KENNETH AND HARRY
From the day when Mrs. Stannard took home her sister’s little boy,
Charles Harold, or Harry, as he was usually called, she gave him a
mother’s care equally with her own son, Kenneth, who was nearly the same
age as his cousin, but as unlike him as one boy can be unlike another.
“He is his father all over and can’t help it,” Mrs. Stannard would say,
as an excuse for Harry’s faults, which, without his father, she would
have condoned for the sake of his mother and because of his handsome
face and affectionate, winning ways. At a very early age he began to
assume an air of superiority over his associates, because of the money
left him by his father, who, he said, was a gentleman and not a farmer,
and came of a family which never had to work. And Harry wouldn’t work.
Why should he? he said, when his board was paid and he was not beholden
in any way to the uncle and aunt who cared for him. They could charge
what they liked, he didn’t care. He should still have quite a fortune
when he was twenty-one, after which he intended to travel and see the
world and have a good time generally.
He had a pretty good time as a boy, Kenneth thought, when he stayed in
bed till breakfast was ready on cold winter mornings, while he, Kenneth,
was up before light, helping his father with the fires and chores, and
sometimes hanging out the Monday’s washing for his mother, when the wind
was so sharp as to penetrate through her mittens and the thick hood upon
her head. Kenneth was decidedly a mother’s boy, an unselfish, helpful
boy, doing for every one whatever his hands found to do, and never
dreaming that any necessary labor was beneath him. Every dumb beast on
the place, from Sorrel, the horse, and the big rooster who ruled the
hen-yard, down to the lambs feeding in the sheep pasture, knew him and
came at his call as readily as the watch dog, Chance, or the house cat,
Fan, with her family of six kittens just opening their eyes, and six
more gambolling about the premises and getting their daily rations from
the trough Kenneth had scooped out from a log, and into which, morning
and night, he always poured a part of old Limeback’s milk. She was the
cow set apart for the cats, and Kenneth saw that they had their rights
religiously, and bore meekly Harry’s jeers at what he called Ken’s
soft-heartedness for dogs and cats and animals generally. Sometime he
meant to have a blooded horse and put him on the racecourse with large
bets behind him, but as for farm animals, they were like country people,
and he hated them, and the only serious quarrel he and Kenneth ever had
was when he tied two kittens together by their hind legs and then set a
rat terrier belonging to a neighbor to worry them. The dog was dealt a
blow with a hoe which sent him yelping home, the little cats were
untied, and then Harry had a thrashing such as he never forgot. His lip
was cut and swollen, his eyes black for a week, but he bore no malice
against Kenneth for the castigation. On the contrary, he rather
respected him for it.
“Upon my word, I didn’t s’pose you had so much grit, or could strike so
hard; there’s some strength in your big, rough hands. I b’lieve you’ll
be a prize fighter yet,” he said good-naturedly, when Kenneth tried to
apologize, saying he must have hit harder than he meant to, he was so
mad. “Never mind, Ken, I deserved to have my eyes and teeth knocked out.
I’m a kind of blackguard anyway,” he added, while the two boys shook
hands, and Harry never again tried the experiment of tieing cats
together and setting the dog upon them.
He was a very handsome boy, with soft dark eyes and a winsome smile and
white hands, which never did any harder work than to run the mower over
the lawn, tie up a rose bush or shell peas for his aunt when she was in
a hurry. For the rest of the time, when not in school, he read novels
mostly, or books of travel and adventure. He had a boat on the pond
which he named “Ken” for his cousin, who rarely found time to go out in
it, so busy was he with the many duties devolving upon him as a farmer’s
son.
Kenneth liked books for the books’ sake, and unlike Harry, was always
glad when school commenced and sorry when it ended. Some day he meant to
go to the Academy in Millville, and perhaps to the dancing-school opened
there every winter, and learn some of the manners which were natural to
Harry; then, if he worked hard and saved a great deal, he might possibly
go to college, and afterwards study medicine with Dr. Catherin, the
famous physician at Rocky Point. It surely must be a grand thing to
alleviate pain, only he could never bear to lose a patient and witness
the grief of friends. That would be dreadful and unnerve him for days,
he thought. Kenneth was very sympathetic, and showed it in every act.
Weak as water, Harry said, and laughed when he cried because old blind
Roan, who had been in the family for years, broke his legs and had to be
shot. He did not look very weak with his broad shoulders and chest and
sinewy arms, which could handle Harry as if he were a child.
“Wait till I have been through all the athletic sports in college; then
see if I can’t lick you,” Harry said, when a boy of fifteen, he was
about to start for Andover, where he was to begin his preparatory course
for college and the sports which would enable him to lick his cousin,
Kenneth.
His fortune was sufficient to give him Andover and college, for neither
of which he cared a straw except as they might advance him in the career
he had marked out for himself in the future.
“No more rough farming for me,” he said, on the morning when he was
leaving for Andover, forgetting that he had never so much as hoed a row
of potatoes or weeded a garden bed, let alone what he called rough
farming. “I am going to have a good time after I am through college, and
perhaps shall fix up the old house and spend a few weeks there in the
summer with some high bloods, whose acquaintance I shall make. That will
be a tony thing to do. Or, I may bring a wife there for the summer,—a
rich one, if I have any; none of your poor country girls for me. I leave
them to you. Maybe I shall fancy that Connie, What’s-her-name?—your
father’s ward, you know. How much do you s’pose she’s worth?”
He was sitting on the kitchen table, swinging his legs back and forth
and watching Kenneth strapping his trunk by the door, and paying very
little attention to him until Connie What’s-her-name was mentioned. Then
Kenneth looked up quickly, and said: “Do you mean Connie Elliott? Why,
she’s only a little girl, five or six years old, and you are nearly
fifteen.”
“Phoo! Nine years’ difference is nothing if you fancy the girl and she
has the ready,” Harry replied. “Father was ten years older than mother.
It’s the thing to do. But, halloo, there’s Sorrel and the buggy. I
s’pose it’s time to go. Good-by, Ken. You are a good sort of fellow
after all, and I shall miss you awfully. Good-by, Aunt Mary. You have
always been nice to me. I’m sorry I have not been a better boy, more
like Ken. Good-by.”
There were tears in his dark eyes as he kissed his Aunt Mary and shook
hands with Kenneth, both of whom, under the spell he cast over them,
would have forgiven far more than they had to forgive in the handsome
boy, who, as long as they could see him, stood up in the buggy and waved
his hat and hands to them as they stood watching him in the door, and
thinking, not of his faults, but how lonely they should he without him.
In Kenneth’s heart there was no feeling of envy. It had always seemed
right that the good things should come to Harry and the bad things, if
there were any, should come to himself. This arose partly from his
unselfishness, and partly because Harry claimed everything as his right.
Kenneth would have liked Andover, but as it did not seem within his
reach, he was content with the Millville Academy, where he soon became
the most popular boy, as well as the first in his class. At the
dancing-school, which he attended every Saturday afternoon, he did not
succeed quite as well. His movements were a little clumsy, but he
learned many things which he had heard Harry say were essential to the
manners of a gentleman, and felt himself quite accomplished, though of
course not equal to Hal, who always seemed to know the right thing to
say and do.
At first there were a few homesick letters from Hal, as he began to find
his level and didn’t like it.
“Andover is not what it is cracked up to be,” he wrote to Kenneth. “Some
of the fellows don’t know a gentleman when they see him. Think of their
trying to make me a fag. Not much! I wish you were here to whale ’em.”
After a few weeks the letters were more cheerful in tone. The boys had
found out that he was somebody, and he had made the acquaintance of a
real nice chap,—rich, too. He laid great stress on _rich_, as if that
were the main thing in favor of Tom Haynes, who lived in Kentucky near
where Harry’s father was born.
“He has heard of the Morrises, and knows they are a tip-top family,” he
wrote. “A little fast, maybe, as one of them once ran a bowie knife into
somebody who called him a liar. But that’s nothing. That shows grit, Tom
says, and he knows. We have a long vacation at Christmas and New Year’s,
nearly two weeks, and Tom has hinted pretty broadly that he’d like to
spend it with me at The 4 Corners. You see, I’ve done some tall bragging
about _my house_, the Morris Place, and have spoken of Aunt Mary as the
housekeeper, and so on. You know the blacks south are all uncles and
aunts, and somehow Tom has got it into his head that Aunt Mary and Uncle
Ephraim came from Kentucky with my father, and are like,—well, like his
Aunt Dinah and Uncle Sam he talks so much about. I never meant him to
think so, for I am not quite a cad; but when I saw that he had the idea,
and that because of it he thought more of me and stood for me against
the wretches who were going to toss me in a blanket I couldn’t tell him.
How could I? He’d like to see the Morris Place, and says he’d have such
fine times with sleigh rides and skating and eating Aunt Mary’s _pones_.
I wonder what they are! I told him she made No. 1 fried cakes, but I
never said a word about _pones_! He has a colored boy at home, who comes
into his room every cold morning and makes a fire before he is up, and
brushes his clothes and blacks his shoes. My eye! What would he think of
that blizzardy north chamber, where we sleep and nearly shake the teeth
out of our heads with the cold, as we dress and hurry downstairs to wash
in a tin basin and wipe on a roller-towel! No, sir! I could not have him
at the farmhouse, and so I had to make up some yarn about Aunt Mary’s
having the rheumatism and Uncle Ephraim the gout, and nobody to do
anything but a boy, Kenneth! And I honestly believe he thinks you black
with the rest, although I never hinted such a thing. Why, you are as
white as the driven snow compared to me, a liar and blackguard. But what
was there left for me but to lie, and I can do that easy, you know,—that
is, I can blarney a fellow till he don’t know whether he is himself or
someone else. I blarneyed Tom till he wrote to his mother, who has
invited me to spend the holidays at Cedar Bank, and I have accepted.
Won’t it be jolly? And, by the way, I wish Uncle Ephraim would add a
little to my allowance. Tom thinks me a kind of millionaire, and it
won’t do to go empty-handed. I’d like to see you all, of course, but you
will keep, and the invitation to Cedar Bank won’t. Give my love to Aunt
Mary and kiss her for me, and Uncle Ephraim, too, if he will let you.
Give old Chance a pat on the head. I think a good deal of him as a dog.
Tom knows about him and the dozen cats,—I think I said two dozens,—who
eat out of the trough. He wants to see them awfully. He is nearly as
great on cats as you are.
“Very lovingly, your cousin,
“HAL.”
Kenneth read this letter twice, with a swelling in his heart as if it
would burst. For himself he did not care, but he did not like to have
his father and mother mistaken for darkies. It was humiliating, and it
hurt him. He didn’t like the way Harry spoke of the house, as if he were
ashamed of it, but more than all he was disappointed. He had anticipated
Harry’s coming home, and wanted to show him his standing in the
Millville Academy, and to compare notes as to which knew the most of
Latin, and to show off his dancing steps and bows, and possibly get Hal
to coach him a little, he was so well posted on such matters. Then there
were so many things to make Harry’s home coming pleasant. Quantities of
walnuts and butternuts and chestnuts, which he had gathered during the
autumn, when he had a leisure hour, were ranged in rows on the ball-room
floor. The finest clusters of grapes had been wrapped in paper bags, and
put away where they would not freeze, for Harry was fond of grapes, and
apples, too, and the largest and best of Baldwins and Kings were on the
top of the barrels in the cellar ready for him, while over and above all
was the present Kenneth had bought for him with money saved from his own
rather scanty allowance, a pearl-handled pocket knife with three blades,
for which he had given a dollar. There were the soft wool mittens his
mother had knit and the skates his father had bought, all waiting for
Hal, who was not coming to claim them, and whose friend, Tom Haynes,
thought them all negroes and the Morris Place a palace! It was hard, and
Kenneth swallowed and winked a good many times before he could force
back the tears from his eyes and the lump from his throat.
“Hal does not care for us; he thinks we are dirt, and is ashamed to
bring his fine friend here,” he said, as he handed the letter to his
mother, who was scarcely less hurt and disappointed. “Yes, he’s ashamed
of us,” Kenneth repeated to himself that night, as he went up to the
_blizzardy_ north room, which never seemed to him quite so cold as it
did now in the light of Harry’s criticism. “’Tis cheerless, that’s a
fact,” Kenneth thought, as the wind went screaming past the house,
driving before it a cloud of snow, some of which sifted in upon the bare
floor through the shaky window. “Yes, ’tis cheerless and cold, and after
all I don’t much blame Hal for wanting to go where a nigger makes a fire
in the morning before he is up, but, by golly! he needn’t let ’em think
father and mother are nigger aunties and uncles, and if I live I’ll show
him somebody he nor forty Tom Hayneses won’t be ashamed of! Yes, I
will!”
The last words were said sleepily, for Kenneth’s head was on the pillow,
and his last glimmer of consciousness was that he was to make something
of himself of which his cousin would not be ashamed.