CHAPTER II.UNCLE DAVID.
Mrs. Weston was tired and sat down in her rocking-chair to rest. Her day’s work was fairly over. The breakfast had been ready punctually at half past five, and it was well-cooked, as she had boasted it would be—corn-bread smoking hot, fried chicken, potatoes, flap-jacks and molasses—a meal for a king, to say nothing of a working-man and his negro help. Ezra and Napoleon Pompey had partaken heartily, especially the latter, for he had been living on underdone hoe-cake and cold pork. Then they had gone off to the ploughing, while Olive had bustled around and got forward with her house-work. At eleven o’clock she had run up the towel against the shady side of the house, a signal easily seen from the distant field, and signifying that dinner was ready. They had come home, men and horses thoroughly hungry and ready for food and rest. Ezra lay on the kitchen floor and talked to her while she washed up the dishes. And now it was three o’clock, and all the work was done. She thought she would read a little. She hadseveral books with her that she had been looking forward to reading. So she took up one of them and seated herself comfortably in the rocking-chair. The door was open and a warm air came in from the south along with the gleaming sunshine. Diana lay across the door-way, but kept one eye open, so as to see when the black hen came near enough to have a spring at her with any chance of grabbing a mouthful of tail-feathers. Olive’s eyes rested very little on the book, but much on the view outside. It looked pleasant enough in the bright May sunshine. The long brown patch of the garden showed a few methodical green lines that spoke of vegetables beginning to sprout. The meadow of blue grass just beyond was likewise by its hue showing the on-coming of the warm spring weather, and yet again further off, on the other side of the meadow, lay the vast field which her husband was ploughing. Once in every half hour she could see him turn at the head-land, and noted how seldom he seemed to stop and rest. Napoleon Pompey was riding the off leader, and from that distance they seemed little insects gently crawling backwards and forwards across the land. Pleasant it looked too and by no means hard work. Olive determined to go out to the field one day soon and watch the process from a nearer point of view; she might indeed herself hold the plough-handles, it looked easy, she would ask Ezra to let her, she would like to learn to do all sorts of work so as to be very useful, she would—confused imagesswept slowly over her mind, she leaned back her pretty little head and slept in her chair.
She awoke with a start. A large square figure stood in the door-way, blocking out the sunshine, and Diana, with the insane friendliness of a puppy, was trying to clamber up one of his legs.
“Well, little gal, I reckon you’re ’most tired out, ain’t you?” said the big man, coming straight into the room.
Mrs. Weston rose to her utmost height of five feet two inches, and tried to be dignified.
“Do you wish to see my husband?” she inquired stiffly.
“No, I don’t want to see Ezry. I come to talk to you a spell, and see you.”
“You are very kind I’m sure,” returned the little lady icily, but the stranger did not seem one whit abashed. He took a nail-keg and sat down on it and looked about him. “Wal, now,” he remarked, nodding his head, “Ezry is real downright handy. He’s gone and got your house fine and fixed up, ain’t he now?”
“It is extremely comfortable, Mr.—ah—I don’t think you mentioned your name,” said Mrs. Weston, with a snap of her black eyes. She didn’t at all relish the free and easy way in which this man spoke of her husband.
“Do tell!” exclaimed the stranger with vast cordiality. “An’ you didn’t know who I was. Why, I’mUncle David. I guessed everybody ’ud know me. There ain’t nobody else so big and awkward looking ’bout here on this prairie as me. Why, there was a man over to Perfection City yesterday, he come from beyond Cotton Wood Creek, and he said he calculated I’d be powerful useful on washing days, ’cause if they tied the clothes-line to me I’d do instead of a pole, an’ timber is mighty scarce anyhow.”
Uncle David gave a long loud laugh that set Diana into an ecstasy of delight, and was of itself so joyous that, after a moment, Olive also joined in with a merry titter. She had often heard her husband speak of Uncle David, as being one of the kindest and most simple-hearted of men. Her frigid manner melted rapidly and completely.
“Wal, now,” began Uncle David again, after his merriment had subsided, “how do you like our name?”
“Your name,” repeated Olive considerably puzzled.
“No, our name, the name of the Community, Perfection City. Do you like it?”
“I don’t think I do,” replied she.
“Jes’ so,” broke in Uncle David, apparently much pleased with this answer. “I knew you wouldn’t. Nobody does.”
“Why did you call it such a name—such a horrid name—and if nobody likes it, what is the use?”
“There now, that’s what they all say, until I talkto ’em,” said Uncle David. “You see I gave the name to the place.”
“Oh, it was your choice!” said Olive.
“When we came here, Niece and I, there wasn’t no town nor nothing, it was just open prairie. Ezry he come along too with us, and the Carpenters, and Mrs. Ruby, and the Wrights.”
“You leave out Madame Morozoff-Smith,” interrupted Olive.
“I thought you knew. Why, Madame, she’s Niece. She ain’t my real niece, she wasn’t born in my family, but she’s niece by adoption, and I hold she’s more to me than half the nieces I ever seen. I ain’t cute like most of the folks here, an’ there wasn’t no use in having me at Perfection City. I can’t do nothing. I can’t compose papers like Brother Wright. So I was studyin’ to see some way for me to come with ’em. It would ha’ broke my heart to be left behind. Madame, she come to me, an’ says she: ‘You’ll be my uncle. I want an uncle very much, and I’ll love you dearly.’ An’ so I was. I call it the greatest honour of my life when Madame made me her uncle, and added my name to hers.” Uncle David stooped and patted Diana’s head thoughtfully.
“When did you think of the name?” said Olive with a view to bringing him back to the point.
“Yes, jes’ so, that’s ’xactly what I was comin’ to. You see, when Ezry fust come here with us he wasn’t quite clear in his mind ’bout joinin’ in with us, leastwaysnot to be one of the Community for his whole mortal life. It’s a serious step to take, and he was a-doubtin’ in his mind, leastways till Madame she talked to him for a spell. He wasn’t sure fust if he’d got a call to community-life. He knowed it was the best, of course, and the true life: he knowed all that right enough, but he didn’t feel sure of himself as bein’ fit to found a city. It is a most responsible thing to be a founder. ’Taint everybody as is fit for it. Then Madame made it clear how she was a founder, an’ she is the most wonderful woman ever lived in this world, an’ she showed Ezry how it was his duty to help in this great work, an’ when he saw that clear he was dreadful sot on it too. We was a-gettin’ our houses up as spry as ever we could, and ole Wright he was a-buildin’ th’ Academy, then Ezry says: ‘What’s goin’ to be our name?’ It was jes’ called Weddell’s Gully, ’cause we bought from a man o’ that name. So Ezry said: ‘Let’s call it something to signify our principles,’ and one person said one name and one said another, then Wright said ‘Let’s call it Teleiopolis.’”
“Oh, that sounds very pretty,” exclaimed Olive. “Why didn’t you?”
“Wal, now, I said that’s very pretty, jes’ the same as you did. What does it mean, do you know?”
“No, I don’t know. I suppose it is Greek for something.”
“’Zactly so. It is Greek for something, and that something is Perfection City.”
“It sounds nicer.”
“Maybe so, but you look here. Are we Greeks?”
“No, of course not.”
“Then why talk in Greek?”
“I don’t know, except it is prettier.”
“Do you suppose them old Greeks, when they went an’ founded cities, they called ’em names out o’ some other language they didn’t understand, or did they called ’em good solid Greek names as any little boy ’ud know what they meant?” asked Uncle David with rising energy.
“I believe they called their cities by Greek names, in fact I know they did,” said Olive, hastily reviewing her stock of history.
“An’ why?” asked Uncle David.
“I don’t know.”
“Because they wasn’t ’shamed o’ their mother tongue like we are. That’s why,” said Uncle David, clapping his big hand on his knee.
“Oh indeed,” said Olive.
“An’ that’s what I said, says I, ‘We are ’Mericans, we are founding a new city that’s goin’ to be great things one day. We have our principles. Let’s live up to them. We hain’t shamed o’ nothin’. Leastways not to my knowledge. We are goin’ to be an example to these folks roun’ here. We are goin’ to show ’em how to live a better life nor they ever did before. An’ how in thunder can we do that if we start by being ’shamed of our own mother tongue? We hain’tGreeks, we don’t talk in Greek. This hain’t Teleiopolis, this is Perfection City.’ That is what I said to ’em.”
“What did they say to that?” asked Olive, much interested in the rugged honesty of Uncle David.
“Wal, I don’t know as they said anything much, on’y Ezry, he said he guessed he’d had his fust lesson, an’ he come and shook hands an’ said it certainly should be Perfection City, an’ so it was.”
“I shall think better of the name now,” said Olive. “Only at first I was afraid of people laughing, people who didn’t understand it, you see.”
“Oh, people’ll laugh,” said Uncle David. “People does a heap o’ laughing in this world without makin’ it one mite merrier for anybody. I like laughing myself. It’s awful good an’ satisfyin’ to have a real square laugh, but t’aint that sort. Mos’ folks’ laugh hain’t got no more fun in it than the laugh of a hoot-owl. I’d a heap sight rather have none at all. You ain’t agoin’ to mind that sort, I hope?” Uncle David spoke with a shade of anxiety in his manner.
“Oh no, I’m not thin-skinned,” said Olive with a superior smile.
“Some folks is made that way. When they have found a tender spot in anybody they can’t rest no how till they’ve stuck some sort o’ pin into it.”
“Tell me, does everything belong to everybody generally out here? It is so puzzling. This house,for instance, is it ours or yours or everybody’s?” asked Olive.
“The land an’ the horses an’ the cattle an’ waggons was mostly bought with community-money, that is Madame, she gave the money, she’s rich you know, an’ she’s generous and always givin’ to the Community, her whole heart is in it. But Ezry worked a heap on this house, he mostly built it all, an’ it’s his, an’ t’other folks’ houses are theirs. That’s Brother Wright’s over yonder, an’ that’s our house beside the ’Cademy, most everybody worked to get it up and fix it comfortable for Madame. Old Mrs. Ruby, she lives to herself in the log cabin we bought from Weddell, we had it moved there a purpose over from the Gully, ’cause she liked to live beside the spring so as to get her water handy. She had a little mite of money which we used in buyin’ stock.”
“So you do have some things as private property, just like ordinary people,” observed Olive.
“Of course. It would not be any sort o’ use to have everything in common, ’cause folks’ notions don’t always ’xactly suit. An’ what we want is to have everybody free, so they can be perfectly happy here. We don’t want to have no strife, an’ no jealousy, an’ no ill feeling one towards another. But there can’t be community in all things. What sort o’ use would it be for you an’ me to have community o’ boots an’ shoes?” said Uncle David with a great laugh, sticking out his enormous foot towards whereOlive’s dainty little slipper peeped from beneath her dress.
“Your shoes, my dear, wouldn’t go on my two fingers, an’ mine ’ud be big enough to make a tol’eble boat for you. There couldn’t be community in shoes, so there ain’t none. But with the lan’ it’s different. We all work that for the benefit of everybody, there ain’t no strugglin’ to be fust an’ get ahead o’ one another. We are all brothers at Perfection City.”
Olive was full of excitement when Ezra came back at sun-down.
“Just fancy, I’ve had my first visitor,” she said as she stood beside her husband while he was watering the horses.
“Who was it? Mrs. Ruby?”
“No, it was Uncle David,” and she gave a merry little laugh.
“Well, and how did you like him?”
“I think he is just charming. He is just like a piece of granite or oak or something of that sort, not smooth or shiny on the outside, but solid and sound to the very core. Oh! I shall love Uncle David.”
“That’s right. He is a good man,” said Ezra.
“And you know? he has made me understand about Perfection City. I shan’t want to laugh at it any more, and I don’t care if anybody else does. It was real brave of you showing your colours plain and sticking to them,” said Olive with a skip and a clap of her little hands.