_First Monday, November._
About ten this morning, Nucky came silently into the cottage, got his
books, and was starting to the school-house, when I called him into my
room.
"Did you go home?" I asked.
"Yes."
"And did Blant send you back?"
"Yes," he said. Then suddenly he flung the books on the floor and burst
into furious weeping. "He run me off," he said; "and now there haint
nobody to keep lookout for him, and I know he'll be kilt! If I was
strong as him, I'd show him whether he could run me off!"
(I judge that Blant had to resort to severe measures before prevailing
upon him to return.)
"When did he send you back?"
"Saturday."
"Where have you been since then?"
"Laying out in the high rocks,--I felt so bad I never cared what become
of me. Todd and Dalt will get Blant, I know they will!"
I tried to comfort and cheer the poor child, telling him Rich Tarrant
would help Blant, but I myself feel that he has grave cause for anxiety.
_Wednesday._
Trouble certainly arrives promptly. A man stopped at the gate this noon
and hallooed for Nucky. "War's broke out again on Trigger," he said;
"yesterday was election day, and when Blant rid down to the precinct
booth to cast his first vote, there was Todd and Dalt a-drinking and
a-whooping round like wild, and making their brags he wouldn't dast to
put in an appearance. Of course when he come, it was just a question of
the quickest trigger; and Todd had his right elbow put out of business,
and Dalt a bullet in his shoulder, before you could bat your eye. Blant
he got a trifling flesh-wound in his thigh,--nothing to speak of. He
said you would probably hear of the trouble, and not git it straight,
and he sont me over to relate to you how it really was, and to tell you
to stay right where you air, or you'll see certain trouble,--that he is
plenty able to tend to all that comes, and you throwed in; that your
maw's desires that you get l'arning has got to be fulfilled though the
heavens fall."
Nucky was silent and white for a moment; then he called out savagely,
"You tell him I hate him for treating me this way, and I don't mind if
he does get kilt!", then, rushing into his room and locking his door, I
heard him kick chairs violently about, and then burst into another wild
fit of weeping. With his devotion to Blant turned back upon itself, and
his emotions and energies denied their natural outlet, I can see that
this is to be a time of great strain and suffering.
_Friday._
I am pleased to find that Geordie's blandishments are not invariably
successful. The little Salyers brought back with them from home two
pairs of stout brogans. Now that November has set in, it is necessary to
get all feet covered,--a most difficult proposition, since the friendly
barrels hold almost no boys' shoes. Women's shoes have had to be
de-heeled and pressed into service; and these of course suffer by
comparison with the fine brogans. Yesterday while we were planting
onions, I heard snatches of a conversation between Geordie and Hen, in
which the word "brogans" played a prominent part. What Geordie's various
offers were I could not gather; but, evidently, Hen has an acute mind,
and has been cutting eye-teeth in past experiences; for his final
answer came out loud and emphatic,
"No, son, I don't want your cow,--your calf's lousy!"
_Sunday Night._
With Nucky, moods of deep depression alternate with those of insane
daring. Yesterday, looking up from the garden, I was horrified to see
him balancing on the roof-tree of the big house, with the slippery,
frosty roof slanting steeply down on both sides; and this afternoon on
our walk, while the boys played "fox and dogs" and ran like deer over
the mountains, I saw the "fox," Nucky, make for the gray rocks and crags
that crown the summit of one, and then crawl to the jutting edge of the
highest, and hang with his hands from it, out over space. These
performances of his cause me acute suffering.
I wonder that mothers have not made a study of the effects of color upon
children. My change of dress in the evenings from dark blue serge to
cardinal silk causes an even more pronounced change in the home
atmosphere. Red, the color of life, certainly appeals to boys; when I
put on the cardinal dress, they love to stroke it with their hands, or
to rub their heads against my shoulders as I read.
That beauty also means a great deal more to them than we older people
think, I was made to realize when Iry began to tell to-night about the
"powerful pretty looks" of his young mother, and how he loved, baby
though he was, to "just lay and look at her." He told of one day in
particular when he awoke from sleep in her arms before a great, roaring
fire, and he and she looked and smiled into each other's eyes for a
long, long time, until some strange women came in and interrupted them.
It is a singular thing for him to remember--doubtless he and she had
gazed into each other's eyes many times, after the manner of mothers and
firstborn sons--probably the coming of the strange women fixed this
particular incident in his memory.
Later in the evening, when we resumed the adventures of Odysseus, there
was a chorus of indignation when the hero permits the monster Scylla to
snatch six of his friends from the ship and make a meal of them. "Shut
up the book!" "Don't want to hear about no such puke-stocking as him,"
"Ongrateful's worse'n pizen!" "Why'n't he grab his ax and chop off them
six heads when he seed 'em a-coming?" "Any man can't fight for his
friends better be dead!" were some of the comments. I bowed to the storm
and shut the book, to hear several instances of true friendship related.
One was about Blant and Rich Tarrant. During active hostilities on
Trigger last winter, Blant was getting out yellow poplar timber from the
top of his mountain, almost under the shadow of the "high rocks" on the
summit, Richard assisting him. Happening to cast his eyes upward,
Richard was just in time to see the muzzle of a gun projecting over the
rocks, and to throw himself in front of Blant and receive the discharge
in his own bosom. Had it been an inch farther to the right, it would
have pierced his heart. As it was, he made a troublesome recovery.
"That's what I call right friendship," said Nucky; "there haint a minute
in the day when him and Blant wouldn't lay down their life for each
other, glad."
"Who was it shot the gun?" inquired Philip.
"Oh, Todd. We knowed it later when he went about with his left hand tied
up,--Blant fired as the bullet hit Rich, at the hand that held the gun.
We Marrses don't do no low-down fighting,--we allus fight in the open.
And the Cheevers used to; but Todd is a snake in the grass, and don't
stop at nothing."
_Thursday._
While at the big house talking with the head-workers yesterday, they
showed me some albums of photographs made in the beginnings of their
work here, before the school was even thought of, and when they came up
from the Blue Grass only in the summers, and lived in tents, having
classes in cooking, sewing, singing, nursing and the like. I turned the
pages with eagerness, hearing enthralling tales as I went, and stopped
at last before a small picture of strange beauty. In a blaze of
firelight, against a dusky log-cabin interior, sat a young mother with a
child clasped in her arms. The serene, Madonna-like tenderness of face
and attitude made the photograph memorable and surprising.
"Many persons have admired that picture," said one of the heads; "we
took it years ago, over on Rakeshin Creek, late one afternoon when,
weary from a long tramp, we walked in upon a young mother and her child
in the firelight. We spent the night there afterward."
"On Rakeshin!" I exclaimed. "How long ago was it?"
"Eight years, I should say."
"Do you suppose--could it have been, the wife and child of Mr. Atkins?"
"That's exactly who it was," she replied,--"one of his wives, I hardly
remember which."
"I know," I said; "it was Iry's mother. And that wonderful child
remembers the very hour! Only Sunday he was telling of the long look he
and his mother were taking at each other when some strange women came in
and interrupted them."
The heads exclaimed with me in wonder and loving interest.
"Give it to me," I said, "so that I may send it off at once to be
enlarged for his Christmas present."
_Friday._
Very heavy rains for three days, and another big "tide," with seven
panels of the back fence washed away, and Perilous a boiling yellow
flood down which logs and whole trees are rushing. What was my horror,
on hearing loud cheers from the stable-lot this morning, to see Nucky
out in the middle of the torrent, standing calmly on a swift log, which
even as I glanced, shot around a curve and out of sight. Ten minutes of
agony for me followed; then Nucky reappeared, wet only to the waist, and
followed by every boy on the place.
"Gee, that wasn't nothing," he deprecated, in answer to my reproaches,
"I've rid logs ever sence I was born. I just jumped on her when she come
a-nigh shore, and off again down Perilous a piece. I haint afeared!"
"Haint afeared got his neck broke yesterday," remarked Joab, drily.
These desperate and daring moods of Nucky's are source of untold
suffering to me. I know they are caused largely by his worry over Blant,
and his baffled desire to be at his post on Trigger. Sometimes I think
it would be best to let him go,--there can be no doubt that Blant does
need him, and he is doing little in his studies, and is so bitter and
gloomy that I scarcely know my once delightful boy.