"Some are like that," he said. "Some call their calves to run. Others
won't let you come near 'em at all; and I've even known of a case where a
cow gored its calf to death rather than let anyone touch it."
I looked at Mr. Purdy not without a feeling of admiration. This was a
thing he knew: a language not taught in the universities. How well it
became him to know it; how simply he expressed it! I thought to myself:
There are not many men in this world, after all, that it will not pay
us to go to school to--for something or other.
I should never have been able, indeed, to get the cow and calf home,
last night at least, if it had not been for my chance friend. He knew
exactly what to do and how to do it. He wore a stout coat of denim,
rather long in the skirts. This he slipped off, while I looked on in
some astonishment, and spread it out on the ground. He placed my staff
under one side of it and found another stick nearly the same size for
the other side. These he wound into the coat until he had made a sort of
stretcher. Upon this we placed the unresisting calf. What a fine one it
was! Then, he in front and I behind, we carried the stretcher and its
burden out of the wood. The cow followed, sometimes threatening,
sometimes bellowing, sometimes starting off wildly, head and tail in the
air, only to rush back and, venturing up with trembling muscles, touch
her tongue to the calf, uttering low maternal sounds.
"Keep steady," said Mr. Purdy, "and everything'll be all right."
When we came to the brook we stopped to rest. I think my companion would
have liked to start his argument again, but he was too short of breath.
It was a prime spring evening! The frogs were tuning up. I heard a
drowsy cowbell somewhere over the hills in the pasture. The brown cow,
with eager, outstretched neck, was licking her calf as it lay there on
the improvised stretcher. I looked up at the sky, a blue avenue of
heaven between the tree tops; I felt the peculiar sense of mystery which
nature so commonly conveys.
"I have been too sure!" I said. "What do we know after all! Why may
there not be future heavens and hells--'other heavens for other earths'?
We do not know--we do not _know_--"
So, carrying the calf, in the cool of the evening, we came at last to my
yard. We had no sooner put the calf down than it jumped nimbly to its
feet and ran, wobbling absurdly, to meet its mother.
"The rascal," I said, "after all our work."
"It's the nature of the animal," said Mr. Purdy, as he put on his coat.
I could not thank him enough. I invited him to stay with us to supper,
but he said he must hurry home.
"Then come down soon to see me," I said, "and we will settle this
question as to the existence of a hell."
He stepped up close to me and said, with an appealing note in his voice:
"You do not really believe in a hell, do you?"
How human nature loves collusiveness: nothing short of the categorical
will satisfy us! What I said to Mr. Purdy evidently appeased him, for he
seized my hand and shook and shook.
"We haven't understood each other," he said eagerly. "You don't believe
in eternal damnation any more than I do." Then he added, as though some
new uncertainty puzzled him, "Do you?"
At supper I was telling Harriet with gusto of my experiences. Suddenly
she broke out:
"What was his name?"
"Purdy."
"Why, he's the infidel that Mrs. Horace tells about!"
"Is that possible?" I said, and I dropped my knife and fork. The
strangest sensation came over me.
"Why," I said, "then I'm an infidel too!"
So I laughed and I've been laughing gloriously ever since--at myself, at
the infidel, at the entire neighbourhood. I recalled that delightful
character in "The Vicar of Wakefield" (my friend the Scotch Preacher
loves to tell about him), who seasons error by crying out "Fudge!"
"Fudge!" I said.
We're all poor sinners!