Chapter XV: Lydia and Ben

Lydia Rowe—the girl had a second name, though it was seldom used—was permitted to remain with the Andersons, because of the sympathy felt at the farm-house by the old mill, for Clara’s toilsome life and the grandmother’s helplessness.

This girl, slim, wiry, and irrepressible in her activity, would have rebelled against the loneliness of the old house, but for some friends that she managed to pick up in the neighborhood.

Within sight of the old poplars, a small house was standing on the river’s brink. With its gable end toward the street, and a sparse, weedy garden behind it, this dwelling looked more like a vast railroad car with a peaked roof than anything else.

Within this dwelling Lydia discovered materials for a friendship that occupied much of her spare time, and saved her from absolute homesickness—the widow who went out to days-work, took in washing, and occasionally sold spruce-beer to such customers as she could get, was the proud mother of two children, who helped her in a rough way, but found plenty of time to introduce a great deal of mischievous fun into their usefulness.

The eldest of these children—a tall, loose-jointed lad, with curving legs and arms like flails—was errand-boy and horse-catcher for the whole neighborhood.

Ben was always hard at work or hard at play, which sometimes produced the effect of work. In the winter he set rabbit-traps in the woods and his baits of sweet apples were more successful than those of any other boy. Out of this fun came delicious little stews for his mother’s table, and skins to sell at the stores. Ben knew all the musk-rat holes along the beautiful water-course that flowed back of his mother’s house, and made no inconsiderable money by the fur secured in his traps. He could use carpenter’s tools in a rough way, and made sleds for coasting down the long sloping hill behind the school-house, where he went as a scholar perhaps two half-days in a week, but not oftener if he could help it.

In the summer time, when the meadows were crimson with strawberries and fragrant with wild pinks, Ben commenced a season of berry-picking, which lasted till there were no more blackberries in the pastures, whortle-berries on the hills, or wild grapes in the woods.

Beyond all these occupations, Ben had unusual resources of enjoyment. The canoe, or “dug-out,” which lay rocking in the river behind the golden willow hedge, had been hollowed with his own hands, from the trunk of a fallen tree. The stilts with which he crossed the ford just below that great clump of elms were of his own devising.

Ben Vose was no beauty, but the good-natured expression of his uncomely face, the genial kindness of a Newfoundland dog in his eyes, and an honest desire to please, had made the boy a general favorite, and won for him many an odd job, that, to use his own phrase, helped the old woman along more than folks knew of.

The sister, a bright, mischief-loving girl, younger than Ben, seemed to have absorbed all the comeliness of the family in her own person. She was enough younger than Lydia to feel all the influence of that strange girl’s sharp wit and abundant powers of usefulness or mischief. As for Ben, a rather shallow sense of strength and self-reliance kept him from being the abject slave that Lydia aspired to make him. He greatly admired her crossed vision and smart ways, but had a vague sense of male superiority that was constantly provoking contest and struggle between them, in which little Nancy invariably sided with Lydia.

One day when Waldon’s horse had stood an hour or more in front of Mrs. Anderson’s house, Lydia met Ben on his way to give the animal a feed of oats, in response to the confidential orders of the young lady.

“Look here, Ben,” said the maiden, standing with folded arms and uplifted chin in the footpath that ran parallel with the road, “I want you to just go back home and let that highferluten feller’s horse alone.”

“What for?” questioned Ben. “You’ve been spiteful all along to the gentleman, but what on ’arth has sot you so agin the horse, that you ’grudge him a few oats? Do you want to starve the dumb cretur?”

“Yes, that’s just what I do want, Ben.”

“What for?”

“’Cause he brings the feller here almost every day of his life, and he stays later and later every time.”

“Well, what if he does?”

“What if he does? why, Ben Vose, can’t you see?”

“See what?”

“So long as he gets nice teas in the house and his horse is fed outside, he’ll keep coming.”

“Well, what if he does?”

“Oh, dear me, what fools do live in this world!” said Lydia, unfolding her arms and dropping them to her sides in despair.

“Jest so,” answered Ben, with good-natured equanimity, “but who’s the fool now?”

“Ben Vose, you put me out of patience!”

“Well, let me go along and I won’t.”

“Not to give that horse oats? I’ve set my foot down and you shan’t do it nohow.”

Ben laughed with a deep inward chuckle, took the girl up by the arms, planted her in the path behind him, and marched on.

“Ben Vose, you’ll wish you hadn’t done that, before you and I are good friends again.”

“Mebby I will, and then agin mebby I won’t,” answered Ben, looking over his shoulder with aggravating good humor.

“There he goes,” said the girl, doubling her little brown hand into an impatient fist, “but I’ll pay him for it, or my name isn’t Lydia Rowe.”

Lydia sat down on a loose stone near the fence, and gave way to a fit of angry despondency.

“I can’t stop his coming that way anyhow. A girl that has lived a whole winter in York, and been with city people all her life, sees things that a fellow like Ben can’t begin to understand. If I could only talk to some one now, a minister, or something of that kind; but there isn’t a creature that I dare whimper a word to. Besides I’ve no business to say a word. Still that fellow shan’t come here so much if I can help it, making her feel like a bird one day, and home-sick as death the next. There’s something in his eyes I don’t like; he seems to swallow up her face with them like our cat when it sees a plump little mouse peaking out of her hole.”

Here Lydia shook her head at the shadow which followed all her movements, and seemed to find great relief in talking to it.

“I’m afraid, awfully afraid she’s getting fond of him. The signs are strong enough. Luncheon in the middle of the day, Oolong tea, that no one but the old woman ever drank in this house before. The milk skimmed unbeknownst every morning, and no reason given to nobody till out it comes in the best china pitcher for his wild strawberries. Then the days he don’t come it’s enough to make one cry to see her face—so eager, so anxious, then so down-hearted.

“If he meant anything particular wouldn’t he come Sunday nights as other people do and speak out like a man? Things are going wrong both here and at the Mill bridge, I am awfully afraid. Mr. Fletcher looked skittish when I spoke about Miss Bertha, and folks tell me he’s gone away for good. I don’t know as Bertha cared much about him anyhow. Since I’ve seen this other girl with her beau it seems to me as if she didn’t. I reckon she gave him the mitten: his face looked like it.

“Well, Miss Clara ain’t likely to mitten her beau—but then is he her beau? and if he is, would I like to have him about?”

Here Lydia arose, nodded affectionately to her shadow, which saluted back from the grass, and walked homeward, dissatisfied with everything there, but most of all with Ben Vose, whose devotion she had calculated on with certainty.