SCENE V.
_The White Farm. Afternoon._
TIMOTHY FINDS A HOUSE IN WHICH HE THINKS A BABY IS NEEDED, BUT THEINMATES DO NOT ENTIRELY AGREE WITH HIM.
Meanwhile, Miss Avilda Cummins had left her window and gone into thenext room for a skein of yarn. She answered the knock, however; and,opening the door, stood rooted to the threshold in speechlessastonishment, very much as if she had seen the shades of her ancestorsdrawn up in line in the dooryard.
Off went Timothy's hat. He hadn't seen the lady's face very clearly whenshe was knitting at the window, or he would never have dared to knock;but it was too late to retreat. Looking straight into her cold eyes withhis own shining gray ones, he said bravely, but with a trembling voice,"Do you need any babies here, if you please?" (Need any babies! What aninappropriate, nonsensical expression, to be sure; as if a baby weresomething exquisitely indispensable, like the breath of life, forinstance!)
No answer. Miss Vilda was trying to assume command of her scatteredfaculties and find some clue to the situation. Timothy concluded thatshe was not, after all, the lady of the house; and, remembering themarble doorplate in the orchard, tried again. "Does Miss Martha Cumminslive here, if you please?" (Oh, Timothy! what induced you, in thiscrucial moment of your life, to touch upon that sorest spot in MissVilda's memory?)
"What do you want?" she faltered.
"I want to get somebody to adopt my baby," he said; "if you haven't gotany of your own, you couldn't find one half as dear and as pretty as sheis; and you needn't have me too, you know, unless you should need me tohelp take care of her."
"You're very kind," Miss Avilda answered sarcastically, preparing toshut the door upon the strange child; "but I don't think I care to adoptany babies this afternoon, thank you. You'd better run right back hometo your mother, if you've got one, and know where 't is, anyhow."
"I--haven't!" cried poor Timothy, with a sudden and unpremeditated burstof tears at the failure of his hopes; for he was half child as well ashalf hero. At this juncture Gay opened her eyes, and burst into a wildhowl at the unwonted sight of Timothy's grief; and Rags, who was full ofexquisite sensibility, and quite ready to weep with those who did weep,lifted up his woolly head and added his piteous wails to the concert. Itwas a _tableau vivant_.
"Samanthy Ann!" called Miss Vilda excitedly; "Samanthy Ann! Come righthere and tell me what to do!"
The person thus adjured flew in from the porch, leaving a serpentinetrail of red, yellow, and blue rags in her wake. "Land o' liberty!" sheexclaimed, as she surveyed the group. "Where'd they come from, and whatair they tryin' to act out?"
"This boy's a baby agent, as near as I can make out; he wants I shouldadopt this red-headed baby, but says I ain't obliged to take him too,and makes out they haven't got any home. I told him I wa'n't adoptin'any babies just now, and at that he burst out cryin', and the other twofollowed suit. Now, have the three of 'em just escaped from someasylum, or are they too little to be lunatics?"
Timothy dried his tears, in order that Gay should be comforted andappear at her best, and said penitently: "I cried before I thought,because Gay hasn't had anything but cookies since last night, and she'llhave no place to sleep unless you'll let us stay here just till morning.We went by all the other houses, and chose this one because everythingwas so beautiful."
"Nothin' but cookies sence--Land o' liberty!" ejaculated Samantha Ann,starting for the kitchen.
"Come back here, Samanthy! Don't you leave me alone with 'em, and don'tlet's have all the neighbors runnin' in; you take 'em into the kitchenand give 'em somethin' to eat, and we'll see about the rest afterwards."
Gay kindled at the first casual mention of food; and, trying to clamberout of the basket, fell over the edge, thumping her head smartly on thestone steps. Miss Vilda covered her face with her hands, and waitedshudderingly for another yell, as the child's carnation stocking andterra-cotta head mingled wildly in the air. But Lady Gay disentangledherself, and laughed the merriest burst of laughter that ever woke theechoes. That was a joke; her life was full of them, served fresh everyday; for no sort of adversity could long have power over such a natureas hers. "Come get supper," she cooed, putting her hand in Samantha's;adding that the "nasty lady needn't come," a remark that happily escapeddetection, as it was rendered in very unintelligible "early English."
Miss Avilda tottered into the darkened sitting-room and sank on to ablack haircloth sofa, while Samantha ushered the wanderers into thesunny kitchen, muttering to herself: "Wall, I vow! travelin' over thecountry all alone, 'n' not knee-high to a toad! They're send in' outawful young tramps this season, but they sha'n't go away hungry, if Iknow it."
Accordingly, she set out a plentiful supply of bread and butter,gingerbread, pie, and milk, put a tin plate of cold hash in the shed forRags, and swept him out to it with a corn broom; and, telling thechildren comfortably to cram their "everlastin' little bread-basketsfull," returned to the sitting-room.
"Now, whatever makes you so panicky, Vildy? Didn't you never see a trampbefore, for pity's sake? And if you're scar't for fear I can't handle'em alone, why, Jabe 'll be comin' along soon. The prospeck of gittin'to bed's the only thing that'll make him 'n' Maria hurry; 'n' they'llboth be cal'latin' on that by this time!"
"Samanthy Ann, the first question that that boy asked me was, 'If MissMartha Cummins lived here.' Now, what do you make of that?"
Samantha looked as astonished as anybody could wish. "Asked if MarthyCummins lived here? How under the canopy did he ever hear Marthy's name?Wall, somebody told him to ask, that's all there is about it; and whatharm was there in it, anyhow?"
"Oh, I don't know, I don't know; but the minute that boy looked up at meand asked for Martha Cummins, the old trouble, that I thought was deadand buried years ago, started right up in my heart and begun to achejust as if it all happened yesterday."
"Now keep stiddy, Vildy; what could happen?" urged Samantha.
"Why, it flashed across my mind in a minute," and here Miss Vildalowered her voice to a whisper, "that perhaps Martha's baby didn't die,as they told her."
"But, land o' liberty, s'posin' it didn't! Poor Marthy died herself more'n twenty years ago."
"I know; but supposing her baby didn't die; and supposing it grew up anddied, and left this little girl to roam round the world afoot andalone?"
"You're cal'latin' dreadful close, 'pears to me; now, don't go s'posin'any more things. You're makin' out one of them yellow-covered books,sech as the summer boarders bring out here to read; always chock full ofdoin's that never would come to pass in this or any other Christiancountry. You jest lay down and snuff your camphire, an' I'll go out an'pump that boy drier 'n a sand heap!"
Now, Miss Avilda Cummins was unmarried by every implication of herbeing, as Henry James would say: but Samantha Ann Ripley was a spinsterpurely by accident. She had seldom been exposed to the witcheries ofchildren, or she would have known long before this that, so far as shewas personally concerned, they would always prove irresistible. Shemarched into the kitchen like a general resolved upon the extinction ofthe enemy. She walked out again, half an hour later, with the very teethof her resolve drawn, but so painlessly that she had not been aware ofthe operation! She marched in a woman of a single purpose; she came outa double-faced diplomatist, with the seeds of sedition and conspiracylurking, all unsuspected, in her heart.
The cause? Nothing more than a dozen trifles as "light as air." Timothyhad sat upon a little wooden stool at her feet; and, resting his arms onher knees, had looked up into her kind, rosy face with a pair of liquideyes like gray-blue lakes, eyes which seemed and were the very windowsof his soul. He had sat there telling his wee bit of a story; just avague, shadowy, plaintive, uncomplaining scrap of a story, withoutbeginning, plot, or ending, but every word in it set Samantha AnnRipley's heart throbbing.
And Gay, who knew a good thing when she saw it, had climbed up into hercapacious lap, and, not being denied, had cuddled her head into that"gracious hollow" in Samantha's shoulder, th
at had somehow missed thepressure of the childish heads that should have lain there. ThenSamantha's arm had finally crept round the wheedlesome bit of softhumanity, and before she knew it her chair was swaying gently to andfro, to and fro, to and fro; and the wooden rockers creaked more sweetlythan ever they had creaked before, for they were singing their firstcradle song!
Then Gay heaved a great sigh of unspeakable satisfaction, and closed herlovely eyes. She had been born with a desire to be cuddled, and had hadprecious little experience of it. At the sound of this happy sigh andthe sight of the child's flower face, with the upward curling lashes onthe pink cheeks and the moist tendrils of hair on the white forehead,and the helpless, clinging touch of the baby arm about her neck, Icannot tell you the why or wherefore, but old memories and new desiresbegan to stir in Samantha Ann Ripley's heart. In short, she had met theenemy, and she was theirs!
Presently Gay was laid upon the old-fashioned settle, and Samanthastationed herself where she could keep the flies off her by waving apalm-leaf fan.
"Now, there's one thing more I want you to tell me," said she, after shehad possessed herself of Timothy's unhappy past, uncertain present, andstill more dubious future; "and that is, what made you ask for MissMarthy Cummins when you come to the door?"
"Why, I thought it was the lady-of-the-house's name," said Timothy; "Isaw it on her doorplate."
"But we ain't got any doorplate, to begin with."
"Not a silver one on your door, like they have in the city; but isn'tthat white marble piece in the yard a doorplate? It's got 'MarthaCummins, aged 17,' on it. I thought may be in the country they had themin their gardens; only I thought it was queer they put their ages onthem, because they'd have to be scratched out every little while,wouldn't they?"
"My grief!" ejaculated Samantha; "for pity's sake, don't you know atombstun when you see it?"
"No; what is a tombstun?"
"Land sakes! what do you know, any way? Didn't you never see a graveyardwhere folks is buried?"
"I never went to the graveyard, but I know where it is, and I knowabout people's being buried. Flossy is going to be buried. And so thewhite stone shows the places where the people are put, and tells theirnames, does it? Why, it is a kind of a doorplate, after all, don't yousee? Who is Martha Cummins, aged 17?"
"She was Miss Vildy's sister, and she went to the city, and then comehome and died here, long years ago. Miss Vildy set great store by her,and can't bear to have her name spoke; so remember what I say. Now, this'Flossy' you tell me about (of all the fool names I ever hearn tell of,that beats all,--sounds like a wax doll, with her clo'se sewed on!), wasshe a young woman?"
"I don't know whether she was young or not," said Tim, in a puzzledtone. "She had young yellow hair, and very young shiny teeth, white aschina; but her neck was crackled underneath, like Miss Vilda's;--it hadno kissing places in it like Gay's."
"Well, you stay here in the kitchen a spell now, 'n' don't let in thatrag-dog o' yourn till he stops scratching if he keeps it up till thecrack o' doom;--he's got to be learned better manners. Now, I'll go in'n' talk to Miss Vildy. She may keep you over night, 'n' she may not; Iain't noways sure. You started in wrong foot foremost."