CYRUS SACRIFICES HIMSELF FOR THE SAKE OF THE “ALIENS”
“I’ve thought it all over and there’s no other way. I must give up
going to college,” Cyrus announced in his slow, positive way.
It was six years after grandpa had given him the charge to care for
little Dave, for I must resist the great temptation to linger on the
days when childhood filled the earth for us with “the light that never
was on sea or land.”
Those days seemed to come to an end all at once for Cyrus and Octavia,
and even for me, when grandpa died. For financial trouble came and we
feared losing even the dear old roof over our heads.
Grandpa had been a shipbuilder. The firm of David Partridge & Son was
known all over the State and, in fact, much farther than the State.
Although the business of shipbuilding had declined in our State, even
before grandpa entered it, yet he prospered for a time. The weaknesses
of disease and old age caused his failure--the same causes that had
made him yield to mother’s dimple--at least so Uncle Horace solemnly
declared. He had never yielded to Uncle Horace, but had always been
determined to keep him in leading-strings and consequently, Uncle
Horace had felt but little interest in the business, devoting himself
to raising stock on his fine farm.
But when grandpa died, and his affairs were found badly involved, Uncle
Horace immediately undertook to manage the business and retrieve the
losses. And it was Cyrus, eighteen-year-old Cyrus, whom he consulted;
they went over the books together. It was the family opinion that Uncle
Horace and Cyrus were alike. They both had strong individualities and
were extremely reserved and self-contained; otherwise I could never
see any resemblance. Certainly Uncle Horace had never given them any
reason to hope that their desire of making a minister of him would
be accomplished, while almost from childhood Cyrus’ bent had been in
that direction, and we all understood that it was beginning to be his
heart’s desire.
I knew that grandma prayed every day that she might live to hear
Cyrus preach the gospel; that Octavia self-denyingly saved her
school-money--she had secured the Mile End school to teach by the time
she was sixteen--and that Loveday made her clover-stamped, “gilt-edged”
butter and the Groundnut Hill cheese, by which we were getting famous,
all with the one idea of paying Cyrus’ college expenses.
I even picked berries to make preserves to sell, with Estelle helping
me until her chubby hands and arms were torn and bleeding from the
blackberry thorns. She was as stout-hearted as an Indian and never
complained. And we put the money into her red-apple bank to send Cyrus
to college; and proud enough we both were.
After all that, after the sending of Cyrus to college had been the
family impetus for years and Cyrus had been prepared at the Corinth
Academy--I drove him over with old Abigail, the white mare, every
day--with old Parson Grover to add the finishing touches to his Latin
and Greek, one may imagine how I felt to have Cyrus tell me, quietly,
that he had decided not to go to college after all!
It was in the counting-room, down at the shipyard; shall I ever forget
the day? It was summer and the sky with its clouds and the river with
its sails were a lovely symphony in blue and white, with an atmosphere
of breeze and sunshine. Some lumbermen on a raft were singing “Sweet
Marie,” and the children, Dave and Estelle, were shouting with glee as
they tumbled off a teeter into the piles of soft and fragrant sawdust.
“You know I am slow,” Cyrus continued, while I was trying to get my
breath after the shock of astonishment I had felt when he told me that
he was not going to college. He had arisen from the desk where he
had been jotting down figures and stood, very erect and pale, by the
window. He was only nineteen, but I thought admiringly that he already
looked like a minister. “It would be a great while before I should have
any success, if I ever did. And I couldn’t think of going into the
ministry to make money.”
“Money!” I echoed in amazement. “Why, we are all getting where we
can take care of ourselves!” And I wondered if he did not know that
even I, whose talents were only domestic ones, was to supply the
Palmyra canning factory with preserves and the new summer hotel with
strawberries and eggs.
“The business isn’t prospering,” said Cyrus slowly. “Uncle Horace will
never have any interest in it.”
“You don’t like it either,” I said, and Cyrus permitted himself to make
a little weary grimace. But he caught himself up the next minute.
“It would be a pity to have it go out of the family,” he said. “I can’t
help but think how grandfather would hate to have the business fail.”
“He never seemed to think of that,” I said. “He only wanted you to be a
minister. Mother, too, wanted you to be one--like father.”
Cyrus smiled a little bitterly, and pointed through the open window
where Dave appeared upon a lofty teeter, high in the air, his slender
figure outlined against the blue of the sky, the sunlight glinting on
his curly yellow poll.
“We’ll send him to college,” he said. “See here!” He drew a letter from
his pocket. “This is from his teacher, Miss Raycroft, saying she can do
nothing with him, and I’ve had a polite suggestion from the committee
that it would be just as well to keep him at home, as he disturbs
the order and discipline of the school by drawing pictures, chiefly
caricatures, upon the books and walls and blackboards.”
I was dumb with dismay. We knew that there was a little mischief in
David. He would draw pictures; the fly-leaves of all the books that
he used were spoiled, and travelers stopped to laugh at the grotesque
figures in red chalk or black paint that adorned the barn door. But
that Dave’s mischief could be taken as seriously as this I had never
expected.
“I’ve known that this was what it would come to,” said Cyrus gloomily.
“You remember what grandfather said? It’s alien blood. They’ll never be
like us, either of them.” Estelle’s side of the teeter was up now; her
yellow curls were afloat in the heavenly ether, her gleeful laugh came
ringing down to us. “She won’t mind what any one says to her, Loveday
says, and I’ve noticed it, too.”
It struck me that Cyrus was taking things too hard. It seemed a little
funny, that a boy of his age should have thought so seriously about the
misbehavior of children. Cyrus seemed to read my thoughts.
“You may think these are small things,” he said, “but they show the
alien blood. We always behaved pretty well--even you.”
I dropped upon a stool. Cyrus did sometimes take one’s breath away. If
a little mild indignation flamed in my bosom it was speedily quenched
by a recollection of the time when Cyrus pulled me--almost by my
hair--out of the mud pool in Quagmire swamp, where I had been strictly
forbidden to go. I had a vague, painful suspicion that if I should rake
up all the past I might be grateful to Cyrus for including me in the
“pretty well-behaved,” in spite of his painfully qualifying “even.”
The entry in my diary that night was the sage reflection that the
impression of our misdeeds remained more strongly with others than with
ourselves.
“This kind of behavior,” pursued Cyrus in a judicial tone, “means
irresponsibility. They will have to be taken care of for a long time,
if not for always. The New England energy and thrift will never be
found there. The boy will think that making pictures is the business of
life.”
“Sometimes it is. Pictures sell,” I ventured, feeling in myself a
broadness of spirit that was almost reckless, and remembering, with a
vague dismay, the painted saints.
“Only those by very great artists,” said Cyrus practically. “The rank
and file of the profession are apt to be out at the elbows.”
I listened admiringly, he was so confident in wisdom, but I wondered
dimly how he knew, for very few artists had ever found their way to
Palmyra.
“You know how it was, once,” Cyrus continued hesitatingly. “Grandfather
had to provide.”
I suppose I had gathered the fact vaguely, from the talk of my elders,
but childhood blessedly depreciates practical cares. And what more
appropriate, as it seemed to me, than that grandpa, whom I thought the
greatest potentate on earth, should pay everybody’s bills?
“I don’t disparage art,” continued Cyrus loftily, and I thought that
sounded well whatever it might mean. “But I am looking at the practical
side of things and I can’t help seeing that the aliens have got to be
taken care of. We are, as you say, where we can provide for ourselves.
I could work my way through college.” Cyrus was very tall as he said
this. “But I must devote myself to the business. If that fails I must
try something else to provide for them. You know what I promised
grandfather about him.”
It was the boy who rankled. Cyrus had never liked him. Girls were, at
best, an inscrutable evil; one learned to put up with them.
“But they don’t cost much now,” I said eagerly, “and the farm pays.”
Cyrus shook his head. “Only fairly well. Leander Green manages it as
well as it can be done, with Loveday’s help.”
“And mine,” I added eagerly.
Cyrus’ small, near-sighted eyes widened, and there was, I fancied, a
flicker of a smile under his moustache; but the moustache was not as
yet large enough to hide much of anything, so I decided to give him the
benefit of the doubt, especially as he immediately said quite heartily:
“I know you do help, Bathsheba, and I am glad to see that you
understand the work that properly belongs to a woman.”
He might have been grandpa or dear old Parson Grover, only that neither
of them had so much dignity. He reminded me of the answer that grandpa
made him, once, when he asked if he (grandpa) was as old as he when a
certain event happened.
“My dear Cyrus, I never was as old as you!” said grandpa.
“But there is no use in talking. You see how it is!” Cyrus went
on with a touch of impatience. “My duty lies here. I shall be a
shipbuilder, of more or less success--I am afraid it will be less.”
“It is a very great pity that mother married again!” said I.
I am always very outspoken when I am deeply moved. I expected that
Cyrus would reprove me. Instead, he walked with hasty strides to and
fro across the office, and an unwonted color flamed in his cheeks that
were as swarthy, almost, as an Indian’s.
“Those children are chains about our wrists, and they always will be!”
he said, almost fiercely.
The screen door was suddenly flung open and the “chains” appeared. They
were ten and nine, now, and a pretty pair, with our mother’s blonde
coloring. The girl had a vivacity, and they both had a supple grace
that made them quite unlike the other Palmyra children, quite unlike
what we had been at their age. It seemed un-American and was, perhaps,
an inheritance from some remote French ancestor, or at least, from
ancestors more accustomed to the gay world than were ours. There was a
vague tradition that the artist, their father, was of lofty lineage.
I had always felt that this unlikeness of the children to ourselves
jarred upon Cyrus and Octavia, while to me it was a fascination.
“We made ourselves in the sawdust,” announced Estelle, “and Dave came
fat--as fat as a doughnut boy when he puffs all up in the pan. Perhaps
it was because his sawdust was so fine and soft. But his clothes are
big and baggy. They don’t fit anyway.”
The child had a fine scowl of scorn between her delicate brows as she
looked at Dave’s clothes, which, what with grandma’s conscientious
economy and Loveday’s lack of tailor skill, certainly did all that
clothes could do to conceal his lithe grace of form.
“I came as lean as a daddy-long-legs,” added Estelle. “This is one of
my skimpy dresses. One good thing, it will wear out soon! Loveday said
there must be two for me out of every one of Octavia’s. Oh, how I wish
Octavia didn’t like purple and green!”
The dress was a cross-barred muslin, ugly of color and design. Octavia
was near-sighted, devoted to books, and almost wholly indifferent to
dress, and yet with a serene impression that she always looked well and
a tendency toward striking effects.
“I’ve got through with the other one like this.” The child heaved a
long sigh of relief. “It got a beautiful great tear on a fence nail,
so zigzag that even Loveday couldn’t mend it. Oh, Bashie, you will get
through with your blue spot soon, won’t you, and the sash! The blue
spot is so pretty and your dresses are so nice because they won’t make
two!” she said fervently, as she clung to my arm.
I had sometimes had a guilty sense of being too small to suit the
household economies, but now I felt a sympathetic satisfaction that
there would be but one dress of the blue spot.
“Can’t you get a little sense into her head, Bathsheba?” said Cyrus,
wearily, and with a severe glance at the graceful little figure in its
ungainly hugely-flowered gown.
Estelle, alas! promptly made a face at him, one of her naughtiest, most
mocking and defiant. One would scarcely have believed that there could
be such wicked gleams from such soft, blue eyes!
And Dave took from his pocket a weapon known to Palmyra as a
bean-slinger with which it was his habit to promptly avenge Estelle. I
drew the children hastily away.
“They are only children,” I said aside to Cyrus. But he was not in a
mood to take them lightly. The situation, which it seemed to me that he
exaggerated, was evidently very real and bitter to him. He was giving
up his heart’s desire, he was giving himself to monotonous, uncongenial
work, and to-day, at least, he could not be called the cheerful giver
whom the Lord loveth.
I was sick at heart and rebellious against Providence for Cyrus’ sake.
It was an overturning of the proper, the natural order of things that
he should not go to college and be a minister. As long as I could
remember I had known that this was to be Cyrus’ lot in life. The plan
had been sealed by the sacred wish of the dead. We all bore with Cyrus’
sometimes excessive assumption of dignity--what Uncle Horace permitted
himself to call “bumptiousness”--on this ground. We felt that the
children must not be allowed to make a noise when he was reading or
studying, Loveday felt that he must have fine pocket handkerchiefs and
the lion’s share of the preserves. And this was not because he was
the finest scholar at the Academy, proud as we were of that fact, nor
yet because dear old Mr. Grover had told us, with a quaver of tearful
joy in his voice, that Cyrus’ Latin verses were wonderful, that never
before had he known such Latin verses to be written by a boy of his
age. No, it was because Cyrus was going to be a minister. We reverenced
the calling. I think there was an especial reverence for it in Palmyra,
and we felt it the more because our great-grandfather had been the
first minister of the town and it was also sacred to us as the calling
of the father whom we had never known.
Cyrus seemed almost a minister already. Had not he been called upon
to lead the prayer meeting one evening when the minister was away and
Deacon Barstow had a sore throat? And although Octavia was pale with
fear lest he should break down or say something that he ought not,
and I felt grandma’s little frame beside me shake like a leaf in the
wind, yet Cyrus was calm and dignified, and every one said that he did
beautifully and exclaimed, “What a minister he will make!”
And after all Cyrus was not going to be a minister! There was a
strangling lump in my throat and my eyes smarted with unshed tears as
I tried to look, at Estelle’s vehement bidding, at the depressions that
their small bodies had made in the heaps of fresh and fragrant sawdust.
These impressed me suddenly with a vague resemblance to little graves,
and with a swift revulsion of feeling I seized the children and hugged
them. They might be little “aliens” and they were costing much, but I
loved them.
“You were very, very naughty to Cyrus,” I said to Estelle, who was not
very responsive to sentiment at the best, and was now unpleasantly
sticky from peanut taffy. “If you knew, if you understood, I am sure
you couldn’t be. He is very good and very unhappy. He isn’t going to be
a minister!”
The lump in my throat choked me now, but I had to conquer it, for we
were out of the shipyard and walking in the road, where curious eyes
might see my tears.
“Cyrus isn’t going to be a minister?” repeated Estelle, reflectively.
“Well, I shouldn’t think it would be much fun anyway; though people
would give him all their nice things when he was invited to tea. I
would much rather be a tin-peddler, or an essence-peddler, then I could
put drops of essence of peppermint on all my lumps of sugar.”
“Why is a girl always so greedy?” inquired Dave, dispassionately.
“But, really, when you come to think of what jolly things there are
to do--killing Indians, and riding buffaloes, and being a pirate like
Captain Kidd, it does seem kind of queer that a fellow should want to
be a minister! But, then, it’s just like Cyrus to want to tell people
what they ought to do and how bad they are when they can’t talk back.”
And these were children who went to Sunday-school, who read their
verses and said their prayers every day! I felt a chilling dismay. I
knew that it was not easy to recall the real ideas of one’s childhood,
but surely we had never been like these small heathens!
“Oh, don’t you know, can’t you understand, that to teach people the
gospel, to help them to be good, is better, higher than any of those
things?” I cried, with desperate earnestness.
“Could Cyrus make people good?” asked Estelle reflectively. “He makes
me bad some way; worse than anybody does, except Iky Barstow who calls
me a hopper-grass. And then he thinks I am bad all the time, when I am
really kind of mixed.”
“He thinks a fellow ought to like ’rithmetic,” said Dave meditatively,
winding the string about his top, as we walked along, “and chop wood
instead of going fishing. I suppose that’s the way all ministers
begin,” he added, wagging his yellow head solemnly--as if preaching
were the result of a long indulgence in erroneous opinions.
“But he’s got to be a minister, you know,” said Estelle, stopping
suddenly in the road and giving a final severe twist to the rope
that she had made of her apron--she was a nervous little thing, and
tried Loveday’s patience by knotting and twisting her strings and her
clothes. “He’s got to, because there’s our berry money in my bank. I--I
put my bantam money in there, too.”
The color came and went in the child’s face as I gazed at her.
“Yes, that was why I sold my bantams. I didn’t tell. I wanted Cyrus
to be a minister so much. I guess I was better last year. I had a
temptation last week to spend the money for chocolate creams and a
parasol with lace on it. But I couldn’t smash the bank because your
berry money was in it, too. We’ll go back and tell Cyrus about the
money and then he’ll know he must go to college and be a minister.” She
seized my arm in her imperative little way.
“No, we won’t go back to Cyrus,” I said. “But I am going to see Mr.
Grover, and you may go with me if you like. I want him to tell Cyrus
that he isn’t seeing things in the right light.”
I talked to the child, partly because my overfull sixteen-year-old
heart must find an outlet, partly because I wished to soften her heart
towards Cyrus and make her feel, so far as a child could, the sacrifice
he was making.
“He thinks it is his duty to take care of you and Dave,” I said
bluntly. In my exalted mood of pity for Cyrus I felt as if she ought to
know it.
“Take care of us? Mercy! That would be worse than having Loveday. And
how ridiculous! Why I darned one of his stockings last week, myself.
Loveday showed me. I wanted to, because you put a china egg into the
toe.”
I sighed impatiently. Were all children as stupid as this? Had I been
mistaken in thinking her intelligent?
But she was silent as we walked up the minister’s garden path and in
the shadow of the tall old elm trees I saw the color come and go upon
her sensitive little face.
Dave had caught sight of the Barstow boys and gone in pursuit of them.
The old minister had just come out upon the porch to rest in the shade,
but he didn’t look in the least as if we disturbed him. He took off his
straw hat to me as if I were sixty instead of sixteen, and he kissed
Estelle’s sticky little hand.
But when I had told him my trouble, plunging headlong into the
subject, as was my habit, for the first time in my life Parson Grover
disappointed me.
“Cyrus has talked the matter over with me, my dear, and I think the boy
is quite right,” he said. “When God has filled our hands with duties he
doesn’t mean us to go in search of others.”
Here was Loveday’s doctrine again! “People should do their duty where
the Lord had sot ’em!”
“Surely you don’t think there is only one way to serve Him,” added the
old man gently. “The fields white for the harvest are of many kinds and
often, often they lie close to the reaper’s hand.”
He said much more about the impossibility of knowing in what direction
Cyrus’ talent might lie, while he was still so young, of the
development that resulted from doing one’s simple duty, and of the
Guiding Hand that never failed.
And I was comforted a little, if I was not altogether convinced.
“Would it make Cyrus like Mr. Grover to be a minister?” inquired
Estelle, when we had walked half way homeward in silence. “I shall find
out whether the blackberries are ripe in the Notch pasture to-morrow,
and I shall get old Mrs. Trull to let me pick her geese at Christmas to
earn money.”
The child’s little peaked face was aglow with eagerness. But I was not
thinking of her then.
I went to Uncle Horace that very afternoon. He was the trustee of
grandpa’s estate and the guardian of us all. I asked him just how
things were and if it were necessary for Cyrus to give up going to
college.
Uncle Horace looked at me with a quizzical smile from under his great
shaggy eyebrows.
“I went to college,” he said. We were in his office at the stock farm,
and he pointed to his diploma hanging among the prints of fine horses
and cattle.
“But Cyrus is different,” I said with only half-smothered indignation.
“He wants to be a minister. Grandpa meant that he should be a minister.”
Uncle Horace’s face darkened and he drummed on the table with his long,
heavy fingers.
“I don’t see how it could be managed, just as things are,” he said.
“And he has a head for business; that is, he knows that two and two
make four, which is more than can be said of most boys of his age. And
he has mastered the details already, so that he would be a real loss.
He isn’t very quick at his books, either; he would never make his mark
as a scholar or a preacher. Oh, yes, I know about the Latin verses, but
they don’t prove much of anything. There is no market for Latin verses.”
A market for them, as if they were beeves or swine!
I was so full of indignation that I went away without a word. Uncle
Horace called after me from the doorway:
“I’ll tell you who will have to be sent to college, because he’ll never
be good for anything without it. Cyrus knows it as well as I do. It’s
that little Dave.”