Mothering on Perilous Part 6

_Thursday._

Mrs. Salyer rode in to-day to see her boys, a watermelon in one saddle-pocket, a lot of fine pawpaws in the other. Oh the joy of the "two homesicks"! Before leaving, she said that her cousin Emmeline's funeral occasion was set for the fourth Sat.u.r.day and Sunday in October, and she hoped her boys might be permitted to come home at that time and pay their respects to Emmeline, adding that she would be pleased to have me come with them. In answer to my puzzled inquiries--for I failed to see how Emmeline's death could be so nicely calculated in advance--she explained that funerals are never held in this country at the time of burial, when it is usually impossible to get a preacher, but that they are conducted in deliberate and appropriate style a year or two after the death.

This is to be the little Salyers' first visit home--we think it best they shall not go until then--and never, I suppose, was a funeral-occasion the subject of such desire and rejoicing.

_Sunday Night._

For two weeks we have been reading Hawthorne's Wonder Tales; and this afternoon on our walk the boys, led by Nucky, searched hopefully in caves, coal-banks and rock-dens for gorgons, minotaurs and dragons, finding nothing worse, however, than a few rattlesnakes and copperheads,--a tame subst.i.tute and an old story. But the value of drawing their minds to foes in the abstract is already apparent,--they fight less, and traits other than martial are coming to the front. Nucky has been giving his energies to learning, with results that astonish.

His teacher says she has never seen such mental alertness. She has already put him up two grades, and says if he keeps on he may go up another this half-term. Iry, too, is proving his right to his t.i.tle of "pure scholar."

To-night when we began again on the Wonder Book, Nucky said, "I can tell you a story that beats them,--all about a man by the name of Christian, that fit with devils, and come near being et up by a giant ten times as big as him."

There were loud cries of, "Tell it, Trojan!"; and he launched forth into a most graphic version of Pilgrim's Progress, the other boys listening absorbed throughout the evening. When all started off to bed, I called Nucky back. "Where did you learn that story?" I asked him.

"I have knowed it sence allus-ago," he said; "Maw she used to read it to me out of a book with pictures."

It is the first time he has spoken of his mother,--I hear from the other boys that he lost her quite recently.

"Then your mother had learning?" I inquired.

"She never got any inside a school-house," he replied; "but her great-grandpaw he had a sight of learning, and when he was a' old man, too feeble to do anything but set by the fire, he teached her how to read and write and figger, and was so proud of her being a scholar that when he come to die he left her what books he had,--there is several, all yallow and crumbly. One is a Bible; but the one I like is this-here about Christian and the devils. I used to lay and look at it by the hour, and learnt to read a-trying on it."

This is most interesting as being another proof that the early settlers of this country were men of an education impossible to their descendants. It also helps to account for Nucky's remarkable mentality.

He grasps a thing almost before it is spoken, has only to read over his lessons once, and remembers the stories I tell and read with surprising minuteness.

_Wednesday._

I suppose I might have expected some ill effects from the hero-tales.

When I went down to inspect the stable-lot this morning, I found three barn cats writhing in their death agonies, and Jason galloping off on a stick-horse, brandishing a shinny-bat. His explanation that he was Bellerophon, the stick Pegasus, and the cats the three heads of the Chimaera failed to mollify me. I gave him his first taste of "the rod,"

and did not "spar'" it. Evidently the child has a poetic imagination, which must not be permitted to run riot.

X

ABOUT MOTHERS

_Sat.u.r.day Night._

The little Salyers, while really fond of one another, have queer ways sometimes of showing it. This afternoon Keats called up wearily from the back yard, where for eight hours he had been carrying water and keeping up fires for the wash-girls, to Hen in the doorway, "What time is it, son?" to receive the affectionate reply, "Time all dogs was dead,--haint you sick?"

To-night, sitting around our lamp, eating peppermint candy, the boys got to talking about their mothers, living or dead,--Keats and Hen of course about Nervesty, Taulbee, Killis and Hosea about their good mothers at home, Geordie and Absalom about theirs who is married again and lives in Virginia, and Philip, Joab, Iry and Jason about theirs who are dead.

Nucky alone did not talk,--it seems impossible for him to speak of his mother.

Iry told many little incidents his remarkable memory enables him to recall, though his mother died when he was only three. One is, standing beside her while she fed him beans and sorghum from a spoon; another, having a small paddle and helping her "battle" the clothes as she washed them beside the branch; still another, being left by her in a pen made of rails and a log high up on the mountainside where she was hoeing corn, seeing a beautiful, shining, spotted thing come out on the log to sun itself, and amusing himself poking his finger at the pretty creature to make it lick out its tongue, rattle its tail, and "quile" itself up, till suddenly something fell on the bright head, and his mother, with a terrible scream, threw down her hoe and caught him to her bosom. These and other sc.r.a.ps of recollection the "pure scholar" treasures so tenderly it seems hard indeed that his mother should have taken the "breast-complaint,--some calls it the galloping consumpt'," and died so young, missing his love.

"You know," I said to him, "that being dead isn't really being dead, but just gone out of sight. Your dear mother still lives and loves and watches over you constantly, though you cannot see her."

"I allus heared dead folks was just h'ants, trying to layway and scare folks," said Iry.

"Nothing of the kind," I a.s.sured him; "they can never be seen by these eyes of ours, but they are near, quite near us always, to love and protect us, especially mothers their orphan children."

There was a long silence. Then, with a sigh, little Iry exclaimed, slowly, "Dag gone, I wisht somebody'd a-told me that before,--I wouldn't a-been so lonesome!"

Nucky, who had not spoken a word during the conversation, got up and hurried from the room. At bed-time, Hen slipped into my door to report, "I tracked Trojan to the hayloft, and heared him a-laying up there crying fit to kill for his maw."

Poor child,--the still waters run deep!

_Sunday Night._

Nucky asked for extra work during his playtime yesterday in order to make some money, and for three hours spaded flower-beds, receiving a dime in pay, and making a mysterious visit to the village after supper.

This morning when I was ready for church, he came into my room with a yard of bright pink ribbon dangling from his hand. This he held out to me, saying,

"You allus go about with them old black strings on, and haint got no pretty fixings like t'other women,--I allow you're too poor to buy 'em.

I want you to have something pretty."

For seven years I have not had on a color,--I never supposed I could wear one again. But I slowly unfastened the black ribbon from my collar, and replaced it with the pink. Then I put my arms around Nucky, and kissed him.

"I _was_ poor,--horribly poor, Nucky," I said, "before I got you and the other boys. But I shall never feel poor again, after receiving such a precious gift as this!"

Precious indeed it is, not only as representing untold sacrifice on his part, but as showing that he really cares for me,--he is so reserved and self-contained I did not dream he did.

One thing is certain,--I will try to deserve his sacrifice and love,--to-morrow I will send away not only for bright ribbons, but for cheerful dresses which shall please his eyes and those of the others. No longer shall they see me in garments of heaviness.

_Tuesday._

This noon, Iry, who since our first talk about swearing, has been trying without much success to stop it--sometimes he bites off the tail of a swear-word, but generally the head and trunk escape him--ran into my room with big eyes. "Geordie and me was a-quarling over a shinny-bat he traded me out of, and I started to say a' awful cuss-word at him, and then I ricollected what you said about my maw a-watching me all the time, and I never said a thing to him but 'Dad burn your ole soul!'"

I congratulated the "pure scholar" on his great victory, and encouraged him to press on.

_Wednesday, Bed-time._

To-day was Mother's birthday. While I was placing a bowl of asters before her picture over my fireboard, Nucky came in, and I spoke to him about her, telling him how her love and courage had sustained me through deepest sorrow, and how terribly I miss her now. After a while he said, in a low voice, "I miss my maw, too."

"Tell me about her," I said.

Then, little by little, and often with great difficulty, and with long silences, he told me the story of his mother; how devoted she had been to her children, and how eager that they, and especially he, should get learning, teaching him what she could, getting a little district school established on Trigger three years ago, and coming over herself to this school last April to try and get him in here, being nag-flung on her way home, and sustaining injuries which caused her to die a month later when her last baby was born; how on her deathbed she had called her family around her, and given them her love and blessing and advice, asking her husband never to put a "step-maw" over her children, and leaving them all in Blant's charge, confiding to his special care the day-old baby, "your paw being too puny to set up with it of nights," and pa.s.sing away at last clinging to them and weeping bitter tears that she must leave them. He also told how Blant had accepted his sacred trust; tenderly and tirelessly minding the younger children, cooking and cleaning; when not out tending the crop, clearing new-ground, logging and the like, and how, above all, he has devoted himself to "the babe," patiently walking the floor with it at night, warming its bottle, jolting it on his knee, toasting its little feet before the fire, sleeping with it on his arm, and "making it sugar-teats and soot-tea as good as a woman." This being the same Blant who "never goes out without a gun," and has done such notable slaughter in the hereditary "war" with the Cheevers!

I own to a large curiosity to behold this hero--more than ever since I heard what Nucky told me to-day. I am glad that the visit to Trigger comes the end of this week.