Not Quite Eighteen Part 2

"I shall call you Mrs. Keene, then," said Janet, mortified, but persistent. Her stepmother looked pained, but she said no more.

None of the other children made any difficulty about saying "Mamma" to this sweet new friend. Jessie Keene was the very woman to "mother" a family of children. Bright and tender and firm all at once, she was playmate to them as well as authority, and in a very little while they all learned to love her dearly,--all but Janet; and even she, at times, found it hard to resist this influence, which was at the same time so strong and so kind.

Still, she did resist, and the result was constant discomfort to both parties. To the younger children the new mamma brought added happiness, because they yielded to her wise and reasonable authority. To Janet she brought only friction and resentment, because she would not yield.

So two months pa.s.sed. Late in August, Mr. and Mrs Keene started on a short journey which was to keep them away from home for two days. Just as the carriage was driving away, Mrs. Keene suddenly said,--

"Oh, Janet! I forgot to say that I would rather you didn't go see Ellen Colton while we are away, or let any of the other children. Please tell nurse about it."

"Why mustn't I?" demanded Janet.

"Because--" began her mother, but Mr. Keene broke in.

"Never mind 'becauses,' Jessie; we must be off. It's enough for you, Janet, that your mother orders it. And see that you do as she says."

"It's a shame!" muttered Janet, as she slowly went back to the house. "I always have gone to see Ellen whenever I liked. No one ever stopped me before. I don't think it's a bit fair; and I wish Papa wouldn't speak to me like that before--her."

Gradually she worked herself into a strong fit of ill-temper. All day long she felt a growing sense of injury, and she made up her mind not to bear it. Next morning, in a towering state of self-will, she marched straight down to the Coltons, resolved at least to find out the meaning of this vexatious prohibition.

No one was on the piazza, and Janet ran up-stairs to Ellen's room, expecting to find her studying her lessons.

No; Ellen was in the bed, fast asleep. Janet took a story-book, and sat down beside her. "She'll be surprised when she wakes up," she thought.

The book proved interesting, and Janet read on for nearly half an hour before Mrs. Colton came in with a cup and spoon in her hand. She gave a scream when she saw Janet.

"Mercy!" she cried, "what are you doing here? Didn't your ma tell you?

Ellen's got scarlet-fever."

"No, she didn't tell me _that_. She only said I mustn't come here."

"And why did you come?"

Somehow Janet found it hard to explain, even to herself, why she had been so determined not to obey.

Very sorrowfully she walked homeward. She had sense enough to know how dreadful might be the result of her disobedience, and she felt humble and wretched. "Oh, if only I hadn't!" was the language of her heart.

The little ones had gone out to play. Janet hurried to her own room, and locked the door.

"I won't see any of them till Papa comes," she thought. "Then perhaps they won't catch it from me."

She watched from the window till Maria came out to hang something on the clothesline, and called to her.

"I'm not coming down to dinner," she said. "Will you please bring me some, and leave it by my door? No, I'm not ill, but there are reasons.

I'd rather not tell anybody about them but Mamma."

"Sakes alive!" said old Maria to herself, "she called missus 'Mamma.'

The skies must be going to fall."

Mrs. Keene's surprise may be imagined at finding Janet thus, in a state of voluntary quarantine.

"I am so sorry," she said, when she had listened to her confession.

"Most sorry of all for you, my child, because you may have to bear the worst penalty. But it was brave and thoughtful in you to shut yourself up to spare the little ones, dear Janet."

"Oh, Mamma!" cried Janet, bursting into tears. "How kind you are not to scold me! I have been so horrid to you always." All the pride and hardness were melted out of her now, and for the first time she clung to her stepmother with a sense of protection and comfort.

Janet said afterwards, that the fortnight which she spent in her room, waiting to know if she had caught the fever, was one of the nicest times she ever had. The children and the servants, and even Papa, kept away from her, but Mrs. Keene came as often and stayed as long as she could; and, thrown thus upon her sole companions.h.i.+p, Janet found out the worth of this dear, kind stepmother. She did _not_ have scarlet-fever, and at the end of three weeks was allowed to go back to her old ways, but with a different spirit.

"I can't think why I didn't love you sooner," she told Mamma once.

"I think I know," replied Mrs. Keene, smiling. "That stiff little will was in the way. You willed not to like me, and it was easy to obey your will; but now you will to love me, and loving is as easy as unloving was."

THE WOLVES OF ST. GERVAS.

There never seemed a place more in need of something to make it merry than was the little Swiss hamlet of St. Gervas toward the end of March, some years since.

The winter had been the hardest ever known in the Bernese Oberland. Ever since November the snow had fallen steadily, with few intermissions, and the fierce winds from the Breithorn and the St. Theodule Pa.s.s had blown day and night, and the drifts deepened in the valleys, and the icicles on the eaves of the chalets grown thicker and longer. The old wives had quoted comforting saws about a "white Michaelmas making a brown Easter;" but Easter was at hand now, and there were no signs of relenting yet.

Week after week the strong men had sallied forth with shovels and pickaxes to dig out the half-buried dwellings, and to open the paths between them, which had grown so deep that they seemed more like trenches than footways.

Month after month the intercourse between neighbors had become more difficult and meetings less frequent. People looked over the white wastes at each other, the children ran to the doors and shouted messages across the snow, but no one was brave enough to face the cold and the drifts.

Even the village inn was deserted. Occasionally some hardy wayfarer came by and stopped for a mug of beer and to tell Dame Ursel, the landlady, how deep the snows were, how black clouds lay to the north, betokening another fall, and that the shoulders and flanks of the Matterhorn were whiter than man had ever seen them before. Then he would struggle on his way, and perhaps two or three days would pa.s.s before another guest crossed the threshold.

It was a sad change for the Krone, whose big sanded kitchen was usually crowded with jolly peasants, and full of laughter and jest, the clinking of gla.s.ses, and the smoke from long pipes. Dame Ursel felt it keenly.

But such jolly meetings were clearly impossible now. The weather was too hard. Women could not easily make their way through the snow, and they dared not let the children play even close to the doors; for as the wind blew strongly down from the sheltering forest on the hill above, which was the protection of St. Gervas from landslides and avalanches, shrill yelping cries would ever and anon be heard, which sounded very near. The mothers listened with a shudder, for it was known that the wolves, driven by hunger, had ventured nearer to the hamlet than they had ever before done, and were there just above on the hillside, waiting to make a prey of anything not strong enough to protect itself against them.

"Three pigs have they carried off since Christmas," said Mere Kronk, "and one of those the pig of a widow! Two sheep and a calf have they also taken; and only night before last they all but got at the Alleene's cow. Matters have come to a pa.s.s indeed in St. Gervas, if cows are to be devoured in our very midst! Toinette and Pertal, come in at once! Thou must not venture even so far as the doorstep unless thy father be along, and he with his rifle over his shoulder, if he wants me to sleep of nights."

"Oh, dear!" sighed little Toinette for the hundredth time. "How I wish the dear summer would come! Then the wolves would go away, and we could run about as we used, and Gretchen Slaut and I go to the Alp for berries. It seems as if it had been winter forever and ever. I haven't seen Gretchen or little Marie for two whole weeks. _Their_ mother, too, is fearful of the wolves."

All the mothers in St. Gervas were fearful of the wolves.

The little hamlet was, as it were, in a state of siege. Winter, the fierce foe, was the besieger. Month by month he had drawn his lines nearer, and made them stronger; the only hope was in the rescue which spring might bring. Like a beleaguered garrison, whose hopes and provisions are running low, the villagers looked out with eager eyes for the signs of coming help, and still the snows fell, and the help did not come.

How fared it meanwhile in the forest slopes above?

It is not a sin for a wolf to be hungry, any more than it is for a man; and the wolves of St. Gervas were ravenous indeed. All their customary supplies were cut off. The leverets and marmots, and other small animals on which they were accustomed to prey, had been driven by the cold into the recesses of their hidden holes, from which they did not venture out. There was no herbage to tempt the rabbits forth, no tender birch growths for the strong gray hares.

No doubt the wolves talked the situation over in their wolfish language, realized that it was a desperate one, and planned the daring forays which resulted in the disappearance of the pigs and sheep and the attack on the Alleene's cow. The animals killed all belonged to outlying houses a little further from the village than the rest; but the wolves had grown bold with impunity, and, as Mere Kronk said, there was no knowing at what moment they might make a dash at the centre of the hamlet.

I fear they would have enjoyed a fat little boy or girl if they could have come across one astray on the hillside, near their haunts, very much. But no such luck befell them. The mothers of St. Gervas were too wary for that, and no child went out after dark, or ventured more than a few yards from the open house-door, even at high noon.

"Something must be done," declared Johann Vecht, the bailiff. "We are growing sickly and timorous. My wife hasn't smiled for a month. She talks of nothing but snow and wolves, and it is making the children fearful. My Annerle cried out in her sleep last night that she was being devoured, and little Kasper woke up and cried too. Something must be done!"