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ROUGH-HEWN
_BY THE SAME AUTHOR_
THE SQUIRREL-CAGE
A MONTESSORI MOTHER
MOTHERS AND CHILDREN
THE BENT TWIG
THE REAL MOTIVE
FELLOW CAPTAINS
(With SARAH N. CLEGHORN)
UNDERSTOOD BETSY
HOME FIRES IN FRANCE
THE DAY OF GLORY
THE BRIMMING CUP
ROUGH-HEWN
BY
DOROTHY CANFIELD
"There's a divinity that shapes our ends,
Rough-hew them how we will."
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY
HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY, INC.
PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.
CONTENTS
PAGE
ANY LITTLE BOY 1
CULTURE IN THE AIR 29
NEALE BEGINS TO BE NEALE 85
"TO-DAY SHALL BE THE SAME AS YESTERDAY" 129
AN EDUCATION IN THE HUMANITIES AND THE LIBERAL ARTS 209
BIRTHDAYS IN SEVERAL LANGUAGES 317
THE END OF ALL ROADS 379
_ANY LITTLE BOY_
CHAPTER I
In the spring of 1893 Strindberg had just published "A Fool's
Confession," D'Annunzio was employing all the multicolored glory of his
style to prove "The Triumph of Death"; Hardy was somberly mixing on his
palette the twilight grays and blacks and mourning purples of "Jude the
Obscure"; Nordau, gnashing his teeth, was bellowing "Decadent" at his
contemporaries who smirked a complacent acceptance of the epithet ...
and, all unconscious of the futility and sordidness of the world, Neale
Crittenden swaggered along Central Avenue, brandishing his shinny stick.
It was a new yellow shinny stick, broad and heavy and almost as long as
the boy who carried it. Ever since he had seen it in the window of
Schwartz's Bazar, his soul had yearned for it. For days he had hoarded
his pennies, foregoing ice-cream sodas, shutting his ears to the
seductive ding-dong of the waffle-man's cart, and this very afternoon
the immense sum of twenty-five cents had been completed and now he owned
a genuine boughten stick, varnished and shiny. What couldn't he do with
such a club! He beat it on the sidewalk till the flag-stones rang; he
swung it around his head. What stupendous long-distance goals he was
going to make! How he would dribble the ball through the enemy!
Spring had turned the vacant lots into sticky red mud, but Central
Avenue was hard if somewhat undulating macadam. It had stone curbs too,
that bounced the ball back as if specially designed for side-boundaries
by a philanthropic Board of Supervisors. Somewhere along it he was sure
to find a game in progress. Yes, there they were in front of Number Two
School. Neale broke into a run and coming up breathless plunged into the
scrimmage.
Shinny as played on Union Hill in the nineties had none of the
refinements of its dignified cousin, field-hockey. Roughly divided into
two sides, an indeterminate number of players tried with their sticks to
knock a hard rubber ball to opposite ends of a block. Team work was
elementary: the slowest runner on each side lay back to "tend gool"; the
rest, following the fortunes of the ball, pelted to and fro in a
seething melee of scuffling feet and clashing sticks. After each goal
the ball was brought to the middle of the block, the two captains took
their stand with sticks on either side of it. "One," they rapped their
sticks on the pavement; "two," they rapped them together; "one, two,
one, two." Then pandemonium broke out shrilly, sticks rapping against
each other or against opposing shins, yells of "shinny on your own
side," a welter of little boys battling around the ball as it shot up
and down, sometimes advancing rapidly, sometimes stationary among a
vortex of locked sticks until finally a lucky knock drove it past one or
the other side street.
Once as they were walking back after a goal, Fatty Schmidt noticed
Neale's new weapon. "Oh, you gotta new shinny. Where'd you get it?
Schwartz? Huh, them kind ain't no good; they split." Neale was silent as
an Iroquois, but he had already begun to doubt. The heavy new stick
didn't seem to be turning out what he had expected. It tripped him up
occasionally and he never got it on the ball as quickly as he had his
old home-made locust-shoot with the knob of root at the end. But he kept
his doubts to himself, let out another notch of speed, and tried harder.
It began to go better. He stopped a dangerous rush by hooking Franz
Uhler's stick just as he was about to shoot for goal. Another time
unaided he took the ball away from Don Roberts, lost it, but Marty Ryan
retrieved it, and Neale and Marty raced down almost on top of the
opposing goal keeper. Marty hit the ball a terrific crack. "Gool!" they
cried exultingly, then on another note, indignantly, "Hi there, drop
that!" For as the ball bounded along the street, a ragged little boy who
had sprung up from nowhere grabbed it and made off. The pack gave chase.
The little gamin had a good start but the bigger boys ahead of Neale
were gaining on him. He turned off eastward. As Neale tore along he saw
Marty and Franz catch up with the little kid, and then ... what was
this? Where did all those other boys come from?
With a whoop of joyous exultation he recognized the familiar ambush, the
welcome invitation to battle. "Come on, fellers!" he yelled back to his
own crowd. "Hoboken micks!" And with the rest of the Union Hill crowd
charged through a fire of stones at the invaders.
Then it was that the new shinny stick vindicated itself. Swinging it
like a crusader's two-handed sword, Neale hacked and hewed. He landed on
the funny-bone of a boy struggling with Marty for the ball. He landed on
another mick's ribs. He heaved the stick up and was going to smash a
hostile head when the enemy broke and ran. Triumphant, the Union Hill
boys chased them to the edge of the hill, and sent a volley of stones
after them as they scrambled down the steep path among the rocks, but
pursued them no further. Below was the enemy's country. The Union Hill
crowd never ventured down the rocks to the level cinder-filled flats
beside the railroad tracks. That was Hoboken and a foreign land.
It was supper time now. The victors said "So long" to each other and
dispersed. Neale, somewhat lame but elated, went up the wooden steps of
the porch. He stood his stick up in the umbrella-stand, went to the
bathroom, washed his hands, brushed his hair, at least the top layer of
it, and went quietly down to the dining-room. There he ate his buttered
toast and creamed potatoes and drank his cocoa silently, while his
father and mother talked. He paid no attention to what they said. He was
living over again the fight of the afternoon, and forecasting fresh
conquests for the future. His mother passed him a sauce-dish of
preserved cherries and a piece of cake. After he had eaten this, he got
up silently and went back to his room. His mother looked after him
tenderly. "Neale is a _good_ boy," she said. Although he was no longer
there, she still saw his honest round face, clear eyes, fresh color. She
smiled to herself lovingly.
Her husband nodded, "Yes, he's a good boy." After a thoughtful pause, he
added, "Seems an awfully _quiet_ kid, though. I mean he keeps things to
himself. You haven't any idea whether he's having a real boy's fun or
not. He makes so little noise about it."
As he passed through the hall Neale lingered a moment to handle the
shinny stick again. He looked at it carefully to see if perhaps there
was not a little blood on it.