VIII
THE ADOPTION OF ALBERT AND VICTORIA
AUGUST—THE CORN MOON
It all happened in August, the limp and lazy month of the year abhorred by Martha Saunders, born Corkle. It surely requires a certain amount of natural philosophy, adaptability to fruit and salad lunches, and an aptitude for lounging in shady places and watching the grass grow, or gazing through the trees skyward from the depth of a hammock, to make August even a mildly pleasurable month. Night is August’s strong point; her full moon sheds a placid coppery light, making the glistening green of the cornfields, heavy in ear, look wet and cool; but in the daytime, the Harvest Fly proclaims the heat insistently, mould born of heavy dew invades the pantry, and the milk is curdled by the shock of frequent thunder.
All the defects of the month sink into her soul, but for none of the assuasions does English-born Martha care. She would not effect even a temporary compromise with her sturdy red-meat diet; she considers lounging of any kind a sin, and the very sight of a hammock calls up most unpleasant memories.
The year that she married Timothy and left our house for the cottage at the poultry farm on the hill above, I gave her one of these offending articles to hang in the shade of some apple trees overlooking the coops, thinking it would be a point of vantage for her. But no, the thing was barely put in place and swaying in the breeze, when her substantial form came from the house and stood before us, arms folded, head erect, but eyes closed: “Mrs. Evan,” she said, moistening her lips conspicuously, “I thank you kindly for your wish, but if it please you, Timothy shall take it down again, for those things are more than I can stand for. Oh, yes, I’ve tried one, and when I was in it, I was minded of the ship the morn after the third night out, which being a storm, the ’atches were down and the smells not working out, took a good clutch on the stummick, so that a fine cup of tea couldn’t find lodging there, the ship still heaving short all the time; and no disrespect intended, Mrs. Evan.”
As Martha came from a county in old England of peculiarly equable climate, she lacked her usual energy in the New England August, and a sort of mental prickly heat usually settled upon her, more trying than the bodily variety. In fact, the most strenuous part of the season’s labour was over: the early chicks were already broilers; the next group were firm on their feet, and the late ones not yet to be set; while the old hens spent all their time kicking up the dust and moulting with a thoroughness sometimes embarrassing to the beholder.
By this time also the jam and jelly gamut had been run through strawberries, currants, gooseberries, raspberries, and the rest, leaving only peaches, the spicy beach plums, and quinces for the future, so that Martha’s capable hands were fairly empty, save for the bit of housework, and what was that with a husband as canty and well-drilled as Timothy? Thus it came about that, into what should have been Martha’s vacation time, unrest entered, and each year she managed to worry herself and prod Timothy into the pursuit of some new scheme which, fortunately, generally came to an end with the first cool day of autumn.
“The woman’s harvest spells” were what Timothy called this mild sort of summer madness, and in speaking of it to father, he once said: “Of coorse ye ken, Dochtor, that some weemen are mickle like their own settin’ hens: when busy season’s over, they’r nae content to scratch beetles in the bonny fresh grass in the pasture, and moult quiet like, but they must raise up dust and maak the feathers fly. Hecht! Dochtor, ye ken, ye ken, and naught said, I see it in yer eye!”
In one of these temporary summer periods, Martha had become a convert to Christian Science, but backslid before winter, because she continued to have the nosebleed, for which she had paid no small sum to be cured by absent treatment, and about the failure of this method she expressed her mind freely.
“Tush, tush, woman, and dinna fash yoursel,” said Timothy, with twinkling eyes. “Doubtless they meant ye weel, but their minds was na pooerful enoo to send the healin’ through sic braw oak trees as we hae hereaboot! Man has to stick up poles like birds’ twigs to catch this new no-wire telegraph, so mebbe had we a braw toor on the hoose to draw it down, yer nose might catch the benefit o’ their far-away healin’!”