Frank of Freedom Hill Part 14

"But the children, Doctor. I'm trying to give 'em a better chance than I had or their mother."

"That's all right, Jennings. But we have to trim our sails to meet life as it is. Your heart leaks, man! You've done what you could for your children. They'll just have to s.h.i.+ft for themselves."

Tom Jennings drove slowly home. Martha, not knowing the purpose of his visit to town that day, had gone to see Mrs. Taylor, a neighbour. Even Mac was not in the yard to welcome him. He put up his horse, then sat down on the back steps to do the hardest thinking he had ever done.

At first it seemed to him like providence that just recently Tom Belcher had offered to buy the farm. In fact, he was calling him up every day about it. He could sell it to-morrow and then he could move to Greenville. The children were paying part of their expenses. But without his help, two of them at least would have to leave college. What was more, they would have to go to work to help him now. The interest from what he could get for the farm would not keep him going--and farming was the only thing he knew how to do.

But why shouldn't they help him? He had already done for them more than any neighbour had done for his children. True, his greatest ambition would be unrealized. But, as the doctor said, you had to trim your sails in this life. Why should he carry on a fight when he had been stricken?

G.o.d did not expect a crippled man to run a race.

Also, he was frightened for his life. He carried within his body an enemy that might strike him down at any moment. Then, rather pleasantly, he forecast his life in town. He had fought hard, and now he could lay his armour down, and no one would think any the less of him.

And so he sat pondering, thinking first of his children, for whom he had had such high ambitions, then of himself, who would like to live his allotted span, when across the pasture he saw blind Mac coming. It was a hot September afternoon, and he had evidently been to the creek to cool off and to get away from flies. He came steadily along, and though n.o.body was near his tail was gently wagging.

The rear lot gate had been left open so the cattle could go to pasture, and the dog came through the gate and across the barn lot. This brought him to the fence that separated the lot from the yard, and before this fence he stopped and felt about with his foot, tail still wagging. Tom Jennings did not speak but watched him with queer emotions.

Having located the fence the blind dog backed off, looked up as if trying to see, started to spring, hesitated, started again, and finally leaped. His front paws hooked over the top plank, and he pulled himself up, remained balanced another moment, then jumped into the yard. It was as neatly done as if he were not blind. Tail still wagging, he came across the yard.

But Martha had forgotten at last: in the middle of the yard was a chicken coop she had recently moved there. Tom started to call out a warning, then for some queer reason did not. Over the unexpected obstacle the dog stumbled and came near falling. He let out no cry. He simply went to the coop, felt it, as if to locate it for the future, then came on toward the house. His head was bowed, though, as if with that shame he seemed always to feel when because of his affliction he happened to have an accident. But his tail was still wagging.

"Mac!" It broke from the man.

The blind dog raised his head and whiffed the air. Then he located his master and came toward him. He laid his head on Tom Jennings's knee, and Tom Jennings laid his big hard hand on the blind dog's head.

"G.o.d struck you!" he said hoa.r.s.ely, "an' you never give up. G.o.d put out yo' eyes, and still you do your work. An' you're only a dumb brute, an'

I was made in the image of G.o.d!"

The rural telephone in the hall suddenly gave his ring, and he rose and went into the house.

"Yes--I've decided, Tom," he said. "I ain't goin' to sell the farm."

After that there came, perforce, a change in Jennings's method of farming. Years ago Frank had besought him to diversify his crops, to study his soil, to take advantage of the information the agricultural college and the Government were so glad to send.

But to the older Jennings thinking had always been harder than physical toil. Brought up right after the Civil War in a section left poverty-stricken, he could just read and write--that was all; for when he was twelve his service between the plough handles had begun, and there he had served ever since.

Now, from necessity, he began to think and plan. He asked the agricultural college for information, and they sent not only pamphlets but a representative from an experiment station to consult with him and advise him. He sold a bit of land and bought farm machinery. He built a tenant house and installed help. And all the time Frank (who did not know of the leaking heart) also advised him by letters, and when he came home in the summer, helped wonderfully--both by hard work and by mental initiative.

No great prosperity followed. But Tom Jennings did a shade better than he had done before, and the children stayed at college. Not even Martha knew the extent of what the doctor had told him that day. Only to Mac did he talk freely.

"When yo' eyes was put out, ol' codger, you whetted yo' nose," he would say; "and when my muscles lost their engine power I whetted my ol' rusty brain."

His children all did well at college. Frank finished an academic course (Tom and Martha saw him graduate), then went off to a medical college.

Mary, the older girl, was studying library work; the younger girl had come to no conclusion yet. The three of them came home in summer for at least part of the season, and always came at Christmas. They brought with them a different atmosphere--the atmosphere of a wider world. But the girls helped the mother in the kitchen and Frank advised with the father about the farm. There was no feeling of shame on one side, or of apology on the other. It was the kind of thing that has happened on thousands of American farms.

Sometimes at night Tom spoke of his children to Martha: "They are goin'

to pa.s.s us by, Mother. They are goin' to amount to more than we have."

And then he would go to the window and raise the sash.

"Old man?" he would say.

And from the kennel would come a tap-tap that told he was heard.

And Tom continued to hunt with Mac, alone now, for Nell had died of pneumonia. It was a good combination, the man with the damaged heart and the dog with the sightless eyes. Tom had to go slow; so did Mac.

Gradually Tom worked out a series of signals which the dog understood.

If there were a ditch ahead Tom would blow once very sharp on his whistle; if the dog was to turn to the right, he would blow twice, to the left, three times. Sometimes, of course, the signals got crossed, and Mac tumbled into a ditch or ran into a tree. Then there would be a choke in Tom's throat. But these things didn't happen often.

It got to be a familiar sight in the community. Men from the Northern Hunt Club, men who attended the field trials on the Earle plantation, came to see the blind dog hunt. Never was such a nose, sportsmen said; never such intelligence and sagacity.

"Shake hands with the gentlemen, Mac," the proud master would say. "They speak well of you."

And the setter would go from one to the other and raise his paw, his head held high after the manner of the blind.

There was never a bright fire in the winter that Mac did not share; never a home-coming of the children that he, as well as Tom, was not at the station to meet them; never a choice bit on the table after Thanksgiving and Christmas but that a portion of it was laid aside for his plate.

And so his days and years pa.s.sed and Mac grew old--not feeble, but a bit slow and a little doting, as old setters become. He would lay his head on Tom's knee and, unless Tom moved or pushed him away, keep it there for hours. The same was true of Martha; sometimes when she was churning he would stay until the b.u.t.ter came. It was as if he knew he didn't have very much longer to abide.

Then Frank Jennings came home, a doctor, with his degree. That was in the fall, just before bird season. Because of the deficiencies of his early education he had had to spend the summer making up certain courses in biology.

He was now a fine, tall, grave young fellow of twenty-eight; even handsome and distinguished. His ambition, he told his father, was to be a surgeon in children's deformities. To this end he hoped to get an appointment as a.s.sistant to a certain surgeon, the most famous children's surgeon in the world.

Frank was a quiet fellow; "hoped" was the word he used, but the father knew it was more than hope--it was ardent desire. He thought maybe he had attracted some attention, Frank said, and that his work had reached the ears of the surgeon. If he could get the appointment he felt that his future was secure.

"What do you want to be a child's surgeon for?" asked the father. "To make money?"

Frank looked at him quietly and shook his head, and that was all they said.

He left soon after that. Tom drove him to the station, the blind dog sitting in the foot of the buggy.

"Don't you and Mother let your hopes get too high," warned the young man. "There'll be a hundred applicants besides myself. I'll telegraph the result."

A few days afterward bird season opened and Tom Jennings and Mac set off after dinner. There had been three or four days of heavy rains but now the weather had cleared. It was a silent, gorgeous afternoon, high colours everywhere, gold in the sky and in the frosty air.

As he walked along Tom was thinking of his boy and of his girls; for if Mac was growing a bit doting, so, perhaps, was he. Before him old Mac, head high, circled slowly, with ever-wagging tail. Suddenly, not very far from the river, he stopped, and his tail stiffened.

"Comin', ol' boy," said Tom.

The birds rose and the gun barked twice. One bird tumbled dead. The other, only winged, recovered itself and, fluttering across the field, came down near the bank of the river. Mac brought the dead bird, and Tom Jennings, stooping first to pat his head, dropped it in his pocket. Then they went on after the wounded one, which had come down near the river.

Even now Tom was thinking in a mooning sort of way of his children.

The river made a sharp curve inward near the point where the bird had gone down. Then, forming the remainder of a letter S, it swept out again and around a curve. Below this curve it tumbled over extensive and dangerous shoals of rock. The rains had swollen it. And now the roar from these shoals filled the air.

It was this roar, together with a chance feather that had got into the whistle, that drowned out the frantic signal Tom Jennings tried to give.

For ahead of him a terrible thing was about to happen. The wounded bird, frightened at the approach of the dog, rose, fluttered along the ground toward the river, and stopped near the sh.o.r.e. And old Mac, his nose telling him exactly what had occurred, was following with wagging tail and p.r.i.c.ked ears--following toward that sharp inward curve of the river, where the banks had caved in and were very steep, and where the current below made a sudden swerve, then swept outward again.

Again, after shaking it, Tom tried to blow his whistle; but the feather had not been dislodged and the roar drowned out the m.u.f.fled sound.