Mothering on Perilous Part 11

"Did you go home?" I asked.

"Yes."

"And did Blant send you back?"

"Yes," he said. Then suddenly he flung the books on the floor and burst into furious weeping. "He run me off," he said; "and now there haint n.o.body to keep lookout for him, and I know he'll be kilt! If I was strong as him, I'd show him whether he could run me off!"

(I judge that Blant had to resort to severe measures before prevailing upon him to return.)

"When did he send you back?"

"Sat.u.r.day."

"Where have you been since then?"

"Laying out in the high rocks,--I felt so bad I never cared what become of me. Todd and Dalt will get Blant, I know they will!"

I tried to comfort and cheer the poor child, telling him Rich Tarrant would help Blant, but I myself feel that he has grave cause for anxiety.

_Wednesday._

Trouble certainly arrives promptly. A man stopped at the gate this noon and hallooed for Nucky. "War's broke out again on Trigger," he said; "yesterday was election day, and when Blant rid down to the precinct booth to cast his first vote, there was Todd and Dalt a-drinking and a-whooping round like wild, and making their brags he wouldn't dast to put in an appearance. Of course when he come, it was just a question of the quickest trigger; and Todd had his right elbow put out of business, and Dalt a bullet in his shoulder, before you could bat your eye. Blant he got a trifling flesh-wound in his thigh,--nothing to speak of. He said you would probably hear of the trouble, and not git it straight, and he sont me over to relate to you how it really was, and to tell you to stay right where you air, or you'll see certain trouble,--that he is plenty able to tend to all that comes, and you throwed in; that your maw's desires that you get l'arning has got to be fulfilled though the heavens fall."

Nucky was silent and white for a moment; then he called out savagely, "You tell him I hate him for treating me this way, and I don't mind if he does get kilt!", then, rushing into his room and locking his door, I heard him kick chairs violently about, and then burst into another wild fit of weeping. With his devotion to Blant turned back upon itself, and his emotions and energies denied their natural outlet, I can see that this is to be a time of great strain and suffering.

_Friday._

I am pleased to find that Geordie's blandishments are not invariably successful. The little Salyers brought back with them from home two pairs of stout brogans. Now that November has set in, it is necessary to get all feet covered,--a most difficult proposition, since the friendly barrels hold almost no boys' shoes. Women's shoes have had to be de-heeled and pressed into service; and these of course suffer by comparison with the fine brogans. Yesterday while we were planting onions, I heard s.n.a.t.c.hes of a conversation between Geordie and Hen, in which the word "brogans" played a prominent part. What Geordie's various offers were I could not gather; but, evidently, Hen has an acute mind, and has been cutting eye-teeth in past experiences; for his final answer came out loud and emphatic,

"No, son, I don't want your cow,--your calf's lousy!"

_Sunday Night._

With Nucky, moods of deep depression alternate with those of insane daring. Yesterday, looking up from the garden, I was horrified to see him balancing on the roof-tree of the big house, with the slippery, frosty roof slanting steeply down on both sides; and this afternoon on our walk, while the boys played "fox and dogs" and ran like deer over the mountains, I saw the "fox," Nucky, make for the gray rocks and crags that crown the summit of one, and then crawl to the jutting edge of the highest, and hang with his hands from it, out over s.p.a.ce. These performances of his cause me acute suffering.

I wonder that mothers have not made a study of the effects of color upon children. My change of dress in the evenings from dark blue serge to cardinal silk causes an even more p.r.o.nounced change in the home atmosphere. Red, the color of life, certainly appeals to boys; when I put on the cardinal dress, they love to stroke it with their hands, or to rub their heads against my shoulders as I read.

That beauty also means a great deal more to them than we older people think, I was made to realize when Iry began to tell to-night about the "powerful pretty looks" of his young mother, and how he loved, baby though he was, to "just lay and look at her." He told of one day in particular when he awoke from sleep in her arms before a great, roaring fire, and he and she looked and smiled into each other's eyes for a long, long time, until some strange women came in and interrupted them.

It is a singular thing for him to remember--doubtless he and she had gazed into each other's eyes many times, after the manner of mothers and firstborn sons--probably the coming of the strange women fixed this particular incident in his memory.

Later in the evening, when we resumed the adventures of Odysseus, there was a chorus of indignation when the hero permits the monster Scylla to s.n.a.t.c.h six of his friends from the ship and make a meal of them. "Shut up the book!" "Don't want to hear about no such puke-stocking as him,"

"Ongrateful's worse'n pizen!" "Why'n't he grab his ax and chop off them six heads when he seed 'em a-coming?" "Any man can't fight for his friends better be dead!" were some of the comments. I bowed to the storm and shut the book, to hear several instances of true friendship related.

One was about Blant and Rich Tarrant. During active hostilities on Trigger last winter, Blant was getting out yellow poplar timber from the top of his mountain, almost under the shadow of the "high rocks" on the summit, Richard a.s.sisting him. Happening to cast his eyes upward, Richard was just in time to see the muzzle of a gun projecting over the rocks, and to throw himself in front of Blant and receive the discharge in his own bosom. Had it been an inch farther to the right, it would have pierced his heart. As it was, he made a troublesome recovery.

"That's what I call right friendship," said Nucky; "there haint a minute in the day when him and Blant wouldn't lay down their life for each other, glad."

"Who was it shot the gun?" inquired Philip.

"Oh, Todd. We knowed it later when he went about with his left hand tied up,--Blant fired as the bullet hit Rich, at the hand that held the gun.

We Ma.r.r.s.es don't do no low-down fighting,--we allus fight in the open.

And the Cheevers used to; but Todd is a snake in the gra.s.s, and don't stop at nothing."

_Thursday._

While at the big house talking with the head-workers yesterday, they showed me some alb.u.ms of photographs made in the beginnings of their work here, before the school was even thought of, and when they came up from the Blue Gra.s.s only in the summers, and lived in tents, having cla.s.ses in cooking, sewing, singing, nursing and the like. I turned the pages with eagerness, hearing enthralling tales as I went, and stopped at last before a small picture of strange beauty. In a blaze of firelight, against a dusky log-cabin interior, sat a young mother with a child clasped in her arms. The serene, Madonna-like tenderness of face and att.i.tude made the photograph memorable and surprising.

"Many persons have admired that picture," said one of the heads; "we took it years ago, over on Rakeshin Creek, late one afternoon when, weary from a long tramp, we walked in upon a young mother and her child in the firelight. We spent the night there afterward."

"On Rakeshin!" I exclaimed. "How long ago was it?"

"Eight years, I should say."

"Do you suppose--could it have been, the wife and child of Mr. Atkins?"

"That's exactly who it was," she replied,--"one of his wives, I hardly remember which."

"I know," I said; "it was Iry's mother. And that wonderful child remembers the very hour! Only Sunday he was telling of the long look he and his mother were taking at each other when some strange women came in and interrupted them."

The heads exclaimed with me in wonder and loving interest.

"Give it to me," I said, "so that I may send it off at once to be enlarged for his Christmas present."

_Friday._

Very heavy rains for three days, and another big "tide," with seven panels of the back fence washed away, and Perilous a boiling yellow flood down which logs and whole trees are rushing. What was my horror, on hearing loud cheers from the stable-lot this morning, to see Nucky out in the middle of the torrent, standing calmly on a swift log, which even as I glanced, shot around a curve and out of sight. Ten minutes of agony for me followed; then Nucky reappeared, wet only to the waist, and followed by every boy on the place.

"Gee, that wasn't nothing," he deprecated, in answer to my reproaches, "I've rid logs ever sence I was born. I just jumped on her when she come a-nigh sh.o.r.e, and off again down Perilous a piece. I haint afeared!"

"Haint afeared got his neck broke yesterday," remarked Joab, drily.

These desperate and daring moods of Nucky's are source of untold suffering to me. I know they are caused largely by his worry over Blant, and his baffled desire to be at his post on Trigger. Sometimes I think it would be best to let him go,--there can be no doubt that Blant does need him, and he is doing little in his studies, and is so bitter and gloomy that I scarcely know my once delightful boy.

XVI

FILIAL PIETY AND CROUP

_Sat.u.r.day Bed-time._

This evening, while we were popping corn in the "fotch-on" poppers, Killis said he could recollect "capping" corn in a skillet under the still while he and his father made liquor.