One of the earliest memories Luke could recall was the big blurred
impression of Nat's face bending over his crib of an evening. At first
flat, indefinite, remote as the moon, it grew with time to more human,
intimate proportions. It became the face of "brother," the black-haired,
blue-eyed big boy who rollicked on the floor with or danced him on his
knee to--
This is the way the lady rides!
Tritty-trot-trot; tritty-trot-trot!
Or who, returning from school and meeting his faltering feet in the
lane, would toss him up on his shoulder and canter him home with mad,
merry scamperings.
Not that school and Nat ever had much in common. Even as a little shaver
Luke had realized that. Nat was the family wilding, the migratory bird
that yearned for other climes. There were the times when he sulked long
days by the fire, and the springs and autumns when he played an unending
round of hookey. There were the days when he was sent home from school
in disgrace; when protesting notes, and sometimes even teacher, arrived.
"It's not that Nat's a bad boy, Mrs. Haynes," he remembered one teacher
saying; "but he's so active, so full of restless animal spirits. How are
we ever going to tame him?"
Maw didn't know the answer--that was sure. She loved Nat best--Luke had
guessed it long ago, by the tone of her voice when she spoke to him, by
the touch of her hand on his head, or the size of his apple turnover, so
much bigger than the others'. Maw must have built heavily on her hopes
of Nat those days--her one perfect child. She was so proud of him! In
the face of all ominous prediction she would fling her head high.
"My Nat's a Peel!" she would say. "Can't never tell how he'll turn out."
The farmers thereabouts thought they could tell her. Nat was into one
scrape after another--nothing especially wicked; but a compound of the
bubbling mischief in a too ardent life--robbed orchards, broken windows,
practical jokes, Halloween jinks, vagrant whimsies of an active
imagination.
It was just that Nat's quarters were too small for him, chiefly. Even he
realized this presently. Luke would never forget the sloppy March
morning when Nat went away. He was wakened by a flare of candle in the
room he shared with his brothers. Tom, the twelve-year-old, lay sound
asleep; but Nat, the big man of fifteen, was up, dressed, bending over
something he was writing on a paper at the bureau. There was a fat
little bundle beside him, done up in a blue-and-white bandanna.
Day was still far off. The window showed black; there was the sound of a
thaw running off the eaves; the white-washed wall was painted with
grotesque leaping shadows by the candle flame. At the first murmur, Nat
had come and put his arms about him.
"Don't ye holler, little un; don't ye do it! 'Tain't nothin'--on'y
Natty's goin' away a spell; quite a spell, little un. Now kiss Natty....
That's right!... An' you lay still there an' don't holler. An' listen
here, too: Natty's goin' to bring ye somethin'--a grand red ball,
mebbe--if you're good. You wait an' see!"
But Natty hadn't brought the ball. Two years had passed without a scrap
of news of him; and then--he was back. Slipped into the village on a
freighter at dusk one evening. A forlorn scarecrow Nat was; so tattered
of garment, so smeared of coal dust, you scarcely knew him. So full of
strange sophistications, too, and new trails of thought--so oddly rich
of experience. He gave them his story. The tale of an exigent life in a
great city; a piecework life made of such flotsam labors as he could
pick up, of spells of loafing, of odd incredible associates, of months
tagging a circus, picking up a task here and there, of long journeyings
through the country, "riding the bumpers"--even of alms asked at back
doors!
"Oh, not a tramp, Nat!"
The hurt had quivered all through Maw.
But Nat only laughed.
"Jiminy Christmas, it was great!"
He had thrown back his head, laughing. That was Nat all through--sipping
of life generously, no matter in what form.
He had stayed just three weeks. He had spent them chiefly defeating
Maw's plans to keep him. Wanderlust kept him longer the next time. That
was eight years ago. Since then he had been back home three times. Never
so poor and shabby as at first--indeed, Nat's wanderings had prospered
more or less--but still remote, somewhat mysterious, touched by new
habits of life, new ways of speech.
The countryside, remembering the manner of his first return, shook its
head darkly. A tramp--a burglar, even. God knew what! When, on his third
visit home, he brought an air of extreme opulence, plenty of money, and
a sartorial perfection undreamed of locally, the heads wagged even
harder. A gambler probably; a ne'er-do-well certainly; and one to break
his mother's heart in the end.
But none of this was true, as Luke knew. It was just that Nat hated
farming; that he liked to rove and take a floater's fortune. He had a
taste for the mechanical and followed incomprehensible quests. San
Francisco had known him; the big races at Cincinnati; the hangars of
Mineola. He was restless--Nat; but he was respectable. No one could look
into his merry blue eyes and not know it. If his labors were uncertain
and sporadic, and his address that of a nomad, it all sufficed, at least
for himself.
If at times Luke felt a stirring doubt that Nat was not acquitting
himself of his family duty, he quenched it fiercely. Nat was different.
He was born free; you could tell it in his talk, in his way of thinking.
He was like an eagle and hated to be bound by earthly ties. He cared for
them all in his own way. Times when he was back he helped Maw all he
could. If he brought money he gave of it freely; if he had none, just
the look of his eye or the ready jest on his lip helped.
Upstairs in a drawer of the old pine bureau lay some of Nat's discarded
clothing--incredible garments to Luke. The lame boy, going to them
sometimes, fingered them, pondering, reconstructing for himself the
fabric of Nat's adventures, his life. The ice-cream pants of a bygone
day; the pointed, shriveled yellow Oxfords! the silk-front shirt; the
odd cuff link or stud--they were like a genie-in-a-bottle, these poor
clothes! You rubbed them and a whole Arabian Night's dream unfurled from
them.
And Nat lived it all! But people--dull stodgy people like Uncle Clem and
Aunt Mollie, and old Beckonridge down at the store, and a dozen
others--these criticized him for not "workin' reg'lar" and giving a full
account of himself.
Luke, thinking of all this, would flush with impotent anger.
"Oh, let 'em talk, though! He'll show 'em some day! They dunno Nat.
He'll do somethin' big fur us all some day."