The Light in the Clearing Part 11

"Wal, I kind o' believe--" he paused at the edge of what may have been a dangerous opinion.

I shook the box and the needle swung and quivered back and forth and settled with its point in the north again. Oh, what a mystery! My eyes grew big at the thought of it.

"Do folks take compa.s.ses with 'em when they die?" I asked.

"No, they don't need 'em then," said Uncle Peabody. "Everybody has a kind of a compa.s.s in his own heart--same as watermelons and chickens have. It shows us the way to be useful, and I guess the way o'

usefulness is the way to heaven every time."

"An' the way o' uselessness is the way to h.e.l.l," Aunt Deel added.

One evening in the early summer the great Silas Wright had come to our house from the village of Russell, where he had been training a company of militia.

I remember that as he entered our door he spoke in this fashion: "Baynes, le's go fishing. All the way down the road I've heard the call o' the brooks. I stopped on the Dingley Bridge and looked down at the water. The trout were jumping so I guess they must 'a' got sunburnt and freckled and sore. I can't stand too much o' that kind o' thing. It riles me. I heard, long ago, that you were a first-cla.s.s fisherman, so I cut across lots and here I am."

His vivid words touched my imagination and I have often recalled them.

"Well, now by mighty! I--" Uncle Peabody drew the rein upon his imagination at the very brink of some great extravagance and after a moment's pause added: "We'll start out bright an' early in the mornin'

an' go up an' git Bill Seaver. He's got a camp on the Middle Branch, an'

he can cook almost as good as my sister."

"Is your spring's work done?"

"All done, an' I was kind o' thinkin'," said Uncle Peabody with a little shake of his head. He didn't say of what he had been thinking, that being unnecessary.

"Bart, are you with us?" said Mr. Wright as he gave me a playful poke with his hand.

"May I go?" I asked my uncle.

"I wouldn't wonder--go an' ask yer aunt," said Uncle Peabody.

My soul was afire with eagerness. My feet shook the floor and I tipped over a chair in my hurry to get to the kitchen, whither my aunt had gone soon after the appearance of our guest. She was getting supper for Mr.

Wright.

"Aunt Deel, I'm goin' fishin'," I said.

"Fishin'! I guess not--ayes I do," she answered.

It was more than I could stand. A roar of distress and disappointment came from my lips.

Uncle Peabody hurried into the kitchen.

"The Comptroller wants him to go," said he.

"He does?" she repeated as she stood with her hands on her hips looking up at her brother.

"He likes Bart and wants to take him along."

"Wal, then, you'll have to be awful careful of him," said Aunt Deel.

"I'm 'fraid he'll plague ye--ayes!"

"No, he won't--we'll love to have him."

"Wal, I guess you could git Mary Billings to come over and stay with me an' help with the ch.o.r.es--ayes, I wouldn't wonder!"

I could contain my joy no longer, but ran into the other room on tiptoe and announced excitedly that I was going. Then I rushed out of the open door and rolled and tumbled in the growing gra.s.s, with the dog barking at my side. In such times of joyful excitement I always rolled and tumbled in the gra.s.s. It was my way of expressing inexpressible delight.

I felt sorry for the dog. Poor fellow! He couldn't go fishing. He had to stay home always. I felt sorry for the house and the dooryard and the cows and the grindstone and Aunt Deel. The glow of the candles and the odor of ham and eggs drew me into the house. Wistfully I watched the great man as he ate his supper. I was always hungry those days. Mr.

Wright asked me to have an egg, but I shook my head and said "No, thank you" with sublime self-denial. At the first hint from Aunt Deel I took my candle and went up to bed.

"I ain't afraid o' bears," I heard myself whispering as I undressed. I whispered a good deal as my imagination ran away into the near future.

Soon I blew out my candle and got into bed. The door was open at the foot of the stairs. I could see the light and hear them talking. It had been more than a year since Uncle Peabody had promised to take me into the woods fishing, but most of our joys were enriched by long antic.i.p.ation filled with talk and fancy.

I lay planning my behavior in the woods. It was to be helpful and polite and generally designed to show that I could be a man among men. I lay a long time whispering over details. There was to be no crying, even if I did get hurt a little once in a while. Men never cried. Only babies cried. I could hear Mr. Wright talking about Bucktails and Hunkers below stairs and I could hear the peepers down in the marsh.

Peepers and men who talked politics were alike to me those days. They were beyond my understanding and generally put me to sleep--especially the peepers. In my childhood the peepers were the bells of dream-land calling me to rest. The sweet sound no sooner caught my ear than my thoughts began to steal away on tiptoe and in a moment the house of my brain was silent and deserted, and thereafter, for a time, only fairy feet came into it. So even those happy thoughts of a joyous holiday soon left me and I slept.

I was awakened by a cool, gentle hand on my brow. I opened my eyes and saw the homely and beloved face of Uncle Peabody smiling down at me.

What a face it was! It welcomed me, always, at the gates of the morning and I saw it in the glow of the candle at night as I set out on my lonely, dreaded voyage into dream-land. Do you wonder that I stop a moment and wipe my gla.s.ses when I think of it?

"h.e.l.lo, Bart!" said he. "It's to-morrer."

I sat up. The delicious odor of frying ham was in the air. The glow of the morning sunlight was on the meadows.

"Come on, ol' friend! By mighty! We're goin' to--" said Uncle Peabody.

Happy thoughts came rushing into my brain again. What a tumult! I leaped out of bed.

"I'll be ready in a minute, Uncle Peabody," I said as, yawning, I drew on my trousers.

"Don't tear yer socks," he cautioned as I lost patience with their unsympathetic behavior.

He helped me with my boots, which were rather tight, and I flew down-stairs with my coat half on and ran for the wash-basin just outside the kitchen door.

"h.e.l.lo, Bart! If the fish don't bite to-day they ought to be ashamed o'

themselves," said Mr. Wright, who stood in the dooryard in an old suit of clothes which belonged to Uncle Peabody.

The sun had just risen over the distant tree-tops and the dew in the meadow gra.s.s glowed like a net of silver and the air was chilly. The ch.o.r.es were done. Aunt Deel appeared in the open door as I was wiping my face and hands and said in her genial, company voice:

"Breakfast is ready."

Aunt Deel never shortened her words when company was there. Her respect was always properly divided between her guest and the English language.

How delicious were the ham, smoked in our own barrels, and the eggs fried in its fat and the baked potatoes and milk gravy and the buckwheat cakes and maple syrup, and how we ate of them! Two big pack baskets stood by the window filled with provisions and blankets, and the black bottom of Uncle Peabody's spider was on the top of one of them, with its handle reaching down into the depths of the basket. The musket and the powder horn had been taken down from the wall and the former leaned on the window-sill.

"If we see a deer we ain't goin' to let him bite us," said Uncle Peabody.

Aunt Deel kept nudging me under the table and giving me sharp looks to remind me of my manners, for now it seemed as if a time had come when eating was a necessary evil to be got through with as soon as possible.

Even Uncle Peabody tapped his cup lightly with his teaspoon, a familiar signal of his by which he indicated that I was to put on the brakes.