Part 10 (1/2)
”Did you call me, Mother Cow?” I asked softly.
The question was taken from my lips as Pan came out of the darkness behind her and took me into his arms.
”Yes, she called you. I didn't think I'd see you. I was just going to leave her for you and go my way; but trust women for secret communication,” he said as my arm slipped around his bare throat.
”Not see me?” I questioned.
”I never wanted to see you again until I came for you, Woman. I didn't think I could stand it--to put you out of my arms again. I can't take you with me to-night. I came miles out of my way to bring her to you, and I've hurried them both cruelly. The calf is only two days old, but you do need her badly to feed the chickens. Milk-fed chickens show a gain of thirty per cent. over others. You can churn and get all the b.u.t.ter you need and feed them the b.u.t.termilk.”
”Do you suppose I can learn to milk and churn her?” I asked as I shrank a bit closer in his arms from this new responsibility.
”Milk her and churn the milk,” laughed Pan as he bent my head forward on his arm, set his teeth in the back of my neck, and shook me like p.e.c.k.e.rwood Pup shakes the gray kitten when I'm not looking.
”Will you show me in the morning?”
”Woman, I have to run ten miles through the forest before daybreak, and I don't know when I can come back to you. I know I ought to tell you things, but I--I just can't. I demand of life that I be allowed to come for you and take you into the woods with only your Romney bundle. Will you be here ready for me when I come, and keep the bundle tied up?”
”Yes,” I answered as I drew his head down and pressed it to my breast, hoping that he might hear the chant on my heartstrings. I think he did hear.
”I am thy child.
I am thy mate.
Come!”
he made response, as he slipped from my arms and away into the darkness, leaving me alone with only the mother now for company. She licked my arm with a warm, rough tongue, and I came back into my own body and led her to the barn and supper.
There are two kinds of love, the cultivated kind that bores into a woman's heart through silk and laces in a hot-house atmosphere and brings about all kinds of enervating reactions until operated upon by marriage; the other kind a field woman breathes into her lungs and it gets into her circulation and starts up the most awful and productive activity. I've had both kinds. I moped for months over Gale Beacon, and made him and Matthew and father completely unhappy, lost ten pounds, and was sent to a rest-cure for temper. The next morning after Adam gave me the cow and calf and pa.s.sionate embraces out in the orchard I began to work like six women, and what I did to Elmnest not ten women could have accomplished in as many days.
I weeded the whole garden and I picked three bushels of our first peas, tied up sixty bunches of very young beets with long, tough orchard gra.s.s, treated fifty bunches of slender onions the same way, half a dozen of each to the bunch, and helped Bud Corn-ta.s.sel load a two-horse wagon with them and everything eatable he could get out of Aunt Mary's garden. Then I got up at two o'clock in the night and fed the mules so Bud could start at half-past two in order to be in the market at Hayesville long before the break of day, so as to sell the truck at the very top of the market to the earliest greengrocers. I gave Bud coffee and bread and b.u.t.ter and drove the team down to the gate while he went ahead to open it. I stood up while I drove, too, because Bud had not had room to put a seat in for himself and expected to stand up all the way to town. Talk about Mordkin and Pavlova!
To stand up and drive a team hitched to a jolt-wagon over boulders and roots requires leg muscles! I hope I will be able to restrain myself from driving the team into market some day, but I am not sure I can. With the eggs and the ”truck” Bud brought back sixteen dollars, eleven of which were mine. I bought a peck of green peas for myself from myself and ate most of them for dinner by way of blowing in some of the money. Then the chant on my heartstrings speeded me up to white-was.h.i.+ng all the chicken paraphernalia on the place, and I dropped corn behind Rufus' plow for a whole day, even if it was to produce food for the swine. I went to bed at night literally on time with the chickens. I could only stay awake to kneel and reach out the arms of prayer and enfold Pan to my heart for a very few seconds before I vaulted into the four-poster and tumbled into the depths of sleep.
My activities were not in any way limited by the stone walls that surround Elmnest, but they spread over entire Riverfield, which had very nearly quit the pursuit of agriculture and gone madly into a social adventure.
Everybody was getting ready for the trip into the capital city to answer the governor's invitation, and clothing of every color, texture, and s.e.x was being manufactured by the bolt. For every garment manufactured I was sponsor.
”I sure am glad you have come down, Nancy,” said Mrs. Addc.o.c.k, with almost a moan; ”that Mamie there won't let me turn up the hem of her dress without you, though I say what is a hem to a woman who has set in six pairs of sleeves since day before yesterday!”
”I want shoe-tops and Ma wants ankles,” sniffed Mamie Addc.o.c.k. ”Polly Beesley wears shoe-tops and she's seventeen and goes to the city to dance.
And Miss Bess' and yours are shoe-tops, too.”
”Now you see what it is to raise a child to be led into sin and vanity,”
said Mrs. Addc.o.c.k, looking at me reproachfully from her seat upon the floor at the feet of the worldly Mamie.
”I'll turn up the hem just right, Mrs. Addc.o.c.k, while you get the collars on little Sammie's and Willie's s.h.i.+rts,” I said soothingly as I sank down beside her at Mamie's feet.
”I had to cut Sammie's s.h.i.+rt with a tail to tuck in, all on account of that Mr. Matthew Berry's telling him that s.h.i.+rt and pants ought to do business together. And there's Willie's jeans pants got to have pockets for the knife that Mr. Owen gave him. I just can't keep up with these city notions of my children with five of 'em and a weak back.” As she grumbled Mrs.
Addc.o.c.k rose slowly from her lowly position to her feet.
”I'll make Willie's trousers, Mrs. Addc.o.c.k, this afternoon, if he'll come and help me feed and bed everything at Elmnest,” I offered, with my mouth full of pins.
”No, child, but thank you for your willing heart. Mrs. Spain told me how you made Ezra's pants so one leg of him came while the other went, and I guess a mother is the only one to get the legs of her own offspring to match. I'll work it out myself now that Miss Mamie is attended to.”