That Rosalie’s mysterious friends—or enemies, it might have been—kept close and accurate watch over her was manifested from time to time. Once, when Anderson was very ill with typhoid fever, the package of bills was accompanied by an unsigned, typewritten letter. The writer announced that Mr. Crow’s state of health was causing some anxiety on Rosalie’s account—the child was then six years old—and it was hoped that nothing serious would result. Another time the strange writer, in a letter from Paris, instructed Mr. Crow to send Rosalie to a certain boarding school and to see that she had French, German, and music from competent instructors. Again, just before the girl went to New York for her two years’ stay in Miss Brown’s school, there came a package containing $2500 for her own personal use. Rosalie often spoke to Anderson of this mysterious sender as the “fairy godmother”; but the old marshal had a deeper and more significant opinion.
Perhaps the most anxious period in the life of Anderson Crow came when Rosalie was about ten years old. A new sheriff had been elected in Bramble County, and he posed as a reformer. His sister taught school in Tinkletown, and Rosalie was her favourite. She took an interest in the child that was almost the undoing of Mr. Crow’s prosperity. Imagining that she was befriending the girl, the teacher appealed to her brother, the sheriff, insisting that he do what he could to solve the mystery of her birth. The sheriff saw a chance to distinguish himself. He enlisted the help of an aggressive prosecuting attorney, also new, and set about to investigate the case.
The two officers of the law descended upon Tinkletown one day and began to ask peremptory questions. They went about it in such a high-handed, lordly manner that Anderson took alarm and his heart sank like lead. He saw in his mind’s eye the utter collapse of all his hopes, the dashing away of his cup of leisure and the upsetting of the “fairy godmother’s” plans. Pulling his wits together, he set about to frustrate the attack of the meddlers. Whether it was his shrewdness in placing obstacles in their way or whether he coerced the denizens into blocking the sheriff’s investigation does not matter. It is only necessary to say that the officious gentleman from Boggs City finally gave up the quest in disgust and retired into the oblivion usual to county officials who try to be progressive. It was many weeks, however, before Anderson slept soundly. He was once more happy in the consciousness that Rosalie had been saved from disaster and that he had done his duty by her.
“I’d like to know how them doggone jays from Boggs City expected to find out anything about that child when I hain’t been able to,” growled Mr. Crow in Lamson’s store one night. “If they’ll jest keep their blamed noses out of this affair I’ll find out who her parents are some day. It takes time to trace down things like this. I guess I know what I’m doin’, don’t I, boys?”
“That’s what you do, Anderson,” said Mr. Lamson, as Anderson reached over and took a handful of licorice drops from the jar on the counter.
CHAPTER IX
The Village Queen
The spring of 1903 brought Rosalie back to Tinkletown after her second and last year with Miss Brown in New York City. The sun seemed brighter, the birds sang more blithely, the flowers took on a new fragrance and the village spruced up as if Sunday was the only day in the week. The young men of the town trembled when she passed them by, and not a few of them grew thin and haggard for want of food and sleep, having lost both appetite and repose through a relapse in love. Her smile was the same as of yore, her cheery greetings the same, and yet the village swains stood in awe of this fine young aristocrat for days and days. Gradually it dawned upon them that she was human, after all, despite her New York training, and they slowly resumed the old-time manner of courting, which was with the eyes exclusively.
A few of the more venturesome—but not the more ardent—asked her to go walking, driving, or to the church “sociables,” and there was a rivalry in town which threatened to upset commerce. There was no theatre in Tinkletown, but they delighted in her descriptions of the gorgeous play-houses in New York. The town hall seemed smaller than ever to them. The younger merchants and their clerks neglected business with charming impartiality, and trade was going to “rack and ruin” until Rosalie declined to marry George Rawlins, the minister’s son. He was looked upon as the favoured one; but she refused him in such a decisive manner that all others lost hope and courage. It is on record that the day after George’s congé Tinkletown indulged in a complete business somersault. Never before had there been such strict attention to customers; merchants and clerks alike settled down to the inevitable and tried to banish Rosalie’s face from the cost tags and trading stamps of their dull, mercantile cloister. Even Tony Brink, the blacksmith’s ’prentice, fell into the habits of industry, but with an absent-mindedness that got him kicked through a partition in the smithy when he attempted to shoe the fetlock of Mr. Martin’s colt instead of its hoof.
The Crow family took on a new dignity. Anderson gave fifty dollars to the Foreign Missionary Society of the Presbyterian Church, claiming that a foreign education had done so much for his ward; and Mrs. Crow succeeded in holding two big afternoon teas before Rosalie could apply the check rein.
One night Anderson sat up until nearly ten o’clock—an unheard-of proceeding for him. Rosalie, with the elder Crow girls, Edna and Susie, had gone to protracted meeting with a party of young men and women. The younger boys and girls were in bed, and Mrs. Crow was yawning prodigiously. She never retired until Anderson was ready to do likewise. Suddenly it dawned upon her that he was unusually quiet and preoccupied. They were sitting on the moonlit porch.
“What’s the matter, Anderson? Ain’t you well?” she asked at last.
“No; I’m just thinkin’,” he responded, rather dismally. “Doggone, I cain’t get it out of my head, Eva.”
“Can’t get what out?”
“About Rosalie.”
“Well, what about her?”
“That’s jest like a woman—always fergittin’ the most important things in the world. Don’t you know that the twenty years is up?”
“Of course I know it, but ’tain’t worryin’ me any. She’s still here, ain’t she? Nobody has come to take her away. The thousand dollars came all right last February, didn’t it? Well, what’s the use worryin’?”
“Mebbe you’re right, but I’m skeered to death fer fear some one will turn up an’ claim her, er that a big estate will be settled, er somethin’ awful like that. I don’t mind the money, Eva; I jest hate to think of losin’ her, now that she’s such a credit to us. Besides, I’m up a stump about next year.”
“Well, what happens then?”
“Derned if I know. That’s what’s worryin’ me.”
“I don’t see why you—”
“Certainly you don’t. You never do. I’ve got to do all the thinkin’ fer this fambly. Next year she’s twenty-one years old an’ her own boss, ain’t she? I ain’t her guardeen after that, am I? What happens then, I’d like to know.”
“You jest have to settle with the court, pay over to her what belongs to her and keep the thousand every spring jest the same. Her people, whoever they be, are payin’ you fer keepin’ her an’ not her fer stayin’ here. ’Tain’t likely she’ll want to leave a good home like this ’un, is it? Don’t worry till the time comes, Anderson.”
“That’s jest the point. She’s lived in New York an’ she’s got used to it. She’s got fine idees; even her clothes seem to fit different. Now, do you s’pose that fine-lookin’ girl with all her New York trimmin’s ’s goin’ to hang ’round a fool little town like this? Not much! She’s goin’ to dig out o’ here as soon’s she gits a chance; an’ she’s goin’ to live right where her heart tells her she belongs—in the metropolees of New York. She don’t belong in no jim-crow town like this. Doggone, Eva, I hate to see ’er go!”
There was such a wail of bitterness in the old constable’s remark that Mrs. Crow felt the tears start to her own eyes. It was the girl they both wanted, after all—not the money. Rosalie, coming home with he
r party some time afterward, found the old couple still seated on the porch. The young people could not conceal their surprise.
“Counting the stars, pop?” asked Edna Crow.
“He’s waiting for the eclipse,” bawled noisy Ed Higgins, the grocer’s clerk. “It’s due next winter. H’are you, Anderson?”
“How’s that?” was Anderson’s rebuke.
“I mean Mr. Crow,” corrected Ed, with a nervous glance at Rosalie, who had been his companion for the evening.
“Oh, I’m jest so-so,” remarked Anderson, mollified. “How was the party?”
“It wasn’t a party, Daddy Crow,” laughed Rosalie, seating herself in front of him on the porch rail. “It was an experience meeting. Alf Reesling has reformed again. He told us all about his last attack of delirium tremens.”
“You don’t say so! Well, sir, I never thought Alf could find the time to reform ag’in. He’s too busy gittin’ tight,” mused Anderson. “But I guess reformin’ c’n git to be as much a habit as anythin’ else.”
“I think he was a little woozy tonight,” ventured ’Rast Little.
“A little what?”
“Drunk,” explained ’Rast, without wasting words. ’Rast had acquired the synonym at the business men’s carnival in Boggs City the preceding fall. Sometimes he substituted the words “pie-eyed,” “skeed,” “lit up,” etc., just to show his worldliness.
After the young men had departed and the Crow girls had gone upstairs with their mother Rosalie slipped out on the porch and sat herself down upon the knee of her disconsolate guardian.
“You are worried about something, Daddy Crow,” she said gently. “Now, speak up, sir. What is it?”
“It’s time you were in bed,” scolded Anderson, pulling his whiskers nervously.
“Oh, I’m young, daddy. I don’t need sleep. But you never have been up as late as this since I’ve known you.”
“I was up later’n this the time you had the whoopin’-cough, all right.”
“What’s troubling you, daddy?”
“Oh, nothin’—nothin’ at all. Doggone, cain’t a man set out on his own porch ’thout—”
“Forgive me, daddy. Shall I go away and leave you?”
“Gosh a’mighty, no!” he gasped. “That’s what’s worryin’ me—oh, you didn’t mean forever. You jest meant tonight? Geminy crickets, you did give me a skeer!” He sank back with a great sigh of relief.
“Why, I never expect to leave you forever,” she cried, caressing his scanty hair. “You couldn’t drive me away. This is home, and you’ve been too good to me all these years. I may want to travel after a while, but I’ll always come back to you, Daddy Crow.”
“I’m—I’m mighty glad to hear ye say that, Rosie. Ye see—ye see, me an’ your ma kinder learned to love you, an’—an—”
“Why, Daddy Crow, you silly old goose! You’re almost crying!”
“What’s that? Now, don’t talk like that to me, you little whipper-snapper, er you go to bed in a hurry. I never cried in my life,” growled Anderson in a great bluster.
“Well, then, let’s talk about something else—me, for instance. Do you know, Daddy Crow, that I’m too strong to live an idle life. There is no reason why I shouldn’t have an occupation. I want to work—accomplish something.”
Anderson was silent a long time collecting his nerves. “You wouldn’t keer to be a female detective, would you?” he asked drily.
CHAPTER X
Rosalie Has Plans of Her Own
“Do be serious, daddy. I want to do something worth while. I could teach school or—”
“Not much! You ain’t cut out fer that job. Don’t you know that ever’body hates school-teachers when they’re growed up? Jerusalem, how I still hate old Rachel Kidwell! An’ yet she’s bin dead nigh onto thirty years. She was my first teacher. You wasn’t born to be hated by all the boys in the district. I don’t see what put the idee of work inter your head You got ’bout eight thousand dollars in the bank an’—”
“But I insist that the money is yours, daddy. My fairy godmother paid it to you for keeping, clothing, and educating me. It is not mine.”
“You talk like I was a boardin’ school instead o’ bein’ your guardeen. No, siree; it’s your money, an’ that ends it. You git it when you’re twenty-one.”
“We’ll see, daddy,” she replied, a stubborn light in her dark eyes. “But I want to learn to do something worth while. If I had a million it would be just the same.”
“You’ll have something to do when you git married,” observed he sharply.
“Nonsense!”
“I s’pose you’re goin’ to say you never expect to git married. They all say it—an’ then take the first feller ’at comes along.”
“I didn’t take the first, or the second, or the third, or the—”
“Hold on! Gosh a’mighty, have you had that many? Well, why don’t you go into the matrimonial agent’s business? That’s an occupation.”
“Oh, none of them was serious, daddy,” she said naïvely.
“You could have all of the men in the county!” he declared proudly. “Only,” he added quickly, “it wouldn’t seem jest right an’ proper.”
“There was a girl at Miss Brown’s a year ago who had loads of money, and yet she declared she was going to have an occupation. Nobody knew much about her or why she left school suddenly in the middle of a term. I liked her, for she was very nice to me when I first went there, a stranger. Mr. Reddon—you’ve heard me speak of him—was devoted to her, and I’m sure she liked him. It was only yesterday I heard from her. She is going to teach school in this township next winter.”
“An’ she’s got money?”
“I am sure she had it in those days. It’s the strangest thing in the world that she should be coming here to teach school in No. 5. Congressman Ritchey secured the appointment for her, she says. The township trustee—whatever his name is—for a long time insisted that he must appoint a teacher from Tinkletown and not an outsider. I am glad she is coming here because—well, daddy, because she is like the girls I knew in the city. She has asked me to look up a boarding place for next winter. Do you know of any one, daddy, who could let her have a nice room?”
“I’ll bet my ears you’d like to have your ma take her in right here. But I don’t see how it c’n be done, Rosie-posie. There’s so derned many of us now, an’—”
“Oh, I didn’t mean that, daddy. She couldn’t come here. But don’t you think Mrs. Jim Holabird would take her in for the winter?”
“P’raps. She’s a widder. She might let her have Jim’s room now that there’s a vacancy. You might go over an’ ast her about it to-morrer. It’s a good thing she’s a friend of yourn, Rosalie, because if she wasn’t I’d have to fight her app’intment.”
“Why, daddy!” reproachfully.
“Well, she’s a foreigner, an’ I don’t think it’s right to give her a job when we’ve got so many home products that want the place an’ who look unpopular enough to fill the bill. I’m fer home industry every time, an’ ’specially as this girl don’t appear to need the place. I don’t see what business Congressman Ritchey has foolin’ with our school system anyhow. He’d better be reducin’ the tariff er increasin’ the pensions down to Washington.”
“I quite agree with you, Daddy Crow,” said Rosalie with a diplomacy that always won for her. She knew precisely how to handle her guardian, and that was why she won where his own daughters failed. “And now, good-night, daddy. Go to bed and don’t worry about me. You’ll have me on your hands much longer than you think or want. What time is it?”
Anderson patted her head reflectively as he solemnly drew his huge silver time-piece from an unlocated pocket. He held it out into the bright moonlight.
“Geminy crickets!” he exclaimed. “It’s forty-nine minutes to twelve!” Anderson Crow’s policy was to always look at things through the small end of the telescope.
The slow, hot summer wore away, and to Rosalie
it was the longest that she ever had experienced. She was tired of the ceaseless twaddle of Tinkletown, its flow of “missions,” “sociables,” “buggy-horses,” “George Rawlin’s new dress-suit,” “harvesting,” and “politics”—for even the children talked politics. Nor did the assiduous attentions of the village young men possess the power to shorten the days for her—and they certainly lengthened the nights. She liked them because they were her friends from the beginning—and Rosalie was not a snob. Not for the world would she have hurt the feelings of one poor, humble, adoring soul in Tinkletown; and while her smile was none the less sweet, her laugh none the less joyous, in her heart there was the hidden longing that smiled only in dreams. She longed for the day that was to bring Elsie Banks to live with Mrs. Holabird, for with her would come a breath of the world she had known for two years, and which she had learned to love so well.
In three months seven men had asked her to marry them. Of the seven, one only had the means or the prospect of means to support her. He was a grass-widower with five grown children. Anderson took occasion to warn her against widowers.
“Why,” he said, “they’re jest like widders. You know Dave Smith that runs the tavern down street, don’t you? Well, doggone ef he didn’t turn in an’ marry a widder with seven childern an’ a husband, an’ he’s led a dog’s life ever sence.”
“Seven children and a husband? Daddy Crow!”
“Yep. Her derned husband wouldn’t stay divorced when he found out Dave could support a fambly as big as that. He figgered it would be jest as easy to take keer of eight as seven, so he perlitely attached hisself to Dave’s kitchen an’ started in to eat hisself to death. Dave was goin’ to have his wife apply fer another divorce an’ leave the name blank, so’s he could put in either husband ef it came to a pinch, but I coaxed him out of it. He finally got rid of the feller by askin’ him one day to sweep out the office. He could eat all right, but it wasn’t natural fer him to work, so he skipped out. Next I heerd of him he had married a widder who was gittin’ a pension because her first husband fit fer his country. The Government shet off the pension jest as soon as she got married ag’in, and then that blamed cuss took in washin’ fer her. He stayed away from home on wash-days, but as every day was wash-day with her, he didn’t see her by daylight fer three years. She died, an’ now he’s back at Dave’s ag’in. He calls Dave his husband-in-law.”
The George Barr McCutcheon Megapack: 25 Classic Novels and Stories Page 290