Caddie Woodlawn

by Carol Ryrie Brink

  And then at last she loosened the right screw! Whizz! bang! the spring flew out with a whirr and hit the low ceiling. Screws and cog wheels flew in every direction. It was like an explosion. The circuit rider’s clock had suddenly flown to pieces! Caddie uttered a cry of despair and looked wildly about her. What would Father say?

  There was a low chuckle from the stairway. Caddie followed the sound with startled eyes. Standing on one of the lower steps, so that his eyes were just above the level of the attic floor, stood her father. How long he had been watching her, she had no idea.

  “Father,” she wailed, “it went to pieces! The circuit rider’s clock!” Her father leaned against the wall of the staircase and laughed. Caddie had almost never seen him laugh so hard. She, herself, did not know whether to laugh or cry.

  “Father,” she repeated, “it went to pieces!”

  Still laughing, Mr. Woodlawn came up the stairs.

  “Let’s pick up the pieces,” he said. “We’re going to put that clock together, Caddie. I’ve been needing a partner in my clock business for a long time. I don’t know why I never thought of you before!”

  “A partner!” gasped Caddie. She began to race about the attic, picking up screws and springs. “A real partner?”

  “If you do well,” said her father. “Clara is too busy with Mother, and Tom hasn’t the patience nor the inclination. Yes, Caddie, I believe you’ll be my partner.”

  Together they sat on the attic floor and put the circuit rider’s clock in order. Mr. Woodlawn explained and demonstrated, while Caddie’s eager fingers did the work. Together they cleaned and oiled the parts and made the nice adjustments that were required. By the time the work was finished, it was growing dark in the attic.

  “Now take that down and show your mother, Caddie,” said Mr. Woodlawn. Together they marched downstairs, one as proud as the other, and Caddie set the circuit rider’s clock in the middle of the dining-room table.

  “So you mended Mr. Tanner’s clock, did you, Johnny?” said Mrs. Woodlawn carelessly.

  “No, not this time,” said her husband, with a twinkle in his eye. “Caddie did it.”

  “Caddie did it?” Mrs. Woodlawn and Clara and the children, who had just come in from school, crowded around to see.

  “It runs,” marveled Tom, and Warren uttered an admiring “Golly!”

  The circuit rider’s clock no longer looked like the “face of a dead friend.” It appeared to be very much alive and spoke up with a cheerful tick.

  Caddie never forgot the lesson she had learned that day in the attic. Wherever she was, all through her long and busy life, clocks ticked about her pleasantly, and, if they didn’t, she knew the reason why.

  8. Breeches and Clogs

  The long winter evenings in the farmhouse were very pleasant times. Grouped about the fire and the lamp, the Woodlawns made their own society, nor wanted any better. One evening soon after Caddie’s adventure in the attic, they were all gathered together thus. Everyone who belonged was there—except Nero. Caddie missed the faithful head resting against her knee. They were recalling old adventures that they had had, and now Clara was speaking in her gentle voice.

  “Yes,” she said, “it was the first winter we were out here. We lived at Eau Galle then, near the mill, and we had school in the tavern. Caddie and Tom were little then, and Warren was a baby.”

  “Where was I?” demanded Hetty.

  “You hadn’t come yet.”

  “Go on and tell,” urged the other children. They all sat about the big stove, cracking butternuts between hammer and stones, and dropping the meats into a wooden bowl.

  “There isn’t much to tell,” continued Clara in her soft voice, “only I came through the woods one day and I saw a bear eating a little pig.”

  “Where did he get it?” asked Warren.

  “From one of the farms, I guess.”

  “Were you scared?” asked Hetty.

  “Oh!” said Clara, putting her slim hand against her heart. “I was so scared. It makes my heart thump yet to think of it!”

  “I wouldn’t have been so scared,” boasted Tom. “Remember, Caddie, when we saw the wolves?”

  “Uh-huh!” said Caddie, her mouth full of butternuts.

  “Tell about that,” said Warren. “I wish I’d been there.”

  “Well, one time the cows got into the swamp, and Caddie and I went after them to bring them home, and right in the swamp we met a wolf.”

  “Did he bite you?” asked little Minnie breathlessly.

  “No, he just stood and looked at us, and we looked at him.”

  “I’d have shot him or hit him with a rock,” said Warren.

  “You hold your tongue, Warren,” said Tom. “I guess you’d have done the same as us, if you’d been there. I don’t know what would have happened next, if two big hounds hadn’t come along and chased him away.”

  “Aw, you’re making it up,” said Warren, who was always skeptical of any adventures which Tom and Caddie had without him.

  “No, honest,” said Tom. “Caddie will tell you the same thing. The hounds were after him—that’s why he acted so funny. They belonged to a man down the river.”

  “Robert Ireton can tell a better one than that,” said Warren. “He says there was a fiddler coming home through the woods late one night from a dance, and a pack of wolves took after him. He saw he couldn’t get away from them, so he stopped and played his fiddle to them, and they all went away and let him go home in peace.”

  “I know!” said Tom. “It’s true, too. Robert had it from a man who married the fiddler’s sister.”

  Mr. Woodlawn smiled at his wife and said: “Ireton knows how to tell a good story as well as sing a good song, I see.”

  Caddie had been listening to the stories in silence. Now she suddenly jumped up, shaking the nutshells from her apron into the wood basket. Without a word, she caught up one of the candles which burned on a side table and ran upstairs to the attic. She hastily went through the contents of one of the boxes until she found what she was seeking; and downstairs she ran again, almost before the others had ceased gaping over her sudden departure.

  “Look!” she said. She held up a small pair of scarlet breeches and two little wooden-soled clogs.

  “Well, of all things!” cried Mrs. Woodlawn. “Wherever did you get those?”

  “In one of the boxes in the attic.”

  “What are they? What are they?” cried the children, leaving their nuts to crowd nearer.

  “I don’t know whose they are,” said Caddie. “There must be a story about them, Mother. Do you know it?”

  Mrs. Woodlawn looked at her husband. He had taken one of the little shoes in his hand, and it scarcely covered his big palm. He turned it this way and that, smiling an odd, perplexed smile.

  “Well, well, well!” he said. “What a funny little shoe!”

  The impatient children crowded nearer, and little Minnie clambered onto his knee.

  “Father,” cried Caddie, “you know something about them! Tell us!”

  “Tell us! Tell us!” echoed the others.

  “Yes, Johnny, you had better tell them now,” said Mrs. Woodlawn.

  Mr. Woodlawn still hesitated, his eyes deep with thoughts of something far away, something beyond the warm room and the ring of bright, expectant faces; something less bright and warm and happy.

  Mrs. Woodlawn stirred impatiently. “Those are your father’s shoes, children,” she said. “He used to dance in them in England, and the little red breeches, too—long, long ago. Do tell them, Johnny. They’ve a right to know.”

  “Yes, yes,” said Mr. Woodlawn, “they have a right to know and I have always meant to tell them. But it’s a long story, children, you had best go back to your hassocks and your nuts.”

  Eyes round with wonder and anticipation, the young Woodlawns did as they were told. To think of Father ever being small enough to wear those breeches and clogs, and dancing in them, too, in faraway England. How strange it
was! They had heard so much of Boston, but nobody spoke of England where the strange little boy, who had grown to be Father, had danced in red breeches and clogs. Caddie thought of what Father had said about England on the night when the circuit rider had been with them. How often she had wondered about that since then!

  “You have grown up in a free country, children,” began Mr. Woodlawn. “Whatever happens I want you to think of yourselves as young Americans, and I want you to be proud of that. It is difficult to tell you about England, because there all men are not free to pursue their own lives in their own ways. Some men live like princes, while other men must beg for the very crusts that keep them alive.”

  “And your father’s father was one of those who live like princes, children,” cried Mrs. Woodlawn proudly.

  “My father was the second son in a proud, old family,” said Mr. Woodlawn. He set the clock he was mending beside him on the table, and his hands, unaccustomed to idleness, rested awkwardly on his knees. “My father’s father was a lord of England, and the lands he owned rolled over hills and valleys and through woods.”

  “Bigger than ours?” wondered Hetty.

  “Many times. Yes, many, many times. There was a great stone house with towers and turrets and a moat with swans, and there were peacocks on the lawn.”

  “Peacocks!” cried Clara, clasping her hands.

  “Yes,” said the father gravely. “I saw them once when I was a little boy. My mother held me by the hand and I stood on tiptoe to look between the bars of the great gate, and there they were, a dozen of them, stepping daintily, with arched necks, and spreading or trailing their great tails upon the grass.”

  “But, Father,” said Caddie, “why were you outside?”

  “Well may you ask that question, Caddie!” cried Mrs. Woodlawn. Her earrings trembled with her indignation.

  “Old Lord Woodlawn was very proud,” said Father, “and he had planned a brilliant future for his second son. . . . Thomas, my father’s name was—that’s where you get your name, Tom. But Thomas Woodlawn wanted to live his own life, and he had fallen in love. His heart had overlooked all the fine young ladies of high degree, and had settled upon the little seamstress who embroidered and mended and stitched away all day in the sewing room of the great house.”

  “Just like Tom and Kat—” began Hetty, but Caddie suddenly thrust a butternut into her mouth, and the rest of what she had intended to say was lost.

  “I cannot blame him for falling in love,” said Father. “That little seamstress was very beautiful and sweet. She was my mother. They were married secretly, and then they went to old Lord Woodlawn and told him. They thought that he would forgive them, after it was done and past repair. But they hadn’t reckoned on the old man’s stubbornness and wounded pride. You see, my mother was the daughter of the village shoemaker. God knows, the old shoemaker earned an honest living and lived an upright life, but to my Grandfather Woodlawn’s notion anything connected with such a trade was low and shameful.”

  “How funny!” said Caddie, “if he was a good shoemaker.”

  “The old lord was beside himself with anger. He ordered Father to forsake his bride, but that my father would not do, so the old man turned them out together. ‘Never come back,’ he told my father. ‘You are no longer my son.’ If my father had been the eldest son, the laws of England would have restored his position to him at the death of the old lord. But a disinherited second son has nothing to look forward to. So now he found himself penniless and with a wife to support.”

  “But I don’t understand!” said Caddie.

  “No, my dear,” said her father. “It is hard to understand an old man’s selfish pride. He had planned his son’s life, and he could not endure to have his plans lightly set aside. He might have taken my father back if Father had forsaken Mother, but that was not my father’s way. And so the two young things went out into the world to make a living for themselves. My father had been trained to ride a horse to hounds, to read a little Latin, and to grace a drawing room, but he knew no more about any useful trade than baby Joe. There was one thing he could do, however. He had always had some skill at drawing and painting, and, as a boy, his father had humored him by letting him have lessons in the art. Now he found that he could get occasional work by painting panels and murals in taverns and public houses. It was a sorry comedown for the son of a nobleman. Sometimes they paid him only in food and lodging and he and his wife were obliged to stay there eating and sleeping out his earnings. Truly they were glad enough to have a roof over their heads and something in their stomachs, I imagine. I, myself, remember the long walks and the slim dinners and sometimes nights spent under a haycock, when we could not find a tavern which wanted decorating.”

  “Poor Father!” cried Caddie softly.

  “But worse was to come,” said Mr. Woodlawn slowly. “The tramping about, the worry and hunger and cold were too much for my father, who did not have the peasant hardiness of my mother and me. I was about ten years old when he died, and I was a little lad who looked scarce half my years.”

  “And what did you do then?” breathed the little Woodlawns anxiously.

  “My mother had no money to take us home again,

  and what could she have expected for us if she had gone? The old lord was not likely to forgive her after his son was dead, and the shoemaker was as annoyed with his daughter for marrying out of her class as the old lord was himself. And then my mother had her own amount of pride. In those days the worst vice in England was pride, I guess—the worst vice of all, because folks thought it was a virtue.”

  “But, Father, what about the clogs and breeches?” asked Caddie.

  “Have patience,” said Mrs. Woodlawn. “He’ll get to them presently.”

  “My mother earned what she could as a seamstress. But that was not enough. We had no home of our own and we wandered from lodgings to lodgings always half-hungry and owing money. I did what odd jobs I could, but folks thought me too small and young to be entrusted with much. I was a lively lad, as gay as a cricket, in spite of my troubles. I had learned to dance and I begged my mother for a pair of clogs. The poor, good woman had no money to spare for dancing clogs, as I well know now. But, I daresay, I left her no peace, and suddenly she had an idea for granting my request and at the same time adding something to our income. She bought me the clogs and made me a little green jacket and a pair of red breeches. There was a green cap, too, with a red feather, and so I danced, and people threw me coppers as if I had been a monkey.”

  “Did you make a lot of money, Father?”

  “No, but I made enough to help a bit, and sometimes they even engaged me in cheap music halls to do a week’s turn or two. That was a great event.”

  “Oh, Father, can you still dance?” cried Caddie.

  “I’ve still got two legs,” said Mr. Woodlawn, gay once more.

  “Oh, do! do!” the children cried, seizing him by the hands and pulling him out of his chair. “Oh, Father, dance! Do!”

  Mr. Woodlawn laughed. Then suddenly he pursed his lips and began to whistle an old-fashioned jig. Tap! tap! tap! went toe and heel, and suddenly he was jigging and clogging and snapping his fingers to the astonishment of the open-mouthed children. They formed a delighted ring about him, clapping and shouting, and keeping time with their feet.

  Mrs. Woodlawn got up quickly and went into her bedroom. Nobody missed her, nor heard her opening the drawers in the chest where the linen was kept. When the dance was over, and Father sank, breathless and laughing, into his chair, Mrs. Woodlawn came out with a small oil painting in her hands.

  “Your father will never show you this,” she said, “so I am going to.”

  “No, no, Harriet,” begged Mr. Woodlawn, still laughing and panting. “It’s too foolish.”

  “The children shall judge of that,” said his wife, and she propped the canvas up on the table. It was a dim picture, painted in an old style, of a very funny little boy. The little boy seemed scarcely more than a baby and h
e was dressed in a quaint little sailor suit with a wide-brimmed hat. Two tufts of bright red hair were pulled down on either side of the face, beneath the brim of the hat. Everybody began to laugh. And yet there was something sad and wistful, too, in the eyes of the strange little boy who looked at them.

  “It’s your father,” said Mrs. Woodlawn, “and it was his poor, dear father who painted it. Your father was only three years old.”

  The children shouted with laughter, but Caddie felt a little bit as if she wanted to cry, too, and she reached for Father’s hand and squeezed it.

  “It’s a wicked shame!” continued Mrs. Woodlawn tartly. “All that land in England, that great stone house, even the peacocks—they ought to belong in part to your father, perhaps entirely. Who knows? Think, children, all of you might have been lords and ladies!”

  “No, no, Harriet,” said Mr. Woodlawn, growing grave again. “It was a hard struggle, but what I have in life I have earned with my own hands. I have done well, and I have an honest man’s honest pride. I want no lands and honors which I have not won by my own good sense and industry.”

  Just then the clocks all over the house began to chime ten.

  “Ah! my dears!” cried Mrs. Woodlawn. “When have you ever gone so late to bed! Scamper now, as fast as you can!”

  Frightened by the idea of sitting up so late, the little children scurried to obey. Clara and Caddie went more slowly upstairs together. Clara’s slender shoulders were lifted with a new pride and her dark eyes shone.

  “Peacocks on the lawn, Caddie,” she whispered. “Just think!”

  “Peacocks!” repeated Caddie softly, and then suddenly she scowled and clenched her fists. For she was seeing the peacocks through a great, barred gate, with a funny little boy in a sailor suit and a wide-brimmed hat, whose wistful eyes looked sadly out between his odd tufts of red hair.

  9. “The Rose Is Red”

  Caddie went back to school again in February. Her long vacation had grown tiresome. Even the excitement of finding the breeches and clogs and of hearing Father’s story, even the delight of being Father’s partner in business, did not make up for the long, lonely hours when the other children were at school. She was glad to be back at school in time for Valentine’s Day, for that was always fun. On that day most of the children exchanged comics, but you could tell which boys had “sweethearts,” because their fancies betrayed them into paper lace and true love knots, turtle doves, and clasped hands.