Ragged Lady — Complete

I.

It was their first summer at Middlemount and the Landers did not know the roads. When they came to a place where they had a choice of two, she said that now he must get out of the carry-all and ask at the house standing a little back in the edge of the pine woods, which road they ought to take for South Middlemount. She alleged many cases in which they had met trouble through his perverse reluctance to find out where they were before he pushed rashly forward in their drives. Whilst she urged the facts she reached forward from the back seat where she sat, and held her hand upon the reins to prevent his starting the horse, which was impartially cropping first the sweet fern on one side and then the blueberry bushes on the other side of the narrow wheel-track. She declared at last that if he would not get out and ask she would do it herself, and at this the dry little man jerked the reins in spite of her, and the horse suddenly pulled the carry-all to the right, and seemed about to overset it.

“Oh, what are you doing, Albe't?” Mrs. Lander lamented, falling helpless against the back of her seat. “Haven't I always told you to speak to the hoss fust?”

“He wouldn't have minded my speakin',” said her husband. “I'm goin' to take you up to the dooa so that you can ask for youaself without gettin' out.”

This was so well, in view of Mrs. Lander's age and bulk, and the hardship she must have undergone, if she had tried to carry out her threat, that she was obliged to take it in some sort as a favor; and while the vehicle rose and sank over the surface left rough, after building, in front of the house, like a vessel on a chopping sea, she was silent for several seconds.

The house was still in a raw state of unfinish, though it seemed to have been lived in for a year at least. The earth had been banked up at the foundations for warmth in winter, and the sheathing of the walls had been splotched with irregular spaces of weather boarding; there was a good roof over all, but the window-casings had been merely set in their places and the trim left for a future impulse of the builder. A block of wood suggested the intention of steps at the front door, which stood hospitably open, but remained unresponsive for some time after the Landers made their appeal to the house at large by anxious noises in their throats, and by talking loud with each other, and then talking low. They wondered whether there were anybody in the house; and decided that there must be, for there was smoke coming out of the stove pipe piercing the roof of the wing at the rear.

Mr. Lander brought himself under censure by venturing, without his wife's authority, to lean forward and tap on the door-frame with the butt of his whip. At the sound, a shrill voice called instantly from the region of the stove pipe, “Clem! Clementina? Go to the front dooa! The'e's somebody knockin'.” The sound of feet, soft and quick, made itself heard within, and in a few moments a slim maid, too large for a little girl, too childlike for a young girl, stood in the open doorway, looking down on the elderly people in the buggy, with a face as glad as a flower's. She had blue eyes, and a smiling mouth, a straight nose, and a pretty chin whose firm jut accented a certain wistfulness of her lips. She had hair of a dull, dark yellow, which sent out from its thick mass light prongs, or tendrils, curving inward again till they delicately touched it. Her tanned face was not very different in color from her hair, and neither were her bare feet, which showed well above her ankles in the calico skirt she wore. At sight of the elders in the buggy she involuntarily stooped a little to lengthen her skirt in effect, and at the same time she pulled it together sidewise, to close a tear in it, but she lost in her anxiety no ray of the joy which the mere presence of the strangers seemed to give her, and she kept smiling sunnily upon them while she waited for them to speak.

“Oh!” Mrs. Lander began with involuntary apology in her tone, “we just wished to know which of these roads went to South Middlemount. We've come from the hotel, and we wa'n't quite ce'tain.”

The girl laughed as she said, “Both roads go to South Middlemount'm; they join together again just a little piece farther on.”

The girl and the woman in their parlance replaced the letter 'r' by vowel sounds almost too obscure to be represented, except where it came last in a word before a word beginning with a vowel; there it was annexed to the vowel by a strong liaison, according to the custom universal in rural New England.

“Oh, do they?” said Mrs. Lander.

“Yes'm,” answered the girl. “It's a kind of tu'nout in the wintatime; or I guess that's what made it in the beginning; sometimes folks take one hand side and sometimes the other, and that keeps them separate; but they're really the same road, 'm.”

“Thank you,” said Mrs. Lander, and she pushed her husband to make him say something, too, but he remained silently intent upon the child's prettiness, which her blue eyes seemed to illumine with a light of their own. She had got hold of the door, now, and was using it as if it was a piece of drapery, to hide not only the tear in her gown, but somehow both her bare feet. She leaned out beyond the edge of it; and then, at moments she vanished altogether behind it.

Since Mr. Lander would not speak, and made no sign of starting up his horse, Mrs. Lander added, “I presume you must be used to havin' people ask about the road, if it's so puzzlin'.”

“O, yes'm,” returned the girl, gladly. “Almost every day, in the summatime.”

“You have got a pretty place for a home, he'e,” said Mrs. Lander.

“Well, it will be when it's finished up.” Without leaning forward inconveniently Mrs. Lander could see that the partitions of the house within were lathed, but not plastered, and the girl looked round as if to realize its condition and added, “It isn't quite finished inside.”

“We wouldn't, have troubled you,” said Mrs. Lander, “if we had seen anybody to inquire of.”

“Yes'm,” said the girl. “It a'n't any trouble.”

“There are not many otha houses about, very nea', but I don't suppose you get lonesome; young folks are plenty of company for themselves, and if you've got any brothas and sistas—”

“Oh,” said the girl, with a tender laugh, “I've got eva so many of them!”

There was a stir in the bushes about the carriage, and Mrs. Lander was aware for an instant of children's faces looking through the leaves at her and then flashing out of sight, with gay cries at being seen. A boy, older than the rest, came round in front of the horse and passed out of sight at the corner of the house.

Lander now leaned back and looked over his shoulder at his wife as if he might hopefully suppose she had come to the end of her questions, but she gave no sign of encouraging him to start on their way again.

“That your brotha, too?” she asked the girl.

“Yes'm. He's the oldest of the boys; he's next to me.”

“I don't know,” said Mrs. Lander thoughtfully, “as I noticed how many boys there were, or how many girls.”

“I've got two sistas, and three brothas, 'm,” said the girl, always smiling sweetly. She now emerged from the shelter of the door, and Mrs. Lander perceived that the slight movements of such parts of her person as had been evident beyond its edge were the effects of some endeavor at greater presentableness. She had contrived to get about her an overskirt which covered the rent in her frock, and she had got a pair of shoes on her feet. Stockings were still wanting, but by a mutual concession of her shoe-tops and the border of her skirt, they were almost eliminated from the problem. This happened altogether when the girl sat down on the threshold, and got herself into such foreshortening that the eye of Mrs. Lander in looking down upon her could not detect their absence. Her little head then showed in the dark of the doorway like a painted head against its background.

“You haven't been livin' here a great while, by the looks,” said Mrs. Lander. “It don't seem to be clea'ed off very much.”

“We've got quite a ga'den-patch back of the house,” replied the girl, “and we should have had moa, but fatha wasn't very well, this spring; he's eva so much better than when we fust came he'e.”

“It has the name of being a very healthy locality,” said Mrs. Lander, somewhat discontentedly, “though I can't see as it's done me so very much good, yit. Both your payrints livin'?”

“Yes'm. Oh, yes, indeed!”

“And your mother, is she real rugged? She need to be, with such a flock of little ones!”

“Yes, motha's always well. Fatha was just run down, the doctas said, and ought to keep more in the open air. That's what he's done since he came he'e. He helped a great deal on the house and he planned it all out himself.”

“Is he a ca'penta?” asked Mrs. Lander.

“No'm; but he's—I don't know how to express it—he likes to do every kind of thing.”

“But he's got some business, ha'n't he?” A shadow of severity crept over Mrs. Lander's tone, in provisional reprehension of possible shiftlessness.

“Yes'm. He was a machinist at the Mills; that's what the doctas thought didn't agree with him. He bought a piece of land he'e, so as to be in the pine woods, and then we built this house.”

“When did you say you came?”

“Two yea's ago, this summa.”

“Well! What did you do befoa you built this house?”

“We camped the first summa.”

“You camped? In a tent?”

“Well, it was pahtly a tent, and pahtly bank.”

“I should have thought you would have died.”

The girl laughed. “Oh, no, we all kept fast-rate. We slept in the tents--we had two—and we cooked in the shanty.” She smiled at the notion in adding, “At fast the neighbas thought we we'e Gipsies; and the summa folks thought we were Indians, and wanted to get baskets of us.”

Mrs. Lander did not know what to think, and she asked, “But didn't it almost perish you, stayin' through the winter in an unfinished house?”

“Well, it was pretty cold. But it was so dry, the air was, and the woods kept the wind off nicely.”

The same shrill voice in the region of the stovepipe which had sent the girl to the Landers now called her from them. “Clem! Come here a minute!”

The girl said to Mrs. Lander, politely, “You'll have to excuse me, now'm. I've got to go to motha.”

“So do!” said Mrs. Lander, and she was so taken by the girl's art and grace in getting to her feet and fading into the background of the hallway without visibly casting any detail of her raiment, that she was not aware of her husband's starting up the horse in time to stop him. They were fairly under way again, when she lamented, “What you doin', Albe't? Whe'e you goin'?”

“I'm goin' to South Middlemount. Didn't you want to?”

“Well, of all the men! Drivin' right off without waitin' to say thankye to the child, or take leave, or anything!”

“Seemed to me as if SHE took leave.”

“But she was comin' back! And I wanted to ask—”

“I guess you asked enough for one while. Ask the rest to-morra.”

Mrs. Lander was a woman who could often be thrown aside from an immediate purpose, by the suggestion of some remoter end, which had already, perhaps, intimated itself to her. She said, “That's true,” but by the time her husband had driven down one of the roads beyond the woods into open country, she was a quiver of intolerable curiosity. “Well, all I've got to say is that I sha'n't rest till I know all about 'em.”

“Find out when we get back to the hotel, I guess,” said her husband.

“No, I can't wait till I get back to the hotel. I want to know now. I want you should stop at the very fust house we come to. Dea'! The'e don't seem to be any houses, any moa.” She peered out around the side of the carry-all and scrutinized the landscape. “Hold on! No, yes it is, too! Whoa! Whoa! The'e's a man in that hay-field, now!”

She laid hold of the reins and pulled the horse to a stand. Mr. Lander looked round over his shoulder at her. “Hadn't you betta wait till you get within half a mile of the man?”

“Well, I want you should stop when you do git to him. Will you? I want to speak to him, and ask him all about those folks.”

“I didn't suppose you'd let me have much of a chance,” said her husband. When he came within easy hail of the man in the hay-field, he pulled up beside the meadow-wall, where the horse began to nibble the blackberry vines that overran it.

Mrs. Lander beckoned and called to the man, who had stopped pitching hay and now stood leaning on the handle of his fork. At the signs and sounds she made, he came actively forward to the road, bringing his fork with him. When he arrived within easy conversational distance, he planted the tines in the ground and braced himself at an opposite incline from the long smooth handle, and waited for Mrs. Lander to begin.

“Will you please tell us who those folks ah', livin' back there in the edge of the woods, in that new unfinished house?”

The man released his fork with one hand to stoop for a head of timothy that had escaped the scythe, and he put the stem of it between his teeth, where it moved up and down, and whipped fantastically about as he talked, before he answered, “You mean the Claxons?”

“I don't know what thei' name is.” Mrs. Lander repeated exactly what she had said.

The farmer said, “Long, red-headed man, kind of sickly-lookin'?”

“We didn't see the man—”

“Little woman, skinny-lookin; pootty tonguey?”

“We didn't see her, eitha; but I guess we hea'd her at the back of the house.”

“Lot o' children, about as big as pa'tridges, runnin' round in the bushes?”

“Yes! And a very pretty-appearing girl; about thi'teen or fou'teen, I should think.”

The farmer pulled his fork out of the ground, and planted it with his person at new slopes in the figure of a letter A, rather more upright than before. “Yes; it's them,” he said. “Ha'n't been in the neighbahood a great while, eitha. Up from down Po'tland way, some'res, I guess. Built that house last summer, as far as it's got, but I don't believe it's goin' to git much fa'tha.”

“Why, what's the matta?” demanded Mrs. Lander in an anguish of interest.

The man in the hay-field seemed to think it more dignified to include Lander in this inquiry, and he said with a glimmer of the eye for him, “Hea'd of do-nothin' folks?”

“Seen 'em, too,” answered Lander, comprehensively.

“Well, that a'n't Claxon's complaint exactly. He a'n't a do-nothin'; he's a do-everything. I guess it's about as bad.” Lander glimmered back at the man, but did not speak.

“Kind of a machinist down at the Mills, where he come from,” the farmer began again, and Mrs. Lander, eager not to be left out of the affair for a moment, interrupted:

“Yes, Yes! That's what the gul said.”

“But he don't seem to think't the i'on agreed with him, and now he's goin' in for wood. Well, he did have a kind of a foot-powa tu'nin' lathe, and tuned all sots o' things; cups, and bowls, and u'ns for fence-posts, and vases, and sleeve-buttons and little knick-knacks; but the place bunt down, here, a while back, and he's been huntin' round for wood, the whole winta long, to make canes out of for the summa-folks. Seems to think that the smell o' the wood, whether it's green or it's dry, is goin' to cure him, and he can't git too much of it.”

“Well, I believe it's so, Albe't!” cried Mrs. Lander, as if her husband had disputed the theory with his taciturn back. He made no other sign of controversy, and the man in the hay-field went on.

“I hea' he's goin' to put up a wind mill, back in an open place he's got, and use the powa for tu'nin', if he eva gits it up. But he don't seem to be in any great of a hurry, and they scrape along somehow. Wife takes in sewin' and the girl wo'ked at the Middlemount House last season. Whole fam'ly's got to tu'n in and help s'po't a man that can do everything.”

The farmer appealed with another humorous cast of his eye to Lander; but the old man tacitly refused to take any further part in the talk, which began to flourish apace, in question and answer, between his wife and the man in the hay-field. It seemed that the children had all inherited the father's smartness. The oldest boy could beat the nation at figures, and one of the young ones could draw anything you had a mind to. They were all clear up in their classes at school, and yet you might say they almost ran wild, between times. The oldest girl was a pretty-behaved little thing, but the man in the hay-field guessed there was not very much to her, compared with some of the boys. Any rate, she had not the name of being so smart at school. Good little thing, too, and kind of mothered the young ones.

Mrs. Lander, when she had wrung the last drop of information out of him, let him crawl back to his work, mentally flaccid, and let her husband drive on, but under a fire of conjecture and asseveration that was scarcely intermitted till they reached their hotel. That night she talked a long time about their afternoon's adventure before she allowed him to go to sleep. She said she must certainly see the child again; that they must drive down there in the morning, and ask her all about herself.

“Albe't,” she concluded; “I wish we had her to live with us. Yes, I do! I wonder if we could get her to. You know I always did want to adopt a baby.”

“You neva said so,” Mr. Lander opened his mouth almost for the first time, since the talk began.

“I didn't suppose you'd like it,” said his wife.

“Well, she a'n't a baby. I guess you'd find you had your hands full, takon' a half-grown gul like that to bring up.”

“I shouldn't be afraid any,” the wife declared. “She has just twined herself round my heat. I can't get her pretty looks out of my eyes. I know she's good.”

“We'll see how you feel about it in the morning.”

The old man began to wind his watch, and his wife seemed to take this for a sign that the incident was closed, for the present at least. He seldom talked, but there came times when he would not even listen. One of these was the time after he had wound his watch. A minute later he had undressed, with an agility incredible of his years, and was in bed, as effectively blind and deaf to his wife's appeals as if he were already asleep.