Over Paradise Ridge
Page 22
steps all the time, evenwhen the minister (who had manners like those of Colonel Menefee and theMayor of Hayesboro) came to supper, or the girl that always had a plateof hickory-nut candy in her hand and kept saying sharp things whilegiving everybody something sweet to take away the taste. Julia said shewas that girl, but Peter indignantly denied anybody's being anybody, andthen we all kept still. Just then the curtain went down on the secondact, with the whole house in an uproar; and there was a call for Peterand Farrington.
Peter went and left me sitting there in the shadow alone, while hestepped out on the stage all by himself--the stage of his life. And, oh,I was so glad to be in the shadow all by myself, for I had been as happyas I could and it was beginning to wear off. I wanted Sam--I wanted himeven if the wonderful woman in the play was going to have him in reallife, too, as I knew would have to happen some day. Also Sam deserved tobe there that night if anybody did, and he was way down in the HarpethValley working, working, working, it seemed to me, that all the rest ofthe world might play. I wanted him! I felt as if I couldn't stand itwhen Peter stepped forward, looking like the most beautiful Keats theworld had ever known, and the whole house gasped at his beauty and keptstill to hear what a man that looked like that would have to say. Istifled a sob and looked around to see if I could flee somewhere, whensuddenly my groping hand was taken in two big, warm, horny ones, andSam's deep voice said in the same old fish-hook tone:
"Steady, Bettykin, and watch old Pete take his first hurdle."
I took one look at a great big glorious Sam in all sorts of fine linenthat was purple in the mist of my eyes, and then I was perfectly quiet,with no fish-hook at all in my arm or in my life. I heard every word ofPeter's speech, and laughed and almost cried over the one Farringtonmade about the young American drama, with his arm across Peter'sshoulder. I forgot all about Sam because he was there, and just reveledin being happier than I had been since I had adopted Peter and the play,now that it was successfully out of our systems.
And it _was_ successfully out. Nobody who heard the thunder after thelast act could have doubted that. The _New Times_ the next day said itwas "The burgeoning of the American poetic drama," and another papersaid, "Bubbles fresh from the fount of American youth." We got thepapers and read them coming home from Peter's supper-party over at theAstor, which his New York friends gave because they wanted to see moreof his Hayesboro friends. Everybody was there and the success of theevening came when Pink Herriford told his mule story. Peter made him doit, and everybody adored it. And just as they were all laughing andexclaiming at the droll way in which he characterized those resurgentmules, I looked down the table and happened to see that Clyde Tolbot washolding Editha Morris Carruthers's hand in a way that anybody whounderstood these matters knew from the position of their shoulders thatsuch was the case.
"A taxicab lost us on Broadway at ten dollars per second, and I madeconnection with her wires before found," he whispered to me, as we allrose to go, just as the night was also taking its departure from NewYork. New York in the daytime is like a huge football game in which amillion or two players all fall on the ball of life at the same time andkick and squirm and fight over it; but at night it is a dragon withbillions of flaming eyes that only blink out when it is time to crawlaway from the rising sun and get in a hole until the dark comes again.It is the most wonderful city in the world to stay in until you areready to go home.
Sam hadn't been at Peter's supper-party, and neither had Judge Vandyne,but I didn't worry about that. I never worry about Sam. I just like toknow he is somewhere near and then forget him--if I am allowed, which Iam not if Sam can think up some important work for me to do. At sixo'clock in the morning I laid down the papers with Peter's triumph inthem and rolled into bed, dead with sleep; and before seven Sam had sentme a note that forced me to open my eyes and stagger up and on. It said:
DEAR BETTY,--Get a maid at the hotel to come with you to the following address. I need you badly. A reliable taxi is waiting. SAM.
Horrible thoughts of somebody's having kidnapped Sam flashed across mybrain as I threw on my clothes. How had he happened to come to New York,anyway, and then disappear right after the play? What kind of troublecould he be in, and how could I help? I looked in my purse and foundonly ten dollars, but I felt the roll that I always carry in my stockingand it still felt a respectable size. I never count money when I amspending it, because you don't enjoy it so much; and I had been awayfrom home three weeks. Still, if I had to bribe or buy Sam out ofanything, I could get more some place. I must hurry to do as he told me,and then he would direct me how to rescue him.
In less time than it would take most girls, as soggy with sleep as Iwas, to get dressed and down to a taxi, I was on my way to Sam. I forgotto get the maid to go with me; and, anyway, what was the use, with anice young white man like that taxi-car driver? He said, looking at meso pleasantly that I was sure he didn't really mean anything, "It'searly, isn't it, miss?"
I was so hustled and so dazed, and had such trouble in making the littlenew kind of hook-buttons on my gloves stay fastened, that before I knewit we drew up at a queer kind of old warehouse down in a part of NewYork where I had never been, with a line of the ocean or the bay or theriver or the harbor, I couldn't tell which, just beyond. Then I wasscared, for instead of Sam being in danger, I felt that maybe I wasbeing kidnapped. I hesitated at the curbing as I got out of the taxi.
"Through that warehouse and to your left you'll find the gentleman. Goodmorning, miss," said the nice taxi-man as he touched his cap and droveoff and left me to my fate. If I had had only my own fate to consider Iwould have taken to my good strong legs and fled, but Sam was alsoconcerned. At the thought of his needing me my courage came back, and Iwent on into the long shed where queer dirty boxes and bales and barrelsand things were piled. At last I came to a turn and stepped into a lowroom that was almost at the water's edge. It was still very earlymorning, and a mist from the sea made things dim, but in a crowd ofqueer people and bundles and voices I saw Sam standing and lookingperfectly helpless, while that Commissioner of Agriculture stood over bythe window, evidently perfectly furious and growling out expletives tothe saddest crowd of pitiful people I had ever seen.
Sam was in his dress-suit with his overcoat off and his hair in a mop;and in a faltering jumble of several languages he was trying to tellsomething to a gaunt, fierce woman in a wide ragged skirt, a shapeless,torn man's coat, with a faded woolen scarf over her head. In her armsshe had a baby, and a woman with a baby in her arms knelt beside her;while a dozen other women with children, ragged, pale, frightened littlechildren in their arms, and at their skirts, hung in a sullen groupback of her. A crowd of dejected, hungry, gaunt men stood to one side,and one very old man had his old woolen cap off his white head, which Icould see was bowed in prayer. In a moment I knew from their Flemishpatois, which I had heard so often out in the fields of beautifulBelgium during that happy month just before the war, that they wererefugees, and my heart went out in a rush to them as I went in a rush toSam and grasped his arm.
"Oh, what is it, Sam, and what do they want?" I asked.
"They are emigrants from Belgium. The Commissioner has had me appointedto settle them in the Harpeth Valley on lands near my own, for which hehas options. I came on in response to his telegram to meet themto-morrow, but they were landed here on the dock at one o'clock in thenight, because of a fire on the steamer. I came right down from thetheater, but they are frightened and the women have lost all confidencein everything. They don't seem to want to go with me to the car that wehave ready to take them to Tennessee. I can't understand them, nor theyme, and I sent for you. You're a woman, Betty. See what you can do tocomfort and hearten them and make them ready to go with me when thetrain leaves in less than two hours."
Oh, I know I am young and have been sheltered, and don't know what it isto be shot at and killed, and have my children torn from my arms and tobe hungry and cold. But women do understand
other suffering women, andwhen I stretched out my hands to the fierce woman with her starvingchild at her breast, I knew what to falter out in a mixture of her ownpatois and mine.
"_Il est bon_--a good, good man. _Alle avec_--go with him," I pleaded.
"But it is a fine gentleman! No, we come to a master, to work that we donot starve. A landowner," she said, and regarded Sam in his purple andfine broadcloth with fierce and desperate distrust that the other womenalso expressed with hissing breaths which brought surly growls ofsuspicious acquiescence from the men.
"But look, look!" I exclaimed. I turned to Sam and drew one of his big,farm-worn hands forward and held it in mine out to the fierce woman,behind whom the others cowered. There was the broad thumb, off of whichthe barrel of peas had smashed the