8042
“I'll never fergit the day Bill come—'twas
harvest time again—
An' the air blown over the yellow fields was
sweet with the scent o' the grain.
The dooryard was full o' the neighbors,
who had come to share our joy,
An' all of us sent up a mighty cheer at
the sight o' that soldier boy.
“An' all of a sudden somebody said: 'My
God! don't the boy know his mother?'
An' Bill stood a-whisperin', fearful like,
an' a starin' from one to another;
'Have courage, Bill,' says he to himself,
as he stood in his coat o' blue,
'Why, God 'll take care o' you, my boy,
God 'll take care o' you.'
“He seemed to be loadin' an' firin' a gun,
an't' act like a man who hears
The awful roar o' the battle-field a-sound-in' in his ears;
Ten thousan' ghosts o' that bloody day
was marchin' through his brain,
An' his feet they kind o' picked their way
as if they felt the slain.
8043
An' I grabbed his hand, an' says I to Bill,
'Don't ye 'member me?
I'm yer father—don't ye know me? How
frightened ye seem to be.'
But the boy kep' a-whisperin' to himself,
as if 't was all he knew,
'God 'll take care o' you, Bill, God 'll take
care o' you.'
He's never known us since that day, nor
his sweetheart, an' never will;
Father an' mother an' sweetheart are all
the same to Bill.
An' he groans like a wounded soldier,
sometimes, the whole night through,
An' we smooth his head, an' say: 'Yes,
Bill, He'll surely take care o' you.'
'Ye can stop a war in a minute, but when
can ye stop the groans?
Fer ye've broke our hearts an' sapped our
strength an' plucked away our bones.
An' ye've filled our souls with bitterness
that goes from sire to son,
So ye best be kind o' careful down there
in Washington.”
8044
Before us lay the peaceful valley, and on a far hill we could see the door-yard bordered with small trees and haunted by the ghosts of the battlefield.
“We've had our lesson,” said Uncle Eb, “but there's some that havint. You 'member Lon Tracy—he was one o' the most peaceable men that ever lived. One day he went to the village, an' some mis'rable, drunken cuss pitched on him an' Lon set to an' thrashed him proper.
“'I'm surprised,' said the Justice o' the Peace, when Lon come before him.
“'So'm I,' said Lon.
“'S'pose ye knew 'nough t' keep out o' trouble.'
“'So did I,' says Lon.
“'I didn't think you were a fighting man.'
8045
“'I didn't nuther,' says Lon.
“'How did it happen?'
“'Very easy—he rapped me an' I rapped back,' says Lon.
“'An' you rapped the hardest.'
“'Wal, when ye pay a debt o' that kind,' says Lon, 'ye ain't no way petic'lar how much int'rest ye allow.'
“Now that's what's the matter,” said Uncle Eb. “They's some that 'ain't learnt any better than to fight an' quarrel, an' when they git rapped they're goin' t' rap back, an' be a leetle too liberal with the pay.”
“But the great school ain't goin' t' be ruled much longer by its primer class,” said the poet. “An' the Principal an' trustees will put an end to fightin' between classes. They find it interferes with the work o' the school, whose great aim is given in three
8046
words: Peace, Happiness, Brotherhood.”
“Wal, I'm goin' t' play truant an' go fishin',” said Uncle Eb.
“School's dismissed fer the day,” said Feary, as he rose to leave us. “Eb Holden, we're both likely to be promoted before long. We're like two boys who've been away to school. When we get home they're goin' to be glad to see us. Good-bye!”
“Good-bye!”
So the old man left us, and we sat watching him as he crossed the brook and slowly mounted the green uplands.
“Purty good fishin' when Jed Feary's around,” said Uncle Eb, as we slowly made our way to the edge of the woods. “Growin' old, ain't he?—say, if his body fitted his soul what do ye s'pose we'd think o' him? I dunno but we'd
8047
feel like gittin' on our knees when he come around. It wouldn't do. This world's no place fer angels, after all. Wal, come on, le's quit thinkin' an' have some fun.”
9048
8048
S we entered the cool woods and came where we could hear the song of the brook, Uncle Eb cautioned me in a whisper, just as he used to do: “Now go careful.”
I found a rock at the head of a likely stretch of rapids on which he could sit comfortably as he fished. I prepared his tackle and baited his hook for him, and stood by as it went plunking into smooth water. Sitting there, he seemed to forget his feebleness, and his voice and figure were full of animation. His hair, as white as snow, was
8049
like the crown of glory of which David sings.
He kept hauling and giving out. Now and then, as he felt a nibble, he addressed the fish:
“How d' do? Come ag'in,” he said, as he continued to work his line. “Tut, tut! you're another!” he exclaimed, with a sharp twitch.
The trout was a large one, and Uncle Eb, with a six-ounce rod, had not been able to lift and swing him ashore in the old fashion. He held on with jiggling hands and a look of great animation as the fish took line in half a dozen quick rushes.
“You're tryin' to jerk me out o' my boots”—the words were emphasized and broken here and there by the struggle. The rod's vibration had got into his voice and all the upper part
8050
of his body. “Stop that, ye scalawag!” he went on. “Consarn ye, come here to me!”
He seized the line, flung his rod on the shore, and began to haul vigorously hand over hand. When the splendid fish lay gasping at his feet, Uncle Eb turned to me and shook his head. He sat breathing hard, as if the exertion had wearied him. Soon he took out his jack-knife, a serious look on his face.
“You go cut me an alder pole,” said he, with decision. “That thing ain't no better'n a spear o' grass.”
I ran up the shore, glad of the chance he had given me to conceal my laughter. I cut a long, stout pole among the bushes, and returned, trimming it as I ran.
“Willie, hurry up!” said he, with an eager look on his face, as if it were one
8051
again.
“There,” said he, trying the pole, “that's a reg'lar stun-lifter. I can sass 'em back now. Put on the hook an' line.”
In a moment he gave his bait a fling, and assumed that alert and eager attitude so familiar to me.
“Tut, tut!” said he, with a lively twitch. “I dare ye to do it ag'in.”
Soon the rod sprang upward, and a wriggling trout rose in the air, swung above the head of Uncle Eb, and fell to the earth behind him.
“There, by gravy! that's what I call fun,” said he. “No, I don't want to torment 'em there 'n the water; 'taint fair. I'd ruther fetch 'em right out.”
I unhooked the fish for him.
“Look here, you go on 'bout yer
8052
business,” he added. “I can bait my own hook.”
I left him and began to whip my way down the brook. It was good fishing, but the scene was by far the best part of it. What was there in those lovely and familiar shores to keep my heart so busy? The crows, hurrying like boys let out of school, seemed to denounce me as an alien. A crane flew over my head, crunkling a fierce complaint of me, and the startled kingfisher was most inhospitable.
A small, bare-footed boy passed me, fishing on the farther bank. He had a happy face, and mine—well, I turned away for very shame of it. The boy looked at me critically, as if I were a trespasser, and I remembered how I felt years ago, when I saw a stranger on the brook.
8053
I remembered how, as a boy, I used to long for a watch-chain, and how once Uncle Eb hung his upon my coat, and said I could “call it mine.” So it goes all through life. We are the veriest children, and there is nothing one may really own. He may call it his for a little while, just to satisfy him. The whole matter of deeds and titles had become now a kind of baby's play. You may think you own the land, and you pass on; but there it is, while others, full of the same old illusion, take your place.
I followed the brook to where it idled on, bordered with buttercups, in a great meadow. The music and the color halted me, and I lay on my back in the tall grass for a little while, and looked up at the sky and listened. There under the clover tops I could
8054
hear the low, sweet music of many wings—the continuous treble of the honey-bee in chord with flashes of deep bass from the wings of that big, wild, improvident cousin of his.
Above this lower heaven I could hear a tournament of bobolinks. They flew over me, and clung in the grass tops and sang—their notes bursting out like those of a plucked string. What a pressure of delight was behind them! Hope and I used to go there for berries when we were children, and later—when youth had come, and the colors of the wild rose and the tiger-lily were in our faces—we found a secret joy in being alone together. Those days there was something beautiful in that hidden fear we had of each other—was it not the native, imperial majesty of innocence? The look of
8055
her eyes seemed to lift me up and prepare me for any sacrifice. That orchestra of the meadow spoke our thoughts for us—youth, delight and love were in its music.
Soon I heard a merry laugh and the sound of feet approaching, and then the voice of a young man.
“Mary, I love you,” it said, “and I would die for your sake.”
The same old story, and I knew that he meant every word of it. What Mary may have said to him I know well enough, too, although it came not to my ears; for when I rose, by and by, and crossed the woodland and saw them walking up the slopes, she all in white and crowned with meadow flowers, I observed that his arm supported her in the right way.
I took down my rod and hurried up
8056
stream, and came soon where I could see Uncle Eb sitting motionless and leaning on a tree trunk. I approached him silently. His head leaned forward; the “pole” lay upon his knees. Like a child, weary of play, he had fallen asleep. His trout lay in a row beside him; there were at least a dozen. That old body was now, indeed, a very bad fit, and more—it was too shabby for a spirit so noble and brave. I knew, as I looked down upon him, that Uncle Eb would fish no more after that day. In a moment there came a twitch on the line. He woke suddenly, tightened his grasp, and flung another fish into the air. It broke free and fell upon the ripples.
“Huh! ketched me nappin',” said he. “I declare, Bill, I'm kind o' shamed.”
8057
I could see that he felt the pathos of that moment.
“I guess we've fished enough,” he said to himself, as he broke off the end of the pole and began to wind his line upon it. “When the fish hev t' wake ye up to be hauled in its redic'lous. The next time I go fishin' with you I'm goin' t' be rigged proper.”
In a moment he went on: “Fishin' ain't what it used t' be. I've grown old and lazy, an' so has the brook. They've cut the timber an' dried the springs, an' by an' by the live water will go down to the big sea, an' the dead water will sink into the ground, an' you won't see any brook there.”
We began our walk up one of the cowpaths.
“One more look,” said he, facing about, and gazing up and down the
8058
familiar valley. “We've had a lot o' fun here—'bout as much as we're entitled to, I guess—let 'em have it.”
So, in a way, he deeded Tinkle Brook and its valley to future generations.
We proceeded in silence for a moment, and soon he added: “That little brook has done a lot fer us. It took our thoughts off the hard work, and helped us fergit the mortgage, an' taught us to laugh like the rapid water. It never owed us anything after the day Mose Tupper lost his pole. Put it all together, I guess I've laughed a year over that. 'Bout the best payin' job we ever done. Mose thought he had a whale, an' I don't blame him. Fact is, a lost fish is an awful liar. A trout would deceive the devil when he's way down out o' sight in the
8059
water, an' his weight is telegraphed through twenty feet o' line. When ye fetch him up an' look him square in the eye he tells a different story. I blame the fish more'n I do the folks.
“That 'swallered pole' was a kind of a magic wand round here in Faraway. Ye could allwus fetch a laugh with it. Sometimes I think they must 'a' lost one commandment, an' that is: Be happy. Ye can't be happy an' be bad. I never see a bad man in my life that was hevin' fun. Let me hear a man laugh an' I'll tell ye what kind o' metal there is in him. There ain't any sech devilish sound in the world as the laugh of a wicked man. It's like the cry o' the swift, an' you 'member what that was.”
Uncle Eb shook with laughter as I
8060
tried the cry of that deadly bugbear of my youth.
We got into the wagon presently and drove away. The sun was down as I drew up at the old school-house.
“Run in fer a minute an' set down in yer old seat an' see how it seems,” said Uncle Eb. “They're goin' to tear it down, an' tain't likely you'll see it ag'in.”
I went to the door and lifted its clanking latch and walked in. My footsteps filled the silent room with echoes, and how small it looked! There was the same indescribable odor of the old time country school—that of pine timber and seasoning fire-wood. I sat down in the familiar seat carved by jack-knives. There was my name surrounded by others cut in the rough wood.
8061
Ghosts began to file into the dusky room, and above a plaintive hum of insects it seemed as if I could hear the voices of children and bits of the old lessons—that loud, triumphant sound of tender intelligence as it began to seize the alphabet; those parrot-like answers: “Round like a ball,”
“Three-fourths water and one-fourth land,” and others like them.
“William Brower, stop whispering!” I seemed to hear the teacher say. What was the writing on the blackboard? I rose and walked to it as I had been wont to do when the teacher gave his command. There in the silence of the closing day I learned my last lesson in the old school-house. These lines in the large, familiar script of Feary, who it seems had been a
8062
visitor at the last day of school, were written on the board:
Attention all—the old school's end is near.
Behold the sum of all its lessons here:
If e'er by loss of friends your heart is bowed!
Straightway go find ye others in the crowd.
Let Love's discoveries console its pain
And each year's loss be smaller than its gain.
God's love is in them—count the friends ye
get
The only wealth, and foes the only debt.
In life and Nature read the simple plan:
Be kind, be just, and fear not God or man.
School's out.
I passed through the door—not eagerly, as when I had been a boy, but with feet paced by sober thought—and I felt like one who had “improved his time,” as they used to say.
8063
We rode in silence on our way to Hillsborough, as the dusk fell.
“The end o' good things is better'n the beginning,” said Uncle Eb, as we got out of the carriage.
8064
9064
NE more scene from that last year, and I am done with it. There is much comes crowding out of my memory, but only one thing which I could wish were now a part of the record. Yet I have withheld it, and well might keep it to myself, for need of better words than any which have come to me in all my life.
Christmas! And we were back in the old home again. We had brought the children with us. Somehow they seemed to know our needs and perils. They rallied to our defence, marching
8065
up and down with fife and drum, and waving banners, and shouts of victory—a battalion as brave as any in the great army of happiness. They saved the day which else had been overrun with thoughts and fears from the camp of the enemy. Well, we had a cheerful time of it, and not an eye closed until after the stroke of ten that night.
Slowly, silence fell in the little house. Below-stairs the lights were out, and Hope and I were sitting alone before the fire. We were talking of old times in the dim firelight. Soon there came a gentle rap at our door. It was Uncle Eb with a candle in his hand.
“I jes' thought I'd come in an' talk a leetle conversation,” said he, and sat down, laughing with good humor.
“'Member the ol' hair trunk?” he asked, and when I assured him that we
8066
could not ever forget it, he put his hand over his face and shook with silent and almost sorrowful laughter.
“I 'member years ago, you use' to think my watch was a gran' thing, an' when ye left hum ye wanted t' take it with ye, but we didn't think it was best then.”
“Yes, I remember that.”
“I don't s'pose”—he hesitated as a little embarrassed—“you've got so. many splendid things now, I—I don't s'pose—”
“Oh, Uncle Eb, I'd prize it above all things,” I assured him.
“Would ye? Here 't is,” said he, with a smile, as he took it out of his pocket and put it in my hand. “It's been a gran' good watch.”
“But you—you'll need it.”
“No,” he answered. “The clock
8067
'll do fer me—I'm goin' to move soon.”
“Move!” we both exclaimed. “Goin' out in the fields to work ag'in,” he added, cheerfully.
After a glance at our faces, he added: “I ain't afraid. It's all goin' t' be fair an' square. If we couldn't meet them we loved, an' do fer 'em, it wouldn't be honest. We'd all feel as if we'd been kind o' cheated. Suthin' has always said to me: 'Eb Holden, when ye git through here yer goin' t' meet them ye love.' Who do ye s'pose it was that spoke t' me? I couldn't tell ye, but somebody said it, an' whoever 'tis He says the same thing to most ev'ry one in the world.”
“It was the voice of Nature,” I suggested.
“Call it God er Natur' er what ye
8068
please—fact is it's built into us an' is a part of us jest as the beams are a part o' this house. I don't b'lieve it was put there fer nuthin. An' it wa'n'. put there t' make fools of us nuther. I tell ye, Bill, this givin' life fer death ain't no hoss-trade. If ye give good value, ye're goin' to git good value, an' what folks hev been led to hope an' pray fer since Love come into the world, they're goin' to have—sure.”
He went to Hope and put a tiny locket in her hand. Beneath its panel lay a ringlet of hair, golden-brown.
“It was give to me,” he said, as he stood looking down at her. “Them little threads o' gold is kind o' wove all into my life. Sixty year ago I begun to spin my hope with 'em. It's grow-in' stronger an' stronger. It ain't
8069
possible that Natur' has been a foolin' me all this time.”
After a little silence, he said to Hope: “I want you to have it.”
Her pleasure delighted him, and his face glowed with tender feeling.
Slowly he left us. The candle trembled in his hand, and flickering shadows fell upon us. He stopped in the open door. We knew well what thought was in his mind as he whispered back to us:
“Merry Chris'mas—ev'ry year.” Soon I went to his room. The door was open. He had drawn off his boots and was sitting on the side of his bed. I did not enter or speak to him, as I had planned to do; for I saw him leaning forward on his elbows and wiping his eyes, and I heard him saying to himself:
8070
“Eb Holden, you oughter be 'shamed, I declare. Merry Chris'mas! I tell ye. Hold up yer head.”
I returned to Hope, and we sat long looking into the firelight. Youth and its grace and color were gone from us, yet I saw in her that beauty “which maketh the face to shine.”
Our love lay as a road before and behind us. Long ago it had left the enchanted gardens and had led us far, and was now entering the City of Faith and we could see its splendor against the cloud of mystery beyond. Our souls sought each other in the silence and were filled with awe as they looked ahead of them and, at last, I understood the love of a man for a woman.