CHAPTER XX

THE LAST TIME

When everything was settled, the Rocky Forkers said they were not surprised that Doctor Garde was going to move. A man always ought to better himself; but they hoped he _would_ better himself. The Rocky Fork was rough and hilly, but some towns might be worse.

Miss Calder was to take the children home with her; but the doctor, able to ride about with his arm in a sling, had to collect fees and settle his business before departing to a new field.

So Bluebell came the last time to the log school-house. She might not see it again.

“The children shall visit you every summer, Liza,” said the young man.

“And you must come to see them,” urged Miss Melissa. But Liza knew the old time was forever broken up. And Bluebell knew that when she came back the school-house would not be her school-house, nor Mr. Pitzer, if he still reigned, her master; yet in her bustle and anticipation, regrets were crowded to a corner of her mind, and she felt important on this last day. Mr. Pitzer had written a beautiful parting address to her on half a tall foolscap sheet, in his fairest hand, upstrokes light and downstrokes artistically shaded, with such wonderful turning W’s and other capitals, throwing fantastic vines all around. He had ornamented the top with a bird and a fish in red and green inks, each being deftly finished by a continuous flourish without the pen having been lifted from the paper. The address began, “Dear Youth;” and went on to describe life as a stream, and a child as a young voyager who was bidden to beware of quicksands, whose sky your old friend hoped might be ever free from storms. In concluding he said, “How touching is a young and interesting mind just unfolding its petals to the sunlight! Whoever shall bring it to perfect flower, it will always be a source of pleasure to your old friend to remember that he was the first to lead it in the ways of knowledge. May heaven bless and richly endow my young friend! “Your schoolmaster, “THOMAS PITZER.”

Bluebell folded the paper reverently. She could not read many of the words; it was necessary to add more years to her life before this production could be appreciated in its magnitude. But she was very grateful for such a testimonial, and some odd tender string began vibrating in her little heart. Oh, dear Mr. Pitzer! and dear old benches that smelled like the chest carved by Antony of Trent! The very dunce-cap was a thing of joy when she thought of it! How funny it looked on a blubbering little boy who would not repent of his misdeeds until he was stood in the middle of the floor with that paper cone on his head! Should she ever know again the hungry smell of a reticule that has a few stale crumbs in it? She had her way all day. She visited, and when she and Tildy asked to go after the water, not a soul in school would have been a rival candidate for the same office.

They brought back bunches of honeysuckle from Langley’s well, and the smell of that flower became forever associated in Bluebell’s mind with worm-eaten benches, clay-chinked walls and the stirring air of the hills. She wore her best blue calico, and felt so dressed up as to have lost part of her identity. So Tildy rested the pail-handle on a stick, and silently carried the short end herself. And when they put the water-pail on its bench in the corner, Joe Hall got permission to pass it around (another fat office in primitive school-life), and not one mouth within those walls could refuse to press the dripping gourd when it presented itself, splashing cold drops on bare feet, or sending delicious shudders through thinly covered limbs. When Joe Hall reached Bluebell, he dropped in her lap not only a thumb-paper bearing her name, but a lot of birds ingeniously folded in the pattern generally accepted by the school.

Perintha Pancost had her pocket so bulging full of new apples that it weighed her down, and all the scholars on her bench swallowed expectantly. But, one after the other, they were passed to Bluebell, through hands which only stopped them on the way for a smell; so Bluebell’s pocket bulged, and she and Perintha exchanged the most amiable and confiding smiles. Mr. Pitzer was so busy mending pens that he perhaps saw no occasion for bringing out and reading that article of the rules which forbade eating “_apples, condiments, and nuts, or going to dinner-bags in school hours_.”

How kind all those boys and girls were! John Tegarden showed her the “Death of the Flowers,” in the Fourth Reader, which he was learning to speak before summer school was out, for the “last day;” and, as it had a melancholy tone, Bluebell felt vaguely complimented. She would be away off in Sharon on that day; she would not even see the prizes distributed, to say nothing of missing that spelling-prize herself.

Some of the parents who were not too busy harvesting, would be there in their Sunday clothes; the children themselves would appear in different character, all shod in stiff shoes or jaunty slippers; the fortunate girls in white dotted swiss, or book muslin, with rosettes of ribbon in their tightly braided hair, the poorer ones in starched calico; the boys dressed exactly like their fathers, and looking like little old men, very much subdued by the calamity of clothes.

But still there probably were grander gala days in Sharon.

Amanda Willey would have Bluebell stand next to her in the ring at noon when they played “_I lost my glove yesterday, found it to-day_.” Of course Tildy stood on the other side, and Perintha, who went around with the glove--which was simply and solely an empty reticule, there being no glove in the entire school wardrobe--dropped it behind Bluebell. They abstained from “_Drown the Duck_,” because she hated the tiresome ins and outs, and was sure to be drowned by dashing straight at the leader.

Even the boys left “_Bull in the Pen_,” and “_Mad Dog_,” to say nothing of “_Base_” and “_Three Old Cat_,” and condescended to play for once with the girls, if the girls would play that variation of “_Hide and Seek_” known to them as “_Hickamy-dickamy_;” and to Bluebell was reserved the right of repeating the cabalistic formula by which the panting and eager crowd was narrowed down to the one party who had to hide his eyes. With dipping forefinger she went the rounds, rejoicing in the liquid roll of the words:

“Hickamy-dickamy, aliga-mo; Dick slew, aligo-slum; Hulkum, pulkum, peeler’s gum: France--you’re out!”

The lot fell on Minerva Ridenour, that little baby-faced thing who was always standing about with her mouth open, as if perpetually astonished at the world, and who could not even eat an apple without showing how her white first-teeth made cider of the fruit. There were plenty of places to hide: behind logs and trees, behind the school-house and the school-house door. Before she had counted a hundred, with her eyes hid against the base, not a bobbing head or glint of calico could be seen in the landscape; and when, rubbing the smear which darkness had made, off her sight, she wandered cautiously a few yards from the base, lo! there were a half a dozen long-legged fellows patting it, having swooped from overhanging branches or from behind logs. Forms appeared everywhere, and the little Black Man ran valiantly, but overtook only one or two at the base, where she patted excitedly, calling the individual names of the entire school, until she was checked, and reminded if she called anybody’s name before he appeared, that party could “come in free.” Joe Hall and John Tegarden remained out when all the rest stood in a scarlet and perspiring group! and it was ludicrous to see Minerva fly back to the base as if drawn by an elastic rope which she had stretched, every time an alarm rose behind her or she saw a suspicious spot. On the other hand, the found majority shouted warning or encouragement to the invisibles:

“Lay low, Joe!”

“Run, John, now’s your time! Run! run! run!”

John had hid in the hollow towards the Rocky Fork, and his long legs at his distance were pretty equally matched against Minerva’s tardier feet at her distance. It was an exciting moment, in which the majority patted its hands and knees and shouted with all its might. Minerva came in gallantly, but John reached over her at the last instant and patted the base: “One, two, three!” And then his impetus carried him sprawling on the ground. It was John’s nature to throw his entire sensitive soul into what he undertook, and he did not enjoy the girls’ laughing and the boys’ hooting as he scrambled upon “all-fours.” He did not know he was to do martial service for his country and to die the death of a soldier. The noble possibilities of the boy were at that time only apparent in his tenderness of heart. It was an aggravation to an awkward fellow like John to see Joe Hall sail in and encircle the base while Minerva was farthest from it, as if Mercury’s wings grew on his neatly moving heels; pat it triumphantly, and step back with his head up, as if graceful success was a matter of course for him.

Oh, they had so much fun! If there was anything in the world more exhilarating than running right through when the Black Man calls, Doctor Garde’s little girl had yet to encounter it. Then there was that similar play, with a shiver in it:

“How many miles to Barley-bright?” “Three score and ten.” “Can I get there by candle-light?” “Yes, if the witches don’t catch you!”

But the school-day ended. Bluebell put her reader and spelling-book into her reticule. She got one last head-mark. And the lessons the higher classes had read that afternoon, made a background of thought in her mind--the magnificently worded “Con-fla-gra-tion of an Am-phi-theatre,” and that rousing story of a son’s return, beginning, “It was night. The widow of the Pine Cottage had laid on her last fagot.”

One by one the boys and girls went out, bowing or curtsying to the master, and he laid special emphasis on the “_Good_-evening” which he gave Bluebell.

How soon it was all over! And how soon the very evening before her departure had come! The clothes she was to wear on the journey were laid out on a chair, and her mother’s trunk brought down from the garret, repaired and packed. After all, it was decided to let Roxana stay with Liza until her father was ready to depart. In her own flutter, Bluebell scarcely anticipated missing the baby.

Tildy came over to stay all night, and they played until late. She brought her John Rogers’ Primer as a parting gift for Bluebell to “remember her by.” Its frontispiece represented the martyr, John Rogers, burning at the stake, surrounded by soldiers with axes, and his numerous family, in very short-waisted gowns or mature-looking coats. The delightful rhymes within its covers almost repeated themselves:

“Time cuts down all, Both great and small.”

“In Adam’s fall We sin-ned all.”

“Zaccheus he Did climb a tree, His lord and master For to see;”

and many others with an old-fashioned tang like that of a winter apple kept far into the spring. And there was, besides, John Rogers’s address to his children. On receiving this precious pamphlet, Bluebell drew from her own stores her oldest and dearest book, the “_Hymns for Infant Minds_,” in pink pasteboard covers. There was this prime favorite:

“My father, my mother, I know, I cannot your kindness repay; But I hope as the older I grow, I shall learn your commands to obey. You loved me before I could tell Who it was that so tenderly smiled; But now that I know it so well, I should be a dutiful child.”

And there, too, was Mr. Pitzer’s battle piece:

“Let dogs delight,” &c.,

And,

“I thank the goodness and the grace Which on my birth has smiled;”

with dozens of other gently stimulating hymns which Bluebell had long known by heart. In giving this book to Tildy, she gave as nearly a part of her identity as could be separated from herself.

Morning came--early, but moist and shady among the hills. The girls were up before anybody else in the house. Tildy hooked Bluebell up with maternal care, and combed the tangles out of her hair with an energy which came near straining their friendship at that last moment.

Then Liza bustled about breakfast, and the baby waked in the unusual stir. Miss Melissa moved out of her chamber in the dignified habit which she had laid aside after her arrival at the Rocky Fork. Father did not ride away until the party was ready to start. Abram with his spring-wagon was to drive them to the station: father was still a left-handed horseman.

The last, and almost the very best, breakfast of Rocky Fork life was just over, when Robert’s Liza and Teeny came trailing up the meadow, their dresses deeply touched with dew. Teeny brought her rough-coated china lamb as a parting gift; she had outgrown such toys; but Bluebell could only give her a kiss in return, for all her treasures were under lock and key.

Then a rattling was heard along the lane, and Abram appeared with his horse and spring-wagon. He had two split-bottomed chairs for his travellers, but for himself, a board across the wagon was good enough. He let down the bars, and drove in to take on the trunks. And then Bluebell realized that she was going away from home!

Does the child leave you so lightly, old weather-beaten house! Never mind. Years will bring you your revenge: you will live in her mind forever, a symbol of joy which does not come when we are older.

She is squeezing the little sister, responding to Tildy’s stoical hug--and Tildy starts straight to the lower bars, her brimming eyes turned from the company. Liza-Robert is caressing her with some pious words, and now she is tight in Liza’s arms, just realizing how soft and comfortable and dear they have been. She hangs to Liza while Miss Melissa makes her adieux, and Teeny gives her another pat as Abram hoists her into the vehicle.

Father is ready on his Arabian to ride beside them as far as Mary Ann post-office. They will take the long way around the hills.

The bars are put up behind them. Bluebell looks back and sees her group of friends moving into the house, and hears Rocco’s voice--like the voice of the old house--calling persistently:

“Good-by, B’uebell, good-by! Good-by, B’uebell!”