CHAPTER XV
GUNS AND STRING BEANS
"Claire darling—
"Almost two weeks since I wrote to you. Will you love me any more?
"As I write I am all alone on the edge of a very little pool of light reflected from my little lamp that was only intended to see me into bed and not to burn half the night through while I write to my pal.
"Is this summer night as perfect where you are, Claire? (Tush—you've probably been playing tennis and dancing and flirting until you are too exhausted to care about anything except the breakfast bell disturbing you.) But up here it's wonderful! The sky is blue-black velvet, all studded with stars that seem suspended—they are so very close. And the air just caresses you! And there are the sweetest smells, grassy and earthy and all fragrant of roses. There are queer little noises, too—as though the night was full of fairy creatures. And I heard a whip-or-will! And a screech-owl, way, way off.
"Since I wrote to you last I have 'put my foot in it' again! Terribly! It's too long a story to write to you—there isn't nearly oil enough for that—but I skated over the thin ice and reached safety—in other words, I am still here! And, Nancy, I know, now, even Aunt Sabrina is beginning to like me! Do you know why? Because I lost my head and told her what I thought was the matter with her and Happy House and I don't suppose anyone dared to tell her that before. (I called her Leavitt traditions tommy-rot.) And I think she enjoyed the sensation! Anyway, she seems to treat me now like Somebody and she said something the other day about how lovely the autumns were on the Island, as though she took it for granted I'd be here then!
"Claire, what if I can never get away? Did I dream, when I took Anne's shoes (to speak in figures) and put them on, where they'd lead me? And sometimes I think that I will not see the end of the trail for a long time. I'm not crazy to see it, either, for it must end in Disaster!
"I am beginning to understand these people, too. I—in my usual way, judged them too quickly! One must know their history to know them—know what a splendid background they have. Aunt Sabrina has taken up Ezekiel where she left off and tells me stories about the Champlain Valley. Of course, I know she is doing it, because I called the Leavitt glories 'tommy-rot' and when I read, in B'lindy's book (gotten up, of course, to bait tourists) what these Islanders have done, I feel cheap and small and insignificant beside all these people who have such heroic grandfathers and great grandfathers.
"I suppose, all over the world, Island people must be different from people whose lands lie directly contingent with other lands and people. The very waters that shut away these precious Hero Islands wash their lives back upon themselves—they live in—they can't help it. The world that rushes on so fast for us, living in the big cities, scarcely stirs them here! These folks talk about Ethan Allen and Remembrance Baker as though it was only yesterday they walked down under the elms of the village street! They all eat off from very old china and sit in very old chairs—precious because some hero dear to the Island has sat in them!
"(All of this is not original with me—The Hired Man said it.)
"So just as I finished grandly saying to Aunt Sabrina that it didn't matter at all what the people, who are dead and gone, have done, I'm beginning to see—like a picture opened before my eyes—that it does matter—quite a little! They, these dead and gone people, leave us what they have done; if it's bad, we have to pay for it, some way or other—if it's noble, we have to be worthy of it! That philosophy is all mine and not the Hired Man's.
"There are a great many things about the aforesaid Hired Man (I never think of him as that) that perplex me. He is a great big riddle. He is more interesting than any one I ever met before. I wish you were here so we could talk him over the way we used to the Knights of the Pink Parlor. That he is good looking is not what seems so queer, because I suppose there are good-looking hired men as well as good-looking street car conductors or undertakers. He is so understandable—he is like you and Anne and Dad. And he knows so much about everything! He must have gone to college—he talks just like a college man. But once when I hinted he smiled and told me that he was 'still a student in the college of Experience, where after all one could learn more than at even the great universities.'
"He is Mysterious. After I've been with him I plan it all out—what he must have been and why he fell to the level of this sort of work; then the next time I see him he says something that makes me change all my ideas. I am sure he is concealing something—he simply will not say one word about himself! I don't believe it's anything as bad as murder or forgery or—anything like that, because he has such honest eyes, and they look right straight through you. It's probably some sorrow or—or disappointment. Sometimes his eyes look very tired, as though they had seen some terrible tragedy, though mostly always they're just jolly.
"He's wonderful with Nonie and Davy—they adore him. He thinks of so many nice things for them to do. He says once he was a scoutmaster in the Boy Scouts. I think he almost gave something away then, for, after he said it, he looked so funny and wouldn't say another word.
"He treats me as though I was another boy just a little older than Davy. And after the silly men we knew in college it's a relief to find anyone like Peter Hyde, even though he is a hired man. I suppose it's because he's probably had a hard time—has had to make his way, he's had all the nonsense knocked out of him! I am sure, if one could teach him to dance and then set him down in the middle of your mother's living-room you'd all go crazy over him. Now isn't that some Hired Man? Dear me, I spend more time wondering about him! Then I laugh at myself. Do you remember the Russian who came to college last year—how we all thought he must be a Russian prince and then we found out he'd been born on the Lower East Side?"
There were other doubts concerning Peter Hyde that Nancy did not confide to Claire. For the past two years and more, in Nancy's honest soul, all men between twenty-one and forty were divided into two classes; those who had gone over to France and those who had not. If Peter Hyde had gone there was nothing in any act or word that signified it; if he had not gone, why not? Was that what he was hiding?
She had resorted, feeling very contemptible as she did so, to little traps to draw him out, but he had invariably escaped them—sometimes changing the subject abruptly, other times openly laughing and saying nothing. Very much against her will she felt growing within her a contempt for him; almost a dislike of his personal appearance, so obviously healthy and able to have fought for his country! And yet, loyalty had kept her from confiding this to Claire.
A sense of fairness, too, urged her to give Peter the benefit of the doubt until she knew. "I'll just ask him," she decided resolutely. "I'll ask him right out—the very first chance I get!"
The opportunity to learn the truth had come on the very afternoon following the night she had written to Claire. Nonie and Davy had not appeared for a swim, so Peter had suggested a walk. He wanted Nancy to go over, with him, the new work he had started on the Judson ten-acre piece, the improvements in the barns, the rotary gardens.
It was the first time that Peter Hyde had talked much about his work. Nancy, who would have said turnips grew on bushes, for all she knew, found herself, under his instruction, suddenly absorbed in the scientific growing of beans and corn and potatoes; in the making of one strip of garden produce three different food products in rotation; in irrigation and drainage; in sanitary stables and electrically lighted chicken houses.
"You know there's poetry in these growing things," Peter cried, waving his hand out over the tender stalks of corn. "You get all the Art you want! Can you find anywhere a more wonderful picture than that waving field of oats—pale green against that sky? And in a few weeks it'll be yellow. See that lettuce green, too. And music—you can stand in a field of corn when the wind is blowing a little and you will hear a symphony!"
Nancy, surprised, watched his glowing face with interest Here was indeed a new side of the Hired Man! He went on:
"And business, say, there's a practical side to this farming that ought to satisfy any man. Wits, science, strategy, instinct, plain common-sense—it's all as necessary right here as in the biggest business concern in the world. And if a fellow wants a fight—well, he has it when he goes up against Mother Earth. We're used to thinking of her as kindly, generous, lavishing her favors! I've had another picture—she's worse than a Czar! She's exacting, she's moody, she's undependable, at times. I suppose she does it to try out her children—but anyway, the farmer has to fight every minute!"
He stopped suddenly. "I'm boring you to death, maybe!" He laughed apologetically. "It's always been a hobby of mine—this working with the earth. I never thought I'd do anything with it—until the war! Then I realized how much a nation's prosperity depends upon how its soil is used. And that's where our government's been short-sighted. They haven't paid enough attention to the small farmers. Of course, they try out some good things and publish bulletins, but the farmers ought to know how, by certain scientific changes, the productiveness of the land can be doubled! Take Judson, here. He's been farming this whole place just the way his grandfather did before him! He's read about new-fangled things, but he's afraid to try them—he doesn't know how to begin! Think how many Judsons there are all over the world! So I'm trying to show him by actually working out some experiments I've tested. If it's a success, if his account at the bank at North Hero shows it at the end of the season—why, there isn't anything Judson will be afraid to try. And think what it would mean to this country if it had a million farmers like Judson! And see how easily they can be shown!"
Nancy's face was alight with enthusiasm. With her vivid imagination she pictured a glorious army of Peter Hydes going out over the land, rescuing the poor farmers, putting new weapons into their hands!
"It's wonderful! And it's—brave!" she added, "because it isn't as if you went off with a whole lot of others with bands and flags flying!"
She was suddenly struck with remorse that she had, in her heart, so wronged Peter Hyde! She had thought him a slacker when he had shouldered the harder task! Something in the earnestness still reflected on his face made her own her guilt.
"I can't be glad enough you've told me all this! I didn't know! I never lived in the country. I just thought things to eat grew up any old way. And all this time I have been thinking horrid things about you because I thought you hadn't gone to war! I thought, maybe, you were way off up here to escape the feeling everyone had for slackers! You can imagine, now, when I see what you really are doing, how ashamed I feel! Will you forgive me?"
Peter's frank amusement made Nancy feel very uncomfortable and small. But then she deserved it! He held out his hand as a sign of his forgiveness. There was still laughter in his eyes as he regarded her.
"I suppose that was very natural! Most of the young fellows you know must have gone over!" he said, seriously enough.
She wanted very much to tell him of her father—how he had followed the men over the top; how he had worked day after day getting the stories back to the people at home and spent night after night tracing the "missing," or writing letters for the boys who never got further back than the first dressing-stations and who wanted mothers and fathers and sweethearts to know that they'd had their chance and had made the most of it! But she couldn't, for she was supposed to be Anne and Anne's father had died when she was a little girl.
She told him of a few of the college men she had known, who had gone, eagerly, at the first call.
"They didn't even want to wait to get commissions! They just wanted to fight!"
The revelation of Peter Hyde made her think of Claire's brother. She told him about Claire and Anne—she called Anne, vaguely, "another girl." "Claire's a darling and we just love her, but we can't abide her brother! Of course it's not reasonable, because we've never laid eyes on him, but we've heard enough from Claire to know just what he's like. I suppose the war made a few like him—he was brave enough over there and lucky to have all his recommendations recognized, but it made him so conceited! He came back here and just strutted around, everywhere. Claire says her mother's friends used to have teas for him—he'd go to them and speak and show his medals! Claire was mad over him. She was so disappointed because I came here instead of going to Merrycliffe. But I couldn't see myself spending my time petting her beloved Lion! I knew I'd be rude and say just what I thought."
Nancy and Peter were sitting upon the stump of a tree near the cliff. Peter suddenly rose and walked to the edge—his back square to Nancy. After a moment he turned.
"Thought I heard something down there," he explained, at her questioning glance. "Don't blame you for disliking that sort—like Claire's brother! They're a rummy kind! I had a friend a lot like him. But—maybe, it wasn't all his fault—about the teas and things! Maybe his mother got 'em started and he didn't want to hurt her!"
It was like Peter Hyde, so gentle with children and animals, to stand up now for even Barry Wallace's kind.
"You're just like Dad," Nancy cried warmly, then stopped, a little frightened. But of course Peter had not been in Freedom long enough to know anything about the Leavitts.
He bowed with great ceremony, one hand over his heart.
"If Dad's like daughter, I thank you for the compliment. Now, if you will linger longer with me I'd like to show you Mrs. Sally and her babies. Sally is my experimental pig. I've built a piggery for her with a plunge and a sunken garden, and if you don't declare that Sally enjoys such improved surroundings, I'll know my whole summer's work's a failure."
Nancy walked over the rough ground toward the barns with a light heart. She had a delightful sense of being "pals" with this new Peter Hyde—who, while the Barry Wallaces were swaggering around with their medals, was up here in an out-of-the-way corner of the nation, fighting a new sort of a fight! He actually wanted her approval of his new piggery!