That Little Girl of Miss Eliza's: A Story for Young People

That Little Girl of Miss Eliza's: A Story for Young People

CHAPTER I

“The poorest farming land in all the country,” someone called it. “The best crop of stones and stumps, I ever saw,” someone else had said. Everyone smiled and drove on, and Shintown and its people passed from their knowledge.

“Shintown? Where in the name of goodness did they get such a name?” the elderly gentleman in the touring car asked his companion.

“Have to use your shins to get here. It used to be that Shank’s mare was the only one that could travel the miserable roads. They were mere foot-paths. Even the railroads have shot clear of it. See over there.”

There was truth in the words. Shintown, which was no town at all, but a few isolated farmhouses, looked down from its heights on one side upon the main line of the Susquehanna Valley, five miles away. On the other side, at a little more than half the distance, the branch of the W. N. P. and P. wound along the edge of the river. Both roads avoided Shintown as though it had the plague. The name was quite enough to discourage anyone. Nature had done its best for the place, the people had done their worst. It stood in the valley, and yet on a higher elevation than the country adjacent, the mountain being twenty miles distant. It was as though a broad table had been set in a wide country, with the mountain peaks as decorous waiters standing at the outer edge.

The houses were sagging affairs. They were well enough at one time, but were now like a good intention gone wrong. The storm had beaten upon them for so many years that all trace of paint was gone. The chimneys sloped as far as the law of gravity allowed. Gates hung on one hinge, and the fences had the same angle as an old man suffering with lumbago.

The corners of the fields were weed-ridden. The farmers never had time to plow clear to the corners and turn plumb. The soil had as many stones as it had had twenty years before. The whole countryside was suffering from lack of ambition. Crops were small, and food and clothes were meager. The stock showed the same attributes. It was stunted, dwarfed, far from its natural efficiency in burden bearing, milk-giving or egg-laying.

There was one place not quite like this – the old Wells place at the cross roads. The house was neither so large, nor so rambling as the others. It stood deep among some old purple beeches, and in summer it had yellow roses clambering over one entire side. The color was peculiar, and marked its occupant and owner just a little different from other people in the community. Everyone conceded that point without a question. She was just a little different. The house was all in shades of golden brown; brown that suggested yellow when the sun shone. It was a color that not a man in Shintown or a painter at the Bend or Port would have thought of putting on a house. Who ever thought of painting a house anything but white with green shutters or a good, serviceable drab? Golden browns in several shades! Why, of course, the woman must be peculiar. She did the work herself too. She arose at daylight to paint the upper portion and she quit work when travel on the highway began.

That was another peculiarity which the countryside could not understand; a woman who could be independent enough to choose what color she would, in defiance of all set laws, and yet afraid to let folks see her climbing a ladder to the second story.

If peculiar means being different, Eliza Wells was that. She was thirty, and never blushed at it. She had even been known to mention her birthdays as “I was twenty-nine yesterday. How time does fly!” And she said it after the manner of one who might have said, “To-morrow I set the old Plymouth Rock on a settin’ of Dominick eggs.”

But the country folk were kind enough and overlooked her not being as themselves. There was a knowing smile now and then, a sage nodding of the head. Now and then someone went as far as to say, “That’s Liza’s way. She never did act like other folks.”

Eliza knew she was peculiar and tried her best to be like those about her. She had never known any other kind of people; for she had been born and bred in the little place. But do as she could, her own self would break loose every now and then. In spite of her effort to be like other people, there were times when she could be nothing but her own unusual, individual self.

It was not that she admired the ways of life of the people about her. Had she done so, it might have been easier to have become like them. But she argued in this fashion: if all these hundred souls lived in one way and declared that to be the right way, then surely she was wrong, and her ideas had all gone awry somewhere; for one could not stand against a hundred.

The old Wells place had all the finger-marks of having a peculiar occupant. Hollyhocks all along the walk to the milk-house, nasturtiums climbing over a pile of rock; wistaria clinging to the trunk of a dead tree; wild cucumber vines on a trellis shielding the wood-pile and chip yard. In the recess of the old-fashioned front entrance were old blue bowls filled with nasturtiums.

The old blue delft had been in the family of Eliza’s grandmother Sampson for generations. Everybody knew it; but Eliza paraded them and seemed as proud of them as though they had just been purchased from Griffith’s “five and ten.” But she couldn’t fool the people of Shintown. They knew a thing or two and they were certain that the bowls were over a hundred years old.

On hot days, she ate on her kitchen porch, which she had enclosed with cotton fly-net, and she stuck a bunch of pansies in a teacup and had them beside her plate.

That was quite enough to show that she was peculiar. No one else in the country put flowers on the table. Indeed, no one raised them. What was the use? They weren’t good to eat.

But Eliza’s place was not a farm, else she could not have wasted so much time on worthless things. Two acres was all she owned, and she kept half of that in yard and flowers.

She would have had more room for garden if she would have cut down one or more of her purple beeches, but she would not do that. When Sam Houston suggested it to her, saying in his blunt way, “If you’d plant less of the ‘dern foolishness,’ you’d have more room for cabbages,” she replied, with a merry glint in her eye, “Sometimes, I think cabbages is the worst foolishness of all.”

Sam could make no reply to that. A man couldn’t reason with a woman who had no more sense than that.

Eliza Wells could afford to be a little different from anybody else. In the vernacular of the country, “she was well-fixed.” This meant not that she had millions, or even a hundred thousand, but there was money enough out at interest to bring her in fifteen dollars each month. This, with her garden truck and home, made her independent.

To have money in the bank was a distinguishing mark of rank. Not a soul at Shintown except Eliza could boast so much. Sam Houston was the only one in the countryside who had tales to tell of a father and a grandfather who lived on interest money.

Her financial independence made Eliza’s peculiarities a little more bearable. They were the idiosyncracies of the bloated capitalist.

Eliza drove to the Bend the first of each quarter to draw her interest money. She wore a black silk dress and a little bonnet. How she hated the stiff shininess of black silk. How miserably awkward she felt with the caricature of black lace and purple pansies, which custom called a bonnet, on her head. But she had been reared to believe that black silk was the only proper dress for a woman, no longer young, and the days after twenty years were always placed to the credit of age.

So she wore her black silk, although she saw nothing pretty in it. The women of Shintown envied her the possession of such a mark of gentility and declared that Eliza had a good bit of style for a woman of her age, and after a fashion all their own were proud of her.

She always drove Old Prince when she went to the Bend. There was always a little shopping before she came home. Quarter day fell on the first of July. The sun was fairly blazing upon the stretch of dusty road which knew no shadow of tree.

Miss Eliza was anxious to get home. Her hands were sweating in their heavy gloves. Not a breeze was stirring. The stiff black silk was not an easy or comfortable dress for a hot day. Yet she let Old Prince take his time. The flies bothered him considerably, and he shied like a young colt at every object in the road. He had not been out of the stable-yard for a week and what energy had been left to him had been bottled up for this trip to town.

In his youth, some years before, he had been a vicious animal which only a man with a steady nerve and strong hand could manage. But age had made him tractable. He went home at a steady gait with the reins hanging loose on his back, except when Eliza shook them to dislodge an annoying fly.

As they turned the bend of the road at Farwell, Old Prince shied suddenly and turned the wheels deep in the ditch. Eliza steadied herself and seized the reins. “There, old fellow, go quiet. There hain’t nothing here to disturb you.”

Her words sounded brave enough, yet she glanced apprehensively about. The new railroads had brought their following of tramps, and Eliza was fearful. She peered into the clump of elder bushes which grew up along the hillside. It was a beautiful rather than a fearful sight which met her eyes. A big woman with great braids of yellow hair sat in the shade of the underbrush. Eliza did not notice that her dress was exceedingly shabby. She did notice, however, that a little child lay in her arms. Both were sound asleep as though utterly exhausted by their travels.

They were strangers. Eliza knew that at a glance. She knew all the residents of the valley. A small traveling bag lay beside the woman. Her hand resting lightly upon it, as though even in sleep she would keep it in custody.

Miss Eliza spoke to Prince who would persist in frolicking and garotting about like a colt. The public road was not a safe sleeping place for a woman and child. Eliza recognized her duty. Leaning forward, she touched the woman’s hand lightly with her whip. She did this several times before the woman’s eyes opened.

“I’ve been trying to waken you,” said Eliza. “The road is not a safe place to sleep.”

The woman looked wonderingly about, yawned and rubbed her eyes. It was some minutes before she could get her bearings. When her eyes fell on the child, she smiled and nodded back at Eliza and then got upon her feet and began to put herself to rights.

“Where are you going?” asked Eliza.

The woman hesitated, puckered her brows and at last said, “I – I bane gone to Yameston.”

“Foreign,” said Eliza mentally. She had no idea where ‘Yameston’ was, but it was reasonable to suppose that the woman was cutting across country to take the flyer at the Port where it stopped to change engine and crews.

“It’s no place for a woman to rest. Tramps are thicker than huckleberries. Climb in and I’ll drive you and your baby part of the way.”

The woman could not understand, but she did grasp the meaning of Miss Eliza’s moving to the opposite side of the seat and reaching forth her hand to help her get into the carriage.

When they were safely seated, Miss Eliza touched Old Prince with the whip. At that instant, the oncoming flyer, as it entered the yard, whistled like a veritable demon. The two were too much for the old horse, who had been a thoroughbred in his time and had never known the touch of a whip. He reared on his hind feet, and then with a mad plunge went tearing down the road which was hemmed in on one side by the hills, and whose outer edge lay on the rocky bluffs of the river.

Miss Eliza held to the reins until they cut into the flesh. Bracing herself against the dash board, she kept Old Prince to the middle of the road. Just as she felt sure that she could manage him, the rein on the hillside snapped. The tension on the other side turned the animal toward the edge of the bank. Eliza dropped the useless rein, seized the child in her arms and held it close to her breast, hoping by her own body to protect it from the fall. It was all the work of a second. She shut her eyes even as she did this.

CHAPTER II

Eliza never could tell how long it was before she opened her eyes again. She was conscious at first of the sun beating down upon her face. Bewildered she opened her eyes only to close them again quickly against the unbearable light of the sky at midday. She tried to move, but her muscles were bound. A delicious sense of languor was again stealing over her, when she moved her hand slightly and felt water running over it. This aroused her again, and set her thoughts in motion. Little by little it all came back to her; her drive, the woman and child and the run-away horse. She knew now where she was. She need not open her eyes to see. She was lying at the foot of the stone wall at Paddy’s Run hill. She could hear the noise of running water. She thought of these things in a dreamy, far-off fashion as though it were something she might have read sometime. The child! Then she realized the awfulness of what had happened. Had she killed them both! She did not dare think of anything so horrible. She lay quite still, straining every nerve to listen for some sound of life. She heard it at last. It was the most beautiful sound she had ever heard in all her life. A low gurgly coo and then the touch of baby fingers on her face.

“Pitty ady – det up. Pitty ady, don’t seep so long.” The laughing dimpled face of the child looked down at her. It had escaped then. It was with a delicious feeling of thankfulness that she closed her eyes, not to open them again for several hours.

She was back in her own home then, lying on the old mahogany davenport with all the neighbors for miles about bending over her. She could hear Sam Houston holding forth in the kitchen. She listened, and there came to her in a listless sort of way that Sam always was a brag.

“I was just settin’ out to walk down to the office,” he was saying, “and when I came on to the road, who should I see but that old rascal of a Prince come walking along with one shaft hanging to his heels and the reins floppin’ down on his side. He looked as quiet as a lamb, for all the world as though he had been put to grazin’ instead of up to some devilment. I tell you right here, it didn’t take me long to know that something was up. I called Jim-boy, and off we started as fast as legs could carry us, and sure enough there the hull three of them lay – ”

“Three! Three! Three of them!” The words kept running off in Eliza’s mind. There were three – herself, the baby and – she could not remember who the third was. Then she did remember. Like a flash all was clear. She raised herself and was about to get up.

“There – there, Liza, you mustn’t.” Mrs. Kilgore would have forced her back on the pillows.

“I must get up. There’s nothing at all the matter with me.” Pushing aside the detaining hands, she stood upon her feet. For an instant she was a little giddy, but she steadied herself. Her muscles ached as she moved. Her black silk waist had been cut open the full length of the sleeve and she saw that her arm was black and blue. It was badly swollen. She could move it though, and bruises will soon heal.

“Where’s the woman – the woman who was with me?” she asked. She looked about on the faces. Every woman in Shintown was there. Old Granny Moyer sitting hunched up in the corner, using snuff and gloating. Mrs. Kilgore, bustling about with liniments and medicine bottles, her face radiant with the happiness of waiting upon the sick. From the room beyond came the heavier tones of men’s voices. None of the women had attempted to answer Eliza’s question. Her head was whirling so that she forgot in an instant that she had asked it. She listened to the voices from the parlor. Then, with all the energy of which she was capable, she moved quickly across the room and entered what the countryside termed ‘the parlor.’ This room was one of the things which Eliza disliked. She never said so. She never gave her thoughts tangible form even to herself. She simply avoided the room because she never felt at ease or comfortable when she sat within it.

There was a heavy Brussels carpet with bold design in bright colors. The chairs had backs as stiff as a poker. They were upholstered in red plush with ball fringe everywhere it could be stuck on. The walls were made hideous with life-sized crayon portraits. Chenille curtains were draped at the windows and a rope portière impeded the opening and closing of the door. A large marble-topped table stood in the center of the room. It was all hideous enough even if the odor of camphor and moth balls had not been in the air. It was an awful example of clinging to customs which are hideous.

Eliza never could sit there. She always felt irritated and fussy whenever she put it to rights, but yet she had not reached the stage of advancement which seeks the cause and removes it.

Bracing herself against the jamb of the door, she raised her aching, bruised hand and pushed aside the rope drapery. The center-table with its marble top had been removed from its accustomed place and something else was there.

Eliza stood for a moment to look about her. Squire Stout stood by, leaning on his cane. He was a little shriveled-up creature with snowy hair. His lips were thin and cruel. There was the air of an autocrat, a demagogue about him. Near him was Doctor Dullmer, whose face even now had lost nothing of its helpful, cheery, optimistic expression. There were other men in the group. They had all been talking; but they ceased at the sight of Miss Eliza standing in the doorway.

“You?” exclaimed Doctor Dullmer, advancing and extending his arm for support. “What do you mean? You should be in bed!”

“I am all right. Just bruised. That is all.”

She clung to his arm as she moved toward the little group, which separated to make room for her as she advanced.

Then she saw why the center-table with its square marble top had been pushed to the wall The woman lay there. Her beautiful yellow hair was coiled about her head like a golden crown. She looked so smiling and happy that Eliza could not feel one pang of sorrow for her. She bent over and smoothed the stranger’s forehead.

“I wonder who she was,” she said at length.

“Don’t you know?” the question came from every man there and from the group of women who had packed the narrow doorway. They were too fearful and too nervous to enter.

“No, I do not,” said Eliza. “I know neither her name nor her destination.”

“Sit down,” said Doctor Dullmer brusquely, pushing forward a chair and forcing her, none too gently, into it. She sat bolt upright and looked at the men about her. She forgot that her arm was aching with its bruises, and that a great cut near her temple, which the doctor had stitched, was making her head throb and tremble like an over-pressure of caged steam.

“But she was with you.” – “You were driving her.” “We supposed right along that she was some of your kin.”

Eliza shook her head. “I’ll tell you how it happened so,” she began. “I never saw her – ”

“Don’t talk about it now. Better wait until to-morrow, until you are better,” advised Doctor Dullmer.

“I must talk now. It’s better to tell about it at once so there can be no misunderstanding. It will help me to get it off my mind.”

“Well, just as you please,” said he, but he drew a chair beside her and watched her closely. He alone realized that she was on the point of collapse which might come suddenly upon her. He thought only of her physical condition. He had not estimated the power of will which is able to put aside all physical discomfort and carry a thing through because it is right to do so.

So Eliza sat bolt upright in the stiff chair, hideous with its red plush upholstery, and related all that had happened the several hours before.

The men listened with a question at intervals. When the story was ended, Miss Eliza got upon her feet.

“You’ll go to bed now,” said the doctor.

“Send everyone home but Mrs. Kilgore. I cannot rest with so many about me.”

Mrs. Kilgore had overheard the words and was already ridding the house of the neighbors.

“You’d better go, Granny. Your old man will want supper soon.”

“I think your baby would be crying for you, Mrs. Duden.”

“Hain’t you afraid to leave the twins alone in the house with matches and oil about?” So by dint of suggestion, she turned them all homeward and locked the door.

Miss Eliza went back to the davenport and, arranging the pillows, laid down her throbbing head and closed her eyes.

Mrs. Kilgore bustled about, closing doors and drawing shades. She was as happy as could be. She was in her element in the sick-room. She found thorough enjoyment in officiating at the house of sorrow. She drew down the corners of her mouth and assumed a doleful expression, but a pleased excitement showed itself in spite of all.

“Pitty adee – pitty adee.” A few toddling steps, and the child came close to the davenport where Eliza lay. Her baby hands rested lightly against the bandaged head.

“Pitty adee – hurted. Me’s sorry. Me kiss ’ou an ’ou get well.” Standing on tip-toe, she put her lips again and again against the bandage.

Miss Eliza trembled. A strange thrill went through her. She had never known much about children. She had been the only chick and child of her parents. She had not realized that a baby could be so sweet. A strange joy filled her at the touch of the lips. The term ‘Pretty lady’ found a responsive chord in her heart which vibrated. She had lived alone all her life. No one had ever touched lips to hers. No one had ever found her attractive or beautiful. For as many years as she could remember, no one had ever called her ‘pretty’. She did not think whether it were true or false. She accepted it as something new and delightful. She was a human being, though she had always been alone, and she craved affection just as every one of humanity does.

She drew the child close to her. It cuddled up as though it had known only love and tenderness and feared no one. At length it crawled up on the davenport and nestled close in her arms, with the little head on her breast. All the while, it kept up a prattle of sympathy for the ‘pitty adee who was hurted’ and the baby hands touched Eliza’s cheek lightly. So both fell asleep.

The news of the accident had spread quickly enough. Telegrams had flashed over the country and local newspapers sent reporters at once to secure particulars. Williamsburg was the nearest city of importance. The Herald was the daily with the largest circulation. It was always looking for a “scoop.”

When the telegrams came in telling of the accident, Morris was the only man in the outer office. McCoy nailed him at once.

“Get to Shintown as fast as you can. Find out everything. Write a column or two and get back before the press closes for the morning edition.”

Morris started. Until this time, he had written nothing but personals. He was eager to advance. This looked to him like a rung in the ladder. He would “make good” for himself and his paper. There was no passenger train due, but he caught a fast freight and “bummed” his way to the Bend and walked from there to Shintown.

He was admitted without question to the parlor of the old Wells place. The men had departed, leaving only a watcher beside the dead.

The boy took out his note-book and asked questions which the man who sat in waiting and Mrs. Kilgore eagerly answered. He looked at the woman with her mass of yellow hair about her head like a crown. He had been brought up inland. He knew little of that great wave of surging humanity which yearly seek our shores in search of a home. He had seen the German type with fair skin and yellow hair. It did not come to him that a far northern country had these characteristics intensified.

The presses closed at midnight. He had four hours to reach the city and have his copy ready. He fired questions rapidly, and wrote while the answers came. Then he fairly ran down the country road to the Bend where he caught the late flyer.

It was almost eleven when he began to make copy. Suddenly he stopped. He had neglected to ask the sex of the child who had been made motherless by the accident. He paused an instant. He had no time to find out. He would use a reporter’s privilege.