Old Caravan Days Part 22

It might be somewhere in the woods, or jogging innocently along a dirt road. It was no longer an object to the searchers. He believed the woman and child had left it, intending to rejoin it at some appointed place when all excitement was over. He said he thought he had the very woman and child back here a piece, though they might give him the slip before he could bring anybody to certainly identify them.

"My little one 'give me the slip'!" exclaimed Mrs. Tracy indignantly.

The man said his meaning was, she might be slipped off by her keeper.

"Where have you got them?" inquired Grandma Padgett.

"He saw 'em goin' into Sunday-school, marm," explained Zene.

"There's a meetin'-house over yonder three or four mile," pointing with his whip.

"It's the unlikeliest place that ever was," said the messenger, polishing his horse's wet neck. "And I suppose that's what the woman thought when she slipped in there. If I hadn't happened by in the nick of time I wouldn't mistrusted. She didn't see me. She was goin'

up the steps, with her back to the road, and the meetin'-house sets a considerable piece from the fence. They was all singin' loud enough to drown a horse's feet in the dust."

"And both were like the descriptions you had?" said Mrs. Tracy.

"So nigh like that I half-pulled up and had a notion to go in and see for myself. Then, thinks I, you better wait and bring-the ones that would know for sure. There ain't no harm in that."

Before the mother could speak again, Grandma Padgett told the man to turn back and direct them, and Zene to fall behind the carriage with his load. He could jog leisurely in the wake of the carriage, to avoid getting separated from it: that would be all he need attempt.

She took up her whip to touch Hickory and Henry.

After turning off on the by-road, Grandma Padgett heard Zene leisurely jogging in the wake of the carriage, and remembered for a moment, with dismay, the number of breakable things in his load. He drove all the way to the meeting-house with the white and gray constantly rearing their noses from contact with the hind carriage curtains; up swells, when the road wound through stump-bordered sward, and down into sudden gullies, when all his movables clanged and rumbled, as if protesting against the unusual speed they had to endure. Zene was as anxious to reach the meeting-house as the man who cantered ahead.

They drew up to where it basked on the rising ground, an old brown frame with lichens crusting the roof. There were two front doors, a flight of wooden steps leading up to each, and three high windows along the visible side. All these stood open letting out a pleasant hum, through which the cracked voice of an old man occasionally broke. No hump of belfry stood upon its back. The afternoon sun was the bell which called that neighborhood together for Sunday-school.

And this unconscious duty performed, the afternoon sun now brightened the graves which crowded to the very fence, brought out the glint and polish of the new marble headstones, or showed the grooved names in the old and leaning slate ones. Some graves were enclosed by rails, and others barely lifted their tops above the long gra.s.s. There were baby-nests hollowing into the turf, and clay-colored piles set head and foot with fresh boards. And on all these aunt Corinne looked with an interest which graves never failed to rouse in her, no matter what the occasion might be.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE FIRST MESSENGER.]

The horses switched their tails along the outside of the fence. One backed his vehicle as far as his. .h.i.tching-strap would let him, against the wheels of another's buggy, that other immediately responding by a similar movement. Some of them turned their heads and challenged Hickory and Henry and the saddle-horse with speaking whinneys. "Whe-hee-hee-hee! You going to be tied up here for the gra.s.s-flies to bite too? Where do you come from, and why don't you kick your folks for going to afternoon meeting in hot June time?"

The pilot of the caravan had helped take horse-thieves in his time, and he considered this a similar excursion. He dismounted swiftly, but with an air of caution, and as he let down the carriage steps, said he thought they better surround the house.

But Mrs. Tracy reached the ground as if she did not see him, and ran through the open gate with her black draperies flowing in a rush behind her. Robert Day and aunt Corinne were anxious to follow, and the man tied Grandma Padgett's horses to a rail fence across the road, while some protest was made among the fly-bitten row against the white cover of Zene's moving-wagon.

Although Bobaday felt excited and eager as he trotted up the gra.s.s path after Mrs. Tracy, the spirit of the country Sunday-school came out of doors to meet him.

There were the cla.s.s of old men and the cla.s.s of old women in the corner seats each side of the pulpit, and their lesson was in the Old Testament. The young ladies listened to the instruction of the smart young man of the neighborhood, and his sonorous words rolled against the echoing walls. He usually taught the winter district and singing schools. The young girl who did for summer schoolmiss, had a cla.s.s of rosebud children in the middle of the meetinghouse, and they crowded to Her lap and crawled up on her shoulders, though their mothers, in the mothers' cla.s.s, shook warning heads at them. Scent of cloves, roses and sweetbrier mingled with the woody smell of a building shut close six days out of seven. Two rascals in the boys' cla.s.s, who, evading their teacher's count, had been down under the seats kicking each other with stiff new shoes, emerged just as the librarian came around with a pile of books, ready to fight good-naturedly over the one with the brightest cover. The boy who got possession would never read the book, but he could pull it out of his jacket pocket and tantalize the other boy going home.

The Sunday-school was a wholesome, happy place, even for these young heathen who were enjoying their bodies too much to care particularly about their souls. And when the superintendent stood up to rap the school to order for the close of the session, and line out one of Watts's sober hymns, there was a pleasant flutter of getting ready, and the smart young man of the neighborhood took his tuning-fork from his vest pocket to hit against his teeth so he could set the tune. He wore a very short-tailed coat, and had his hair brushed up in a high roach from his forehead, and these two facts conspired to give him a brisk and wide awake appearance as he stepped into the aisle holding a singing book in his hand.

But no peaceful, long-drawn hymn floated through the windows and wandered into the woods. The tw.a.n.g of the tuning-fork was drowned by a succession of cries. The smart young man's eyebrows went up to meet his roach while he stood in the aisle astonished to see a lady in trailing black clothes pounce upon a child strange to the neighborhood, and exclaim over, and cover it with kisses.

CHAPTER XXIII. FORWARD.

Some of the boys climbed upon seats to look, and there was confusion. A baby or two in the mothers' cla.s.s began to cry, but the mothers themselves soon understood what was taking place, and forgot the decorum of Sunday-school, to crowd up to Mrs. Tracy.

"The child is hers," one said to another. "It must have been lost.

Who brought it in here?"

The fortunate messenger who had been successful in his undertaking, talked in undertones to the superintendent, telling the whole story with an air of playing the most important part in it. In return, the superintendent mentioned the notice he had taken of those two strangers, his attempt to induce the woman to go to the mothers'

cla.s.s, her restlessness and the child's la.s.situde.

The smart young man stood close by, receiving the correct version of the affair, and holding his tuning-fork and book behind him; and all the children, following their elders, flocked to seats around Mrs.

Tracy, gazing over one another's shoulders, until she looked up abashed at the chaos her excitement had made.

"It's really your child?" said Grandma Padgett, sitting down beside the mother with a satisfied and benevolent expression.

"Oh, indeed, yes! Don't you know mamma, darling?"

For reply, the little girl was clinging mutely to her mother's neck.

Her curls were damp and her eyes very dark-ringed. But there was recognition in her face very different from the puzzled and crouching obedience she had yielded to the one who claimed her before.

"They've been dosing her again," p.r.o.nounced Grandma Padgett severely.

"And she's all beat out tramping, poor little thing!" said one of the neighborhood mothers. "Look at them dusty feet!"

Mrs. Tracy gathered the dusty feet into her lap and wiped them with her lace handkerchief.

Word went forth to the edge of the crowd that the little girl needed water to revive her, and half a dozen boys raced to the nearest house for a tin pailful.

With love-feast tenderness the neighborhood mothers administered the dripping cup to little Rose Tracy when the boys returned. Her face and head were bathed, and hands and feet cooled. The old women all prescribed for her, and her mother listened to everybody with distended eyes, but fell into such frequent paroxysms of kissing her little girl that some of the boys ducked their heads to chuckle. This extravagant affection was more than they could endure.

"But where's that woman?" inquired Robert Day. He stood up on the seat behind his grandmother and Mrs. Tracy, and could see all over the house, but his eyes roamed unsuccessfully after the English player. The people having their interest diverted by that question, turned their heads and began to ask each other where she was. n.o.body had noticed her leave the church, but it was a common thing to be pa.s.sing in and out during Sunday school. She had made her escape.

Half the a.s.sembly would have pursued her on the instant; she could not be far away. But Mrs. Tracy begged them to let her go; she did not want the woman, could not endure the sight of her, and never wished to hear of her again. Whatever harm was done to her child, was done. Her child was what she had come in search of, and she had it.

So the group eager to track a kidnapper across fields and along fence-corners, calmed their zeal and contented themselves with going outdoors and betting on what direction the fugitive from punishment had taken.

Perhaps she had grown to love little Rose, and was punished in having to give her up. In any case, the Pig-headed man and the various people attached to his show, no more appeared on the track followed by Grandma Padgett's caravan. Mrs. Tracy would not have him sought out and arrested, and he only remained in the minds of Robert and aunt Corinne as a type of monster.

When they left the meeting-house, the weather had changed. People dismissed from Sunday-school with scanter ceremony than usual, got into their conveyances to hurry home, for thunder sounded in the west, and the hot air was already cooled by a rush of wet fragrance from the advancing rain.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THEY BADE FAIRY CARRIE GOOD-BY.]

It proved to be a quick shower, white and violent while it lasted, making the fields smoke, and walling out distant views. Spouts of water ran off the carriage top down the oil cloth ap.r.o.n which protected Robert and his grandmother. Mrs. Tracy held her little girl in her lap, and leaned back with an expression of perfect happiness.

The rain came just as her comfort had come, after so much parching suspense. Aunt Corinne wondered in silence if anything could be nicer than riding under a snug cover on which the sky-streams pelted, through a wonderland of fragrance. Every grateful shrub and bit of sod, the pawpaw leaves and spicewood stems, the half-formed hazel-nuts in fluted sheaths, and even new hay-stacks in the meadows, breathed out their best to the rain. The world never seems so fresh and lovable as after a June shower.

Presently the sun was shining, and the ground-incense steaming with stronger sweetness, and they came to the wet 'pike stretching like a russet-colored ribbon east and west, and turned west toward Indianapolis.

On the 'pike they met another of the men sent out by Mrs. Tracy and the lawyer. His horse's coat was smoking. Mrs. Tracy took up a gold pencil attached to her watch, and wrote a note to the lawyer. She was going on to the city, and would return directly home with her child.

The note she sent by the men, after thanking them, and paying them in what Robert and his aunt considered a prodigal and wealthy manner.

So large a slice out of the afternoon had their trip to the meeting-house taken, that it was quite dark when the party drove briskly into Indianapolis.

It was a little city at that date. Still, Bobaday felt exalted by clanging car-bells and railroad crossings. It being Sunday evening, the freights were making up. The main street, called Washington, was but an extension of the 'pike, stretching broad and straight through the city. He noticed houses with balconies, set back on sloping lawns. Here a light disclosed a broad hall with dim stairs at the back. And in another place children were playing under trees; he could hear their calls, and by straining his eyes, barely discern that they wore sumptuous white city raiment. The tide of home-makers and beautifiers had not then rolled so far north of East Washington street as to leave it a mere boundary line.