Part 6

“My poppies down at Miss Moran’s were nice too,” she went on, “but I was awfully disappointed about my larkspur. It didn’t bloom a bit that summer, and Miss Moran had said it would be blue, and I like blue best of anything, don’t you? It isn’t so bright as red, but it’s such a way-deep-down-glad color. Well, that fall, Miss Moran had me move the larkspur plants over by the lily bed; and one day the next summer, when I hadn’t been up there for weeks, John came after me with the horse and said Miss Moran wanted me in a hurry. I was afraid she was sick, but she wasn’t She just grabbed me when I got there and said:

“ ‘Peggy O’Neill, you’ve been working miracles. Come along quick and see them.’

“So we held hands and raced to the garden and there were my larkspurs all blossoming—a great big patch of them with white lilies cuddling up close to them! Blue? Why, you never saw anything bluer. I looked at them and my legs went wobbly and I flopped right down and cried. Yes, sir, honestly I did. I couldn’t stand having helped God make anything so beautiful. He was used to it but I wasn’t. Isn’t it wonderful that He could think of so many perfectly splendid things to make in seven days? There’s no telling what He’d have done, if He’d taken a year to do it. Did you ever try to think of something more that would have been awfully nice and that He could have done if He’d taken more time? I’ve tried lots of times, but I never could. It seems as if He hadn’t forgotten a thing.

“I’ve never felt the same about myself since I helped Him with those larkspurs. They bloom every summer, and every time I see them, I feel as if I’d made a piece of sky. You get Miss Moran to let you plant some larkspur in her garden. You won’t ever feel real downhearted and discouraged about yourself afterward. I do think a flower garden’s the sweetest thing. I wish we had one.”

“Why don’t we have one?” asked Archibald.

Pegeen looked at him doubtfully, saw determination in his face, and fairly crowed for joy.

“Out in front and along the path! Poppies and bachelor buttons and marigolds and lots of things that’ll bloom quick—and then larkspur and phlox and lilies to bloom next summer.”

Her exultant voice suddenly wavered and dropped, and the joy died out of her.

For a moment the man did not understand. Then he looked ahead and saw the end of the summer’s trail. Oddly enough he too shrank from the vision.

“I’m coming back, Peg,” he promised quickly. “I’m surely coming back. The heart of the world is up here among the hills, I believe, and there’s nothing to keep me away.”

She smiled again then—but a misty little smile.

“I just thought—all of a sudden—” she explained falteringly. “A summer’s so short and I’m being so happy—and it’s half-past June already.”

“That’s why we must hurry with our garden.” There was a sympathetic mist in the man’s own eyes, but he resolutely dragged the talk away from sentiment. It’s a way men have.

“We’ll plant all sorts of splendid things and the Smiling Lady will teach us to work miracles,” he said.

“She’ll give us loads of baby plants. She loves starting new gardens.” Pegeen was cheerful again now. He had said he would come back and it was easy for her to believe in happiness.

“To-morrow I’ll dig the beds,” promised Archibald. “Now tell me what the neighbors thought of your new finery.”

Pegeen was all excitement.

“They couldn’t believe it. They honestly couldn’t. Ginsy Shalloway’ll talk herself to death about them, and Mrs. Frisbie said that either you were cracked or just a natural spendthrift, and Mrs. Neal spoke right up and said you were a big-hearted young gentleman, that’s what you were; and I hugged her for it and they’re all crazy to know what you get paid for your pictures, and I said maybe you’d let me take you to see them only maybe not, because you had lots of painting to do and couldn’t let visiting interfere. So you don’t have to go if you don’t want to.”

“But I do want to, Peg. I’m going to garden and to neighbor. I’m credibly informed that there’s the road to being happy most of the time and contented all the time. I’m going to send to town for a horse of mine that’s eating his head off in the stables, and we’ll rent a cart, and then we can neighbor fast and furiously all up and down the Valley.”

“Oh, my stars!” crooned Pegeen, in ecstasy.

“Can you ride your horse?” she asked suddenly.

“That’s what he’s for, chiefly. Why?”

“Well, I just thought maybe you’d lend him to Miss Moran when you weren’t neighboring. She loves riding better than anything and she had a beautiful riding horse when she came, but he hurt himself jumping the pasture fence and died, and she couldn’t afford to get another. She’s the loveliest thing on horseback—but, do you know, she rides straddle just like a boy and she wears breeches and sometimes they show; folks here thought it was awful at first. They buzzed around to each other’s houses like a swarm of bees, talking about it, and they thought maybe Mr. Colby, the minister, ought to take it up. And he wouldn’t. He said she didn’t go to his church, and that anyway it wasn’t a thing for a single man to take up with a young lady. So then they thought the ladies’ aid would have to do something, but they sort of put it off, and then Mr. Frisbie went to Boston to spend a week with his rich brother that’s a minister in a big church there. He came back telling that the parks up there were simply full of ladies riding straddle and that his brother’s wife said all the richest and properest ladies wore breeches when they rode and that it was countrified to be shocked. So then everybody quieted down. Mrs. Neal says Ginsy Shalloway sent for a pattern for riding breeches, but I don’t believe she’s ever had a call for it.”

Archibald, who had been chuckling over the Valley’s consternation, had an inspiration.

“Peggy,” he said, “I wonder if Mrs. Neal could stable two horses for me. You and I are going to do our neighboring behind a pair—but remember, Peg, I never heard that the Smiling Lady rode. That extra riding horse is going to be a lucky accident. Incidentally, I’m going to teach you to ride him.”

“Oh, my stars!” The small girl crooned it again, from heart fullness. “And I didn’t even pray for you to come! If I could have thought of anything as nice as you, I’d have prayed for it, but I couldn’t. So I just said ‘God bless me’ and I guess He thought that meant sending you.”

“God bless you, Peg,” Archibald said very softly. He couldn’t remember having asked God to bless any one, since far away bedtimes in which a very small boy and a very loving mother and a certain little white bed in a cheerful nursery figured hazily. Come to think of it, he hadn’t been on speaking terms with God at all, since those old days; but here in the Happy Valley one met Him at every turn and He seemed very friendly.

The dinner missed at noon was, according to Nora’s prophecy, warmed up for supper; and after it was eaten and the dishes had been washed Archibald walked down to Mrs. Benderby’s with Pegeen, because she was later than usual and the shadows were black.

As the two passed out of the meadow, they found Mr. and Mrs. Neal standing in the middle of the road in front of their home, talking excitedly and looking down toward Pisgah, where a red glow lighted the sky from behind a crouching black hill.

“What’s up?” Archibald asked. “Oh, I see—fire. What do you think it is?”

“Another barn, I guess,” Mr. Neal said grimly. “From the looks, I should say ’twas Frisbie’s. Getting past a joke, this thing is. Makes a man feel darned uncomfortable when he goes to bed. Something’s got to be done. That’s the fifth.”

“Fifth what?”

“Fifth barn burning! Set on fire every one of ’em. Nobody suspected at first, but the fires began coming along too regular to be accidental and then there were signs of the work found, but they ain’t been able to catch the fire-bug. He don’t seem to steal anything—crazy, most likely. Just likes to watch the things burn, but there’s been a big loss and one house went too, and folks are mighty stirred up about it. I don’t feel none too easy myself. There’s no telling where the thing’ll hit next.”

“Had detectives on the job, I suppose?” said Archibald.

“Oh, yes, the town got a couple of ’em up here. Ate everything within sight and looked wise and got nowheres. They sort of suspected Ezra Watts, but, jumping Jerusha, everybody else had thought of that before they did. That’s the first rule up here when anything goes wrong. Suspect Ezra. He’s a good deal of a pill, Ezra is, and I don’t put much past him in the way of meanness, but I can’t say as I held him accountable for the drought last year or for my horses having pink eye this spring. I’ve got a leaning toward proof, and there ain’t a ghost of proof against Ezra in this barn business—except just his general cussedness and that he thinks he’s got a grudge against the Valley folks—but I’m kind of afraid some of the young fellows’ll handle him rough, without asking for proof, if this barn burning keeps up. When Nick Bullard and Lem Tollerton and that crowd get a drink or two aboard, they don’t set much store by law and order. I kind of figure that this would be a healthy time for Ezra to visit somewheres without waiting to be invited.”

“You don’t mean that they’d really harm him?” Archibald said incredulously.

“Well, as I said, there’s just a few of the boys that ain’t strong on law and order, when they’re full of liquor ’n’ animal spirits ’n’ have what they’d call a good cause. Of course the rest of us would stop them if we got wind of their deviltry in time, but we generally don’t and then when it’s over there’s nobody wants to run them down and jail them because everybody knows their families and neighbors are with them. Last time they made trouble they beat up a peddler that had been cheating all the women. Can’t say he didn’t deserve a licking, but the boys overdid it and got considerable of a scare themselves. Thought they’d killed the fellow.

“Ma and I took him in and nursed him up and turned him out all right. He did talk some about suing for assault and all that, but, shucks, how’d he know who to sue? The boys wore masks. He was some scared too, and so he went off as soon as he was able—and glad to go. Glad to have him go, we were. You’ve got to do you’re duty, but I must say I ain’t strong on Samaritaning when the hurt party’s as low down a skunk as that peddler was.

“The boys ain’t been taking any law into their hands since that, but the whole neighborhood’s so stirred up over this fire-bug—”

“Stop borrowing trouble, Pa,” Mrs. Neal interrupted. “Nice idea of his neighbors you’ll be giving Mr. Archibald. You’re getting as nervous as a tadpole over this barn business.”

“Too nervous to put up a pair of horses for me, if I send for them?” inquired Archibald laughingly, but Mr. Neal’s face was serious as he answered.

“At your own risk. I’ll be glad to take them but you’d better insure them.”

Archibald met Mrs. Benderby for the first time that night. She was sitting on the porch as he and Peg turned in at the gate, and, rising from her chair, came forward to meet them.

“This is Mr. Archibald,” Pegeen announced with an air of proud proprietorship.

The woman gave him a thin cold hand. The chill of it made him peer more closely at her through the starlit gloom, but he could see her face only in dim outlines. Scanty hair brushed smoothly back from the forehead and fastened in a tight knob at the back of the head left hollow temples in view and below them Archibald made out sunken cheeks and the angles of a sharp chin. But it was the woman’s figure that emphasized most clearly the chill of the bony hand. Even in the starlight, the sunken chest and rounded shoulders, the sagging droop of the whole body told their tale of hard work and physical unfitness and utter weariness.

“I’m glad to meet you,” Mrs. Benderby was saying. “Peg’s told me how wonderful good you’ve been to her and I think a sight of Peg. I’d ought to.”

There was weariness in the voice too, yet it strove for a brisk cheerfulness that was evidently its natural note.

Something tugged suddenly at Archibald’s heartstrings. Life was too hard for women.

“Yes; you and I couldn’t do without Pegeen,” he said. The friendly warmth of his voice affected the tired little woman as had the warm strength of his hand-clasp. There _was_ something about Peg’s Mr. Archibald, she admitted to herself—something that cheered one up a bit. That “you and I” had a folksy sort of ring. He wasn’t stuck up if he did come from New York.

She smiled in the dark and though he could not see the smile he heard it in her voice.

“When you get used to having Peg around, nothing goes right without her,” she said. “Seems as if she always knew what you needed or wanted before you did. She spoils people, Peg does—gets ’em so they can’t live alone and most of us has to live alone sooner or later—even when there’s plenty of folks living in the same house with us.”

Archibald nodded. He had lived alone “with plenty of folks” and he knew what she meant.

“Won’t you sit down, sir?” Mrs. Benderby asked. “We’ll go indoors if you say, but it’s kind of cool and restful out here in the dark. I like being in the dark, evenings. You can’t see things you’d ought to get up and do.”

She had dropped into her rocking chair again and Archibald sat down on a broken-backed bench, while Pegeen went into the house. He could hear her bustling about in the kitchen and humming a gay tune as she worked.

“Ain’t she the cheerfulest thing?” Mrs. Benderby said, after a quiet moment in which she too had been listening to the quick, light steps and the rollicking tune. “Seems as if, as soon as she’s around, I feel rested. You just can’t slump down when Peg’s boosting you. Even thinking about her’s better than medicine. Some days when I ain’t my best and the work don’t go good, I hang on to the thought of Peg as if ’twas a patent life-preserver. Funny, ain’t it—a little scrap of a big-eyed thing like her! She ain’t exactly pretty, Peg ain’t, but I think the angels must be some like her.”

“I shouldn’t wonder,” Archibald agreed. He could understand why Pegeen had felt that she must go over and see to Mrs. Benderby. He felt strongly impelled to see to her himself—and he smiled as it occurred to him that perhaps he was really neighboring.

“You must put your heart into the gardens and the people,” the Smiling Lady had said. Well, he seemed to be putting his heart into Mrs. Benderby. Something ought to be done about her, something even more than Pegeen was doing. He didn’t like the remembrance of that clammy hand or the ache of weariness in the voice that held no trace of complaint or bitterness.

“You and Peg and I will have to look after each other a little,” he said later as he rose to go. “Of course I know that Peg could see to both of us competently with one hand tied behind her, but you and I will get into the game for our own sakes. I’m going to depend upon you to advise me about the child. Women understand such things better than men.”

“I’d be proud to help,” she said eagerly.

It seemed to him that the hand she gave him in good night had a thrill of warmth in it and that the bent shoulders had straightened just a little.

“Good night, Peg,” he called through the open door.

The small girl came running out.

“I was just getting ready for morning,” she explained. “Mrs. Benderby has to go off real early, and any way I thought it’d be nice for you and her to get acquainted without me there.

“It was awfully good of you to bring me home. I wasn’t afraid—not really—only it’s so comfortable not to have to be not afraid. Good night.”

And as he went through the gate, she called again.

“Good night I’ll be up to you early.”

Archibald walked home with the friendly, childish voice ringing in his ears and in his heart an unaccountably fervent thankfulness that she surely would be “up to him early.” Morning—even a June morning—wouldn’t, be a cheerful thing with Pegeen away.

VII

The next day was a momentous one at the shack. Archibald and Pegeen started their garden and Wiggles was taken into the family. The garden came along according to plan but Wiggles was accidental. Peggy brought him with her when she arrived in the morning and the first intimation of his presence came to Archibald with a request for an antiseptic bandage.

“I saw you had some in your trunk, and it’s time for you to get up anyway,” Peggy called through the bedroom door.

“Are you hurt?” he asked in alarm.

“No, I’m all right. It’s a dog. I guess it was an automobile. Anyway its leg’s hurt.”

The explanation was hardly lucid but Archibald gathered that first aid measures were being taken for the dog not for the automobile.

“Wait a minute and I’ll help,” he said as he passed a roll of bandage through the partly opened door.

“It’d only spoil your breakfast.” She was serious but practical. “I can do it. I’ve done it to lots of things. There’s peroxide on the mantel and he’s as patient as can be.”

When Archibald, shaven and dressed, left his room a half hour later, there were no signs of casualty and Pegeen was as serene as usual.

“He’s all fixed,” she said. “It wasn’t so terribly bad, but he couldn’t walk and of course I couldn’t leave him down there.”

“Of course not,” agreed Archibald.

But after breakfast, as she led him out to see the cripple, a shade of anxiety crossed her face.

“He isn’t a handsome dog,” she warned—“not exactly handsome, but he’ll be real cute when I’ve washed him—and he won’t be a bit of trouble to you. I’ll keep him in the shed and I’ll—”

“Piffle, Peg!” interrupted the man rudely. “We needed a dog.”

The dirty, shaggy little beast lying on a pile of burlap in the shed was not handsome. Pegeen had spoken within bounds. Mongrel was written large on him, but a strain of Airedale, albeit with a bar sinister across it, gave his ugliness a redeeming dash of distinction, and when two beseeching, friendly brown eyes met Archibald’s and the whole dog from sniffing nose to frantically wagging tail, wiggled propitiation, the man took the new-comer into the family with something like enthusiasm.

“He’s _not_ handsome, Peg,” he agreed, “but he’s a jolly little chap. We’ll call him Wiggles.”

A day or two later, Archibald coming home from a morning’s painting found Pegeen with something on her mind.

After a little it came out.

“Do you like kittens, Mr. Archibald?” she asked with elaborate casualness.

“Oh, so-so.” He was absorbed in cleaning his pipe.

“I think it’s awful to drown them, don’t you?”

He caught the note of anxiety in her voice and looked at her quickly.

“Miss Moran does too,” she urged in defense of her position. “Maybe she’d take it if you don’t want me to have it, but I’d like to doctor its eyes first. It’ll be lovely when its eyes are well—and the boys had a piece of fish line and a stone. They thought it was fun. I flew right at Benny Crocker and slapped him—as hard as ever I could—and he was so surprised he dropped the kitten and then I grabbed it up—and I always did want to slap Benny anyway. If I’d been a boy I’d have licked him long ago and I don’t see why being a girl—only of course long hair’s handy to pull—but they didn’t get a chance to-day. I can run as fast as any boy, if I do have skirts. It’s gray with one white paw. I think you’d like it, if its eyes weren’t sore. I’m putting boric acid in them. That’s what the doctor gave Mrs. Neal for hers when they were red and hurt her and she loaned me some.”

“What does Wiggles say about it?” Archibald asked gravely.

Pegeen giggled.

“I wouldn’t dare tell you,” she said. “He swore. Honestly he did—dog swearing anyhow—but when he found I liked the kitten, he quieted down and now he just laughs when the spunky little thing spits at him. I do love a dog that has a long nose so he can laugh, don’t you? I wouldn’t have one of those snub-nosed, sulky looking dogs for anything—unless it was sick or something and needed to be taken care of.”

“Oh, Peg, Peg! Are we going to take care of all the halt and maimed and blind?”

She looked at him thoughtfully. “Well,—they aren’t all likely to come along our way and anyway I won’t have any more here if you hate it; but you see I always did—and I can’t leave them alone at Mrs. Benderby’s all day and so I—but of course we won’t have any more here if it bothers you—just Wiggles and Spunky. I thought we’d call kitten Spunky. She’s so little and she stands up to Wiggles as if she were his size. I sort of think that kitten’s Irish.”

“Bless you, child, I don’t mind running a foundling asylum. Why should I? I’m one of the foundlings and I’m as grateful to you as Wiggles and Spunky ever can be.”

She looked at him soberly for a moment and then she smiled. There was something extra special about Pegeen’s smile. A hint of it was not always playing about her lips and eyes as the elusive promise of smiles always lurked in Nora Moran’s face. The child’s sensitive mouth and great dark blue eyes were profoundly serious much of the time—quietly happy but serious for all that. When the smiles came, they flashed out suddenly, radiantly, a surprise, an illumination, a wave of gaiety rippling from brow to chin and overflowing the whole child. Even her hair ribbons seemed to quiver with it, her short skirts to swish with mirth, her slim little feet to move to dance tunes.

To see it once was to want more of it.

“Making you happy is sheer, wanton self-indulgence, Peg,” Archibald said as he studied her face. “I’ll not acquire merit by anything I do to set you smiling. That’s sure.”

She did not understand but that made no difference. He often talked over her head, but words were unimportant. The essential thing was that he should be pleased with her and he was. She could see that. Moreover, he wasn’t prejudiced against stray kittens.

“But I won’t show her to you until her eyes are better,” she said wisely. “A smashed leg like Wiggles’ is sort of interesting when it’s all bandaged up, but you’ve got to love a thing considerable much not to mind sore eyes. If I ever get sick and stay sick a long time, I do hope it’ll be a nice, clean, interesting kind of sickness—but what I’d like best would be to be sitting out in the sunshine feeling happy and then just not to be there—like Mr. Benderby. It was hard on Mrs. Benderby, but wasn’t it perfectly lovely for him? Out under the big apple tree he was, and it was all in bloom and there were orioles nesting in it. I think that was wonderful, don’t you? I’d have liked that for Mother—only it was so lovely for me to have a chance to take care of her. I guess that’s why God doesn’t let everybody go in beautiful ways. He knows they’re going to be so happy in a little while that having been sick won’t count and He lets them go the hard way so that the people who love them and are going to have to stay on without them can have the comfort of taking care of them.”

“That’s one way of looking at it,” said Archibald.

They were occupying their favorite seat on the doorstep now. Pegeen’s elbows were on her knees, her hands cupping her chin, her eyes gazing out across the Valley.

“What do you think souls look like, Mr. Archibald?” she asked suddenly.

Archibald considered the subject and acknowledged that he had no theories on it.

“Well, I’ve thought about it lots,” Peg said cheerfully. Her discussions of life, death, and immortality were always imperturbably cheerful. Nothing morbid touched her. Life was a fact and death was a fact and immortality was a fact. They were all vastly interesting. Why not wonder about them and talk about them?