The Light in the Clearing Part 40

I turned to him with a look of inquiry and asked:

"What is it?"

"The one and only miracle we know-the gate o' birth through which comes human life and the lips commanding our love and speaking the wisdom of childhood. Show me how a man treats women an' I'll tell ye what he amounts to. There's the test that shows whether he's a man or a spaniel dog."

There was a little moment of silence then--how well I remember it! The schoolmaster broke the silence by adding:

"Well ye know, lad, I think the greatest thing that Jesus Christ did was showing to a wicked world the sanct.i.ty o' motherhood."

That, I think, was the last lesson in the school year. Just beyond us I could see the slant of Bowman's Hill. What an amount of pains they gave those days to the building of character! It will seem curious and perhaps even wearisome now, but it must show here if I am to hold the mirror up to the time.

"I wonder why Kate is asking about me," I said.

"Never mind the reason. She is your friend and let us thank G.o.d for it.

Think how she came to yer help in the old barn an' say a thousand prayers, my lad. I shall write to her to-day, and what shall I say as to the work?"

"Well, I've been consulting the compa.s.s," I answered thoughtfully, as I looked down at the yielding sand under my feet. "I think that I want to be a lawyer."

"Good! I would have guessed it. I suppose your week in the court room with the fine old judge and the lawyers settled that for ye."

"I think that it did."

"Well, the Senator is a lawyer, G.o.d prosper him, an' he has shown us that the chief business o' the lawyer is to keep men out o' the law."

Having come to the first flight of the uplands, he left me with many a kind word--how much they mean to a boy who is choosing his way with a growing sense of loneliness!

I reached the warm welcome of our little home just in time for dinner.

They were expecting me and it was a regular company dinner--chicken pie and strawberry shortcake.

"I wallered in the gra.s.s all the forenoon tryin' to git enough berries for this celebration--ayes!--they ain't many of 'em turned yit," said Aunt Deel. "No, sir--nothin' but pure cream on this cake. I ain't a goin' to count the expense."

Uncle Peabody danced around the table and sang a stanza of the old ballad, which I have forgotten, but which begins:

_Come, Philander, let us be a-marchin'._

How well I remember that hour with the doors open and the sun shining brightly on the blossoming fields and the joy of man and bird and beast in the return of summer and the talk about the late visit of Alma Jones and Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln!

While we were eating I told them about the letter of old Kate.

"Fullerton!" Aunt Deel exclaimed. "Are ye sure that was the name, Bart?"

"Yes."

"Goodness gracious sakes alive!"

She and Uncle Peabody gave each other looks of surprised inquiry.

"Do you know anybody by that name?" I asked.

"We used to," said Aunt Deel as she resumed her eating. "Can't be she's one o' the Sam Fullertons, can it?"

"Oh, prob'ly not," said Uncle Peabody. "Back east they's more Fullertons than ye could shake a stick at. Say, I see the biggest bear this mornin'

that I ever see in all the born days o' my life.

"It was dark. I'd come out o' the fifty-mile woods an' down along the edge o' the ma'sh an' up into the bushes on the lower side o' the pastur. All to once I heerd somethin'! I stopped an' peeked through the bushes--couldn't see much--so dark. Then the ol' bear riz up on her hind legs clus to me. We didn't like the looks o' one 'nother an' begun to edge off very careful.

"Seems so I kind o' said to the ol' bear: 'Excuse me.'

"Seems so the ol' bear kind o' answered: 'Sart'nly.'

"I got down to a little run, near by, steppin' as soft as a cat. I could just see a white stun on the side o' it. I lifted my foot to step on the stun an' jump acrost. B-r-r-r-r! The stun jumped up an' scampered through the bushes. Then I _was_ scairt. Goshtalmighty! I lost confidence in everything. Seemed so all the bushes turned into bears.

Jeerusalem, how I run! When I got to the barn I was purty nigh used up."

"How did it happen that the stone jumped?" I asked.

"Oh, I guess 't was a rabbit," said Uncle Peabody.

Thus Uncle Peabody led us off into the trail of the bear and the problem of Kate and the Sam Fullertons concerned us no more at that time.

A week later we had our raising. Uncle Peabody did not want a public raising, but Aunt Deel had had her way. We had hewed and mortised and bored the timbers for our new home. The neighbors came with pikes and helped to raise and stay and cover them. A great amount of human kindness went into the beams and rafters of that home and of others like it. I knew that The Thing was still alive in the neighborhood, but even that could not paralyze the helpful hands of those people. Indeed, what was said of my Uncle Peabody was nothing more or less than a kind of conversational firewood. I can not think that any one really believed it.

We had a cheerful day. A barrel of hard cider had been set up in the dooryard, and I remember that some drank it too freely. The he-o-hee of the men as they lifted on the pikes and the sound of the hammer and beetle rang in the air from morning until night. Mrs. Rodney Barnes and Mrs. Dorothy came to help Aunt Deel with the cooking and a great dinner was served on an improvised table in the dooryard, where the stove was set up. The shingles and sheathes and clapboards were on before the day ended.

When they were about to go the men filled their cups and drank to Aunt Deel.

I knew, or thought I knew, why they had not mentioned my Uncle Peabody, and was very thoughtful about it. Suddenly the giant Rodney Barnes strode up to the barrel. I remember the lion-like dignity of his face as he turned and said:

"Now, boys, come up here an' stand right before me, every one o' you."

He ranged them in a circle around the barrel. He stood at the spigot and filled every cup. Then he raised his own and said:

"I want ye to drink to Peabody Baynes--one o' the squarest men that ever stood in cowhide."

They drank the toast--not one of them would have dared refuse.

"Now three cheers for the new home and every one that lives in it," he demanded.

They cheered l.u.s.tily and went away.

Uncle Peabody and I put in the floors and stairway and part.i.tions. More than once in the days we were working together I tried to tell him what Sally had told me, but my courage failed.

We moved our furniture. I remember that Uncle Peabody called it "the houseltree." We had greased paper on the windows for a time after we moved until the sash came. Aunt Deel had made rag carpets for the parlor and the bedroom which opened off it. Our windows looked down into the great valley of the St. Lawrence, stretching northward thirty miles or more from our hilltop. A beautiful grove of sugar maples stood within a stone's throw of the back door.

What a rustic charm in the long slant of the green hill below us with its gray, mossy boulders and lovely thorn trees! It was, I think, a brighter, pleasanter home than that we had left. It was built on the cellar of one burned a few years before. The old barn was still there and a little repairing had made it do.

The day came, shortly, when I had to speak out, and I took the straight way of my duty as the needle of the compa.s.s pointed. It was the end of a summer day and we had watched the dusk fill the valley and come creeping up the slant, sinking the boulders and thorn tops in its flood, one by one. As we sat looking out of the open door that evening I told them what Sally had told me of the evil report which had traveled through the two towns. Uncle Peabody sat silent and perfectly motionless for a moment, looking out into the dusk.

"W'y, of all things! Ain't that an awful burnin' shame-ayes!" said Aunt Deel as she covered her face with her hand.