The lantern was carried, as I finally discovered, by an old man getting
a basket of chips near the barn gate. He had his eye on me as I leaned
over the fence. He swung the lantern closer.
“My name is Nicholas,” I said. “I am a professional tramp.”
“W-e-l-l,” he said slowly, in question, and then in exclamation.
He flashed the lantern in my face. “Come in,” he said. “Sit down.”
We were together on the chip-pile. He did not ask me to split kindling,
or saw wood. Few people ever do.
In appearance he was the old John G. Whittier type of educated
laboring-man, only more eagle-like. He spoke to me in a kingly
prophetic manner, developed, I have no doubt, by a lifetime of
unquestioned predominance at prayer-meeting and at the communion table.
It was the sonorous agricultural holy tone that is the particular
aversion of a certain pagan type of city radical who does not
understand that the meeting-house is the very rock of the agricultural
social system. As far as I am concerned, if this manner be worn by a
kindly old man, it inspires me with respect and delight. In a slow and
gracious way he separated his syllables.
“Young man, you are per-fect-ly wel-come to shel-ter if we are on-ly
sure you will not do us an in-ju-ry. My age and ex-per-ience ought to
count for a lit-tle, and I assure you that most free travel-ers abuse
hos-pi-tal-ity. But wait till my daugh-ter-in-law comes.”
I was shivering with weariness, and my wet feet wanted to get to a
stove at once. I did not feel so much like talking some one to death as
I had a while back.
By way of passing the time, the Patriarch showed me his cane.
“Pre-sen-ted at the last old set-tel-ers’ picnic because I have been
the pres-i-dent of the old-settlers’ association for ten years. Young
man, why don’t you carry a cane?”
“Why should I?”
“Won’t it help you to keep off dogs?”
I replied, “A housekeeper, if she is in a nervous condition, is apt
to be afraid of a walking-stick. It looks like a club. To carry
something to keep off dogs is like carrying a lightning-rod to keep off
lightning. I encounter a lot of barking and thunder, but have never
been bitten or blasted.”
And while I was thus laboring for the respect of the Patriarch, the
daughter-in-law stepped into the golden circle of the lantern light.
She had just come from the milking. I shall never forget those bashful
gleaming eyes, peering out from the sunbonnet. Her sleeves were rolled
to the shoulder. Startling indeed were those arms, as white as the
foaming milk.
She set down the bucket with a big sigh of relaxation. She pushed back
the sunbonnet to get a better look. The old man addressed her in an
authoritative and confident way, as though she were a mere adjunct, a
part of his hospitality.
“Daugh-ter, here is a good young man--he Looks like a good young man,
I think a stew-dent. You see he has books in his pock-et. He wants a
night’s lodging. Now, if he _is_ a good young man, I think we can give
him the bed in the spare room, and if he is a bad young man, I think
there is enough rope in the barn to hang him before daylight.”
“Yes, you can stay,” she said brightly. “Have you had supper?”
It is one of the obligations of the road to tell the whole truth. But
in this case I lied. The woman was working too late.
“Oh yes, I’ve had supper,” I said.
And she carried the milk into the darkness.
In the city, among people having the status indicated by the big red
barn and the enormous wind-mill and a most substantial fence, this
gleaming woman would have languished in shelter. She would have played
at many philanthropies, or gone to many study clubs or have had many
lovers. She would have been variously adventurous according to her
corner of the town. Here her paramour was WORK. He still caressed her,
but would some day break her on the wheel.
The old man sent me toward the front porch alone. There was a rolling
back of the low gray clouds just then, and the coming of the moon. The
moon’s moods are so many. To-night she took the forlornness out of the
restless sky. She looked domestic as the lantern.