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NEIGHBOURS
By
ROBERT STEAD
_Author of_ "_The Cow Puncher_", "_The Homesteaders_",
"_Dennison Grant_", "_The Empire Builders_", _etc._
TORONTO
HODDER AND STOUGHTON
LIMITED
Copyright, Canada, 1922
HODDER & STOUGHTON, LIMITED
PUBLISHERS
PRINTED IN CANADA.
NEIGHBOURS
CHAPTER I.
My earliest recollection links back to a grey stone house by a road
entering a little Ontario town. Across the road was a mill-pond, and
across the mill-pond was a mill; an old-fashioned woolen mill which was
the occasion and support of the little town. Beside the mill was a
water-wheel; not a modern turbine, but a wooden wheel which, on sunshiny
days, sprayed a mist of jewels into the river beneath with the
prodigality of a fairy prince.
My father worked in the mill, as did most of the men and many of the
women of the town. That was before Unionism had succeeded in any general
introduction of the eight-hour day; my father started work at seven in
the morning and worked until six at night. His days were full of the
labor of the mill, but his evenings and the early, sun-bright summer
mornings belonged to his tiny farm at the border of the town. We had two
cows, a pig or two, some apple and cherry trees, and little fields of
corn and clover.
The mill-pond was held in check by a stone dam which crossed from the
road almost in front of our door to a point on the mill itself. The
stone crest of this dam rose about two feet above the level of the
water in the mill-pond, and was about two feet wide. Along this crest my
father walked on his way to and from the mill, but I had strict orders
not to attempt the feat, with the promise that I would be thrashed
"within an inch of my life" if I did.
And now I must introduce Jean Lane, daughter of our nearest neighbour,
Mr. Peter Lane. Jean is to travel with us through most of the chapters
of this somewhat intimate account, and you may as well meet her at four,
bare-footed and golden-haired and blue-eyed, with a wisp of white cotton
dress and a gleam of white teeth set between lips of rose-leaf. Demurely
down the road she came to where I lay sprawled on the river bank
contemplating the leisured precision of the water-wheel beyond. When she
reached me she paused, sat down, and buried her feet in the soft sand of
the bank.
"I want to go to the mill," she said, when her little toes were well out
of sight.
"But you can't go to the mill," I said, with the mature authority of
six. "You'd fall in."
"I wouldn't, neither,"--she glanced at me elfishly from under her yellow
locks--"not if you helped me."
It was a difficult situation. Here was I, a young man of six, honored by
a commission of great responsibility from a young woman of four. My
native gallantry, as well as a pleasant feeling of competence, urged
that I immediately lead her across that two foot strip of masonry. But
the parental veto, and the promise of being thrashed within an inch of
my life, sorely, and, as it seemed to me, unfairly, curbed my chivalry.
"I'd like to take you over, Jean," I conceded, "but my father won't let
me."
"Did you' father say you mustn't take _me_ over?" With almost uncanny
intuition she thrust at the vulnerable spot in the armor of my good
behavior.
"No; he didn't say anything about you."
"Then you can take me?"
I dug my toes into the sand beside hers, but did not answer.
"If my big bruvver John was here he'd take me over, _quick_," she
continued, with a quivering lip.
John Lane was six, like me, and no bigger. The allusion to him as her
big brother, who would take her over _quick_, and the quivering lip,
were too much.
I scrambled to my feet. "Come," I said, with masculine recklessness,
starting for the dam, and she followed joyously.
We were about half way over when something happened--I never knew
what--but I plumped into deep water like a stone thrown from the shore.
I took a great mouthful and came up spluttering, choking, frantic. The
slippery wall gave no grip for my hands, and in a moment I must have
gone down again, but Jean's head came out over the ledge and her little
arms were reached down to mine. I grasped them and hung on--hung in
water to my neck, while Jean and I both shouted lustily.
Help came quickly in the person of my father, who had seen the accident
from one of the upper windows of the mill, and had come rushing out at a
pace which had quite upset the operatives on his route. I was dragged up
on the dam in a moment, and I can remember Jean standing beside my
father, crying a little, and saying, "Please don' scold him, Mr. Hall. I
made him do it."
I expected my father to scold her, but he took her up in his arms and
held her to his breast.
"You're a brave little girl, Jean; you're a wonderful little girl," I
heard him say, and he kissed her on the face, which he hardly ever did
to me. Then homeward he led me, wet and miserable, and speculating
silently on what it may mean to be thrashed within an inch of one's
life.
But it proved to be a day of surprises. I was not thrashed within an
inch of my life, nor at all; I was undressed, and rubbed with a warm
towel, and put in bed, and given a large tumblerful of hot choke-cherry
wine, because it was still early in the season and the water was cold.
And my little sister Marjorie came and looked at me with large, dark,
comprehending eyes, and said, "I know why you didn't get thrashed?"
"Why didn't I get thrashed?" I ventured.
"Because you were so _awful_ wicked. When you're awful bad you don't get
thrashed; its only when you're a little bad," she explained.
I had to stay in bed for the remainder of the day, which I think was
more a punishment than a precaution, so I had opportunity to think on
Marjorie's philosophy. It was evident that she was right; I had the
proof in my own experience; I had been very wicked, and had escaped
punishment. My ideas of wickedness were well defined. Wickedness
consisted of telling lies, using bad words, disobeying one's parents,
getting drunk, and cutting wood on Sunday. All our religion was
negative; it consisted entirely of Thou Shalt Nots. It was utterly
selfish. To my father, my mother, my little sister and myself the
purpose of religion was to keep us from going to Hell, and,
incidentally, to cause us to go to Heaven, although the hope element
never weighed as much in our minds as did the fear element.
I have said that our religion was entirely a matter of Thou Shalt Nots,
but I should make one exception. There was one Thou Shalt. Thou Shalt go
to church every Sunday. Accordingly each Sunday morning I was crowded
into a pair of boots and stockings and a suit with an uncomfortable
white collar, and the four of us walked in great solemnity to the church
of our faith. There were other churches in town, but I had already
learned that it was almost as bad to go to them as not to go at all; in
fact, our minister was suspected of believing that it was even worse. In
any case we took no chances, and when, as happened on one or two
occasions, our minister was unable to preach and no substitute had been
found, we stayed religiously at home.
In the church we sat in a stiff, high-backed seat, where I was required
to be very still through a tedious discourse of which I comprehended
nothing whatever. In summer I usually contrived to enliven the time by
a surreptitious killing of beetles, with which the church was infested.
The building was small, but the preacher shouted at the top of his
voice, as though in competition with the rival preacher two blocks down
the street, which I verily believe he was. When the sermon was over the
plate was passed and I deposited a copper--the only coin I ever handled
until I was ten or twelve years old. Then we filed solemnly home again.
My consciousness of evil-doing, however, rested lightly upon me. I had
escaped the strap which hung behind the kitchen door, and which was a
much more immediate menace than any possible torments of the
after-world. I spent the remaining hours of the day in imagining
situations in which I would save Jean from all kinds of disasters.
Next morning found me none the worse for my experience; indeed my dip
over the dam already seemed a more or less vague recollection. After
breakfast I made a journey to the big pine which grew at the very end of
our little farm--a surviving monarch of the forest that in some way had
escaped the locust-cloud of axe-men which had swarmed through the
country twenty years before. All the good pine had been cut out then,
but the hardwoods, being heavier and more difficult to market, had been
left, and with them my father had wrestled many a sundown hour, and into
the night until he could no longer see. But this lone pine had remained
standing, a proud and melancholy reminder of the greatness of the forest
and of the insane destructiveness of the maggots of men who had
over-run it, sweeping away in a season that which the centuries had
borne but which the centuries will not return.
I took my way in the warm morning sun past the cow-stables--the "byre"
it was in those days--through the vegetable garden, and down a path
between rows of sprouting corn which led to the uncleared land at the
back of the farm. Here was a wooden fence to keep the cattle off the
corn field. I slipped easily between the bars and followed the path, now
a cow-path winding sinuously about the trunks of sturdy maples, until it
brought me under the shadow of the great, green arms. Far aloft the old
tree towered in majestic symmetry, and the morning breeze passed through
its branches with a sound as of a mighty wind. I threw myself on the
grass at its feet, and there, lying on my back, with my eyes partly
shaded by my hand, I watched the fleecy clouds far, far above as they
trailed their gossamer laces across the blue portals of heaven, and
dreamed of a day when I should do something great and be a hero in the
eyes of Jean.
Perhaps it was as I lay under the great pine on that sunny summer
morning and watched the filmy clouds float gently overhead that I caught
my first glimpse, shyly, wonderingly, through the golden gates of
romance. It was a vision of Jean; a vision which has remained with me
through the years, growing, thrilling in my moments of happiness, fading
in my hours of darkness, but at no time quite obscure. Perhaps it was my
first glimpse of that vision which brought me on that morning to my
feet where the great pine's swaying lacework of sun and shadow patterned
the green grass and set my heart lilting with the joy of being alive.
I was about to shape my lips for a whistle when I became conscious of a
presence. It was Jean, her golden locks held together by a midget
sunbonnet, save for some vagrant curls which nestled against the
peach-pink bloom of her cheeks; her chubby bare feet seeking cover in
the grass.
"I saw you going to the big tree", she explained, "so I comed too."
"Uh-huh," I commented cautiously, being gripped with a sudden sense that
this young woman had led me into difficulties only a day ago. Men cannot
be too careful.
She sidled toward me. "Do you know what you have to do for yesterday?"
she queried.
"No," I said, with some misgiving, thinking that possibly my behavior
had been reported to the Lanes to my disadvantage.
"Gwandma says when a young la-dy saves a young gen-tle-man,
he-has-to-mawwy-her," she said, speaking very slowly at first, but
finishing her sentence with a little run. "So you have to mawwy me."
She was beside me now, and her face was radiant with the excitement of
her secret.
"But I can't marry you! Only grown-ups do that!" I protested.
"Won't we be gwown-ups some day?"
"I guess so," I admitted. And then with a sudden burst of resolution I
added, "And then I'll marry you."
She held her face up to me and I leaned over and kissed it shyly. Then,
hand in hand, we retraced our way down the cow-path, along the rows of
sprouting corn, by the stables and past our house. Jean led me to her
own home, which was next to ours, down the road.
"You have to ask Mama," she said, as our little figures dropped their
shadows across Mrs. Lane's kitchen floor.
This was more than I had bargained for. I was beginning to discover that
Miss Jean was a young woman of action as well as decision. But I was
game.
"Mrs. Lane," I said, bracing my chubby legs for the ordeal,
"I-want-to-marry-Jean."
Jean's mother looked at me with a smile that broadened until it broke
into open laughter.
"I am afraid you are very precocious children," she remarked. I didn't
know what that meant, but she gave us each a doughnut, and we went away
happy, Jean twirling hers on her finger for a wedding ring.