The Light in the Clearing Part 19

We got home at half past eight and found my aunt greatly worried. She had done the ch.o.r.es and been standing in her hood and shawl on the porch listening for the sound of the wagon. She had kept our suppers warm but I was the only hungry one.

As I was going to bed the Senator called me to him and said:

"I shall be gone when you are up in the morning. It may be a long time before I see you; I shall leave something for you in a sealed envelope with your name on it. You are not to open the envelope until you go away to school. I know how you will feel that first day. When night falls you will think of your aunt and uncle and be very lonely. When you go to your room for the night I want you to sit down all by yourself and open the envelope and read what I shall write. They will be, I think, the most impressive words ever written. You will think them over but you will not understand them for a long time. Ask every wise man you meet to explain them to you, for all your happiness will depend upon your understanding of these few words in the envelope."

In the morning Aunt Deel put it in my hands.

"I wonder what in the world he wrote there--ayes!" said she. "We must keep it careful--ayes!--I'll put it in my trunk an' give it to ye when ye go to Canton to school."

"Has Mr. Wright gone?" I asked rather sadly.

"Ayes! Land o' mercy! He went away long before daylight with a lot o'

jerked meat in a pack basket--ayes! Yer uncle is goin' down to the village to see 'bout the mortgage this afternoon, ayes!"

It was a Sat.u.r.day and I spent its hours cording wood in the shed, pausing now and then for a look into my grammar. It was a happy day, for the growing cords expressed in a satisfactory manner my new sense of obligation to those I loved. Imaginary conversations came into my brain as I worked and were rehea.r.s.ed in whispers.

"Why, Bart, you're a grand worker," my uncle would say in my fancy.

"You're as good as a hired man."

"Oh, that's nothing," I would answer modestly. "I want to be useful so you won't be sorry you took me and I'm going to study just as Mr. Wright did and be a great man if I can and help the poor people. I'm going to be a better scholar than Sally Dunkelberg, too."

What a day it was!--the first of many like it. I never think of those days without saying to myself: "What a G.o.d's blessing a man like Silas Wright can be in the community in which his heart and soul are as an open book!"

As the evening came on I took a long look at my cords. The shed was nearly half full of them. Four rules of syntax, also, had been carefully stored away in my brain. I said them over as I hurried down into the pasture with old Shep and brought in the cows. I got through milking just as Uncle Peabody came. I saw with joy that his face was cheerful.

"Yip!" he shouted as he stopped his team at the barn door where Aunt Deel and I were standing. "We ain't got much to worry about now. I've got the interest money right here in my pocket."

We unhitched and went in to supper. I was hoping that Aunt Deel would speak of my work but she seemed not to think of it.

"Had a grand day!" said Uncle Peabody, as he sat down at the table and began to tell what Mr. Wright and Mr. Dunkelberg had said to him.

I, too, had had a grand day and probably my elation was greater than his. I tarried at the looking-gla.s.s hoping that Aunt Deel would give me a chance modestly to show my uncle what I had done. But the talk about interest and mortgages continued. I went to my uncle and tried to whisper in his ear a hint that he had better go and look into the wood-shed. He stopped me before I had begun by saying:

"Don't bother me now, Bub. I'll git that candy for ye the next time I go to the village."

Candy! I was thinking of no such trivial matter as candy. He couldn't know how the idea shocked me in the exalted state of mind into which I had risen. He didn't know then of the spiritual change in me and how generous and great I was feeling and how sublime and beautiful was the new way in which I had set my feet.

I went out on the porch and stood looking down with a sad countenance.

Aunt Deel followed me.

"W'y, Bart!" she exclaimed, "you're too tired to eat--ayes! Be ye sick?"

I shook my head.

"Peabody," she called, "this boy has worked like a beaver every minute since you left--ayes he has! I never see anything to beat it--never! I want you to come right out into the wood-shed an' see what he's done--this minute--ayes!"

I followed them into the shed.

"W'y of all things!" my uncle exclaimed. "He's worked like a nailer, ain't he?"

There were tears in his eyes when he took my hand in his rough palm and squeezed it and said:

"Sometimes I wish ye was little ag'in so I could take ye up in my arms an' kiss ye just as I used to. Horace Dunkelberg says that you're the best-lookin' boy he ever see."

"Stop!" Aunt Deel exclaimed with a playful tap on his shoulder. "W'y! ye mustn't go on like that."

"I'm tellin' just what he said," my uncle answered.

"I guess he only meant that Bart looked clean an' decent--that's all--ayes! He didn't mean that Bart was purty. Land sakes!--no."

I observed the note of warning in the look she gave my uncle.

"No, I suppose not," he answered, as he turned away with a smile and brushed one of his eyes with a rough finger.

I repeated the rules I had learned as we went to the table.

"I'm goin' to be like Silas Wright if I can," I added.

"That's the idee!" said Uncle Peabody. "You keep on as you've started an' everybody'll milk into your pail."

I kept on--not with the vigor of that first day with its new inspiration--but with growing strength and effectiveness. Nights and mornings and Sat.u.r.days I worked with a will and my book in my pocket or at the side of the field and was, I know, a help of some value on the farm. My scholarship improved rapidly and that year I went about as far as I could hope to go in the little school at Leonard's Corners.

"I wouldn't wonder if ol' Kate was right about our boy," said Aunt Deel one day when she saw me with my book in the field.

I began to know then that ol' Kate had somehow been at work in my soul--subconsciously as I would now put it. I was trying to put truth into the prophecy. As I look at the whole matter these days I can see that Mr. Grimshaw himself was a help no less important to me, for it was a sharp spur with which he continued to prod us.

CHAPTER VII

MY SECOND PERIL

We always thank G.o.d for men like Purvis: we never thank them. They are without honor in their own time, but how they brighten the pages of memory! How they stimulated the cheerfulness of the old countryside and broke up its natural reticence!

Mr. Franklin Purvis was our hired man--an undersized bachelor. He had a Roman nose, a face so slim that it would command interest and attention in any company, and a serious look enhanced by a bristling mustache and a retreating chin. At first and on account of his size I had no very high opinion of Mr. Purvis. That first evening after his arrival I sat with him on the porch surveying him inside and out.

"You don't look very stout," I said.

"I ain't as big as some, but I'm all gristle from my head to my heels, inside an' out," he answered.

I surveyed him again as he sat looking at the ledges. He was not more than a head taller than I, but if he were "all gristle" he might be ent.i.tled to respect and I was glad to learn of his hidden resources--glad and a bit apprehensive as they began to develop.

"I'm as full o' gristle as a goose's leg," he went on. "G.o.d never made a man who could do more damage when he lets go of himself an' do it faster. There ain't no use o' talkin'."

There being no use of talking, our new hired man continued to talk while I listened with breathless interest and growing respect. He took a chew of tobacco and squinted his eyes and seemed to be studying the wooded rock ledges across the road as he went on:

"You'll find me wide awake, I _guess_. I ain't afraid o' anythin' but lightnin'--no, sir!--an' I can hurt hard an' do it rapid when I begin, but I can be jest as harmless as a kitten. There ain't no man that can be more harmlesser when he wants to be an' there's any decent chance for it--none whatsomever! No, sir! I'd rather be harmless than not--a good deal."