"_A billion elements go into the making of a boy, but there is one
fundamental agent of his greatness or commonness--his mother._"--_Will
Levington Comfort._
Fears for Dolly were not ungrounded. Following the instinct of her
kind, the aristocratic little Jersey had slipped away by herself on
this particular afternoon. Billy found the rest of the cows waiting
at the bars, lowing to be milked after a day on the heavy spring
pasture. It was only necessary to let them into the lane and they
started off home in a bobbing file. To find the missing cow was
another proposition.
Billy knew the magnitude of the task, and planned his course with the
ingenuity of a general. He would climb the hill first and inspect the
cedar thickets; then he would come down through the gully where the
rocks and thorns and hazel bushes made strange hiding places. If she
wasn't there he would have to inspect the fence into the neighbor's
woods. The pasture was rough and thickety, but he knew every foot of
the ground--he had covered it on similar occasions before, and if he
suffered some anxiety as to whether he could locate the cow before
dark, there was also a pleasant little thrill of adventure in the
undertaking.
But Dolly wasn't among the cedars, and she hadn't found a shelter in
the valley. The shadows were creeping out long and misty when Billy,
with an unsteady feeling under his belt, turned his scrutiny to the
line fence. Sure enough, there was a spot where the dead bush topping
the ridge of piled up stones was trampled and broken. The high-strung
little heifer had taken a dangerous climb to find a sanctuary worthy
of her great moment. Beyond the break in the fence there wasn't a
clue to the direction she had taken--nothing but solid, damp woods,
and it was getting dark. Then over the fields came two slow, familiar
calls from the dinner bell. A warm flood of relief came over Billy;
his mother was telling him to come home--maybe his father had come
back and would hunt the cow.
Dan hadn't come home yet. He was just driving into the yard when
Billy came up. Besides, he had spent the afternoon in a rather noisy
hang-out in town and was in no humor for hunting stray cattle.
"Chores all done?" he asked in the edged voice that the family had
learned to listen for. Billy had never thought of chores. He
remembered them now with a feeling of guilt. At the same time his
quick senses observed the quietness of the pigs in the pen, the
horses crunching their hay in the stable. "Seems as if mother's done
them," he replied. "I went from the funeral to get the cows. Dolly's
missing."
"You mean to say you went off all afternoon when you knew that heifer
needed watchin'? And you haven't found her yet? Well, just git right
back and stay till you do find her. Never mind about your mother
callin' you. You ain't dealin' with your mother now. What I'm
telling' you is not to show yourself back here till you find that
cow, if it takes you till daylight."
If the task of finding a hiding cow in the woods at night had seemed
impossible before, it was the last thing Billy hoped for now, as he
stumbled rapidly back over the humpy path through the stubble field,
blinding, angry tears burning his eyes and a child's bitter vengeance
surging up inside of him and finding an outlet in strange, mad little
curses. At the edge of the woods the feeling began to cool in a new
sensation. Billy wouldn't have admitted what it was, but the place
was so still and dark and far away from everywhere, that the breaking
of a dry twig under his feet set his pulses beating wildly. There
were weird stories afloat in the neighborhood that the wood was a
dark haunt of tramps, and ever since old Enoch, the half-witted
brother of a neighbor, had wandered off and gotten lost in the heart
of it and only his pitiful crying had brought the men with their
lanterns, school children had avoided it as the abode of all things
lunatic and uncanny.
But Billy couldn't avoid it now. With hands clenched and legs
stiffened and cold he began his lone patrol, rustling the dead leaves
as little as possible and stopping to listen every few seconds, as he
groped deeper into the blackness. Once he called "Dolly," but the
hoarse, strained voice came whispering back from behind a hundred
tree trunks. He didn't move till they had finished. Once he stumbled
against a rotten log, and a cat leaped almost from under his feet and
shot in long lopes off into the bracken. Instinctively Billy broke
off a dead limb--he had heard of ugly encounters with bush cats in
the hungry season, and the consciousness that his presence of mind
hadn't entirely left him brought new courage. For the first time
since he entered the wood he really remembered what he was there for.
The blood began to circulate in his shaking limbs, and he found
himself peering into the blackness and listening--not for "sounds"
this time, but for Dolly.
Years after, in a wood in Flanders, on a night mercifully blacker
than this, moving like a shadow among the willows, keeping his eyes
raised from the pitiful staring eyes on the ground around him, and
calling softly in a voice scarcely above the warm, scented wind off
the field, his memory played him a strange trick. A shutter in his
brain seemed to click, revealing for an instant an old picture, as
though this experience had happened to him before somewhere. Was the
thing "getting" him as he had seen it get others? With a new terror
in his drawn face he put his hand to his head and whispered, "Oh,
God, not that!" Then over his bleared consciousness came a tinkling
like a little bell, and a voice, clear, sweet and confident: "Billy,
boy, it's all right. I'm here." And the tears came with a flood of
relief and comfort, just as they had done years before when he stood
in the woods of the old swamp farm, hearing her call and the tinkling
of her milk pail. She had come to help him.
So are the hardest experiences made bearable by such a love, and the
bitterest tragedies averted even through its memory.
It was a strong, free "Whoo-oo," that the boy sent ringing through
the woods now. It started a dozen little creatures scuttling back to
their holes--and right beside him a crackling of dead underbrush, the
sound of a short, quick trot, a low bellow either of fear or warning,
then not five yards away from him, with lowered head and eyes blazing
in the darkness stood the Jersey heifer.
Billy knew that for the moment the gentle, domesticated little beast
was as dangerous as any of the wild cattle of the plains. A few
minutes before he would have been paralyzed at the vague shape in
the darkness with its blazing eyes and low, threatening guttural
sounds. Now, with the confidence inspired by his mother's nearness,
came a self mastery and a happy feeling of competence. He advanced
steadily, ready to dart behind a tree if the cow showed any real sign
of attack, calmly enough repeating, "Steady, Dolly; so, Boss."
Evidently the cow recognized and trusted him; he had petted her all
her life; also he was not coming near her calf. She had hidden it in
a spot quite safe from intrusion. Sure of that she was not averse to
being friendly. There was nothing to do but to try to make her
comfortable where she was for the night; that was why his mother had
brought the milk-pail. With a knowledge acquired of experience she
learned that the calf had fed itself; that meant that it was all
right. Glowing like prospectors who have found a yellow vein and
marked the place, they made their way out of the wood.
Down in the hollow a light twinkled in the kitchen window; it was
nearly midnight and Billy found himself stumbling over the rough
pasture field half asleep and decidedly out of temper.
"My, but I hate this place," he stormed bitterly. "Soon's I'm big
enough to get away it won't see much more of me, I can tell you."
His mother was silent. She never used the evasive "You must not say
such things." Perhaps the most eloquent part of her life was its
quietness. Just now Billy felt his conscience twinge under it. Her
patience was teaching him early to overcome the selfishness of youth.
He knew that always hers was the greater suffering, but she never
complained; so a bit sheepishly he added: "And I suppose that's just
when I might be able to save you and Jean some. But I could make lots
of money then; we'd be independent; we could all go together."
"Oh, no, sonny, we couldn't do that. Things will be different.
There'll be a way for you and Jean. We'll find one somehow. Maybe
your father'll see things differently after a while. I think that'll
be a fine calf of Dolly's; likely almost a cream coat with black
points and big soft, black eyes, like a young deer's."
"I think she was a fool to trail it away in there as if she thought
we'd kill it. I'd have been gooder'n gold to it at home. It was just
a chance that we found her at all, and I'm sure no one wants to go
prowlin' around the swamp at this time of the night."
Then she told him what she knew of nature's primitive laws handed
down from Dolly's wild ancestors--how the wild birds protect their
young from preying enemies and why the old turkey hen, tame for
generations, always tried to hide her nest. She also told him of
whatever beautiful things she knew to look and listen for in the
woods at night, simple, wonderful lore that her father had given her
on their walks through the woods to salt the cattle on Sundays.
Before Billy had finished his bread and milk and crawled into bed he
had resolved to explore that wood again. He wasn't afraid of it now;
it was a real outdoor theatre.
But long after he was asleep his mother lay awake on the lounge
downstairs, listening to the heavy breathing in the next room and
thinking. It had troubled her a good deal lately, this night
thinking, always looking back and wondering just how present
situations had come about. Life had sprung up around her so happily
in her beautiful old home. Only to live and laugh and be happy--that
was all that was expected of her, and if it didn't seem enough, if
she had visions, mysterious inward stirrings of something creative
crying for expression, she generally kept them to herself. At last
she suggested it timidly--she wanted to go to school, she wanted to
do something. She didn't know just what. How could she when she had
never had a chance to see what there was to be done? But her father
had laughed and petted her and said he guessed he could keep his only
little girl. It was a pretty hard lookout if a man couldn't protect
his one pet lamb from being buffetted about in the world, fighting
for a living with men, and losing their respect and her own
womanliness by working at a man's job. And he added with unconcealed
disappointment that it wasn't like her to want such a thing when she
could have the protection of her father's home.
She didn't realize then, of course, how miserably inadequate such a
protection might be, but the argument silenced her. She felt keenly
ashamed of herself--sort of in a class with the long-spurred hen
cropping up every year, a menace to the social life and economic
purpose of the flock. They seemed to think she wanted to "go into the
world" for the mere joy of adventure or the hope of notoriety, either
of which would almost have frightened her to death. But the
uncontrollable little voice inside wouldn't be quiet. It still cried
out to create something, to be a part of the scheme that makes the
world go round.
Then Dan came, Dan with his handsome face and buoyant, indomitable
swing, a fine animal--and the time-old instinct leapt into a flame.
There had never been anyone else, because there hadn't been anyone
else in the neighborhood, and she had never been out of it, and this
seemed just what she had been waiting for. She wasn't introspective,
and she didn't stop to analyze this feeling, of course. Apart from
the tumultuous sway of it there were secret visions which she would
not for worlds have revealed to anyone, but which brought her the
only reassurance, "This is real"--a train of little white figures to
hold close for a while, then to send out into the world to do the
things she had wanted to do. They would be just like Dan, of course,
but they would be guided by the spark she had kept smouldering in her
dreams for them.
Now that the dream had failed it never occurred to her that she had
made a mistake. Dan was still her man; she couldn't have imagined
things otherwise, only she wondered what she could do, working
single-handed and against odds, to give the children a chance. What
if, in the fight ahead of her, she should go out as she had seen
several of her neighbors go, coming up to the battle spent and tired
out, trying desperately to hang on, then suddenly letting go because
the overstrained vitality just snapped? Staring into the darkness she
whispered over and over, "Oh, God, I can't--not yet."