MISS MARTHA HAWKINS.
"It's very good for the health to dig in the elements. I was quite
emaciated last year at the East, and the doctor told me to dig in the
elements. I got me a florial hoe and dug, and it's been most excellent
for me[19]." Time, the Saturday following the Friday on which Ralph kept
Shocky company as far as the "forks" near Granny Sanders's house. Scene,
the Squire's garden. Ralph helping that worthy magistrate perform sundry
little jobs such as a warm winter day suggests to the farmer. Miss
Martha Hawkins, the Squire's niece, and his housekeeper in his present
bereaved condition, leaning over the palings--pickets she called
them--of the garden fence, talking to the master. Miss Hawkins was
recently from Massachusetts. How many people there are in the most
cultivated communities whose education is partial!
"It's very common for school-master to dig in the elements at the
East," proceeded Miss Martha. Like many other people born in the
celestial empires (of which there are three--China, Virginia,
Massachusetts), Miss Martha was not averse to reminding outside
barbarians of her good fortune in this regard. It did her good to speak
of the East.
Now Ralph was amused with Miss Martha. She really had a good deal of
intelligence despite her affectation, and conversation with her was both
interesting and diverting. It helped him to forget Hannah, and Bud, and
the robbery, and all the rest, and she was so delighted to find somebody
to make an impression on that she had come out to talk while Ralph was
at work. But just at this moment the school-master was not so much
interested in her interesting remarks, nor so much amused by her amusing
remarks, as he should have been. He saw a man coming down the road
riding one horse and leading another, and he recognized the horses at a
distance. It must be Bud who was riding Means's bay mare and leading
Bud's roan colt. Bud had been to mill, and as the man who owned the
horse-mill kept but one old blind horse himself, it was necessary that
Bud should take two. It required three horses to run the mill; the old
blind one could have ground the grist, but the two others had to
overcome the friction of the clumsy machine. But it was not about the
horse-mill that Ralph was thinking nor about the two horses. Since that
Wednesday evening on which he escorted Hannah home from the
spelling-school he had not seen Bud Means. If he had any lingering
doubts of the truth of what Mirandy had said, they had been dissipated
by the absence of Bud from school.
"When I was to Bosting--" Miss Martha was _to_ Boston only once in her
life, but as her visit to that sacred city was the most important
occurrence of her life, she did not hesitate to air her reminiscences of
it frequently. "When I was to Bosting," she was just saying, when,
following the indication of Ralph's eyes, she saw Bud coming up the hill
near Squire Hawkins's house. Bud looked red and sulky, and to Ralph's
and Miss Martha Hawkins's polite recognitions he returned only a surly
nod. They both saw that he was angry. Ralph was able to guess the
meaning of his wrath.
Toward evening Ralph strolled through the Squire's cornfield toward the
woods. The memory of the walk with Hannah was heavy upon the heart of
the young master, and there was comfort in the very miserableness of the
cornstalks with their disheveled blades hanging like tattered banners
and rattling discordantly in the rising wind. Wandering without purpose,
Ralph followed the rows of stalks first one way and then the other in a
zigzag line, turning a right angle every minute or two. At last he came
out in a woods mostly of beech, and he pleased his melancholy fancy by
kicking the dry and silky leaves before him in billows, while the
soughing of the wind through the long, vibrant boughs and slender twigs
of the beech forest seemed to put the world into the wailing minor key
of his own despair.
What a fascination there is in a path come upon suddenly without a
knowledge of its termination! Here was one running in easy, irregular
curves through the wood, now turning gently to the right in order to
avoid a stump, now swaying suddenly to the left to gain an easier
descent at a steep place, and now turning wantonly to the one side or
the other, as if from very caprice in the man who by idle steps
unconsciously marked the line of the foot-path at first. Ralph could not
resist the impulse--who could?--to follow the path and find out its
destination, and following it he came presently into a lonesome hollow,
where a brook gurgled among the heaps of bare limestone rocks that
filled its bed. Following the path still, he came upon a queer little
cabin built of round logs, in the midst of a small garden-patch inclosed
by a brush fence. The stick chimney, daubed with clay and topped with
a barrel open at both ends, made this a typical cabin.
[Illustration: CAPTAIN PEARSON]
It flashed upon Ralph that this place must be Rocky Hollow, and that
this was the house of old John Pearson, the one-legged basket-maker, and
his rheumatic wife--the house that hospitably sheltered Shocky.
Following his impulse, he knocked and was admitted, and was not a little
surprised to find Miss Martha Hawkins there before him.
"You here, Miss Hawkins?" he said when he had returned Shocky's greeting
and shaken hands with the old couple.
"Bless you, yes," said the old lady. "That blessed gyirl"--the old lady
called her a girl by a sort of figure of speech perhaps--"that blessed
gyirl's the kindest creetur you ever saw--comes here every day, most, to
cheer a body up with somethin' or nuther."
Miss Martha blushed, and said "she came because Rocky Hollow looked so
much like a place she used to know at the East. Mr. and Mrs. Pearson
were the kindest people. They reminded her of people she knew at the
East. When she was to Bosting--"
Here the old basket-maker lifted his head from his work, and said:
"Pshaw! that talk about kyindness" (he was a Kentuckian and said
_kyindness_) "is all humbug. I wonder so smart a woman as you don't
know better. You come nearder to bein kyind than anybody I know; but,
laws a me! we're all selfish akordin' to my tell."
"You wasn't selfish when you set up with my father most every night for
two weeks," said Shocky as he handed the old man a splint.
"Yes, I was, too!" This in a tone that made Ralph tremble. "Your father
was a miserable Britisher. I'd fit red-coats, in the war of
eighteen-twelve, and lost my leg by one of 'em stickin' his dog-on'd
bagonet right through it, that night at Lundy's Lane; but my messmate
killed him though which is a satisfaction to think on. And I didn't like
your father 'cause he was a Britisher. But ef he'd a died right here in
this free country, 'though nobody to give him a drink of water, blamed
ef I wouldn't a been ashamed to set on the platform at a Fourth of July
barbecue, and to hold up my wooden leg fer to make the boys cheer! That
was the selfishest thing I ever done. We're all selfish akordin' to my
tell."
"You wasn't selfish when you took me that night, you know," and Shocky's
face beamed with gratitude.
"Yes, I war, too, you little sass-box! What did I take you fer? Hey?
Bekase I didn't like Pete Jones nor Bill Jones. They're thieves, dog-on
'em!"
Ralph shivered a little. The horse with the white forefoot and white
nose galloped before his eyes again.
"They're a set of thieves. That's what they air."
"Please, Mr. Pearson, be careful. You'll get into trouble, you know, by
talking that way," said Miss Hawkins. "You're just like a man that I
knew at the East."
"Why, do you think an old soldier like me, hobbling on a wooden leg, is
afraid of them thieves? Didn't I face the Britishers? Didn't I come home
late last Wednesday night? I rather guess I must a took a little too
much at Welch's grocery, and laid down in the middle of the street to
rest. The boys thought 'twas funny to crate[20] me. I woke up kind o'
cold, 'bout one in the mornin.' 'Bout two o'clock I come up Means's
hill, and didn't I see Pete Jones, and them others that robbed the
Dutchman, and somebody, I dunno who, a-crossin' the blue-grass paster
_towards_ Jones's?" (Ralph shivered.) "Don't shake your finger at me,
old woman. Tongue is all I've got to fight with now; but I'll fight them
thieves tell the sea goes dry, I will. Shocky, gim me a splint."
"But you wasn't selfish when you tuck me. Shocky stuck to his point most
positively.
"Yes, I was, you little tow-headed fool! I didn't take you kase I was
good, not a bit of it. I hated Bill Jones what keeps the poor-house, and
I knowed him and Pete would get you bound to some of their click, and I
didn't want no more thieves raised; so when your mother hobbled, with
you a-leadin' her, poor blind thing! all the way over here on that
winter night, and said, 'Mr. Pearson, you're all the friend I've got,
and I want you to save my boy,' why, you see I was selfish as ever I
could be in takin' of you. Your mother's cryin' sot me a-cryin' too.
We're all selfish in everything, akordin' to my tell. Blamed ef we
ha'n't, Miss Hawkins, only sometimes I'd think you was real benev'lent
ef I didn't know we war all selfish."
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 19: Absurd as this speech seems, it is a literal transcript of
words spoken in the author's presence by a woman who, like Miss Hawkins,
was born in Massachusetts.]
[Footnote 20: When the first edition of this book appeared, the critic
who analyzed the dialect in _The Nation_ confessed that he did not know
what to "crate" meant. It was a custom in the days of early Indiana
barbarism for the youngsters of a village, on spying a sleeping
drunkard, to hunt up a "queensware crate"--one of the cages of round
withes in which crockery was shipped. This was turned upside down over
the inebriate, and loaded with logs or any other heavy articles that
would make escape difficult when the poor wretch should come to himself.
It was a sort of rude punishment for inebriety, and it afforded a
frog-killing delight to those who executed justice.]