Laddie Part 50

"I see!" said the Princess.

"'Bobolink in maple high, trills a note of glee Farmer boy a gay reply now whistles cheerily.'

"Then you whistle the chorus like you did it."

"You do indeed!" said the Princess. "Proceed!"

"'Then the farmer boy at noon, rests beneath the shade, Listening to the ceaseless tune that's thrilling through the glade.

Long and loud the harvest fly winds his bugle round, Long, and loud, and shrill, and high, he whistles back the sound.'"

"He does! He does indeed! I haven't a doubt about that!" cried the Princess. "'Long, and loud, and shrill, and high,' he whistles over and over the sound, until it becomes maddening. Is that all of that melodious, entrancing production?"

"No, evening comes yet. The last verse goes this way:

"'When the busy day's employ, ends at dewy eve, Then the happy farmer boy, doth haste his work to leave, Trudging down the quiet lane, climbing o'er the hill, Whistling back the changeless wail, of plaintive whip-poor-will,'--

and then you do the chorus again, and if you know how well enough you whistle in, 'whip-poor-will,' 'til the birds will answer you. Laddie often makes them."

"My life!" cried the Princess. "Was that he doing those bird cries?

Why, I hunted, and hunted, and so did father. We'd never seen a whip-poor-will. Just fancy us!"

"If you'd only looked at Laddie," I said.

"My patience!" cried the Princess. "Looked at him! There was no place to look without seeing him. And that ear-splitting thing will ring in my head forever, I know."

"Did he whistle it too high to suit you, Princess?"

"He was perfectly welcome to whistle as he chose," she said, "and also to plow with the carriage horses, and to bedeck them and himself with the modest, shrinking red tulip and yellow daffodil."

Now any one knows that tulips and daffodils are NOT modest and shrinking. If any flowers just blaze and scream colour clear across a garden, they do. She was provoked, you could see that.

"Well, he only did it to please you," I said. "He didn't care anything about it. He never plowed that way before. But you said he mustn't plow at all, and he just had to plow, there was no escaping that, so he made it as fine and happy as possible to show you how nicely it could be done."

"Greatly obliged, I'm sure!" cried the Princess. "He showed me! He certainly did! And so he feels that there's 'no escaping' plowing, does he?"

Then I knew where I was. I'd have given every cent of mine in father's chest till, if mother had been in my place. Once, for a second, I thought I'd ask the Princess to go with me to the house, and let mother tell her how it was; but if she wouldn't go, and rode away, I felt I couldn't endure it, and anyway, she had said she was looking for me; so I gripped the s.h.i.+ngle, dug in my toes and went at her just as nearly like mother talked to her father as I could remember, and I'd been put through memory tests, and descriptive tests, nearly every night of my life, so I had most of it as straight as a string.

"Well, you see, he CAN'T escape it," I said. "He'd do anything in all this world for you that he possibly could; but there are some things no man CAN do."

"I didn't suppose there was anything you thought Laddie couldn't do,"

she said.

"A little time back, I didn't," I answered. "But since he took the carriage horses, trimmed up in flowers, and sang and whistled so bravely, day after day, when his heart was full of tears, why I learned that there was something he just COULDN'T DO; NOT TO SAVE HIS LIFE, OR HIS LOVE, OR EVEN TO SAVE YOU."

"And of course you don't mind telling me what that is?" coaxed the Princess in her most wheedling tones.

"Not at all! He told our family, and I heard him tell your father.

The thing he can't do, not even to win you, is to be shut up in a little office, in a city, where things roar, and smell, and nothing is like this----"

I pointed out the orchard, hill, and meadow, so she looked where I showed her--looked a long time.

"No, a city wouldn't be like this," she said slowly.

"And that isn't even the beginning," I said. "Maybe he could bear that, men have been put in prison and lived through years and years of it, perhaps Laddie could too; I doubt it! but anyway the worst of it is that he just couldn't, not even to save you, spend all the rest of his life trying to settle other people's old fusses. He despises a fuss.

Not one of us ever in our lives have been able to make him quarrel, even one word. He simply won't. And if he possibly could be made to by any one on earth, Leon would have done it long ago, for he can start a fuss with the side of a barn. But he can't make Laddie fuss, and n.o.body can. He NEVER would at school, or anywhere. Once in a while if a man gets so overbearing that Laddie simply can't stand it, he says: 'Now, you'll take your medicine!' Then he pulls off his coat, and carefully, choosing the right spots, he just pounds the breath out of that man, but he never stops smiling, and when he helps him up he always says: 'Sorry! hope you'll excuse me, but you WOULD have it.'

That's what he said about you, that you had to take your medicine----"

I made a mistake there. That made her too mad for any use.

"Oh," she cried, "I do? I'll jolly well show the gentleman!"

"Oh, you needn't take the trouble," I cried. "He's showing you!"

She just blazed like she'd break into flame. Any one could fuss with her all right; but that was the last thing on earth I wanted to do.

"You see he already knows about you," I explained as fast as I could talk, for I was getting into an awful mess. "You see he knows that you want him to be a lawyer, and that he must quit plowing before he can be more than friends with you. That's what he's plowing for! If it wasn't for that, probably he wouldn't; be plowing at all. He asked father to let him, and he borrowed mother's horses, and he hooked the flowers through the fence. Every night when he comes home, he kneels beside mother and asks her if he is 'repulsive,' and she takes him in her arms and the tears roll down her cheeks and she says: 'Father has farmed all his life, and you know how repulsive he is.'"

I ventured an upward peep. I was doing better. Her temper seemed to be cooling, but her face was a jumble. I couldn't find any one thing on it that would help me, so I just stumbled ahead guessing at what to say.

"He didn't WANT to do it. He perfectly HATED it. Those fields were his Waterloo. Every furrow was a FIGHT, but he was FORCED to show you."

"Exactly WHAT was he trying to show me?"

"I can think of three things he told me," I answered. "That plowing could be so managed as not to disfigure the landscape----"

"The dunce!" she said.

"That he could plow or do dirtier work, and not be repulsive----"

"The idiot!" she said.

"That if he came over there, and plowed right under your nose, when you'd told him he mustn't, or he couldn't be more than friends; and when you knew that he'd much rather die and be laid beside the little sisters up there in the cemetery than to NOT be more than friends, why, you'd see, if he did THAT, he couldn't help it, that he just MUST.

That he was FORCED----"

"The soldier!" she said.

"Oh Princess, he didn't want to!" I cried. "He tells me secrets he doesn't any one else, unless you. He told me how he hated it; but he just had to do it."

"Do you know WHY?"

"Of course! It's the way he's MADE! Father is like that! He has chances to live in cities, make big business deals, and go to the legislature at Indianapolis; I've seen his letters from his friend Oliver P. Morton, our Governor, you know; they're in his chest till now; but father can't do it, because he is made so he stays at home and works for us, and this farm, and towns.h.i.+p, and county where he belongs.

He says if all men will do that the millennium will come to-morrow. I 'spose you know what the millennium is?"

"I do!" said the Princess. "But I don't know what your father and his friend Oliver P. Morton have to do with Laddie."

"Why, everything on earth! Laddie is father's son, you see, and he is made like father. None of our other boys is. Not one of them loves land. Leon is going away as quick as ever he finishes college; but the more you educate Laddie, the better he likes to make things grow, the more he loves to make the world beautiful, to be kind to every one, to gentle animals--why, the biggest fight he ever had, the man he whipped 'til he most couldn't bring him back again, was one who kicked his horse in the stomach. Gee, I thought he'd killed him! Laddie did too for a while, but he only said the man deserved it."