Laddie Takes the Plunge

"This is the state of man: to-day he puts forth The tender leaves of hopes; to-morrow blossoms, And bears his blushing honors thick upon him; The third day comes a frost, a killing frost, And, when he thinks, good, easy man, full surely His greatness is a-ripening, nips his root, And then he falls, as I do."

"Watch me take the plunge!" said Laddie.

"'Mad frenzy fires him now,'" quoted Leon.

It was Sunday after dinner. We had been to church and Sunday-school in the forenoon, and we had a houseful of company for dinner. All of them remained to spend the afternoon, because in our home it was perfectly lovely. We had a big dinner with everything good to start on, and then we talked and visited and told all the news. The women exchanged new recipes for cooking, advised each other about how to get more work done with less worry, to doctor their sick folks, and to make their dresses.

At last, when every thing was talked over, and there began to be a quiet time, father would reach across the table, pick up a paper and read all the interesting things that had happened in the country during the past week; the jokes too, and they made people think of funny stories to tell, and we just laughed. In the Agriculturist there were new ways to farm easier, to make land bear more crops; so he divided that with the neighbours, also how to make gardens, and prune trees.

Before he finished, he always managed to work in a lot about being honest, kind, and loving G.o.d.

He and mother felt so good over Leon, and by this time they were beginning to see that they were mighty glad about the money too. It wouldn't have been so easy to work, and earn, and pay back all that for our school, roads, and the church; and every day you could see plainer how happy they felt that they didn't have to do it. Because they were so glad about these things, they invited every one they met that day; but we knew Sat.u.r.day mother felt that probably she would ask a crowd, from the chickens, pie, and cake she got ready. When the reading part was over, and the women were beginning to look at the clock, and you knew they felt they should go home, and didn't want to, Laddie arose and said that, and Leon piped up like he always does and made every one laugh. Of course they looked at Laddie, and no one knew what he meant, so all the women and a few of the men asked him.

"Watch me, I said," laughed Laddie as he left the room.

Soon Mrs. Dover, sitting beside the front window, cried: "Here he is at the gate!"

He was on his horse, but he hitched it and went around the house and up the back way. Before long the stair door of the sitting-room opened, and there he stood. We stared at him. Of course he was bathed, and in clean clothing to start with, but he had washed and brushed some more, until he shone. His cheeks were as smooth and as clear pink as any girl's, his eyes blue-gray and big, with long lashes and heavy brows.

His hair was bright brown and wavy, and he was so big and broad. He never had been sick a day in his life, and he didn't look as if he ever would be.

And clothes DO make a difference. He would have had exactly the same hair, face, and body, wearing a hickory shirt and denim trousers; but he wouldn't have looked as he did in the clothes he wore at college, when it was Sunday there, or he was invited to a party at the President's. I don't see how any man could possibly be handsomer or look finer. His shirt, collar, and cuffs were snow-white, like everything had to be before mother got through with it; his big loose tie almost reached his shoulders; and our men could do a thing no other man in the neighbourhood did: they could appear easier in the finest suit they could put on than in their working clothes.

Mother used to say one thing she dreaded about Sunday was the evident tortures of the poor men squirming in boots she knew pinched them, coats too tight, and collars too high. She said they acted like half-broken colts fretting over restriction. Always she said to father and the boys when they went to buy their new clothes: "Now, DON'T join the harness fighters! Get your clothing big enough to set your bodies with comfort and ease."

I suppose those other men would have looked like ours if their mothers had told them. You can always see that a man needs a woman to help him out awful bad.

Of course Laddie knew he was handsome; he had to know all of them were looking at him curiously, but he stood there b.u.t.toning his glove and laughing to himself until Sarah Hood asked: "Now what are you up to?"

He took a step toward her, ran one hand under her lanternjawed chin, pulled her head against his side and turned up her face.

"Sarah," he said, "'member the day we spoiled the washing?"

Every one laughed. They had made jokes about it until our friends knew what they meant.

"What are you going to spoil now?" asked Sarah.

"The Egyptians! The 'furriners.' I'm going right after them!"

"Well, you could be in better business," said Sarah Hood sharply.

Laddie laughed and squeezed her chin, and hugged her head against him.

"Listen to that, now!" he cried. "My best friend going back on me.

Sarah, I thought you, of all people, would wish me luck."

"I do!" she said instantly. "And that's the very reason I don't want you mixed up with that mysterious, offish, stuck-up mess."

"Bless your dear heart!" said Laddie, giving her a harder squeeze than ever. "You got that all wrong, Sarah. You'll live to see the day, very shortly, when you'll change every word of it."

"I haven't done anything but get surer about it every day for two years, anyway," said Sarah Hood.

"Exactly!" said Laddie, "but wait until I have taken the plunge! Let me tell you how the Pryor family strikes me. I think he is a high-tempered, domineering man, proud as Lucifer! For some cause, just or not, he is ruining his life and that of his family because he so firmly believes it just; he is hiding here from his home country, his relatives, and friends. I think she is, barring you and mother, the handsomest woman of her age I ever saw----"

All of them laughed, because Sarah Hood was nearly as homely as a woman could grow, and maybe other people didn't find our mother so lovely as we thought her. I once heard one of her best friends say she was "distinctly plain." I didn't see how she could; but she said that.

"--and the most pitiful," Laddie went on. "Sarah, what do you suppose sends a frail little woman pacing the yard, and up and down the road, sometimes in storm and rain, gripping both hands over her heart?"

"I suppose it's some shameful thing I don't want you mixed up with!"

said Sarah Hood promptly, and people just shouted.

"Sarah," said Laddie, "I've seen her closely, watched her move, and studied her expression. There's not one grain of possibility that you, or mother, or Mrs. Fall, or any woman here, could be any closer connected with SHAME. Shame there is," said Laddie, "and what a word!

How it stings, burns, withers, and causes heart trouble and hiding; but shame in connection with that woman, more than shame thrust upon her, which might come to any of us, at any time, shame that is her error, in the life of a woman having a face like hers, Sarah, I am ashamed of you! Your only excuse is that you haven't persisted as I have until you got to see for yourself."

"I am not much on persistence in the face of a locked door, a cast-iron man with a big cane, and two raving bulldogs," said Mrs. Hood. "Wait, young man! Just wait until he sets them on you."

Laddie's head went back and how he laughed.

"Hist! A word with you, Sarah!" he said. "'Member I have a sort of knack with animals. I never yet have failed with one I undertook to win. Now those bulldogs of Pryors' are as mild as kittens with a man who knows the right word. Reason I know, Sarah, I've said the word to them, separately and collectively, and it worked. There is a contrast, Sarah, between what I say and do to those dogs, and the kicks and curses they get from their owner. I'll wager you two to one that if you can get Mr. Pryor to go into a 'sic-ing' contest with me, I can have his own dogs at his throat, when he can't make them do more than to lick my hands."

They laughed as if that were funny.

"Well, I didn't know about this," said Sarah. "How long have you lived at Pryors'?"

You couldn't have heard what Laddie said if he'd spoken; so he waited until he could be heard, and it never worried him a speck.

He only stood and laughed too; then, "Long enough," he said, "to know that all of us are making a big and cruel mistake in taking them at their word, and leaving them penned up there weltering in misery. What we should do, is to go over there, one at a time, or in a body, and batter at the door of their hearts, until we break down the wall of pride they have built around them, ease their pain, and bring them with us socially, if they are going to live among us. You people who talk loudly and often about loving G.o.d, and 'doing unto others,' should have gone long ago, for Jesus' sake; I'm going for the sake of a girl, with a face as sweet, and a heart as pure, as any accepted angel at the foot of the throne. Mother, I want a cup of peach jelly, and some of that exceptionally fine cake you served at dinner, to take to our sick neighbour."

Mother left the room.

"Father, I want permission to cut and carry a generous chestnut branch, burred, and full fruited, to the young woman. There is none save ours in this part of the country, and she may never have seen any, and be interested. And I want that article about foot disease in horses, for Mr. Pryor. I'll bring it back when he finishes."

Father folded the paper and handed it to Laddie, who slipped it in his pocket.

"Take the finest branch you can select," father said, and I almost fell over.

He had carried those trees from Ohio, before I had been born, and mother said for years he wrapped them in her shawl in winter and held an umbrella over them in summer, and father always went red and grinned when she told it. He was wild about trees, and bushes, so he made up his mind he'd have chestnuts. He planted them one place, and if they didn't like it, he dug them up and set them another where he thought they could have what they needed and hadn't got the last place.

Finally, he put them, on the fourth move, on a little sandy ridge across the road from the wood yard, and that was the spot. They shot up, branched, spread, and one was a male and two were females, so the pollen flew, the burrs filled right, and we had a bag of chestnuts to send each child away from home, every Christmas. The brown leaves and burrs were so lovely, mother cut one of the finest branches she could select and hung it above the steel engraving of "Lincoln Freeing the Slaves," in the boys' room, and nothing in the house was looked at oftener, or thought prettier. That must have been what was in the back of Laddie's head when he wanted a branch for the Princess.

Mother came in with the cake and jelly in a little fancy basket, and Laddie said: "Thank you! Now every one wish me luck! I'm going to ride to Pryors', knock at the door, and present these offerings with my compliments. If I'm invited in, I'm going to make the effort of my life at driving the entering wedge toward social intercourse between Pryors and their neighbours. If I'm not, I'll be back in thirty minutes and tell you what happened to me. If they refuse my gifts, you shall have the jelly, Sarah; I'll give Mrs. Fall the olive branch, bring back the paper, and eat the cake to console my wounded spirits."

Of course every one laughed; they couldn't help it. I watched father and he laughed hardest of the men, but mother was more stiff-lipped about it; she couldn't help a little, though. And I noticed some of those women acted as if they had lost something. Maybe it was a chance to gossip about Laddie, for he hadn't left them a thing to guess at, and mother says the reason gossip is so dreadful is because it is always GUESSWORK. Well, that was all fair and plain. He had told those people, our very best friends, what he thought about everything, the way they acted included. He was carrying something to each member of the Pryor family, and he'd left a way to return joking and unashamed, if they wouldn't let him in. He had fixed things so no one had anything to guess at, and it would look much worse for the Pryors than it would for him, if he did come back.

I wondered if he had been born that smart, or if he learned it in college. If he did, no wonder Leon was bound to go. Come to think of it, though, mother said Laddie was always like that. She said he never bit her when he nursed; he never mauled her as if she couldn't be hurt when he was little, he never tore his clothes and made extra work as he grew, and never in his life gave her an hour's uneasiness. But I guess she couldn't have said that about uneasiness lately, for she couldn't keep from looking troubled as all of us followed to the gate to see him start.

How they joked, and tried to tease him! But they couldn't get a breath ahead. He shot back answers as fast as they could ask questions, while he cut the branch and untied the horse. He gave the limb and basket to mother to hold, kissed her good-bye, and me too, before he mounted.

With my arms around his neck--I never missed a chance to try to squeeze into him how I loved him--I whispered: "Laddie, is it a secret any more?"