That Little Girl of Miss Eliza's Part 15

"Have you written them?" It was surprising how concise, how direct the tramp could be when he chose.

"Write them? I never thought of such a thing. I made up the stories simply to please Beth. I am not an author."

"You don't know what you are," he said. "You have never found yourself, Miss Eliza. No one knows how great a thing he may be. In each soul lies an unexplored country. Be a Columbus to your own soul."

He took up his hat and moved to the door. "I want you to write down these stories Beth told me. Don't bother trying to make them fine.

Scribble them. This is not a request, Miss Eliza. This is a command."

Eliza had no time to remonstrate. The tramp was gone before she could reply.

"I would do it, Adee." Beth smiled whimsically to herself and added, as she did when she was a baby, "Please, pretty lady."

It was impossible to withstand both of these. Eliza began the very next day when Beth was away at school. She took tablet and pencil and, sitting down by the open grate, wrote just as she had told the stories to Beth. There was no attempt at fine writing. Her language was simple as a child's. There were even quite serious mistakes in grammar and punctuation. The hours pa.s.sed quickly. Beth was home from school before Eliza realized it. She had been happy all afternoon-happy in a different way from what she had been all these years.

"I am expressing myself. I am finding my own soul," she told herself.

She smiled at her own egotism, as she added, "What, if like Columbus, I should find a great undiscovered country?"

She laid the stories away. What simple little things they were! The story of an ambitious little seed which was unhappy because it had been tied up in a paper all winter and then hidden in the ground. It wanted to do something great. It did not wish to hide from life and light. But as the days pa.s.sed, it crept up from the earth into a life of whose beauty it had no conception. It cast shade and perfume on all about it.

It burst in a hundred glorious flowers. Then it learned that its own way would have made it a failure, that there is something in one which must suffer and die before one can be a power.

The following afternoon she wrote again. There was little chance of interruption, for neighbors were at a distance, and the people of Shintown did not give themselves to bodily exertion.

One evening she handed them to the tramp when he came for his evening supply of milk and eggs.

"Quite a package," he said. "Is this all you can think of, or have you more in that head of yours?"

"More! My head has turned into a veritable widow's cruse. The instant I take out one story, another one slips in to take its place. I do not know where they come from. I am sure I do not try to think of them. They just pop in."

"Let them pop, and keep on writing," replied the man. "I came across several books I think you'd like, and a magazine article on the possibilities of the so-called worked out farm."

He laid them on the table, took up his milk-pail and went his way down the slope. His voice rang out clear and strong:

"Drink to me only with thine eyes, And I'll not ask for wine."

"I wonder where he found all his songs. Hundreds of them I think I've heard him sing this winter."

"He must have picked them up tramping about," said Beth.

Moving to the table, Eliza took up the books and magazines which he had left her. The book was one on the wild flowers and weeds of the Alleghanies. It was handsomely ill.u.s.trated and most comprehensive, dealing with their medicinal as well as floral values.

"It's written by Joseph Barnes Hillis," she said. "Isn't it strange that it should be the same name as the tramp's? The article in the magazine is by the same writer. How strange! I'll-"

She did not finish the sentence, for Sam Houston and old Squire Stout entered without knocking-one of the irregularities of social convention in the locality.

"Good evening, folks," said Sam. "Eliza, I've come over on strange business. It's queer how things do happen."

The squire took the most comfortable seat in the room and leaned back in his chair. "It's certainly a most curious circ.u.mstance," he said. He opened his coat and took from his pocket a weather-beaten, worn old leather purse.

CHAPTER XIV.

The squire laid the purse on the table with an air which spoke volumes.

"It certainly is mysterious how things do work out," he said. He was always deliberate in speech, but fortunately, he said little. His particularly impressive method of procedure was to look wise.

Miss Eliza glanced at the purse. It was not attractive. Touched with mildew, soiled and almost filthy, it was rather repulsive. She had learned that Sam was not one to be questioned when he had a story to tell. The only way was to let him go slowly and interpolate with indifferent matters of all sorts.

"There ain't much to tell about the finding of the purse," he began.

Then Eliza understood. But she did not reach forward to seize what might contain something which would reveal Beth's ident.i.ty. It came to her that that meant losing Beth. For an instant she felt that she could not give her up.

"We were fixing the old stone wall at Paddy's Run," continued Sam. "The Morris Brothers have the contract, and Ab Morris came and asked me if I'd hand-."

"No use of telling all the details," said the squire sharply. "Keep to the point. There's no use telling what Ab said to you or you to Ab."

"Well, no need to cut me short. There's plenty of time to tell details, as you call them, and everything else that pertains to this here subject which we have in hand. We've been a wantin' to know these things for ten years and couldn't. Then what's the use of gettin' in a rush and tell everything in a minute."

"There's no danger of you ever doing those two things-getting in a rush and telling everything in a minute. You couldn't do it, Sam." The squire was habitually sarcastic.

"We'll drive slow. It may be a rough road, and we're driving in the dark, so to speak. We were fixing the wall, anyway. Bill Yothers, he was knocking out the loose stone, when he stops and says to me, 'Sam, that looks mighty like a purse, that I've knocked down there. You'd better get it.' Well, I did. I dropped the reins and went over and picked it up. I examined it carefully before I opened it, and-."

Eliza had taken up the purse. No doubt it had dropped from the carriage when Old Prince took his mad leap, and had lodged among the stones in the wall to be hidden away for over ten years. It had been partially protected from the weather.

Miss Eliza opened it gingerly. It almost fell to pieces as she did so.

The leather flap at the top fell from it. Within the double compartment were pieces of paper thick with mildew. These were intact enough to show that they once were bills. There was a little silver, and a trunk check of bra.s.s. This was green with corrosion, so that the number had been effaced.

Without a word, Eliza took it and went to the kitchen. Beth was close at her side. Neither could speak, but the atmosphere was fairly vibrating with suppressed emotion. Eliza took down her scouring soap from the shelf and began rubbing the check.

"This will do little good," she said after a moment. "I'll dip it in lye and scour it with ashes."

"Yes," said Beth, hurrying into the wash-house and returning with the can of lye. Eliza put the check on a saucer and covered it for an instant with the lye. Then she rubbed it with wood ashes.

The men had grown impatient and had followed her into the kitchen. They came to the door just as Eliza had finished her inspection. "It has Baltimore on it," she said. "The number is 4536. It's very plain."

"Little good it will do you," said Sam. "That just shows you that it was checked from there. It doesn't show who sent it."

"It may tell us a great deal," said Eliza. Keeping the check in her hand, she led the way back into the living room. The men followed and seated themselves. She had been wishing that they would go. She wanted to be alone and think of the matter. She could see that Beth was very much excited, although she sat very quiet.

But the fire was too comfortable for Sam to leave. He had taken the most comfortable chair in the room. He put his legs far apart, bent over so that his elbows could rest on his knees, and his chin in turn upon the upturned palm. He began a recital of all the incidents of the day when Old Prince went wild, and he had first found Eliza and the child, and he continued telling how strange it seemed that he should be the one to find the purse.

"But there'll nothing come of it now," he concluded. "And to my way of thinking, it's just as well. The little girl has been well took care of.

Her mother's dead, we know that. We buried her out there in the old Wells' lot, alongside of your own parents, Eliza. If she had a father, no doubt he's gone and married again and has other children. It's just as well not to try to hunt 'em up."

Eliza thought so, too, for other reasons. She could not give her up. She would be too lonely without her. She simply could not live without her.

While these thoughts were in her mind, another slipped in there too. She was not conscious that it was there. "The tramp would leave in the spring." He had said that weeks before. She never called him that any more, nor had she permitted Beth to do so.

In her own thoughts she had no name for him. He was just "he," nothing more. She told herself that she would miss his magazines and his help about her flowers. She had kept up with Beth in all her studies. She had read Latin, and worked out Algebra. Now this would be gone. There would be nothing at all left to her, except her stories, which she had still continued, and her club in town. But what would they mean, with Beth and him gone?