CHAPTER VIII

SEEKING HER GOAL

All the way up on the train Jean kept thinking about Daddy Higginson’s last words when he had held her hand at parting.

“This isn’t my thought, Jeanie, but it’s a good one even if Nietzsche did write it. As I used to tell you in class about Pope and Socrates and all the other warped geniuses, think of a man’s physical suffering before you condemn what he has written. Carlyle might have been our best optimist if he’d only discovered pepsin tablets, and lost his dyspepsia. Here it is, and I want you to remember it, for it goes with arrows of longing. The formula for happiness: ‘A yea, a nay, a straight line, a goal.’”

It sounded simple enough. Jean felt all keyed up to new endeavor from it, with a long look ahead at her goal, and patience to wait for it. She felt she could undertake anything, even the care of the house during her mother’s absence, and that was probably what lay behind the telegram.

When Kit met her at the station, she gave her an odd look after she had kissed her.

“Lordy, but you do look Joan of Arc-ish, Jean. You’d better not be lofty up home. Everything’s at sixes and sevens.”

“I’m not a bit Joan of Arc-ish,” retorted Jean, with a flash of true Robbins spirit. “What’s the trouble?”

Kit gathered up the reins from Princess’s glossy back, and started her up the hill. Mr. Briggs had somehow been evaded this time. There was a good coating of snow on the ground and the pines looked weighed down by it, all silver white in the sunshine, and green beneath.

“Nothing much, except that—what on earth have you got in the bag, Jean?”

Jean had forgotten all about the puppy. Piper had kept his word and met her at the train with Jiggers’ son, a sleepy, diminutive Boston bull pup all curled up comfortably in a wicker basket with little windows, and a cosy nest inside. He had started to show signs of personal interest, scratching and whining as soon as Jean had set the bag down at her feet in the carriage.

“It’s for Doris. Talbot Pearson sent it up to her to remember Jiggers by.”

“Jiggers?”

“It’s Jiggers’ baby,” said Jean solemnly. “Looks just like him, too. His name is Piper. Won’t she love him, Kit?”

“I suppose so,” said Kit somewhat ungraciously. “I haven’t room for one bit of sentiment after the last few days. You’ve been having a round of joy and you’re all rested up, but if you’d been here, well . . .” eloquently. “First of all there came a letter from Benita Ranch. Uncle Hal’s not expected to live and they’ve sent for Mother. Seems to me as if everyone sends for Mother when anything’s the matter.”

“But Father isn’t going way out there too, is he?”

“Yes. They’ve wired money for both of them to go, and stay for a month anyway, and Cousin Roxy says it’s the right thing to do. She’s going to send Mrs. Gorham, the Judge’s housekeeper, to look after us. Now, Jean, don’t put up any hurdles to jump over because it’s bad enough as it is, and Mother feels terribly. She’d never have gone if Cousin Roxy hadn’t bolstered up her courage, but they say the trip will do Father a world of good and he’ll miss the worst part of the winter, and after all, we’re not babies.”

Jean was silent. It seemed as if the muscles in her throat had all tightened up and she could not say one word. They must do what was best, she knew that. It had been driven into her head for a year past, that always trying to do what was best, but still it did seem as if California were too far away for such a separation. The year before, when it had been necessary to take Mr. Robbins down to Florida, it had not seemed so hard, because at Shady Cove they were well acquainted, and surrounded by neighbors, but here—she looked out over the bleak, wintry landscape and shivered. It had been beautiful through the summer and fall, but now it was barren and cheerless. The memory of Bab’s cosy studio apartment came back to her, and a quick sense of rebellion followed against the fate that had cast them all up there in the circle of those hills.

“You brace up now, Jean, and stop looking as if you could chew tacks,” Kit exclaimed, encouragingly. “We all feel badly enough and we’ve got to make the best of it, and help Mother.”

The next few days were filled with preparations for the journey. Cousin Roxy came down and took command, laughing them out of their gloom, and making the Motherbird feel all would be well.

“Laviny don’t hustle pretty much,” she said, speaking of old Mrs. Gorham, who had been the Judge’s housekeeper for years. “But she’s sure and steady and a good cook, and I’ll drive over every few days to see things are going along as they should, and there’s the telephone too. Bless my heart, if these big, healthy girls can’t look after themselves for a month, they must be poor spindling specimens of womanhood. I tell you, Betty, it’s trials that temper the soul and body. You trot right along and have a second honeymoon in the land of flowers. And if it’s the Lord’s will your brother should be taken, don’t rebel and pine. I always wished we had the same outlook as Bunyan did from his prison cell when he wrote of the vision on Jordan’s bank, when those left on this side sang and glorified God if one was taken home. Remember what Paul said, ‘For ye are not as those who have no hope.’ Jean, put in your mother’s summer parasol. She’s going to need it.”

Shad drove them down to the station in a snowstorm. Jean stood in the doorway with Cousin Roxy and Mrs. Gorham, waving until they passed the turn of the road at the mill. The other girls were at school, and the house seemed fearfully lonely to her as she turned back and fastened the storm doors.

“Now,” Cousin Roxy said briskly, drawing on her thick knit woolen driving gloves, “I’m going along myself, and do you stand up straight, Jean Robbins, and take your mother’s place.” She mitigated the seeming severity of the charge by a sound kiss and a pat on the shoulder. “I brought a ham down for you chicks, one of the Judge’s prize hickory home smoked ones, and there’s plenty in the cellar and the preserve closet. You’d better let Laviny go along her own gait. She always seems to make out better that way. Just you have an oversight on the girls and keep up the good cheer in the house. Pile on the logs and shut out the cold. While they’re away, if I were you I’d close up the big front parlor, and move the piano out into the living-room where you’ll get some good of it. Goodbye for now. Tell Laviny not to forget to set some sponge right away. I noticed you were out of bread.”

Ella Lou took the wintry road with zest, the steam clouding her nostrils, as she shook her head with a snort, and breasted the hill road. Jean breathed a sigh as the familiar carriage disappeared over the brow of the hill. Out in the dining-room, Mrs. Gorham was moving placidly about as if she had always belonged there, humming to herself an old time song.

“When the mists have rolled in splendor, from the beauty of the hills, And the sunshine warm and tender, falls in kisses on the rills, We may read love’s shining letter, in the rainbow of the spray, We shall know each other better, when the mists have cleared away.”

When Shad returned from the station, he came into the kitchen with a load of wood on his arm, stamping his feet, and whistling.

“Seen anything of Joe?” he asked. “I ain’t laid eyes on the little creature since breakfast, and he was going to chop up my kindling for me. I’ll bet a cookie he’s took to his heels. He’s been acting funny for several days ever since that peddler went along here.”

“Oh, not really, Shad,” said Jean, anxiously. She had overlooked Joe completely in the hurry of preparations for departure. “What could happen to him?”

“Nothing special,” answered Shad dryly, “’cepting an ingrowing dislike for work.”

“You can’t expect a little fellow only nine to work very hard, can you?”

“Well, he should earn his board and keep, I’ve been telling him. And he don’t want to go to school, he says. He’s got to do something. He keeps asking me when I’m going down to Nantic. Looks suspicious to me!”

“Nantic? Do you suppose—” Jean stopped short. Shad failed to notice her hesitancy, but went on out doors. Perhaps the boy was wondering if he could get any trace of his father down at Nantic, she thought. There was a great deal of the Motherbird’s nature in her eldest robin’s sympathy and swift, sure understanding of another’s need. She kept an eye out for Joe all day, but the afternoon passed, the girls came home from school, and supper was on the table without any sign of their Christmas waif. And finally, when Shad came in from bedding down the cows and milking, he said he was pretty sure Joe had cut and run away.

“Do you think it’s because he didn’t want to stay with us while Mother and Father were away?” asked Helen.

“No, I don’t,” Shad replied. “I think he’s just a little tramp, and he had to take to the road when the call came to him. He wasn’t satisfied with a good warm bed and plenty to eat.”

But Jean felt the responsibility of Joe’s loss, and set a lamp burning all night in the sitting room window as a sign to light his way back home. It was such a long walk down through the snow to Nantic, and when he got there, Mr. Briggs would be sure to see him, and make trouble for him. And perhaps he had wandered out into the hills on a regular tramp and got lost. Just before she went up to bed Jean called up Cousin Roxy and asked her advice.

“Well, child, I’d go to bed tonight anyway. He couldn’t have strayed away far, and there are plenty of lights in the farmhouse windows to guide him. I saw him sitting on the edge of the woodpile just when your mother was getting ready to leave, and then he slipped away. I wouldn’t worry over him. It isn’t a cold night, and the snow fall is light. If he has run off, there’s lots of barns where he can curl down under the hay and keep warm. When the Judge drives down to Nantic tomorrow I’ll have him inquire.”

But neither tomorrow, nor the day after, did any news come to them of Joe. Mr. Briggs was sure he hadn’t been around the station or the freight trains. Saturday Kit and Doris drove around through the wood roads, looking for footprints or some other signs of him, and Jean telephoned to all the points she could think of, giving a description of him, and asking them to send the wanderer back if they found him. But the days passed, and it looked as if Joe had joined the army of the great departed, as Cousin Roxy said.

Before the first letter reached them from California, telling of the safe arrival at Benita Ranch of Mr. and Mrs. Robbins, winter decided to come and stay a while. There came a morning when Shad had hard work opening the storm door of the kitchen, banked as it was with snow. Inside, from the upper story windows, the girls looked out, and found even the stone walls and rail fences covered over with the great mantle that had fallen steadily and silently through the night. There was something majestically beautiful in the sweep of the valley and its encircling hills, seen in this garb.

“You’ll never get to school today, girls,” Mrs. Gorham declared. “Couldn’t get through them drifts for love nor money. ’Twouldn’t be human, nuther, to take any horse out in such weather. Like enough the mailman won’t pull through. Looks real pretty, don’t it?”

“And, just think, Mother and Father are in summerland,” Helen said, standing with her arm around Jean at the south window. “I wish winter wouldn’t come. I’m going to follow summer all around the world some time when I’m rich.”

“Helenita always looks forward to that happy day when the princess shall come into her own,” Kit sang out, gleefully. “Meantime, ladies, I want to be the first to tell the joyous tidings. The pump’s frozen up.”

“Shad’ll have to take a bucket and go down to the spring then, and break through the ice,” Mrs. Gorham said, comfortably. “After you’ve lived up here all your life, you don’t mind such little things. It’s natural for a pump to freeze up this sort of weather.”

“You know,” Kit said darkly to Jean, a few minutes later, in the safety of the sitting room, “I’m not sure whether I want to be an optimist or not. I think sometimes they’re perfectly deadly, don’t you, Jean? I left my window open at the bottom last night instead of the top, and this morning, my dear child, there was snow on my pillow. Yes, ma’am, and when I told that to Mrs. Gorham, she told me it was good and healthy for me, and I ought to have rubbed some on my face. Let’s pile in a lot of wood and get it nice and toasty if we do have to stay in today. Who’s Shad calling to?”

Outside they heard Shad’s full toned voice hailing somebody out in the drifts, and presently Piney came to the door stamping her feet. She wore a pair of Honey’s old “felts,” the high winter boots of the men folks of Gilead, and was muffled to her eyebrows.

“I walked over this far anyway,” she said happily. “Couldn’t get through with the horse. I wondered if we couldn’t get down to the mill, and borrow Mr. Peckham’s heavy wood sled, and try to go to school on that.”

“We can’t break through the roads,” objected Doris.

“They’re working on them now. Didn’t you hear the hunters come up in the night? The barking of the dogs wakened us, and Mother said there were four big teams going up to the camp.”

Just then the door opened and Shad came in with the morning’s milk, his face aglow, his breath steaming.

“Well, it does beat all,” he exclaimed, taking off his mittens and slapping his hands together. “What do you suppose? It was dark last night and snowing when I drove the cows up from the barnyard. They was all huddled together like, and I didn’t notice them. Well, this morning I found a deer amongst ’em, fine and dandy as could be, and he ain’t a bit scared, neither. Pert and frisky and lying cuddled down in the hay just as much at home as could be. Want to come see him? I’ve got a path shoveled.”

Out they all trooped to the barn, through the walls of snow. The air was still and surprisingly mild. Some Phoebe birds fluttered about the hen houses where Shad had dropped some cracked corn, and Jim Dandy, the big Rhode Island Red rooster, stood nonchalantly on one foot eyeing the landscape as if he would have said,

“Huh, think this a snowfall? You ought to have seen one in my day.”

The barn smelled of closely packed hay and dry clover. Inside it was dim and shadowy, and two or three barn cats scooted away from their pans of milk at the sight of intruders. Shad led the way back of the cow stall to the calf corner, and there, sure enough, shambling awkwardly but fearlessly to its feet, was a big brown deer, its wide brown eyes asking hospitality, its nose raised inquiringly.

“You dear, you,” cried Doris, holding out her hand. “Oh, if we could only tame him; and maybe he’d bring a whole herd down to us.”

“Let’s keep him until the hunters have gone, anyway,” Jean said. “Will he stay, Shad?”

“Guess so, if he’s fed, and the storm keeps up. They often come down like this when feed’s short, and herd in with the cattle, but this one’s a dandy.”

“And the cows don’t seem to mind him one bit.” Doris looked around curiously at the three, Buttercup, Lady Goldtip and Brownie. They munched their breakfast serenely, just as if it were the most everyday occurrence in the world to have this wild brother of the woodland herd with them.

“Let’s call up Cousin Roxy and tell her about it,” said Kit. “She’ll enjoy it too.”

On the way back to the house they stopped short as the sharp crack of rifles sounded up through the silent hills.

“They’re out pretty early,” said Shad, shaking his head. “Them hunter fellows just love a morning like this, when every track shows in the snow.”

“They’d never come near here,” Doris exclaimed, indignantly. “I’d love to see a lot of giant rabbits and squirrels hunting them.”

“Would you, bless your old heart,” laughed Jean, putting her arm around the tender hearted youngest of the brood. “Never have any hunting at all, would you?”

Doris shook her head.

“Some day there won’t be any,” she said, firmly. “Don’t you know what it says in the Bible about, ‘the lion shall lie down with the lamb and there shall be no more bloodshed’?”

Shad looked at her with twinkling eyes as he drawled in his slow, Yankee fashion,

“Couldn’t we even kill a chicken?”

And Doris, who specially liked wishbones, subsided. Over the telephone Cousin Roxy cheered them all up, first telling them the road committeeman, Mr. Tucker Hicks, was working his way down with helpers, and would get the mailman through even if he was a couple of hours late.

“You folks have a nice hot cup of coffee ready for the men when they come along, and I’ll do the same up here, to hearten them up a bit. I’ll be down later on; a week from Monday is Lincoln’s birthday, and I thought we’d better have a little celebration in the town hall. It’s high time we stirred Gilead up a bit. I never could see what good it was dozing like a lot of Rip van Winkles over the fires until the first bluebird woke you up. I want you girls to all help me out with the programme, so brush up your wits.”

“Isn’t that splendid?” exclaimed Kit, radiantly. “Cousin Roxy is really a brick, girls. She must have known we were ready to nip each other’s heads off up here just from lack of occupation.”

Piney joined in the general laugh, and sat by the table, eyeing the four girls rather wistfully.

“You don’t half appreciate the fun of being a large family,” she said. “Just think if you were the only girl, and the only boy was way out in Saskatoon.”

Jean glanced up, a little slow tinge of color rising in her cheeks. She had not thought of Saskatoon or of Honey and Ralph for a long while.

“When do you expect him back, Piney?”

“Along in the summer, I think. Ralph says he is getting along first rate.”

“Give him our love,” chirped up Doris.

“Our very best wishes,” corrected Helen in her particular way. But Kit said nothing, and Jean did not seem to notice, so the message to the West went unchallenged.