Caddie Woodlawn (9 page)

“So you mended Mr. Tanner's clock, did you, Johnny?” said Mrs. Woodlawn carelessly.

“No, not this time,” said her husband, with a twinkle in his eye. “Caddie did it.”

“Caddie did it?”
Mrs. Woodlawn and Clara and the children, who had just come in from school, crowded around to see.

“It runs,” marveled Tom, and Warren uttered an admiring “Golly!”

The circuit rider's clock no longer looked like the “face of a dead friend.” It appeared to be very much alive and spoke up with a cheerful tick.

Caddie never forgot the lesson she had learned that day in the attic. Wherever she was, all through her long and busy life, clocks ticked about her pleasantly, and, if they didn't, she knew the reason why.

The long winter evenings in the farmhouse were very pleasant times. Grouped about the fire and the lamp, the Woodlawns made their own society, nor wanted any better. One evening soon after Caddie's adventure in the attic, they were all gathered together thus. Everyone who belonged was there—except Nero. Caddie missed the faithful head resting against her knee. They were recalling old adventures that they had had, and now Clara was speaking in her gentle voice.

“Yes,” she said, “it was the first winter we were out here. We lived at Eau Galle then, near the mill, and we had school in the tavern. Caddie and Tom were little then, and Warren was a baby.”

“Where was
I
?” demanded Hetty.

“You hadn't come yet.”

“Go on and tell,” urged the other children. They all sat about the big stove, cracking butternuts between hammer and stones, and dropping the meats into a wooden bowl.

“There isn't much to tell,” continued Clara in her soft voice, “only I came through the woods one day and I saw a bear eating a little pig.”

“Where did he get it?” asked Warren.

“From one of the farms, I guess.”

“Were you scared?” asked Hetty.

“Oh!” said Clara, putting her slim hand against her heart. “I was so scared. It makes my heart thump yet to think of it!”

“I wouldn't have been so scared,” boasted Tom. “Remember, Caddie, when we saw the wolves?”

“Uh-huh!”
said Caddie, her mouth full of butternuts.

“Tell about that,” said Warren. “I wish I'd been there.”

“Well, one time the cows got into the swamp, and Caddie and I went after them to bring them home, and right in the swamp we met a wolf.”

“Did he bite you?” asked little Minnie breathlessly.

“No, he just stood and looked at us, and we looked at him.”

“I'd have shot him or hit him with a rock,” said Warren.

“You hold your tongue, Warren,” said Tom. “I guess you'd have done the same as us, if you'd been there. I don't know what would have happened next, if two big hounds hadn't come along and chased him away.”

“Aw, you're making it up,” said Warren, who was always skeptical of any adventures which Tom and Caddie had without him.

“No, honest,” said Tom. “Caddie will tell you the same thing. The hounds were after him—that's why he acted so funny. They belonged to a man down the river.”

“Robert Ireton can tell a better one than that,” said Warren. “He says there was a fiddler coming home through the woods late one night from a dance, and a pack of wolves took after him. He saw he couldn't get away from them, so he stopped and played his fiddle to them, and they all went away and let him go home in peace.”

“I know!” said Tom. “It's true, too. Robert had it from a man who married the fiddler's sister.”

Mr. Woodlawn smiled at his wife and said: “Ireton knows how to tell a good story as well as sing a good song, I see.”

Caddie had been listening to the stories in silence. Now she suddenly jumped up, shaking the nutshells from her apron into the wood basket. Without a word, she caught up one of the candles which burned on a side table and ran upstairs to the attic. She hastily went through the contents of one of the boxes until she found what she was seeking; and downstairs she ran again, almost before the others had ceased gaping over her sudden departure.

“Look!” she said. She held up a small pair of scarlet breeches and two little wooden-soled clogs.

“Well, of all things!” cried Mrs. Woodlawn. “Wherever did you get those?”

“In one of the boxes in the attic.”

“What are they? What are they?” cried the children, leaving their nuts to crowd nearer.

“I don't know whose they are,” said Caddie. “There must be a story about them, Mother. Do you know it?”

Mrs. Woodlawn looked at her husband. He had taken one of the little shoes in his hand, and it scarcely covered his big palm. He turned it this way and that, smiling an odd, perplexed smile.

“Well, well, well!” he said. “What a funny little shoe!”

The impatient children crowded nearer, and little Minnie clambered onto his knee.

“Father,” cried Caddie, “you know something about them! Tell us!”

“Tell us! Tell us!” echoed the others.

“Yes, Johnny, you had better tell them now,” said Mrs. Woodlawn.

Mr. Woodlawn still hesitated, his eyes deep with thoughts of something far away, something beyond the warm room and the ring of bright, expectant faces; something less bright and warm and happy.

Mrs. Woodlawn stirred impatiently. “Those are your father's shoes, children,” she said. “He used to dance in them in England, and the little red breeches, too—long, long ago. Do tell them, Johnny. They've a right to know.”

“Yes, yes,” said Mr. Woodlawn, “they have a right to know and I have always meant to tell them. But it's a long story, children, you had best go back to your hassocks and your nuts.”

Eyes round with wonder and anticipation, the young Woodlawns did as they were told. To think of Father ever being small enough to wear those breeches and clogs, and dancing in them, too, in faraway England. How strange it was! They had heard so much of Boston, but nobody spoke of England where the strange little boy, who had grown to be Father, had danced in red breeches and clogs. Caddie thought of
what Father had said about England on the night when the circuit rider had been with them. How often she had wondered about that since then!

“You have grown up in a free country, children,” began Mr. Woodlawn. “Whatever happens I want you to think of yourselves as young Americans, and I want you to be proud of that. It is difficult to tell you about England, because there all men are not free to pursue their own lives in their own ways. Some men live like princes, while other men must beg for the very crusts that keep them alive.”

“And your father's father was one of those who live like princes, children,” cried Mrs. Woodlawn proudly.

“My father was the second son in a proud, old family,” said Mr. Woodlawn. He set the clock he was mending beside him on the table, and his hands, unaccustomed to idleness, rested awkwardly on his knees. “My father's father was a lord of England, and the lands he owned rolled over hills and valleys and through woods.”

“Bigger than ours?” wondered Hetty.

“Many times. Yes, many, many times. There was a great stone house with towers and turrets and a moat with swans, and there were peacocks on the lawn.”

“Peacocks!” cried Clara, clasping her hands.

“Yes,” said the father gravely. “I saw them once
when I was a little boy. My mother held me by the hand and I stood on tiptoe to look between the bars of the great gate, and there they were, a dozen of them, stepping daintily, with arched necks, and spreading or trailing their great tails upon the grass.”

“But, Father,” said Caddie, “why were you outside?”

“Well may you ask that question, Caddie!” cried Mrs. Woodlawn. Her earrings trembled with her indignation.

“Old Lord Woodlawn was very proud,” said Father, “and he had planned a brilliant future for his second son. . . . Thomas, my father's name was—that's where you get your name, Tom. But Thomas Woodlawn wanted to live his own life, and he had fallen in love. His heart had overlooked all the fine young ladies of high degree, and had settled upon the little seamstress who embroidered and mended and stitched away all day in the sewing room of the great house.”

“Just like Tom and Kat—” began Hetty, but Caddie suddenly thrust a butternut into her mouth, and the rest of what she had intended to say was lost.

“I cannot blame him for falling in love,” said Father. “That little seamstress was very beautiful and sweet. She was my mother. They were married secretly, and then they went to old Lord Woodlawn and told him. They thought that he would forgive them, after it was done and past repair. But they hadn't reckoned on the
old man's stubbornness and wounded pride. You see, my mother was the daughter of the village shoemaker. God knows, the old shoemaker earned an honest living and lived an upright life, but to my Grandfather Woodlawn's notion anything connected with such a trade was low and shameful.”

“How funny!” said Caddie, “if he was a
good
shoemaker.”

“The old lord was beside himself with anger. He ordered Father to forsake his bride, but that my father would not do, so the old man turned them out together. ‘Never come back,' he told my father. ‘You are no longer my son.' If my father had been the eldest son, the laws of England would have restored his position to him at the death of the old lord. But a disinherited second son has nothing to look forward to. So now he found himself penniless and with a wife to support.”

“But I don't understand!” said Caddie.

“No, my dear,” said her father. “It is hard to understand an old man's selfish pride. He had planned his son's life, and he could not endure to have his plans lightly set aside. He might have taken my father back if Father had forsaken Mother, but that was not my father's way. And so the two young things went out into the world to make a living for themselves. My father had been trained to ride a horse to hounds, to
read a little Latin, and to grace a drawing room, but he knew no more about any useful trade than baby Joe. There was one thing he could do, however. He had always had some skill at drawing and painting, and, as a boy, his father had humored him by letting him have lessons in the art. Now he found that he could get occasional work by painting panels and murals in taverns and public houses. It was a sorry comedown for the son of a nobleman. Sometimes they paid him only in food and lodging and he and his wife were obliged to stay there eating and sleeping out his earnings. Truly they were glad enough to have a roof over their heads and something in their stomachs, I imagine. I, myself, remember the long walks and the slim dinners and sometimes nights spent under a haycock, when we could not find a tavern which wanted decorating.”

“Poor Father!” cried Caddie softly.

“But worse was to come,” said Mr. Woodlawn slowly. “The tramping about, the worry and hunger and cold were too much for my father, who did not have the peasant hardiness of my mother and me. I was about ten years old when he died, and I was a little lad who looked scarce half my years.”

“And what did you do then?” breathed the little Woodlawns anxiously.

“My mother had no money to take us home again,