CHAPTER III
The Surprise Party
Pam stepped off the boat at Hunt’s Crossing. There was a curious sense of unreality all about her. She felt as if she were walking in her sleep, and she half-expected to wake presently and find herself back in the top bedroom of the boarding-house in London, which she had shared with her mother and Muriel.
The forest had been pushed back a little at Hunt’s Crossing. There were three wooden houses and several barns grouped near the river, but they all had a ragged, unfinished look which jarred on Pam, and forced her to the realization of being in a strange land. If she had been merely dreaming these things would not have troubled her.
There was no one to meet her; she had not expected there would be. Her mother, once she had agreed to Pam’s plan, had told her all about the road from Hunt’s Crossing to Ripple. The trail wound sharply round past Bond’s store, which was the Post Office, curved round the angle of the hill, and then stretched in a straight line for three miles and a half to Ripple. There were cross trails here and there, but there was no mistaking the way. Pam even felt as if she had been here before when she saw the cluster of houses near to the river, the tumbledown barns, and the various trails that converged at the crossing.
She went into the store and arranged for her heavy baggage to be kept there until she could send or come for it; then, carrying her bag, her umbrella, and a waterproof, she set her face to the trail.
Curious glances followed her as she left the little cluster of houses. It was so rarely that a stranger of the softer sex left the river boats at this point. Men there were in plenty who came and went, intent on selling something, or looking for something to buy. But a well-dressed girl, who arranged for her baggage to be left at the store and then went marching along the forest trails as if she had lived there all her life, was, indeed, something to speculate over. Life moved fairly easily with the people at Hunt’s Crossing, so they were able to lean over their front fences and continue their speculations without any serious upset to the day’s work.
It was late in the afternoon, and the October sunshine had a mellow tinge, as if the reflected glories of the crimson and gold of the oaks and maples had somehow coloured the glow of the sunshine to a warmer tint. Pam kept bursting into “Oh’s” and “Ah’s” of pleasure as she trod the trail with a sprightly step, and gazed on all the wealth of colour with which the forest was painted on that sunny autumn afternoon. Accustomed as her eyes had been to the soft neutral tints of London, and fresh as she was from a week of gazing on the grey Atlantic, all this flaming beauty of the woodland affected her senses, making her giddy.
For a mile or more she went ahead at a brisk pace, but her bag was heavy, her coat was hot, and presently, sitting down for a brief rest, she found herself so comfortable that she fell asleep. It was a foolish thing to do, of course, but who can expect fully-fledged wisdom and hoary-haired discretion in a girl of twenty? Pam awoke with a start after a delicious dream of her grandfather’s warm welcome at the end of the journey; she thought he was telling her with tears in his tired old eyes that he was sure she would be the joy of his life and the solace of his lonely days, but that he would know no real happiness until her mother and the other children came to live with him also.
The glory had faded from the forest, and a cool wind stirred among the rustling leaves. The sun had dropped out of sight, and with a sharp exclamation of dismay Pam rose to her feet to continue her journey. How idiotic she had been to fall asleep in this fashion when she should have been marching straight on! By the way, in which direction did she require to go? Straight on—but now she was not sure which direction was straight on, or which led back to Hunt’s Crossing. If by ill luck she took the wrong way darkness would overtake her, and she would have to ask for a night’s lodging at one of the three houses there. Even if she went forward on the right road she would still have difficulty in reaching Ripple by the time it grew dark, for now she was finding one foot very sore where her boot had rubbed it. She limped along the trail for a few hundred yards, gazing to right and left in a perfect fever of anxiety. There was forest on either side. Cedar, birch, beech, oak, and ash jostled each other, or stood singly or in groups, with wide stretches of lesser growth. It looked so exactly like the way she had been traversing before she went to sleep that after ten minutes or so Pam became convinced that she had turned round and was going back by the way she had come.
“Oh, I am in a hopeless muddle!” she murmured in a rueful tone, and turning back on her tracks she limped along as fast as she could go. Darkness dropped so suddenly on the forest that she was not prepared for its coming, and panic seized her in its grip. She could have screamed from sheer terror; but it was of no use to scream if there was no one to hear.
Suddenly a sound struck her ear—a sound of singing—voices in unison. Whatever could it be? Pam stood motionless in the middle of the trail, straining her ears to listen, while her heart beat so loudly that it seemed to stop her from catching the words that were sung. It was an old negro melody, and presently the words came to her through the clear air of the evening with quite startling distinctness:
Mother, rock me in the cradle all the day.
You may lay me down to sleep, my mother dear,
But rock me in the cradle all the day.
Pam had never heard anything like it before. The haunting sweetness of the melody, joined to the words, made her so fearfully home-sick that she had the greatest difficulty to keep from crying like a baby. But the singers were coming nearer, and her position of being lost on a straight trail was quite sufficiently ridiculous without her making herself look more absurd by being found in tears; so she stiffened her back and clenched her fists tightly.
Suddenly the singers changed their tune and broke into a rollicking, lilting melody:
I’m so glad the angels brought the tidings down,
I’m hunting for a home.
You’ll not get lost in the wilderness,
Hunting for a home.
Pam could hear the measured trot of horses now. The party were coming nearer and nearer. There were the voices of girls mingling with the deeper tones of men, and a sudden wave of confidence surged into her heart, for she knew that she would not be afraid to trust these people.
“Stop, will you please stop, I have lost my way!” Her voice sounded strange and shrill in her own ears as she ran out to the middle of the trail and held up her arms to stop the first wagon. By this time she had gathered that there were two wagons, and that they were very near together. The rising moon sent a pale shaft of light down among the forest trees, falling on Pam, lighting her face with an unearthly brilliance, and turning her fair hair into a mass of gleaming gold. The horses were startled by the sudden apparition in the track. They stopped short, tried to rear, and veering round would have bolted but for the firm hand on the lines and the reassuring shouts of the driver in their ears.
“Whoa, there! Steady, Tom and Firefly! What possesses you to cut capers like unbroken colts every time you meet a lady on the trail?”
“A lady, is it? I declare I thought it was a ghost!” cried another voice. “What eyes you have, Don! You are a perfect bat to see like that in the dark!”
The singing came to an abrupt end, and a perfect babel of questions broke out from both wagons.
The driver of the first, a young man with broad shoulders and a determined manner, jumped down from the high seat and, approaching Pam, who had retreated to the side of the trail through fear of being run over, asked her politely:
“What can we do for you? Have you lost your way?”
“Yes,” admitted Pam, and now she was tingling all over with mortification. “I am going to Ripple, and I am not sure that I am on the right trail.”
“You are going away from Ripple at this moment, as straight away from it as possible,” said the young man. Then he asked the question which Pam had expected would come. “Where have you come from? Excuse my curiosity, but this trail only leads to Ripple, you see, so it is passing wonderful that you failed to find it.”
The stupidity of the situation struck Pam then. Oh, what an idiot she had been! How these people would laugh at her! But it could not be helped, and so she began by laughing at herself.
“Would you believe it? I was going to Ripple from Hunt’s Crossing, but the afternoon was hot and I sat down to rest, then went so fast asleep that when I woke I did not know which was forward and which was back to the river. I went as I thought forward, then it looked so much like the trail I had been following before I sat down that I turned round and took the other way; then it got dark, and I was just beginning to be frightened nearly out of my senses when along you came, and the sound of your singing brought my courage back.”
“Poor little girl!” The young man spoke as if she were about ten years old, and Pam coloured hotly with indignation because he had so little discernment.
“I am old enough to take care of myself,” she retorted, with quite crushing dignity.
“I do not doubt it.” He was frankly laughing at her now, but his manner was so kind that she did not care. Then the people in the second wagon shouted to know when the first lot were going to get a move on, and the young man said hurriedly: “We are going to Ripple; won’t you get up in our wagon and come with us? That is my sister Sophy on the front seat—Sophy Grierson. I am Don Grierson.”
A tremendous load was lifted from the heart of Pam. She would not have to walk the dark forest trail alone.
“Thank you, I shall be glad to ride,” she answered, keeping her voice steady with an effort.
“Up you get, then. Move along a bit farther, will you, Sophy? There will be room for this young lady between us if I sit a bit on the side. Ah, steady there! Where have you been raised? It looks as if you don’t know how to board a wagon.” The young man caught Pam in his arms as she stumbled in climbing, and his quickness saved her from a nasty fall.
“I can board a motor bus when it is moving, but this is different,” she said with a gasp when she was fairly settled between Sophy and Don, and the horses had started forward again. “I come from London, and I have never been in the country except for a holiday.”
“And then to set out to walk a forest trail for the first time alone, and to go to sleep on the way! What next, I wonder?” Don flourished his whip in the air to express all the things he could not put into language, but the horses took it as a hint to go faster, and they tore along at such a pace that Pam was breathless and giddy from being shaken and bumped.
“Old Wrack Peveril will sit up when we come walking in upon him, I guess,” said a girl with a loud voice who was sitting at the rear of the wagon.
“He will sit up still more when he sees the supper we have brought him,” replied Galena Gittins, who was sitting just behind Pam. “Folks say the old man never has a decent meal, because he is too mean to spend money on proper food, the wretched old skin-a-flint!”
Pam wrenched herself round with a violence which all but upset Sophy Grierson, who was rather cramped for room.
“It is not fair to talk like that before me,” she said explosively. “Mr. Wrack Peveril is my grandfather, and I have come all the way from England to live with him. I don’t believe he is so mean, but I am afraid that he is poor, and he sent the money to pay my passage, so perhaps he has not been able to buy things for himself.”
“Are you Nancy Peveril’s girl?” cried a stout woman who sat on the seat with Galena Gittins, and as she asked the question she leaned forward and gripped the shoulder of Pam in the friendliest fashion imaginable.
“I am Pamela Walsh, and my mother was Nancy Peveril before she married my father,” replied Pam with great dignity, and then her shoulder was gripped more heartily than before by the excitable stout woman.
“Dear, dear, how time flies! I declare it makes me feel quite old to think of Nancy having a grown-up daughter. My dear, we are ever so glad to see you; but I don’t think your mother should have let you come all this way alone to live with an old man like Wrack Peveril, who won’t have a woman inside his doors.”
“He won’t be able to help himself to-night!” chuckled the girl with the loud voice.
Pam caught her breath in a gasp of dismay. Her mother had written to Ripple to say that Pam was coming instead of Jack, but there had been no time for an answer to that letter. It was the very first time since she had left England that a doubt of her welcome assailed her. Now she was suddenly afraid, and she cowered closer against Sophy Grierson, while she wondered what sort of a greeting she would get when Ripple was reached.
“We are going to have a surprise party at your grandfather’s house to-night,” said Galena Gittins, leaning forward and speaking over the shoulder of Pam in a very friendly fashion. “We’ve got a jolly good supper here in the wagons with us, and there is another wagon coming from over the Ridge. That lot will bring a fiddle and a melodeon with them, so we shall have some music, and be able to dance all night. I just love surprise parties, don’t you?”
“I have never been to one,” answered Pam. After a brief hesitation she asked: “Will Grandfather like a lot of folks coming along unexpected like this? And to stay all night, too?”
“I guess he won’t!” broke in the stout woman with a jolly, rollicking laugh. “But, my dear, it is the good of the many that we have to study in this part of the world; and what would become of the young people if there was no fun going at all? For myself, I’d nearly as soon stay at home o’ nights now as go racketing round and losing my night’s rest. But well I know it is good for the boys and girls to have someone to mother them a bit at their play, so I don’t shy at a frolic, even though it takes me a week to get over it.”
“The folks don’t have to suffer when we go round surprising them, Miss Walsh,” said Don, who had not spoken for some time save to shout at the horses, the trail at this part being very difficult and dark; tall trees stood in serried ranks on either side of the way, and the moonlight had no chance at all. “We always take about twice as many provisions as we can possibly eat; and if we upset a house a bit, we always put everything straight before we leave. You should see how glad they are to have us at some places.”
“I don’t care for a surprise party where the folks like to have us. I would rather go where we were not wanted,” broke in the girl with the loud voice, whom the others called Sissy. “What fun we did have that time we surprised Mose Paget, and he would not get up to let us in until we threatened to break the door down! Do you remember that night, Galena? You had that pink blouse on, and Mose was most insulting in what he said about the way you had dressed up.”
“That is Ripple, Miss Walsh.” The quiet voice of Don broke in upon Sissy’s loud-toned reminiscences, and Pam gave a start of surprise as the dim outlines of a big timber house came into view. It stood in a clearing with a background of lofty trees, and the light of the rising moon fell full upon the long brown front.
“It looks so different from what I expected, and yet I have known it all my life,” said Pam eagerly, and she leaned forward to get a better view. Then she cried out sharply: “But there is no one at home, and it looks like a dead house. Don’t you think so?”