The Next of Kin Part 7

Corbett's boarding-house. He brought with him everything that any boy could ever want, and his room, which he kept spotlessly clean, with its beautiful rug, pictures, and books, was the admiration of the neighborhood.

Stanley understood the situation and spoke of it quite frankly.

"My father thought it better for me to come away for a while, to see if it would not toughen me up a bit. He has been rather disappointed in me, I think. You see, I had an accident when I was a little fellow and since then I have not been--quite right."

"Just think of that," Mrs. Corbett said afterwards in telling it to a sympathetic group of "Stoppers." "It wouldn't be half so bad if the poor boy didn't know that he is queer. I tried to reason it out of him, but he said that he had heard the housekeeper and the parlor-maid at home talking of it, and they said he was a bit looney. It wouldn't be half so bad for him if he was not so near to being all right! If ever I go wrong in the head I hope I'll be so crazy that I won't know that I'm crazy. Craziness is like everything else--it's all right if you have enough of it!"

"Stanley is not what any one would call crazy," said one of the Stoppers; "the only thing I can see wrong with him is that you always know what he is going to say, and he is too polite, and every one can fool him! He certainly is a good worker, and there's another place he shows that he is queer, for he doesn't need to work and still he does it! He likes it, and thanked me to-day for letting him clean my team; and as a special favor I'm going to let him hitch them up when I am ready to go!"

Stanley busied himself about the house, and was never so happy as when he was rendering some service to some one. But even in his happiest moments there was always the wistful longing for home, and when he was alone with Mrs. Corbett he freely spoke of his hopes and fears.

"It may not be so long before they begin to think that they would like to see me; do you think that it is really true that absence makes the heart grow fonder--even of people--like me? I keep thinking that maybe they will send for me after a while and let me stay for a few days anyway. My mother will want to see me, I am almost sure,--indeed, she almost said as much,--and she said many times that she hoped that I would be quite happy; and when I left she kissed me twice, and even the governor shook hands with me and said, 'You will be all right out there in Canada.' He was so nice with me, it made it jolly hard to leave."

Another day, as he dried the dishes for her, a.s.suring her that it was a real joy for him to be let do this, he a.n.a.lyzed the situation again:--

"My father's people are all very large and handsome," he said, "and have a very commanding way with them; my father has always been obeyed, and always got what he wanted. It was my chin which bothered him the most. It is not much of a chin, I know; it retreats, doesn't it? But I cannot help it. But I have always been a bitter disappointment to him, and it really has been most uncomfortable for mother--he seemed to blame her some way, too; and often and often I found her looking at me so sadly and saying, 'Poor Stanley!' and all my aunts, when they came to visit, called me that. It was--not pleasant."

Every week his letter came from home, with books and magazines and everything that a boy could wish for. His delight knew no bounds.

"They must think something of me," he said over and over again! At first he wrote a letter to his mother every day, but a curt note came from his father one day telling him that he must try to interest himself in his surroundings and that it would be better if he wrote only once a week! The weekly letter then became an event, and he copied it over many times. Mrs. Corbett, busy with her work of feeding the traveling public, often paused long enough in her work of peeling the potatoes or rolling out pie-crust to wipe her hands hastily and read the letter that he had written and pa.s.s judgment on it.

Feeling that all green Englishmen were their legitimate prey for sport, the young bloods of the neighborhood, led by Pat Brennan, Mrs.

Corbett's nephew, began to tell Stanley strange and terrible stories of Indians, and got him to send home for rifles and knives to defend himself and the neighborhood from their traitorous raids, "which were sure to be made on the settlements as soon as the cold weather came and the Indians got hungry." He was warned that he must not speak to Mrs. Corbett about this, for it is never wise to alarm the women. "We will have trouble enough without having a lot of hysterical women on our hands," said Pat.

After the weapons had come "The Exterminators" held a session behind closed doors to see what was the best plan of attack, and decided that they would not wait for the Indians to begin the trouble, but would make war on them. They decided that they would beat the bushes for Indians down in the river-bottom, while Stanley would sit at a certain point of vantage in a clump of willows, and as the Indians ran past him, he would pot them!

Stanley had consented to do this only after he had heard many tales of Indian treachery and cruelty to the settlers and their families!

The plan was carried out and would no doubt have been successful, but for the extreme scarcity of Indians in our valley.

All night long Stanley sat at his post, peering into the night, armed to the teeth, s.h.i.+vering with the cold wind that blew through the valley. His teeth chattered with fright sometimes, too, as the bushes rustled behind him, and an inquisitive old cow who came nosing the willows never knew how near death she had been. Meanwhile his traitorous companions went home and slept soundly and sweetly in their warm beds.

"And even after he found out that we were fooling him, he was not a bit sore," said Pat. "He tried to laugh! That is what made me feel cheap--he is too easy; it's too much like taking candy from a kid. And he was mighty square about it, too, and he never told Aunt Maggie how he got the cold, for he slipped into bed that morning and she didn't know he was out."

Another time the boys set him to gathering the puff-b.a.l.l.s that grew in abundance in the hay meadow, a.s.suring him that they were gopher-eggs and if placed under a hen would hatch out young gophers.

Stanley was wild with enthusiasm when he heard this and hastened to pack a box full to send home. "They _will_ be surprised," he said.

Fortunately, Mrs. Corbett found out about this before the box was sent, and she had to tell him that the boys were only in fun.

When she told him that the boys had been just having sport there came over his face such a look of sadness and pain, such a deeply hurt look, that Mrs. Corbett went back to the barn and thrashed her st.u.r.dy young nephew, all over again.

When the matter came up for discussion again, Stanley implored her not to speak of it any more, and not to hold it against the boys. "It was not their fault at all," he said; "it all comes about on account of my being--not quite right. I am not quite like other boys, but when they play with me I forget it and I believe what they say. There is--something wrong with me,--and it makes people want--to have sport with me; but it is not their fault at all."

"Well, they won't have sport with you when I am round," declared Mrs.

Corbett stoutly.

Years rolled by and Stanley still cherished the hope that some day "permission" would come for him to go home. He grew very fast and became rather a fine-looking young man. Once, emboldened by a particularly kind letter from his mother, he made the request that he should be allowed to go home for a few days. "If you will let me come home even for one day, dearest mother," he wrote, "I will come right back content, and father will not need to see me at all. I want to stand once more before that beautiful Tissot picture of Christ holding the wounded lamb in his arms, and I would like to see the hawthorn hedge when it is in bloom as it will be soon, and above all, dear mother, I want to see you. And I will come directly away."

He held this letter for many days, and was only emboldened to send it by Mrs. Corbett's heartiest a.s.surances that it was a splendid letter and that his mother would like it!

"I do not want to give my mother trouble," he said. "She has already had much trouble with me; but it might make her more content to see me and to know that I am so well--and happy."

After the letter had been sent, Stanley counted the days anxiously, and on the big map of Canada that hung on the kitchen wall he followed its course until it reached Halifax, and then his mind went with it tossing on the ocean.

"I may get my answer any day after Friday," he said. "Of course I do not expect it right off--it will take some little time for mother to speak to father, and, besides, he might not be at home; so I must not be disappointed if it seems long to wait."

Friday pa.s.sed and many weeks rolled by, and still Stanley was hopeful.

"They are considering," he said, "and that is so much better than if they refused; and perhaps they are looking about a boat--I think that must be what is keeping the letter back. I feel so glad and happy about it, it seems that permission must be coming."

In a month a bulky parcel came to him by express. It contained a framed picture of the Good Shepherd carrying the lost lamb in his arms; a box of hawthorn blossoms, faded but still fragrant, and a book which gave directions for playing solitaire in one hundred and twenty-three ways!!

Mrs. Corbett hastened to his room when she heard the cry of pain that escaped his lips. He stood in the middle of the floor with the book in his hand. All the boyishness had gone out of his face, which now had the spent look of one who has had a great fright or suffered great pain. The book on solitaire had pierced through his cloudy brain with the thought that his was a solitary part in life, and for a few moments he went through the panicky grief of the faithful dog who finds himself left on the sh.o.r.e while his false master sails gayly away!

"I will be all right directly," he stammered, making a pitiful effort to control his tears.

Mrs. Corbett politely appeared not to notice, and went hastily downstairs, and although not accustomed to the use of the pen, yet she took it in hand and wrote a letter to Stanley's father.

"It is a pity that your poor lad did not inherit some of your hardness of heart, Mr. Goodman," the letter began, "for if he did he would not be upstairs now breakin his and sobbin it out of him at your cruel answer to his natural request that he might go home and see his mother. But he has a heart of gold wherever he got it I don't know, and it is just a curse to him to be so constant in his love for home, when there is no love or welcome there for him. He is a lad that any man might well be proud of him, that gentle and kind and honest and truthful, not like most of the young doods that come out here drinkin and carousin and raisin the divil. mebbe you would like him better if he was and this is just to tell you that we like your boy here and we dont think much of the way you are using him and I hope that you will live to see the day that you will regret with tears more bitter than he is sheddin now the way you have treated him, and with these few lines I will close M corbett."

How this letter was received at Mayflower Lodge, Bucks, England, is not known, for no answer was ever sent; and although the letters to Stanley came regularly, his wish to go home was not mentioned in any of them. Neither did he ever refer to it again.

"Say, Stan," said young Pat one day, suddenly smitten with a bright thought, "why don't you go home anyway? You have lots of money--why don't you walk in on 'em and give 'em a surprise?"

"It would not be playing the game, Pat; thank you all the same, old chap," said Stanley heartily, "but I will not go home without permission."

After that Stanley got more and more reticent about the people at home. He seemed to realize that they had cut him off, but the homesick look never left his eyes. His friends now were the children of the neighborhood and the animals. Dogs, cats, horses, and children followed him, and gave him freely of their affection. He worked happy hours in Mrs. Corbett's garden, and "Stanley's flowers" were the admiration of the neighborhood.

When he was not busy in the garden, he spent long hours beside the river in a beautifully fas.h.i.+oned seat which he had made for himself, beneath a large poplar tree. "It is the wind in the tree-tops that I like," he said. "It whispers to me. I can't tell what it says, but it says something. I like trees--they are like people some way--only more patient and friendly."

The big elms and spruce of the river valley rustled and whispered together, and the poplars shook their coin-like leaves as he lay beneath their shade. The trees were trying to be kind to him, as the gray olive trees in Gethsemane were kind to One Other when his own had forgotten Him!

When the news of the war fell upon the Pembina Valley, it did not greatly disturb the peacefulness of that secluded spot. The well-to-do farmers who had held their grain over openly rejoiced at the prospect of better prices, and the younger men, when asked to enlist, replied by saying that the people who made the war had better do the fighting because they had no ambition to go out and stop German bullets. The general feeling was that it would soon be over.

At the first recruiting meeting Stanley volunteered his services by walking down the aisle of the church at the first invitation. The recruiting officer motioned to him to be seated, and that he would see him after the meeting.

Stanley waited patiently until every person was gone, and then timidly said, "And now, sir, will you please tell me what I am to do?"

The recruiting officer, a dapper little fellow, very pompous and important, turned him down mercilessly. Stanley was dismayed. He wandered idly out of the church and was about to start off on his four-mile walk to the Stopping House when a sudden impulse seized him and he followed the recruiting agent to the house where he was staying.

He overtook him just as he was going into the house, and, seizing him by the arm, cried, "Don't you see, sir, that you must take me? I am strong and able--I tell you I am no coward--what have you against me, I want to know?"

The recruiting officer hesitated. Confound it all! It is a hard thing to tell a man that he is not exactly right in the head.

But he did not need to say it, for Stanley beat him to it. "I know what's wrong," he said; "you think I'm not very bright--I am not, either. But don't you see, war is an elemental sort of thing. I can do what I'm told--and I can fight. What does it matter if my head is not very clear on some things which are easy to you? And don't you see how much I want to go? Life has not been so sweet that I should want to hold on to it. The young men here do not want to go, for they are having such a good time. But there is nothing ahead of me that holds me back. Can't you see that, sir? Won't you pa.s.s me on, anyway, and let me have my chance? Give me a trial; it's time enough to turn me down when I fail at something. Won't you take me, sir?"

The recruiting officer sadly shook his head. Stanley watched him in an agony of suspense. Here was his way out--his way of escape from this body of death that had hung over him ever since he could remember. He drew nearer to the recruiting officer,--"For G.o.d's sake, sir, take me!" he cried.

Then the recruiting officer pulled himself together and grew firm and commanding. "I won't take you," he said, "and that's all there is about it. This is a job for grown-up men and men with all their wits about them. You would faint at the sight of blood and cry when you saw the first dead man."