To Nathan, the white mule, I owed it that I was able to take good care
of Penelope Blight in the first hours of my guardianship. But for him
I should have brought her face to face with the mob that rode out of
Malcolmville to storm the clearing. I knew but one road home from the
gut, and that was the way James had brought me fishing. Had we
followed it, we should have hardly crossed the ridge before we met the
van of an ill-organized but determined army, and then to her grief
terror must have been added by the wagons filled with men armed as
though they were going into battle. The obstinate temperament of the
mule served us a good turn. When Penelope and I led him from the barn
and climbed to his back, he must have supposed that we were going to
the store and should leave him tied for hours in the hot sun, switching
flies, while we sat comfortably in the shade of the porch discussing
the universe's affairs. Believing this, he protested, stopping in the
middle of the clearing to enjoy a few tidbits of sprouting corn.
Discovering that the small boy on his back lacked his master's strength
and courage, he decided to go on, but as he chose. He chose first a
trot. To Penelope and me it seemed a mad gallop, and I clung
desperately to his scanty mane while she clutched my waist and pleaded
with me to halt him and let her down. In this eternity of
suffering--ten minutes really--her greater grief was forgotten, and she
was spared the pang of a last look at her deserted home, for when
Nathan decided to walk she turned her head to see only a long archway
of trees ending in a green wall.
"Davy," she cried, "please let me get off!"
Now I wanted to get off myself, but I suspected her desire to run back
to the clearing, and my over-powering thought was to carry her away
from that forbidding place. I had promised the Professor to take care
of the girl, and responsibility had added years to my age and inches to
my stature. I was no longer a shivering, frightened boy clinging to
her hand, and, though I was not the master of the mule, while we stayed
on his back I was Penelope's master, and that was what I had determined
to be.
"Don't be afraid, little 'un," I returned boldly, when I had recovered
my breath and balance. "I can handle him all right."
To make good my boast, I even dared to kick Nathan, fearing lest a
pause in our journey might allow her to slip from his back.
"I want to find father--to go with him," she pleaded. It was the
hundredth time she had told me that.
"He said you were to come with me, Penelope," I argued. "And he told
me particular that he wouldn't be home till a week from Monday."
This last was a little fiction of mine, which seemed warranted by the
circumstances, and had Penelope pressed me and asked me when her father
had made such a definite statement I was ready to go to any extent with
like imaginings if only I could keep her with me. She did not, and her
cheerier tone quieted my conscience.
"Is he?" she cried. "Do you really think he will come home, Davy?"
"Didn't he tell me so?" I returned haughtily. "And besides, what would
he stay away any longer for?"
Still Penelope was inclined to doubt. She knew that the morning's
strange events had brought her father into great trouble, and she could
not believe that a vain search for him would satisfy his enemies. Two
weeks, she thought, would suffice to wear them out, but two weeks in
her small mind was an eternity when it was to be faced without him.
"Oh, Davy, I wish he hadn't done it," she cried. "If he hadn't shot
Mr. Lukens, then he wouldn't have to run away, would he?"
"That was just a mistake," I replied, as though shooting constables
were quite a favorite sport where I lived. "He told me particular he
didn't mean it, but having done it, and they not understanding that he
didn't mean it, he kind of had to get out till things blowed over."
"Didn't he do wrong to shoot Mr. Lukens?"
"Wrong?" My tone expressed the greatest astonishment at such an idea.
"Why, Penelope, if I was him I'd have done exactly the same
thing--exactly."
My approval of her father's act was a great consolation to her. The
pressure of her encircling arms made me gasp, and there was a note of
gratitude in her voice. "Oh, Davy, I know you would; you are so brave."
"And I'll take care of you, Penelope," I said, quite as though I
seconded her approval of my courage and had forgotten that there were
such things as rattlesnakes. "As long as you are with me you needn't
be afraid of anything."
Nathan's pace was quieter and steadier, and being secure on his back I
felt capable of any heroism. We had passed the worst part of the road.
It was broader, the trees parted overhead, letting in the sunshine, and
danger never seems so near when one moves in the bright day; so my
heart grew lighter, and, had I known the words of any rollicking song,
I should have sung, like James, but lacking these I had recourse to
whistling. Nerves which had been set on edge by the rifle's report,
the fumes of smoke, the cries of pain and fright, were quieted first by
long-drawn, melancholy notes, and then I swung into a bold trilling,
more suited to my adventurous spirit, throwing back my head, extending
my lips heavenward, addressing my melody to the sky. Pausing,
exhausted, I expected to hear from behind me some expression of
astonishment and pleasure at my birdlike song. Instead there was only
a muffled sobbing.
"Little 'un," I said in a chiding voice, "you hadn't otter cry when I'm
taking care of you. There's nothing to be afraid of. Why, we're going
home."
Oh, wise Nathan! Then I thought him obstinate and contradictory.
Halting, he planted his feet as though no power on earth could move
him, and shot forward his long ears. Then it seemed to me that he was
trying to show how futile my boast, and in my anger I dared to kick
him. A fly would have moved him as well. His long ears trembled as he
watched the road rising to cross the ridge, and he seemed to see over
the crest and to hear noises too distant and indistinct for me. Then I
thought him obstinate; now I suspect that while the Professor had given
Penelope to my care, he must have ordered Nathan to watch over us both.
The mule looked right through that hill. He saw the threatening army
charging the other slope. He turned. The bushes opened, and we
plunged into a narrow path which skirted the base of the ridge. In
vain I tried to pull him back. In vain Penelope addressed to him her
appeals. He was fixed in his purpose neither to hear nor to obey, and
struck into a steady canter. I clung to his mane; Penelope, to me.
The earth swung around us. Solid became fluid. The path moved up and
down, and flowed beneath us like running water. Great trees broke from
their roots and ran at us, and when Nathan dodged them, they swung down
their branches to blind us with their leaves, and sometimes almost to
lift us in the air like Absalom. The memory of Absalom was very clear
in my mind, for just a week before I had seen his picture in our
Sunday-school quarterly, and now, confused in my eyes with the dancing
trees, I saw him, as I had seen him in the picture, suspended from a
limb by his long hair, quietly waiting to be taken down. There was
something more than a mere coincidence in that Sunday-school lesson.
Here was another warning neglected. With Mr. Pound and Stacy Shunk,
Miss Spinner took a place as a prophetess. She had taught me that boys
who mocked their respectable elders were eaten by bears, and I believed
her. She had demonstrated beyond all doubt that boys who defied their
parents and ran away from home must come to a dreadful end in the
entangling limbs of trees. With Absalom's example before me I had run
away from home, and here I was being carried through the forest on a
mad steed, and here were the trees running at me from every side,
reaching out their forked limbs to seize my hair. Penelope was
forgotten. More than once I tried to avert my impending fate by
letting go of Nathan's mane and taking my chances with his heels and
the stony path, but as I was about to close my eyes and let myself go
he rose in the air, and the distance between me and the earth seemed so
stupendous as to become the greater peril. Had the mule kept on his
wild career I might at last have gathered courage for the fall, but the
path came to an end, our pace slackened, the trees took root again; I
was conscious of Penelope's encircling arms, and raising my head saw
that we were in a broad road, and, better still, we were climbing the
hill; each step was carrying us nearer the clearest and bluest of skies
that always held over my home; I knew that from that line where ridge
and sky met, I should look down and see home itself.
We reached the top of the ridge, and the valley lay beneath us. It was
young and cheerful in its fresh green, with here a brown checkering of
fallow, and there a white barn glistening in the sun, and orchards in
the full glory of their blossom. Below us a stone mill grumbled over
its unending task, and from the meadows came the blithe call of the
killdee. It was all home to me from the fringing pines on the
ridge-top, across the land to the mountains by the river, for on such a
threshold one casts off fear. Danger might lurk about us in the
shadows of the woods, but never out there in the broad day under the
kindly eye of God. Nathan might gallop through tangled brush, but here
even his mood changed and he walked sedately. Even the strange road
was friendly to me, for it led into a friendly land. It descended the
ridge, passed the mill, rose again over a hill; there at the crest I
lost it, but only for a moment while it crossed the hollow and came
into view on the easy slope beyond, going straight into the valley's
heart and beckoning me on.
"It's all right now, Penelope," I cried, and I pointed to the two
steeples of Malcolmville, and then led her eyes to the right to a long
stone house, almost hidden in a clump of giant oaks. I could find it
by our barn, for our barn would dominate any land. In the distance it
seemed a mighty marble pile, lifting its white walls into the blue, and
then ambitiously reaching higher with red-tipped cupolas. The
Colosseum to-day is not half so large as our barn when placed in memory
beside it. So there was pride in my voice as I spoke.
"Yon's our home, little 'un, and yon's our barn, and just the other
side is the meadow and the creek where I'll take you fishing."
The splendid promise of fishing had little effect on Penelope's
spirits. Such a prospect as I offered, such a home, a Babylonian
palace beside the cabin in the clearing, with the added joys of the
meadow and the creek, should have compensated in part, at least, for
the temporary loss of her father, and I was much surprised that she
gave no sign of pleasure. She made no answer even, and I had no
evidence of her nearness to me but the two brown hands clasped before
me and the brush of the ribbon against my neck. So we rode on in
silence, save when I whistled, and I did not whistle very much, for my
thoughts were too busy with the morning's adventure and forecasting the
days to come. My mind was wonderfully clear about the future; the way
seemed very easy. Thereafter I should listen to warnings. I had
brought myself to unpleasant passes by a reckless disregard of
warnings, and now if Mr. Pound told me to beware, or Stacy Shunk to
look out, or Miss Spinner to remember Absalom, I should heed their
admonitions, yet those unpleasant passes became in retrospect
delightful adventures, and I congratulated myself that I was coming
through them with so much credit. That I was conducting myself with
credit, I had no doubt. My father could not have accepted the
Professor's charge more confidently than I, nor could he have used more
adroitness in persuading Penelope to leave the clearing. So I was sure
of commendation when I brought her home. Home was such a bountiful
place. My mother had impressed that on me very often. She had laid
emphasis on my obligation to share my riches with others--generally
when I had to carry heavy baskets down to the parsonage. To-day I was
mindful of that injunction, and to take care of Penelope was a pleasant
task, since for the present it meant simply to share with her from an
inexhaustible store. Considering the future, I wandered into hazy and
very muddled dreams. Did the Professor never return, I was quite
willing to keep my promise and to care for his daughter always. This
did not mean that I was contemplating matrimony at some remote time.
Matrimony, to my youthful observation, was a prosaic state. It did not
seem to me that my father and mother led an interesting life. If they
were happy in it, then it was in a very strange way, for they only knew
a dull routine of work and worry. Sometimes they laughed, and when
they did it was hard to discover the sources of their mirth. How my
father could find pleasure in Mr. Pound's sermons was a mystery, and
when my mother declared that the meeting of the Ladies' Aid had been
most enjoyable I was sure that she was pretending. No; the future held
something better for me than such dull days. Somehow, somewhere, when
I became a man I should live days like this day, I should live as now I
rode, with every sense keyed to the joy of living, and Penelope's arms
would encircle me and the blue ribbon would gently brush my neck.
These pleasant dreams were disturbed by realities. I had come to one
of those dreadful moments when danger rises like an appalling cloud,
through which we can see no gleam of light beyond. This cloud, "at
first no larger than a man's hand," arose from a fence in the person of
Piney Savercool. I saw him with pleasure, for I knew that I was coming
to familiar roads, and then he was such a very small boy that I had not
that sense of humiliation which I must have felt had one of my own age
seen me riding with a girl.
"Morning, Piney," I said grandly.
For an answer Piney simply opened his mouth very wide, and his eyes
started from his head.
My effect upon him was very pleasing to me, and I ventured still more
grandly: "Pleasant day, Piney."
Then he found his voice, "Ma-ma--come quick!" he shrieked. "Davy
Malcolm's runnin' away with a lady!"
This announcement brought Mrs. Savercool from the house, and in a few
bounds she was before us, checking our further advance with a
wide-spread apron.
"Dav-id Malcolm," she cried, "the idea of you lettin' such a little 'un
as her set on such a dangerous animal. Stop! Get down, I say, both on
you!"
I could not break through that apron, and my heart sank, for, instead
of riding grandly home and presenting Penelope to my parents with a
proper speech, we were threatened with an ignominious journey in the
Savercool buggy. With Mrs. Savercool's charge that we were foolish
children, and that she could never forgive herself if she did not stop
our wild career at once, years dropped from my age and inches from my
stature, and I was at the point of obeying her meekly. But Nathan took
offence at her tone. He bolted. Just what happened I could not see,
for I had to take myself to his mane again, and he held his terrific
pace until we reached the pike, and along the pike to the fork where
the road branched off to our farm. When he paused here it was to
consider whether he would go on toward Malcolmville or into the quiet,
shaded lane. He must have recalled the hitching-rail, the sun, and the
flies, and preferred to risk even a road that he did not know, for on
he went--quietly.
We crossed the little knoll and the house came into view. The cry of
exultation which rose to my lips was checked when I saw, stretching
from the gate down the road, a long line of vehicles. The first held
the hitching-post. The others took to the fence--buggies, buckboards,
phaetons, single horses, and teams, an ominous picture. Not since my
grandfather's funeral had I seen quite such a sight before our house,
and my heart sank. Could death have come in my absence? On second
thought I remembered how brief that absence had been, measured in
hours, and I sought another reason for the gathering. I began at the
last vehicle and carried my eye along the line, to find that I knew
them all. There was Doctor Pearl's buckboard, with his mustang eating
a fence post; Squire Crumple's gray mare in his narrow courting buggy;
old Mr. Smiley's ponderous black with his comfortable phaeton, speaking
the presence of Mr. Pound and Mrs. Pound, who used it as their own; the
Buckwalters' rockaway and the Rickabachs' spring-wagon. Even Miss
Agnes Spinner's bicycle had a fence panel all to itself, as though it
were very skittish and likely to kick and set the whole road in
commotion. To my own unimportant self I never attributed this assembly
of all the great folk of the valley. There was some more potent
reason. As I pondered, hunting for it, we came to the lane. Until I
found that reason it seemed wise for me to turn there, and under the
cover of the orchard to reach the hiding of the barn, where I could
leave Penelope while I scouted and had a peep through the keyhole of
the back door. But Nathan saved me from such an ignominious return.
He kept right on. My efforts to stop him only made him trot, and in a
moment we were at the gate. He seemed to like the house and the shade
of the oaks, for he halted, let himself down on three legs complacently
and began to switch at flies. And I, with nothing left to do, was
measuring the distance to a safe landing when I heard a cry from the
door.
"Davy! Davy!" I saw my mother running down the path with her arms
outstretched, and after her came a great company.
"Davy--Davy, dear--we thought you had been drowned!" she cried.
Here, then, was the reason for this great gathering. What a commotion
for so small a reason--as though a boy's chief end were to tumble into
the water, as though he never were to be trusted out of his mother's
sight? I dropped the reins; my eyes and my mouth opened wide with
astonishment.
"Your father's dragging the mill-dam for you this very minute." She
was at the gate. "Where--where have you been?"
She did not let me answer. She lifted her hands and caught me in her
embrace, and Penelope's arms were clutching me about the neck as she
was swung with me from Nathan's back.
My mother was crying, from gladness I took it, for there certainly was
joy in her eyes when she held me off and looked down at me. Then came
astonishment, and she lowered her spectacles from the top of her head
to make sure that she saw aright.
"But who--who is this?" she said.
For answer I took Penelope's hand and faced the whole company; faced
Mr. Pound and the squire, old Mr. Smiley and Miss Spinner, Mrs. Pound,
and a score of others of the great folk of the valley. I faced them
with defiance in my eyes, for were not they the authors of the
Professor's troubles and was I not his only friend?
"It's Penelope Blight," I said, "and I promised the Professor to take
care of her."
"What?" cried Mr. Pound. "The Professor's daughter--the man who almost
killed Constable Lukens? Dav-id!"
"Yes, sir," I said. Penelope's hand was tightening in mine, and I
glanced to my side, to see her standing very straight, and the blue
ribbon was tilted as proudly as on that morning when we met by the
mountain brook.
"Dav-id!" cried my mother.
"Yes, sir," I said, looking right at Mr. Pound. "I promised the
Professor that I would take care of her--always."