WE FIND OURSELVES OWN FOLKS AT LAST

The young ship builder by Sophie Swett is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here. CHAPTER XIV

WE FIND OURSELVES OWN FOLKS AT LAST

“I’ve kep’ Hiram waitin’ consid’able of a spell,” continued Loveday, in a firmer voice. “I wa’n’t but seventeen when he first come a-courtin’ me, and now I’m risin’ forty. I wa’n’t never one that felt a partickler call to matrimony, nor that thought they had any great tarlent for it. And the Lord ’peared to have filled my hands consid’able full where he’d sot me.”

“Dear Loveday! I should think He had!” murmured Octavia.

My heart was too full for words. I seemed to realize, for the first time, what Loveday had been to us. Groundnut Hill Farm without her was a thing which my imagination failed to grasp. I stared at her in blank dismay.

“It wouldn’t ’pear to be a time to think of marryin’ or givin’ in marriage, when there’s family troubles,” continued Loveday; “not without there was partickler reasons, as you might say. But—but Hiram he kind of needs now to be took care of——”

“And you have been taking care of us instead all these years!” I said, self-reproachfully, for we had always regarded this romance of Loveday’s as only a matter to smile at.

“’Tain’t that so much,” amended Loveday, conscientiously. “I can’t say as I was ever one that felt a real call to take care of a man person—but—but it seems to come handy that we should get married right now. Hiram’s a professor and a God-fearin’ man if ever there was one, and yet I can’t feel to trust him to go everywheres alone—men folks bein’ so easy carried away.”

This was puzzling; for had not Hiram, from his youth up, gone on his traveling tours alone?

“Besides, he hain’t got quite so much spunk to carry things through as what I have, if I do say it,” Loveday continued, thoughtfully.

Was Loveday becoming mercenary and longing that Hiram’s business should have the aid of her superior “spunk”? I felt a cold chill in the shadow of suspicion, of which I was ashamed the next moment, that Loveday was fleeing from our falling fortunes.

“But we want you to have a beautiful wedding, Loveday,” said Octavia. “And just now——”

“’Twill be day after to-morrer to the minister’s,” said Loveday firmly. “I shall be marryin’ in the Lord and ’twon’t be a mite of matter if I don’t have a good black silk, as I always calc’lated to.”

“Day after to-morrow!” echoed Octavia and I, in a dismayed chorus.

“And if there ain’t no objections I’m a-comin’ back ag’in, after we have a little weddin’ tour. It’ll mebbe be only a short one, and then ag’in mebbe ’twill take some time. I’ve got Viola pretty well broke in. Her riz biscuits is fair to middlin’, and her pies ’n’ cakes ain’t pison. I can feel to trust her for a week or two, anyhow.”

“And you’re coming back? O, Loveday, how delightful!” we cried. “But you shouldn’t have given us such a fright.”

“I never expected but what you knew that here was where the Lord had sot me,” said Loveday, with a surprised, almost an injured expression of countenance. “Why, land sake! I don’t expect I could live nowheres but at Groundnut Hill Farm as long as there was such a place. There is creturs that sheds their skins, they say, but the Lord never made me one of that kind.

“Hiram he’s of a rovin’ disposition. He always was and he always will be. If there ain’t no objection ’twill come kind of handy for him to come here between times, or when he has a tunin’ spell and I can patch and button and better him. Hiram was always one that needed being looked after reg’lar—same as I always have.”

“It will be beautiful! Just as if you were not married at all,” we said, with intense relief, and if we wondered that Hiram could be trusted again after the wedding tour it was only vaguely, for Loveday’s ideas were not always easy to follow.

Hiram appeared the next day in very high spirits. As difficult as it was for Loveday to write letters, she had evidently informed her loyal lover that it was her sovereign behest to name the day. She snubbed him for his gaiety, nevertheless. In spite of her strange choice of a wedding day, it was evident that Loveday felt keenly the troubles that overshadowed the family.

Photography was the business that came next in order in Hiram’s “combernation,” but his bride elected that essence-peddling should be continued for the wedding journey. The photograph wagon was too slow and cumbersome, she said, for a wedding tour. It was “her way to do things up kind of spry.”

Hiram insisted upon re-painting his wagon for the occasion, although there was a fear that the paint would not be dry, and the picture of himself, which adorned the side, was painted with the brilliant purple necktie which he meant to wear at his wedding. Loveday was not willing that we should even go to the minister’s with her, but we lay in ambush behind Mr. Grover’s willow hedge, and all of us, even Cyrus—Alice Yorke was with us,—threw rice and old shoes after the wedding carriage that is, the essence wagon, which, with its new and brilliant coat of paint, looked as festal as befitted the occasion.

Loveday, who disapproved of such demonstrations, sat grimly disregarding, while we followed on with cheers, until the last Palmyra corner, the post road, was reached. Then she relented and turned toward us a bashful, becomingly tearful face, that was hardly to be recognized as Loveday’s.

Notices of the coming bankruptcy sale were posted upon the Palmyra fences. They stared at us shamelessly, sickeningly on all the dear, familiar roads, turning spring’s verdant delights into a mockery. Even on the banks of our beautiful river were these hideous signs, printed large, that they might be read from steamer and vessel. As far away as the port the dreadful announcement flaunted at every corner. We were forced to invent pretexts to prevent grandma from taking her accustomed drives, lest they should be read by even her dim, old eyes, so large were the letters.

Only a few days before the one which was set for the auction sale, “Evelyn Marchmont” came home. It was I who brought from the post-office the dreadful, bulky package that represented so much labor and effort and hope.

None of the trite sayings are so true as that misfortunes never come singly. To carry it to Octavia was almost more than I could bear to do just now!

It was a Saturday morning, and she and Estelle were together in the latter’s attic studio. They were very often together now; a real intimacy had developed since the city experience.

I will admit that I sometimes felt a little shut out. And yet there is a satisfaction in the production of cheese and preserves, if you feel that you have a real talent in that direction, that I believe is scarcely inferior to that which one feels in the production of literature and art! Moreover, I didn’t refuse to accept the consolation that Octavia offered me. Better pictures and stories were being continually brought forth than either she or Estelle could ever hope to give to the world, she said, while no one could ever beat me at sage cheese or quince jelly!

I wondered whether, since the old house was built, anybody had ever carried a heavier burden up those attic stairs than “Evelyn Marchmont” was to me! I sat down upon the top-stair feeling that I could get no farther with my heavy heart and the dreadful package.

“I thought I saw Bathsheba coming from the office,” I heard Estelle say. “Perhaps we shall hear to-day.”

And then I steeled my nerves and went into the studio. I only hoped that Octavia would not weep. She seldom did, but when the tears came it was in a tempest. I stood speechless while Octavia looked at the package.

“Oh, Evelyn has come back!” she exclaimed, lightly. “I knew it would. You needn’t think I mind, Bathsheba! I’ve had all those pangs and gotten over them. I don’t need to be told now that I can’t do that sort of thing. But oh, Estelle, there is a letter for you! Do hurry and open it!”

She tossed the package carelessly upon the table, and watched Estelle, breathlessly, while she opened the letter. A thin strip of paper fluttered out, of a kind happily known to prosperous makers of cheese and preserves!

“We find your sister’s little stories charming,” read Estelle, in a voice that was half-choked with delight. “We enclose a check for the two first sent, and shall examine the others at once. The fact that they have been used in her kindergarten would not injure them at all for our use, and we should be glad to consider any others that she may have on hand. We recognize a new touch in them, and should be glad to have her submit a serial for our magazine to run for three or six months. Your very original drawings illustrate your sister’s work so strikingly that we prophesy for your work done in conjunction a real success, and should, indeed, be glad to have you give us the refusal of anything in our line that you may do.”

Oh, and then there was hilarity in the studio! We were none of us so very old, and, of course, one could not expect Estelle whose own affair this was, to take it very quietly.

“Only the little stories that I wrote for my kindergarten. Estelle would send them,” explained Octavia, with joyful tears. “Fancy their finding a new touch in them and prophesying a real success! See what they say!” she added, as I picked up “Evelyn Marchmont” from the floor where it had fallen.

I opened the package, and read from a printed slip.

“The publishers regret that their list of books for the coming year is already so large that they are obliged to return your interesting manuscript.”

The following P. S. was added: “The criticism of one of our readers is enclosed, as it is thought that the writer may possibly find a valuable suggestion in it.”

I handed the enclosed scrap of blue paper to Octavia, and she read aloud: “A commonplace story, not without interest, although of somewhat stilted and old-fashioned diction. The author’s material is incidentally derived from books rather than from life. She would do better if she should make use of her every-day experiences of life in writing, and not go beyond her own environment.”

“I have found that out for myself,” said Octavia, quickly. “Experience and publishers’ readers sometimes point to the same conclusion, it seems! To think of my little kindergarten stories and jingles promising to be a real success—that, with the aid of Estelle’s bunchy babies! More than half the success, I am sure, will be hers. And if ever I write another word I will look to Palmyra for my material!”

We were still talking over the joy and the wonder of this good fortune, and I had just suggested that Cyrus must be told at once, that he might at least have the practical comfort of knowing that we could all take care of ourselves, when a voice called, at the foot of the stairs:

“May I come up?”

“Of course you may,” returned Estelle, for it was Alice Yorke.

And Alice came up with her cheeks so vividly aglow that I felt like warning her against running up-stairs; but there was such a chattering that I couldn’t. And when one came to look closely at her one saw that her eyes were shining in a soft and misty fashion, as if she were deeply moved. But at the time Estelle was pouring out upon her the tale of the delightful double success, and it was no wonder, I thought, that she looked so. Alice was so very sympathetic.

But before long it occurred to me, suddenly, that she was, in spite of her looks, a little absent-minded; as if she might have a tale of her own to tell, and a sudden suspicion seized me.

I longed to ask her if she knew the reason why Dave lingered, but I did not quite dare. She grew visibly ill at ease, walking about the studio, examining things which she had seen fifty times before, and asking questions whose answers she knew by heart. Then she stood by the window and drummed upon the pane, and remarked that the robins in the old elm-tree were wise to build their nest so high above the reach of prowling cats. And suddenly she wheeled about, and came toward us, and burst forth, between laughter and crying:

“Girls, I don’t know how to tell you, and I don’t know how you’ll take it at such a time as this; but I—I promised him that I would tell you that—that if you don’t mind I’m going to be your sister!”

Estelle was the first to get at her and throw her arms around her neck.

“It’s just what I’ve wanted, you know that, you little hypocrite! And you’re such a dear that you’re almost good enough for him, and you’ll almost make up to him for what he has suffered!”

Now I must admit that while I was glad for Dave I had a horrible pang of jealousy for Cyrus. I couldn’t help feeling that Dave had the lighter nature, although he had in some ways shown himself so strong, that there might be many a light fancy for him while for Cyrus there would never be any woman but Alice Yorke.

I remembered the look in Cyrus’ face that day in the shipyard, when Dave had so coolly monopolized her and I sat stupidly cold and dumb.

Octavia, whose short-sightedness was proverbial in the matter of romances, was almost as demonstrative as Estelle. She said that “perhaps the dear fellow ought not to think of marrying just yet——” “Oh, no, no, we are both willing to wait!” Alice interpolated, quickly—but that she could not think of a girl whom she would rather he would have chosen for a wife. And as for a sister-in-law, she well knew how we should all love and prize her.

And finally I managed to blurt out, like the bashful guest at a wedding: “I hope you’ll be happy.”

But I said it I knew, with a doubtful accent, and not until Octavia and Estelle had stared at me, in reproachful dismay, and Alice had begun to look deeply hurt.

“I think the discipline he has had has been good for him, although some of us feel that it was rather uncalled for, but that he will be nobler and stronger for it always,” said Octavia.

“I know I’m not good enough for him,” said Alice, meekly. “But I am going to try to be, and learn just how a minister’s wife ought to behave.”

“A minister’s wife!” gasped Octavia and Estelle in chorus.

But I, who am not the quick-witted one of the family, I sprang up and hugged her.

Estelle collapsed on a hassock.

“You no-end-of-a-humbug, we thought it was Dave,” she cried.

“That boy!” exclaimed Alice Yorke, who was herself nearly two years younger than the boy. “Cyrus thought so, and I—I had almost to ask him to have me!”

“If you have broken Dave’s heart you shall answer for it to me!” said Estelle. But she laughed. She evidently shared my opinion, that Dave’s heart was not very brittle.

Nevertheless, to this day I am not sure about it!

With all these gleams of sunshine the dreaded day of the auction sale came steadily on, and poor Cy’s happiness only showed itself occasionally in a flash of light across his worn face. I knew that he reproached himself for thinking of any happiness of his own at such a time.

On the very day before that appointed for the auction, Cyrus received a telegram from Dave, from whom no one had been able to hear a word for more than a fortnight.

“Stop sale, if possible. Can satisfy creditors!”

The telegram was brought to the house while we were at breakfast. Cyrus turned white to the lips as he read it.

“If there could be a chance!” he murmured, while grandma chirped to the canary in blissful unconcern. “But what is it possible for the boy to do? We have no credit now because we have no prospects! You don’t think I would have left any stone unturned, Bathsheba? It would be useless for me to try to stop the sale!”

“But Dave is not one to get foolish fancies into his head,” I insisted.

“Dave is a good fellow, but he’s only twenty,” said Cyrus; and threw the telegram into the waste-basket.

“I wish—I wish that Uncle Horace had not gone away,” I said, desperately.

“He could do nothing,” said Cyrus, patiently. “Besides, he is almost unbalanced by his anxiety about Rob.”

Cyrus went off, repeating that it was useless to try to stop the sale; but at the gate he was met by the assignee, into whose hands the creditors had put their claims. He also had received a telegram, and was disposed to be governed by it. His had come from the millionaire, Solomon Salter. That was the man for whose yacht Dave had made the design.

He came down to Palmyra with Dave the next day—a little man, with a curly wig, sharp eyes and frisky little movements, like a squirrel’s. I may as well say here that we learned afterward, that under a sharp and business-like outward presentment he concealed a heart as big as his fortune, which is not supposed to be characteristic of millionaires. But it was not his heart which saved the day for us; it was, as he assured us, purely a business matter. He wished a yacht built, and had been convinced by Dave that we had just the facilities for building yachts at our shipyard. Young Carruthers, of whose property he was trustee, wished to have a yacht built also, and there were others whose custom he could influence in our direction.

Those boys, Dave and Ned Carruthers, had had to spend some time talking him round; he had a good many irons in the fire, but he liked Dave’s design and he liked his pluck. He had talked with him enough to know that he was a business man as well as an artist, and he thought that with the little lift that he should be glad to give him the business might go on prosperously.

“Do you dare to trust it all to Dave?” I asked Cyrus, wonderingly, as I saw that the cloud of care had lifted from his face.

“Yes, with the proper backing; he is a great fellow, Dave, you know!” said Cyrus.

It was a gala day in Palmyra when those hateful placards were taken down and the large force of men that had been discharged was hired again to work in the shipyard. Dave did not seem to me to be as happy as he should be, but then happiness was dampered a little for us all by anxiety about Rob.

“I haven’t neglected that matter of old Lucifer,” Dave said to me. “I have been telegraphing to different places where Alf Reeder might have located, but all in vain. Ned Carruthers has gone up to New Hampshire now, and I’m going to follow just as soon as possible, though it seems like a wild goose chase.”

I didn’t dare to tell him that I thought Uncle Horace knew the whole truth. I did not know how he would feel when he knew that all his sacrifice made to protect Rob from his father had been made in vain.

“It has come to the point where nothing but that horse will save Rob’s life,” continued Dave, “and if I can find him I am simply going to bring him home with me.”

“But Uncle Horace——?” I questioned.

“I think we have all been infected with Rob’s terror of his father,” said Dave. “I have a right to own any horse that I please.”

“You will have when you are twenty-one,” I retorted. For a defiance of Uncle Horace seemed to me a reckless thing.

Dave adhered to his determination, and was starting off one morning to catch the steamer, when, borne upon the breezes to our ears, as we stood in the porch, came the sound of the horn with which Hiram Nute always announced his arrival in Palmyra.

“I should have thought that Loveday would have suppressed the horn,” Octavia remarked.

But Loveday looked proud and happy, perched beside Hiram upon the resplendent wagon.

But Hiram came not with a cracking of his whip and at a lively speed, as usual, but with a slowness that made us fear that something was the matter. Dave lingered to greet them, although he would have to run to be in time for the boat.

“We have come slow ’count of this poor old cretur!” explained Loveday from afar, in her high, shrill tones. “He’s most beat out.”

And now we saw, hitched to the back of the wagon, a poor old horse, whose head hung dejectedly, and whose ribs could be counted.

“You’ve got him!” cried Dave, and dropped his traveling-bag and his overcoat in the garden path.

“Well, I never calc’lated to come without him, though one time I didn’t know as we should fetch anything but his body,” said Loveday. “That man, Alf Reeder, had gone clear’n off to Canady and left the horse on his brother’s old, wore out farm, where there wa’n’t a bite for a grasshopper. There he was pocketin’ the money for his keep and poor old Lucifer a-starvin’! But there! what can you expect of them bettin’ kind of folks that’s used to livin’ on what’s other folks’ loss?”

“I never ought to have trusted him,” said Dave, self-reproachfully. “But he seemed so fair, and I paid him a good price.”

Dave was stroking Lucifer with tender hands, and the old horse looked at him with an almost human gaze.

“I don’t know as we should ever ’a’ got him if it hadn’t been for a young man that said he was a friend of all of you, though I never heard tell of him in my born days—Mr. Edward Carruthers; he give me his card. We fell in with him at a hotel, and first off I thought he was teched, he was so crazy to help find Alf Reeder. And if it didn’t turn out that that was what he’d come for himself—to find the old horse!

“And I never see the beat of the way he stuck to it, and never slep’ nights! He went horseback through the woods and through terrible rough roads, where the wagon couldn’t go. But that ain’t the strangest part!”

Hiram had gallantly assisted his bride to alight, and she stood now with us beside the old horse, and lowered her voice to a mysterious whisper.

“Mr. Horace hain’t got home yet, has he? We come acrost him, too, at a hotel, and if he wa’n’t lookin’ for Alf Reeder, too! We’d got the old horse then, least way Mr. Carruthers had. He come leadin’ him into the door-yard, while we was standin’ on the porch, and I see Mr. Horace knew him the minute he clapped eyes onto him. And it ’peared to me there wa’n’t nothin’ to do but jest to face the music.

“‘I know it’s old Lucifer,’ says I. ‘He belongs to Mr. David,’ says I, ‘and I’ve come a-purpose to carry him home.’ And then I hadn’t no time to think of what I should say, but something made me real bold! ‘When there’s somethin’ that a sick boy has got his heart on,’ says I, ‘why, there ain’t anything that’ll cure him but jest that thing, and it’s cruelty to keep it from him,’ says I. Now I felt as if the earth would open and swallow me up after I’d said that to Mr. Pa’tridge himself! But what do you think he done?—him that never was one to be free with hired help! He came right up to me and held out his hand for me to shake. And ‘God bless you!’ says he, with his great, strong voice a-shakin’. Mr. Horace that never was a professor!

“‘I guess I’ve been a hard man without realizin’ it, Loveday,’ says he. ‘I heard the truth about myself from some of your young people down in the shipyard one day, and I guess, mebbe, it has fetched me to a better mind,’ says he. ‘I come after the horse myself,’ says he, ‘but you’ve got the start of me.’ Now, wouldn’t you most think he’d really met with a change?”

Dave set out for Uncle Horace’s with the old horse after it had been fed and rubbed down, and on the orchard slope I saw him met by the tall gaunt figure that there was no mistaking. After a little parley, Dave put the bridle rein into Uncle Horace’s hand, and turned back.

“I thought it would be better that his father should take the horse to Rob,” he explained to me when I went to meet him.

But I knew he had denied himself a great pleasure. It is seldom that a boy has tact like that!

And I must tell him about Cyrus and Alice Yorke! Was any one ever so tormented as I by a divided heart? Now I felt almost resentful against Cyrus.

“Things have turned out so beautifully, haven’t they, Dave?” I stammered; “all but——” oh, if I only had a little tact! “O, Dave, do you care?” I blurted out.

He caught my eye and blushed and laughed.

“Poor old Cyrus! he told me, himself,” he said; “he fancied I should care, I think. But only imagine Cy making love! How did he ever manage it? It must have been like an elephant dancing. But he got there, didn’t he? You never can tell about girls! And he deserves to succeed. I can see now, Bathsheba, that we haven’t always appreciated Cyrus.”

We! and in the old days he had always reckoned Cyrus and me together. Loveday need not have feared that the aliens would never be just like the rest of us.

“Don’t trouble about me, Bathsheba,” he added, lightly. “There are as good fish in the sea as ever were caught!”

“Dave, have you been going to Peggy Carruthers’ little studio teas?” I asked, eagerly.

“Little studio teas!” he echoed, with a non-committal laugh, “as if I were not a business man! I’m not the one that’s going to change my name to Carruthers!”

And he went off, whistling gaily; but I didn’t know. To this day I don’t know! But could I be less than content, as I sat upon the orchard slope and thought of the wonderful way in which things had worked together for good for us all? And we were all in one heart, “own folks” at last, even Rob and his father.

The busy hum of the yard—shipyard—mingled again with the placid song of our beautiful river. The soft, blue summer sky bent over us like a benediction, and God’s providence was our sure inheritance.

Viola’s voice aroused me from my meditations:

“Miss Bathsheba, Leander’s cousin has come about the hogs’-head-cheese!” she said.

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