Produced by Donald Lainson
THE RE-CREATION OF BRIAN KENT
By Harold Bell Wright
DEAR AUNTIE SUE:
I have wondered many times, while writing this simple story of life and
love, if you would ever forgive me for putting you in a book. I hope you
will, because if you do not, I shall be heartbroken, and you wouldn't
want me that way, would you, Auntie Sue?
I fancy I can hear you say: “But, Harold, how COULD you! You know I
never did the things you have made me do in your story. You know I never
lived in a little log house by the river in the Ozark Mountains! What in
the world will people think!”
Well, to tell the truth, dear, I don't care so very much what people
think if only they will love you; and that they are sure to do,
because,--well, just because--You must remember, too, that you will
be eighty-seven years old the eighteenth of next November, and it is
therefore quite time that someone put you in a book.
And, after all, Auntie Sue, are you very sure that you have never lived
in a little log house by the river,--are you very sure, Auntie Sue?
Forgive my impertinence, as you have always forgiven me everything;
and love me just the same, because I have written only in love of the
dearest Auntie Sue in the world!
Signature [Harold]
The Glenwood Mission Inn, Riverside, California, April 30, 1919.
“And see the rivers, how they run
Through woods and meads, in shade and sun,
Sometimes swift, sometimes slow,--
Wave succeeding wave, they go
A various journey to the deep
Like human life to endless sleep!”
John Dyer--“Grongar Hill.”
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I. A REMARKABLE WOMAN
II. THE MAN IN THE DARK
III. A MISSING LETTER
IV. THE WILL OF THE RIVER
V. AUNTIE SUE RECOGNIZES A GENTLEMAN
VI. IN THE LOG HOUSE BY THE RIVER
VII. OFFICERS OF THE LAW
VIII. THAT WHICH IS GREATER THAN THE LAW
IX. AUNTIE SUE'S PROPOSITION
X. BRIAN KENT DECIDES
XI. RE-CREATION
XII. AUNTIE SUE TAKES A CHANCE
XIII. JUDY TO THE RESCUE
XIV. BETTY JO CONSIDERS
XV. A MATTER OF BUSINESS
XVI. THE SECRET OF AUNTIE SUE'S LIFE
XVII. AN AWKWARD SITUATION
XVIII. BETTY JO FACES HERSELF
XIX. JUDY'S CONFESSION
XX. BRIAN AND BETTY JO KEEP HOUSE
XXI. THE WOMAN AT THE WINDOW
XXII. AT THE EMPIRE CONSOLIDATED SAVINGS BANK
XXIII. IN THE ELBOW ROCK RAPIDS
XXIV. JUDY'S RETURN
XXV. THE RIVER
ILLUSTRATIONS
BETTY JO
“LOOK, JUDY! LOOK!”
AUNTIE SUE SAID, SOFTLY, “SHE DID NOT UNDERSTAND, BRIAN.”
...SHE MADE THE LITTLE BOOK OF PAINFUL MEMORIES A BOOK OF JOYOUS
PROMISE.
THE RE-CREATION OF BRIAN KENT
CHAPTER I.
A REMARKABLE WOMAN.
I remember as well as though it were yesterday the first time I met
Auntie Sue.
It happened during my first roaming visit to the Ozarks, when I had
wandered by chance, one day, into the Elbow Rock neighborhood. Twenty
years it was, at least, before the time of this story. She was standing
in the door of her little schoolhouse, the ruins of which you may still
see, halfway up the long hill from the log house by the river, where the
most of this story was lived.
It was that season of the year when the gold and brown of our Ozark
Hills is overlaid with a filmy veil of delicate blue haze and the world
is hushed with the solemn sweetness of the passing of the summer. And as
the old gentlewoman stood there in the open door of that rustic temple
of learning, with the deep-shadowed, wooded hillside in the background,
and, in front, the rude clearing with its crooked rail fence along which
the scarlet sumac flamed, I thought,--as I still think, after all these
years,--that I had never before seen such a woman.
Fifty years had gone into the making of that sterling character which
was builded upon a foundation of many generations of noble ancestors.
Without home or children of her own, the life strength of her splendid
womanhood had been given to the teaching of boys and girls. An old-maid
schoolteacher? Yes,--if you will. But, as I saw her standing there that
day,--tall and slender, dressed in a simple gown that was fitting to her
work,--there was a queenly dignity, a stately sweetness, in her bearing
that made me feel, somehow, as if I had come unexpectedly into the
presence of royalty. Not the royalty of caste and court and station with
their glittering pretenses of superiority and their superficial claims
to distinction,--I do not mean that; I mean that true royalty which
needs no caste or court or station but makes itself felt because it IS.
She did not notice me at first, for the noise of the children at play in
the yard covered the sound of my approach, and she was looking far, far
away, over the river which lay below at the foot of the hill; over the
forest-clad mountains in the glory of their brown and gold; over the
vast sweep of the tree-crowned Ozark ridges that receded wave after wave
into the blue haze until, in the vastness of the distant sky, they were
lost. And something made me know that, in the moment's respite from her
task, the woman was looking even beyond the sky itself.
Her profile, clean-chiselled, but daintily formed, was beautiful in its
gentle strength. Her hair was soft and silvery like the gray mist of the
river in the morning. Then she turned to greet me, and I saw her eyes.
Boy that I was then, and not given overmuch to serious thought, I knew
that the high, unwavering purpose, the loving sympathy, and tender
understanding that shone in the calm depth of those eyes could belong
only to one who habitually looks unafraid beyond all earthly scenes.
Only those who have learned thus to look beyond the material horizon of
our little day have that beautiful inner light which shone in the eyes
of Auntie Sue--the teacher of a backwoods school.
Auntie Sue had come to the Elbow Rock neighborhood the summer preceding
that fall when I first met her. She had grown too old, she said, with
her delightful little laugh, to be of much use in the larger schools of
the more thickly populated sections of the country. But she was still
far too young, she stoutly maintained, to be altogether useless.
Tom Warden, who lived just over the ridge from the schoolhouse, and
who was blessed with the largest wife, the largest family, and the most
pretentious farm in the county, had kinsfolk somewhere in Illinois.
Through these relatives of the Ozark farmer Miss Susan Wakefield had
learned of the needs of the Elbow Rock school, and so, finally, had
come into the hills. It was the influential Tom who secured for her the
modest position. It was the motherly Mrs. Tom who made her at home in
the Warden household. It was the Warden boys and girls who first called
her “Auntie Sue.” But it was Auntie Sue herself who won so large a place
in the hearts of the simple mountain folk of the district that she
held her position year after year, until she finally gave up teaching
altogether.
Not one of her Ozark friends ever came to know in detail the history of
this remarkable woman's life. It was known in a general way that she
was born in Connecticut; that she had a brother somewhere in some
South-American country; that two other brothers had been killed in the
Civil War; that she had taught in the lower and intermediate grades of
public schools in various places all the years of her womanhood. Also,
it was known that she had never married.
“And that,” said Uncle Lige Potter, voicing the unanimous opinion,
of the countryside, “is a doggone funny thing and plumb unnatural,
considerin' the kind of woman she is.”
To which Lem Jordan,--who was then living with his fourth wife, and
might therefore be held to speak with a degree of authority,--added:
“Hit sure is a dad burned shame, an' a plumb disgrace to the men of this
here country, when you come to look at the sort of wimmen most of 'em
are a marryin' most of the time.”
Another matter of universal and never-failing interest to the mountain
folk was the unprecedented number of letters that Auntie Sue received
and wrote. That some of these letters written by their backwoods teacher
were addressed to men and women of such prominence in the world that
their names were known even to that remote Ozark district was a source
of no little pride to Auntie Sue's immediate neighbors, and served to
mark her in their eyes with no small distinction.
It was during the fourth year of her life amid the scenes of this
story,--as I recall time,--that Auntie Sue invested the small savings
of her working years in the little log house by the river and the eighty
acres of land known as the “Old Bill Wilson place.”
The house was a substantial building of three rooms, a lean-to kitchen,
and a porch overlooking the river. The log barn, with “Prince,” a gentle
old horse, and “Bess,” a mild-mannered, brindle cow, completed the
modest establishment. About thirty acres of the land were cleared and
under cultivation of a sort. The remaining acreage was in timber.
The price, under the kindly and expert supervision of Tom Warden, was
fifteen dollars an acre. But Auntie Sue always laughingly insisted that
she really paid fifty cents an acre for the land and fourteen dollars
and a half an acre for the sunsets.
The tillable land, except for the garden, she “let out on shares,”
always under the friendly guardianship of neighbor Tom; while Tom's boys
cared for the little garden in season, and saw to it that the woodpile
was always ample and ready for the stove. And, in addition to these
fixed and regular homely services, there were many offerings of helpful
hands whenever other needs arose; for, as time passed, there came to be
in all the Elbow Rock district scarce a man, young or old, who did not
now and then honor himself by doing some little job for Auntie Sue;
while the women and girls, in the same neighborly spirit, brought from
their own humble households many tokens of their loving thoughtfulness.
And never did one visit that little log house by the river without
the consciousness of something received from the silvery-haired old
teacher--a something intangible, perhaps, which they could not have
expressed in words, but which, nevertheless, enriched the lives of
those simple mountain people with a very real joy and a very tangible
happiness.
For six years, Auntie Sue continued teaching the Elbow Rock
school;--climbing the hill in the morning from her log house by the
river to the cabin schoolhouse in the clearing on the mountain-side
above; returning in the late afternoon, when her day's work was over,
down the winding road to her little home, there to watch, from the porch
that overlooked the river, the sunset in the evening. And every year the
daily climb grew a little harder; the days of work grew a little longer;
she went down the hill in the afternoon a little slower. And every year
the sunsets were to her eyes more beautiful; the evening skies to her
understanding glowed with richer meaning; the twilight hours filled her
heart with a deeper peace.
And so, at last, her teaching days were over; that is, she taught no
more in the log schoolhouse in the clearing on the mountain-side. But
in her little home beside the river she continued her work; not from
text-books, indeed, but as all such souls must continue to teach, until
the sun sets for the last time upon their mortal days.
Work-worn, toil-hardened mountaineer mothers, whose narrow world denied
them so many of the finer thoughts and things, came to counsel with
this childless woman, and to learn from her a little of the art of
contentment and happiness. Strong men, of rude dress and speech, whose
lives were as rough as the hills in which they were reared, and whose
thoughts were often as crude as their half-savage and sometimes lawless
customs, came to sit at the feet of this gentle one, who received them
all with such kindly interest and instinctive understanding. And young
men and girls came, drawn by the magic that was hers, to confide in
this woman who listened with such rare tact and loving sympathy to their
troubles and their dreams, and who, in the deepest things of their young
lives, was mother to them all.
Nor were the mountain folk her only disciples. Always there were the
letters she continued to write, addressed to almost every corner of
the land. And every year there would come, for a week or a month, at
different times during the summer, men and women from the great world of
larger affairs who had need of the strength and courage and patience and
hope they never failed to find in that little log house by the river.
And so, in time, it came to be known that those letters written by
Auntie Sue went to men and women who, in their childhood school days,
had received from her their first lessons in writing; and that her
visitors, many of them distinguished in the world of railroads and
cities, were of that large circle of busy souls who had never ceased to
be her pupils.
Thus it came that the garden was made a little larger, and two rooms
were added to the house, with other modest improvements, to accommodate
Auntie Sue's grown-up boys and girls when they came to visit her. But
never was there a hired servant, so that her guests must do their own
household tasks, because, Auntie Sue said, that was good for them and
mostly what they needed.
It should also be said here that among her many pupils who lived beyond
the sky-line of the far, blue hills, not one knew more of the
real secret of Auntie Sue's life and character than did the Ozark
mountaineers of the Elbow Rock district, among whom she had chosen to
pass the evening of her day.
Then came one who learned the secret. He learned--but that is my story.
I must not tell the secret here.