Two Little Savages Part 6

XIV

Froth

From now on to the spring Yan was daily gaining in strength, and he and his mother came closer together. She tried to take an interest in the pursuits that were his whole nature. But she also strove hard to make him take an interest in her world. She was a morbidly religious woman. Her conversation was bristling with Scripture texts. She had a vast store of them--indeed, she had them all; and she used them on every occasion possible and impossible, with bewildering efficiency.

If ever she saw a group of young people dancing, romping, playing any game, or even laughing heartily, she would interrupt them to say, "Children, are you sure you can ask G.o.d's blessing on all this? Do you think that beings with immortal souls to save should give rein to such frivolity! I fear you are sinning, and be sure your sin will find you out. Remember, that for every idle word and deed we must give an account to the Great Judge of Heaven and earth."

She was perfectly sincere in all this, but she never ceased, except during the time of her son's illness, when, under orders from the doctor, she avoided the painful topic of eternal happiness and tried to simulate an interest in his pursuits. This was the blessed truce that brought them together.

He found a confidante for the first time since he met the collarless stranger, and used to tell all his loves and fears among the woodfolk and things. He would talk about this or that bird or flower, and hoped to find out its name, till the mother would suddenly feel shocked that any being with an immortal soul to save could talk so seriously about anything outside of the Bible; then gently reprove her son and herself, too, with a number of texts.

He might reply with others, for he was well equipped. But her unanswerable answer would be: "There is but one thing needful. What profiteth it a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?"

These fencing bouts grew more frequent as Yan grew stronger and the doctor's inhibition was removed.

After one of unusual warmth, Yan realized with a chill that all her interest in his pursuits had been an affected one. He was silent a long time, then said: "Mother! you like to talk about your Bible. It tells you the things that you long to know, that you love to learn.

You would be unhappy if you went a day without reading a chapter or two. That is your nature; G.o.d made you so.

"I have been obliged to read the Bible all my life. Every day I read a chapter; but I do not love it. I read it because I am forced to do it.

It tells me nothing I want to know. It does not teach me to love G.o.d, which you say is the one thing needful. But I go out into the woods, and every bird and flower I see stirs me to the heart with something, I do not know what it is; only I love them: I love them with all my strength, and they make me feel like praying when your Bible does not.

They are my Bible. This is my nature. G.o.d made me so."

The mother was silent after this, but Yan could see that she was praying for him as for a lost soul.

A few days later they were out walking in the early spring morning.

A Sh.o.r.e-lark on a clod whistled prettily as it felt the growing sunshine.

Yan strained his eyes and attention to take it in. He crept up near it. It took wing, and as it went he threw after it a short stick he was carrying. The stick whirled over and struck the bird. It fell fluttering. Yan rushed wildly after it and caught it in spite of his mother's calling him back.

He came with the bird in his hand, but it did not live many minutes.

His mother was grieved and disgusted. She said. "So this is the great love you have for the wild things; the very first spring bird to sing you must club to death. I do not understand your affections. Are not two sparrows sold for one farthing, and yet not one of them falls to the ground without the knowledge of your heavenly Father."

Yan was crushed. He held the dead bird in his hand and said, contradictorily, as the tears stood in his eyes, "I wish I hadn't; but oh, it was so beautiful."

He could not explain, because he did not understand, and yet was no hypocrite.

Weeks later a cheap trip gave him the chance for the first time in his life to see Niagara. As he stood with his mother watching the racing flood, in the gorge below the cataract, he noticed straws, bubbles and froth, that seemed to be actually moving upstream. He said:

"Mother, you see the froth how it seems to go up-stream."

"Well!"

"Yet we know it is a trifle and means nothing. We know that just below the froth is the deep, wide, terrible, irresistible, arrowy flood, surging all the other way."

"Yes, my son."

"Well, Mother, when I killed the Sh.o.r.e-lark, that was froth going the wrong way, I did love the little bird. I know now why I killed it.

Because it was going away from me. If I could have seen it near and could have touched it, or even have heard it every day, I should never have wished to harm it. I didn't mean _to kill it_, only _to get it_. You gather flowers because you love to keep them near you, not because you want to destroy them. They die and you are sorry. I only tried to gather the Sh.o.r.e-lark as you would a flower. It died, and I was very, very sorry."

"Nevertheless," the mother replied, "the merciful man is merciful unto his beast. He who hearkens when the young Ravens cry, surely took note of it, and in His great Book of Remembrance it is written down against you."

And from that time they surely drifted apart.

PART II

SANGER & SAM

I

The New Home

Yan was now fourteen years old long-legged, thin, and growing fast The doctor marked this combination and said: "Send him on a farm for a year."

Thus it was that an arrangement was made for Yan to work for his board at the farmhouse of William Raften of Sanger.

Sanger was a settlement just emerging from the early or backwoods period.

The recognized steps are, first, the frontier or woods where all is unbroken forest and Deer abound; next the backwoods where small clearings appear; then a settlement where the forest and clearings are about equal and the Deer gone; last, an agricultural district, with mere shreds of forest remaining.

Thirty years before, Sanger had been "taken up" by a population chiefly from Ireland, st.u.r.dy peasantry for the most part, who brought with them the ancient feud that has so long divided Ireland--the bitter quarrel between the Catholics or "Dogans" (why so called none knew) and Protestants, more usually styled "Prattisons." The colours of the Catholics were green and white; of the Protestants orange and blue; and hence another distinctive name of the latter was "Orangemen."

These two factions split the social structure in two vertically. There were, in addition, several horizontal lines of cleavage which, like geological seams, ran across both segments.

In those days, the early part of the nineteenth century, the British Government used to a.s.sist desirable persons who wished to emigrate to Canada from Ireland. This aid consisted of a free ocean pa.s.sage. Many who could not convince the Government of their desirability and yet could raise the money, came with them, paying their regular steerage rate of $15. These were alike to the outside world, but not to themselves. Those who paid their way were "pa.s.sengers," and were, in their own opinion, many social worlds above the a.s.sisted ones, who were called "Emmy Grants." This distinction was never forgotten among the residents of Sanger.

Yet two other social grades existed. Every man and boy in Sanger was an expert with the axe; was wonderfully adroit. The familiar phrase, "He's a good man," had two accepted meanings: If obviously applied to a settler during the regular Sat.u.r.day night Irish row in the little town of Downey's Dump, it meant he was an able man with his fists; but if to his home life on the farm, it implied that he was unusually dexterous with the axe. A man who fell below standard was despised.

Since the houses of hewn logs were made by their owners, they reflected the axemen's skill. There were two styles of log architecture; the shanty with corners criss-cross, called hog-pen finish, and the other, the house with the corners neatly finished, called dovetail finish. In Sanger it was a social black eye to live in a house of the first kind. The residents were considered "scrubs" or "riff-raff" by those whose superior axemanship had provided the more neatly finished dwelling. A later division crept in among the "dovetailers" themselves when a brickyard was opened. The more prosperous settlers put up neat little brick houses. To the surprise of all, one Phil O'Leary, a poor but prolific Dogan, leaped at once from a hog-pen log to a fine brick, and caused no end of perplexity to the ruling society queens, simply paralyzing the social register, since his nine fat daughters now had claims with the best. Many, however, whose brick houses were but five years old, denounced the O'Learys as upstarts and for long witheld all social recognition.

William Raften, as the most prosperous man in the community, was first to appear in red bricks. His implacable enemy, Char-less (two syllables) Boyle, egged on by his wife, now also took the red brick plunge, though he dispensed with masons and laid the bricks himself, with the help of his seventeen sons. These two men, though Orangemen both, were deadly enemies, as the wives were social rivals. Raften was the stronger and richer man, but Boyle, whose father had paid his own steerage rate, knew all about Raften's father, and always wound up any discussion by hurling in Raften's teeth: "Don't talk to me, ye upstart. Everybody knows ye are nothing but a Emmy Grant." This was the one fly in the Raften ointment. No use denying it. His father had accepted a free pa.s.sage, true, and Boyle had received a free homestead, but what of that--that counted for nothing. Old Boyle had been a "Pa.s.sENGER," old Raften an "EMMY GRANT."

This was the new community that Yan had entered, and the words Dogan and Prattison, "green" and "orange and blue," began to loom large, along with the ideas and animosities they stood for.

The accent of the Sangerite was mixed. First, there was a rich Irish brogue with many Irish words; this belonged chiefly to the old folks.

The Irish of such men as Raften was quite evident in their speech, but not strong enough to warrant the accepted Irish spelling of books, except when the speaker was greatly excited. The young generation had almost no Irish accent, but all had sifted down to the peculiar burring nasal whine of the backwoods Canadian.

Mr. and Mrs. Raften met Yan at the station. They had supper together at the tavern and drove him to their home, where they showed him into the big dining-room--living-room--kitchen. Over behind the stove was a tall, awkward boy with carroty hair and small, dark eyes set much aslant in the saddest of faces. Mrs. Raften said, "Come, Sam, and shake hands with Yan." Sam came sheepishly forward, shook hands in a flabby way, and said, in drawling tones, "How-do," then retired behind the stove to gaze with melancholy soberness at Yan, whenever he could do so without being caught at it. Mr. and Mrs. Raften were attending to various matters elsewhere, and Yan was left alone and miserable.