with delight at the presence of our old friends. Then while I crouched and stirred, he took his long knife out, cut great armfuls of cedar boughs, threw them in a shadow at the foot of a tall old oak, and with a bundle of sticks swept upon them a great pile of dry leaves into the form of a huge nest. The golden glow was just fading as I lifted the pot and poured his portion in his bowl, then mine in the other, while he cut the black loaf he had taken from his bundle into hunks with his knife. It was after seven o'clock, and the crescent moon hung low by the ridge, waiting for the sun to take its complete departure before setting in for its night's joy-ride up the sky. It was eight before Pan finished his slow browsing in his bowl and came over to crouch with me out on the ledge of rock that overlooked the world below us. Clusters of lights in nests of gray smoke were dotted around over the valley, and I knew the nearest one was Riverfield; indeed I could see a bunch of lights a little way apart from the rest, and I felt sure that they were lighting the remaining revelers at my wedding-feast at Elmnest. The Golden Bird had gone sensibly to roost on one of the low limits of the old oak, and he reminded me of the white blur of Polly's wedding bell, which I had caught a glimpse of as I ran through the hall at Elmnest.
"I am thy child," crooned Pan, with a new note to his chant that immediately started on my heartstrings. "And I'm tired," he added as he stretched himself on the rock beside me, laid his head on my breast, and nuzzled his lips into my bare throat.
"I'm going to lift the crests and look at the tips of your ears, Pan," I said as I held him tight.
"Better not," he mocked me.
I did, and the tips were—I never intend to tell.
The lights were twinkling out in the valley one by one, and the young moon made the purple blackness below us only faintly luminous when Pan drew me closer and then into the very edge of the world itself, and pointed down into the soft darkness.
"We are all like that, we natives of this great land—asleep in the midst of a silvery mist, while the rest of the world is in the blaze of hell. We've got to wake up and take them to our breast, to nourish and warm and save them. There'll be just you and I and a few others to call the rest of our people until they hear and value and work," he said as he settled me against him so that the twain chants of our heartstrings became one.
"I'll follow you through the woods and help you call, Adam," I said softly, with my lips under the red crest nearest to me.
"And I'll bring you back here to nest and stay with you until your young are on their feet, with their eyes open," Pan crooned against my lips. "Dear God, what a force unit one woman and one man can create!"
This is not a story of laughter or tears, of shock or depression. It has no manufactured gloom. It preaches no reform. It has not a single social problem around which the characters move and argue and agonize. No reader need lie awake at night wondering what the author meant; all she intends to convey goes over the top with the first sight of the printed words. The story invites the reader to be thrilled, and dares him (or her) to weep.
Briefly, "The Firefly of France" is in the manner of the romance—in the manner of Dumas, of Walter Scott. It is a story of love, mystery, danger, and daring. It opens in the gorgeous St. Ives Hotel in New York and ends behind the Allied lines in France. The story gets on its way on the first page, and the interest is continuous and increasing until the last page. And it is all beautifully done.
The Philadelphia Record says: "No more absorbing romance of the war has been written than 'The Firefly of France.' In a sprightly, spontaneous way the author tells a story that is pregnant with the heroic spirit of the day. There is a blending of mystery, adventure, love and high endeavor that will charm every reader."
12mo, 363 pagesIllustrated by Grant T. ReynardPrice $1.40
At All BookstoresPublished byTHE NEW CENTURY CO.353 Fourth AvenueNew York City
A book of humor and entertaining facts. It is a sort of Los Angeles Canterbury Tales wherein appears the stories, told in the first person, of the handsome film actor whose beauty is fatal to his comfort; of the child wonder; the studio mother; the camera man, who "shoots the films"; the scenario writer; the "extra" man and woman, whose numbers are as the sands of the sea; the publicity man, who "rings the bells," etc., etc.
All the stories are located in or near Los Angeles, a section more densely populated with makers of "movies" than any other section on earth. The author lives there, he has been in sympathetic contact with these votaries of this new art since its beginning, and his statements are entirely trustworthy.
"Film Folk" is not a series of actual biographies of individuals; the author in each case presents an actor, a director or one of the other characters for the sake of concreteness and to carry out the story-form, and he contrives to set forth in the course of the book the entire movie-making world. The reader gets a clear idea of how the films are made and he is immensely entertained with the accounts of the manners and customs of the inhabitants of the vast movie villages—manners and customs unique in many respects.
The stories are told in a style as easy to read as the author is good-humored.
8vo, 356 pagesIllustrated from photographsPrice $2.00
At All BookstoresPublished byTHE CENTURY CO.353 Fourth AvenueNew York City