CHAPTER X
THE HIRED MAN
"Claire, darling—
"It's after ten o'clock at night and here on North Hero that's like four in the morning in New York, but I can't wait another minute to write to you. The funniest thing has happened—only I'll save it for the end of my letter.
"I haven't written to you since that letter with the crazy postscript, like a nightcap, on it. Well, instead of being deported from Happy House, bag and baggage, I seem to become more of a fixture, each day. And each day, Claire Wallace, I grow more and more to think I belong here. Just so often I have to shake myself and say 'don't forget—you're pretending.' And, I scarcely dare write this—I believe they are all growing a little, wee bit fond of me—the real me. Of course Webb loved me at first sight and so did old Jonathan—he's a dear! And precious little Aunt Milly, who is getting the prettiest pink in her cheeks and can laugh now, truly laugh, and is as proud as can be over her first washcloth, she wants me with her all the time. I can tell by the way she looks at me. And I am really growing embarrassed, to say nothing of fat, with the good things B'lindy cooks and if you knew B'lindy, you'd understand that that is her way of showing sentiment. But as to Aunt Sabrina—I am not so sure!
"Things have changed since I wrote to you—there was an awful clashing of wills in Happy House and Aunt Sabrina came out on the bottom and since then she has an air of 'having washed her hands of me.' And she's stopped the lessons on Leavitts, too, just when we'd gotten to Ezekiel. But I've learned more than she wanted me to—I've found out about the mystery, as I wrote before, only I can't explain until our own Anne says I may—because it's about her grandfather!
"I believe in my last letter I said, too, that I hated Happy House. Well, I don't believe I do. It's a funny place—just when you think its dismal and prisony you see something you just love—like one of Jonathan's rose ramblers, all pinky, climbing up an old gray tree trunk. I can't explain it, there's a sort of an appeal about the whole place that's spooky, as though it was something human and—wanted me! Isn't that a silly notion, especially when I'm just here acting Anne's part so that she can go off to Russia?
"And this whole village is just like Happy House—it is proudly clinging to what it has been in the past and defying the advance of the new things of the present. When I walk along the main street (and only street) of the village I stare at the shutup houses, for, bless me, no one would dream of opening any blinds, and I wonder if there's a marble-topped table in every one of those best-parlors and a family Bible on every table filled with pages of ancestors. I suppose I'm wickedly disrespectful—when I see my dear Dad, and oh, how I want, want, want to see him—I shall tell him that now I know he didn't bring me up right.
"I am a 'honery' member of a club—and now I'm approaching the exciting part of my letter. It is called Cove's Club and has rules that forbid my swearing, talking back, smoking, lying, stealing bird's eggs, hurting dumb animals, and that make me fight (and lick) every enemy to the club (which, alas, seem to be mostly mothers) kill pirates and defend my country. Isn't that heavenly? It meets whenever Liz Hopworth has to clean the 'meetin' house' which is always on Mondays and after there's a social. And to attend the meetings you have to slide down thirty feet of bank to what is known around here as Falling Water Cove, though I don't believe water ever fell there. Anyway, it is a historic spot for reasons besides the club—one is that it was from there Robert Leavitt and the women of the household, with little Justine, escaped when Freedom was attacked by the Indians and it was there, one dark night, Ethan Allen himself landed in a boat for a secret conference with Jacob Leavitt before an attack upon the Yorkers. (90 plus in American History.)
"And the members of the Club are (please read slowly) Me, Davy Hopworth, Dick Snead, Jim Davis, Kirk Brown and Peter Hyde—the hired man.
"Peter Hyde and I are the 'honery' members."
"I can hear you, Claire. 'That is just like you, Nancy Leavitt—swear you're going to do one thing and doing another.' Yes, darling, it is like me, I'll admit! But this time it's different. I really did intend to be very haughty and distant each time I saw the man but—I couldn't. Could you, if you had just been running a race which included vaulting a stone wall? I had to run the race to win Davy's respect and I had to jump the wall—well, to show I could! And of course I never dreamed the creature was anywhere around. But he sprang up from the earth, I believe, and was there at the finish. And could you look haughty with every hair pin dropping out of your head?
"And, anyway, afterwards, he explained something that has made everything different, but that comes later in my story.
"Today it rained for the first time since I've been in North Hero. A sort of steady pitter-patter, not the kind of a downpour that makes you hug shelter, but a splashy sort you long to run out in with your face turned up. All morning long I sat with the aunts (Aunt Milly was so disappointed when she saw the rain that I brought her down to the hollyhock porch and made her all comfy there) and I simply couldn't stand it all afternoon so, after lunch, I stole away. Now Happy House is divided (thank goodness) into two parts, so if the aunts are on one side it is easy to slip out of the other. I put on my slicker and cap and slipped away. I frisked around in the rain drops for awhile, then, I started toward the orchard to see if my water-proof box was water-proof. And as I walked down the path I heard the sound of hammering from the direction of my Nest. 'A-ha,' says I, 'I will surprise nice Mr. Webb at his work!' So I crept up on tiptoe. And, oh, Claire, it wasn't Mr. Webb at all—it was Peter Hyde! There he was with a hammer and a saw and some nails in a funny apron he had tied around him working away with the rain spattering through the leaves right into his face.
"I was so surprised I thought I'd run back, but just at that moment he saw me. And of course, the way I always do when I shouldn't, I began to laugh. And he laughed, too, though he was embarrassed.
"I am sure he didn't want me to find out that he had made the seat. But for a hired man he met the situation with ease. He simply asked me to stand there while he drove one more nail; then, he said, his work would be complete. When he'd finished he held out his hand and invited me to climb into the nest. All this with the rain spattering on us! Of course I had to tell him that it was perfectly lovely and had been such a jolly surprise and that I had thought Webb had made it. And now comes the funny part. He explained in a sort of sheepish way that he thought I was a little girl! Jonathan had told him that Miss Sabrina's little niece was coming to Happy House. When he caught a glimpse of me in the stage (he dared to say this) he thought I looked like a 'jolly sort of a kid.' Then that very afternoon he saw me turn a handspring in the orchard—and climb the tree! He said he got to thinking what a sort of dull place Happy House would be for any youngster, and that it would be fun for him to do some little thing to make it jollier for her. He admitted, to use his own words, that he was flabbergasted to find that I wasn't a kid after all! I'm glad, in a 'close-up' I do look my years!
"But can't you see that that explains everything and that he wasn't impertinent, after all?
"Of course, living in cities all my life, I've always had an impression that hired men were just big, clumsy, dirty looking creatures who ate with knives and always smelled horsey. This Peter Hyde isn't that way at all. He's tanned copper-color but his face and hands look clean and except for his clothes, he doesn't look much different from any one else. And now that he knows I am quite grown-up (at least in years) he treats me very nicely.
"We're going to do all sorts of nice things for Davy Hopworth, who is a very nice, bright youngster, but, just because he's a Hopworth, the other boys get punished for playing with him and that makes both Peter Hyde and me indignant.
"Isn't the world funny, Claire, how the sins of the fathers and the grandfathers are visited upon the children—at least in places like this? Of course my beloved Finnegans are too busy just keeping the present generation going, to think much about the past, and the world they live in rushes too fast to stop to think that Timmy Finnegan, maybe's, going to rob a bank because his great-great-grandfather, over in County Cork, ran off with a pig.
"It is too late in the evening to philosophize, and I mustn't let my wick burn too low or Aunt Sabrina will know I'm using the midnight oil. Don't be cross, dear Claire, if you don't hear from me every day; although you might suppose that up here I'd have a great deal of leisure time, somehow each day seems to bring something unexpected. And as I said on page 2 of this voluminous letter, I am growing fond of Happy House and there is a sort of fascination about everything here. Dear Anne, with her noble dreams, never longed to bring about the reforms that I do! One is to throw out the dreadful waxed flowers and peacock feathers and old grasses from Happy House and fill the vases with fresh flowers. Another is to sweep through the whole blessed village and open every blind and let in today!
"And then when I'm bursting with my longing to make the whole world better, I'm suddenly reminded that I'm just a little next-to-nothing that can't even remember to act grown-up, masquerading in our Anne's shoes and daring to find flaws in Miss Sabrina Leavitt with all the noble heritage of Leavitt tradition flowing in her veins.
"Good night, littlest pal, I wish I could be with you long enough for a good, long gossip. But, by and by—"