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DeTroyes - "Four Arthurian Romances, by Chretien DeTroyes"

Herman Melville - "A Romance of the South Sea"

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - "Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre Buch 1"

Jerome K. Jerome - "Malvina of Brittany"

Laddie, A True Blue Story

G >> Gene Stratton Porter >> Laddie, A True Blue Story




"I am reading it because it is conceded to be one of the most
beautiful poems ever written," said the Princess.

"You knew when you began that you would come to those lines."

"I never even thought of such a thing."

"But you knew that is how your father would regard any
relationship, friendly or deeper, with me!"

"I cannot possibly be held responsible for what my father
thinks."

"It is natural that you should think alike."

"Not necessarily! You told me recently that you didn't agree
with your father on many subjects."

"Kindly answer me this," said Laddie: "Do you feel that I'm a
`clown' because I'm not schooled to the point on all questions of
good manners? Do you find me gross because I plow and sow?"

"You surprise me," said the Princess. "My consenting to know and
to spend a friendly hour with you here is sufficient answer. I
have not found the slightest fault with your manners. I have
seen no suspicion of `grossness' about you."

"Will you tell me, frankly, exactly what you do think of me?"

"Surely! I think you are a clean, decent man, who occasionally
kindly consents to put a touch of human interest into an hour,
for a very lonely girl. What has happened, Laddie? This is not
like you."

Laddie sat straight and studied the beech branches. Father said
beech trees didn't amount to much; but I first learned all about
them from that one, and what it taught me made me almost worship
them always. There were the big trunk with great rough spreading
roots, the bark in little ridges in places, smooth purple gray
between, big lichens for ornament, the low flat branches, the
waxy, wavy-edged leaves, with clear veins, and the delicious nuts
in their little brown burrs. The Princess and I both stared at
the branches and waited while a little breath of air stirred the
leaves, the sunshine flickered, and a cricket sang a sort of
lonesome song. Laddie leaned against the tree again, and he was
thinking so hard, to look at him made me begin to repeat to
myself the beech part of that beautiful churchyard poem our big
folks recite:


"There, at the foot of yonder nodding beech,
That wreathes its old fantastic roots so high,
His listless length at noontide he would stretch,
And pore upon the brook that babbles by."


Only he was studying so deeply you could almost feel what was in
his mind, and it was not about the brook at all, even if one ran
close. Soon he began talking.

"Not so bad!" he said. "You might think worse. I admit the
cleanliness, I strive for decency, I delight in being humanely
interesting, even for an hour; you might think worse, much worse!

You might consider me a `clown.' `A country clod.' Rather a
lowdown, common thing, a `clod,' don't you think? And a `clown'!

And `gross' on top of that!"

"What can you mean?" asked the Princess.

"Since you don't seem to share the estimate of me, I believe I'll
tell you," said Laddie. "The other day I was driving from the
gravel pit with a very heavy load. The road was wide and level
on either side. A man came toward me on horseback. Now the law
of the road is to give half to a vehicle similar to the one you
are driving, but to keep all of it when you are heavily loaded,
if you are passing people afoot or horseback. The man took half
the road, and kept it until the nose of his horse touched one of
the team I was driving. I stopped and said: `Good morning, sir!

Do you wish to speak with me?' He called angrily: `Get out of
my way, you clod!' `Sorry sir, but I can't,' I said. `The law
gives me this road when I am heavily loaded, and you are on foot
or horseback.'"

"What did he do?" asked the Princess.

And from the way she looked I just knew she guessed the man was
the same one I thought of.

"He raised his whip to strike my horse," said Laddie.

"Ah, surely!" said the Princess. "Always an arm raised to
strike. And you, Man? What did you do?" she cried eagerly.

"I stood on my load, suddenly," said Laddie, "and I called:
`Hold one minute!'"

"And he?" breathed the Princess.

"Something made him pause with his arm still raised. I said to
him: `You must not strike my horse. It never has been struck,
and it can't defend itself. If you want to come a few steps
farther and tackle me, come ahead! I can take it or return it,
as I choose.'"

"Go on!" said the Princess.

"That's all," said Laddie, "or at least almost all."

"Did he strike?"

"He did not. He stared at me a second, and then he rode around
me; but he was making forceful remarks as he passed about
`country clods,' and there was an interesting one about a `gross
clown.' What you read made me think of it, that is all."

The Princess stared into the beech branches for a time and then
she said: "I will ask your pardon for him. He always had a
domineering temper, and trouble he had lately has almost driven
him mad; he is scarcely responsible at times. I hesitate about
making him angry."

"I think perhaps," said Laddie, "I would have done myself credit
if I had recognized that, and given him the road, when he made a
point of claiming it."

"Indeed no!" cried the Princess. "To be beaten at the game he
started was exactly what he needed. If you had turned from his
way, he would have considered you a clod all his life. Since you
made him go around, it may possibly dawn on him that you are a
man. You did the very best thing."

Then she began to laugh, and how she did laugh.

"I would give my allowance for a quarter to have seen it," she
cried. "I must hurry home and tell mother."

"Does your mother know about me?" he demanded. "Does she know
that you come here?"

The Princess arose and stood very tall and straight.

"You may beg my pardon or cease to know me," she said. "Whatever
led you to suppose that I would know or meet you without my
mother's knowledge?"

Then she started toward the entrance.

"One minute!" cried Laddie.

A leap carried him to her side. He caught her hands and held
them tight, and looked straight into her eyes. Then he kissed
her hands over and over. I thought from the look on her face he
might have kissed her cheek if he had dared risk it; but he
didn't seem to notice. Then she stooped and kissed me, and
turned toward home, while Laddie and I crossed the woods to the
west road, and went back past the schoolhouse. I was so tired
Laddie tied the strings together and hung my shoes across his
shoulders and took me by the arm the last mile.

All of them were at home when we got there, and Miss Amelia came
to the gate to meet us. She was mealy-mouthed and good as pie,
not at all as I had supposed she would be. I wonder what Laddie
said to her. But then he always could manage things for every
one. That set me to wondering if by any possible means he could
fix them for himself. I climbed to the catalpa to think, and the
more I thought, the more I feared he couldn't; but still mother
always says one never can tell until they try, and I knew he
would try with every ounce of brain and muscle in him. I sat
there until the supper bell rang, and then I washed and reached
the table last. The very first thing, mother asked how I bruised
my face, and before I could think what to tell her, Leon said
just as careless like: "Oh she must have run against something
hard, playing tag at recess." Laddie began talking about Peter
coming that night, and every one forgot me, but pretty soon I
slipped a glance at Miss Amelia, and saw that her face was redder
than mine.



CHAPTER VI

The Wedding Gown

"The gay belles of fashion may boast of excelling
In waltz or cotillon, at whist or quadrille;
And seek admiration by vauntingly telling
Of drawing and painting, and musical skill;
But give me the fair one, in country or city,
Whose home and its duties are dear to her heart,
Who cheerfully warbles some rustical ditty,
While plying the needle with exquisite art:
The bright little needle, the swift-flying needle,
The needle directed by beauty and art."


The next morning Miss Amelia finished the chapter--that made two
for our family. Father always read one before breakfast--no
wonder I knew the Bible quite well--then we sang a song, and she
made a stiff, little prayer. I had my doubts about her prayers;
she was on no such terms with the Lord as my father. He got
right at Him and talked like a doctor, and you felt he had some
influence, and there was at least a possibility that he might get
what he asked for; but Miss Amelia prayed as if the Lord were ten
million miles away, and she would be surprised to pieces if she
got anything she wanted. When she asked the Almighty to make us
good, obedient children, there was not a word she said that
showed she trusted either the Lord or us, or thought there was
anything between us and heaven that might make us good because we
wanted to be. You couldn't keep your eyes from the big gad and
ruler on her desk; she often fingered them as she prayed, and you
knew from her stiff, little, sawed-out petition that her faith
was in implements, and she'd hit you a crack the minute she was
the least angry, same as she had me the day before. I didn't
feel any too good toward her, but when the blood of the Crusaders
was in the veins, right must be done even if it took a struggle.
I had to live up to those little gold shells on the trinket.
Father said they knew I was coming down the line, so they put on
a bird for me; but I told him I would be worthy of the shells
too. This took about as hard a fight for me as any Crusade would
for a big, trained soldier. I had been wrong, Laddie had made me
see that. So I held up my hand, and Miss Amelia saw me as she
picked up Ray's arithmetic.

"What is it?"

I held to the desk to brace myself, and tried twice before I
could raise my voice so that she heard.

"Please, Miss Amelia," I said, "I was wrong about the birds
yesterday. Not that they don't fight--they do! But I was wrong
to contradict you before every one, and on your first day, and if
you'll only excuse me, the next time you make a mistake, I'll
tell you after school or at recess."

The room was so still you could hear the others breathing. Miss
Amelia picked up the ruler and started toward me. Possibly I
raised my hands. That would be no Crusader way, but you might do
it before you had time to think, when the ruler was big and your
head was the only place that would be hit. The last glimpse I
had of her in the midst of all my trouble made me think of
Sabethany Perkins.

Sabethany died, and they buried her at the foot of the hill in
our graveyard before I could remember. But her people thought
heaps of her, and spent much money on the biggest tombstone in
the cemetery, and planted pinies and purple phlox on her, and
went every Sunday to visit her. When they moved away, they
missed her so, they decided to come back and take her along. The
men were at work, and Leon and I went to see what was going on.
They told us, and said we had better go away, because possibly
things might happen that children would sleep better not to see.
Strange how a thing like that makes you bound you will see. We
went and sat on the fence and waited. Soon they reached
Sabethany, but they could not seem to get her out. They tried,
and tried, and at last they sent for more men. It took nine of
them to bring her to the surface. What little wood was left,
they laid back to see what made her so fearfully heavy, and there
she was turned to solid stone. They couldn't chip a piece off
her with the shovel. Mother always said, "For goodness sake,
don't let your mouth hang open," and as a rule we kept ours shut;
but you should have seen Leon's when he saw Sabethany wouldn't
chip off, and no doubt mine was as bad.

"When Gabriel blows his trumpet, and the dead arise and come
forth, what on earth will they do with Sabethany?" I gasped.
"Why, she couldn't fly to Heaven with wings a mile wide, and what
use could they make of her if she got there?"

"I can't see a thing she'd be good for except a hitching post,"
said Leon, "and I guess they don't let horses in. Let's go
home."

He acted sick and I felt that way; so we went, but the last
glimpse of Sabethany remained with me.

As my head went down that day, I saw that Miss Amelia looked
exactly like her. You would have needed a pick-ax or a crowbar
to flake off even a tiny speck of her. When I had waited for my
head to be cracked, until I had time to remember that a Crusader
didn't dodge and hide, I looked up, and there she stood with the
ruler lifted; but now she had turned just the shade of the
wattles on our fightingest turkey gobbler.

"Won't you please forgive me?"

I never knew I had said it until I heard it, and then the only
way to be sure was because no one else would have been likely to
speak at that time.

Miss Amelia's arm dropped and she glared at me. I wondered
whether I ever would understand grown people; I doubted if they
understood themselves, for after turning to stone in a second--
father said it had taken Sabethany seven years--and changing to
gobbler red, Miss Amelia suddenly began to laugh. To laugh, of
all things! And then, of course, every one else just yelled. I
was so mortified I dropped my head again and began to cry as I
never would if she'd hit me.

"Don't feel badly!" said Miss Amelia. "Certainly, I'll forgive
you. I see you had no intention of giving offense, so none is
taken. Get out your book and study hard on another lesson."

That was surprising. I supposed I'd have to do the same one
over, but I might take a new one. I was either getting along
fast, or Miss Amelia had her fill of birds. I wiped my eyes as
straight in front of me as I could slip up my handkerchief, and
began studying the first lesson in my reader: "Pretty bee, pray
tell me why, thus from flower to flower you fly, culling sweets
the livelong day, never leaving off to play?" That was a poetry
piece, and it was quite cheery, although it was all strung
together like prose, but you couldn't fool me on poetry; I knew
it every time. As I studied I felt better, and when Miss Amelia
came to hear me she was good as gold. She asked if I liked
honey, and I started to tell her about the queen bee, but she had
no time to listen, so she said I should wait until after school.
Then we both forgot it, for when we reached home, the Princess'
horse was hitched to our rack, and I fairly ran in, I was so
anxious to know what was happening.

I was just perfectly amazed at grown people! After all the
things our folks had said! You'd have supposed that Laddie would
have been locked in the barn; father reading the thirty second
Psalm to the Princess, and mother on her knees asking God to open
her eyes like Saul's when he tried to kick against the pricks,
and make her to see, as he did, that God was not a myth, Well,
there was no one in the sitting-room or the parlour, but there
were voices farther on; so I slipped in. I really had to slip,
for there was no other place they could be except the parlour
bedroom, and Sally's wedding things were locked up there, and we
were not to see until everything was finished, like I told you.

Well, this was what I saw: our bedroom had been a porch once, and
when we had been crowded on account of all of us coming, father
enclosed it and made a room. But he never had taken out the
window in the wall. So all I had to do when I wanted to know how
fast the dresses were being made, was to shove up the window
above my bed, push back the blind, and look in. I didn't care
what she had. I just wanted to get ahead of her and see before
she was ready, to pay her for beating me. I knew what she had,
and I meant to tell her, and walk away with my nose in the air
when she offered to show me; but this was different. I was wild
to see what was going on because the Princess was there. The
room was small, and the big cherry four-poster was very large,
and all of them were talking, so no one paid the slightest
attention to me.

Mother sat in the big rocking chair, with Sally on one of its
arms, leaning against her shoulder. Shelley and May and the
sewing woman were crowded between the wall and the footboard, and
the others lined against the wall. The bed was heaped in a
tumble of everything a woman ever wore. Seemed to me there was
more stuff there than all the rest of us had, put together. The
working dresses and aprons had been made on the machine, but
there were heaps and stacks of hand-made underclothes. I could
see the lovely chemise mother embroidered lying on top of a pile
of bedding, and over and over Sally had said that every stitch in
the wedding gown must be taken by hand. The Princess stood
beside the bed. A funny little tight hat like a man's and a
riding whip lay on a chair close by. I couldn't see what she
wore--her usual riding clothes probably--for she had a nip in
each shoulder of a dress she was holding to her chin and looking
down at. After all, I hadn't seen everything! Never before or
since have I seen a lovelier dress than that. It was what always
had been wrapped in the sheet on the foot of the bed and I hadn't
got a peep at it. The pale green silk with tiny pink moss roses
in it, that I had been thinking was the wedding dress, looked
about right to wash the dishes in, compared with this.

This was a wedding dress. You didn't need any one to tell you.
The Princess had as much red as I ever had seen in her cheeks,
her eyes were bright, and she was half-laughing and half-crying.

"Oh you lucky, lucky girl!" she was saying. "What a perfectly
beautiful bride you will be! Never have I seen a more wonderful
dress! Where did you get the material?"

Now we had been trained always to wait for mother to answer a
visitor as she thought suitable, or at least to speak one at a
time and not interrupt; but about six of those grown people told
the Princess all at the same time how our oldest sister Elizabeth
was married to a merchant who had a store at Westchester and how
he got the dress in New York, and gave it to Sally for her
wedding present, or she never could have had it.

The Princess lifted it and set it down softly. "Oh look!" she
cried. "Look! It will stand alone!"

There it stood! Silk stiff enough to stand by itself, made into
a little round waist, cut with a round neck and sleeves elbow
length and flowing almost to where Sally's knees would come. It
was a pale pearl-gray silk crossed in bars four inches square,
made up of a dim yellow line almost as wide as a wheat straw,
with a thread of black on each side of it, and all over, very
wide apart, were little faint splashes of black as if they had
been lightly painted on. The skirt was so wide it almost filled
the room. Every inch of that dress was lined with soft, white
silk. There was exquisite lace made into a flat collar around
the neck, and ruffled from sight up the inside of the wide
sleeves. That was the beginning. The finish was something you
never saw anything like before. It was a trimming made of white
and yellow beads. There was a little heading of white beads
sewed into a pattern, then a lacy fringe that was pale yellow
beads, white inside, each an inch long, that dangled, and every
bead ended with three tiny white ones. That went around the
neck, the outside of the sleeves, and in a pattern like a big
letter V all the way around the skirt. And there it stood--
alone!

The Princess, graceful as a bird and glowing like fire, danced
around it, and touched it, and lifted the sleeves, and made the
bead fringe swing, and laughed, and talked every second. Sally,
and mother, and all of them had smiled such wide smiles for so
long, their faces looked almost as set as Sabethany's, but of
course far different. Being dead was one thing, getting ready
for a wedding another.

And it looked too as if God might be a myth, for all they cared,
so long as the Princess could make the wedding dress stand alone,
and talk a blue streak of things that pleased them. It was not
put on either, for there stood the dress, shimmering like the
inside of a pearl-lined shell, white as a lily, and the tinkly
gold fringe. No one COULD have said enough about it, so no
matter what the Princess said, it had to be all right. She kept
straight on showing all of them how lovely it was, exactly as if
they hadn't seen it before, and she had to make them understand
about it, as if she felt afraid they might have missed some
elegant touch she had seen.

"Do look how the lace falls when I raise this sleeve! Oh how
will you wear this and think of a man enough to say the right
words in the right place?"

Mother laughed, and so did all of them.

"Do please show me the rest," begged the Princess. "I know there
are slippers and a bonnet!"

Sally just oozed pride. She untied the strings and pushed the
prettiest striped bag from a lovely pink bandbox and took out a
dear little gray bonnet with white ribbons, and the yellow bead
fringe, and a bunch of white roses with a few green leaves.
These she touched softly, "I'm not quite sure about the leaves,"
she said.

The Princess had the bonnet, turning and tilting it.

"Perfect!" she cried. "Quite perfect! You need that touch of
colour, and it blends with everything. How I envy you! Oh why
doesn't some one ask me, so I can have things like these? I
think your brother is a genius. I'm going to ride to Westchester
tomorrow and give him an order to fill for me the next time he
goes to the city. No one shows me such fabrics when I go, and
Aunt Beatrice sends nothing from London I like nearly so well.
Oh! Oh!"

She was on her knees now, lifting the skirt to set under little
white satin slippers with gold buckles, and white bead buttons.
When she had them arranged to suit her, she sat on the floor and
kept straight on saying the things my mother and sisters seemed
crazy to hear. When Sally showed her the long white silk mitts
that went with the bonnet, the Princess cried: "Oh do ride home
with me and let me give you a handkerchief Aunt Beatrice sent me,
to carry in your hand!"

Then her face flushed and she added without giving Sally time to
say what she would do: "Or I can bring it the next time I come
past. It belongs with these things and I have no use for it.
May I?"

"Please do! I'll use it for the thing I borrow."

"But I mean it to be a gift," said the Princess. "It was made to
go with these lace mitts and satin slippers. You must take it!"

"Thank you very much," said Sally. "If you really want me to
have it, of course I'd love to."

"I'll bring it to-morrow," promised the Princess. "And I wish
you'd let me try a way I know to dress hair for a wedding. Yours
is so beautiful."

"You're kind, I'm sure," said Sally. "I had intended to wear it
as I always do, so I would appear perfectly natural to the folks;
but if you know a more becoming way, I could begin it now, and
they would be familiar with it by that time."

"I shan't touch it," said the Princess, studying Sally's face.
"Your idea is right. You don't want to commence any new,
unfamiliar style that would make you seem different, just at a
time when every one should see how lovely you are, as you always
have been. But don't forget to wear something blue, and
something borrowed for luck, and oh do please put on one of my
garters!"

"Well for mercy sake!" cried my mother. "Why?"

"So some one will propose to me before the year is out," laughed
the Princess. "I think it must be the most fun of all, to make
beautiful things for your very own home, and lovely dresses, and
be surrounded by friends all eager to help you, and to arrange a
house and live with a man you love well enough to marry, and fix
for little people who might come----"

"You know perfectly there isn't a single man in the county who
wouldn't propose to you, if you'd let him come within a mile of
you," said Shelley.

"When the right man comes I'll go half the mile to meet him? you
may be sure of that; won't I, Mrs. Stanton?" the Princess turned
to mother.

"I have known girls who went even farther," said my mother rather
dryly.

"I draw the line at half," laughed the Princess. "Now I must go;
I have been so long my people will be wondering what I'm doing."

Standing in the middle of the room she put on her hat, picked up
her whip and gloves, and led the way to the hitching rack, while
all of us followed. At the gate stood Laddie as he had come from
the field. His old hat was on the back of his head, his face
flushed, his collar loosened so that his strong white neck
showed, and his sleeves were rolled to the elbow, as they had
been all summer, and his arms were burned almost to blisters.
When he heard us coming he opened the gate, went to the rack,
untied the Princess' horse and led it beside the mounting block.
As she came toward him, he took off his hat and pitched it over
the fence on the grass.

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