CHAPTER XIX

RALPH’S HOMELAND

At the bend of the road the land sloped suddenly straight for the river brink. A quarter of a mile below was the dam, above Mr. Rudemeir’s red saw mill. Little River widened at this point, and swept in curves around a little island. There were no buildings on it, only broad low lush meadows that provided a home for muskrats and waterfowl. Late in the fall fat otters could be seen circling around the still waters, and wild geese and ducks made it a port of call in their flights north and south.

As Ella Lou started into the water, Carlota asked just one question.

“How deep is it?”

“Oh, it varies in spots,” answered Cousin Roxy, cheerfully; her chin was up, her firm lips set in an unswerving smile, holding the reins in a steady grasp that steadied Ella Lou’s footing. To Jean she had never seemed more resourceful or fearless. “There’s some pretty deep holes, here and there, but we’ll trust to Ella Lou’s common sense, and the workings of divine Providence. Go ’long there, girl, and mind your step.”

Ella Lou seemed to take the challenge personally. She felt her way along the sandy bottom, daintily, and the wheels of the two seated democrat sank to the hubs. Out in midstream they met the double current, sweeping around both sides of the island; and here for a minute or two, danger seemed imminent. Cousin Roxy gave a quick look back over her shoulder.

“Can you swim, Jean?” Jean nodded, and held on to the cats and Cynthy, grimly. It was hard saying which of the two were proving the more difficult to manage. The wagon swayed perilously, but Ella Lou held to her course, and suddenly they felt the rise of the shore line again. Overhead, there had flown a vanguard of frightened birds, flying ahead of the smothering clouds of smoke that poured now in blinding masses down from the burning woods. The cries and calls of the men working along the back fire line reached the little group on the far shore, faintly.

As the mare climbed up the bank, dripping wet and snorting, Cousin Roxy glanced back over her shoulder at the way they had come. Cynthy gave one look too, and covered her face with her hands. The flames had swept straight down over her little home, and she cried out in anguish.

“Pity’s sakes, Cynthy, praise God that the two of us aren’t burning up this minute with those old shingles and rafters,” cried Mrs. Ellis, joyfully. “I could rise and sing the Doxology, water soaked as I am, and mean it more than I ever have in all of my life.”

“Oh, and Miss Allan, not one of the cats got wet even,” Jean exclaimed, laughing, almost hysterically. “You don’t know what a time I had holding that bag up out of the water. Do turn around and look at the wonderful sight. See, Carlota!”

But Carlota had jumped out of the wagon with Cousin Roxy, and the two of them were petting and tending Ella Lou, who stood trembling in every limb, her eyes still wide with fear.

“You wonderful old heroine, you,” said Carlota, softly. “I think we all owe our lives to your courage.”

“She’s a fine mare, if I do say so, God bless her.” Cousin Roxy unwound her old brown veil and used it to wipe off Ella Lou’s dripping neck and back. If her own cloak had been dry she would have laid it over her for a cover.

The flames had reached the opposite shore, but while the smoke billowed across, Little River left them high and dry in the safety zone.

“I guess we’d better be making for home as quick as we can,” said Cousin Roxy. Except for a little pallor around her lips, and an extra brightness to her eyes, no one could have told that she had just caught a glimpse of the Dark Angel’s pinions beside that river brink. She pushed back her wisps of wavy hair, climbed back into the wagon, and turned Ella Lou’s nose towards home.

The Judge was watching anxiously, pacing up and down the long veranda with Billie sitting in his reed chair bolstered up with pillows beside him. He had telephoned repeatedly down to Greenacres, but they were all quite as anxious now as himself. It was Billie who first caught a sight of the team and its occupants.

Kit had gone out into the kitchen to start dinner going. She had refused to believe that any harm could come to Cousin Roxy or anyone under her care, and at the sound of Billie’s voice, she glanced from the window, and caught sight of Jean’s familiar red cap.

“Land alive, don’t hug me to death, all of you,” exclaimed Cousin Roxy. “Jean, you go and telephone to your mother right away, and relieve her anxiety. Like enough, she thinks we’re all burned to cinders by this time, and tell her she’d better have plenty of coffee and sandwiches made up to send over to the men in the woods. All us women will have our night’s work cut out for us.”

It was the girls’ first experience of a country forest fire. All through the afternoon the fresh relays of men kept arriving from the nearby villages, and outlying farms, ready to relieve those who had been working through the morning. Up at the little white church, the old bell rope parted and Sally Peckham’s two little brothers distinguished themselves forever by climbing to the belfry, lying on their backs on the old beams, and taking their turns kicking the bell.

There was but little sleep for any members of the family that night. Jean never forgot the thrill of watching the fire from the cupola windows, and with the other girls she spent most of the time up there until daybreak. There was a fascination in seeing that battle from afar, and realizing how the little puny efforts of a handful of men could hold in check such a devastating force. Only country dwellers could appreciate the peril of having all one owned in the world, all that was dear and precious, and comprised in the word “home,” swept away in the path of the flames.

“Poor old Cynthy,” said Jean. “I’m so glad she has her cats. I shall never forget her face when she looked back. Just think of losing all the little keepsakes of a lifetime.”

It was nearly five o’clock when Shad returned. He was grimy and smoky, but exuberant.

“By jiminitty, we’ve got her under control,” he cried, executing a little jig on the side steps. “Got some hot coffee and doughnuts for a fellow? Who do you suppose worked better than anybody? Gave us all cards and spades on how to manage a fire. He says this is just a little flea bite compared with the ones he has up home. He says he’s seen a forest fire twenty miles wide, sweeping over the mountains up yonder.”

“Who do you mean, Shad,” asked Jean. “For goodness’ sake tell us who it is, and stop spouting.”

“Who do you suppose I mean?” asked Shad, reproachfully. “Honey Hancock’s cousin, Ralph McRae, from Saskatoon.”

Jean blushed prettily, as she always did when Ralph’s name was mentioned. She had hardly seen him since his arrival, owing to Billie’s illness, and Carlota’s visit with her. Still, oddly enough, even Shad’s high praise of him, made her feel shyly happy.

The fire burned fitfully for three days, breaking out unexpectedly in new spots, and keeping everyone excited and busy. The old Ames barn went up in smoke, and Mr. Rudemeir’s saw mill caught fire three times.

“By gum!” he said, jubilantly, “I guess I sit out on that roof all night long, slapping sparks with a wet mop, but it didn’t get ahead of me.”

Sally and Kit ran a sort of pony express, riding horseback from house to house, carrying food and coffee over to the men who were scattered nearly four miles around the fire-swept area. Ralph and Piney ran their own rescue work at the north end of town. Honey had been put on the mail team with Mr. Ricketts’ eldest boy, while the former gave his services on the volunteer fire corps. The end of the third day Jean was driving back from Nantic station, after she had taken Carlota down to catch the local train to Providence. The Contessa had sent her maid to meet her there, and take her on to Boston. It had been a wonderful visit, Carlota said, and already she was planning for Jean’s promised trip to the home villa in Italy.

Visions of that visit were flitting through Jean’s mind as she drove along the old river road, and she hardly noticed the beat of hoofs behind her, until Ralph drew rein on Mollie beside her. They had hardly seen each other to talk to, since her return from Boston.

“The fire’s all out,” he said. “We have left some of the boys on guard yet, in case it may be smouldering in the underbrush. I have just been telling Rudemeir and the other men, if they’d learn to pile their brush the way we do up home, they would be able to control these little fires in no time. You girls must be awfully tired out. You did splendid work.”

“Kit and Sally did, you mean,” answered Jean. “All I did was to help cook.” She laughed. “I never dreamt that men and boys could eat so many doughnuts and cup cakes. Cousin Roxy says she sent over twenty-two loaves of gingerbread, not counting all the other stuff. Was any one hurt, at all?”

“You mean eating too much?” asked Ralph, teasingly. Then more seriously, he added, “A few of the men were burnt a little bit, but nothing to speak of. How beautiful your springtime is down here in New England. It makes me want to take off my coat and go to work right here, reclaiming some of these old worked out acres, and making them show the good that still lies in them if they are plowed deep enough.”

Jean sighed, quickly.

“Do you really think one could ever make any money here?” she asked. “Sometimes I get awfully discouraged, Mr. McRae. Of course, we didn’t come up here with the idea of being farmers. It was Dad’s health that brought us, but once we were here, we couldn’t help but see the chance of making Greenacres pay our way a little. Cousin Roxy has told us we’re in mighty good luck to even get our vegetables and fruit out of it this last year, and it isn’t the past year I am thinking of; it’s the next year, and the next one and the next. One of the most appalling things about Gilead is, that you get absolutely contented up here, and you go around singing blissfully, ‘I’ve reached the land of corn and wine, and all its blessings freely mine.’ Old Daddy Higginson who taught our art class down in New York always said that contentment was fatal to progress, and I believe it. Father is really a brilliant man, and he’s getting his full strength back. And while I have a full sense of gratitude towards the healing powers of these old green hills, still I have a horror of Dad stagnating here.”

Ralph turned his head to watch her face, giving Mollie her own way, with slack rein.

“Has he said anything himself about wanting to go back to his work?” he asked.

“Not yet. I suppose that is what we really must wait for. His own confidence returning. You see, what I’m afraid of is this: Dad was born and brought up right here, and the granite of these old hills is in his system. He loves every square foot of land around here. Just supposing he should be contented to settle down, like old Judge Ellis, and turn into a sort of Connecticut country squire.”

“There are worse things than that in the world,” Ralph replied. “Too many of our best men forget the land that gave them birth, and pour the full strength of their mature powers and capabilities into the city mart. You speak of Judge Ellis. Look at what that old fellow’s mind has done for his home community. He has literally brought modern improvements into Gilead. He has represented her up at Hartford off and on for years, when he was not sitting in judgment here.”

“You mean, that you think Dad ought not to go back?” asked Jean almost resentfully. “That just because he happened to have been born here, he owes it to Gilead to stay here now, and give it the best he has?”

Ralph laughed, good naturedly.

“We’re getting into rather deep water, Miss Jean,” he answered. “I can see that you don’t like the country, and I do. I love it down east here where all of my folks came from originally, and I’m mighty fond of the west.”

“Oh, I’m sure I’d like that too,” broke in Jean, eagerly. “Mother’s from the west, you know. From California, and I’d love to go out there. I would love the wide scope and freedom I am sure. What bothers me here, are those rock walls, for instance.” She pointed at the old one along the road, uneven, half tumbling down, and overgrown with gray moss; the standing symbol of the infinite patience and labor of a bygone generation. “Just think of all the people who spent their lives carrying those stones, and cutting up all this beautiful land into these little shut-in pastures.”

“Yes, but those rocks represent the clearing of fields for tillage. If they hadn’t dug them out of the ground, they wouldn’t have had any cause for Thanksgiving dinners. I’m mighty proud of my New England blood, and I want to tell you right now, if it wasn’t for the New England blood that went out to conquer the West, where would the West be today?”

“That’s all right,” said Jean, a bit crossly for her, “but if they had pioneered a little bit right around here, there wouldn’t be so many run down farms. What I would like to do, now that Dad is getting well, is make Greenacres our playground in summertime, and go back home in the winter.”

“Home,” he repeated, curiously.

“Yes, we were all born down in New York,” answered Jean, looking south over the country landscape, as though she could see Manhattan’s panoramic skyline rising like a mirage of beckoning promises. “I am afraid that is home to me.”