It was well for me that in my hours of absence fear had brought my
parents to a just estimate of my character and to a truer appreciation of
my essentiality to their happiness. My mother had long been haunted by a
conviction that I should meet an early death by drowning or an accidental
gunshot, and this very morning she had awakened from a dream in which she
saw her only child floating on the murky waters of the mill-dam. Rushing
to my room and finding me gone, she had had her worst fears confirmed,
and at the moment of my reappearance Mr. Pound was endeavoring to console
her for her loss and to bring her to a state of Christian resignation.
So all was forgotten in the joy of my unexpected return, and though in
the eyes of the minister, Miss Spinner, and the others I was just a small
black sheep about whose absence an unnecessary pother had been raised,
there was only rejoicing in the home fold. Even my father did not
humiliate me with forgiveness, but took me in his arms silently and held
me there, as he might have held me had he just rescued me from the depths
of the mill-dam. To follow such a greeting with chastisement, however
well merited, was quite out of the question. In the seclusion of my own
room I did meet with gentle chiding for the anguish I had caused, but my
mother remembered her dream, and my father his hours of futile searching,
and I knew that the hands which pressed mine would not be raised against
me in harsh reproof. Below us, I was sure, ears were strained to hear
some real evidence that I was receiving my deserts, for there was a
silence there like that outside of the prison wall when the crowd waits
for the doleful tidings tolled by the prison bell. Perhaps the listeners
were disappointed. I remember that Mr. Pound looked rather nonplussed as
he saw us coming down-stairs, my father leading the way, smiling gravely,
my mother following, clutching my hand as though she would never release
it.
I had told them everything then. The story I had tried in vain to tell
them at dinner on the previous day was now listened to with eagerness,
and my father, knowing the truth of James's fall from grace, was
outspoken in his declaration that an injustice had been done the
Professor. In a solemn conference in the parlor, with Mr. Pound and the
squire, Doctor Pearl, Mr. Smiley, and all the other important men of the
neighborhood, he decried the attack on Henderson Blight as an outrage; he
found solace alone in the fact that the constable had been more
frightened than hurt, for it seemed that the bullet had only clipped the
flesh of his leg; he took upon himself all the blame for the affair, on
the ground that he, at least, should have known better. Squire Crumple
heartily agreed with my father, and pointed out that on his part he had
only allowed the warrant to issue under protest; henceforth he would rely
on his own judgment and would not interpret the law to suit the whims of
his friends. Mr. Pound was contrite, but he took comfort in the thought
that they had acted for the best in the light of their knowledge of the
circumstances, but now, knowing the facts, he advised that the whole
matter be allowed to simmer down quietly. He still took issue with his
respected friend the squire on the illegality of the means used to rid
the community of a most undesirable member. The squire replied with
heat, referring to the case of The Commonwealth _versus_ Hodgins, and the
subsequent action of Hodgins _versus_ The Commonwealth for damages. It
was very evident that he would be relieved in mind if the case of The
Commonwealth _versus_ Blight did simmer down. But there was one obstacle
to this programme of forgetting. It was not the constable. Lukens could
be quieted easily. It was Penelope. Even the gentlest ministrations of
Miss Spinner had failed to bring the small girl to a realization of the
happy change in her lot. Even Mr. Pound was touched by her grief and so
troubled that he offered amends in a home under the parsonage roof. He
realized now that the reason he had never been blessed with a child of
his own was that when the time came there might be a place at his board
and a nook in his heart for this abandoned little girl. On the strength
of her husband's offer Mrs. Pound was claiming Penelope as her own, and
very soon was complaining that she had a most troublesome child to deal
with. Penelope had divined that Mr. Pound was her father's arch-enemy,
and she met his most benign approach with her head tilted defiantly and
her eyes flashing, so that now, in a quandary, he asked: "What shall we
do with the child?"
The question was a sign that he surrendered her. He had shown an honest
desire to take her under his roof, and no one could say that if he had
fired the train which had wrecked her home, he was not willing to make
atonement.
"What shall we do with the child?" my father repeated. He rose to show
that the conference was ended and the question settled. "David has
already answered that," he said, laying a hand upon my shoulder. "My boy
promised Henderson Blight to take care of her until he returned. They
have settled it among themselves, and I shall do nothing to interfere
with them."
He spoke so firmly that no one dared to remonstrate, and so it came that
I kept my promise to the Professor as far as it was in my power. He must
have said himself that Penelope had a home better than any he could have
given her. She had a mother's care--a care so loving that I should have
grown jealous had I not found a certain compensation in the fact that the
watchfulness over me relaxed and I was less hampered in my comings and
goings. Before a month had passed my mother was confessing a dread that
the Professor might return and claim the child; she was pleading with my
father to abandon what she called a useless and an expensive search.
Chance had left the door open, and chance had brought me into the hall,
so I stopped and stood as silently as I could that I might not disturb
their conference. I was frightened by the sternness in my father's
voice. He spoke of his duty. To him duty summed up life. He had his
duty, even in the matter of so worthless a creature as this Henderson
Blight. Declaring this, he stamped the floor in emphasis.
Often in the weeks that followed, when Penelope and I roamed over the
fields, when her merriment rang out the highest, and her laughter was so
free that it seemed she was forgetting the clearing and the days when her
sole companion was the gaunt and bitter-tongued Professor--often then I
would hear again the stamp of my father's foot and his stern avowal, and
to me it was as though he were conspiring against me in seeking to send
away the only comrade I had ever known, and would leave me to pass my
days in the wake of James. I abhorred James now. I had come to know the
pleasure of real companionship, and looked back to the old days wondering
how I had endured them, and with dread to those that seemed to lie ahead.
Penelope was a girl, to be sure, but she was not like the insipid
creatures of the village who were held in such contempt by boys of my
age. Where I dared to go she followed. Did I climb to the highest
girder in the barn and balance myself on the dizzy height, she was with
me. Did I venture to run the wildest rapids of the creek in the clumsy
box which I called my canoe, she trusted her newest frock and ribbons to
my seamanship. And better than all was the respect and admiration in
which she held me. To her I was no longer the frightened, shivering boy
of the mountain brook. I was in a land I knew and followed its familiar
ways without fear. One day she saw me tumble from the bridge into the
deep swimming-hole, and while she cried out in fright I swam nonchalantly
ashore, a full dozen strokes, and as I dried myself in the sun I reproved
her for her little faith in me. On another I presented her to old Jerry
Schimmel, sitting, a brown, dishevelled heap on his cobbler's bench, and
from my accustomed seat by his stove, in a voice cast into the echoing
hollows of my chest, I commanded him to tell us how he had fought in the
battle of Gettysburg. From my familiarity with the stirring incidents of
the fight as Jerry described them, Penelope thought that I must have had
a part in it too, and my modest disclaimer hardly convinced her that I
had not been a companion-in-arms of this battle-worn veteran.
What days those were! Even the fear that my father would find the
missing Professor grew less. They drifted into weeks, and weeks into
months, and there was no sign of the fugitive. I found myself looking
into the future as though in the quiet evening I were turning my eyes
over the valley to the west and the golden clouds hovering there. I
dealt only with results. I crossed mountains without climbing them, and
always Penelope shared my glory with me. I look back now smiling at that
boyish self-reliance. Mountains have been crossed, but with what
heart-breaking struggles? Battles have been won, but with what a toll of
suffering?
As I recall the day when I first came face to face with real trouble,
with a trouble that leaves in the heart a never-healing wound, it was the
brightest of all that summer. It was one of those days when there was
not the filmiest cloud to veil the sun; you could see the ether
shimmering over the land, and the fields of yellow grain looked like
lakes of molten metal. Shaded by our wide straw hats, Penelope and I had
no thought of the tropic heat. We were engrossed in the reaper as it cut
its way through the wheat; we followed it, counting the sheaves as they
dropped with mechanical precision; we stepped along untiringly in its
wake, as though the rough stubble were the smoothest of paths, and the
clatter of the machine the sweetest of music. Above the raucous clacking
I heard my mother calling, and, suspecting some needless injunction not
to get overheated, I pretended not to hear and looked the other way. But
she was insistent. When we had rounded the field again, she crossed the
road to the fence; the reaper stopped, and on a day so still that a dog's
bark carried a mile there was no escape from her uplifted voice.
Reluctantly Penelope and I abandoned our enchanting travel and obeyed the
summons.
"Penelope," my mother said, taking the girl by the hand, "come into the
house. Your uncle is here."
Penelope stopped and looked up into my mother's face, and there was
wonder in her eyes. She had forgotten her uncle, so rarely had she heard
her father speak of him, and I was quicker than she to grasp the meaning
of his coming, for I remembered that Rufus, who never had had a real
idea, who made his first success by giving away a prize with every pound
of tea. I believed that he had come to take Penelope from me, and with
every step I saw my fears confirmed.
"Your Uncle Rufus," my mother said, and she closed her lips very tightly
as she walked on.
The parlor shades were up--an ominous sign, for the parlor would only be
opened to a person of importance. Had the Professor visited us, the
humbler sitting-room would have been quite good enough to receive him in,
and it seemed a strange commentary on his harsh judgment that his brother
should be ushered into the stately chamber where the very air grew old in
dignified seclusion. Still more forcibly was this idea impressed on my
mind when I stood at the door and saw my father sitting very erect, on a
most uncomfortable chair, listening respectfully to the stranger's rapid
words.
Rufus Blight spoke in a loud voice; he lolled in the big walnut rocker,
with his arm stretched across the centre table, to the peril of my
mother's precious Swiss chalet and the glass dome which protected it; on
the family Bible his fingers were beating a tattoo as carelessly as they
might have done on the counter of his general store. There was nothing
in his appearance to suggest kin to the lean and cadaverous Professor.
The Professor always seemed to move with effort, but his brother was
alive all over. Though short and fat, he had none of the placidity which
we associate with corpulence. As he talked his hands moved restlessly;
his bristling red mustache accentuated the play of his lips; his heavy
gold watch-chain moved up and down with his breathing; even his hair was
alert.
"He is a remarkable man--I might say, a very remarkable man," were the
words that came to us as we entered the hall. "Of course, you couldn't
understand him--few could. He had to go his own way and would take help
from no one, not even his brother. Upon my word, Judge----"
Our entrance checked him. He rose, and with arms akimbo stood gazing
down at Penelope. She, clinging to my mother, her cheek pressed against
her as she half turned from him, looked up at him, abashed and wondering,
for to her small mind there was in this stranger something awe-inspiring.
The sleek man in spotless, creaseless clothes, with polished boots and
close-shaved, powdered, barbered face, was so different from her unkempt
father that she could hardly believe him kin. Baal would have seemed as
near to her, and had the idol stretched out his arms to take her into his
destroying embrace, she could hardly have been more frightened than when
she saw Mr. Blight's fat hands reaching toward her. Mr. Blight smiled,
and well he might, for this slip of a girl gazing up at him was of his
own blood, and all that was good in that blood found expression in her
sweetness. He had come prepared to see a slattern, ill-fed, unkempt, the
true daughter of shiftless parents and a wretched mountain home; he had
found a graceful little body, and he wanted to take her into his
possession at once.
"Penelope," he exclaimed, "don't you know your Uncle Rufus?"
There was no particular reason why Penelope should know her Uncle Rufus.
She could have submitted herself as easily to the embrace of any
well-dressed, smiling stranger, and she shrank back, but my mother pushed
her forward within reach of the restless hands.
"It's your dear uncle, child," she said soothingly. "He has come to take
you to a nice home."
"And he is going to bring you up," my father added in a wonderfully
cheerful voice, born either from his own escape from responsibility or
her brightened prospects. "He is going to give you everything."
Penelope was on the verge of tears, but she held them back. "I don't
want everything," she said, as she strove to check her forced advance by
planting her feet firmly and leaning back against my mother. "I just
want to stay here till father comes."
"But your father will come to us--of course, he will come to us,
Penelope," Mr. Blight cried. His hands closed on hers, he hooked an arm
about her and held her very cautiously, as though he were as afraid of
her as she of him. "You mustn't be frightened, my dear," he went on,
and, soothed by his kindly tones, she leaned against his knee. "That's
better, child." Encouraged by her half-yielding attitude, he stroked her
hair. To me, watching them from the hiding of my mother's skirt, she had
fallen into a magician's clutches and was being lulled by soft words into
an indifference to danger.
"I'm your father's brother, child," he pursued, in his insinuating tone.
"Next to him I'm nearer to you than any one else, and to me there is no
one as near as he. We will try to find him together--you and I, eh? And
we'll all live together in Pittsburgh. You'll like Pittsburgh--it's a
very lively, pushing town."
"But I want to stay here with Davy," said Penelope in a low voice.
"With Davy?" Mr. Blight stared at her in surprise. Then he began to
laugh as though he were contrasting all he could give her with Davy's
humble powers. "Child--child--you don't realize what you are refusing.
You don't realize what your Uncle Rufus is going to do for you. I've no
one to look after--you will be the joy of a poor old bachelor's heart,
won't you, now?"
He spoke as though being a poor old bachelor was quite the pleasantest
possible condition, yet he rolled out the phrase twice as if to touch
Penelope's heart. Remembering the only other bachelor I had ever seen, I
stared at him in wonder. This other was Philip Spangler, who sat all day
in the store gazing vacantly at the stove. Once I asked Stacy Shunk why
he stayed there, and Stacy, lifting a warning finger, whispered: "He's
jest a bachelor, Davy, an old, old bachelor." Contrasting him with Mr.
Blight, I was puzzled. If it was a terrible thing to be an old bachelor,
certainly he accepted the condition lightly; he was trying to arouse
sympathy when it was plain that he did not need or deserve it, for
evidently he was quite well satisfied with a single state, however
deplorable it might come to be. Penelope was being enmeshed by unfair
means, and it was hard to keep still, but there was nothing that I could
do.
Now my father lifted his chin clear of the high points of his collar.
"Penelope," he began, "you are fortunate--very fortunate--in having such
an uncle. Mr. Blight is a prominent man, and I might say"--glancing
apologetically at the guest--"a rich man." Then, meeting no
contradiction, he added--"a very rich man, who can give you such
advantages as would be far beyond my means, even were you my daughter."
"I don't want advantages," said Penelope, hardly above a whisper, and for
want of a better resting-place she dropped her head on her uncle's
shoulder and burst into tears.
"There--there--there--" cried Mr. Blight, patting her clumsily on the
back. Had she been a full-grown woman, he could hardly have been more
embarrassed, yet he was pleased that she clung to him thus, for he was
smiling. "I'll not give you any advantages you don't want--I promise
you. I just wish to make you happy. What's the use of my working all my
life, piling up money, capturing the steel trade, adding mills and mills
to my plants, if I have no one to look after. There--there--there--now,
child, don't cry. Won't you come with your poor, lonely, old uncle?"
Even to my prejudiced mind, he was playing his part well, for this
awkward kindness touched Penelope at last. She did not reply, nor did
she demur, but she clung closer to him in silence. I saw my danger and
hers, and ran to him and grasped his knees.
"Oh, Mr. Blight, don't take her away!" I cried. "I promised the
Professor I'd look after her. I promised----"
"Dav-id!" exclaimed my father, and he grasped my arm and began to draw me
away.
My fear of him even could not restrain me, and I resisted, digging my
fingers into the knees, clutching the folds of the trousers where Mr.
Blight had so carefully arranged them to prevent them bagging. He
intervened, as much, I think, to save his immaculate clothes as me from
being torn asunder.
"Dav-id!" cried my father.
"Mr. Blight--Mr. Blight--don't take her away!" I pleaded.
Mr. Blight began to laugh. "Judge--Judge--release him," he said, and
freeing me from the paternal grasp, he drew me toward him. When he had
ironed out the wrinkled knees with his hand, he patted me on the head.
"You are a good boy, David," he went on, "and I understand exactly how
you feel. What you have done for Penelope will never be forgotten, will
it, my little girl?" The emphasis on the last phrase of possession
extinguished the spark of hope in me, and had he stopped there I should
have surrendered feebly, but turning to my father, he added: "You have a
fine boy, Judge, and I like him. When I get home I shall send him a gun.
What kind of a gun do you want, David?"
Young as I was then, I had not yet learned to value the good things of
life in terms of dollars, and to the power of the dollar my eyes were
just being opened. This man wielded it. He was enticing Penelope behind
the barrier of his fat, oily prosperity where I could not reach her.
Holding her there, he was magnanimously compensating me with a gun, as
though we were making a trade in which the profit were mine, as though he
were valuing her in money. My dislike, born of the Professor's
contemptuous reference to him, had turned to distrust and aversion as I
watched him weaving his toils about Penelope. Now I hated him and drew
back from him as though his touch were baneful; I stamped a foot and
shook a fist and shouted: "I don't want your old gun; Penelope doesn't
want your money. You have no right----"
My father's arms were about me. He lifted me from my feet and carried me
to the door, and as I struggled blindly to free myself and return to the
attack I looked back at Rufus Blight. It was not to see him sinking
under the shame of my anathema. Signs of anger in him would have
incensed me far less than his lofty unconcern. He even interceded for
me, but this only proved how secure was his victory, and that to his view
what fell to me was of little moment.
"Don't be hard on Davy, Judge," he said, interrupting my father's
apologies for my rudeness. "He's just a boy. I don't know but what, if
I were in his place, I should do exactly the same thing--feel exactly the
same way."
This was small consolation to me, for Penelope's head was buried in his
shoulder; her face was hidden by her tousled hair, but I could hear her
sobbing: "Uncle--uncle--let me stay with Davy."
In the plea alone she acknowledged her kin to him and surrendered. He
could well afford to be generous. By every law of custom I had merited
severe punishment at my father's hands, and that his hands were stayed by
Mr. Blight's intercession was but another evidence of his power. When my
father reasoned with me kindly, instead of whipping me, I yielded, not to
his sophistry but to that masterful influence before which even he seemed
to bend. I realized the hopelessness of my cause, and found myself
facing Mr. Blight again, an humble suppliant for his pardon. Humbly I
asked him if I might not soon see Penelope again, and she joined in my
petition. Humbly I asked that some day he would bring her back to the
valley, and she seconded my prayer, standing at my side, clasping my hand
and looking up at her uncle from tearful eyes. He promised everything.
He took my hand and hers, and for the moment it seemed that this little
circle was my real family, and that my father and mother, standing over
us, were hardly more than law-given preceptors. Before our guest's
expanding smile and the magic of his tongue the clouds fled. Those which
hung heaviest he brushed away with his restless hands. Soon, very soon,
I was to go to that bustling, pushing town of Pittsburgh and with
Penelope explore its wonders. We should ride behind the fastest pair of
trotters in the State--his trotters; we should see the greatest mills in
the country--his mills--where steel was worked like wax into a thousand
giant forms; we should take long excursions on the river in a wonderful
new boat--his boat-- Why it would make a boy of him just to have us with
him!
Under the spell of his words an hour flew by, and then my mother led
Penelope away to make her ready for the journey. She brought her back to
us decked in a hat and frock born of many days of planning and three
trips to the county town. The humble art of Malcolmville had not been
intrusted with so important a commission as Penelope's best clothes. For
these the shops of Martinsburg, crammed with the latest fashions of
Philadelphia, had been ransacked; the smartest modiste in Martinsburg had
trimmed the hat with many yards of tulle and freighted it with pink
roses; the smartest couturiere in Martinsburg had created that wonderful
blue chintz frock, with ribbons woven through mazes of flounces; the last
touch was my mother's--the plait of hair, done so masterfully that even
the weight of the great blue bow could not bend it.
I looked at Penelope in awe. She was no longer the little girl whom I
had met by the mountain stream. I was still an uncouth boy, with face
smudged with the dust of the fields and hands blackened in play. Yet she
did not see the wide gulf which separated us, and, forgetting the hat,
the frock, the chaff that clung to my matted hair and the grime of my
shirt, she ran to me, threw her arms about my neck and cried:
"Davy--Davy--I don't want to go!"
I knew that she had to go, and though the tears seemed to burst up in a
great flood from my heart, I would not show them in my eyes. Tears are
unmanly--unboyly rather--and I fought them back, but for them I could not
speak. My father took Penelope from me. He lifted her in his arms and
carried her out of the house and down the path to the gate, where the
carriage was waiting. He placed her on the seat; he straightened out her
rumpled frock, and even crossed her hands upon her lap, as though she
were quite incapable of doing anything for herself. Then he kissed her.
It was the first time I had ever seen him kiss her. When he spoke it was
to say good-by to Rufus Blight, who was in his seat, pulling on a pair of
yellow gloves.
"We shall all meet again, very soon," said Mr. Blight omnipotently, as
though Fate were a henchman of his. "You must all come to Pittsburgh to
see us. It's a lively, pushing town, and you'll enjoy it." Leaning from
the carriage and holding out his hand to me, he added: "And you,
Davy--you will come very, very soon."
I believed him. But the dream that he had conjured for us of the days to
come, of his lively, pushing town, the fastest trotters, the wonderful
boat, were shattered by contact with the harsh fact of this parting.
I looked past him at Penelope, sitting very straight, with her hands in
her lap as my father had placed them. There was a giant frog in my
throat, but I conquered it as I had conquered my tears, and speaking very
steadily, I said: "Good-by, Penelope--I'll not forget. Some day I will
take care of you."
She did not turn. Her eyes held right ahead, but she answered bravely:
"Good-by, Davy. I'll see you soon--very soon. Remember----"
The rest I did not hear. A medley of hoofs, harness and wheels broke in
and she was away to a new world and a new life. The brave little figure
bowed suddenly, and the roses and the tulle, the precious creation of the
Martinsburg modiste, were ruthlessly crushed against the sleek bulk of
the man who had never had a real idea.