promised your father I would. He told me to. And I’d better get it over.
Mebbe there’s something in it for you--and mebbe not. But here it is.'
II
'I’ve lived right here since I was a little shaver. My father cleared
this land on the Ridge, and as I grew up, I helped him. We were a small
family for those days. I was the only boy. There was one sister, Sarah,
who keeps house for me now--and Cynthy. Cynthy was an orphan my folks
took to raise for company to Sarah. My father was her guardeen and she
had two thousand dollars, so it wasn’t charity, you understand. She was
the prettiest child, an’ the gentlest, I ever see, with her big brown
eyes, her curly bronze hair, an’ her friendly little ways. I made it my
business to look after Cynthy, the way a bigger boy will, from the time
she come to us. Sometimes Sarah, being larger an’ self-willed, would
pick on her a little--an’ then I’d put Sarah in her place mighty sudden.
P’raps Cynthy was my romance, for she was a little finer stuff than we
were. But I wasn’t a sentimental boy. Quite the other way. Mostly I was
counted a handful. You ain’t got anybody in your school as hard to
handle as I was when I was a cub.
'When I went to school, I went for the fun of it, and to torment the
teacher. I hadn’t another thought in my head. If I didn’t get a lickin'
once a week, I thought I was neglected. When I was sixteen, I’d been
through Dayboll’s Arithmetic, and I could read and spell a little for my
own use, but my spelling wasn’t much good to anybody else. That was all
I knew and all I wanted to know. You see, the little I learned was all
plastered on the outside, so to speak. It hadn’t called to anything
inside me then.
'One fall there come a new teacher to our school, a young fellow earnin'
money to get through college. He got on the right side of me somehow. I
can’t tell how he did it, because I don’t know. But first he set me
studying and then he set me thinking. And I began to work at books _from
the inside_. They weren’t tasks any more. He made me feel like I had a
mind and could use it, just like I knew I had strong muscles and could
use them. Seemed 's if when I once got started, I couldn’t stop. I got
up mornings to study. I studied nights an’ I studied Sundays. There
couldn’t nothing stop me. I thought I’d found the biggest thing on earth
when I found out how to make my mind work! Jerusalem! Those were days! I
was happy then! Sometimes I wonder what the Lord’s got saved up for us
in the next world as good as that tasted in this.'
He stopped, threw back his head and drew in a long, ecstatic breath, as
though he would taste again the sharp, sweet flavor of that draught.
'I studied like that for nigh two years. Then a new idea struck me. It
was one spring day. I remember father and I was ploughing for corn. I
said, "Father, if I could get a school, I guess I could teach." He
hadn’t no more idea I could teach than that I could go to Congress, not
a bit; but I finally drilled it into him I was in earnest, and that fall
he helped me get a school near home.
'I never did any work as hard as that. It was against me that I was so
near home, and everybody knew I’d never studied until just lately. I
could tell you stories from now till bedtime about the times I had with
the big boys and girls. But I never let go my main idea for a
minute--that it wasn’t just so much grammar and 'rithmetic I was tryin'
to cram into them, but that I had to show 'em how to sense it all. By
and by, one after another found out what I was after. The bright ones
took to it like ducks to water. It was just wonderful the work they’d do
for me, once they understood.
'A notion took shape in my head. For all I could see, the things to
learn were endless. They stretched ahead of me like a sun-path on the
water. I thought, "Mebbe I can go on learning all my days. Mebbe I can
teach as I learn, so young folks will say of me as I said of my teacher,
_He showed me how to sense things for myself._" That notion seemed
wonderful good to me! It grew stronger an’ stronger. It seemed as if I’d
fit into such a life the way a key fits in its lock. And I couldn’t see
no reason why I shouldn’t put it through.
'So I spoke to father. He didn’t say much, but I noticed he didn’t seem
keen about it. He’d bought the store at the Corners two years before,
and it seemed to me it would work out pretty well if he sold the farm
and just tended store and had a little house in Garibaldi, as he and
mother got along in years.
'I thought likely Sarah would marry, and anybody might be sure Cynthy
would. She an’ Sarah had had two years' schooling in Oatesville by this
time, and they held themselves a bit high. Cynthy was grown up that
pretty and dainty you caught your breath when you looked at her. There’s
some young girls have that dazzling kind of a look. When you lay eyes on
them, it hardly seems as if it could be _true_ they looked like that.
Cynthy was one of that kind.
'My plans took shape in my mind the second winter I taught. I set my
heart on teaching one more year and then going to school somewhere
myself. I got the State University catalogue and began to plan the
studying I did nights so it would help me enter.
'It was just then that I ran against the proposition of teaching Greek.
A boy from York State come out to spend the winter with an uncle whose
farm joined ours. He’d lost his father, and I guess his mother didn’t
know what to do with him. I don’t mean Dick wasn’t a good boy, but
likely he was a handful for a woman.
'Living so near, we saw a lot of him. He was always coming in evenings
to see the girls, and he pretended to go to school, too. He was sort of
uppish in his ways, and I knew he made fun of me and my teaching, all
around among the neighbors. What did he do one day but bring me some
beginning Greek exercises to look over, with his head in the air as if
he was sayin', "Guess I’ve got you now!"
'I took his exercises and looked at 'em, awful wise, and said those was
all right, that time. Bless you, I didn’t know Alphy from Omegy, but I
meant to, mighty quick! I walked seven miles an’ back that evening to
borrow some Greek books of a man I knew had 'em, and sat up till two
o’clock, tryin' to get the hang of the alphabet.
'Well, sir! I just pitched into those books an’ tore the innards out of
'em, and then I pitched into that fellow. You’d ought to have seen him
open his eyes when he found I knew what I was talkin' about! He got
tired of his Greek inside of two weeks. But I held him to it. I made him
keep right on, and I did the same, and kept ahead of him.
'It interested me awfully, that Greek. I borrowed some more books and
got me some translations. I don’t say I got so I could read it easy, but
I got on to a lot of new ideas. There was one book about a fellow who
was strapped to a rock for a thousand years for bringing the fire of the
gods to mortals. Probably you’ve heard of it. I liked that.'
All this sounded to me a good deal like a fairy-tale the old gentleman
was telling. Of course, all education is so much more rigid nowadays,
that the idea of anybody pitching in that way, and grabbing the heart
out of any form of knowledge was novel to me. Yet I’d read in the
biographies of great men that such things had really been done.
Only--Mr. Miles wasn’t a great man. How, then, had he come to
accomplish what I understood was essentially an achievement of genius?
The thing staggered me.
'"Prometheus Bound,"' said Seth Miles meditatively. 'That’s the one. You
may think I was conceited, but it seemed to me I knew how that man felt.
To make them look up! To kindle the flame! Didn’t I know how a man could
long to do that? Wouldn’t I, too, risk the anger of the gods if I could
fire those children’s minds the way my own was fired?
'You see, it’s this way, Richard: a feeling is a feeling. There are only
just so many of 'em in the world, and if you know what any one of 'em is
like, you do. That’s all.
'When I spoke to father about my plans again, he looked as if I’d hurt
him. A pitiful, caught look came in his eyes, and he said, "Don’t let’s
talk about it now, Seth. I--I reelly ain’t up to it to-day."
'There was something in what he said, or the way he said it, that just
seemed to hit my heart a smashing blow. I felt like I’d swallowed a
pound of shot, and yet I didn’t know why. I couldn’t see anything wrong,
nor any reason why my plans wasn’t for the best, for all of us. But
those few words he said, and the way he looked, upset me so that I went
off to the barn after school that afternoon and climbed into the hay-mow
to find a quiet place to figure the thing out. I hadn’t been there long
before I heard voices down below, and Cynthy’s laugh, and somebody
climbing the ladder. It was Cynthy and Dick. Sarah had sent 'em out to
hunt more eggs for a cake she was bakin'.
'I didn’t think they’d stay long, and I wanted to be let alone, so I
just kept quiet.
'Now I want to say before I go any further that Dick would have been a
great deal more no-account than he was if he hadn’t admired Cynthy, and
it wasn’t any wonder she liked him. Besides what there was to him, there
was plenty of little reasons, like the kind of neckties he wore and the
way he kept his shoes shined. There was always a kind of style about
Dick.
'They rustled round, laughing and talking, till they got the five eggs
they was sent for, and then Cynthy made as if she started down the
ladder. Dick held her back.
'"Not till you’ve kissed me!" said he.
'"I’m ashamed of you," said she.
'"I’m proud of myself," said he, "to think I know enough to want it.
Why, Cynthy, I ain’t never had one, but I’d swear a kiss of yours would
be like the flutter of an angel’s wing across my lips."
'"That’s foolishness," said she; but she said it softly, as if she liked
foolishness.
'Mebbe you wonder how I remember every little thing they said. It’s like
it was burned into my brain with fire. For I no sooner heard 'em foolin'
with one another that soft little way than something seemed to wring my
heart with such a twist that it stopped beating.--Dick kiss Cynthy?
Why--why, Cynthy was mine! She’d always been as close to me as the beat
of my own heart. From the minute I first laid eyes on her I’d known it,
in the back of my mind. I’d never put it into words, not even to myself.
But that was the way it _was_. So now my soul just staggered. Nobody
could kiss Cynthy but me. That was all.
'"Foolishness!" said Dick; his voice was sort of thick and blurry, and,
of a sudden, I could hear him breathing hard. "Foolishness! I guess it’s
the only wisdom that there is!--My God!--My God!--_O Cynthy, just one
kiss!_"
'"Dick! Why, Dick!"
'Her little voice sounded like the birds you sometimes hear in the
middle of the night, just that soft, astonished, questioning note.
'I suppose I was across that mow and beside 'em in five seconds, but it
seemed to me I took an hour to cross it. I never traveled so long and
hard a road, nor one so beset with terror and despair.
'They turned and faced me as I came. Dick’s face was red, and in his
eyes was agony--no less. Cynthy was very white, her little head held
high on her slender neck. Her eyes was brave and clear. Mebbe I was
excited, but it seemed to me that she was shinin' from head to foot. You
see, to her it was so wonderful.
'We stood there silent for a long minute, lookin' clean into one
another’s souls. Dick’s eyes and mine met and wrestled. I never fought a
fight like that,--without a word nor a blow,--and yet we were fighting
for more than our lives.
'His eyes didn’t fall. He didn’t look shamefaced. Oh, he too had pluck!
'As my brain cleared of the queer mist, that cry of his seemed to sound
pitifully in my ears.
'"_O Cynthy, just one kiss!_"
'I don’t suppose there’s a man on earth that ain’t said that from once
to fifty times, just as much in earnest as Dick, and just as little
thinkin' them words are the key in the Door--the door that gives on the
road runnin' down to Hell or up to Heaven. You’ve got to move one way or
the other if you open that door. It ain’t a road to linger on. Love
marches.
'That was the way it come to me then. For most men, love marches.--But
me. How about me? The love that come to me had been silent and patient.
It’d sat in my heart like a bird on its nest. Was I different from other
men? Did I ask less, give more? I was just a boy--how was I to know?
'It was Cynthy broke the tension. She was always a bit of a mischief.
Suddenly she smiled an’ dimpled like the sun comin' out from a cloud.
She caught Dick’s finger-tips quick an’ brushed 'em across her lips.
'"Well, Seth!" she says to me, cheerful and confident again.
'"Is he your choice, Cynthy?" said I. "Dare you leave us--_all_ of
us--an’ go to him forever?" I asked her, steadying my voice.
'She looked a little hurt and a little puzzled.
'"Has it come to that?" she asked me.
'"Mebbe it hasn’t with you," I answered, "but it has with Dick--an’ with
me, Cynthy."
'She looked at me as if she didn’t know what I meant, and then the color
rushed up into her face in a glorious flood.
'"Not--not you too, Seth?" she cried. "Oh--not you too!"
'"Yes, Cynthy,--now and always."
'She looked from me to Dick an’ back to me again. In her face I saw she
was uncertain.
'"Why didn’t you tell me before?" she cried out sharply. "Why
didn’t--_you_--teach me? O Seth, he needs me most!"
'Dick’s eyes and mine met and clashed again like steel on steel. But it
was mine that fell at last.
'We all went back to the house together without saying any more.
'It come to me just like this. Dick was tangled in his feelings, and the
feelings are the strongest cords that ever bind a boy like him. Cynthy
was drawn to him, because to her Dick was a thing of splendor and it was
so wonderful he needed her! I needn’t tell you what it was tied me. I
still had a fighting chance to get her away from him, but was it fair of
me to make the fight?
'Every drop of blood in my body said, Yes! Every cell in my brain said,
No! For, you see, life had us in a net--but I was the strong one and _I
could break the net_.
'I went off and walked by myself. Sundown come, and milking-time, and
supper. But I forgot to eat or work. I walked.
'No man can tell you what he thinks and feels in hours like them. There
ain’t no words for the awful hopes or the black despairs or the gleams
that begin like lightning-flashes and grow to something like the
breaking dawn. I couldn’t get away from it anyhow I turned. It wasn’t a
situation I _dared_ leave alone, not with Dick at white heat and Cynthy
so confident of herself and so pitiful. It wasn’t safe to let things be.
I must snatch her from him or give her to him.--It was my turn now to
cry out, _O my God_!
''T was long after dark when I come back. My mind was made up. They
should have each other. I’d do what I could to make the thing easy.
"After all," I told myself, "you ain’t completely stripped. Don’t think
it! You have the other thing. You can carry the torch. You can bring
down the flame. Folks will thank you yet for the sacred fire!"
'I laid that thought to my heart like something cool and comforting. And
it helped me to come through.
'When I got back to the house, it was late and everybody was abed but my
father. He was sitting right here where we are, waiting up for me. There
was a moon, some past the full, rising yonder. I sat down on the step
below him and put it to him straight.
'"Father," said I, "Dick’s in love with Cynthy. She’s eighteen an’ he’s
twenty. I judge we’d better help 'em marry."
'He give a heartbroken kind of groan. "Don’t I know she’s eighteen?" he
said. "Ain’t it worryin' the life right out of me?"
'"Whatever do you mean?" I asked pretty sharp, for I sensed bad trouble
in his very voice.
'"It’s her two thousand dollars," he said. "She’s due to have it. If she
marries, she’s got to have it right away. And I ain’t got it to give
her, that’s all!"
'"Where is it? What’s become of it?"
'"I bought the store at the Crossroads with it, and give her my note.
But I hadn’t no business to do it that way. And the store ain’t done
well, and the farm ain’t done well. The summer’s been so cold and wet,
corn ain’t more 'n a third of a crop, and I put in mainly corn this
year. I can’t sell the store. I dunno’s I can mortgage the farm. I dunno
what _to_ do. If you leave home like you talk of, I shall go under.
Somebody’s got to take hold an’ help me. I can’t carry my load no
longer."
'So--there was that! And I had to face it alone.
'I didn’t despair over the money part of it, like father did. I knew
he’d neglected the farm for the store, and the store for the farm. If
I’d been with him either place, instead of teaching, things would have
gone on all right. I thought Dick could have his choice of the store or
a part of the land to clear up the debt to Cynthy. But, whichever he
took, father’d need me to help out. I could see he was beginning to
break. And Dick would need me too, till he got broke in to work and
earnin'. So--now it was me that life had in the net, and there was no
way I could break out.
'Father went off to bed a good deal happier after I told him I’d stand
by. He even chippered up so he said this: "You’re all right, Seth, and
teachin''s all right. But I’ve thought it all over and I’ve come to the
conclusion that teachin' and studyin''s like hard cider. It goes to your
head and makes you feel good, but after all, there ain’t nothing
nourishing about it. I’d like to see you make some money."
'I sat on those steps the rest of the night, I guess, while that waning
moon climbed up the sky and then dropped down again. 'T ain’t often a
man is called on to fight two such fights in a single day. I ain’t been
able to look at a moon past the full since that night.
'And yet--toward morning there come peace. I saw it this way at last. To
help is bigger yet than to teach. If Prometheus could be chained to that
rock a thousand years while the vultures tore his vitals just so that
men might _know_, couldn’t I bear the beaks an’ the claws a little
lifetime so that father and Cynthy and Dick might _live_? I thought I
could--an’ I have.'
* * * * *
Mr. Miles stopped short. Something gripped my throat. I shall never see
again such a luminous look as I caught on his face when he turned it
toward the darkening west. The black clouds had rolled up rapidly while
we were talking and, if you’ll believe me, when he had finished, it
thundered on the right!
'Is--is that all?' I said chokily.
'Cynthy’s had a happy life,' he said. 'Dick made good in the store, and
he’s made good out yonder in the world. Dick has gone very far. And as
for me, there’s only one thing more I want in this world. If--if I could
see her boy and his pick up the torch I dropped, and carry on that
sacred fire--'
It was mighty queer, but I found I was shaking all over with an
excitement I hardly understood. Something that had been hovering in the
air while he talked came closer and suddenly showed me its face.
'But,' I said thick and fast, 'but--why, _mother’s_ name is Cynthia!'
'Yes, Richard.'
'And father--_father_--?'
'Yes, Richard.'
It was my turn to feel something squeeze my heart as in two hands. I’ll
never tell you how I felt! For I saw a thousand things at once. I saw
what dad meant by my touching life. And I saw the meaning of the path I
had chosen blindly. Before me, like a map, were spread their lives and
mine, to-day and yesterday. I shook with the passions that had created
me. I vibrated with the sacrifices that had gone to make me possible.
For the first time in all my days I got a glimpse of what the young
generation means to the elder. On my head had descended all their hopes.
I was the laden ship that carried their great desires. Mine to lift the
torch for all of them--and thank God for the chance!
I struck my tears away and reached out blindly to grasp Seth Miles’s
bony hand. I guess he knew I meant it.
BURIED TREASURE
BY MAZO DE LA ROCHE
I
IT was Saturday morning, and we three were together in Mrs.
Handsomebody’s parlor--Angel, and The Seraph, and I.
No sooner had the front door closed upon the tall, angular figure of
that lady, bearing her market basket, than we shut our books with a
snap, ran on tiptoe to the top of the stairs, and, after a moment’s
breathless listening, cast our young forms on the smooth walnut
banister, and glided gloriously to the bottom.
Regularly on a Saturday morning Mrs. Handsomebody went to market, and
with equal regularity we, her pupils, instantly cast off the yoke of her
restraint, slid down the banisters, and entered the forbidden precincts
of the Parlor.
On other week-days the shutters of this grim apartment were kept closed,
and an inquisitive eye, applied to the keyhole, could just faintly
discern the portrait in crayon of the late Mr. Handsomebody, presiding,
like some whiskered ghost, over the revels of the stuffed birds in the
glass case below him.
But on a Saturday morning Mary Ellen swept and dusted there. The
shutters were thrown open, and the thin-legged piano and the haircloth
furniture were furbished up for the morrow.
Moreover, Mary Ellen liked our company. She had a spooky feeling about
the parlor. Mr. Handsomebody gave her the creeps, she said; and once
when she had turned her back she had heard one of the stuffed birds
twitter. It was a gruesome thought.
When we bounded in on her, Mary Ellen was dragging the broom feebly
across the gigantic green-and-red lilies of the carpet, her bare red
arms moving like listless antennæ. She could, when she willed, work
vigorously and well; but no one knew when a heavy mood might seize her,
and render her as useless as was compatible with retaining her
situation.
'Och, byes!' she groaned, leaning on her broom. 'This spring weather do
be makin' me as wake as a blind kitten! Sure, I feel this mornin' like
as if I’d a stone settin' on my stomach, an’ me head feels as light as
thistledown. I wisht the missus’d fergit to come home an’ I could take a
day off--but there’s no such luck for Mary Ellen!'
She made a few more passes with her broom and then sighed.
'I think I’ll soon be leavin' this place,' she said.
A vision of the house without the cheering presence of Mary Ellen rose
blackly before us. We crowded round her.
'Now, see here,' said Angel masterfully, putting his arms about her
stout waist. 'You know perfectly well that father’s coming back from
South America soon to make a home for us, and that you are to come and
be our cook, and make apple-dumplings, and have all the followers you
like.'
Now Angel knew whereof he spoke, for Mary Ellen’s 'followers' were a
bone of contention between her and her mistress.
'Aw, Master Angel,' she expostulated, 'what a tongue ye have in yer head
to be sure! Followers, is it? Sure, they’re the bane o' me life! Now git
out o' the way o' the dust, all of yez, or I’ll put a tin ear on ye!'
And she began to swing her broom vigorously.
We ran to the window and looked out; but no sooner had we looked out
than we whistled with astonishment at what we saw.
But first, I must tell you that the street on which we lived ran east
and west. On the corner to the west of Mrs. Handsomebody’s house was the
gray old cathedral; next to it was the Bishop’s house, of gray stone
also; then a pair of dingy, white brick houses exactly alike. In one of
these we lived with Mrs. Handsomebody, and the other was the home of Mr.
and Mrs. Mortimer Pegg and their three servants.
To us they seemed very elegant, if somewhat uninteresting people. Mrs.
Mortimer Pegg frequently had carriage callers, and not seldom sallied
forth herself in a sedate victoria from the livery stables. But beyond
an occasional flutter of excitement when their horses stopped at our
very gate, there was little in this prim couple to interest us. So neat
and precise were they as they tripped down the street together, that we
called them (out of Mrs. Handsomebody’s hearing) Mr. and Mrs. 'Cribbage
Pegg.'
Now, on this morning in early spring when we looked out of the window,
our eyes discovered an object of such compelling interest in the Peggs'
front garden that we rubbed them again to make sure that we were broad
awake.
Striding up and down the small enclosure was a tall old man wearing a
brilliant-hued, flowered dressing-gown that hung open at the neck,
disclosing his long brown throat and hairy chest, and flapped
negligently about his heels as he strode.
He had bushy iron-gray hair and moustache, and tufts of curly gray beard
grew around his chin and ears. His nose was large and sunburned; and
every now and again he would stop in his caged-animal walk and sniff the
air as though he liked it.
I liked the old gentleman from the start.
'Oo-o! See the funny old man!' giggled The Seraph. 'Coat like Jacob an’
his bwethern!'
Angel and I plied Mary Ellen with questions. Who was he? Did he live
with the Peggs? Did she think he was a foreigner?