CHAPTER XVII
DOCTOR GARDE LISTENS TO REASON
The run had gone down, and the Rocky Fork was within its banks and falling every hour. Hall, with a number of his neighbors, was raising another mill on the site of the old one, and Mr. Pitzer’s boys went down at recess and noon to watch the process and get in the way.
Wreaths of drift on the play-ground showed where the water had been, and the lower logs of the school-house had threads of green springing in their cracks and knot-holes.
Everybody had heard how Doctor Garde got into and out of the Rocky Fork, and the geography-master met some rough bantering which he answered as best he could. The young men in his night school talked in knots in the graveyard about tar and feathers for him; but tar and feathers were a favorite subject with them, principally because they had never seen any and had some curiosity about the effect of such a combination. Mr. Runnels did his best to remove the prejudice against him, and he was so amusing, they forgave him, especially as Doctor Garde had nothing more to say about the matter.
Doctor Garde was badly hurt; and one of the other country doctors who set his bones made sad work with the swollen arm. The whole neighborhood on the safe side of the Fork got upon their plough-horses and came to see him, according to custom. Healthy as his physique was, so many strains and annoyances brought on fever, and Liza-Robert hovered mournfully around the kitchen, taking Liza’s place, while Liza nursed him past the worst days. Miss Calder took charge of the children, though one of the doctor’s fancies was to have them both placed on the foot of his bed where he could see them while they sang to him. With one hand propping up his head, he watched them through half-smiling eyes.
Ballie neighed long and frequently in her stable. Bluebell fed her standing on the barn floor, and smoothed her velvet nose, telling her minutely all that had happened, and whether father was better or worse. Still, Ballie felt lonesome; and as there was no stable boy to groom her down, Liza at last turned her into the meadow, where she sailed like a lark.
On Saturday afternoon Tildy Banks, bare-footed, slipped into the kitchen.
The doctor was very much better. She edged to the room where he lay, and looked in. It was warm, dazzling weather, and all the doors stood open.
Father was having his dinner. Bluebell and Rocco camped beside him, occasionally getting a bit, and finding the invalid fare a great deal nicer than their own unlimited dinner.
“There’s Tildy!” said Bluebell; “come in Tildy: Rocco’s telling father a story. And take a chair.”
“I don’t want to,” responded Tildy, briefly.
The doctor turned his head and asked her how Jacob the soap-boiler was. Tildy’s eyes snapped; for Jacob the soap-boiler was an imaginary person whom the doctor placed before Tildy’s mind as a possible future tyrant. He found the children one day playing a very stately play, with much curtsying and singing:
“Here come three lords just out of Spain A-courting of your daughter Jane.”
“My daughter Jane she is too young To listen to the wiles of a flattering tongue.”
Tildy was especially serious in the performance; and he at once put in a plea for another and absent lord, by title, Jacob the soap-boiler who desired his loyal duty to Matilda instead of to Jane.
“He’s about as well as usual,” she returned with a stoical countenance, but her nails felt quite long.
“The’ ain’t any soap-boiler,” now pleaded Bluebell, making coaxing faces to her father. “And then what happened next, Poppetty?”
The baby leaned her head towards one shoulder and then the other in a bashful pause.
“I guess there isn’t any more of it,” suggested Bluebell.
“Yes, the’ is, too! ’Nen,--’nen--’nen they eat haws and forn-berries and winter-dreens, and ’ey didn’t have good honey and bwed and chickun--’tause the’ wasn’t any. An’ the boy say to his sisser, ‘Don’t try: I git a gun I shoot!’ And birds put leaveses all over ’em. ’Nen they laid down on drown’; an’ the ole bad mans go off and fight wizsor-ruds an’ ’ey git killed. An’ the’ wasn’t any church-house or anyfing. Thus’ trees all ’roun’. An’ the babies didn’t have any krunnel-bed, nor any nice drurio wiz drors to keep the’ Sunday clo’es in. An’ the birds put leaveses all over ’em. An’ they rished they was to their house. An’ they bofe died. ’Nen they touldn’t go any furver ’tause they was so tired! They thus’ laid them down and _di-de_!”
Rocco folded her claws and fixed her black eyes impressively on father’s face.
“An’ birds put leaveses all over ’em,” she repeated.
“Yes,” said father, “that’s a very mournful tale. Now, if you’ll kiss me very carefully you may both get down and run out to play. I ought to get a nap.”
They both kissed him very carefully and went out with Tildy.
Tildy dug her toes into the soil, and made the following remark:--
“Come, and go to ’r house.”
“Well, if Liza’ll let us.”
“She told mother you could come to-day. Mother sent me over to fetch you. They don’t want you ’round while your father’s so sick.”
“He ain’t so sick! He’s ’most well.”
Tildy looked fixedly at her toes:
“He looks awful bad.”
“Well, I guess you would, too, if your ribs and your arm was broke! That day we played down by the run you said he was going to get drowned, but he didn’t!”
“He come nigh it,” observed Tildy, with satisfaction.
“Well, he didn’t get _clear_ drowned, nor he ain’t goin’ to, for all o’ you!” retorted Bluebell with stinging asperity.
Tildy dug her toes into the soil, ploughing quite a furrow.
“My father’s got a pretty verse on his tombstone,” she said, suggestively. “It says:
“‘Remember, friends, as you pass by, As you are now, so once was I: As I am now, so you must be-- Prepare for death and follow me.’”
“That’s on ’most all of ’em in the graveyard!”
“And it’s what they’d put on your father’s.”
“Tildy Banks, I don’t like ye!”
“The’ ain’t no love lost betwixt us,” observed Tildy; and she turned toward home.
Bluebell felt bruised and astounded. Rocco stood by, gazing up through the tunnel of her sun-bonnet.
“You’ll feel sorry when I’m gone off to live somewheres else!”
Tildy pursued her way deafly, straight as an Indian.
“Tildy!”
The distance widened.
“Tildy, what did you go and get mad for? Are you leavin’ us? I don’t think that’s a nice way to mind your mother!”
Tildy paused near the bars, and turned, but without any intention of stooping to parley.
“Melissy Garde, if you’re goin’ to ’r house you better come on.”
Roxana’s sister came on, hurrying her by the hand. It was such a grief to be at variance with anybody, and especially with Tildy, who must indeed love her, they had played together so long.
Tildy helped the baby over the bars, and they all proceeded down the meadow in silence. Ballie was scouring across the flank of the hill, making the woods echo with her whinneys. Whatever was green looked densely so, and the shade was black against the light. The more distant landscape seemed to vibrate in the heat. Grasshoppers fled from their approach in every direction, and down the run Pidey and Rose stood up to their knees in a deep place, chewing their cuds and switching their tails. On such a summer day Nature is a tender mother: the outdoor world is better than the best fairy-books.
“You ought to see my doll Aunt Melissa brought me,” began Bluebell in a conciliatory tone. “Her face kind of melted.” At this moment Bluebell felt she could bear that sad change in Georgiana if it would only mollify Tildy.
“She’s wax, you know, and Rocco held her too near the fire, and one cheek run, like she cried the red off.”
“She did try!” exclaimed Rocco, in distress.
“Liza tried and I tried and Jawgeanus tried--_I_ didn’t hurt her, B’uebell!”
“No, honey, you didn’t. Aunt Melissa says she thinks she can paint it over.”
Tildy stalked ahead, helping to lead the baby.
“Did you go to school yesterday, Tildy?”
“I gener’ly go to school!”
“Did you get the head-mark?”
“Your dear Printh’ Pancost got that.”
Doctor Garde’s little girl looked piteously at the uncompromising sun-bonnet.
“I wish you’d got it, Tildy.”
“_I_ don’t care about head-marks.”
“But I’d rather you’d have the prize than anybody else if I go ’way. We’ve always been cronies, you know.”
Tildy’s sun-bonnet turned its mouth toward her, and the scrutinizing gray eyes focused themselves on their affectionate minion.
“If you’d been some folks’ young one you’d had to go to school every day after the water went down.”
“Well, Tildy, I felt too bad to go when my father was so sick. And I guess he isn’t goin’ to send me any more. We’re goin’ to move away!”
Tildy’s countenance softened by degrees to actual wistfulness. Still she combated the assertion.
“That’s just talk. My mother says he won’t leave the Rocky Fork.”
“Oh, but Liza and Aunt Melissa and him say it’s so. Aunt Melissa wants us to live at her house, and she knows lots of people that will let my father doctor them. And maybe I’ll go to a seminary,” said Bluebell with awe. “That’s a grand, very fine school, Tildy, where you learn to play on a py-anna, and paint flowers, and everybody studies big books! Aunt Melissa says, ‘You are running too many risks, Maurice, and how are you going to educate the children?’ And he says, ‘I thought of the children when I was in the water.’ Liza she cried on her apron, and Aunt Melissa took her handkerchief out of her reddycule and cried on that, and father looked very solemn and says, ‘They owe everything to you, Liza.’ Then Liza says she won’t stand in anybody’s light, and she’s seen it all along. So they talked a good many times. And every time, they talked more like we’s goin’ away. Liza has begun to knit my speckled white-and-red winter stockings.”
They had now reached the run. Tildy took Roxana up and lifted her across the stones. On the other side, it was her proposal to make a saddle to carry the baby up the slope. So Bluebell grasped one of her own wrists, palm downward, and Tildy grasped one of her own, and with their free hands they then grasped each other’s free wrists, thus forming a square and substantial seat on which Rocco sat down when they stooped for her. She held to Tildy’s shoulder and Bluebell’s neck as they went on. Riding on this kind of saddle is most exhilarating. If your bearers stumble you have the chance of alighting on your feet, yet you see the world from an elevated position and at your ease.
They heard the loom before they entered the house. Mrs. Banks was weaving, and Teeny was sitting on the doorstep in the shade, sewing quilt-pieces. Teeny was quite devoted to this industry. She had a very young-womanish air. Her hair was twisted in a knob with some pinks in it, and her mother’s largest apron was tied around her plain-waisted dress.
The floors were all bare at Liza-Robert’s house, though she wove endless carpets for her prouder neighbors. The children went into the loom-room, which was nearly filled by that huge frame. There were threads stretching diagonally and crossing each other in front of her, between which she shot a shuttle from side to side; then she pulled an overhanging frame-work twice, and it sent the bobbin-thread, which was called a filling, home to its place in the web, with a not unmusical sound. The web this time was a linsey cloth with variegated threads through it, intended for the girls’ winter dresses.
She took Rocco up on her lap, let her struggle to guide the shuttle through, and made believe that the baby pulled the frame-work.
“Little innocent!” said Liza-Robert; “it’ll be the only stroke she’ll ever weave. They have things different in fine towns.”
“I want a drink,” said Tildy. She went out, followed by her faithful Bluebell. They ran down to that spring-house spared by the late flood, and opened the door into its coolness. The ground was clear again, and the yellow-faced crocks stood in their accustomed places with the overflow of the spring purling around them. The spring itself was so clear and cold and alive to its duty that there was pleasure in only hanging over it to see your face below. Tildy broke off leaves from peppermint stalks, and bending them so they could be pinned with stems, made cups for Bluebell and herself. They dipped and emptied these thimble-sized cups until the breasts of their dresses were wet, utterly ignoring the gourd which hung on a nail just at hand.