While she was collecting them I saw that the newcomer’s hair was twisted behind her head in a tight little knot, and that she was very slender, and very short; that her features were small and sharp, and dried-up like a mummy’s, and that, altogether, she was the most repulsive-looking creature I had ever seen. I half expected that she would give me a rap as she went out, she looked so sour and ugly. I supposed she was a servant; possibly Adam’s mother, and when Agnes came in, which she did a moment after, looking very much frightened, I had it in my mind to say that the old woman of the sky had swept the children away with a broomstick.
“I was afraid they would annoy you,” she said hurriedly, as though it was necessary to say something before I could remark on the queer little old woman who had driven them away.
I was about to reply that we were getting along very well until one of them fell down, when she continued:—“My uncle has just driven up. He is coming in.”
At that moment the door opened softly, and a very small and handsomely dressed man stepped into the room. He spoke to Agnes pleasantly, and as he looked inquiringly at me, she explained:—
“One of my pupils from Fairview, Ned Westlock. I shall go home with him to-morrow, as the school opens a week earlier than was expected.”
I knew now why his neighbors called him Little Biggs—because he was very short, and very thin, and very little.
“Ah! Ned Westlock.”
After he had said this, he looked at me very attentively while he removed his gloves. Placing them in his tall hat, he set both away, and came back to me.
“I am very glad to know you,” Mr. Biggs said. “I am glad to have you a guest at our house.”
This was encouraging, as nobody else had said as much, and I felt better.
“I need not apologize,” he said, “for the rough but honest ways of us farmers,” looking admiringly at his thin legs, and brushing at a speck of dirt which seemed to be on one of them, “for I believe you come of an agricultural family yourself.”
I was surprised at this reference to his rough ways, for he was extremely fastidious in his dress and manner. I managed to admit, however, that I came of an agricultural family.
“Those of us who live in the country, and earn our bread in the sweat of our brow,” Mr. Biggs went on, seating himself beside me, “cannot be particular. Our clothing, our food, and our ways are rough, but substantial and honest. We have other matters to look after, such as following the plough, sowing the grain, and tossing the hay. We may have our ambitions like other men, but they are dwarfed and bent by holding the plough, and pitching the hay. When did you come, and how long do you stay?”
I replied that I had arrived but a few hours before, and that I would depart the next day at any hour Agnes was ready.
“I am sorry,” Mr. Biggs was good enough to say, “I should be delighted to show you how we carry on a four hundred acre farm. Other great farmers have from four to a dozen hired men about them, but Big Adam and I do all the work here; and we are equal to it, though it keeps us very busy, as you will imagine. We have no time for the fine arts, you may be certain.”
He ran on gayly in this way, making himself out in ignorance and muscle the equal of one of our Fairview farmers, although he was really nothing else to my mind than a fop, until Agnes came in and said we were to walk out to supper. There was no one in the supper room when we entered it, and although I expected other members of the family every moment, none came. Agnes was there most of the time, but did not sit down, and supplied the place of a servant.
“Those of us who live in the country,” said Mr. Biggs, helping me to meat and bread with the greatest ceremony, “cannot be particular as to what we eat, except that it is substantial and hearty. Meat and bread and milk make muscle, and muscle is in great demand on a farm. Big Adam and I find a great deal of it necessary in tilling these four hundred acres, therefore we insist on plenty of plain and substantial food. Excuse me, if I eat like a hog.”
The supper was a very good one, but he talked a great deal about its being plain but hearty; and although he was dainty in his eating, and ate nothing but bread and milk, and toasted bread and tea, he kept apologizing for his ravenous appetite. He had something to say, too, about shovelling in his food with a knife, and bolting it—he did neither, but on the contrary was very delicate—and as he kept watching me, I thought that he must be apologizing for his guest, which made me very uncomfortable at my bad manners, for up to that time I had not been backward in falling to. But as he continued to denounce his unnatural craving for food, and frequently expressed the fear that the meal lacked so much of what I was accustomed to, that I could not possibly make out a comfortable supper, I finally made up my mind he did not mean me at all.
When I had finished he was waiting for me, and we adjourned to the room in which I had played with the children. Lighting a cigar (which he said was a very poor one, but which he observed in the course of the evening, as an example of his extravagance, had cost twenty cents) he took a dressing-gown from a closet, and, putting it on, sat down before me, the picture of luxurious ease.
While we sat there I heard the family of eight, accompanied by their mother and the little old woman who had frightened me, come banging down the stairs, and file into the supper room, where there were a steady noise and wrangle until they had finished and gone up the stairs again. I heard Big Adam protesting to some one that it was not pleasant to be always “jawed at,” and that he did all he could; but when the argument threatened to become boisterous, I heard a pleasanter voice intercede, and establish a peace, and I was sure this was Agnes’s. Mr. Biggs stopped once or twice to listen to the confusion, as if trying to hear what was being said, but recollecting that if he could hear, I could as well, he began talking again to draw my attention from it. He tried to make me believe the children were making the disturbance, and said:—
“There can be no order in a house full of children, and very little comfort.” He stopped to think a moment, but the uproar in the supper room was so great that he went on trying to draw my attention away from it. “I confess to thinking something of them, but every pleasure they bring is accompanied by inconvenience, expense, and annoyance. Have I told you yet that I am a philosopher?”
I had suspected that something was wrong with him, though I could not tell what it was. I replied politely, however, that he had not.
“Well, I am one,” the little man said with a show of pride. “A great many men regard children as blessings. Now I have failed to discover any kind of a blessing or pleasure in being called up in the middle of the night to run for a doctor when there is croup in the house. Usually, too, in such cases the medical man lives a great many miles away, over a rough road. Whenever I go to bed early to make up lost sleep, or come home particularly tired from tossing the hay or holding the plough, either Annie, or Bennie, or Carrie, or Davie, or Effie, or Fannie, or Georgie, or Harry, is sick, and I am compelled to go for a doctor. This never fails if the night is very wet, the roads unusually heavy, or the weather particularly cold. While everybody admires little children, I am sure they would be much more popular if their teeth came more easily; and that there would be a greater demand for them if they did not take a hundred different diseases to which they are not exposed. I am that kind of philosopher.”
The fire in the end of his cigar having about gone out, from holding it in his hand and waving it at me, he revived it with a great deal of puffing, and went on:—
“Understand me, Ned Westlock; I do not complain. I am like other men, except that I am not a fool; and while I accept the bitter with the sweet, I point out the bitter and refuse to call it palatable. I am at a loss to understand, for example, why the Creator is more considerate of pigs than He is of children; for I believe pigs cut their teeth before birth, and seldom die except when fat from good health, and at the hands of a butcher. Children, on the other hand”—he used his right hand to represent the pigs, and his left to represent the children—“are never well, and for every tooth there is an insolent doctor with a bill, to say nothing of measles, coughs, rashes, and fevers. I have seen it estimated that it requires three thousand eight hundred and seventy-nine dollars and thirty-five or forty cents to raise a baby to manhood or womanhood. A pig may be raised to maturity with a few hundred buckets of slop, a few bushels of corn, and a wisp of hay occasionally for a bed. What do you think of that?”
As he looked at me as though I had been stubbornly arguing the cause of the children, I replied that the pigs had the best of it, so far, decidedly.
“If you have never talked with a philosopher before, you may never have had your attention called to the fact, which possibly has escaped your own notice, that children do not appreciate good treatment, as do pigs and other animals. The very worst thing you can do for a boy is to treat him well. Where do you find the good boys?”
He made a pause as if expecting a reply, and I said, “I don’t know,” but I knew at once that he was impatient that I had replied, for he wanted to do all the talking himself.
“In families where boys are always hungry and abused,” he resumed. “Where do you find your bad boys? In families where they are treated well, of course. A boy who has plenty to eat, and plenty to wear, and nothing to do, is always impudent and worthless; and parents who go to trouble and expense that their children may be happy and idle pay a big price for a pestilence. I do not pretend to say that in practice I am more of a philosopher than my neighbors; but it is a fact, nevertheless, that the pig that slips into the house and litters it up is beaten with a broomstick until he understands, when tempted on future occasions, that the practice is dangerous. If the pigs get on the porch, and you open the door suddenly, they run away in great haste, having been taught by harsh means that they are not expected there; and if we would teach children in the same way, we should have more comfort with them. But practically we regard the training of pigs as more important than the training of children, and suffer much discomfort in consequence. I recognize certain inexorable masters, and obey them to avoid uncomfortable consequences; and a child must have a master, or it will become disagreeable and annoying.”
He stopped to listen to the noise made by his family up stairs. It was very uproarious, and I thought he was regretting that his philosophy had not been made to bear some practical fruit.
“If you were a young man,” he continued, coming out of a brown study, “and had driven from Fairview to ask my advice on this question, I should advise you thus: ‘Sir, if you covet the society of little children, hire them to play at your house until you are tired; for then you can send them away, and enjoy the quiet following their absence. You will find that pleasant enough, but if you have a house full of your own, that alters the case; for like the deserving poor, they then are always with you—in sickness as well as in health, and when they are disagreeable as well as when they are not.’ That would be my candid advice; you may accept it, or let it alone, as you choose.”
He waved the hand at me which he had previously used to represent the pigs, as though I had been asking him to counsel me on the subject, and as if he were impatient that I did not accept his advice at once. But recollecting himself, he took a delicate knife from his pocket, and after profuse apologies for his ill-manners, proceeded to pare his finger nails, looking occasionally at me as if doubting my ability to understand his philosophy, for I had scarcely said a word in reply to it.
“I understand your father is a singer,” he said, after his fingers were mentally pronounced satisfactory.
I replied with a show of pride that he had the finest voice ever heard in Fairview church, and that he was famous for it.
“He ought to stop it,” Mr. Biggs abruptly said. “People enjoy his singing, I have no doubt, but if he were a friend of mine—I have not even the pleasure of his acquaintance—I would say to him, ‘Quit singing, Reverend John, if you would become great.’ How does it come he is not in the Legislature? Because he sings. The people do not associate statesmanship with singing. When a man is honored for singing, he is honored for little else. Did you ever know a great man who sang?”
I replied that I had not, for I had never known a great man.
“Well,” he answered curtly, “I know them all, and none of them sing. Or play. The darkey who can sing and dance is popular with an idle crowd, but the solid people who have gardens to spade, or walls to whitewash, avoid the musical negro, for his talent is likely to be exhausted in that direction. I don’t pretend to know why it is against a man that he is able to entertain people with his voice, or with the skill of his fingers; I only know it is the case. It would be a kindness for somebody to say as much to Reverend John; you may convey the information to him, with my compliments, if you wish.”
I had been wishing all evening that Agnes would come in, and ask me to sing, as I thought I had talent in that direction, and even debated in my mind whether I would roar the “Hunter’s Horn,” or “Glorious Day of Rest” for the amusement of my host; but I was now glad she had been so considerate of my feelings, and spared me the humiliation. I was quite certain that if she should ask me to sing after what Mr. Biggs had said, I should declare I had never attempted to do such a ridiculous thing.
“Every man who tells an uncomfortable truth,” Mr. Biggs began again, after lighting a fresh cigar by the remains of the old one, “is called a beast. I am called a beast in this neighborhood (which is known for taxing and voting purposes as Smoky Hill) because I tell a great many unpalatable truths; I have eyes and intelligence, therefore I cannot help noticing (and mentioning) that the people of this country pay more attention to raising thorough-bred stock than to raising thorough-bred children which you must admit is ridiculous. I hear that The. Meek, for instance, has his stable full of fine stock, and his house full of sore-eyed children. The. Meek is evidently an ass; I’m glad I do not know him. If I did, I should make myself disagreeable by mentioning the circumstance.”
I may as well mention here that Mr. Biggs was not the kind of man he claimed to be. On the contrary, he made his living by indorsing the follies of other people, but he had pointed out their mistakes to himself so often that I suppose he really believed he was generally despised for telling the truth.
“We have many of the same kind of men in Smoky Hill. It affords me pleasure to assure you that I am unpopular with them, and they take great comfort in the belief that I am likely to die in a year or two of consumption. But I have already had the satisfaction of attending the funerals of five men who predicted that I was not long for the world; I expect to help bury the rest of them at intervals in the future. While I get a little stronger every year, by care and common sense, they get a little weaker, by carelessness and ignorance, and finally they are buried, with L. Biggs, Esq., the consumptive, looking contentedly on. The trouble with these men is that they eat everything coming in their way, like pigs, lacking observation to teach them that a greater number of people die of over-feeding than die of over-drinking or over-working. The last Smoky Hill glutton that died was the Most Worthy Chief of a temperance society, and he was always quarreling with his wife because she didn’t have pie for breakfast. For my part, I detest pie.”
I was about to say that while I agreed with him in everything else, I should be compelled to make an exception in the pie particular; but he did not give me opportunity, for he proceeded:—
“In my visits to the homes of cultured but unwise people, I am frequently tempted to do violence to my stomach by eating late at night, but recollecting the fate of the Smoky Hill men, I respectfully decline. When I am offered cake, and nightmare in other forms, I do not greedily accept and devour everything set before me, but instead I say, ‘If you have cold oatmeal mush, or a bit of graham bread, I will refresh myself with that, but no cake, I thank you, although the assortment is fine, and reflects great credit on the lady of the house.’ Thus I preserve my health, and prove my philosophy. But no doubt I am wearying you; I will show you to bed.”
He did not ask me whether I was tired of his company, but picked up the light as though he could decide questions for boys without their assistance, and leading the way up stairs, I meekly followed. Opening a door after reaching the upper floor, he gave me the light, said good night, and went down again, as though he had not had enough of his own company, and would sit up a while longer.
There were two comfortable beds in the room to which Mr. Biggs had shown me, and Big Adam occupied one of them already, sound asleep. His clothes were piled up in a heap by the side of it, with the Λ-shaped hat on top, ready to go on the first thing in the morning. He mumbled occasionally in his sleep, and I thought he was saying he did the best he could, and that it wasn’t pleasant to be “jawed at,” which made me think again of the terrible old woman with the parchment face, the little head, the little body, and the little knot of hair on the back of her head. I felt like kneeling down by my bed and praying that the queer woman might not have a habit of walking through the house at night, accompanied by the kitchen butcher-knife freshly sharpened at the grindstone, for there was no lock on the door. But speedily occupying the other bed, and putting out the light, I had hardly begun thinking of the curious family before I was sound asleep.
WHEN I went down to breakfast the next morning, I found Agnes waiting for me, and the meal ready; and as was the case the night before, she presided at the table without sitting down. I ate alone, and in silence, as it was explained that Mr. Biggs was not yet up, though it was late, and Agnes did not seem to be in a mood for talking. The circumstance that other members of the family kept out of the room made me think that I was regarded in the house as a sort of a machine likely to explode and hurt somebody, and could be approached only by those who knew where the safety valve was which blew me off; for I supposed Mrs. Biggs and Mrs. Deming to be very aristocratic people, who could not tolerate a country-bred boy. Therefore I did not feel in very good humor myself, thinking that Agnes was ashamed to exhibit me to her friends. Going out to the stables in lazy preparation for returning home, I found Big Adam pitching hay, as I had left him the day before.
“Well, young Westlock, how are you now?” he inquired, leaning on his fork.
I returned his greeting, and said I would hitch up when he had time to help me.
“You needn’t be in a hurry about it,” he said, returning to his work. “If I were you I would manage to get home just at dark, for then you’ll have nothing to do during the day. If you get back too early the preacher may find something for you to do.”
There was a good deal of truth in this, and I thanked him for the suggestion.
“I know something about hired help and boys on a farm. I have had a ripe experience in the service of Biggs. I thought he would talk you to death last night; it’s a terrible death to die. What did he say?”
I repeated portions of the conversation, and gave particular stress to what he had said concerning his and Big Adam’s doing the work of half a dozen men.
“He is always saying that,” Big Adam said indignantly, “but I assure you on my honor that he never held a plough or pitched hay a day in his life. Why, he is not here a third of his time. He came home last night after an absence of four weeks; I don’t know where he has been, but to some of the towns a long way off, probably. At ten or eleven o’clock he will breakfast, and then I shall hitch up and drive him over the place, during which time he will point out and suggest enough work to keep a dozen men busy for months; and after assuring me it ought all to be done before night, he will return to the house to lounge about. In a day or two he will go away again, and come back when he gets ready. That’s the kind of a farmer Biggs is, but I must say for him that he is quiet and peaceable. I wish I could say as much for his sister, the old pelican.”
Up to this time Big Adam had been wearing his Λ-shaped hat so far back on his head that I was wondering it did not fall off; but as if there were some people so contemptible that he could not possibly mention them without showing his temper, he jerked the hat over on his low forehead when he said this, and, looking out from under it with his little eyes, viciously said, “Damn.”
“And who is his sister?” I asked.
“Old Missus Deming, Agnes’s mother; the little old woman they were careful you should not see.”
It came to me all at once—how foolish of me not to have thought of it before—why Agnes never talked about her mother, and why she always seemed to be glad to be away from her; she was disagreeable, not only to Big Adam, but to every one around her. I understood now that Agnes was frightened when I first came for fear I should see her mother, and not for fear her mother would see me, as I had imagined; and I felt so much better that I had a mind to walk in the yard in plain view of the house, that Mrs. Deming might regret not having made my acquaintance. I told Adam that I had seen her, however, and narrated the circumstance of her appearance in the room after the children.
The hired man expressed his satisfaction at this very much as I have seen young colts express it, by kicking his legs out in various directions, and snorting. After he had enjoyed himself in this manner for a while he said:—
“It’s just like her, though. They might have known better than to have left her alone. It’s a wonder she didn’t hit you; I wish she had, for then you would despise her, as I do.”
He continued to chuckle to himself as though it was a satisfaction to him that I had seen his enemy; and putting his finger in his mouth, he drew it out in such a manner that it sounded like pulling a cork; then thumping his jaws he made a sound of liquor coming out of a bottle. This pantomime I interpreted to mean that if he were better off he would celebrate the event with something expensive to drink. I found out afterward that this was a habit with him when in a good humor, and he had acquired such skill by practice that if your back was turned to him the deception was perfect.
“She’s the worst woman on earth,” he continued, leading me behind the barn to be more confidential. “They say she never smiled in her life, and I believe it. She grumbles, and growls, and jaws from morning until night; but what can they do? Bless you, she owns the farm!”
I looked astonished, to induce him to go on.
“Yes, she owns the place, and you bet she looks after it. When she came here with Agnes, six or seven years ago, her brother had a great tract of land bought on credit, and she paid for it with the money she brought along, and built the house you slept in last night. Since then she has been so disagreeable that Biggs is seldom at home, and won’t see her when he is. Did you see his wife?”
I replied that I had been denied that pleasure.
“You would have seen a sight if you had; a woman who hasn’t combed her hair for six years, because she has that old hen to look after, besides the care of the children. I don’t believe she ever sleeps; for if I wake up in the night she is either being railed at by that she devil or is up with the children. I believe she is the only person living whose lot is worse than mine. When I am in the field I am out of my misery, but she never has that opportunity of escaping hers. When Agnes is away I often cook my own meals, and I am the only one besides Agnes that pays her any attention. Except to keep a family of children around her, I think Biggs never notices her; and when he is at home he occupies a room away from the noise and confusion. But she is patient, and never complains, although there is no hope; for the old woman will outlive us all. She lives on growling and grumbling, for she is afraid to eat for fear of poison, and hesitates to sleep for visions of strangling. She talks about poisoning and strangling for hours at a stretch, and accuses the Biggses of wanting to murder her, because she knows it humiliates them. I hear that her late husband was a fine fellow, a sea captain. He was a very sensible man, I judge, for he drowned himself rather than live with her. I think a great deal of Captain Deming’s memory; he is the only great man I know even by reputation. Here’s to him.”
He pulled another cork, which appeared to come with difficulty, and thumped on his jaws to represent the gurgling of liquor as it flows out of the bottle.
“Agnes is like him. It will be a great relief to her to go home with you. Does she ever talk of her mother?”
“No,” I answered.
“I thought not; nor does she ever talk of the Devil. But I’ll be bound she talks a great deal of her father. I think Agnes will never marry, preferring to remain an old maid rather than introduce a husband to her mother; and I don’t blame her. She complains during the few weeks that the poor girl is at home because Agnes is not away earning money for her strong-box, into which goes every dollar of it. If Agnes has any money, Biggs gives it to her; for she has to account for every penny of her earnings to her mother, who says she needs that, and more, to buy something decent to wear. She talks a great deal about having nothing decent to wear, as if anything would look well on her angular old bones except a shroud.”
“What does Biggs do for a living?” I asked, anxious to know as much about the family as possible.
“To be candid with you,” Big Adam replied, in a confidential way, “I don’t know; although he has some way of making money, for he always has it. He organizes the farmers for one thing, and is a member of the Legislature for another. Once he started a Farmers’ Store here, at a place over in the hills there,” pointing in the direction, “where the roads cross, and where the Smoky Hill post-office is kept. He told the people they must organize for protection, and he somehow made them agree to patronize his store if he would start one. They were honest men who made the agreement, and lived up to it a long while; but in time they found out that he was charging them a great deal more for his goods than the dangerous men he had warned them against in town. I was in the place when they came in to hang him; and one man walked up to the rope-reel, and wanted to know how much rope would be necessary. But Biggs made them a speech from a vinegar barrel, and so worked upon their feelings that they went away content with the harmless revenge of calling him a little whiffet. Biggs put me in charge, and galloped away to find a purchaser for his store. He found one by representing that an entire neighborhood of fools had signed an agreement to pay him in cash whatever price he asked for his goods. The purchaser wanted to shoot Biggs when he found out how matters really stood—for he had paid a big price—but for some reason he changed his mind. Biggs is that kind of man. Now you know as much about him as I do.”
As though he had been idling away too much time already, Big Adam began to work with great energy, and refused to talk any more, so I put the horses to the wagon alone; but after I had driven through the gate and into the road he came out as if there was one word more he desired to say, and lifting himself up by putting one foot on the wheel, he whispered in my ear:—
“My father was killed by the Indians.”
He looked so distressed that I expressed some sort of regret, and said it was a pity.
“Good-bye,” he added, giving me his hand; “my last name is Casebolt. My mother is married the second time.”
I shook his great fat hand again, and he went back to his work. Driving round to the front of the house I found Agnes waiting for me, and, lifting her little trunk into the wagon, we drove away, no one appearing at the doors or windows to bid her good-bye. My mother had told me to invite Mrs. Deming to visit her, but out of regard for Agnes I resolved to say that I had forgotten it. As we went past the stables Big Adam motioned for me to stop, and raising himself up beside me by putting his foot on the wheel again, he whispered,—
“My brothers and sisters are all dead.”
He stepped down from the wheel; and putting the whip to the horses I soon left the place behind me.
I saw that Agnes had been crying, for her eyes were red and swollen; but I pretended not to notice it, and hoped her spirits would revive as we neared Fairview.
“You will excuse me, Ned,” she said, after we had driven a long time in silence, “if I have neglected you, but I have not been myself for several days. Big Adam talks a great deal, and I saw you down in the yard with him a long while. You should not believe all he says. I am unhappy on my own account.”
I did not know what to say in reply, for I was anxious for her to believe that I thought her mother was not at home, or something of that sort; so I jerked one of the horses roughly, and said “Whoa,” as if the animal were preparing to run away. I knew she was distressed that I knew how unhappy she was at home, and was trying to lay the blame on herself, as she did in everything; therefore I watched the dangerous horse very intently for several minutes, and finally got down to walk around the wagon, to see if anything was wrong. After I had pounded the tires awhile with a stone, although they were new, I climbed back into my seat, and we drove on again.
“The people of Fairview have been very kind to me,” Agnes continued, not minding that I did not care to talk on the subject, “and I have been happier there than here; although it is very ungrateful in me, and a poor return for the patient way in which they bear with me at home. I am so wicked and selfish.”
The tears came into her eyes as she spoke, and I wondered whether it was wrong to tell white lies, for I was sure Agnes was fibbing in defence of her family. She thought about the matter a long time after that, and looked at me narrowly,—although I pretended not to know it,—and seemed to conclude at last that I had made good use of my time with Big Adam, and that she must depend upon the charity of my silence. Any way, she said no more upon the subject, and we rode in silence for several miles.
“You have always taken a great interest in my father,” she said, at last, wiping her eyes, and dismissing the unpleasant subject. “I have brought you his picture as a present.”
She took it out of a little package she carried, and gave it to me. It was a handsome face, and looked very much as I had imagined, except that it was clean-shaven. I put it away carefully, and she said:—
“My life would have been very different had he lived, and I should not have been so unkind to every one. He was always so brave and good that I should have striven to be like him, for everybody loved him. But he is dead, and I cannot be content without him. It is this that makes me fretful, and unworthy of my many good friends. Oh dear, I am going to cry.”
She did cry again, apologizing for it in a way that reminded me of her uncle; and I sat there feeling like a fool while she was giving vent to her grief, and until she had regained her self-possession once more.
“I am sorry I did not see him buried, and that he did not have a quiet place to rest,” Agnes continued, wiping her eyes; “for I dream at night of his storm-tossed ship, and always think of the sea as forever rolling and tossing his poor body about, refusing it rest and peace. Often in the wicked waves I see his white face turned imploringly to me, and the noises of the night I torture into his cries to me for help. If I knew where he was buried, and could sometimes visit his grave, I should be more content, and less unhappy.”
I had heard a song called “When the Sea gives up its Dead,” and without thinking what I did I softly hummed it.
“When he came home at the time I saw him last, he carried me about in his great strong arms along the beach, and said that if some day he never came back, for me not to dislike the sea, for it had been his friend in many a storm, and had rocked him to sleep almost every night since he was born. ‘It will never prove treacherous,’ he said. ‘My ship may, but never the sea. The “Agnes” is not like the stout girl in whose honor she was named; she is getting old, and should she founder with me in the storms, and go down, never feel unkindly toward the sea. It has been my friend so many years that should it swallow me up I desire you to think that I deserved it.’ He went away soon after that, and we have never seen him since.”
Although the tears came into her eyes again, she bravely wiped them away.
“I am sorry for you,” I made bold to say, looking at her pretty face. “I wish I were a man, and old enough; I would marry you, and make you happy in spite of yourself. I cannot tell you how much I desire your good, or how much I love you. Your presence at our house has made us a different family. My mother is more content, and my father less gloomy; and surely Jo and I know more since you came. I love you because you are good and pretty, and I think you are prettier to-day than I have ever seen you before. If I were a little older I would fall in love with you, and worry you a great deal with my attentions.”
“It wouldn’t worry me, Ned,” she answered, with a return of her old cheerfulness. “I should like it. But I thought you were in love with me.”
“Oh, I am, of course—as a boy,” I answered; “but I mean if I were a man. If you should concentrate the love you distribute in Fairview on one man, I should like to be the man. That’s what I mean. You love everybody in Fairview just alike.”
“I am not so certain of that,” she replied. “I think I am very partial to you. Who is most gallant and thoughtful to me of all my pupils? Why, you are, of course; and I love you best of any of them. When I get to be an old woman, and you a young man, I shall show my love for you by selecting you a wife; and if I am unable to find you a very good one, you shall remain single, as I intend to do. I regard you as my best friend, and I want you to think so. When you came yesterday, I wanted to run down and kiss you, but I could not leave my mother.”
“But you never have kissed me,” I said, “although you say you love me.”
“I will now, if you will let me,” she replied, and putting her arms round me, she kissed me as innocently as if I had been a child. I was very much abashed but thanked her as for any other favor.
“You are the first girl that ever kissed me,” I said.
“Well, let me be the last one, unless I should want to kiss you again. But we are in sight of Fairview, and while we are alone, I want to tell you about Big Adam. His father is an outlaw, living somewhere in the great West; and, although he occasionally comes to Smoky Hill, it is always at night. His mother is a rough woman who smokes and drinks, and his brothers and sisters are very bad people. I don’t know where they all live, though I frequently hear of them, but never anything to their credit. It is said that his mother’s house, which is situated in a deep hollow near the river, is a rendezvous for bad men, and frequently it is raided by the officers looking for her bold husband. Big Adam is the only honest one among them, and that is why he says they are all dead; but even he talks too much.”
I knew she wanted me to believe that he had misrepresented her family, though she was certain he had not; therefore I only said that Fairview church looked very pretty from the high point over which the road led us. I had never thought so before, but the country surrounding it was much finer than the Smoky Hill district, and I began to think that if I could travel more I might grow more content with my own home.
Our house was built in a rather low place, and I noticed with surprise, what I had not had opportunity of noticing before, that a great many new fields were being opened in different directions. Fairview was quietly and rapidly settling up.
“Anything Big Adam may have said to you,” Agnes said as we were nearing the house, “is to be private between you and me.”
I readily promised, though I had been thinking but a moment before of adding largely to it, and astonishing Jo.
“Since we are good friends we must have our secrets, and this is our first one. You may tell Jo that I kissed you.”
I blushed because she had divined that I intended to tell him about her mother, but comforted myself with the reflection that she could not know for a certainty.
My mother was waiting for us; and the place was so quiet and pleasant, and the late dinner she had prepared so good, that I began to feel like a very favored fellow. Jo and the man of the house were away somewhere, and we spent the afternoon like three happy children, suddenly free from some exacting restraint. Agnes and I made so much of my mother, that I remember her as being happier on that day than any other, and when I think of her now, so long after, I am glad that it is as she sat in her easy chair between us that afternoon, saying little, but looking content and happy.
INASMUCH as that young man continued to haul stone to Erring’s Ford for a dam, and would talk of nothing else, it became certain, in course of time, that Jo would never make a farmer; so it was agreed, at a convention attended by my father and my grandmother, that he should be apprenticed for two years to Damon Barker, of the establishment on Bull River. Barker had suggested it, I believe, as he needed some one to assist him, and was much pleased with Jo besides, who had already learned to help him in many ways during visits to the place. These visits were allowed to become frequent and protracted when it was decided that he should be sent there to learn milling as a business. When it was announced to Jo that the arrangement had been made—it was one Sunday afternoon—he took me out to the hayloft of the stable to talk about it.
“I am to be given a chance,” he said, “and that is all I ask. I intend to work hard, and at the end of two years I shall be in position to commence my mill in earnest. I am seventeen years old now; I shall be nineteen then, and by the time I am twenty-one, ‘Erring’s Mill’ will be in operation. It seems a very long time to wait, and a big undertaking, but it is the best I can do.”
He was lying on his back, looking through the holes in the roof at the sky, and I thought more than ever that he was brave and capable, and that he had always been treated unjustly in Fairview. I was thinking—it had not occurred to me before—that I should be very lonesome without him; and he seemed to be thinking of it, too, for he said:—
“But it is only for three or four years, Ned,” as if we had been talking instead of thinking of the separation, “and at the end of that time I may be able to make you my assistant, or, better still, my partner. We have had a very wretched time of it in the past, but there may be a great deal of pleasure in store for us in the future. If we work as hard as we expect, I believe everything will come out right yet. They say you are old of your age. I am not old of my age; on the other hand I am very dull: but I shall be a man then, and in any event one need not be old to be useful. People here think differently, but it is because the community is slow and ignorant. Here the man who owns a piece of land and a team is supposed to have accomplished all that it is possible for a man to accomplish; but Barker told me once that there are men who make a Fairview fortune in a day. I don’t want to be like the people here, for none of them are contented or happy; but I intend to be like the people who I am certain live in other countries. I cannot believe but that there is a better way to live than that accepted at Fairview, and that somewhere—I don’t know where, for I have never travelled—happy homes may be found, and contented people, where parents love their children, and where people love their homes. Therefore I shall begin differently, and work harder, and to more purpose, than the people here have done, to the end that I may be a different man.”
Heaven help you, Jo, in that. There never was a happy man in Fairview, and I hoped with all my heart that Jo might become one, as he deserved.
“I have always been lonely and friendless,” he went on. “They never wanted me at home; your father never seemed satisfied with me here, and, excepting you, I have never had a friend in my life. I care nothing for my family; I fear it is sad depravity, but I cannot help it. They have never treated me well, and care nothing for me, and I cannot feel kindly toward them, for no one can love without a reason. You do not fall in love with the woman that wounds you, but you do fall in love with the woman that is kind to you. I think a great deal of you, but you gave me reason for it by thinking a great deal of me. I never knew until I thought of going away how much I did think of you.”
He talked so pitifully of the neglect to which he had always been subject, and I knew so well it was true, that I could only reply through my tears that he was my best friend, and that I thought more of him than any one else in the world.
“While they all occasionally have kind words for others, they never have a word of encouragement for me, but I am glad that I did not deserve it. I should hate to feel that I deserve all the unkindness I have received here, and that I was as idle and unworthy as they seem to think me; but I never did, and I hope you honestly think so. You are the only one among them who was fair and just, and after I have gone away I shall only have you to remember pleasantly. I am glad that I am going to a place at last where I shall be welcome and useful.”
I thought that afternoon that all of them were unjust to Jo and steadily refused to give him the credit he deserved; I think so now, a great many years after, with a maturer mind and greater experience.
“We have been very ignorant here, you and I.” It was very disgraceful, but very true. “Your father is wise enough, but as he takes no pains to impart it to others, we have had little benefit of his wisdom. For the next two years I shall live with a man who is educated, and who will willingly teach me, and I intend to tax his patience with my studies. Barker is not only learned, but he is courteous, and I can learn something of polite manners. He bows like a king; only a very few men are able to make a really good bow. I asked him once where he learned it, but he only laughed, and said everyone ought to be polite without learning it anywhere. It made me ashamed, for politeness never came natural with me. Perhaps I am so awkward because I do not come of a good family.”
Certainly his father and mother were not polite to each other, or to their son.
“I have made many terrible mistakes from not knowing any better, and they will humiliate me all my life. Once I went with your mother to call at the new minister’s—this is in the strictest confidence, and never to be repeated—and I did a thing so dreadful that I am blushing now in thinking of it. I wore a little cap (I have since burned it), and although I know now it was hideously ugly, I thought then that it made me very handsome. I bought it of a boy who had lived in town, and I had seen town boys wear them. So I shuffled into their parlor wearing your father’s boots, with a pair of his pantaloons tucked into their tops, and the cap on my head. The Shepherds are very well-bred people, and after I had stumbled across the room, and fallen into a chair all in a heap, Mateel—how pretty she was that night, and how pretty she always is!—came over to me, and asked to lay away my cap. I thought it very amiable in me not to trouble her, so I refused to give it up. In fact, I said:—
“‘No, I thank you; I am very comfortable as I am!’
“And I sat the entire evening through with that cap on my head. Nobody had ever told me to remove my cap in the presence of ladies, and being of a poor family, I did not know it without being told. I know better now, for Barker laughed at me, and explained why it was wrong.”
Under other circumstances I should have laughed, but Jo was so serious that I did not think of it.
“They asked me to sing; simply to be polite, I am now certain. Your mother did not say for me not to, so I stumbled over to the melodeon, and sang nine verses of the ‘Glorious Eighth of April’ in a voice so loud that the windows rattled. They were all blushing for me, but I never once suspected it. I had heard your father sing the same song a hundred times, and I supposed it was all right. ‘Is that all?’ they asked when I had finished. I regretted that it was, thinking they were entertained, and I came very near singing it all over again. I told Barker about it, and he gave me lessons in propriety an entire afternoon. I felt coming home that I had in some way committed an indiscretion, but I could not tell exactly what it was until Barker pointed it out. He suggested that I write an apology, and as I have it here, I will read it, if you care to listen.”
He took from his pocket a neatly written note, and after I had signified an anxiety to know its contents, he read:—