CHAPTER IX

JEAN MOTHERS THE BROOD

Cousin Roxy came down the following day and blocked out her plan for a celebration at the Town Hall on Lincoln’s Birthday. The girls had pictured the Town Hall when they had first heard of it as a rather imposing edifice, imposing at least, for Gilead. But it was really only a long, old gray building, one story high, built like a Quaker meeting house with two doors in front, carriage houses behind, and huge century-old elms overshadowing the driveway leading up to it.

Two tall weather worn posts fronted the main road, whereon at intervals were posted notices of town meetings, taxes, and all sorts of “goings on and doings,” as Cousin Roxy said. An adventurous woodpecker had pecked quite a good sized hole in the side of one post, and here a slip of paper would often be tucked with an order to the fishman to call at some out of the way farmhouse, or the tea and coffee man from way over near East Pomfret.

Next to the Town Hall stood the Methodist Church with its little rambling burial ground behind it, straying off down hill until it met a fringe of junipers and a cranberry bog. There were not many new tombstones, mostly old yellowed marble ones, somewhat one sided, with now and then a faded flag stuck in an urn where a Civil War soldier lay buried.

“Antietam took the flower of our youth,” Cousin Roxy would say, with old tender memories softening the look in her gray eyes as she gazed out over the old square plots. “The boys didn’t know what they were facing. My mother was left a young widow then. Land alive, do you suppose there’d ever be war if women went out to fight each other? I can’t imagine any fun or excitement in shooting down my sisters, but men folks are different. Give them a cause and they’ll leave plough, home, and harrow for a good fight with one another. And when Decoration Day comes around, I always want to hang my wreaths around the necks of the old fellows who are still with us, Ezry, and Philly Weaver, and old Mr. Peckham and the rest. And that reminds me,” here her eyes twinkled. The girls always knew a story was coming when they looked that way, brimful of mirth. “I just met Philly Weaver hobbling along the road after some stray cows, ninety-two years young, and scolding like forty because, as he said, ‘That boy, Ezry Hicks, who only carried a drum through the war, has dared ask for an increase in pension.’ Ezry must be seventy-four if he’s a day, but he’s still a giddy boy drummer to Philly.”

Jean helped plan out the programme. It seemed like old times back at the Cove where the girls were always getting up some kind of entertainment for the church or their own club. Billy Peckham, who was a big boy over at Gayhead school this year, would deliver the Gettysburg speech, and the Judge could be relied on to give a good one too. Then Jean hit on a plan. Shad was lanky and tall, awkward and overgrown as ever Abe Lincoln had been. Watching him out of the dining-room window as he split wood, she exclaimed suddenly,

“Why couldn’t we have a series of tableaux on his early life, Cousin Roxy. Just look out there at Shad. He’s the image of some of the early pictures, and he never gets his hair cut before spring, he says, just like the horses. Let’s try him.”

Once they had started, it seemed easy. The first scene could be the cabin in the clearing. Jean would be Nancy Lincoln, the young mother, seated by the fireplace, teaching her boy his letters from the book at her knee.

“Dug Moffat will be right for that,” said Jean happily. “He’s about six. Then we must show the boy Lincoln at school. Out in Illinois, that was, wasn’t it, Cousin Roxy, where he borrowed some books from the teacher, and the rain soaked the covers, so he split his first wood to earn them.”

Cousin Roxy promised to hunt up all the necessary historical data in the Judge’s library at home, and they went after it in earnest. Freddie Herrick, the groceryman’s boy over at the Center, was chosen for Abe at this stage, and Kit coaxed Mr. Ricketts, the mailcarrier, to be the teacher.

“Go long now,” he exclaimed jocularly, when she first proposed it. “I ain’t spoke a piece in public since I was knee high to a grasshopper. I used to spout, ‘Woodman, spare that tree.’ Yep. Say it right off smart as could be. Then they had me learn ‘Old Ironsides.’ Ever hear that one? Begins like this.” He waved one arm oracularly in the air. “‘Aye, tear her tattered ensign down, long has it waved on high.’ Once they got me started, they couldn’t stop me. No, sirree. Went right ahead and learned ’em, one after the other. ‘At midnight in his guarded tent, the Turk lay dreaming of the hour—’ That was a Jim dandy to roll out. And—and the second chapter of Matthew, and Patrick Henry’s speech, and all sorts of sech stuff, but I’d be shy as a rabbit if you put me up before everybody now.”

Still, he finally consented, when Kit promised him his schoolmaster desk could stand with its back half to the audience to spare him from embarrassment.

“Oh, it’s coming on splendidly,” she cried to Cousin Roxy, once she was sure of Mr. Ricketts. “We’ll have Shad for the young soldier in the Black Hawk war, and three of the big boys for Indians. And then, let’s see, the courting of Ann Rutledge. Let’s have Piney for Ann. She has just that wide-eyed, old daguerreotype look. Give her a round white turned down collar and a cameo breast-pin, and she’ll be ideal.”

The preparations went on enthusiastically. Rehearsals were held partly at Greenacres, partly over at the Judge’s, and always there were refreshments afterwards. Mrs. Gorham and Jean prepared coffee and cocoa, with cake, but Cousin Roxy would send Ben down cellar after apples and nuts, with a heaping dish of hermits and doughnuts, and tall pitchers of creamy milk.

Doris was very much excited over her part. She was to be the little sister of the young soldier condemned to death for falling asleep on sentinel duty. And she felt it all, too, just as if it was, as Shad said, ‘for real.’ Shad was the President in this too, but disguised in a long old-fashioned shawl of Cousin Roxy’s and the Judge’s tall hat, and a short beard. He stood beside his desk, ready to leave, when Doris came in and pleaded for the boy who was to be shot at dawn.

“I know I’m going to cry real tears,” said Doris tragically. “I can’t help but feel it all right in here,” pressing her hand to her heart.

“Well, go ahead and cry for pity’s sake,” laughed Cousin Roxy. “All the better, child.”

Kit had been chosen for a dialogue between the North and the South. Helen, fair haired and winsome, made a charming Southland girl, very haughty and indignant, and Kit was a tall, determined young Columbia, making peace between her and the North, Sally Peckham.

It was Sally’s first appearance in public, and she was greatly perturbed over it. Life down at the mill had run in monotonous channels. It was curious to be suddenly taken from it into the limelight of publicity.

“All you have to do, Sally, is let down your glorious hair like Rapunzel,” said Kit. “It’s way down below your waist, and crinkles too, and it’s like burnished gold.”

“It’s just plain everyday red,” said Sally.

“No, it isn’t, and anyway, if you had read history, you’d know all of the great and interesting women had red hair. Cleopatra and Queen Elizabeth and Theodora and a lot more. You’re just right for the North because you look sturdy and purposeful.”

“You know, Cousin Roxy, I think you ought to be in this too,” said Jean, towards the last.

“I am,” responded Cousin Roxy, placidly. “I’m getting up the supper afterwards. Out here you always have to give them a supper, or the men folks don’t think they’re getting their money’s worth. Sometimes I have an oyster supper and sometimes a bean supper, but this time it’s going to be a chicken supper. And not all top crust, neither. Plenty of chicken and gravy. We’ll charge fifty cents admission. I wish your father were here. He’d enjoy it. Heard from them lately?”

Jean nodded, and reached for a letter out of her work-basket on the table.

“Uncle Hal’s better, and Mother says—wait, here it is.” She read the extract slowly.

“‘Next year Uncle Hal wants one of you girls to come out and visit the ranch. I think Kit will enjoy it most.’”

“So she would,” agreed Cousin Roxy. “Don’t say when they expect to start for home, does it? Or how your father is?”

“She only says she wishes she had us all out there until spring.”

“Don’t write her anything that’s doleful. Let her stay until she’s rested and got enough of the sunshine and flowers. It will do her good. We’ll let her stay until the first of March if she likes.” Here Cousin Roxy put her arm around Jean’s slender waist and drew her nearer. “And then I want you should go up to visit Beth for the spring. She’s expecting you. You’ve looked after things real well, child.”

“Oh, but I haven’t,” Jean said quickly. “You don’t know how impatient I get with the girls, especially Helen. It’s funny, Cousin Roxy, but Doris and I always agree and pal together, even do Helen’s share of the work for her, and I think that’s horrid. We’re all together, and Helen’s just as capable of helping along as little Doris is.”

“Well, what ails her?” Cousin Roxy’s voice was good natured and cheerful. “Found out how pretty she is?”

“She found that out long ago,” Jean answered. “She isn’t an ordinary person. She’s the Princess Melisande one day, and Elaine the next. It just seems as if she can’t get down to real earth, that’s all, Cousin Roxy. She’s always got her nose in a book, and she won’t see things that just have to be done. And Kit tells me I’m always finding fault, when I know I’m right.”

“Well, well, remember one thing. ‘Speak the truth in love.’ Coax her out of it instead of scolding. She’s only thirteen, you know, Jeanie, and that’s a trying age. Let her dream awhile. It passes soon enough, this ‘standing with reluctant feet, where the brook and river meet.’ Remember that? And it would be an awfully funny world if we were all cut out with the same cookie dip.”

So Helen had a respite from admonishings, and Kit would eye her elder sister suspiciously, noticing Jean’s sudden change of tactics. Two of Helen’s daily duties were to feed the canary and water the plants in the sunny bay window. But half the time it was Kit who did it at the last minute before they hurried away to school. Then, too, Jean would notice Kit surreptitiously attack Helen’s neglected pile of mending and wade though it in her quick, easy-going way, while Helen sat reading by the fire. But she said nothing, and Kit grew uneasy.

“I’d much rather you’d splutter and say something, Jean,” she said one day. “But you know Helen helps me in her way. I can’t bear to dust and she does all of my share on Saturday. She opened up that box of books for Father from Mr. Everden, and put them all away in his bookcase in just the right order, and she’s been helping me with my French like sixty. You know back at the Cove she just simply ate up French from Mother’s maid, Bettine, when she was so little she could hardly speak English. So it’s give and take with us, and if I’m satisfied, I don’t think you ought to mind.”

“I don’t, not any more,” Jean replied, bending over a neglected box of oil pastels happily. “You do just as you want to, and I’m awfully sorry I was catty about it. I guess the weather up here’s got on my nerves, although Cousin Roxy and Jean Robbins have cooked up something between them, and that’s why she looks so serene and calm.” She paused in the lower hall and looked out of the little top glass in the door. Around the bend of the road came Mr. Ricketts’ little white mail cart and old white horse with all its daily promise of letters and papers. Kit was out of the house, bareheaded, in a minute, running to meet him.

“Got quite a lot this time,” he called to her hopefully. “I couldn’t make out all of them, but there’s one right from Californy and I guess that’s what you’re looking for.”

Kit laughed and took back the precious load. Magazines from Mrs. Crane, and newspapers from the West. Post-cards for Lincoln’s birthday from girl friends at the Cove, and one from Piper with a picture of a disconsolate Boston bull dog saying, “Nobody loves me.”

Jean opened the California letter first, with the others hanging over the back of her chair. It was not long, but Kit led in the cheer of thanksgiving over its message.

“We expect to leave here about the 18th, and should be in Gilead a week later.”

Doris climbed up on a chair to the calendar next the lamp shelf, and counted off the days, drawing a big circle around the day appointed. But when they had called up Cousin Roxy and told her, she squelched their hopes in the most matter-of-fact way possible.

“All nonsense they coming back here just at the winter break-up. I’ll write and tell them to make it the first of March, and even then it’s risky, coming right out of a warm climate. I guess you girls can stand it another week or two.”

“Well,” said Kit heroically, “what can’t be cured must be endured. Rub off that circle around the 18th, Doris, and make it the first of March. What’s that about the Ides of March? Wasn’t some old fellow afraid of them?”

“Julius Cæsar,” answered Jean.

“No such a thing,” said Kit stoutly. “It was Brutus or else Cassius. When they were having their little set-to in the tent. We had it at school last week. Girls, let’s immediately cast from us the cares of this mortal coil, and make fudge.”

Jean started for the pantry after butter and sugar, but in the passageway was a little window looking out at the back of the driveway, and she stopped short. Dodging out of sight behind a pile of wood that was waiting to be split, was a familiar figure. Without waiting to call the girls, she slipped quietly around the house and there, sure enough, backed up against the woodshed, his nose fairly blue from the cold, was Joe.

“Don’t—don’t let Shad know I’m here,” he said anxiously. “He’ll lick me fearfully if he catches me.”

“Oh, Joe,” Jean exclaimed happily. “Come here this minute. Nobody’s going to touch you, don’t you know that? Aren’t you hungry?”

Joe nodded mutely. He didn’t look one bit ashamed; just eager and glad to be back home. Jean put her arm around him, patting him as her mother would have done, and leading him to the kitchen. And down in the barn doorway stood Shad, open mouthed and staring.

“Well, I’ll be honswoggled if that little creetur ain’t come back home to roost,” he said to himself. In the kitchen Joe was getting thawed out and welcomed home. And finally the truth came out.

“I went hunting my dad down around Norwich,” he confessed.

“Did you find him?” cried Doris.

Joe nodded happily.

“Braced him up too. He says he won’t drink any more ‘cause it’ll disgrace me. He’s gone to work up there in the lockshop steady. He wanted me to stay with him, but as soon as I got him braced up, I came back here. You didn’t get my letter, did you? I left it stuck in the clock.”

Stuck in the clock? Jean looked up at the old eight-day Seth Thomas on the kitchen mantel that they had bought from old Mr. Weaver. It was made of black walnut, with green vines painted on it and morning glories rambling in wreaths around its borders. She opened the little glass door and felt inside. Sure enough, tucked far back, there was Joe’s farewell letter, put carefully where nobody would ever think of finding it. Written laboriously in pencil it was, and Jean read it aloud.

“Dere folks.

I hered from a pedlar my dad is sick up in norwich. goodby and thanks i am coming back sum day.

yurs with luv. Joe.”

Joe looked around at them with his old confident smile.

“See?” he said. “I told you I was coming back.”

“And you’re going to stay too,” replied Jean, thankfully. “I’m so glad you’re not under the snow, Joe. You’d better run down and get in that kindling for Shad.”

This took real pluck, but Joe rose bravely, and went out, and Shad’s heart must have thawed a little too, for he came in later whistling and said the little skeezicks was doing well.

Jean laughed and sank back in the big red rocker with happy weariness.

“And Bab said this country was monotonous,” she exclaimed. “If anything else happens for a day or so, I’m going to find a woodchuck hole and crawl into it to rest up.”