The Light in the Clearing Part 5

Thus early I got a notion of the curious extravagance of the money wors.h.i.+per. How different was my uncle, who cared too little for money!

At Christmas I got a picture-book and forty raisins and three sticks of candy with red stripes on them and a jew's-harp. That was the Christmas we went down to Aunt Liza's to spend the day and I helped myself to two pieces of cake when the plate was pa.s.sed and cried because they all laughed at my greediness. It was the day when Aunt Liza's boy, Truman, got a silver watch and chain and her daughter Mary a gold ring, and when all the relatives were invited to come and be convinced, once and for all, of Uncle Roswell's prosperity and be filled with envy and reconciled with jelly and preserves and roast turkey with sage dressing and mince and chicken pie. What an amount of preparation we had made for the journey, and how long we had talked about it! When we had shut the door and were ready to get into the sleigh our dog Shep came whining around us. I shall never forget how Uncle Peabody talked to him.

"Go back, Shep--go back to the house an' stay on the piaz," he began.

"Go back I tell ye. It's Christmas day an' we're goin' down to ol' Aunt Liza's. Ye can't go way down there. No, sir, ye can't. Go back an' lay down on the piaz."

Shep was fawning at my uncle's foot and rubbing his neck on his boot and looking up at him.

"What's that ye say?" Uncle Peabody went on, looking down and turning his ear as if he had heard the dog speak and were in some doubt of his meaning. "Eh? What's that? An empty house makes ye terrible sad on a Chris'mas day? What's that? Ye love us an' ye'd like to go along down to Aunt Liza's an' play with the children?"

It was a clever ruse of Uncle Peabody, for Aunt Deel was softened by his interpretation of the dog's heart and she proposed:

"Le's take him along with us--poor dog! ayes!"

Then Uncle Peabody shouted:

"Jump right into the sleigh--you ol' skeezucks!--an' I'll cover ye up with a hoss blanket. Git in here. We ain't goin' to leave n.o.body alone on Chris'mas day that loves us--not by a jug full--no, sir! I wouldn't wonder if Jesus died for dogs an' hosses as well as for men."

Shep had jumped in the back of the sleigh at the first invitation and lay quietly under his blanket as we hurried along in the well-trod snow and the bells jingled. It was a joyful day and old Shep was as merry and well fed as the rest of us.

How cold and sad and still the house seemed when we got back to it in the evening! We had to drive to a neighbor's and borrow fire and bring it home with us in a pail of ashes as we were out of tinder. I held the lantern for my uncle while he did the ch.o.r.es and when we had gone to bed I fell asleep hearing him tell of Joseph and Mary going to pay their taxes.

In the spring my uncle hired a man to work for us--a noisy, brawny, sharp-featured fellow with keen gray eyes, of the name of Dug Draper.

Aunt Deel hated him. I feared him but regarded him with great hope because he had a funny way of winking at me with one eye across the table and, further, because he could sing and did sing while he worked--songs that rattled from his lips in a way that amused me greatly. Then, too, he could rip out words that had a new and wonderful sound in them. I made up my mind that he was likely to become a valuable a.s.set when I heard Aunt Deel say to my Uncle Peabody:

"You'll have to send that loafer away, right now, ayes I guess you will."

"Why?"

"Because this boy has learnt to swear like a pirate--ayes--he has!"

Uncle Peabody didn't know it but I myself had begun to suspect it, and that hour the man was sent away, and I remember that he left in anger with a number of those new words flying from his lips. A forced march to the upper room followed that event. Uncle Peabody explained that it was wicked to swear--that boys who did it had very bad luck, and mine came in a moment. I never had more of it come along in the same length of time.

One day in the spring when the frogs were chanting in the swamp land, they seemed to be saying, "Dunkelberg, Dunkelberg, Dunkelberg, Dunkelberg," from morning to bedtime. I was helping Uncle Peabody to fix the fence when he said:

"Hand me that stake, Bub. Don't be so much of a gentleman."

I handed the stake to him and then I said:

"Uncle Peabody, I want to be a gentleman."

"A gentleman!" he exclaimed as he looked down at me thoughtfully.

"A grand, n.o.ble gentleman with a sword and a gold watch and chain and diamonds on," I exclaimed.

He leaned against the top rail of the fence and looked down at me and laughed.

"Whatever put that in yer head?" he asked.

"Oh, I don't know--how do ye be it?" I demanded.

"They's two ways," said he. "One is to begin 'fore you're born and pick out the right father. T'other is to begin after you're born and pick out the right son. You can make yerself whatever you want to be. It's all inside of a boy and it comes out by and by--swords and gold and diamonds, or rags an' dirt an' shovels an' crowbars."

I wondered what I had inside of me.

"I guess I ain't got any sword in me," I said.

"When you've been eating green apples and I wouldn't wonder," he answered as he went on with his work.

"Once I thought I heard a watch tickin' in my throat," I said hopefully.

"I don't mean them things is really in ye, but the power to git 'em is in ye," said Uncle Peabody. "That's what I mean--power. Be a good boy and study yer lessons and never lie, and the power'll come into ye jest as sure as you're alive."

I began to watch myself for symptoms of power.

After I ceased to play with the Wills boy Uncle Peabody used to say, often, it was a pity that I hadn't somebody of my own age for company.

Every day I felt sorry that the Wills boy had turned out so badly, and I doubt not the cat and the shepherd dog and the chickens and Uncle Peabody also regretted his failures, especially the dog and Uncle Peabody, who bore all sorts of indignities for my sake.

In the circ.u.mstances I had to give a good deal of time to the proper education of my uncle. Naturally he preferred to waste his time with shovels and rakes. But he soon learned how to roll a hoop and play tag and ball and yard off and how to run like a horse when I sat on his shoulders. It was rather hard on him, after his work in the fields, but he felt his responsibility and applied himself with due diligence and became a very promising child. I also gave strict attention to his talent for story-telling. It improved rapidly. Being frank in my criticism he was able to profit by all his failures in taste and method, so that each story had a fierce bear in it and a fair amount of growling by and by. But I could not teach him to sing, and it was a great sorrow to me. I often tried and he tried, but I saw that it wasn't going to pay. He couldn't make the right kind of a noise. Through all this I did not neglect his morals. If he said an improper word--and I regret to say that he did now and then--I promptly corrected him and reported his conduct to Aunt Deel, and if she was inclined to be too severe I took his part and, now and then, got snapped on the forehead for the vigor of my defense. On the whole it is no wonder that Uncle Peabody wearied of his schooling.

One day when Uncle Peabody went for the mail he brought Amos Grimshaw to visit me. I had not seen him since the day he was eating doughnuts in the village with his father. He was four years older than I--a freckled, red-haired boy with a large mouth and thin lips. He wore a silver watch and chain, which strongly recommended him in my view and enabled me to endure his air of condescension.

He let me feel it and look it all over and I slyly touched the chain with my tongue just to see if it had any taste to it, and Amos told me that his grandfather had given it to him and that it always kept him "kind o' scairt."

"Why?"

"For fear I'll break er lose it an' git licked," he answered.

We went and sat down on the hay together, and I showed him the pennies I had saved and he showed me where his father had cut his leg that morning with a blue beech rod.

"Don't you ever git licked?" he asked.

"No," I answered.

"I guess that's because you ain't got any father," he answered. "I wish I hadn't. There's n.o.body so mean as a father. Mine makes me work every day an' never gives me a penny an' licks me whenever I do anything that I want to. I've made up my mind to run away from home."

After a moment of silence he exclaimed:

"Gos.h.!.+ It's awful lonesome here! Gee whittaker! this is the worst place I ever saw!"

I tried to think of something that I could say for it.

"We have got a new corn sh.e.l.ler," I said, rather timidly.

"I don't care about your corn sh.e.l.lers," he answered with a look of scorn.

He took a little yellow paper-covered book from his pocket and began to read to himself.

I felt thoroughly ashamed of the place and sat near him and, for a time, said nothing as he read.