CHAPTER X

MOTHER OUTDOORS DISTURBED

“Wait, Tildy!” called Bluebell, when she reached the foot-log and saw a figure climbing the heights beyond.

The wind may have carried her voice away, for it almost blew her off the log, and a trampling sound far off, like the rush of an army of giants through the woods, filled one’s ears. The heavy basket caught on bushes as Bluebell scrambled up the rocky path, and tired her hands, while Tildy’s reticule sailed straight on.

“Oh, Tildy, wait!” panted the little girl. Among the windings, or in some short cut, Tildy’s figure ever and anon appeared and disappeared, and Bluebell faced the storm alone. How black its gloom was in the woods! The very rocks and trees which had been smiling landmarks so long, seemed strange and threatening. A quick patter caught her, and then a deluge mixed with frightful glares and deafening roars burst over the world. The trees rocked and twisted, and just ahead of her she saw one tall chestnut bend as if swooning, and fall across the way with a long, sublime, whistling crash. Even in her terror Bluebell heard and felt that wonderful cry of the falling tree which cannot be forgotten. The splinters of its broken trunk stood up like pale yellow icicles in the air. She made a detour among hazel-bushes to pass it, and ran along the path, trembling in every nerve, yet under her fear delighting in this revolution which had overtaken Mother Outdoors. The warm summer rain dripped from every thread of her clothing and soaked her body in its delicious bath. The footway turned into a miniature canal; and every tree-trunk stood in startling blackness against the general gloom. Before the first dash had quite thinned its gray sheet to sprinkles, that far-off tramping arrived in earnest; the storm pelted and poured; the lightning flashed in her very eyes, and its answering thunder was instantaneous; a tree swept down here carrying others with it; and there two went down together, until the whole woods seemed cracking and wailing around her.

With streaming garments, and shoes that spurted water at every step, the little girl still ran ahead. She could scarcely see the downs when she passed them, but they appeared dimly, like the desert islands in Mr. Runnel’s maps. Again and again the lightning seemed barely to miss her, and she jumped as the thunder crashed around her ears. She ran until she was out of breath, and then panted along among the drenched ferns. In spite of the confusion and loneliness and closing darkness, there was exhilaration in the warm, soaking rain.

It ceased to pour as she passed down the slope; the wind lulled; and through openings she could see distant long dark threads stretching from cloud to earth, then suddenly disappearing. The confusion in the woods died away. But there was no clearing up, no emerald flash of wet grass in the setting sun; no rapid drying of branches and laugh of leaves. The rank, fresh smell of wet earth was mingled with scents from the peppermint that bordered the run below, but the faintest suggestion of old dead leaves came with them. The lightning retired toward the horizon and threw a silent or distantly answered dazzle through the woods once in awhile. And night was coming early without any sunset.

Bluebell saw a man advancing through the bushes, drawing showers upon himself at every step. She reflected that it was not far to Banks’ now, and if he tried to carry her off they could hear her scream; so she trotted forward, a desirable object to kidnap, her shapeless bonnet hanging around her neck, which it discolored with its strings, her dress and pantalettes clinging to every line of her vigorous little figure. Still the man paused to parley with her, and his parleying consisted in offering her two fingers of his left hand and turning back.

“Oh, father, I’m ’most drowned! And the woods fell down!”

“It’s been a hard storm,” said father. He had a closed umbrella in his right hand. Branches and underbrush would interfere with it if open here. He paused, setting it against a tree, and reached down to his little girl.

“Perhaps I’d better carry you.”

“Oh, father, I’m wet as sop.”

He lifted her up and took his umbrella. He had on his gum coat and boots which he wore over ordinary clothing when riding in the teeth of storms.

Bluebell threw one arm across his shoulder, from which dangled the big basket.

“That might have been left at the school-house,” said father.

“It’s Liza’s,” said Bluebell, “and all the rain has rained through it and through my dinner cloth.”

“I might have brought it in the buggy. Did you get across the Rocky Fork before the rain?”

“Yes, sir. And Tildy ran on ahead.”

She was progressing royally down the slope, rained on by every branch, but so comfortable right by father’s light, long locks. He moved sure-footed from stone to stone. The dark was closing around them. The cry of frogs and of the disconsolate cows came up from low places in the valley. But Doctor Garde’s little girl had the task of telling her father she had “been called up by the master” that day. His code was stern. He had told her if she received punishment at school and came home with complaints, she would be punished again. Bluebell was very proud of her standing and integrity at school. The closing night seemed so dismal. What would he say if he knew she was called up!

She cuddled her free hand under his ear to have some vantage ground, and broke forth:

“I churned P’rinthy Pancost, father!”

“Did you? How do you play that?”

“We didn’t play, father. We did it a-purpose, Tildy and me. We had a fallin’ out. And the master called me up after school!”

Father walked on with the low pine-like whistle under his breath.

“But we made up,” his little girl went on, unwilling to enter into the enormity of Perintha’s sin against Aunt Melissa; “and she’s going to bring apples to-morrow.”

“That’s right,” said father. “Always treat your little mates kindly, and obey the master.”

“Yes, sir,” assented Bluebell, giving his neck a little squeeze. “I do like the master, father. I guess I’m going to take the prize in our class in spelling!”

Father delivered a short whistle, and looked around into her face, smiling. This signified that he was pleased. It was his note of acclamation over his daughter’s achievements.

“I don’t _think_ anybody else has near as many head-marks as I have. Father, won’t it be polite for me to go to school while Aunt Melissa’s here? Can’t I go in the _afternoons_, anyhow?” coaxingly.

“Do you like to go so well?”

“Oh, yes, sir! We have such fun noons. And somebody else would get my head-marks!”

He did not reply at once, and they came by Banks’s house. The candle was lighted, a smell of supper came forth; and Tildy in dry clothes was standing at the door.

“Why didn’t you wait?” called Bluebell.

“I couldn’t,” said Tildy, tartly.

“P’rinthy’s goin’ to bring some apples to-morrow,” assured Bluebell.

But Tildy sniffed. “Some folks is awful thick, all at once,” she commented.

Bluebell looked down at her father’s ear, and wondered why it was mean to make up with folks.

Tildy’s mother came to the door, drawn by the sound of voices, and looked out anxiously. She was a very tall, ungainly woman, bent in the shoulders, with gray, black-lashed eyes which Tildy’s were like. She wore a clinging black calico. Her face was care-worn but very motherly. Bluebell knew that her husband was dead, that he had worked at the Furnace in the winter, and in the summer farmed his own land, which lay along the valley between the hills and the run. He must have been a pleasant man, for he was cousin to Liza at home. Mrs. Banks’s name was also Eliza; and the neighbors to distinguish them called this one “Robert’s Liza.”

“Did she get hurt?” cried Robert’s Liza, when she made out the doctor’s armload.

“Not a bit,” he replied, facing around and smiling.

“Come in and have some tea or something before you go on, do! Tildy was a sop, and I expect Bluebell’s wetter yet. Teeny got home before the trees began to fall, but I’ve been that frightened about the children!”

“We can’t stop,” said the doctor. “I have to start out when I get back with this soaked pappoose. The run’s rising, Liza. You’d do well to take your crocks out of the milk-house to-night.”

“I’ll do that,” said Liza; “but do _you_ mind the Rocky Fork, Doc--it’s dreadful when it gets up.”

“Oh, never mind me,” replied Bluebell’s father. He plashed on down the slope with her; and through the humid dusk Bluebell heard the run boiling, along with a sound of the Rocky Fork itself, which was quite outside its banks, muddy and angry; and she could not be sure that certain eddies did not swirl above the buried stepping-stones. But father seemed sure of it, for he put his feet through the eddies, and then the water reached the ankles of his gum boots. He stepped firmly up on the meadow green, and during that short interval between the run and the bars, condensed all that he had meant to say to his little girl during the walk.

“Put me down now, father,” she said. “Ain’t you tired?”

He put her down and gave her two of his fingers again, while he took the basket. Two fingers just filled her grasp.

“How do you like to live at the Rocky Fork?”

This question surprised her so she looked up at him; but his face was a white blur in the general dimness.

“Would you rather live in the town where your Aunt Melissa does, and go to a fine school?”

The prospect was like a dazzling flash to Doctor Garde’s little girl, through even this gloomy weather.

“Oh, yes, sir! I’d like to live there! But”--with a rising pang--“Mr. Pitzer is so good, and he let us have spelling-school this very afternoon. Do they have mountain-tea there?”

“Probably not. So you’ve been happy up here in the hills, have you, Bluebell?”

“Yes, sir.” She could barely remember a home in a city, and one pillared church where music was made by unseen people. She had been happy, and the Rocky Fork was the only place she had lived in.

“Miss Melissa has been speaking to me,” said the doctor. “I can’t attend to Rocco and you as your mother would have done. I want to be a good father.” There was an unusually tender tone in his voice.

“Why, father,” exclaimed Bluebell, climbing up the bars, so she could take him around the neck when he lifted her over, “you’re such a nice, nice man! I don’t think anybody could be gooder; I would be so sorry if you was anybody else! I like you, father!”

He laughed half under his breath, and got over the bars with her.

“My daughter flatters me.”

“’Deed, father, I’m in such earnest! ’Deed and double-deed!”

“Ah? Well! Miss Melissa was a great friend of your mother’s, and I think she has some right to advise about the future of you children. You must be educated.”

Bluebell imagined herself an educated, faultless woman like Aunt Melissa!

While she was imagining, her father lifted her up again and kissed her, saying as he set her down, “Run right in now to Liza. She has dry clothes and a nice supper ready for you.”