The old Diller place; a story for young people

Front matter

Book._jC^_i_5.

CopghtlJ? 22/.

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CHAPTER I ^HE departing visitor strode angrily

Jl along the bricked walk that ran beneath the maples, and, not pausing at the open gate of the driveway to look back toward the house, clambered, muttering, into his buggy, and was off. At the same moment, rat-tat-tat, rat-tat-tat, from the front piazza, old Robin’s cane smote the drowsy June silence. Rat-tat-tat! The sound grew angrier with each blow. Old Robin himself had become inarticulate, but you could hear his ‘‘B-r-r-r, g-r-r,” roared forth through clenched teeth. Rat-tat-tat! However reluctant, you dared no longer neglect that summons. Up from the strawberry beds on the right, old Danny came shambling, a pail of strawberries in his hand ; out from the chum-

Q. THE OLD DILLER PLACE

ing in the spring-house at the foot of the knoll on the left, old Davy shuffled. They stood at the piazza steps, two lean old men in overalls, and lifted frightened faces beneath broad hats, faces with mild, vacuous eyes and tremulous lips agape above the straggling beards.

The little man in the rolling chair regarded them a moment with his eyes so bright and darting that one could not see their color.

‘‘Well, what good do you think that does?’’ he jeered at their attitude. “Why don’t you do something about it ? Why don’t you two sprint after him, and upset the buggy and brain the horse, and kill the thieving rascal and carve and quarter him ! That would be something like! Why don’t you do it? That’s what I’d do! But what can I do? And they know it, the dogs ! They come and dare me on my own porch, my own porch, knowing I can’t roll ’em in the duck pond! And what are you two going to do about it. I’d like to know? And what’s going to happen if you don’t do something about it, I’d like to know?”

At their vacant stare, — sole answer, — he growled, ‘T’m sure I don’t know either! I don’t know what’s going to happen to you or to me, or to — ” But at that muttered name he grew redder than before, clenched his teeth more fiercely, and again roared his ‘"B-r-r-r, g-r-r-r” while his cane beat frantically.

Well, Lucy would have to come now, much as she hated leaving her preserve kettles. Although the cane was quieted when Lucy stood in the door, the roaring continued, but Lucy was looking at old Danny’s pail of strawberries. Gently she said, ‘‘Danny, I told you not to hull them. They wilt in the sun when you do that. Did n’t I tell you not to hull them, Danny?”

Old Danny hung his head. “Thought it would save you work,” he murmured.

“They ’re spoiled, Danny,” said Lucy patiently.

Suddenly old Robin thought he detected guilt in Davy’s eye. “Davy, have you salted yesterday’s butter again?” he demanded.

“Thought it would save Lucy,” old Davy excused himself.

“Mrs. Porter’s butter ’s spoiled, then,” murmured Lucy.

“So much work for little girl to do,” the two old men spoke together in apology; Lucy would always be a little girl to them. They stood looking up at Robin and Lucy, disobedient, loving, vacuous, the two old men, as always. Looking at them Robin’s smile suddenly flashed across his square, smoothshaven face, and he shook his head while he dived into the pocket of the coat too large for him, and brought forth a handful of licorice drops, which he divided between the two old hands stretched out.

“Run along, boys,” he said, “and don’t dare do it again.”

Thus, many times a week he dismissed them after he had summoned them to be witnesses of one of the rages that required the family for audience. For the hundredth time old Robin said to Lucy, ‘‘Now, why did they have to lose their wits both together just because they were twins? And why did they have to lose them at all, just along of getting old ? I ’m five years older, and I Ve still got mine.""

Looking from one to the other of the shambling old figures, the mother tenderness came into Lucy"s young eyes, — the twins made her so much trouble! And Lucy knew that the twins had never had their rightful wits, for so Myra Drum and Martha Beardsley had told her, although it had always been Robin"s pet pretense that his brothers had been like other people.

Now Robin carefully arranged a scowl, frowning up at Lucy. “ Pity you could n"t come when I knocked I I might be murdered on my own porch, and you would n"t leave your strawberry preserves!""

‘‘They're going to be the best preserves I ever made!" cried Lucy.

She had perched on the arm of Robin’s wheeled chair, as usual, to Robin’s apprehension lest she should set it rolling over the edge of the sloping piazza ; but old Robin loved this excitement.

Lucy touched with light little hands the gray curls that ringed the bald spot on Robin’s head, then with two firm forefingers smoothed the horizontal lines on his forehead and pressed a little kiss upon it. Nodding in the direction the visitor had taken, she asked, “Was he another of them, Robin.?’’

“ He was,’’ thundered Robin. “ Oh, I wish I had a gun 1 Why did I never learn to shoot ? ’’

A glance at the shrunken body, the size of a boy’s, surmounted by the splendid man’s head, might have revealed the fact why Robin had never learned to shoot.

He growled on. “B-r-r-r! they’re oil and sugar the first time they come, but the last time, and the time after that!’’

Which one was he, Robin, the incubator man, or the Russian clover man, or the patent duck pond, or the black Minorca eggs, or the self-acting churn, or the fall strawberry plants —

‘‘Heavens, girl, are there so many? I never counted!’’

“I’ve counted,” said Lucy. “Robin, do they all want to be paid at once, before we kill the spring chickens, before the raspberry money comes in?”

“It’s now, now, now, with all of ’em!” Then Robin’s manner changed. “Better go back to the preserves, girl!”

But Lucy waited, wide-eyed, for what she knew must come next.

“It will take the lower pasture this time,” old Robin said at last, his face averted. Suddenly he groaned, “One of these days it will take the roof over our heads!”

For Robin and for Lucy it was as if a piece of their own bodies were lopped off each time a fresh slice of the old Diller place was sold to satisfy one of the agents who had wheedled Robin into buying some new device for employing the few acres left.

‘'O Robin!’" gasped Lucy at his words.

‘‘Lord forgive me!” cried Robin at her face, “what’s happening to me to frighten you like that! Lucy, girlie, you know I was just talking! You know that ’s my trouble, too much talk ! Why, we ’ve got the old place still, the best of it, and we’ll keep it, too! Look here, girl,” — and with his stick he brought within reach of his hand a poultry catalogue that had fallen to the floor, — “see here, these fancy Dorkings! Ever see a rooster like that? Going to try ’em! Man tells me there’s nothing like fancy breeds these days!”

“Robin, don’t you think the Plymouth Rocks are better? We’ve got plenty of them. Don’t let ’s get any more chickens just now, Robin.”

For the first time there had come into Lucy’s eyes in looking down at Robin the same expression they had for the twins. She had grown very pale. Old Robin’s words had whirled her back from the happy coziness of the present, from the dear old house, and the sweet June afternoon, to the harassment and the terror of old forgotten days. ‘‘One of these days it will take the roof over our heads!” It was not the words that had frightened her, it was that Robin had said them, — Robin, whose love had roofed in Lucy’s happiness as securely as the old house had sheltered her, — Robin, the dauntless and the capable, who now sat examining the pages of that seductive catalogue with eyes feverishly bright. Lucy looked down at him. It comes to all of us just once in a lifetime, the realization that the person that we love best on earth has grown old. Suddenly out of that first blind terror for herself there came to Lucy a desire as blind, but boundless, to keep the old place a shelter for Robin, always, always!

It was well that Robin did not look up. He lo THE OLD DILLER PLACE would have seen on Lucy’s face the same harried look it had been his pride for seven years to feel that he had driven away forever. And alas for old Robin, and his feverish eyes, and the desperation of his projects to make the tiny farm pay, were they not due to his fight against his dwindling acres and his increasing years, to keep the old place a shelter for Lucy always, always?

Gradually, as Lucy’s light hands played with his hair, old Robin’s fingers relaxed their clutch upon the poultry catalogue and the fire flared out in his eyes. Lucy, too, in comforting some one, had brought back their usual calm to her lips, lips parted, looking as if they were always about to smile, which, however, they rarely did, out-and-out. Robin had begun to whistle: —

“ Brief life is here our portion.

Brief sorrow, short-lived care.”

Sometimes he whistled stormier tunes. Sometimes, too, when he thought no one was listening, all alone in the summer dusk, he

THE OLD DILLER PLACE ii

would whistle very low, ‘‘Mine ain countree,’" — not often, for at sixty-eight Robin had no mind to think himself an old man.

The drowsy peace of the afternoon was about them. However sharply fear might clutch their hearts sometimes, they were not given to brooding or to worry, old Robin and Lucy. And they still had the old place, and they still had each other.

Robin was dreaming back to the day seven years ago when that dusty old highroad down there had brought him Lucy. Six in the morning it had been, June, but raw and rainy, the clouds sullen and low, the village wrapped in mist. Old Robin, always early, was sitting out on his porch alone. He was thinking how dull the house had grown in the years since his mother had died. Before that Robin had always been busy with singing and shouting and jokes and waggery; a man can do that much for a wistful little mother, even if a man has the body of a thirteenyear-old, crippled to boot. Robin looked off toward the muddy old road, leading from the hills on the left to disappear across the hills on the right. Robin had never traveled that road. That morning he was whistling —

as being the hymn best suited to the bold buccaneering thoughts within him, for old Robin was bored that morning, bitterly bored. Then, as he watched, slowly there emerged over the hill and slowly wound down a sorry little caravan, three red wagons of a shabby little circus. Four wet and ragged ponies came trotting after, some draggled dogs followed, that was all — no, not quite ! Full ten minutes behind came another wagon. Unlike the rest, the driver sat erect, not huddled, and unlike the rest looked in and up at the old Diller place, leaned forward and peered up beneath the avenue of maples skirted by a bricked path on either side. Then suddenly the weary horse turned in at the gate, and the battered red-and-gold equipage trundled up and halted just below the knoll, at the terrace steps. Now old Robin saw that the driver was a woman, straight and gypsyish, and that she was dismounting and lifting something tenderly down from the high seat. Straight up to Robin she came, half dragging, half carrying a little girl of ten. The woman sank into a chair, propping the child on her lap, and bending on Robin great black eyes, keen as knives.

‘‘She’s sick,” she said. “Nothin’ much the matter, nothin’ much, ’cept that the life’s killin’ her. The joltin ’s too much for her this mornin’. I thought mebbe you had a little warm milk. She’s sort o’ faint.”

Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat ! — until the twins came scurrying from the kitchen.

“Milk!” ordered Robin, — “warm, and coffee, too, strong and hot.”

“Come, Luce,” said the woman, “see where we are! Open your eyes.”

Then at last the great eyes opened in the little white face.

‘‘See/’ said the woman, “she always looks like that, yet ain’t nobody ever hit her, as I know of, — not since I’ve been with this show, anyway! Yet she always looks like that!”

The woman’s eyes never ceased to dart their razor glances everywhere, chiefly at Robin himself. The milk came for Lucy, and the coffee for the woman.

“ I don’t know where she came from,” the latter went on after a while, “but I know she’s not made for the tumblin’ they’re learnin’ her, nor for the travelin’ neither. She’s different!”

Presently the stranger rose, placing the little girl quietly in the chair vacated.

“Could I leave her here a bit, a few hours, maybe, to rest, till I can come back for her ? It’s all right. Luce. You’ll be safe here with him.” At the step she turned, “And you’ll be safe with her, too!” she said to Robin.

The three old men had somehow got Lucy in upon the horsehair sofa in the Long Room. She slept all day, and all day Robin sat beside her. It had not proved a gloomy day after all, for at eight o’clock away went the clouds and out burst the cheeriest royal red sun Robin had ever seen. Just once Lucy half awoke, looking about her with strange eyes, and seeing Robin asked, “Home?”

“God willing, yes!” said Robin.

The circus woman never came back. She would not have got Lucy if she had come. Yet old Robin had never overcome a fear that some one might come for Lucy, had never conquered a premonition that one day, just as mysteriously as it had brought her, the old road would carry Lucy off to a world where Robin could not follow to take care of her; or, perhaps — and at the thought a teasing grimness touched the old man’s lip — would carry old Robin himself away to a world where he could not take care of Lucy.

Yet this afternoon in full security they were sitting together on the sagging old porch, gazing forth through the arching honeysuckle trellised against the pillars, down toward the road beyond the lower fence. From time to time neighbors went jogging along in buckboard or buggy. Automobiles — for the road was one that connected several summer resorts as well as two distant cities — whirled by in a cloud of dust, bearing strange people, so different from themselves.

Do you wish we had some of their money, Robin?” murmured Lucy.

‘‘I do!” responded Robin heartily.

Occupants both of automobiles and of rural rigs turned to gaze up through the arching maples to the cool, shabby old house on the shady knoll. One car did halt at the gate always open, and actually make as if it would have turned in, but at a querulous ‘‘No, no!” from a purple-veiled lady in the back seat, it went on to the village a mile beyond.

Young Ally Holmes went bouncing by in his buckboard, and through his hollowed hand shouted a far greeting up toward the porch. Jacob Simms, close after, with his usual grimness, did not glance up at the drive.

‘‘Shouldn’t think you would look this way, Jake,” growled Robin. “He’s made me a good offer on the lower pasture, but that gives him no right to pry into my affairs, look as worried as if they were his, and ask me how I ’m making out this year ! I ’ll have none of his impudence!”

“Not impudence, Robin,” soothed Lucy, “any more than Mrs. Beardsley’s asking me why I did n’t have a new suit this spring, or Myra Drum’s offering to make a new white dress for the LF.A. picnic, if I could manage to get the material.”

“Impudence!” stormed Robin; “I’d like to know if the village over yonder thinks it owns you, Lucy!”

“Do you mind, Robin?”

“No-0-0, 1 suppose not. I reckon the whole town has had a hand In raising you. I don’t mind so long as nobody. gets you away from me.”

‘‘Nobody ever shall!” cried Lucy; “but, O Robin, look, that auto has come back from the village and is turning in here!”

With his last words saddening his lips, Robin bent his darting eyes upon the mysterious motor-car, upon the face of the young man who was halting his shining red car at the terrace steps precisely where the shabby red circus wagon once had stood.

In quiet peace as on that other morning, the old place lay about the strangers. Below the terrace the lawn ran in daisies and buttercups down to the road, and in the shade of the maples by the gate a Jersey cow browsed.

A faint breeze stirred the ivy that trailed from the urns standing on either side of the terrace stpps of cracked mossy flags. The same breeze went singing through the grove of pines that on the right of the knoll shaded the house. Great unkempt spheres of boxwood stood below the piazza steps and, stretching the length of the piazza, ran a bed of pansies bordered with mignonette. The bees went droning in and out among the honeysuckle and the air was sweet with blended odors, honeysuckle and box and mignonette and the sharper pungency of Lucy’s strawberry preserves. From the stone spring-house on the left, splashed with much whitewash about the door, came the slap-slap, slap-slap of old Davy’s churn.

On the porch were old armchairs and old cushioned rockers black with age, and in the hall through the wide door one saw other dark old chairs, a shining floor spread with braided rugs, a broad staircase with white shafts and dark rail. Through the opposite hall door, also wide open, the back yard lay green and bright in the sun, and thence came the drowsy cluck of hens and the occasional quack-quack of a duck.

The elder of the two gentlemen in the front seat had jumped out, as had also the slim young lady in the back. Both were carefully assisting the purple-veiled lady to dismount. “I hope this satisfies you, Laura, said the gentleman.

‘‘Fm sure that depends on what we can get here. Elise, unfasten this veil. It’s insufferably hot.”

Elise put back the veil from the discontented blond face, tucked up the gold-gray hair beneath it, readjusted a pin in the lady’s collar, shook the dust from her travelingcoat, all with a lady’s-maid deftness.

‘‘ I ’m insufferably thirsty. Make them give us something cool at once, Hugh. Motoring tires me so. I wonder why we are always motoring.”

“Because the hotel tires you so,” replied her husband; “because everything tires you so. Ernest, where are you? What are you about ?” For the young man had stooped to something about the machinery, and was hammering away with slim, capable hands.

“He has to see to the machine, uncle,”

Elise excused him; adding aside, ‘‘Ernest, don’t poke. It always makes uncle cross.”

The dark, boyish face appeared above the side of the car. “Anything about me that doesn’t make uncle cross.?” he muttered. Ernest glanced toward his uncle as he was just mounting the terrace steps with his wife upon his arm, and the boy’s eyes were troubled, and the usual half-conciliatory smile was upon his handsome face.

“Hurry, Ernest,” repeated Elise, tapping the ground with an impatient brown boot. She was all in brown, — brown silk coat, brown bonnet with knots of brown thistles at the sides, brown gloves, — as always, in faultless stylishness from head to foot. This fact struck Ernest for the hundredth time as he glanced at her, not yet ceasing to hammer.

“How do you do it, Elise?”

“Do what?”

“Manage to look as if you’d always just stepped out of Paris — on nothing at all?”

“Oh, that! That’s easier than some other things ! ’’ the girl replied tersely. “ Ernest, do come!”

They turned up after the others, the brother and sister appearing much alike, except that Elise was thin to sharpness, that her voice was staccato, while Ernest drawled, and that in distinction to his slow grace of movement, her manner had a nervous tension overlaid by a determined tact.

‘T say, Elise, this place makes me feel creepy!”

“Creepy!” Elise turned in surprise.

^ “It’s so homey!” he explained.

Elise smiled ; it was so beautiful when, once in a while, she and Ernest did feel the same about things.

Then sharp and low came her uncle’s voice, addressing Ernest, “You would n’t have poked if there ’d been any lovely yoiing lady in sight on that old porch. I see only a little girl. And that blue calico type would never suit your type!”

“Juliet Poole’s my type!” responded

Ernest nonchalantly. But unseen a quiver ran along his lips, not at his uncle’s words, but at the eternal rasping irritation his voice always had in addressing Ernest. Was there any pleasing him? Ernest wondered. It would n’t have mattered if only Ernest had not so wanted to please him!

Of the stranger’s conversation old Robin’s sharp ears had caught only “ If there ’d been any lovely young lady in sight.” They made him regard with still more suspicion the dark boy among those four invaders standing at the piazza step.

‘‘Good-afternoon,” the older gentleman began, — he was a man all silver gray, coat and cap, hair and eyes, and his voice had a fine silvery inflection; “we are looking for a place where — ”

But Lucy had slipped from Robin’s chair. She stood beneath the arch of honeysuckle, the little lady of the house, giving them welcome. Behind her lay the old hall, all sunny green at the other end. Lucy’s blue skirts were not yet of grown-up length. Her sleeves were rolled up above round elbows. Her hair, ash-colored, dusted with gold, had its braids drawn around across the parting. Her face was an oval, pearly touched with pink. Her lips were parted in their half-smile. Her gray eyes with their jet lashes were as deep and as grave as a child’s.

‘‘How do you do?” said Lucy. “You are hot and tired, are n’t you ? Won’t you sit down and rest? It is always cool up here.”

CHAPTER II H OW quiet it seems to-night!’’ said Lucy

Old Robin looked up at her as she sat on the porch step, her cheeks flushed, her eyes strangely bright, her hands clasping her knee, forgetting the lapful of pansies just picked.

‘‘No quieter than usual,” answered Robin. “I wonder where they came from,” mused Lucy, “and where they were going to.”

“The road brought ’em and took ’em, — may it keep ’em, tool”

“Why, Robin, did n’t you like them?” “Did you?”

“I thought they were very nice.”

“They liked you all right, Lucy, — one of "em, at least! Which of ’em did you like best?”

Flushed, preoccupied, Lucy responded promptly, ‘‘The young lady. None of the girls in the village look like that. I don’t look like that, either, do I ? Was n’t that a pretty dress under her coat? I suppose she’s very rich. But, Robin, — ”

“Go on, Lucy!”

“They talked as if they were going about all the time. If I were very rich I ’d stay at home, would n’t you?”

A moment Robin’s restless eyes sought the road he had never traveled, then came back to the little girl on his old porch beneath the honeysuckle : “ Y es, I ’d stay at home, Lucy 1 ”

“Robin!”

“Yes.”

“Do they call hotels ‘inns’ in England?”

“Yes,” answered Robin, out of much knowledge of old novels.

“The lady talked about inns all the time. She did n’t like the hotel in the village much, did she?”

“Better not tell folks over yonder all she said,” chuckled Robin.

‘‘ But I don^t see why she scolded so about it. I don't think the hotel expects to make tea for people in the middle of the afternoon. But my tea was good, was n't it, Robin ? Your gentlemen liked buttermilk better, though. And was n't it funny that they liked rye bread and butter better than cake ? I was so glad I'd just baked. And, Robin, did n't they eat lots of strawberries and cream? And all the time she was eating, that lady kept scolding about ‘no inns, no inns,' and ‘this wretched country.' Do you suppose she's an American, Robin?"

“Rather!"

“Robin!" Lucy turned about sharply, spilling some pansies, and lifting to Robin a face all flaming bright with some confidence.

“Yes, Lucy, out with it! I've seen something in your mind ever since that auto cleared out, whirr and racket and young fellow and all."

But Lucy turned back, watching the road without speaking, and Robin, skilled with children, said nothing now, waited.

Playing with the pansies, Lucy meditated, “ I don’t think that lady was very nice to the girl when she tried to make her cheer up by saying, ‘Why, auntie, I ’ll have to run over to England and buy an inn and bring it back to America, and run it for your benefit and for all dusty autoists. Just think of the money I ’d make ! ’ Don’t you remember how sharply the lady said, ‘Elise, I wish you’d stop talking about making money. I’m sure you have all the money you need, and nothing to do!”’

“And then,” chuckled Robin, “it was, ‘Elise, fix this,’ and ‘Elise, fix that,’ and ‘Elise, where’s my handkerchief?’ If Elise has nothing to do, Mrs. Auntie keeps her pretty busy doing it! ‘Nobody seems to notice the sparks in the young lady’s eyes.”

Lucy shook her head. “I don’t think they’re very happy with each other. I did n’t think so when I was showing them about the place. Robin, what did you and the gentleman talk about while the rest of us were out looking at the ducks?’"

‘‘He’s all right,” said Robin heartily. “We got on all right after the first. At first he seemed to be kind of studying about my having wheels for legs, and began to talk gently, seemed to me, but I got him off that with a bounce! After that we talked about Pickwick and Peking — he’s been there, made me feel as if I’d been there, too. He’s been round the world.”

“He has lots of money, I suppose.”

“He’s got some other things, too. I don’t envy him! He seemed glad enough to sit still. His wife kept you on the jump, I noticed. We talked of other things, too. After a while we talked of raising chickens and raising young folks. I said I’d had pretty good luck in raising other people’s young ones, though I guessed I ’d had good stock to begin on. He said he’d had some experience in raising other folks’ children, too, although he’d none of his own.”

‘‘ But he was awfully mad when you took the young man for his son, — ‘Not my son, my wife’s nephew!’ ”

“He wanted the young fellow to think he was mad. I’m not so sure he was mad, though!”

“I don’t think they’re any of them very happy together,” sighed Lucy; then, “Robin, have you any idea what they were talking about when they stood together at the terrace steps I mean when they kept talking low and nodding and motioning back toward me, just before they went away; just after I gave them the pansies, and asked them to come again. Can you guess what they were talking about?”

Robin threw back his head and laughed, “You were too much for ’em,” he chuckled, “you were too much for ’em, little girl!”

“What do you mean, Robin? What did they mean?”

‘‘FOR THE OLD PLACE, ROBIN,” LUCY PLEADED

*‘How should I know what they meant, dearie?’’ said Robin gently; “I couldn’t hear.”

Then suddenly Lucy sprang up, and, perched on the perilous chair-arm, suddenly she poured forth all the excitement in a breathless voice that broke sometimes, that planned and pleaded, too; at last, ‘‘O Robin, may I ? She said it would be just the place because of the road. Robin, may I?”

Old Robin gazed at her with a strange baffled look on his face, ‘‘You think I’m an old man, don’t you, Lucy?”

“No, no, no!”

“You think you’re grown up, don’t you?”

“No, no, no! For the old place, Robin,” pleaded Lucy.

“You think I can’t, Lucy?”

“No, no, Robin; but may I? Robin, why don’t you say something? What are you thinking?”

“Thinking if I want any more red wagons, with horses or without, stopping down there at the terrace steps. That’s what it would mean, more autos, and tall young fellows in ’em. Lucy, what did that young fellow talk about when you were trotting ’em over the place.?”

‘‘Why, I can’t remember that he said a single word. But, Robin, may I do it?”

“ Is this what you ’ve been thinking all the time since that red machine went away? Is that all you’ve been thinking?”