The Fat of the Land Part 26

"But how about your friends, Polly?"

"You know as well as I that we haven't lost a friend by living out here, and that we've tied some of them closer. No, sir! No more city life for me. It may do for young people, who don't know better, but not for me.

It's too restricted, and there's not enough excitement."

"Country life fits us like paper on the wall," said I, "but how about the youngsters? If we insist on keeping children, we must take them into our scheme of life."

"Of course we must, but children are an unknown quant.i.ty. They are _x_ in the domestic problem, and we cannot tell what they stand for until the problem is worked out. I don't see why we can't find the value of _x_ in the country as easily as in the city. They have had city and school life, now let them see country life; the _x_ will stand for wide experience at least."

"Jane likes it thus far," said I, "and I think she will continue; but I don't feel so sure about Jack."

"You're as blind as a bat--or a man. Jane loves country life because she's young and growing; but there's a subconscious sense which tells her that she's simply fitting herself to be carried off by that handsome giant, Jim Jarvis. She doesn't know it, but it's the truth all the same, and it will come as sure as tide; and when it does come, her life will be run into other moulds than we have made, no matter how carefully."

"I wonder where this modern Hercules is most vulnerable. I'll slay him if I find him mousing around my Jane."

"You will slay nothing, Mr. Headman, and you know it; you will just take what's coming to you, as others have done since the world was young."

"Well, I give fair warning; it's 'hands off Jane,' for lo, these many years, or some one will be brewing 'harm tea' for himself."

"You bark so loud no one will believe you can bite," said this saucy, match-making mother.

"How about Jack?" said I. "Have you settled the moulds he is to be run in?"

"Not entirely; but I am not as one without hope. Jack will be through college in June, and will go abroad with us for July and August; he will be as busy as possible with the miners from the moment he comes back; he is much in love with Jessie, the Gordon's have no other child, the property is large, Homestead Farm is only three miles, and--"

"Slow up, Polly! Slow up! Your main line is all right, but your terminal facilities are bad. Jack is to be educated, travelled, employed, engaged, married, endowed with Homestead Farm, and all that; but you mustn't kill off the Gordons. I swing the red lantern in front of that train of thought. Let Jack and Jessie wait till we are through with Four Oaks and the Gordons have no further use for Homestead Farm, before thinking of coupling that property on to this."

"Don't be a greater goose than you can help," said Polly. "You know what I mean. Men are so short-sighted! Laura says, 'the Headman ought to have a small dog and a long stick'; but no matter, I'll keep an eye on the children, and you needn't worry about country life for them. They'll take to it kindly."

"Well, they ought to, if they have any appreciation of the fitness of things. Did you ever see weather made to order before? I feel as if I had been measured for it."

"It suits my garden down to the ground," said Polly, who hates slang.

"It was planned for the farmer, madam. If it happens to fit the rose-garden mistress, it is a detail for you to note and be thankful for, but the great things are outside the rose gardens. Look at that corn-field! A crow could hide in it anywhere."

"What have crows hiding got to do with corn, I'd like to know?"

"When I was a boy the farmers used to say, 'If it will cover a crow's back on the Fourth of July, it will make good corn,' and I am farmering with old saws when I can't find new ones."

"It's all of three weeks yet to the Fourth of July, and your corn will cover a turkey by that time."

"I hope so, but we shan't be here to see it, more's the pity, as Sir Tom would say."

"Do you know, Kate says she won't go over. She doesn't think it would pay for so short a trip. Why do you insist upon eight weeks?"

"Well, now, I like that! When did I ever insist on anything, Mrs.

Williams? Not since I knew you well, did I? But be honest, Polly. Who has done the cutting down of this trip? You and the youngsters may stay as long as you please, but I will be back here September 1st unless the _Normania_ breaks a shaft."

"I wish we could go _over_ on a German boat. I hate the Cunarders."

"So do I, but we must land at Queenstown. We must put Sir Tom under the sod at that little castle out from Sligo. Then we can do Holland and Belgium, and have a week or ten days in London."

"That will be enough. I do hope Johnson will take good care of my flowers; it's the very most important time, you know, and if he neglects them--"

"He won't neglect them, Polly; even if he does, they can be easily replaced. But the hay harvest, now, that's different; if they spoil the timothy or cut the alfalfa too late!"

"Bother your alfalfa! What do I care for that? Kate's coming out with the babies, and I'm going to put her in full charge of the gardens.

She'll look after them, I'm sure. I'll tell you another bit of news: Jim Jarvis is bound to go with us, Jack says, and he has asked if we'll let him."

"How long have you had that up your sleeve, young woman? I don't like it a little bit! That is why you talked so like an oracle a little while ago! What does Jane say?"

"She doesn't say much, but I think she wouldn't object."

"Of course she can't object. You sick a big brute of a man on to a little girl, and she don't dare object; but I'll feed him to the fishes if he worries her."

"To be sure you will, Mr. Ogre. Anybody would be sure of that to hear you talk."

"Don't chaff me, Polly. This is a serious business. If you sell my girl, I'm going to buy a new one. I'll ask Jessie Gordon to go with us and, if Jack is half the man I take him to be, he'll replenish our stock of girls before we get back."

"Who is match-making now?"

"I don't care what you call it. I shall take out letters of marque and reprisal. I won't raise girls to be carried off by the first privateer that makes sail for them, without making some one else suffer. If Jarvis goes, Jessie goes, that's flat."

"I think it will be an excellent plan, Mr. Bad Temper, and I've no doubt that we can manage it."

"Don't say 'we' when you talk of managing it. I tell you I'm entirely on the defensive until some one robs me, then I'll take what is my neighbor's if I can get it. If it were not for my promise to Sir Tom, I wouldn't leave the farm for a minute! And I would establish a quarantine against all giants for at least five years."

"You know you like Jarvis. He is one of the best."

"That's all right, Polly. He's as fine as silk, but he isn't fine enough for our Jane yet."

CHAPTER LX

"I TOLD YOU SO"

It may be the limitless horizon, it may be the comradery of confinement, it may be the old superst.i.tion of a plank between one and eternity, or it may be some occult influence of s.h.i.+p and ocean; but certain it is that there is no such place in all the world as a deck of a transatlantic liner for softening young hearts, until they lose all semblance of shape, and for melting them into each other so that out of twain there comes but one. I think Polly was pleased to watch this melting process, as it began to show itself in our young people, from the safe retreat of her steamer chair and behind the covers of her book.

I couldn't find that she read two chapters from any book during the whole voyage, or that she was miserable or discontented. She just watched with a comfortable "I told you so" expression of countenance; and she never mentioned home lot or garden or roses, from dock to dock.

It is as natural for a woman to make matches as for a robin to build nests, and I suppose I had as much right to find fault with the one as with the other. I did not find fault with her, but neither could I understand her; so I fretted and fumed and smoked, and walked the deck and bet on everything in sight and out of sight, until the soothing influence of the sea took hold of me, and then I drifted like the rest of them.

No, I will not say "like the rest of them," for I could not forgive this waste of s.p.a.ce given over to water. In other crossings I had not noted the conspicuous waste with any feeling of loss or regret; but other crossings had been made before I knew the value of land. I could not get away from the thought that it would add much to the wealth of the world if the mountains were removed and cast into the sea. Not only that, but it would curb to some extent the ragings of this same turbulent sea, which was rolling and tossing us about for no really good reason that I could discover. The Atlantic had lost much of its romance and mystery for me, and I wondered if I had ever felt the enthusiasm which I heard expressed on all sides.

"There she spouts!" came from a dozen voices, and the whole pa.s.senger list crowded the port rail, just to see a cow whale throwing up streams of water, not immensely larger than the streams of milk which my cow Holsteins throw down. The crowd seemed to take great pleasure in this sight, but to me it was profitless.

I have known the day when I could watch the graceful leaps and dives of a school of porpoises, as it kept with easy fin, alongside of our ocean greyhound, with pleasure unalloyed by any feeling of non-utility. But now these "hogs of the sea" reminded me of my Chester Whites, and the comparison was so much in favor of the hogs of the land, that I turned from these spectacular, useless things, to meditate upon the price of pork. Even Mother Carey's chickens gave me no pleasure, for they reminded me of a far better brood at home, and I cheerfully thanked the n.o.ble Wyandottes who were working every third day so that I could have a trip to Europe. To be sure, I had European trips before I had Wyandottes; to have them both the same year was the marvel.