Chapter XIV: An Ark Adrift?

SNIGS' queer accident proved more serious than it had at first appeared. The glass had "blown into the flesh," as Rosie had suggested; it took seven stitches of sewing to repair the boy, and he was ill in bed for ten days with high fever and considerable pain.

July was wearing away into August, and the thermometer mounted uncommonly high for an instrument hanging at such altitude above sea-level.

Mrs. Scollard drooped under the heat, and chafed with impatience to get well; the prospect of resuming her duties in town looked distant and dim.

Happie lost her fresh color and buoyancy under unaccustomed duties, and Bob grew grave also as each day piled up hard farm work, and September loomed in sight with its unsolved problems of school and business opportunities.

Polly and Penny were growing bigger and browner almost hour by hour, and Laura was an improved Laura, with her vanity much chastened and her self-confidence subdued by her misadventure. Margery's letters were overflowing with happiness, but her mother read in them subtle indications that her eldest girl was slipping over the boundary line of young girlhood, and was growing up.

Gretta's affairs were getting worse, while she was improving day by day. Miss Bradbury and Mrs. Scollard had grown very fond of the pretty girl, and hardly less interested than Happie in trying to solve the untangling of her life. In proportion as her new friends cared for her, and she blossomed out into the development her cousins had grudged her, the Neumanns became more unkind to her. It was plain that matters could not long continue as they were, and Miss Bradbury and Mrs. Scollard fruitlessly discussed Gretta's prospects, and wished it were within their power to brighten them.

The first of August brought summons of return to Ralph and Snigs. They went away sadly, for the prospect of the Scollards' following them was not bright, and the boys would not be able to come back to the Ark before school began.

These were the changes that August brought to the Ark. With them there was creeping into the air a feeling of waiting. Not of waiting for anything definite, but a vague feeling of unrest, as if "something were going to happen," a feeling very like the atmosphere on a still August afternoon when not a leaf is stirring, and great thunder heads pile up in the west.

"I only hope it will be something good when it happens," Happie said when her mother confessed to this uneasiness. "It really seems as if we could not stand anything bad."

She did not mean to betray her weariness in well-doing; it slipped out in spite of herself.

"Poor little Happie!" sighed her mother, fluttering the sheets of her latest long letter from Margery. "I wonder if I should have insisted on your going to Bar Harbor?"

"Of course not, motherums!" cried Happie hastily. "Margery's letters sound as if she were as happy as the days are long, but they sound as if she had more Margery-things than Happie-things."

"So they do," assented her mother. "You too have noticed the older note, then? I suppose we must make up our minds to letting Margery grow up. But you would have found what you call 'Happie-things' if you had been there. We all find our own attractions throughout life, and wherever we may be. Like draws like, and we rise or sink to our own level; never forget that, my Happie."

"Mothers find little texts everywhere, don't they, motherums?" said Happie kissing her. "They are forever improving their children's minds and morals, and they don't have to wait to find sermons even in stones--though Bar Harbor must have rocks!"

"It is a great advantage to a preacher to have a congregation that must listen," retorted her mother. "Run away and make your cake for supper, you saucy Happie."

"Saucy Happie" turned away laughing, but before she had time to obey Miss Bradbury came into the room with a step that combined stealth and haste.

"I haven't said a word," she whispered, so low that she could hardly be described as saying a word then, "because I did not want to frighten you, Charlotte, but Dundee has been growling fearfully for the past two nights. I don't see how you could have helped hearing him--though to be sure he has slept under my bed, with my door shut! He is out in the yard now, growling and crawling up towards the back door. I am certain that I saw a figure skulking along by the fence. Here is a revolver; I brought it up in case of need, but I can't let any one touch it. Where's Bob?"

"He's out in the barn looking after Don Dolor," said Mrs. Scollard. "I'm not at all frightened, Miss Keren. I'm sure there's nothing wrong. Suppose you stay here with the revolver, and let Happie go out in the kitchen to see if Rosie's there."

"You never can tell how nervous people are going to be nervous!" exclaimed Miss Bradbury, as if she were disappointed by Mrs. Scollard's calmness, even while dreading to disturb her. "Very well; creep out, Happie, but go carefully!"

Happie laughed, and obediently departed. She heard low voices as she neared the kitchen, and she opened the door to discover Rosie's Mahlon standing there on one leg, "like the goose he is," Happie thought, not feeling in the mood to be amused by Rosie's decidedly not better half.

"Have you been around here nights lately?" asked Happie.

"Pretty much all summer," whined Mahlon. "Rosie didn't know it--she wouldn't have cared, no sir, not if she did know it. She hasn't any heart in her, and then you folks got a dog!"

Happie's laugh rang out, and she hurried back to the library. "Put away your revolver, Aunt Keren; it's only Rosie's Mahlon, and the most you would need for him would be a wringing machine--he's very tearful!"

Then she rushed back to see the fun.

"Now you keep still!" she heard Rosie say in a fierce whisper as she entered. But it was much too hard a matter to Mahlon to get started talking for him to be easily silenced. He swung his right arm, and swung his right leg in unison with it. His voice arose into a tearful whine; he seemed to be on the point of breaking into tears, as he often did when excited.

"No, sir," he piped, "I couldn't do it! Nobody couldn't do it. He told me to go up once on the barn loft, on that there cracked ladder and throw down the old straw. And I told him I couldn't, and I wasn't goin' to break my neck, not for him nor nobody like him, and me with a wife dependent on me yet!"

Rosie glanced at Happie involuntarily, with a gleam of pure humor in her eyes, and in spite of herself Happie laughed aloud.

This seemed to outrage Mahlon's already wounded feelings. His voice rose higher and more squeaky as he said: "Yes, sir, you may laugh, but I'm a man, and I've got a man's feelin's yet. I told him I wouldn't climb that there ladder, not if I died fer it, and he said I'd got to climb it, or quit. So I quit, and here I am. I'd like to know what your folks think I'm goin' to do if I hain't got no work, and my wife helpin' you, and my house shut up, lettin' me without no home?"

The arm-and-leg movement waxed furious, and the wailing voice broke altogether as the forlorn creature fell like a scarecrow in a gale, doubled up on a chair, his arms on the table, while he cried into them, face downwards.

Happie felt painfully embarrassed, not understanding the intention of this appeal, but Rosie proved herself equal to this, as to all other occasions.

She took her limp husband by the shoulder and shook him together like a feather bed, the same movement bringing him to his feet.

"Here, you git ap!" she said emphatically. "I hain't goin' to have them dirty coat sleeves that you wear 'round the pigs on my clean table where I'm goin' to make biscuits, and Happie's goin' to bake cake fer supper yet! And you cryin', like a I'd-know-what! I bet you what you dare they got tired already chasin' you round over there to make you work! I guess I know how you dig--take out one shovelful, and then stand five minutes and admire the hole! Happie hain't goin' to be bothered with you. If you want her Aunt Keren to leave you work fer her, you've got to ask her yourself. My days, Mahlon, you look and act more like a roll of carpet rags when I hain't seen you fer a while than ever. You go out and see'f you can't do nothin' towards helpin' Bob a while. He's cleanin' the horse's stall and beddin' him down. You go out once and find out. Supper'll be ready till you come back. If you hain't got nothin' you _must_ do, git up and do somethin' you _kin_ do!"

Mahlon acted on this strong hint, and departed barnward. Happie hid her face by stooping down to get out the cake tins from the deepest recesses of the kitchen closet. Rosie sighed, then she laughed; she was an unconscious philosopher of the school that holds it best to smile at the misfortunes which cannot be cured, that being the one way in which they can be endured.

"If ever you git married, Happie," she said--"and if you take my advice you'll think it over hard before you set the day, and then set another day twenty years later, and think it over again till that one, and I guess till then you'll have seen enough to know you hadn't ought to be in no hurry--but if ever you do git married, for the goodness' sake git a man you don't have to order round! I never give Mahlon orders but I feel 'sif I'd ought ter be broomsticked! My days, I've thought already I'd ruther have a man take a broomstick to _me_ then lop 'round so! A woman hadn't orter give the orders, but when you've got to, you've got to. Don Dolor would look well drivin' you, now wouldn't he? That's the way 'tis: the one that's fit to drive's got to drive, if you want to git anywheres. But don't you never git that kind. I guess you've got to put that there bitter ammon in your cake; the vanilla's all."

Happie made her cake and Rosie made her biscuits, and Mahlon returned with Bob--who had learned to milk--in time to enjoy their steaming fragrance and more substantial qualities.

Miss Bradbury saw at a glance that Bob welcomed the assistance of even the dilapidated Mahlon, for Pete and Jake were uncertain, whereas the duties of each day were as certain as the rising of the sun. Miss Keren therefore engaged Mahlon "to paddle around the Ark," as Bob expressed it, to the ridiculous delight of that abject person, who fully appreciated the gain he had made in insinuating himself into the Ark. "Only," said Miss Bradbury whimsically, "if we could have known it was he who haunted the place by nights we could have dispensed with Dundee's services."

After tea the heavy clouds which had been gathering all the afternoon in white curled masses in the west, mounted higher with the sunset, and turned black and purple, emitting low growls, and occasionally parting to show long, jagged stripes of flame.

"It will be a good one when it gits here," remarked Rosie, putting the remaining biscuits into the bread box. "It's goin' to come sudden, too. If you've let anything to do after supper, Bob, you'd better be about it."

"Everything is battened down and tight caulked for the gale, Captain Gruber," replied Bob in nautical, but indistinct terms, his mouth being occupied with a postscript to supper, in the form of a stolen piece of Happie's cake.

It was nine o'clock, however, before the storm burst with sudden fury out of a greenish-blackness of sky and atmosphere that added to the horror of the vivid lightning.

Miss Bradbury sat erect on a straight chair with her feet on another, in rigid contempt of her own undeniable fear. Mrs. Scollard held Laura and Polly, one in each arm, and Bob and Happie tried to sing, but they missed Margery's sweet alto, and succeeded less well than usual in distracting the family attention from the storm. At its height a carriage dashed up the driveway, and a woman's voice cried: "Whoa!"

"Some one's got caught," observed Rosie, as the family looked at one another, the younger ones with a natural tendency to find something portentous in this arrival out of the wildness and blackness of the night.

"It's like Guy Mannering," whispered Happie to Bob.

Rosie opened the door. They heard her exclaim: "Well, for goodness' sake!"

Then she led the way into the library, as it had been decided to call what had been the parlor, and what Rosie still designated "the room."

She was followed by Miss Eunice Neumann, her sister, and an older woman; all three were very wet and looked as disgusted as mortals could look.

"We thought we'd git home ahead of it," remarked Eunice Neumann by way of greeting, not specifying what they had hoped to outstrip. "But it came up faster than what we thought it would, and when we got here Emmaline said she'd know it if she'd go further, so we come in here. Mahlon took the horse," she added to Rosie, as if she had the first claim to an explanation.

"I'm glad you did not try to go on," said Mrs. Scollard, rising. "Even the distance to your house is too great to travel in weather such as this is. Shall Bob make a fire, a wood-fire on the hearth, Miss Keren? And Rosie will take Miss Neumann up-stairs and lend you dry garments, while yours are hung in the kitchen."

"No, sir; I hain't goin' to bother changin'," said Eunice emphatically. "We'll sit on these wooden chairs. 'Twon't hurt them none to git wet." So saying she drew forth three cherished old chairs which had been Miss Bradbury's grandmother's, and established herself on the first one, setting her sister and her friend an example.

"Bob, please make a fire," said Miss Bradbury. "We do not know this third lady?"

"That there one with 'em is Emmaline Gulick," said Rosie, supplying the deficiencies of introduction, as Eunice disregarded Miss Bradbury's reminder. She spoke, to Mrs. Scollard's embarrassment, in her usual tone, but the reason for this speedily developed.

"She's as deef as a whole row of posts," Rosie continued. "She used to live around here, but she moved down country; she's visitin' the Neumanns now."

"Yes," said Reba speaking unexpectedly. "We feel sorry fer her."

"Is Gretta at home alone?" asked Happie, shrinking from a particularly vivid flash of lightning as she looked out of the window.

"Yes, she is, and lucky to be there yet; I wisht I was," said Eunice. "You've got it nice here now. I wonder you hain't afraid, takin' what belongs to an orphan girl."

"Now, Eunice, you keep still!" interposed Rosie sharply. "They don't know nothin' about that there story, and no one knows if there's a word of truth in it."

Neither of her hostesses were paying very strict attention to the visitor's remarks, but Happie came forward at once from the window. "Aunt Keren," she said, "this is the second time Miss Neumann has hinted that this house is not rightfully yours, only the first time she did more than hint--she said straight out that it belonged to Gretta. I asked Gretta what it meant, but she said nothing at all. Now Rosie seems to have heard of it. Wouldn't you like to understand it?"

"Of course," said Miss Bradbury sharply, forgetting to keep the current of electricity in safe directions, and endangering her life by letting her feet slip from the round of her second chair. "Tell us what you know, Miss Neumann--or Rosie."

"I know all there is to know, and it's all foolishness," said Rosie, forestalling Eunice. "Suppose I git Emmaline Gulick a cup of tea, she's that wet."

"By all means the tea, and for us all, please, but what is the story?" insisted Miss Bradbury, alert as she became convinced there really was a story.

"Gretta's grandmother owned this house," began Eunice, nothing loath to tell the tale which Rosie would gladly have suppressed. "She owned it before she went and married a second time, married old Bittenbender yet! Everybody knew what he was, they say. She found out her mistake, and it didn't take long neither, but 'tain't so easy cuttin' the hangman's rope as 'tis tyin' it. She had to make the best of what there wasn't no best to. She said often and often that she'd made a will leavin' everything she had to her son--that was Gretta's father. But when she come to die her son was dead and buried before her, and there wasn't no will nowheres. So old Bittenbender he took the house, and there wasn't nobody to stop him. We couldn't go to law about it; we hadn't the money nor the time to be on the court for dear knows how many years. Gretta hadn't no other relations to make a fuss, so it stood the way 'twas. If they'd found the will old Bittenbender couldn't have took it, but as 'twas, he did. Then when he'd had it as long's he wanted it, and he was goin' off to live with his folks in Northampton County--he'd had a stroke and couldn't live on alone--why, didn't he up and give over the place to you instead of payin' you what he owed you in money, and lettin' the place for Gretta, who'd ought to have had it by rights in the first place! The Bittenbenders had plenty money, so there wasn't no reason why he couldn't have paid up if he'd had a mind to. He's dead now himself, and you've got the place, but you hadn't ought to have had it, and if 'twas me I shouldn't want it, knowin' how 'twas."

Miss Bradbury and Mrs. Scollard exchanged perturbed glances, while the children watched them anxiously.

"Miss Neumann," said Miss Bradbury at last, "this is a most amazing story. Of course you realize that it is based on mere rumor; there is no proof that Gretta's grandmother made a will, and it is possible that it was she who failed in her duty of providing for the child. It is possible that Mr. Bittenbender had a legal right to the place. Certainly I am guiltless of so much as a suspicion that any one was wronged by his holding it and relinquishing it to me. All that I can do is to try to discover the truth. You may rest assured that I shall deal entirely honestly, not merely according to the letter of the law, but according to its spirit, and should do so were it a stranger who was affected by this issue, and not Gretta, of whom we are so fond."

"It don't do much good to talk," said Eunice defiantly. "I meant to come up and tell you about this, come a-purpose, but now the rain's drove me in here I thought I might as well leave you know what's on my mind when I'd got the chance. Gretta's less good than ever to us. She's all took up with you folks here, and she's gittin' more and more ungrateful to us, who's done all she's had done fer her since she was five years old."

"And that hain't much," Rosie burst forth. "You hadn't ought to talk, Eunice; you had ought to remember we was all lookin' on, and everybody in Crestville knews Gretta's more'n earned the interest on the time before she could do anything. You come out in the kitchen with me and I'll give you some tea. Then I guess, Miss Bradbury, they might as well go up-stairs and go to bed. It's ten o'clock already, and the storm's as fierce as ever, and it'll be late till it stops, if 'tain't morning. You make Emmaline understand, Eunice, and you and Reba kin go to bed in my room."

"I guess I won't drink tea at this hour!" exclaimed Eunice indignantly, "and I hain't a-goin' to bed. Emmaline's kind of feeble; if you want to take her up to your room and leave her lay till she's called, I don't care, but I hain't goin' to bed, nor Reba hain't. I won't keep you folks up; you kin let us with Rosie, and go to bed if you want to. I wanted to tell you about this house, and now I'm satisfied."

"I'll take 'em out in the kitchen," whispered Rosie, rigid with indignant loyalty to Miss Bradbury. "Don't you worry about that story; nobody don't know the truth, anyhow."

Miss Bradbury nodded, quite unperturbed, and said aloud: "I shall make it my business to learn the truth, Rosie."

Poor old deaf Emmaline Gulick was taken up to Rosie's little room to rest, and soon fell comfortably asleep, unconscious of the roar of thunder.

Laura and Polly fell asleep with Jeunesse Dorée on the couch, and their mother, with Bob and Happie, discussed in all its bearings the exciting tale they had just heard, Miss Bradbury much less disturbed than any of them.

The children discovered that they had grown fonder of the Ark than they knew, and it was not wholly pleasant to find any one, even Gretta, its owner instead of themselves--for so thoroughly had Aunt Keren welded them into one family that the Ark seemed as much theirs as hers.

It was midnight when the storm finally broke away sufficiently to allow the refugees from its fury to continue the short remainder of their journey.

Reba went up to awaken Emmaline Gulick. It was not an easy task. Deaf to all sounds, sunk in the first heavy sleep of weariness and increasing years, Reba's voice could not penetrate Emmaline's consciousness.

She laid her hand upon the sleeper's arm. "Emmaline, Emmaline, wake up!" she cried. "It hain't raining now and we're goin' home. Hurry up, Emmaline!"

Emmaline had one abiding dread, and that was fire. As she struggled to the surface of the waking world, that fear asserted itself. She could not hear a word that Reba said; she did not know where she was, but of one thing she was instantly certain. Wherever she was the place was on fire, and she must run for her life!

She snatched a blanket and threw it around her, although she had lain down completely dressed. Wrapped in this blanket, with its striped red border wandering fantastically around her thin, small figure, she ran down-stairs, followed by Reba vainly shouting to her to stop, and entirely at sea as to what ailed her elderly friend.

The family had gathered at the foot of the stairs waiting to see their guests depart; Eunice was already in the carriage at the door. They heard Reba calling frantically to Emmaline to stop, heard her say: "Oh, she's gone crazy! Stop her, Eunice!" They saw the little gray-haired creature, with the gorgeous blanket enveloping her, fly down the stairs and out of the front door, hotly pursued by Reba, and the walls echoed to the children's irrepressible whoop of delight.

It was too dark outside to see clearly the violence with which Emmaline threw herself into the buggy, falling on her knees and getting wound up in the blanket in her haste, but the amazed inmates of the Ark heard Eunice cry: "Git ap!" as Emmaline pulled Reba in after her with the strength of terror and saw the horse start off, probably no less surprised than the human beings behind him. Then they saw Eunice's head thrust out of the side of the buggy, and heard her voice call back in profound disgust: "I'll send the blanket back to-morrer! She thinks the house's afire!"

With that the unexpected visitors made their hasty exit, and all the young Scollards fell in a heap on the lower steps of the stairs, rolling and rocking in agonies of laughter.