Chapter XVII: Burying Ben

The river ran close up to Mrs. Vose’s garden, and could be seen from the back windows of her house creeping through the hemlock shadows that clothed the opposite banks. Here it was deep and slumberous, but further down stream it dashed off a rocky slope between the meadow flats, lying westward, and the village.

These flats could only be reached by a ford which would have been entirely silvered with sunshine but for a clump of splendid elm trees that stood near by, from which a bed of white sand sloped down to the water, looking like a snow drift from the distance. To this spot Lydia was sure to come when she had done up the slight work of Mrs. Anderson’s household. And here she retreated in a state of high dudgeon one day when Waldon had remained longer than usual in the sitting-room, which had been adorned for his coming.

Nancy Vose had joined her on the road, and scarcely had they reached the elms when her brother came strolling down to the ford, trailing his stilts in one hand and carrying a small painted basket in the other. Lydia had never forgiven the lad for the refusal to her request, and this sight rekindled her indignation.

“He’s going to pick strawberries for that man, as sure as you live, Nancy. I’ve asked him not to do any such thing, and he just goes right in my face and does it. Over and over agin, I’ve told him she can’t afford it, and all he cares is to laugh and ask which knows best, she or me.”

“Supposing you ask him not to once more. Mebby he’s forgot,” said Nancy.

Without waiting for permission, the sister ran toward the ford, and called after Ben.

“Ho, Ben, stop a minute. Lydia wants to speak with you.”

“Never mind. I know what it’s all about,” replied Ben, from the distance; “when I come back with the strawberries will be time enough.”

“He’s afraid to come; you talk to him so sharp,” said Nancy, coming with some reluctance back to the elms. “I never saw Ben so hateful.”

“So he won’t speak to me. He don’t try to make up,” said Lydia. “Very well, we’ll see.”

“Oh, Ben don’t mean nothing!” pleaded Nancy, seating herself under the elms. “Any way, he thinks all the world of you.”

“Does he?” said Lydia, biting the strings of her sun-bonnet. “By-and-by he’ll find out how much I like him.”

“Oh, you’ll get over it.”

“Will I?”

Here Lydia began to tear up the grass around her with energy. This exercise carried off the sharp edge of her anger, and she fell to thinking.

There was nothing in the scene before her to encourage wrathful emotions. On the contrary, everything was serene and pleasant. Beyond the opposite banks the meadows were golden with mottled lilies and buttercups. The elms threw their shadows delightfully on the river’s banks, and the stream just there sparkled and murmured joyously as if to entice them to good nature. It was a very coquette, that beautiful stream, sometimes stealing slowly and steadily along, reflecting the hedge rows on its banks, and rippling among the long grasses that drooped greenly down to meet it, or frolicking onward, flashing and eddying in the warm sunlight, and making music among the loose stones.

Lydia gazed on all this in sullen absent-mindedness. She was pondering over her wrongs.

Nancy also was getting serious from pure sympathy, and sat down by her moody companion, looking drearily down upon the bank where it shelved off to a space of white sand, which sloped gradually down to the river’s brink.

At last the girl grew restless; looking reproachfully at Lydia, she said:

“I’m getting tired of staying here with my feet in the grass. So, if you mean to sit here all day, looking cross as vinegar, I’ll dig that well in the sand a little deeper. It was awful nice fun yesterday.”

“What’s the good?” said Lydia, nursing her wrath.

“It’s fun, any way,” answered Nancy, darting off with her pink sun-bonnet hanging by the strings and flying out behind, and her hair all loosened to the sunshine.

She came back directly, carrying two great white wood-chips, gathered from around the stump of a newly-fallen tree a little distance up stream.

Lydia did not move, and she flung the chips down in disgust, looking wistfully at the hole dug in the sand—too deep for her to work in it alone.

All at once Nancy’s face brightened, a swarm of dimples chased each other across her mouth, and her sunburned face sparkled with mischief.

She flung down the white wood-chips, and ran to the bank where Lydia was sitting.

“Lydia, Lydia, I have a thought!”

Lydia moved sullenly when the girl sat down by her, and muttered:

“Well, what of it?”

“You are mad as fire with Ben, and, come to think of it, so am I. You know he killed my beautiful black and yellow kitten only because the poor dear bit his hands and clawed his face till they bled. I told you all about it.”

“Yes, I remember. You wanted me to help pay him out.”

“Well, I’m going to do it now, if you’ll help.”

“How? I should just like to kill him, but he’s bigger and stronger than both of us put together.”

“I know that, Lydia, and he don’t scare worth a cent—wasn’t a bit frightened when I put the poor kitten all stiff and frozen into his bed. I got up ever so many plans to pay him off all by myself, but there’s no fun in doing things alone.”

“Not much,” answered Lydia, impatiently. “I should like to try it though.”

Nancy, placing her elbow on her knee, and her chin in the palm of her hand, looked into her companion’s face.

“You see that hollow choked up with Canada thistles across the river there,” said she, laughing.

Lydia turned her eyes to the jungle of thorny foliage, where a hundred crowns of soft feathery purple were unfolding to the sun, and nodded her heed.

“Well, when the great flowers first began to open and the leaves were covered with pretty, sharp thorns, I thought how nice they would be, laid all fresh and green on the under-sheet of Ben’s bed, some night when I could hide away the kitchen lamps and send him up-stairs in the dark.”

“Capital!” exclaimed Lydia.

“No, no, I gave it up; Ben has grown terribly shy since he found the poor frozen kitten on his pillow; besides, if he did jump right into the thorns, we could not be there to see the fun. It was a bad plan, so I gave it up. There’s no use trying it.”

“No,” answered Lydia. “Thistles wouldn’t half pay him for going against me.”

“Or me, the cruel wretch, as if I ever could get over what he did,” Nancy broke in. “I wonder the ghost of that poor kitten does not follow him about everywhere; but he shall be paid off. I had a plan in my mind while you sat there pouting.”

“What plan, Nancy?”

“Sit closer, and I will tell you,” replied the other gravely, moving along, and patting the grass with her hand.

Lydia took a seat as she requested, and bent her head in deep attention.

“We’ll dig the hole deeper and bury him.”

“Bury him? O Nancy, your own, own brother?”

“Dear me, you won’t understand,” said Nancy. “Not forever and ever. I don’t mean that—not clear overhead, that might stop his breathing, but just so that he can’t get out. Oh, won’t it be fun!”

“We’ll do it,” cried Lydia, starting to her feet.

Nancy gave a shout and ran for the two great white wood-chips that lay on the sand.

When she came back Lydia had leaped into the hole, and had already filled her sun-bonnet with sand, which she held up for Nancy to empty into the river.

Never did two laborers work with more energy than these girls. Fortunately for their object, that hole was deep already, and Lydia, who worked in its depths till her hair was wet with the perspiration that dropped from her face like rain, soon found the surface above her head.

“That’ll do, I reckon,” she said, looking up and pushing the wet hair back from her eyes. “Just give hold here and help me out.”

Nancy knelt down, and gave both her hands in answer to this appeal, but all her strength was insufficient to raise Lydia to the surface.

“Bring a bean pole or something,” said Lydia, dropping back.

Nancy ran up the bank, and brought down the fragment of a broken rail, with which Lydia lifted herself to the sunshine again.

“Is he coming? Have you looked?” she questioned, casting a cross glance over the ford.

“No; he isn’t in sight.”

“Come then and break some twigs from the black alder bushes. No, I’ll do that, while you run down into that boggy hollow there and bring up some of the biggest swamp cabbage-leaves.”

Nancy went off like an arrow, and directly there was a sharp cracking of twigs in the nearest clump of alders.

Both girls came up to the elms at once—one with a bundle of sticks in her arms, the other half buried under a mass of great green leaves, on which moisture was trembling.

Down upon their knees they dropped, weaving the twigs, basket-fashion, over the mouth of the well they had dug. When this was done the twigs were concealed by a covering of green leaves, a treacherous strata of sand was smoothed level with the surface, and their work of mischief was done.

“Help me drag this piece of rail up behind the trees,” said Lydia. “No, no, I can do it alone. You keep watch for Ben.”

Lydia had hardly reached the elms when Nancy called out in great excitement:

“Here he comes.”

Sure enough, Ben Vose appeared that moment down by the ford, with a bunch of daisies, buttercups and meadow-lilies swung to his back like a sheaf of wheat, and a basket of strawberries in his hand. Swinging the basket on one arm, he mounted a huge pair of stilts and came with great strides across the ford.

Nancy ran toward him in high glee, leaving Lydia seated upon the bank.

“Come this way, Ben; you must come, or Lydia’ll never speak to you again. You ought to be ashamed of yourself to treat her so.”

Ben flung his long stilts on the grass and turned toward the elms, his lank arms swinging lazily, his head bent forward, and his face in a broad grin of sympathy with the evident glee of his sister.

“What’s the matter? What is it all about?” he asked, stumbling forward after the girl, who ran on flinging back smiles over her shoulder.

“All about! you’ve been awful hateful to Lydia, and she’s going out of the neighborhood on your account.”

“No!”

Ben was serious enough now.

Nancy paused and dropped a few words in strict confidence.

“I tell you, Ben, she’s sure to go back to the Mill Bridge if you don’t make up with her right away. Come along, now’s your time.”

Ben paused, and seemed to hesitate. Lydia had her face turned away as if resentful still. She was only afraid that he should see the laughter she was striving hard to quell.

“She’s sulking yet,” said Ben, addressing his sister, anxiously.

“Well, what if she is?” said the maiden, rendered serious by breathless suspense. “I would not be a coward anyhow.”

In order to prove that he was not a coward, Ben accepted Nancy’s lead. She gave a judicious leap across the dangerous spot, then turned to make sure that Ben was following.

A step forward, a faint crash, and down the poor fellow went up to the armpits, where he lodged ignominiously. The basket of strawberries flew up from his hold with a jar that sent half its red contents flashing up in the sun, and down on the white sand. The consternation in Ben’s face was something Cruikshank would have gloried in sketching; his struggles were grotesque beyond all ludicrous comparison. They drove Nancy into a wild delirium of glee. Lydia, who had been half upon her dignity, echoed the girl’s laughter as she danced, like a whirlwind, around her victim.

Poor Ben! there was no help for him; up to his armpits in sand, powerless to move, except as his head turned first to his sister, then to Lydia, who, half suffocated with laughter, sat upon the bank with a hand on each knee, cruelly enjoying the wonderful grimaces of his ugly face.

In vain did the poor fellow attempt to draw up his legs and set himself free. The girls had done their work thoroughly; the hole was too deep; his efforts were powerless. The sunshine poured its hottest rays down upon the mass of hair which illuminated his head, rising between those lank arms, like the face and wings surmounting an old-fashioned tombstone.

Still, Ben struggled with all his might. He clenched up great handfuls of sand with a blind effort to fling it at the girls, but it only blinded his eyes, and rained back into his thick hair. The contortions of his face threw the girls into convulsions of merriment, in the midst of which Nancy fell upon the ground laughing, crying and shouting feebly at every new movement or grimace of her prisoner. The very birds that lived in the old elms began to flutter among the leaves, and flew across the river terrified by the noise, and a fish-hawk, which was flying over head with his talons extended for some unfortunate perch, wheeled in the air, darted upward and away toward the hills, scared from his purpose by this unusual noise.

When Nancy was completely out of breath, and could mock him no longer, Ben ceased to struggle, and begged to be set free. His rueful face almost set the girl off again, but she gathered herself up to a sitting posture on the sand, using her finger with great decision in the terms she propounded:

“Now, Ben,” she said, stooping over with an elbow planted in her lap, her cheek resting on one palm, and her laughing eyes bent on the comical-looking head at her feet: “Now, Ben, if we will do it, will you promise not to tell of us?”

“Yes, you image, I promise.”

“You won’t tell mar?”

“No, I won’t.”

“Nor Miss Clara?”

“Oh, Nance, I wouldn’t let her know of this for the world,” answered Ben. “She’d alles be thinking of it, and laughing inside of her pretty mouth when I came in sight.”

“Just so. ‘Buried Ben,’ is what most people will call you if you ever tell. Not that we care; oh, no.”

“But I have promised not to tell. So do make haste, the sand in my eyes smarts awfully.”

“Poor fellow; but you see, Lydia and I must feel safe, you know?”

“What about?”

“Oh, everything. First, you must promise not to pay us off?”

“Well, it’s tough; but I will.”

“Will you be hung and choked to death if you do?”

“Well, yes; if that will pacify you.”

“You’ll never kill any more kittens?”

“Oh, Nancy, haven’t you forgot that yet?”

“No matter how much they scratch and claw?” continued the maiden, determined to make her conditions binding.

“Are you never going to get through?” pleaded Ben. “This hanging by one’s arms when your feet don’t touch is awful tiresome.”

“Poor fellow, I shouldn’t wonder; but then things must be settled just here; it’s easier for us, you know.”

“Do make haste, then!”

“You’ll never pick strawberries for that high-furluten gentleman to eat? Lydia don’t like it, I tell you.”

“But Miss Clara does. It is for her I picked them. She asked me partickler,” expostulated Ben.

“She don’t know what’s good for her,” said Lydia. “If they were for her I wouldn’t say a word. But anyway it ain’t fair to make you promise, hanging in the ground. Fun is fun; but I’m not mean enough for that. Come along, Nancy, and help him out. I like him ever so much more, because he won’t promise now, when it seems as if he couldn’t help himself.”

Before this sentence was uttered, Lydia was halfway down from the elms, dragging the fragment of broken rail toward the scene of Ben’s disaster. Using it as a lever, the poor fellow lifted himself out of the hole, and shook the sand from his hair and garments, like a Newfoundland dog freeing his shaggy coat from water.

“Lydia,” he said, taking his basket from the ground and shaking down the berries it still contained, “take ’em. I give up. I’d rather see tears of disappointment in Miss Clara’s eyes than have you keep mad with me. It’s hard on her and the old woman though. Now ain’t it?”

Lydia took the berries, but Ben could not make out whether she was looking at them or at the broken sheaf of flowers on his back.

“If the berries were for Miss Clara, these others I meant for you, thinking that they might help to make up, for I hadn’t the least idee you meant to be so revengeful.”

“It wasn’t her,” said Nancy. “She helped dig the hole for fun.”

“No, no. Don’t tell fibs, Nancy. I helped along, and laughed as much as you did when he fell in. It was awful mean.”

“Not so mean as I was,” said Ben, brought to sharp repentance by a brace of tears that seemed balancing each other across Lydia’s nose. “Now supposing we make up and say no more about it.”

Here Ben reached out his hand with awkward conciliation, while the old kindly expression came over his face.

Lydia put both her brown hands into his.

“Oh, Ben, do believe me, it was for Miss Clara’s own good I made a fuss.”

“Well, I ain’t a going to dispute that, nor anything else you want me to believe,” said Ben. “So take these, and do what you’ve a mind to with ’em.”

Lydia took the basket with a grateful smile, and the two walked away from the elms, making amicable explanations as they went.

Nancy looked after them with a rueful feeling of ostracism. Was Ben ready to make up with Lydia, and leave her, his own sister, in disgrace?

The girl darted forward and overtook the pair, fearfully anxious and out of breath.

“Ben, Ben, don’t keep mad with me. It was all fun, you know.”

Ben attempted to shake her off; but she entangled her little hands in his rough fingers and persisted in being friends.

“It was all fair; you remember the kitten, Ben; it was only ‘tit for tat,’ you know, dear Ben.”

Ben looked into that half-laughing, half-penitent face, and a smile began to extend his mouth in spite of himself. Nancy took advantage of this, and nestled her little hand into his hard palm; his fingers closed over it—Nancy’s face brightened—she gave a look over her shoulder, and beckoned Lydia to take his other hand. The next moment he was leading them towards the old house, good-naturedly calling both all manner of pet names, honestly forgiving them his untimely burial.