Read Ebook: Jonker Willem van Arkel by Gerdes E Eduard Bos Gerardus Johannes Illustrator

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Ebook has 395 lines and 26890 words, and 8 pages

"I don't care," she decided courageously, making a new resolve, that had nothing to do with hair or complexion. "I'm going to study awful hard at school and beat everybody in the class, and then I'm going to college some day and be a lady. You'll just see if I don't. And it'll be far better to be clever than to be good-lookin', won't it, Sandy?"

That was just eight years ago, and now on her nineteenth birthday Christina was calling to mind with some amusement the humiliation of that day, and with some discouragement, that the high resolve of that occasion was far from being realised.

She came up the path from the barn, where the rays of the early sun made rosy lanes between the pink and white boughs of the orchard. For Christina had been born in the joyous May-time, and the whole farm was bedecked for the occasion. She was tall and straight and carried her two pails of milk with easy grace. The light through the orchard boughs touched her fair hair and made it shining gold. Her eyes were as blue as the strip of sky above her, and her cheeks were as pink as the apple blossoms. Mrs. Johnnie Dunn's judgment had not been reversed by the years, Christina was still a long way from being one of the Lindsay beauties. But she possessed an abundance of that loveliness that always accompanies youth and health and a merry heart.

She was not quite so gay as usual this morning. She felt that she ought to be grave and dignified, as befitted a person who was so old. It was no joke, this being nineteen, just next-door to twenty, when you wanted still to play with the dog or chase Sandy round the stack. Age makes one retrospective, too, and she was reflecting how far short she had come of attaining the great ambition born eight years ago in the raspberry patch. For here she was, on her nineteenth birthday, still milking cows and feeding calves, with not even a school teacher's certificate to her credit.

She had not failed to put forth every effort to attain, but somehow each high endeavour had turned out like the race for the quarter dollar in the berry patch; she was always just about to grasp the prize, when some unfortunate picker fell across her path with a spilled pail.

There was that day when she and Mary and Sandy were all ready to go to High School together. But Father died that summer, and it was decreed that the expense of three in the town could not be met. So Christina stayed, partly because the other two were older, but mostly because Mary cried bitterly at the suggestion that Christina go in her place.

Then there came a second chance when Sandy had graduated and started to teach school, but Grandpa took very ill and could not bear that she leave him. The third time proved the charm, for she did get away, and for a whole year spread her wings gloriously in Algonquin High School. She did wonders, too, taking two years' work in one, but the crops were poor the next year and Mary had to take her term at the Teachers' Training School, and the expense for two could not be met.

And so here she was at nineteen, burning to be up and away, and vowing to herself that not another year would pass over her head and find her still in Orchard Glen milking cows and feeding chickens.

The world about her did not seem to be in accord with her thoughts. It was full of joy and contentment with its beautiful lot. The robins in the gay orchard boughs were shouting that it was a glorious place to live in. Away up in the elm tree before the house an oriole was blowing his little golden trumpet, his flashing coat rivalling the row of scarlet and golden tulips that bordered the garden path. The little green lawn before the house sparkled under a diamond-spangled web.

From beyond the pink and white screen of the orchard came the happy sounds of the barnyard; the clatter of the bars as Sandy turned the cows into the back lane; Old Sport's bark; Jimmie's high voice scolding the calf that was trying to swallow the pail for breakfast; the squeal of hungry little pigs; the clatter of hens and many other voices making up the Barnyard Spring Song.

Christina's pet kitten, a tiny black blot on the pink and green, came daintily down the path to meet her, mindful of her two pails of warm milk. Sport, who had succeeded in putting the cows into their places, came bounding up in a fit of boisterous familiarity, and leaped at the little black ball with a gay,

"Woof! How are you this morning, you useless black mite?"

Two indignant green spots flamed up in the blackness and the mite itself turned into a fierce little bow, bent to shoot, and in a flash, bow quiver and all shot like lightning up the tree, spitting arrows in all directions.

Christina forgot all about her ambitions and laughed aloud, and Sport joined her, leaping around her and laughing silently in his own dog fashion with tongue and tail. It was very hard to remember that one was nineteen and had never been anywhere nor attained anything, impossible to remember when the orchard was aflame in the sunrise, and the oriole was shouting from the elm tree. Christina burst into song, just as spontaneously as the robins.

It was a very foolish song, too, one that Jimmie had brought home from Algonquin High School:

"Oh, Judy O'Toole, It's you that's the fool, For lavin' the county o' Cork. Oh, Judy O'Toole, It's you that's the fool, That iver ye came to New York!"

Ellen, her eldest sister, was frying the pork and potatoes for breakfast in the old summer kitchen. She looked through the door as the singer passed.

"Christine!" she called reprovingly. "Whatever will that girl sing next?"

Uncle Neil, who was drying his hands on the roller towel at the door, laughed indulgently.

"It isn't jist the kind of a hymn that would do for prayer-meeting," he said. "Hi, Christine! Is that a new psalm tune you're practisin'?"

But, Christina and her song had disappeared into the spring house. This was a little stone structure, built into the grassy hill behind the house. Down beside it, overhung with willows, a little spring gushed out of the sand, clear and cold on the hottest summer days. And so, in the little stone building, Christina's butter was always sweet and hard, like golden bricks.

She set about her work with swift motions. It was necessary to work harder than usual to-day, to get rid of the ache to be away doing something else. She set the separator whirling, giving out its droning song of plenty--the farm Matins and Vespers.

"Jimmie," she called up the little stone stairway, "hurry down here, Lazybones, and turn the Gramophone."

A big clumsy boy, whose body was getting ahead of his mind in the race for maturity, came thumping down the steps with the calves' empty pails. He pulled a loose strand of his sister's hair as he seized the handle of the separator.

"Now, Mrs. Johnnie Dunn," he warned, "don't go orderin' your betters round."

Their work was brightened with a great deal of merry nonsense. For Christina always made holiday of all toil, and even Jimmie, who was passing through the weary period of boyhood, when any effort is insupportable, found it amusing to work with her.

"I suppose, now that you're nineteen, you'll be gettin' a fellow," he teased, as he watched her wash the separator and put it out in the sun. "It's time you had one."

"Yes, I was thinking that too," said Christina agreeably. "I was planning that I would get Mike Duffy to be my beau, now that you're so sweet on Big Rosie. It would be so nice to be married into the same family."

Jimmie gave a squall of rage and disgust. Rosie Duffy was a huge freckled-faced girl, to whom, in a moment of generous weakness, he had given a ride from town, and Christina had used the fact to his undoing ever since.

He caught up the calves' pails of milk and fled up into the sunshine. It was never safe to tease Christina, you always got back far worse than you gave.

When he came back to the house the family was gathering for its breakfast, and a fine big family it was. There were just two absent, the father, who was taking his well-earned rest in the grassy church yard on the hill, and Allister, the eldest son, who had gone west ten years ago to make his fortune and had not been home since.

Uncle Neil MacDonald took his place at the head of the table, where he had sat ever since the father left it. Uncle Neil was very much beloved, but he was in no sense the head of the family. He was a gay, easy-going body, given to singing songs and playing the fiddle, and not at all calculated to keep a virile group of boys and girls in order. So, John, the eldest son at home, was the real head of the family, and his mother's support. For John was wise and strong and many, many years older than Uncle Neil.

Ellen, the busy housewife, came next. She was just as handsome as when Miss Flora Grant used to look at her in church, and since she had grown up many other admiring eyes looked her way. Neil, who was going to be a minister, but who was very much of a farmer this morning, sat by John. Neil was already in College, and Mr. Sinclair, the minister of Orchard Glen, who made it his boast that in twenty-five years of his ministry the Orchard Glen church had not been without its representative in Knox College, declared that not one of the train had come up to Neil Lindsay in intellect, and that the world and the church would hear of him one day.

Mary was the family beauty, all pink and white with glossy curls, and Sandy was still Christina's chum and confidant, and the last was Jimmie, hovering between boyhood and manhood. There was a plate set for Grandpa Lindsay, who had not yet appeared. He was rarely quite in time for the early farm breakfast, but he was always on the scene before they separated, to conduct family worship. His bedroom was off the winter kitchen, where the breakfast was laid, and they could hear him moving about singing and talking to himself.

Mrs. Lindsay was a little woman with a sweet, strong face covered with a network of wrinkles. Her hands were calloused and discoloured and her back was bent with hard work, but her eyes were bright, and her heart was still as young as her family.

"And it's nineteen you are to-day, hinny," she cried, looking at Christina fondly.

Christina made a wry face. "Yes, isn't it awful? I don't want to be so old."

"Hut, tut, old," laughed Uncle Neil. "Your mother and father were on their way from the Old Country when she was nineteen, and Allister was a baby."

Christina mentally decided that even crossing the ocean to a strange country was not at all as bad as staying for nineteen years in the same place, but she did not say so.

"Well, it's pretty nice to be nineteen, isn't it?" said Neil. "If it wasn't seeding time John and I would take a day off and go on a picnic."

"I wish something would happen," said Christina recklessly, "something awfully surprising."

"You might go out and hoe up that back field of corn," suggested Sandy. "That would surprise John and me more than anything."

"But it wouldn't surprise me a bit and I'm the person concerned. Nothing in the shape of work could possibly surprise me any more. It would have to be a spree of some sort."

"Well," said Ellen, who was always sensible and practical, "be thankful that nothing unpleasant is happening. Anybody would think you would like the barn to burn down."

It was rather a noisy breakfast, for the Lindsays were a bright crowd in spite of much hard work, and Christina and Sandy were always making merry over something. They were just finishing when Grandpa came in with his toddling step and his usual exclamation of pleased surprised, "Eh, well, well, and you're all here!"

Christina ran for the ancient Bible that lay on the shelf in the corner, with Grandpa's spectacles upon it. Ellen fetched his old red cushion from the sofa in the corner, and Grandpa sat down slowly and heavily. He had never been heard to complain in all his hard-worked life, nor in his years of approaching age, but at the morning worship he always chose a portion of scripture that accorded with his feelings. So when he read the 103rd psalm, his sister smiled, evidently he felt in accord with the radiant May morning. Grandpa was very deaf and laboured under the idea that every one else was similarly afflicted, so he read and prayed in a very loud voice. But the Lindsays were all used to it. This early morning worship set the standard for the day's work. And led by Grandpa who had travelled far up on the road of saintship, it fortified young and old for the day's toil and temptations.

When it was over the family hurried away to their tasks. John and the preacher-farmer went off to the brown fields, Ellen went to her baking and washing. Jimmie shouldered his books and set off on his Monday morning tramp to the High School in Algonquin, from which he would not return until Friday night. Sandy put off his farm overalls, and drove up from the barn with the single buggy; and Mary, with a trim dust-coat over her pretty blue dress, came tripping down the orchard path and climbed into the buggy at his side. Mary taught school at a little corner called Greenwood, a couple of miles down the concession, and Sandy taught just two miles farther on. So every morning the two drove away to their schools and returned in the evening. Christina ran down the lane to open the gate for them.

"Now, be good, and don't go and do anything very wild just because it's your birthday," called Sandy.

"Oh, Christine," cried Mary, "don't let Ellen forget to wash my pink dress; I got some mud on it yesterday. And if you could iron it like a dear, I'd be ever so much obliged."

Christina promised willingly, and waved them a gay good-bye. She stood at the gate watching them as they turned down the broad white road. That road could be seen for miles from where she stood, winding away down over hill and through wooded hollow. It disappeared in a belt of forest but came into view again running along the margin of Lake Simcoe far off on the horizon, and away beyond her view it ended in a great city where Christina had never been. But that road always set her heart beating faster. It was the great highway that led out into the world, the road she longed to take. And always in the morning when she stood at the gate thus, just before turning back to the tasks that held her, it seemed to beckon her to come away.

And then she ran back to the barnyard to feed her chickens, and made the second Great Discovery about herself.

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