Eben Holden Part 19

Uncle Eb had lifted his rifle to shoot again. Suddenly the Indian, who had shot at us, went overboard. In a second they were all in the water, their boat bottom up.

'Now take yer time,' said Uncle Eb coolly, a frown upon his face.

'They'll drown,' said I.

'Don't care if they do, consam 'em,' he answered. 'They're some o' them St Regis devils, an' when they git whisky in 'em they'd jes' soon kill ye as look at ye. They am' no better 'n rats.'

We kept on our way and by and by a wind came up that gave us both some comfort, for we knew it would soon blow them ash.o.r.e. Ab Thomas had come to our camp and sat with Tip and Gerald when we got there. We told of our adventure and then Ab gave us a bad turn, and a proper appreciation of our luck, by telling us that they were a gang of cut-throats--the worst in the wilderness.

'They'd a robbed ye sure,' he said. 'It's the same gang 'at killed a man on Cat Mountain las' summer, an' I'll bet a dollar on it.'

Tip had everything ready for our journey home. Each day Gerald had grown paler and thinner. As we wrapped him in a shawl and tenderly helped him into the wagon I read his doom in his face. We saw so much of that kind of thing in our stern climate we knew what it meant. Our fun was over.

We sat in silence, speeding down the long hills in the fading light of the afternoon. Those few solemn hours in which I heard only the wagon's rumble and the sweet calls of the whip-poor-will-waves of music on a sea of silence-started me in a way of thought which has led me high and low these many years and still invites me. The day was near its end when we got to the first big clearing. From the top of a high hill we could see above the far forest, the red rim of the setting sun, big with winding from the skein of day, that was now flying off the tree-tops in the west.

We stopped to feed the horses and to take a bite of jerked venison, wrapped ourselves warmer, for it was now dunk and chilly, and went on again. The road went mostly downhill, going out of the woods, and we could make good time. It was near midnight when we drove in at our gate.

There was a light in the sitting-room and Uncle Eb and I went in with Gerald at once. Elizabeth Brower knelt at the feet of her son, unb.u.t.toned his coat and took off his m.u.f.fler. Then she put her arms about his neck while neither spoke nor uttered any sound. Both mother and son felt and understood and were silent. The ancient law of G.o.d, that rends asunder and makes havoc of our plans, bore heavy on them in that moment, I have no doubt, but neither murmured. Uncle Eb began to pump vigorously at the cistern while David fussed with the fire. We were all quaking inwardly but neither betrayed a sign of it. It is a way the Puritan has of suffering. His emotions are like the deep undercurrents of the sea.

Chapter 17

If I were writing a novel merely I should try to fill it with merriment and good cheer. I should thrust no sorrow upon the reader save that he might feel for having wasted his time. We have small need of manufactured sorrow when, truly, there is so much of the real thing on every side of us. But this book is nothing more nor less than a history, and by the same token it cannot be all as I would have wished it.

In October following the events of the last chapter, Gerald died of consumption, having borne a lingering illness with great fort.i.tude.

I, who had come there a homeless orphan in a basket, and who, with the G.o.d-given eloquence of childhood had brought them to take me to their hearts and the old man that was with me as well, was now the only son left to Elizabeth and David Brower. There were those who called it folly at the time they took us in, I have heard, but he who shall read this history to the end shall see how that kind of folly may profit one or even many here in this hard world.

It was a gloomy summer for all of us. The industry and patience with which Hope bore her trial, night and day, is the sweetest recollection of my youth. It brought to her young face a tender soberness of womanhood--a subtle change of expression that made her all the more dear to me. Every day, rain or s.h.i.+ne, the old doctor had come to visit his patient, sometimes sitting an hour and gazing thoughtfully in his face, occasionally asking a question, or telling a quaint anecdote. And then came the end.

The sky was cold and grey in the late autumn and the leaves were drifted deep in the edge of the woodlands when Hope and I went away to school together at Hillsborough. Uncle Eb drove us to our boarding place in town. When we bade him goodbye and saw him driving away, alone in the wagon, we hardly dared look at each other for the tears in our eyes.

David Brower had taken board for us at the house of one Solomon Rollin--universally known as 'Cooky' Rollin; that was one of the first things I learned at the Academy. It seemed that many years ago he had taken his girl to a dance and offered her, in lieu of supper, cookies that he had thoughtfully brought with him. Thus cheaply he had come to life-long distinction.

'You know Rollin's Ancient History, don't you?' the young man asked who sat with me at school that first day.

'Have it at home,' I answered, 'It's in five volumes.'

'I mean the history of Sol Rollin, the man you are boarding with,' said he smiling at me and then he told the story of the cookies.

The princ.i.p.al of the Hillsborough Academy was a big, brawny bachelor of Scotch descent, with a stem face and cold, grey, glaring eyes. When he stood towering above us on his platform in the main room of the building where I sat, there was an alertness in his figure, and a look of responsibility in his face, that reminded me of the pictures of Napoleon at Waterloo. He always carried a stout ruler that had blistered a shank of every mischievous boy in school. As he stood by the line, that came marching into prayers every morning he would frequently pull out a boy, administer a loud whack or two, shake him violently and force him into a seat. The day I began my studies at the Academy I saw him put two dents in the wall with the heels of a young man who had failed in his algebra.

To a bashful and sensitive youth, just out of a country home, the sight of such violence was appalling. My first talk with him, however, renewed my courage. He had heard I was a good scholar and talked with me in a friendly way about my plans. Both Hope and I were under him in algebra and Latin. I well remember my first error in his cla.s.s. I had misconstrued a Latin sentence. He looked at me, a smile and a sneer crowding each other for possession of his face. In a loud, jeering tone he cried: 'Mirabile dictu!'

I looked at him in doubt of his meaning.

'Mirabile dictu!' he shouted, his tongue trilling the r.

I corrected my error.

'Perfect!' he cried again. 'Puer pulchre! Next!'

He never went further than that with me in the way of correction. My size and my skill as a wrestler, that shortly ensured for me the respect of the boys, helped me to win the esteem of the master. I learned my lessons and kept out of mischief. But others of equal proficiency were not so fortunate. He was apt to be hard on a light man who could be handled without over-exertion.

Uncle Eb came in to see me one day and sat awhile with me in my seat.

While he was there the master took a boy by the collar and almost literally wiped the blackboard with him. There was a great clatter of heels for a moment. Uncle Eb went away shortly and was at Sol Rollin's when I came to dinner.

'Powerful man ain't he?' said Uncle Eb.

'Rather,' I said.

'Turned that boy into a reg'lar horse fiddle,' he remarked. 'Must 'ave unsot his reason.'

'Unnecessary!' I said.

'Reminded me o' the time 'at Tip Taylor got his tooth pulled,' said he.

'Shook 'im up so 'at he thought he'd had his neck put out o' ji'nt.'

Sol Rollin was one of my studies that winter. He was a carpenter by trade and his oddities were new and delightful. He whistled as he worked, he whistled as he read, he whistled right merrily as he walked up and down the streets--a short, slight figure with a round boyish face and a fringe of iron-grey hair under his chin. The little man had one big pa.s.sion--that for getting and saving. The ancient thrift of his race had pinched him small and narrow as a foot is stunted by a tight shoe.

His mind was a bit out of register as we say in the printing business.

His vocabulary was rich and vivid and stimulating.

'Somebody broke into the a.r.s.enic today,' he announced, one evening, at the supper table.

'The a.r.s.enic,' said somebody, 'what a.r.s.enic?'

'Why the place where they keep the powder,' he answered.

'Oh! the a.r.s.enal.'

'Yes, the a.r.s.enal,' he said, cackling with laughter at his error. Then he grew serious.

'Stole all the ambition out of it,' he added.

'You mean ammunition, don't you, Solomon?' his wife enquired.

'Certainly,' said he, 'wasn't that what I said.'

When he had said a thing that met his own approval Sol Rollin would cackle most cheerfully and then crack a knuckle by twisting a finger.

His laugh was mostly out of register also. It had a sad lack of relevancy. He laughed on principle rather than provocation. Some sort of secret comedy of which the world knew nothing, was pa.s.sing in his mind; it seemed to have its exits and its entrances, its villain, its clown and its miser who got all the applause.

While working his joy was unconfined. Many a time I have sat and watched him in his little shop, its window dim with cobwebs. Sometimes he would stop whistling and cackle heartily as he worked his plane or drew his pencil to the square. I have even seen him drop his tools and give his undivided attention to laughter. He did not like to be interrupted--he loved his own company the best while he was 'doin' business'. I went one day when he was singing the two lines and their quaint chorus which was all he ever sang in my hearing; which gave him great relief, I have no doubt, when lip weary with whistling:

Sez I 'Dan'l Skinner, I thank yer mighty mean To send me up the river, With a sev'n dollar team'

Lul-ly, ul--ly, diddie ul--ly, diddleul--lydee, Oh, lul-ly, ul--ly, diddle ul--ly, diddle ul--ly dee.

'Mr Rollin!' I said.

Yes siree,' said he, pausing in the midst of his chorus to look up at me.

'Where can I get a piece of yellow pine?'