Barr Robert
In the Midst of Alarms
“Oh, you can talk!” cried Yates with audacious admiration, at which the girl colored slightly and seemed to retire within herself again. “And you can make fun of people’s historical lore, too. Which do you use—the tin horn or the natural voice?”
“Neither. If you will look outside, you will see a flag at the top of a pole. That is our signal.”
It flashed across the mind of Yates that this was intended as an intimation that he might see many things outside to interest him. He felt that his visit had not been at all the brilliant success he had anticipated. Of course the quest for bread had been merely an excuse. He had expected to be able to efface the unfavorable impression he knew he had made by his jaunty conversation on the Ridge Road the day before, and he realized that his position was still the same. A good deal of Yates’ success in life came from the fact that he never knew when he was beaten. He did not admit defeat now, but he saw he had, for some reason, not gained any advantage in a preliminary skirmish. He concluded it would be well to retire in good order, and renew the contest at some future time. He was so unused to anything like a rebuff that all his fighting qualities were up in arms, and he resolved to show this unimpressionable girl that he was not a man to be lightly valued.
As he rose the door from the main portion of the house opened, and there entered a woman hardly yet past middle age, who had once been undoubtedly handsome, but on whose worn and faded face was the look of patient weariness which so often is the result of a youth spent in helping a husband to overcome the stumpy stubbornness of an American bush farm. When the farm is conquered, the victor is usually vanquished. It needed no second glance to see that she was the mother from whom the daughter had inherited her good looks. Mrs. Howard did not appear surprised to see a stranger standing there; in fact, the faculty of being surprised at anything seemed to have left her. Margaret introduced them quietly, and went about her preparation for the meal. Yates greeted Mrs. Howard with effusion. He had come, he said, on a bread mission. He thought he knew something about bread, but he now learned he came too early in the day. He hoped he might have the privilege of repeating his visit.
“But you are not going now?” said Mrs. Howard with hospitable anxiety.
“I fear I have already stayed too long,” answered Yates lingeringly. “My partner, Professor Renmark, is also on a foraging expedition at your neighbors’, the Bartletts. He is doubtless back in camp long ago, and will be expecting me.”
“No fear of that. Mrs. Bartlett would never let anyone go when there is a meal on the way.”
“I am afraid I shall be giving extra trouble by staying. I imagine there is quite enough to do in every farmhouse without entertaining any chance tramp who happens along. Don’t you agree with me for once, Miss Howard?”
Yates was reluctant to go, and yet he did not wish to stay unless Margaret added her invitation to her mother’s. He felt vaguely that his reluctance did him credit, and that he was improving. He could not remember a time when he had not taken without question whatever the gods sent, and this unaccustomed qualm of modesty caused him to suspect that there were depths in his nature hitherto unexplored. It always flatters a man to realize that he is deeper than he thought.
Mrs. Howard laughed in a subdued manner because Yates likened himself to a tramp, and Margaret said coldly:
“Mother’s motto is that one more or less never makes any difference.”
“And what is your motto, Miss Howard?”
“I don’t think Margaret has any,” said Mrs. Howard, answering for her daughter. “She is like her father. She reads a great deal and doesn’t talk much. He would read all the time, if he did not have to work. I see Margaret has already invited you, for she has put an extra plate on the table.”
“Ah, then,” said Yates, “I shall have much pleasure in accepting both the verbal and the crockery invitation. I am sorry for the professor at his lonely meal by the tent; for he is a martyr to duty, and I feel sure Mrs. Bartlett will not be able to keep him.”
Before Mrs. Howard could reply there floated in to them, from the outside, where Margaret was, a cheery voice which Yates had no difficulty in recognizing as belonging to Miss Kitty Bartlett.
“Hello, Margaret!” she said. “Is he here?”
The reply was inaudible.
“Oh, you know whom I mean. That conceited city fellow.”
There was evidently an admonition and a warning.
“Well, I don’t care if he does. I’ll tell him so to his face. It might do him good.”
Next moment there appeared a pretty vision in the doorway. On the fair curls, which were flying about her shoulders, had been carelessly placed her brother’s straw hat, with a broad and torn brim. Her face was flushed with running; and of the fact that she was a very lovely girl there was not the slightest doubt.
“How de do?” she said to Mrs. Howard, and, nodding to Yates, cried: “I knew you were here, but I came over to make sure. There’s going to be war in our house. Mother’s made a prisoner of the professor already, but he doesn’t know it. He thinks he’s going back to the tent, and she’s packing up the things he wanted, and doing it awfully slow, till I get back. He said you would be sure to be waiting for him out in the woods. We both told him there was no fear of that. You wouldn’t leave a place where there was good cooking for all the professors in the world.”
“You are a wonderful judge of character, Miss Bartlett,” said Yates, somewhat piqued by her frankness.
“Of course I am. The professor knows ever so much more than you, but he doesn’t know when he’s well off, just the same. You do. He’s a quiet, stubborn man.”
“And which do you admire the most, Miss Bartlett—a quiet, stubborn man, or one who is conceited?”
Miss Kitty laughed heartily, without the slightest trace of embarrassment. “Detest, you mean. I’m sure I don’t know. Margaret, which is the most objectionable?”
Margaret looked reproachfully at her neighbor on being thus suddenly questioned, but said nothing.
Kitty, laughing again, sprang toward her friend, dabbed a little kiss, like the peck of a bird, on each cheek, cried: “Well, I must be off, or mother will have to tie up the professor to keep him,” and was off accordingly with the speed and lightness of a young fawn.
“Extraordinary girl,” remarked Yates, as the flutter of curls and calico dress disappeared.
“She is a good girl,” cried Margaret emphatically.
“Bless me, I said nothing to the contrary. But don’t you think she is somewhat free with her opinions about other people?” asked Yates.
“She did not know that you were within hearing when she first spoke, and after that she brazened it out. That’s her way. But she’s a kind girl and good-hearted, otherwise she would not have taken the trouble to come over here merely because your friend happened to be surly.”
“Oh, Renny is anything but surly,” said Yates, as quick to defend his friend as she was to stand up for hers. “As I was saying a moment ago, he is a martyr to duty, and if he thought I was at the camp, nothing would keep him. Now he will have a good dinner in peace when he knows I am not waiting for him, and a good dinner is more than he will get when I take to the cooking.”
By this time the silent signal on the flagpole had done its work, and Margaret’s father and brother arrived from the field. They put their broad straw hats on the roof of the kitchen veranda, and, taking water in a tin basin from the rain barrel, placed it on a bench outside and proceeded to wash vigorously.
Mr. Howard was much more interested in his guest than his daughter had apparently been. Yates talked glibly, as he could always do if he had a sympathetic audience, and he showed an easy familiarity with the great people of this earth that was fascinating to a man who had read much of them, but who was, in a measure, locked out of the bustling world. Yates knew many of the generals in the late war, and all of the politicians. Of the latter there was not an honest man among them, according to the reporter; of the former there were few who had not made the most ghastly mistakes. He looked on the world as a vast hoard of commonplace people, wherein the men of real genius were buried out of sight, if there were any men of genius, which he seemed to doubt, and those on the top were there either through their own intrigues or because they had been forced up by circumstances. His opinions sometimes caused a look of pain to cross the face of the older man, who was enthusiastic in his quiet way, and had his heroes. He would have been a strong Republican if he had lived in the States; and he had watched the four-years’ struggle, through the papers, with keen and absorbed interest. The North had been fighting, in his opinion, for the great and undying principle of human liberty, and had deservedly won. Yates had no such delusion. It was a politicians’ war, he said. Principle wasn’t in it. The North would have been quite willing to let slavery stand if the situation had not been forced by the firing on Fort Sumter. Then the conduct of the war did not at all meet the approval of Mr. Yates.
“Oh, yes,” he said, “I suppose Grant will go down into history as a great general. The truth is that he simply knew how to subtract. That is all there is in it. He had the additional boon of an utter lack of imagination. We had many generals who were greater than Grant, but they were troubled with imaginations. Imagination will ruin the best general in the world. Now, take yourself, for example. If you were to kill a man unintentionally, your conscience would trouble you all the rest of your life. Think how you would feel, then, if you were to cause the death of ten thousand men all in a lump. It would break you down. The mistake an ordinary man makes may result in the loss of a few dollars, which can be replaced; but if a general makes a mistake, the loss can never be made up, for his mistakes are estimated by the lives of men. He says ‘Go’ when he should have said ‘Come.’ He says ‘Attack’ when he should have said ‘Retreat.’ What is the result? Five, ten, or fifteen thousand men, many of them better men than he is, left dead on the field. Grant had nothing of this feeling. He simply knew how to subtract, as I said before. It is like this: You have fifty thousand men and I have twenty-five thousand. When I kill twenty-five thousand of your men and you kill twenty-five thousand of my men, you have twenty-five thousand left and I have none. You are the victor, and the thoughtless crowd howls about you, but that does not make you out the greatest general by a long shot. If Lee had had Grant’s number, and Grant had Lee’s, the result would have been reversed. Grant set himself to do this little sum in subtraction, and he did it—did it probably as quickly as any other man would have done it, and he knew that when it was done the war would have to stop. That’s all there was to it.”
The older man shook his head. “I doubt,” he said, “if history will take your view either of the motives of those in power or of the way the war was carried on. It was a great and noble struggle, heroically fought by those deluded people who were in the wrong, and stubbornly contested at immense self-sacrifice by those who were in the right.”
“What a pity it was,” said young Howard to the newspaper man, with a rudeness that drew a frown from his father, “that you didn’t get to show ‘em how to carry on the war.”
“Well,” said Yates, with a humorous twinkle in his eye, “I flatter myself that I would have given them some valuable pointers. Still, it is too late to bemoan their neglect now.”
“Oh, you may have a chance yet,” continued the unabashed young man. “They say the Fenians are coming over here this time sure. You ought to volunteer either on our side or on theirs, and show how a war ought to be carried on.”
“Oh, there’s nothing in the Fenian scare! They won’t venture over. They fight with their mouths. It’s the safest way.”
“I believe you,” said the youth significantly.
Perhaps it was because the boy had been so inconsiderate as to make these remarks that Yates received a cordial invitation from both Mr. and Mrs. Howard to visit the farm as often as he cared to do so. Of this privilege Yates resolved to avail himself, but he would have prized it more if Miss Margaret had added her word—which she did not, perhaps because she was so busy looking after the bread. Yates knew, however, that with a woman apparent progress is rarely synonymous with real progress. This knowledge soothed his disappointment.
As he walked back to the camp he reviewed his own feelings with something like astonishment. The march of events was rapid even for him, who was not slow in anything he undertook.
“It is the result of leisure,” he said to himself. “It is the first breathing time I have had for fifteen years. Not two days of my vacation gone, and here I am hopelessly in love!”
CHAPTER VII
Yates had intended to call at the Bartletts’ and escort Renmark back to the woods; but when he got outside he forgot the existence of the professor, and wandered somewhat aimlessly up the side road, switching at the weeds that always grow in great profusion along the ditches of a Canadian country thoroughfare. The day was sunny and warm, and as Yates wandered on in the direction of the forest he thought of many things. He had feared that he would find life deadly dull so far from New York, without even the consolation of a morning-paper, the feverish reading of which had become a sort of vice with him, like smoking. He had imagined that he could not exist without his morning paper, but he now realized that it was not nearly so important a factor in life as he had supposed; yet he sighed when he thought of it, and wished he had one with him of current date. He could now, for the first time in many years, read a paper without that vague fear which always possessed him when he took up an opposition sheet, still damp from the press. Before he could enjoy it his habit was to scan it over rapidly to see if it contained any item of news which he himself had missed the previous day. The impending “scoop” hangs over the head of the newspaper man like the sword so often quoted. Great as the joy of beating the opposition press is, it never takes the poignancy of the sting away from a beating received. If a terrible disaster took place, and another paper gave fuller particulars than the Argus did, Yates found himself almost wishing the accident had not occurred, although he recognized such a wish as decidedly unprofessional.
Richard’s idea of the correct spirit in a reporter was exemplified by an old broken-down, out-of-work morning newspaper man, who had not long before committed suicide at an hour in the day too late for the evening papers to get the sensational item. He had sent in to the paper for which he formerly worked a full account of the fatality, accurately headed and sub-headed; and, in his note to the city editor, he told why he had chosen the hour of 7 P.M. as the time for his departure from an unappreciative world.
“Ah, well,” said Yates under his breath, and suddenly pulling himself together, “I mustn’t think of New York if I intend to stay here for a couple of weeks. I’ll be city-sick the first thing I know, and then I’ll make a break for the metropolis. This will never do. The air here is enchanting, it fills a man with new life. This is the spot for me, and I’ll stick to it till I’m right again. Hang New York! But I mustn’t think of Broadway or I’m done for.”
He came to the spot in the road where he could see the white side of the tent under the dark trees, and climbed up on the rail fence, sitting there for a few moments. The occasional call of a quail from a neighboring field was the only sound that broke the intense stillness. The warm smell of spring was in the air. The buds had but recently broken, and the woods, intensely green, had a look of newness and freshness that was comforting to the eye and grateful to the other senses. The world seemed to be but lately made. The young man breathed deeply of the vivifying air, and said: “No, there’s nothing the matter with this place, Dick. New York’s a fool to it.” Then, with a sigh, he added: “If I can stand it for two weeks. I wonder how the boys are getting on without me.”
In spite of himself his thoughts kept drifting back to the great city, although he told himself that it wouldn’t do. He gazed at the peaceful, spreading landscape, but his eyes were vacant and he saw nothing. The roar of the streets was in his ears. Suddenly his reverie was broken by a voice from the forest.
“I say, Yates, where’s the bread?”
Yates looked quickly around, somewhat startled, and saw the professor coming toward him.
“The bread? I forgot all about it. No; I didn’t either. They were baking—that was it. I am to go for it later in the day. What loot did you rake in, professor?”
“Vegetables mostly.”
“That’s all right. Have a good dinner?”
“Excellent.”
“So did I. Renny, when you interrupted me, I was just counting the farmhouses in sight. What do you say to boarding round among them? You are a schoolmaster, and ought to know all about it. Isn’t education in this country encouraged by paying the teacher as little as possible, and letting him take it out in eating his way from one house to another? Ever board around, Renny?”
“Never. If the custom once existed in Canada, it is out of date now.”
“That’s a pity. I hate to face my own cooking, Renmark. We become less brave as we grow older. By the way, how is old man Bartlett? As well as could be expected?”
“He seemed much as usual. Mrs. Bartlett has sent out two chairs to the tent; she fears we will get rheumatism if we sit on the ground.”
“She is a kind woman, Renny, and a thoughtful. And that reminds me: I have a hammock somewhere among my belongings. I will swing it up. Chairs are comfortable, but a hammock is luxury.”
Yates slid down from the fence top, and together the two men walked to the tent. The hammock was unfurled and slung between two trees. Yates tested it cautiously, and finally trusted himself to its restful folds of network. He was swaying indolently several feet from the ground when he said to Renmark:
“I call this paradise—paradise regained; but it will be paradise lost next month. Now, professor, I am ready to do the cooking, but I have a fancy for doing it by proxy. The general directs, and the useful prosaic man executes. Where are your vegetables, Renny? Potatoes and carrots, eh? Very good. Now, you may wash them, Renny; but first you must bring some water from the spring.”
The professor was a patient man, and he obeyed. Yates continued to swing in the hammock alternating directions with rhapsodies on the beauties of the day and the stillness of the woods. Renmark said but little, and attended strictly to the business in hand. The vegetables finished, he took a book from his valise, tilted a chair back against a tree, and began to read.
“I’m depending upon you for the bread,” he said to the drowsy man in the hammock.
“Right you are, Renny. Your confidence is not misplaced. I shall presently journey down into the realms of civilization, and fill the long-felt want. I shall go to the Howards by way of the Bartlett homestead, but I warn you that if there is a meal on, at either place, you will not have me here to test your first efforts at cooking. So you may have to wait until breakfast for my opinion.”
Yates extricated himself slowly and reluctantly from the hammock, and looked regretfully at it when he stood once more on the ground.
“This mad struggle for bread, professor, is the curse of life here below. It is what we are all after. If it were not for the necessity of bread and clothing, what a good time a fellow might have. Well, my blessing, Renny. Good-by.”
Yates strolled slowly through the woods, until he came to the beginning of a lane which led to the Bartlett homestead. He saw the farmer and his son at work in the back fields. From between the distant house and barn there arose, straight up into the still air, a blue column of smoke, which, reaching a certain height, spread out like a thin, hazy cloud above the dwelling. At first Yates thought that some of the outhouses were on fire, and he quickened his pace to a run; but a moment’s reflection showed him that the column was plainly visible to the workers in the fields, and that if anything were wrong they would not continue placidly at their labor. When he had walked the long length of the lane, and had safely rounded the corner of the barn, he saw, in the open space between that building and the house, a huge camp fire blazing. From a pole, upheld by two crotched supports, hung a big iron kettle over the flames. The caldron was full nearly to the brim, and the steam was already beginning to rise from its surface, although the fire had evidently been but recently kindled. The smoke was not now so voluminous, but Kitty Bartlett stood there with a big-brimmed straw hat in her hands, fanning it away from her face, while the hat at the same time protected her rosy countenance from the fire. She plainly was not prepared to receive visitors, and she started when the young man addressed her, flushing still more deeply, apparently annoyed at his unwelcome appearance.
“Good-afternoon,” he said cordially. “Preparing for washing? I thought Monday was washing day.”
“It is.”
“Then I have not been misinformed. And you are not preparing for washing?”
“We are.”
Yates laughed so heartily that Kitty, in spite of herself, had to permit a smile to brighten her own features. She always found it difficult remain solemn for any length of time.
“This is obviously a conundrum,” said Yates, ticking off the items on his four fingers. “First, Monday is washing day. Second, this is not Monday. Third, neither is to-morrow. Fourth, we are preparing for washing. I give it up, Miss Bartlett. Please tell me the answer.”
“The answer is that I am making soap; soft soap, if you know what that is.”
“Practically, I don’t know what it is; but I have heard the term used in a political connection. In the States we say that if a man is very diplomatic he uses soft soap, so I suppose it has lubricating qualities. Sam Slick used the term ‘soft sawder’ in the same way; but what sawder is, soft or hard, I haven’t the slightest idea.”
“I thought you knew everything, Mr. Yates.”
“Me? Bless you, no. I’m a humble gleaner in the field of knowledge. That’s why I brought a Toronto professor with me. I want to learn something. Won’t you teach me how to make soap?”
“I’m very busy just now. When I said that we were preparing for washing, I should perhaps have told you there was something else we are not prepared for to-day.”
“What is that?”
“A visitor.”
“Oh, I say, Miss Bartlett, you are a little hard on me. I’m not a visitor. I’m a friend of the family. I want to help. You will find me a most diligent student. Won’t you give me a chance?”
“All the hard work’s done. But perhaps you knew that before you came.”
Yates looked at her reproachfully, and sighed deeply.
“That’s what it is to be a misunderstood man. So you think, among other bad qualities, I have the habit of shirking work? Let me tell you, Miss Bartlett, that the reason I am here is because I have worked too hard. Now, confess that you are sorry for what you said—trampling on an already downtrodden man.”
Kitty laughed merrily at this, and Yates laughed also, for his sense of comradeship was strong.
“You don’t look as if you had ever worked in your life; I don’t believe you know what work is.”
“But there are different kinds of labor. Don’t you call writing work?”
“No.”
“That’s just where you’re mistaken. It is, and hard work, too. I’ll tell you about the newspaper business if you’ll tell me about soap making. Fair exchange. I wish you would take me as a pupil, Miss Bartlett; you would find me quick at picking up things.”
“Well, then, pick up that pail and draw a pailful of water.”
“I’ll do it,” cried Yates sternly; “I’ll do it, though it blast me.”
Yates picked up the wooden pail, painted blue on the outside, with a red stripe near the top for ornament, and cream-colored inside. It was called a “patent pail” in those days, as it was a comparatively recent innovation, being cheaper, lighter, and stronger than the tin pail which it was rapidly replacing. At the well was a stout pole, pinned through the center to the upright support on which it swung, like the walking-beam of an engine. The thick end, which rested on the ground, was loaded with heavy stones; while from the thin end, high in the air, there dangled over the mouth of the well a slim pole with a hook. This hook was ingeniously furnished with a spring of hickory, which snapped when the handle of the pail was placed on the hook, and prevented the “patent” utensil from slipping off when it was lowered to the surface of the water. Yates speedily recognized the usefulness of this contrivance, for he found that the filling of a wooden pail in a deep well was not the simple affair it looked. The bucket bobbed about on the surface of the water. Once he forgot the necessity of keeping a stout grip on the pole, and the next instant the pail came up to the sunlight with a suddenness that was terrifying. Only an equally sudden backward jump on Yates’ part saved his head. Miss Bartlett was pleased to look upon this incident as funny. Yates was so startled by the unexpected revolt of the pail that his native courtesy did not get a chance to prevent Kitty from drawing up the water herself. She lowered the vessel, pulling down the pole in a hand-over-hand manner that the young man thought decidedly fetching, and then she gave an almost imperceptible twist to the arrangement that resulted in instant success. The next thing Yates knew the full pail was resting on the well curb, and the hickory spring had given the click that released the handle.
“There,” said Kitty, suppressing her merriment, “that’s how it’s done.”
“I see the result, Miss Bartlett; but I’m not sure I can do the trick. These things are not so simple as they seem. What is the next step?”
“Pour the water into the leach.”
“Into the what?”
“Into the leach, I said. Where else?”
“Oh, I’m up a tree again. I see I don’t even know the A B C of this business. In the old days the leech was a physician. You don’t mean I’m to drown a doctor?”
“This is the leach,” said Kitty, pointing to a large, yellowish, upright wooden cylinder, which rested on some slanting boards, down the surface of which ran a brownish liquid that dripped into a trough.
As Yates stood on a bench with the pail in his hand he saw that the cylinder was filled nearly to the top with sodden wood ashes. He poured in the water, and it sank quickly out of sight.
“So this is part of the soap-making equipment?” he said, stepping down; “I thought the iron kettle over the fire was the whole factory. Tell me about the leach.”
“That is where the hard work of soap making comes in,” said Kitty, stirring the contents of the iron kettle with a long stick. “Keeping the leach supplied with water at first is no fun, for then the ashes are dry. If you put in five more pails of water, I will tell you about it.”
“Right!” cried Yates, pleased to see that the girl’s evident objection to his presence at first was fast disappearing. “Now you’ll understand how energetic I am. I’m a handy man about a place.”
When he had completed his task, she was still stirring the thickening liquid in the caldron, guarding her face from the fire with her big straw hat. Her clustering, tangled fair hair was down about her shoulders; and Yates, as he put the pail in its place, when it had been emptied the fifth time, thought she formed a very pretty picture standing there by the fire, even if she were making soft soap.
“The wicked genii has finished the task set him by the fairy princess. Now for the reward. I want all the particulars about the leach. In the first place, where do you get this huge wooden cylinder that I have, without apparent effect, been pouring water into? Is it manufactured or natural?”
“Both. It is a section of the buttonwood tree.”
“Buttonwood? I don’t think I ever heard of that. I know the beech and the maple, and some kinds of oak, but there my wood lore ends. Why the buttonwood?”
“The buttonwood happens to be exactly suited to the purpose. It is a tree that is very fine to look at. It seems all right, but it generally isn’t. It is hollow or rotten within, and, even when sound, the timber made from it is of little value, as it doesn’t last. Yet you can’t tell until you begin to chop whether it is of any use or not.” Kitty shot a quick glance at the young man, who was sitting on a log watching her.
“Go on, Miss Bartlett; I see what you mean. There are men like the buttonwood tree. The woods are full of them. I’ve met lots of that kind, fair to look upon, but hollow. Of course you don’t mean anything personal; for you must have seen my worth by the way I stuck to the water hauling. But go on.”
“Dear me, I never thought of such a thing; but a guilty conscience, they say–” said Kitty, with a giggle.
“Of course they say; but it’s wrong, like most other things they say. It’s the man with the guilty conscience who looks you straight in the eye. Now that the buttonwood is chopped down, what’s the next thing to be done?”
“It is sawn off at the proper length, square at one end and slanting at the other.”
“Why slanting?”
“Don’t you see, the foundation of plank on which it rests is inclined, so the end of the leach that is down must be slantingly cut, otherwise it would not stand perpendicularly. It would topple over in the first windstorm.”
“I see, I see. Then they haul it in and set it up?”
“Oh, dear no; not yet. They build a fire in it when it gets dry enough.”
“Really? I think I understand the comprehensive scheme, but I slip up on the details, as when I tried to submerge that wooden pail. What’s the fire for?”
