UNCLE SAM
The influence of the place in which I lived began to grow on me. The
warmth of the climate and the clouds of soft and fertile dust were
broken by the refreshing rush of water and the clear soft green of
leaves. We had fruit trees of almost every kind, from the peach to the
amber cherry, and countless oaks by the side of the river--not large,
but most fantastic. Here I used to sit and wonder, in a foolish,
childish way, whether on earth there was any other child so strangely
placed as I was. Of course there were thousands far worse off, more
desolate and destitute, but was there any more thickly wrapped in
mystery and loneliness?
A wanderer as I had been for years, together with my father, change of
place had not supplied the knowledge which flows from lapse of time.
Faith, and warmth, and trust in others had not been dashed out of me by
any rude blows of the world, as happens with unlucky children
huddled together in large cities. My father had never allowed me much
acquaintance with other children; for six years he had left me with a
community of lay sisters, in a little town of Languedoc, where I was the
only pupil, and where I was to remain as I was born, a simple heretic.
Those sisters were very good to me, and taught me as much as I could
take of secular accomplishment. And it was a bitter day for me when I
left them for America.
For during those six years I had seen my father at long intervals, and
had almost forgotten the earlier days when I was always with him. I used
to be the one little comfort of his perpetual wanderings, when I was a
careless child, and said things to amuse him. Not that he ever played
with me any more than he played with any thing; but I was the last of
his seven children, and he liked to watch me grow. I never knew it,
I never guessed it, until he gave his life for mine; but, poor little
common thing as I was, I became his only tie to earth. Even to me he
was never loving, in the way some fathers are. He never called me by pet
names, nor dandled me on his knee, nor kissed me, nor stroked down my
hair and smiled. Such things I never expected of him, and therefore
never missed them; I did not even know that happy children always have
them.
But one thing I knew, which is not always known to happier children:
I had the pleasure of knowing my own name. My name was an English
one--Castlewood--and by birth I was an English girl, though of England
I knew nothing, and at one time spoke and thought most easily in French.
But my longing had always been for England, and for the sound of English
voices and the quietude of English ways. In the chatter and heat and
drought of South France some faint remembrance of a greener, cooler,
and more silent country seemed to touch me now and then. But where in
England I had lived, or when I had left that country, or whether I had
relations there, and why I was doomed to be a foreign girl--all these
questions were but as curling wisps of cloud on memory's sky.
Of such things (much as I longed to know a good deal more about them) I
never had dared to ask my father; nor even could I, in a roundabout way,
such as clever children have, get second-hand information. In the
first place, I was not a clever child; for the next point, I never had
underhand skill; and finally, there was no one near me who knew any
thing about me. Like all other girls--and perhaps the very same tendency
is to be found in boys--I had strong though hazy ideas of caste. The
noble sense of equality, fraternity, and so on, seems to come later in
life than childhood, which is an age of ambition. I did not know who in
the world I was, but felt quite sure of being somebody.
One day, when the great tree had been sawn into lengths, and with the
aid of many teams brought home, and the pits and the hoisting tackle
were being prepared and strengthened to deal with it, Mr. Gundry, being
full of the subject, declared that he would have his dinner in the mill
yard. He was anxious to watch, without loss of time, the settlement of
some heavy timbers newly sunk in the river's bed, to defend the outworks
of the mill. Having his good leave to bring him his pipe, I found him
sitting upon a bench with a level fixed before him, and his empty
plate and cup laid by, among a great litter of tools and things. He was
looking along the level with one eye shut, and the other most sternly
intent; but when I came near he rose and raised his broad pith hat, and
made me think that I was not interrupting him.
“Here is your pipe, Uncle Sam,” I said; for, in spite of all his formal
ways, I would not be afraid of him. I had known him now quite long
enough to be sure he was good and kind. And I knew that the world around
these parts was divided into two hemispheres, the better half being
of those who loved, and the baser half made of those who hated, Sawyer
Sampson Gundry.
“What a queer world it is!” said Mr. Gundry, accepting his pipe to
consider that point. “Who ever would have dreamed, fifty years agone,
that your father's daughter would ever have come with a pipe to light
for my father's son?”
“Uncle Sam,” I replied, as he slowly began to make those puffs which
seem to be of the highest essence of pleasure, and wisps of blue
smoke flitted through his white eyebrows and among the snowy curls of
hair--“dear Uncle Sam, I am sure that it would be an honor to a princess
to light a pipe for a man like you.”
“Miss Rema, I should rather you would talk no nonsense,” he answered,
very shortly, and he set his eye along his level, as if I had offended
him. Not knowing how to assert myself and declare that I had spoken my
honest thoughts, I merely sat down on the bench and waited for him to
speak again to me. But he made believe to be very busy, and scarcely to
know that I was there. I had a great mind to cry, but resolved not to do
it.
“Why, how is this? What's the matter?” he exclaimed at last, when I had
been watching the water so long that I sighed to know where it was going
to. “Why, missy, you look as if you had never a friend in all the wide
world left.”
“Then I must look very ungrateful,” I said; “for at any rate I have one,
and a good one.”
“And don't you know of any one but me, my dear?”
“You and Suan Isco and Firm--those are all I have any knowledge of.”
“'Tis a plenty--to my mind, almost too many. My plan is to be a good
friend to all, but not let too many be friends with me. Rest you quite
satisfied with three, Miss Rema. I have lived a good many years, and I
never had more than three friends worth a puff of my pipe.”
“But one's own relations, Uncle Sam--people quite nearly related to us:
it is impossible for them to be unkind, you know.”
“Do I, my dear? Then I wish that I did. Except one's own father and
mother, there is not much to be hoped for out of them. My own brother
took a twist against me because I tried to save him from ruin; and if
any man ever wished me ill, he did. And I think that your father had the
same tale to tell. But there! I know nothing whatever about that.”
“Now you do, Mr. Gundry; I am certain that you do, and beg you to tell
me, or rather I demand it. I am old enough now, and I am certain my dear
father would have wished me to know every thing. Whatever it was, I am
sure that he was right; and until I know that, I shall always be the
most miserable of the miserable.”
The Sawyer looked at me as if he could not enter into my meaning,
and his broad, short nose and quiet eyes were beset with wrinkles of
inquiry. He quite forgot his level and his great post in the river, and
tilted back his ancient hat, and let his pipe rest on his big brown arm.
“Lord bless me!” he said, “what a young gal you are! Or, at least, what
a young Miss Rema. What good can you do, miss, by making of a rout? Here
you be in as quiet a place as you could find, and all of us likes
and pities you. Your father was a wise man to settle you here in this
enlightened continent. Let the doggoned old folk t'other side of the
world think out their own flustrations. A female young American you are
now, and a very fine specimen you will grow. 'Tis the finest thing to be
on all God's earth.”
“No, Mr. Gundry, I am an English girl, and I mean to be an Englishwoman.
The Americans may be more kind and generous, and perhaps my father
thought so, and brought me here for that reason. And I may be glad to
come back to you again when I have done what I am bound to do. Remember
that I am the last of seven children, and do not even know where the
rest are buried.”
“Now look straight afore you, missy. What do you see yonner?” The Sawyer
was getting a little tired, perhaps, of this long interruption.
“I see enormous logs, and a quantity of saws, and tools I don't even
know the names of. Also I see a bright, swift river.”
“But over here, missy, between them two oaks. What do you please to see
there, Miss Rema?”
“What I see there, of course, is a great saw-mill.”
“But it wouldn't have been 'of course,' and it wouldn't have been at
all, if I had spent all my days a-dwelling on the injuries of my family.
Could I have put that there unekaled sample of water-power and human
ingenuity together without laboring hard for whole months of a stretch,
except upon the Sabbath, and laying awake night after night, and bending
all my intellect over it? And could I have done that, think you now,
if my heart was a-mooning upon family wrongs, and this, that, and the
other?”
Here Sampson Gundry turned full upon me, and folded his arms, and spread
his great chin upon his deer-skin apron, and nodded briskly with his
deep gray eyes, surveying me in triumph. To his mind, that mill was the
wonder of the world, and any argument based upon it, with or without
coherence, was, like its circular saws, irresistible. And yet he thought
that women can not reason! However, I did not say another word just
then, but gave way to him, as behooved a child. And not only that, but I
always found him too good to be argued with--too kind, I mean, and large
of heart, and wedded to his own peculiar turns. There was nothing about
him that one could dislike, or strike fire at, and be captious; and he
always proceeded with such pity for those who were opposed to him that
they always knew they must be wrong, though he was too polite to tell
them so. And he had such a pleasant, paternal way of looking down into
one's little thoughts when he put on his spectacles, that to say any
more was to hazard the risk of ungrateful inexperience.