Speed Nell
Molly Brown's College Friends
CHAPTER XXIV
THE TRENCHES
Molly and Edwin found themselves deeper in this agricultural scheme than they had at first bargained for. If it was to be done at all, it must be well done and quickly. There must be order and system. Suddenly they awoke to the realization that if it was to be well done and quickly done, it was up to them, the Greens, to do it.
“I am afraid, my dear, that you must be the chaperone and I must turn farmer. This is a stupendous undertaking and for the good name of Wellington we must see it through.”
“It will mean work all summer for you, when you so need a holiday, you poor old fellow.”
“I need no more holiday than you do. You haven’t been idle one minute this whole college year. I have a feeling that this summer we have no business with holidays anyhow. The world is too busy, too upset for any of us, who are able, to lay off. I mean to dig and delve here at home and do all the good I can.”
“I think we ought to rent the Orchard Home for the summer, don’t you?” asked Molly, turning her head away so her husband could not see what it cost her to make that suggestion.
“Why, Molly honey, I can’t bear to think of it. It is hard enough on you not to be able to go to Kentucky for vacation, but I don’t think you should have to think of strangers as being among your apple trees.”
“It won’t be bad, not nearly so bad as you think. At least, the little brown bungalow won’t be quite so lonesome as it would be empty all the year, and we might buy tons of seed with the rent money or even take care of some war orphans.”
“I guess you are right, – you usually are. I’ll write to a real estate agent in Louisville immediately and put it on the market for the summer. I hate to do it, though. Not that it will make so much difference to me. Wherever you are is my Orchard Home, honey!”
The Major’s farm was dubbed “The Trenches” by the members of the agricultural club. It was a suitable name, for these girls felt that they were in the war almost as much as the soldier boys themselves.
Early in May Molly moved to the old farmhouse to superintend arrangements for the many girls later to be housed there. It was decided to run the place more or less as a military camp is run, with squads detailed for various duties.
“Only our trench digging will be in the potato fields and our drilling in the bean patch,” Billie declared.
Billie was in a state of ecstasy from the first. She was General Molly’s aide-de-camp, giving time, money, and thought to the undertaking.
“It is so splendid really to be helping! I wanted to do something to help the Government and now I believe I am going to. I should like best to shoulder a gun and take a crack at the Huns, but since that cannot be, I’ll shoulder a pick and take a crack at the soil.”
Billie, whose post-graduate studies at Wellington were not very important, had cut and gone to The Trenches with Molly. They had installed themselves in a corner of the rambling old farmhouse and were as busy as bees getting ready for the thirty girls who were to land on them the last week in May. Katy and the two children were with them, but Kizzie had been left in Wellington to look after the master, who was up to his neck in work for the finals at college.
The students at Wellington had been canvassed from A to Z, and with a deal of clerical work, all of the ones who were to join the agricultural club had been enrolled and their time of service settled on and arranged for. Billie had donated six Close-to-Nature houses which were to be set up on the grassy lawn of the old farm. The cots she had wheedled out or her uncle. Farming implements, such as hoes, rakes, spades, gasoline ploughs and cultivators she had, as she expressed it, “blasted out of Grandmother McKym.”
“They don’t understand me in the least, my uncle and my grandmother, but they love me, I really believe, and I fancy they always hope I’ll come to my senses and marry in ‘the set’ some of these days. They are really dears,” Billie explained to Molly as they helped to unload the wagons that had just arrived laden with the tents and implements.
“I think they are certainly very generous,” declared Molly, pulling out a bundle of rakes.
From the beginning these girls had determined not to be dependent upon the merely masculine to fetch and carry for them, and Molly and Billie had pitched in with a will to do without men if need be.
“Oh, yes, generous enough! They are glad when I let them off with nothing more troublesome than writing checks. I believe Uncle Donald was scared stiff that I might insist on his coming down here to help dig. And as for Grandmother, – she would rather ante up thousands of dollars than have to drag her silk skirts around in the wet grass here at The Trenches. They don’t see for an instant that I am kind of patriotic in helping this way. They think I am just a faddist. Maybe I am, but somehow I feel that I have ideals! Do you think I am just a silly goose to think so?”
“No, indeed! I know you have ideals, – I should hate to think you didn’t, – very high ideals,” said Molly, as together they wheeled the barrow laden with hoes and rakes out to the tool house. “I reckon your uncle and grandmother have them, too, only perhaps they are not so open about them.”
“Oh yes, they have them. Uncle Donald loves to talk about them, but Grandmother isn’t so keen on expressing herself. Sometimes I think his ideals are mostly literary and hers sartorial. He is a great reader of belles lettres and Grandmother has an instinct for clothes that is truly remarkable.”
“You have it, too.”
“Well, I do like ’em, but I like to dress other persons better than I do myself. If I had been poor, I’d have gone into the business. I may do it yet, but now until this war is over it seems to me it doesn’t make a bit of difference how anyone is dressed – anybody but Mother Earth. The soil dressed with a good fertilizer is more important than silk raiment.”
“How about literature?” laughed Molly, her friend’s enthusiasm amusing her and at the same time pleasing her. “Do you think writing should stop as well as dressing?”
“Oh, of course scribblers will scribble and anyone who has a message to deliver will have to spout it out, war time or not, but they may not think they are so all-fired important. A letter from the most ignorant soldier at the front will have more real stuff in it than all of the vaporings of the poet who only imagines gunfire.”
“And here far from the strife – ”
“Here we will make sonnets with hoe and rake!”
“Our lines made by the gasoline plough shall be beautiful and harmonious!” suggested Molly.
“Our onion patch shall be worthy to be put into verse along with Eugene Field’s Onion Tart,” said Billie, going Molly one better.
“Our potato field shall be as full of solid refreshment as Charles Dudley Warner’s five feet of classics. Only smell the newly-ploughed earth! Isn’t it delicious?”
The wagons were unloaded, the farming implements piled neatly in the tool house and the Close-to-Nature houses dotted about the lawn ready for the stupendous task of being put up. The girls were waiting for Katy, whom they had dubbed “the powerful Katrinka,” to come help them with that job. Katy was in her element. She had been born and raised in the country, and now that she was once more where things were growing, where she could help them grow, she was as happy an Irish girl as there was in all the land. Nothing was too difficult for her to do and her great strength helped Molly and Billie out of many a quagmire of work that seemed too heavy for them to accomplish without masculine aid.
“And now Oi’m ready for to help put oop the little play houses,” she said as she joined Molly and Billie.
“That’s fine,” said her mistress, “but before we begin, just let’s smell the ploughed ground a little. Don’t you love it, Katy?”
“Sure! And it beats the perfumery that comes in a bottle, to my moind,” said the girl, sniffing delightedly.
“I don’t see why they don’t bottle the smell of new ploughed earth just as they have new mown hay,” laughed Billie. “I know two who would want to buy it.”
“Deed and Oi’d buy a gallon of sooch smells!”
“Do you know Masefield’s ‘Everlasting Mercy,’ Billie? You and Katy listen while I tell you the part about ploughing and then we’ll put up the tent houses.”
Very charming was the picture made by this group of girls. So Edwin Green thought as he walked silently across the lawn of the old farm. Katy, the sturdy Irish girl, was not without picturesque lines. Her look was somewhat that of Bastien Lepage’s peasant Jeanne d’Arc as she stood in rapt reverie while her beloved mistress gave voice to those wonderful lines of England’s greatest modern poet. Billie looked very down-to-date in her khaki overalls and stubby shoes, while Molly was very Mollyesque in the blue linen blouse that was the only true Molly Brown blue.
She did not hear her husband as he stepped lightly across the green spring grass and he motioned to Billie not to let her know he was there. He stood silently, with bared head while she recited. Molly’s voice had always appealed to Edwin, in fact it had been the first thing that had attracted him – and when Molly recited poetry!
“‘The past was faded like a dream;
There came the jingling of a team,
A ploughman’s voice, a clink of chain,
Slow hoofs, and harness under strain.
Up the slow slope a team came bowing,
Old Callow at his autumn ploughing,
Old Callow stooped above the hales,
Ploughing the stubble into wales.
His grave eyes looking straight ahead,
Shearing a long straight furrow red;
His plough-foot high to give it earth
To bring new food for men to birth.
“‘O wet red swathe of earth laid bare,
O truth, O strength, O gleaming share,
O patient eyes that watch the goal,
O ploughman of the sinner’s soul.
O Jesus, drive the coulter deep
To plough my living man from sleep.
“‘Slow up the hill the plough team plod,
Old Callow at the task of God,
Helped by man’s wit, helped by the brute,
Turning a stubborn clay to fruit,
His eye forever on some sign
To help him plough a perfect line.
*******
“‘I kneeled there in the muddy fallow,
I knew that Christ was there with Callow,
That Christ was standing there with me,
That Christ had taught me what to be,
That I should plough, and as I ploughed
My Savior Christ would sing aloud,
And as I drove the clods apart
Christ would be ploughing in my heart,
Through rest-harrow and bitter roots,
Through all my bad life’s rotten fruits.
“‘O Christ, who holds the open gate,
O Christ, who drives the furrow straight,
O Christ, the plough, O Christ, the laughter
Of holy white birds flying after,
Lo, all my heart’s field red and torn,
And thou wilt bring the young green corn,
The young green corn divinely springing,
The young green corn forever singing;
And when the field is fresh and fair
Thy blessèd feet shall glitter there,
And we will walk the weeded field,
And tell the golden harvest’s yield,
The corn that makes the holy bread
By which the soul of man is fed,
The holy bread, the food unpriced,
Thy everlasting mercy, Christ.’”
Katy wiped her eyes and Billie winked away the tears that would gather. Molly turned and saw Edwin standing only a few feet from her.
“Oh, Edwin, I didn’t know you were there. I declare I haven’t been spouting poetry ever since we got here! We have done a lot and were going now to put up the tent houses, but you aren’t to help. I’ll give you some tea and let you rest up after your tramp. We weren’t expecting you until Saturday – ”
“And don’t want me now?”
“Want you! Why, Edwin Green, B. A., M. A., P. H. D.! You know I always want you,” and then Billie and Katy thought it was time to leave the married lovers alone for a while.
“I want to help put up the houses, though,” insisted Edwin as he and Molly wended their way to a pretty little arbor covered by a crimson rambler that gave promise, if one might judge from the many buds, of being a glorious sight later in the season.
“But we can do it later by our lonesomes. You don’t know how many things we can do without the help of men, especially when one of us is as powerful as Katy and one as spunky as Billie.”
“And how about you?” and he pinched her rosy cheek.
“Oh, I’m not much force, I am afraid, but I have the bump of stickativeness which is sometimes as good as strength and takes the place of cleverness.”
“Do you really think you girls could run this farm without the help of a man?”
“Of course we could, once the heavy ploughing is done, and Katy says she could have done that, too, if we had wanted her to. Do you want to go off on a trip somewhere and let us try to run it without you?”
Edwin looked searchingly into Molly’s blue eyes. His gaze was long and earnest and in his brown eyes Molly read a kind of sadness she had never seen there before.
“Edwin, dearest, what is it?”
“Molly, it isn’t anything unless you want it to be.”
“Tell me!”
“Would you think it right or wrong if I should try to get into the service, military service, I mean? – I have taken an examination and am physically fit. – I won’t apply to go into training at Fort Myer unless you approve. – It rests entirely with you, honey.”
“You must go if you think it right.” Molly spoke without a tremor, although it did seem to her for a moment as though her heart would burst. How could a heart get so big all of a sudden? And then it seemed to her she was sounding cold and unemotional when Edwin wanted something else. “I – I – want you to go! I think it is right for men just like you to go – men with brains and the power of taking hold and leading – I wouldn’t have you stay behind for me for anything on earth. I – I – am proud of you and want you to do exactly what you think is right, and – and – I think you are right – just as right as can be – and – and – I love you more than ever.”
It seemed to both Edwin and Molly that at no time since their walk in the forest of Fontainebleau when the eternal question had been settled between them had any moment been so filled with love and understanding as now when he folded her in his arms. His Molly! His own, brave, true Molly! Her Edwin! Her honorable, courageous Edwin!
“I thought that I could content myself by digging and delving, but somehow I have been feeling lately that if you would consent, it was up to me to do something else. I don’t feel critical in the least towards the men of my age who are not going to the war, – not the younger ones, either, if they do not feel called upon, – but somehow when one has been called as I have, I think he should answer. I don’t know why a staid college professor should think it is his vocation, but I do think it, and, oh, dearest, it is good of you to take it this way!”
“I could take it no other way. Is not my mother giving God-speed to her sons? Is not Judy encouraging Kent? Is not Nance not only sending Andy but going with him? Who am I that I should say you shall and you shan’t do things for your country?”
“But you see, dear girl, there are the children to take care of in case – in case – in case I should – should – well – stump my toe.”
“I can take care of them as my mother did of all of us. My father died when I was a tiny child and still my mother raised me. But don’t stump your toe. Pick up your feet when you walk – and – and – ”
Here Molly came very near shedding the tears that she felt must be shed sooner or later, but she was determined that it should be later and that her soldier boy should not see them. She jumped up and offered to race him to the house where Katy was laying the tea table on the porch.
Edwin knew Molly too well not to understand that this gaiety was nothing but camouflage to conceal emotions that she was too brave to show.
“What will your mother think?”
“She will think that I have married well,” was her gay rejoinder.
“And what does my Mildred think when I tell her her daddy is going to be a soldier?” he asked as he held the little girl close in his arms.
Mildred had been busy with a tiny hoe and shovel on a patch of ground given over to her tender ministrations. Her hands were very grubby and her face not much better, but Edwin seemed not to mind the general griminess of his daughter.
“Oh, I say bully for Daddy! An’ I bet if Dodo’ll wake up, he’d say he was a-goin’, too. Boys is so rombustious.”
******
And now we must leave Molly Brown and her College Friends at the momentous hour when their country is plunged in a great and righteous war. What the future holds for them is as much a mystery as what it holds for any of us. One thing is sure: Molly is doing her duty, – doing it cheerfully and bravely. Around her are college girls and more college girls, each one doing her bit. And so the fields are ploughed, the crops are planted and gathered. Fruit and vegetables are preserved and canned. The men and boys are training for the trenches, but the women and girls are in training, too.
Molly often thinks of that moment when she stood sniffing the up-turned mould, with her husband standing near listening to her as she recited the lines from Masefield; and now as the days multiply she finds comfort in Masefield’s ending to “The Everlasting Mercy”:
“‘How swift the summer goes,
Forget-me-not, pink, rose.
The young grass when I started
And now the hay is carted,
And now my song is ended,
And all the summer spended;
The blackbird’s second brood
Routs beech leaves in the wood;
The pink and rose have speeded,
Forget-me-not has seeded.
Only the winds that blew,
The rain that makes things new,
The earth that hides things old,
And blessings manifold.’”
