Collected Stories (56 page)

Mrs. Ferguesson was not a person who could be overlooked. All the merchants in MacAlpin admitted that she was a fine figure of a woman. As she came down the little yard and out of the gate, the evening breeze ruffled her wavy auburn hair. Her quick step and alert, upright carriage gave one the impression that she got things done. Coming up to the buggy, she took Miss Knightly’s hand.

“Why, it’s Miss Knightly! And she’s brought our girl along to visit us. That was mighty clever of you, Miss, and these boys will surely be a happy family. They do miss their sister.” She spoke clearly, distinctly, but with a slight Missouri turn of speech.

By this time Lesley and her brothers had become telepathically one. Miss Knightly couldn’t tell what the boys said to her, or whether they said anything, but they had her old canvas bag out of the buggy and up on the porch in no time at all. Lesley ran toward the front door, hurried back to thank Miss Knightly, and then disappeared holding fast to the little chap in skirts. She had forgotten to ask at what time Miss Knightly would call for her on Monday, but her mother attended to that. When Mrs. Ferguesson followed the children through the hall and the little back parlour into the dining-room, Lesley turned to her and asked breathlessly, almost sharply:

“Where’s Hector?”

“He’s often late on Friday night, dear. He telephoned me from the depot and said not to wait supper for him—he’d get a sandwich at the lunch counter. Now how
are
you, my girl?” Mrs. Ferguesson put her hands on Lesley’s shoulders and looked into her glowing eyes.

“Just fine, Mother. I like my school so much! And the scholars are nicer even than they were last year. I just love some of them.”

At this the little boy in kilts (the fashion of the times, though he was four years old) caught his sister’s skirt in his two hands and jerked it to get her attention. “No, no!” he said mournfully, “you don’t love anybody but us!”

His mother laughed, and Lesley stooped and gave him the tight hug he wanted.

The family supper was over. Mrs Ferguesson put on her apron. “Sit right down, Lesley, and talk to the children. No, I won’t let you help me. You’ll help me most by keeping them out of my way. I’ll scramble you an egg and fry you some ham, so sit right down in your own place. I have some stewed plums for your dessert, and a beautiful angel cake I bought at the Methodist bake sale. Your father’s gone to some political meeting, so we had supper early. You’ll be a nice surprise for him when he gets home. He hadn’t been gone half an hour when Miss Knightly drove up. Sit still, dear, it only bothers me if anybody tries to help me. I’ll let you wash the dishes afterward, like we always do.”

Lesley sat down at the half-cleared table; an oval-shaped table which could be extended by the insertion of “leaves” when Mrs. Ferguesson had company. The room was already dusky (twilights are short in a flat country), and one of the boys switched on the light which hung by a cord high above the table. A shallow china shade over the bulb threw a glaring white light down on the sister and the boys who stood about her chair. Lesley wrinkled up her brow, but it didn’t occur to her that the light was too strong. She gave herself up to the feeling of being at home. It went all through her, that feeling, like getting into a warm bath when one is tired. She was safe from everything, was where she wanted to be, where she ought to be. A plant that has been washed out by a rain storm feels like that, when a kind gardener puts it gently back into its own earth with its own group.

The two older boys, Homer and Vincent, kept interrupting each other, trying to tell her things, but she didn’t really listen to what they said. The little fellow stood close beside her chair, holding on to her skirt, fingering the glass buttons on her jacket. He was named Bryan, for his father’s hero, but he didn’t fit the name very well. He was a rather wistful and timid child.

Mrs. Ferguesson brought the ham and eggs and the warmed-up coffee. Then she sat down opposite her daughter to watch her enjoy her supper. “Now don’t talk to her, boys. Let her eat in peace.”

Vincent spoke up. “Can’t I just tell her what happend to my lame pigeon?”

Mrs Ferguesson merely shook her head. She had control in that household, sure enough!

Before Lesley had quite finished her supper she heard the front door open and shut. The boys started up, but the mother raised a warning finger. They understood; a surprise. They were still as mice, and listened: A pause in the hall … he was hanging up his cap. Then he came in—the flower of the family.

For a moment he stood speechless in the doorway, the “incandescent” glaring full on his curly yellow hair and his amazed blue eyes. He was surprised indeed!

“Lesley!” he breathed, as if he were talking in his sleep.

She couldn’t sit still. Without knowing that she got up and took a step, she had her arms around her brother. “It’s me, Hector! Ain’t I lucky? Miss Knightly brought me in.”

“What time did you get here! You might have telephoned me, Mother.”

“Dear, she ain’t been here much more than half an hour.”

“And Miss Knightly brought you in with old Molly, did she?” Oh, the lovely voice he had, that Hector—warm, deliberate … it made the most commonplace remark full of meaning. He had to say merely that—and it told his appreciation of Miss Knightly’s kindness, even a playful gratitude to Molly, her clumsy, fat, road-pounding old mare. He was tall for his age, was Hector, and he had the fair pink-cheeked complexion which Lesley should have had and didn’t.

Mrs. Ferguesson rose. “Now let’s all go into the parlour and talk. We’ll come back and clear up afterward.” With this she opened the folding doors, and they followed her and found comfortable chairs—there was even a home-made hassock for Bryan. There were real books in the sectional bookcases (old Ferg’s fault), and there was a real Brussels carpet in soft colours on the floor. That was Lesley’s fault. Most of her savings from her first year’s teaching had gone into that carpet. She had chosen it herself from the samples which Marshall
Field’s travelling man brought to MacAlpin. There were comfortable old-fashioned pictures on the walls—“Venice by Moonlight” and such. Lesley and Hector thought it a beautiful room.

Of course the room was pleasant because of the feeling the children had for one another, and because in Mrs. Ferguesson there was authority and organization. Here the family sat and talked until Father came home. He was always treated a little like company. His wife and his children had a deep respect for him and for experimental farming, and profound veneration for William Jennings Bryan. Even little Bryan knew he was named for a great man, and must some day stop being afraid of the dark.

James Grahame Ferguesson was a farmer. He spent most of his time on what he called an “experimental farm.” (The neighbours had other names for it—some of them amusing.) He was a loosely built man; had drooping shoulders carried with a forward thrust. He was a ready speaker, and usually made the Fourth of July speech in MacAlpin—spoke from a platform in the Court House grove, and even the farmers who joked about Ferguesson came to hear him. Alf Delaney declared: “I like to see anything done well—even talking. If old Ferg could shuck corn as fast as he can rustle the dictionary, I’d hire him, even if he is a Pop.”

Old Ferg was not at all old—just turned forty—but he was fussy about the spelling of his name. He wrote it James Ferguesson. The merchants, even the local newspaper, simply would not spell it that way. They left letters out, or they put letters in. He complained about this repeatedly, and the result was that he was simply called “Ferg” to his face, and “old Ferg” to his back. His neighbours, both in town and in the country where he farmed, liked him because he gave them so much to talk about. He couldn’t keep a hired man long at any wages. His habits were too unconventional. He rose early, saw to the chores like any other man, and went into the field for the morning. His lunch was a cold spread from his wife’s kitchen, reinforced by hot tea. (The hired man was expected to bring his own lunch—outrageous!) After lunch Mr. Ferguesson took off his boots and lay down on the blue gingham sheets of a wide bed, and remained there until what he called “the cool of the afternoon.” When that refreshing
season arrived, he fed and watered his work horses, put the young gelding to his buckboard, and drove four miles to MacAlpin for his wife’s hot supper. Mrs. Ferguesson, though not at all a meek woman or a stupid one, unquestioningly believed him when he told her that he did his best thinking in the afternoon. He hinted to her that he was working out in his head something that would benefit the farmers of the county more than all the corn and wheat they could raise even in a good year.

Sometimes Ferguesson did things she regretted—not because they were wrong, but because other people had mean tongues. When a fashion came in for giving names to farms which had hitherto been designated by figures (range, section, quarter, etc.), and his neighbours came out with “Lone Tree Farm,” “Cold Spring Farm,” etc., Ferguesson tacked on a cottonwood tree by his gate a neatly painted board inscribed: WIDE AWAKE FARM.

His neighbours, who could never get used to his afternoon siesta, were not long in converting this prophetic christening into “Hush-a-bye Farm.” Mrs. Ferguesson overheard some of this joking on a Saturday night (she was marketing late after a lodge meeting on top of a busy day), and she didn’t like it. On Sunday morning when he was dressing for church, she asked her husband why he ever gave the farm such a foolish name. He explained to her that the important crop on that farm was an idea. His farm was like an observatory where one watched the signs of the times and saw the great change that was coming for the benefit of all mankind. He even quoted Tennyson about looking into the future “far as human eye could see.” It had been a long time since he had quoted any poetry to her. She sighed and dropped the matter.

On the whole, Ferg did himself a good turn when he put up that piece of nomenclature. People drove out of their way for miles to see it. They felt more kindly toward old Ferg because he wrote himself down such an ass. In a hard-working farming community a good joke is worth something. Ferguesson himself felt a gradual warming toward him among his neighbours. He ascribed it to the power of his oratory. It was really because he had made himself so absurd, but this he never guessed. Idealists are seldom afraid of ridicule—if they recognize it.

The Ferguesson children believed that their father was misunderstood by people of inferior intelligence, and that conviction gave them a “cause” which bound them together. They must do better than other children; better in school, and better on the playground. They must turn in a quarter of a dollar to help their mother out whenever they could. Experimental farming wasn’t immediately remunerative.

Fortunately there was never any rent to pay. They owned their house down by the depot. When Mrs. Ferguesson’s father died down in Missouri, she bought that place with what he left her. She knew that was the safe thing to do, her husband being a thinker. Her children were bound to her, and to that house, by the deepest, the most solemn loyalty. They never spoke of that covenant to each other, never even formulated it in their own minds—never. It was a consciousness they shared, and it gave them a family complexion.

On this Saturday of Lesley’s surprise visit home, Father was with the family for breakfast. That was always a pleasant way to begin the day—especially on Saturday, when no one was in a hurry. He had grave good manners toward his wife and children. He talked to them as if they were grown-up, reasonable beings—talked a trifle as if from a rostrum, perhaps,—and he never indulged in small-town gossip. He was much more likely to tell them what he had read in the
Omaha World-Herald
yesterday; news of the State capital and the national capital. Sometimes he told them what a grasping, selfish country England was. Very often he explained to them how the gold standard had kept the poor man down. The family seldom bothered him about petty matters—such as that Homer needed new shoes, or that the iceman’s bill for the whole summer had come in for the third time. Mother would take care of that.

On this particular Saturday morning Ferguesson gave especial attention to Lesley. He asked her about her school, and had her name her pupils. “I think you are fortunate to have the Wild Rose school, Lesley,” he said as he rose from the table. “The farmers up there are open-minded and prosperous. I have sometimes wished that I had settled up there, though there are certain advantages in living at the county seat. The educational opportunities are better. Your friendship with Miss Knightly has been a broadening influence.”

He went out to hitch up the buckboard to drive to the farm, while
his wife put up the lunch he was to take along with him, and Lesley went upstairs to make the beds.

“Upstairs” was a story in itself, a secret romance. No caller or neighbour had ever been allowed to go up there. All the children loved it—it was their very own world where there were no older people poking about to spoil things. And it was unique—not at all like other people’s upstairs chambers. In her stuffy little bedroom out in the country Lesley had more than once cried for it.

Lesley and the boys liked space, not tight cubbyholes. Their upstairs was a long attic which ran the whole length of the house, from the front door downstairs to the kitchen at the back. Its great charm was that it was unlined. No plaster, no beaver-board lining; just the roof shingles, supported by long, unplaned, splintery rafters that sloped from the sharp roof-peak down to the floor of the attic. Bracing these long roof rafters were cross rafters on which one could hang things—a little personal washing, a curtain for tableaux, a rope swing for Bryan.

In this spacious, undivided loft were two brick chimneys, going up in neat little stair-steps from the plank floor to the shingle roof—and out of it to the stars! The chimneys were of red, unglazed brick, with lines of white mortar to hold them together.

Last year, after Lesley first got her school, Mrs. Ferguesson exerted her authority and partitioned off a little room over the kitchen end of the “upstairs” for her daughter. Before that, all the children slept in this delightful attic. The three older boys occupied two wide beds, their sister her little single bed. Bryan, subject to croup, still slumbered downstairs near his mother, but he looked forward to his ascension as to a state of pure beatitude.