TWO SIDES OF A CLOUD.
The holy hilarity which Father Baguss enjoyed on his way home, after
having assisted in bringing Harry Wainright back, did not depart with
the shades of night. The old man was out of bed at his usual hour, and
he took his spiritual songs to the barn with him, to the astonishment
of his mild-eyed cows and quick-eared horses; and when his drove of
porkers demanded their morning meal with the vocal power peculiar to
a chorus of swine, the old man defiantly jumped an occasional octave,
and made the spiritual songs dominate over the physical. He seemed
_so_ happy that his single hired man could not resist the temptation
of asking for an increase of pay; but the sobriety to which this
interruption and its consequent refusal reduced Father Baguss was of
only temporary duration, and the broken strain was resumed with renewed
energy. The ecstasy lasted into and through the old man’s matutinal
repast, and manifested itself by an occasional hum through the good
man’s nose, which did the duty ordinarily performed by a mouth which
was now busied about other things; it caused Father Baguss to read a
glorious psalm as he officiated at the family altar after breakfast; it
made itself felt half way through the set prayer which the old farmer
had delivered every morning for forty years; but it seemed suddenly to
depart as its whilom possessor uttered the petition, “May we impart to
others of the grace with which thou hast visited us so abundantly.”
For the Tappelmines had come suddenly into Father Baguss’s mind, and
as that receptacle was never particularly crowded, the Tappelmines
made themselves very much at home there. The prayer having ended, the
old man loitered about the house instead of going directly to the
“clearing,” in which he had been getting out some oak fence-rails; he
stared out of the window, walked up and down the kitchen with his hands
in his pockets, lit a pipe, relit it half a dozen times at two minute
intervals, sighed, groaned, and at length strode across the room like a
bandit coming upon the boards of a theater, seized his hat, and started
for the Tappelmine domicile.
As he plodded along over the rough road, he had two very distinct
ideas in his mind: one was, that he hadn’t the slightest notion of
what to say to Tappelmine; the other, and stronger, was, that it would
be a relief to him to discover that Tappelmine was away from home,
or even sick in bed--yes, or even drunk. But this hope was of very
short duration, for soon the old man heard the Tappelmine axe, and,
as he rounded the corner of the miserable house, he saw Tappelmine
himself--a tall, gaunt figure in faded homespun, torn straw hat, and a
tangled thicket of muddy-gray hair. The face which Tappelmine turned,
as he heard the approaching footsteps, was not one to warm the heart
of a man inspired only by an unwelcome sense of duty; it was thin,
full of vagrant wrinkles; the nose had apparently started in different
directions, and each time failed to return to its original line; the
eyes were watery and colorless, and the lips were thin and drawn into
the form of a jagged volcano crater.
“The idee of doin’ anything for such!” exclaimed Father Baguss under
his breath. “O Lord! _you_ put me up to this here job--unless it was
all Crupp’s work; now see me through!” Then he said,
“How are you, neighbor?”
“Oh! off an’ on, ’bout as usual,” said Tappelmine, with a look which
seemed to indicate that his usual condition was not one upon which he
was particularly to be felicitated.
“How’d your crop turn out?” asked Father Baguss, well knowing that
“crop” was a terribly sarcastic word to apply to the acre or two of
badly cultivated corn which Tappelmine had planted, but yet feeling a
frantic need of talking against time.
“Well, not over’n above good,” said Tappelmine, as impervious to the
innocent sarcasm as he would have been to anything but a bullet or a
glass of whiskey. “I dunno what would have ’come of us ef I hadn’t
knocked over a couple of deer last week.”
“You might have given a hint to your neighbors, if worst had come to
worst,” suggested Father Baguss, perceiving a gleam of light, but not
so delighted over it as a moment or two before he had expected to be.
“Nobody’d have stood by an’ seen you starve.”
“Glad you told me,” said Tappelmine, abruptly raising his axe, and
starting two or three large chips in quick succession.
The light seemed suddenly to be departing, and Father Baguss made a
frantic clutch at it.
“You needn’t have waited to be told,” said he. “You know well enough
we’re all human bein’s about here.”
“Well,” said Tappelmine, leaning on his axe, and taking particular
care not to look into his neighbor’s eye, “I used to borry a little
somethin’--corn, mebbe, or a piece of meat once in a while; but folks
didn’t seem over an’ above glad to lend ’em, an’ I’m one of the kind of
fellows that can take a hint, I am.”
“That was ’cause you never said a word ’bout payin’ back--leastways,
you didn’t at _our_ house.”
Tappelmine did not reply, except by looking sullen, and Father Baguss
continued:
“Besides, it’s kinder discouragin’ to lend to a feller that gets tight
a good deal--gets tight sometimes, anyhow; it’s hard enough to get paid
by folks that always keep straight.”
As Tappelmine could say nothing to controvert this proposition, he
continued to look sullen, and Father Baguss, finding the silence
insupportably annoying, said rather more than he had intended to say.
There are natures which, while containing noble qualities, are most
awkward expositors of themselves, and that of Baguss was one of this
sort. Such people are given to action which is open to criticism on
every side; yet, in spite of their awkwardnesses, they find in their
weakness the source of whatever strength they discover themselves to
be possessed of. Father Baguss was one of this special division of
humanity; but--perhaps for his own good--he was unconscious of his
strength and painfully observant of his weakness. Yet he continued as
follows:
“Look here, Tappelmine, I came over here on purpose to find out if I
could do anything to help you get into better habits. You don’t amount
to a row of pins as things are now, and I don’t like it; it’s throwed
up to me, because I’m your neighbor, and there’s folks that stick to it
that _I’m_ to blame. I don’t see how; but if there’s any cross layin’
around that fits my shoulders, I s’pose I ought to pick it up an’ pack
it along. Now, why in creation don’t you give up drinkin,’ an’ go to
church, an’ make a crop, an’ do other things like decent folks do?
You’re bigger’n I am, an’ stouter, an’ your farm’s as good as mine if
you’d only work it. Now why you don’t do it, I don’t see.”
“Don’t, eh?” snarled Tappelmine, dropping his axe, and leaning against
the house with folded hands. “Well, ’cause I hain’t got any plow, nor
any harrow, nor but one hoss, nor rails enough to keep out cattle, nor
seed-corn or wheat, nor money to buy it with, nor anything to live on
until the crop’s made, nor anything to prevent the crop when it’s made
from being grabbed by whoever I owe money to; _that’s_ why I don’t
make a crop. An’ I don’t go to church, ’cause I hain’t got any clothes
excep’ these ’uns that I’ve got on, an’ my wife’s as bad off as _I_ be.
An’ I don’t give up drinkin’, ’cause drinkin’ makes me feel good, an’
the only folks I know that care anything for me drink too. You fellers
that only drink on the sly----”
“I never touched a drop in all my life!” roared Father Baguss.
“That’s right,” said Tappelmine; “stick to it; there’s some that’ll
believe that yarn. But what I was goin’ to say was, folks that drink on
the sly know it’s comfortin’, an’ I don’t see what they go a-pokin’ up
fellers that does it fair an’ square for.”
Father Baguss groaned, and some influence--the old man in later days
laid it upon the arch-enemy of souls--suggested to him the foolishness
of having gone into so great an operation without first counting
the cost; hadn’t the great Founder of the old man’s religious faith
enjoined a counting of the cost of any enterprise before entering upon
it? Father Baguss wished _that_ chapter of Holy Writ might have met
his eye that morning at the family altar; but it had not, and, worse
yet, Tappelmine was becoming wide awake and excited. It was not what
the drunkard had said about drinking or church-going that troubled this
would-be reformer; Tappelmine’s outline of his material condition was
what annoyed Father Baguss; for, in spite of an occasional attempt to
mentally allay his fears by falling back upon prayer, the incentive
with which he had called upon Tappelmine had taken strong hold of
his conscience, and persisted in making its influence felt. Plows
and prayers, harrows and hopes, seed-corn and the seed sown by the
wayside mixed themselves inextricably in his mind, as parallels often
do when men dream, or when they are confronted by an emergency beyond
the control of their own intellects. The old man prayed silently and
earnestly for relief, and his prayer was answered in a manner not
entirely according to his liking, for he felt moved to say,
“_I’ll_ lend you seed, if you’ll go to work an’ put it right in, an’
I’ll lend you a plow and a team to break up the ground with--I mean,
I’ll hire ’em to you, an’ agree to buy your crop at rulin’ price, an’
pay you the difference in cash.”
“That sounds somethin’ like,” remarked Tappelmine, thrusting his
hands into his trowsers’ pockets, and making other preparations for a
business talk; “but,” he continued, “what am I to live on along till
harvest? ’Tain’t even winter yet.”
Father Baguss groaned, and asked, “What was you a-goin’ to live on if I
hadn’t offered seed and tools, Tappelmine?”
“The Lord knows,” answered the never-do-well, with unimpeachable
veracity.
“Then,” said the old farmer, “I guess he knows what you’ll do in
t’other case. You can work, I reckon. _I_ hain’t got much to do, but
you can do it, at whatever prices is goin’, an’ that’ll help you get
work of other folks; nobody can say I get stuck on the men I hire. So
they’re generally glad enough to hire ’em themselves.”
Tappelmine did not seem overjoyed at his prospects, but he had the
grace to say that they were better than he had expected. Father Baguss
went home, feeling but little more comfortable than when he had
started on his well-intended mission. Tappelmine sauntered into his own
cabin, wondering how much of the promised seed-corn and wheat he could
smuggle into town and trade for whiskey; but he was rather surprised to
have his wife, a short, thin, sallow, uninteresting-looking woman, who
had been listening at the broken window, approach him, throw her arms
about his neck, and exclaim,
“Now, old man, we can be respectable, can’t we? The chance has been a
long time a-comin’, but we’ve got it now.”
The surprise was too great for Tappelmine, and he spent the remainder
of the day in nursing his knee on the single hearthstone of his
mansion. He was not undisturbed, however, and as men of his mental
caliber hate persistent reason even worse than they do work, Mrs.
Tappelmine not only coaxed her lord into resolving to be respectable,
but allowed that gentleman to persuade himself that he had formed the
resolution of his own accord.