Rebecca's Promise Part 19

Frederick Befort dropped on the gra.s.s beside her and took her in his arms. "Indeed, no one shall drown me, _ma pet.i.te_. Why should they?"

"Then when he asks you to come for a row on the river you won't go, will you?" Joan went on. "Say you won't?" She gave him a little shake.

"I--I don't want you to be drowned."

"And I don't want to be drowned." Frederick Befort laughed gently as he wiped the tears from her eyes. "Some one has been teasing you, _mignonne_."

"It wasn't to me he said it. It was to Miss Wyman. He said he could manage Mr. Marshall and Mr. Barton, but that you were too romantic and he would have to drown you."

To Joan's surprise her father threw back his head and laughed and laughed. "So," he murmured as he hugged her, "I am romantic, am I? Miss Wyman----" An odd expression crossed his face as if an odd thought had just crossed his mind. "You like Miss Wyman, don't you, Joan?"

Joan nodded as she clung to his hand. If Peter drowned her father he should drown her, too. Even if she did love Miss Wyman she did not want to live without her father.

"He said you were a cut and polished diamond set in platinum," she hiccoughed. "And he said he was in the rough. That was why he would have to take you in a boat and drown you, because you were a cut and polished diamond. So I ran just as fast as I could for I knew if I told you he never could drown you, could he?"

Frederick Befort put his fingers under the eager little face and tipped it up so that he could kiss the trembling lips. "I don't think Peter wants to drown me, Joan," he explained gently. "He was speaking figuratively."

"What's that?" The new word had to be explained at once. "What's figure speaking?"

Frederick Befort searched his brain for the right words with which to explain it. "When you ran races with Miss Wyman and Peter last night you called out that you were flying because you ran so fast. But you really weren't flying, you know, you just felt as if you were. Peter Simmons doesn't really want to drown me, he just wants to pretend that he does."

"Oh!" The explanation proved satisfactory, and Joan's lips stopped trembling to smile. "It won't hurt to do it that way, will it?"

Frederick Befort smiled ruefully. "I'm not so sure. You know, Joan, that Peter Simmons is young and life is all before him. My life is behind me, the best part of it." He jumped to his feet as Rebecca Mary and Peter rounded the larkspur. Peter was carrying the "Grand Duchy of Luxembourg" and the French grammar.

Joan jumped to her feet, too. "I heard what you said," she called triumphantly, "and I ran to tell my father. Yes, I did, and so you can't drown him now only in your mind."

Peter looked surprised and crestfallen before he laughed. "You saved his life," he said, tickling Joan's neck. "If you hadn't told him I'd take him right out now and drown him."

Joan s.h.i.+vered and looked quickly from Peter to her "cut and polished"

father, who didn't s.h.i.+ver at all.

"Only figuratively, _mignonne_," he reminded her.

"But he could do it truly, perhaps," she said tremulously, for Peter did seem so big and resourceful. "He has a war cross for being brave, you know."

"He received that for saving people, not for drowning them," Frederick Befort said swiftly. "I envy you that, Peter," he added gravely.

Peter nodded. "I hadn't thought of it like that. It is good to think that I helped save, but when you get down to bra.s.s tacks that's what all the fellows were doing," he went on quickly. "They saved the world, ideals, freedom, everything that makes life worth while."

"Yes, you are right. Have you been studying your lesson, Miss Wyman?"

Frederick Befort took the French grammar from Peter's hand. "Are you ready to recite it? Let us go down by the river."

And before Peter could say "booh" he had taken Rebecca Mary and the grammar both away from him.

Peter looked after them and his jaw dropped. "Well, I'll be darned!" he muttered "You bet I'll have to drown that man."

CHAPTER XV

Rebecca Mary had walked over to the farmhouse for Joan, but Joan was feeding the chickens and just couldn't come at once, so Rebecca Mary sat down on the steps and talked with Mrs. Erickson until the last downy chicken had been given its dinner.

"My, Miss Wyman, I expect you'll be glad when they're through their work here and you can leave," Mrs. Erickson remarked sympathetically, as she offered Rebecca Mary a plate of crispy flaky gooseberry tarts. "It must have been pretty hard to start for a wedding and find yourself in jail.

I know how it is with me. I never was much of a gadabout, but, land knows, I'll be glad enough when the guards are taken off, and I can come and go as I please."

"It is rather horrid," Rebecca Mary carelessly agreed as she ate a gooseberry tart. "But I'm not having such a bad time really, Mrs.

Erickson. It might be a lot worse."

"I wish I could look at it like that. But I ain't one to dwell much on the cheerful side of things. What's the use, I say, when there's so much that ain't cheerful. I suppose the old Major knows what he's about, but there's queer things going on in Riverside, or I miss my guess."

Rebecca Mary looked up quickly. "What do you mean?" she wanted to know at once. Mrs. Erickson looked as if she meant such a lot.

Mrs. Erickson drew a sigh from the sole of her stout shoes and moved closer to Rebecca Mary, quite ready and willing to tell her what she meant.

"Well," she said in a whisper which blew a lock of Rebecca Mary's yellow brown hair across her face, "as I understand it, Major Martingale brought all these men down here to work on his experiment and locked us up with them so he wouldn't be disturbed or interrupted and so he wouldn't have any Germans nosing around. Wouldn't you think, then, that he wouldn't want any Germans here? But last night her father," she nodded to Joan, who was vainly trying to divide the dinner evenly among the hungry chickens, "was over here talking to one of the mechanics, George Weiss. He took him down behind the shed there and talked to him in German. They didn't know I heard them, but I did. There isn't much that goes on around Riverside that I don't hear something of. Erickson said talking German don't mean anything but it does to me. Don't it to you?"

"Not much." Rebecca Mary helped herself to another tart. "My word, but these are good, Mrs. Erickson. No, I don't think it means anything for Mr. Befort to talk German. He was brought up practically in Germany."

And she told Mrs. Erickson of the Luxembourg town which was just across the river from Rhenish Prussia. "He hates the Germans," she added, and her white teeth closed over the crispy flaky tart.

"He didn't sound as if he hated the Germans the way he was talking German. Maybe you're right, Miss Wyman, you see more of him than I do, but seems to me if I was trying to keep what I was doing from the Germans I wouldn't have no Germans working with me. Major Martingale oughta know his business, but I dunno----" She shook her head dolefully.

"And more than once, Miss Wyman," she went on in almost a whisper, "I've seen Mr. Befort coming up from the river at sunrise. What's he doing down there I'd like to know? Why ain't he in bed and asleep like the rest of folks? Swimming may be excuse enough for you but it ain't for me. I don't say he ain't what he says he is but I must say that under the circ.u.mstances it's mighty queer. I said to George Weiss myself, said I, 'You got a name that sounds like sauerkraut to me,' said I.

'What side was you on in the late war?' I said. And he looked at me and laughed and said, 'Now Mrs. Erickson,' said he, 'you know very well that I was one of Uncle Sam's boys. It wasn't my fault if I didn't get to France. Maybe my name does have a German sound but the father what gave it to me didn't stay in Germany. He brought it to America, and his boys are a hundred per cent American,' he said. But, land, you dunno whether to believe him or not. A man'll say 'most anything he wants to." And she drew a second sigh from the sole of her thick shoe.

Rebecca Mary should have gasped, but she didn't. She giggled. "You don't look on the cheerful side of things, do you, Mrs. Erickson?"

"Well, it ain't so easy to be cheerful when you know the world as it really is. I've had some experience with these I. W. W. Bolsheviks, Miss Wyman. Not here at Riverside. Land, no! Erickson keeps too good a watch on things, and our men have been working here long enough to know which side of their bread's b.u.t.tered. But I got a brother up in North Dakota and last summer his crops was set on fire and a new thras.h.i.+ng machine ruined by putting nails and other truck into it. I dunno who I do trust, Miss Wyman, but it ain't a man who talks enemy language and acts what I can't understand. I don't blame the Major for being afraid of I. W. W.'s and anarchists, but what I can't see is the way he trusts some folks. My brother said the Germans was back of all the trouble in North Dakota, and he's a truthful man if there is one. Do you know anything about this great work we're doing here, Miss Wyman?"

"Not a thing." Rebecca Mary looked a trifle puzzled. She was a trifle dazed, also, at the flood of words which had poured from Mrs. Erickson's lips.

"No more do I. And Erickson don't know anything or I'd know. More'n once I've slipped down beside that shop hoping to pick up a word, but they don't use language I can understand, and what they're working on don't look like nothing to me through the window. I don't dare go very close for if the old Major'd see me he'd be sure to give me a piece of his mind. He's got a harsh tongue when things don't go his way. I declare, Miss Wyman, when I got so much to worry me I almost wish Mr.

Cabot hadn't been so free with Riverside. I hope he don't find himself wis.h.i.+ng that, too." But she smacked her lips and there was a greedy look in her eyes which flatly contradicted her words. Rebecca Mary jumped to her feet and brushed the crumbs of crispy flaky tart from her fingers.

"It's easy to make mountains out of mole hills, Mrs. Erickson," she said quickly. "But it's rather a waste of time. Major Martingale knows what he is doing. He isn't blind nor deaf. Come, Joan. Haven't you finished yet? We'll be late for our own dinner if you don't hurry."

"I've just finished." Joan held up the empty pan and spoon. "It's such fun, Miss Wyman. Isn't it kind of Mrs. Erickson to let me feed them? But I do think she should teach them better manners. That big white rooster wants to eat it all. If I hadn't driven him away the weeny little ones wouldn't have had a bite."

Mrs. Erickson snorted. "The big white rooster is just like some folks,"

she told Joan. "And if you can teach him table manners, Miss Joan, you're welcome to the job. I've got enough on my hands without showing roosters how to be polite."

"Isn't she a funny woman, Miss Wyman?" Joan asked when they had closed the farmhouse gate behind them. "She is always asking me about daddy.

Every day she asks me if he is an American citizen or if he isn't. And when I asked daddy he said he couldn't be an American citizen because he isn't through with being another kind of a citizen yet."

"He's a Luxembourger, you know, Joan. Why didn't you tell Mrs. Erickson that?"

"I did, and she just sniffed and said she never heard of such a country.

She sniffs awfully funny, Miss Wyman, but she's kind, too. She gave me a doughnut and a piece of cheese as well as a gooseberry tart. She said they'd probably make me sick but I could eat them if I wanted to. And I wanted to, and I wasn't sick. She makes awfully good doughnuts. I think she must be a good cook. The chickens liked their dinner awfully much."

"Positive proof that Mrs. Erickson is the perfect cook. None but the best would do for a flock of hungry chickens. Joan, I'll race you to the house. Wait a minute. Now, one--two--three--Go!"