XII
When I was a child of four, long, long ago, as it seems to me, some friend gave my father a setter dog. And my father named him “Tim,” for the giver’s name was Timothy.
Tim and our old gardener, Sandy’s father, whose name was Uncle Robert, were about the only friends of my early childhood. I remember how in the fall of every year, when the chestnut burrs used to get big and the pippins began to ripen, Uncle Robert used to dig up all the potatoes and make them into a huge mound at the end of our garden. Then he would rake together in heaps the dead and falling leaves, and use them for a warm covering for the potato mound in order to protect the potatoes from the snow and frost, for he kept them there all winter, and only brought them up to the kitchen as the cook needed them. Uncle Robert’s mountain of potatoes always impressed me as being perfectly wonderful. Indeed most everything that Uncle Robert did, came pretty near to the marvelous. Upon the first fall of snow, I used to get a staff, and scale that mountain, and pose on the summit “like stout Cortez—silent, upon a peak in Darien.” I have crossed the Rockies and the Alps since, but not one of them has seemed quite so high or inspiring. Sometimes I think that when a child loses that appreciative sense of the marvelous, the joy of life dies. Mounds become mere mounds, and mountains only mountains.
But the real fun at potato time, was after Uncle Robert had used up as many leaves as he could, and set the rest on fire. No one could ever light a fire quite as well as Uncle Robert. No matter how the wind blew, no matter how much the leaves jumped up in his old face, Uncle Robert caught them and turned them into shoots of flame. That was toward the end of the chilly days when the clouds used to grow black even before the chickens went to roost. And now came the real treat. Uncle Robert would give me two potatoes from within the mound. Then he would poke a hole in the hot, red ashes; I would drop them in; and he would smoulder them with fresh leaves. Hereupon, Uncle Robert would leave to feed the turkeys.
Meanwhile Tim, my setter, sat upon his haunches, watching us, his tongue hanging out, for the fire made him hot. I used to make an extra fuss about all this potato roasting in order that Tim might enjoy it the more. And as soon as I had dropped the potatoes in the ashes, I would go and lie lengthwise on Tim’s back, and fling my arms about his neck and hug him tight. I could go and see the turkeys driven to roost any evening, but this evening was peculiarly Tim’s and mine. I knew that Tim loved me, but not half so much as I loved Tim. I bumped his head, which was my most intimate term of affection with him. We two alone would sit there until the potatoes were cooked, watching the flames change into smoke, and the grey smoke rise and join the greyness of the winter sky. I was happy, so happy, dreaming with my arms about Tim, both of us gazing into the burning leaves, and, oh, their delicious odor, we both relished it, and I, full of affection and boyish glory, thinking strange, innocent thoughts. What would I not give to be that little brown-headed boy again, unfettered with the knowledge of evil?
When the potatoes were cooked to a mealy white, Uncle Robert came back from the turkey-house and pulled them out with his dextrous rake; and we three proceeded to the kitchen, where we found Aunt Maria, Sandy’s mother, sitting by the old brick oven. She gave us salt, and we ate the potatoes. Tim had some. No fairies ever dined like that, I was sure. Then my mother came out on the back veranda, and called:
“My son, my son, come into the house!”
“Doan’t you heah Mistus callin’?” demanded Uncle Robert.
“Yes,” I said, “but I didn’t want to go.”
I went. And I never came back.
That night tragedy was to begin in my life. When we were asleep, my father, mother and I, the son of our overseer trespassed across our lawn. Tim was on watch. No one ever knew exactly what happened; but Tim went at him, tore his pantaloons and bit him in the thigh. It was my certain belief that the boy had stoned Tim, for I found stones in the yard the next morning. And Uncle Robert intimated that Tim had guarded the turkey-house. But excuses were of no avail. Early in the day, the overseer brought the boy and his pantaloons and exhibited them to my father and was loud in his complaints. The brazen, whining boy was really proud of his wound. I do not know what my father said to them, for he took them into his office down by the grape-arbor; but that afternoon Tim was tied with a long trace to the big poplar tree. And I heard my father say that Tim must surely die. Die? What did that mean? Tim die? Dead! My father, a man, have the right to take my Tim’s life? No, no, that could not be. God would not stand for that. My mother had taught me to pray every night, and now in a quick impulse I rushed alone to the garret, secreted myself in a cuddy, knelt by an old black trunk, and prayed and wept; and I felt that God heard me and that my Tim was safe. Oh, what a relief! Then I went to the poplar tree. Tim looked into my eyes. He knew something was wrong. He gave me his paw. And I bumped his head. I whispered that he was safe; that I had prayed for him. I thought and still think that Tim’s eyes watered. We sat there under the poplar tree and watched the yellow leaves fall.
Presently I saw my father appear on the front porch. He had his shotgun under his arm, and came toward us. Child that I was, I thought he was going hunting and had come to get Tim. But when I saw him untie the trace and start to lead Tim, I understood. I screamed, I caught his trouser leg, I wept; he shook me off and had me taken into the house, screaming and kicking and yelling. Oh, I think those were the keenest pangs which I have ever endured. They put me on my play-counter, and offered me toys! I hoodwinked them. I behaved; and in a few minutes they let me go.
I stole up to my cuddy in the garret.
I knelt again by the old black trunk. They had gone back on Tim and therefore on me. But God would not go back on us. I wept and said every prayer that my mother had taught me. And I said this one of my own:
“Lord, save Tim. Don’t let pop make him die.”
Boom! the report of a gun rang across the woods. I shuddered. Had God, too, gone back on me? If so, why?
I went to the attic window and waited breathlessly. I stretched myself flat on the dusty floor, so that I could see and not be seen. After a little while I saw my father climb over the zig-zag fence, carrying the trace over his shoulders.
In the evening they found me stained with dusty tears, asleep on the attic floor. My mother kissed me and petted me and told me that I was her king. It did no good, for she had taught me futile prayers. She put me to bed, but I would not pray. I sobbed while she said the hollow words for me. Then I heard her tell my father that she feared that I was going to be ill.
“Pooh!” said my father, “a child’s sorrows are like a child’s joys, they soon pass away.”
He had a way of checking off the events of life with some false axiom. And soon they thought I was asleep; and I heard him tell my mother how he had taken the trace off the dog after they reached the woods, how Tim had followed him to the great boulder down in the hollow, how Tim had wagged his tail when he told him to look for squirrels in the trees, and then when Tim looked up for the game, he shot him behind the ear, and the dog rolled over in the cave under the boulder.
That was the first night of my life when I did not close my eyes.
Our old house had a large spare room for guests, but what I remember about it is, that my mother used to take me in there every morning when the windows caught the sun. She would draw me up in her lap and read poetry to me. Naturally, I did not understand much of it, but that made no difference, I loved it just the same; for it made my mother, who was not a pretty woman, very beautiful to me. She was an impulsive woman, hugging me one moment, and boxing my ears the next. But those hours in the sunshine when she used to read aloud to me in the spare room, they were sacred. There was nothing then except deep affection.
When she was a girl, I have heard my father say in after years, my mother was as care-free as a meadow-lark. He used to tell me how at house-parties where they did their courting, she would keep all the company in gay spirits and laughter. They married; and a baby girl was born to them. She was my little sister, Louise. She grew to be four years old and was a remarkable child, a bundle of natural mirth and strong individuality. Then she took black diphtheria, and died.
My mother withdrew into herself, she became sad and more sad as time went on; and during this sorrow, she conceived and bore me. Is it any wonder that I, a man, should at times weep like a girl?
Now I am back to where I left off about Tim’s death. It was after he was gone that my mother used to take me daily into the spare room and console me with poetry. Then one day the blinds were drawn close in my mother’s room. She had another of her terrible heart attacks. O God, how I have seen her suffer! She seemed to get much better, indeed quite well, and I grew happy again, and I can see myself climb out of my crib and scramble into bed between her and my father. And she said jokingly to my father:
“If I should die, who will be your wife?”
“I’ll be pop’s schwife!” I exclaimed, as a matter of course, and I can hear their hearty laughter to this day; and my mother drew me over on her and covered me with kisses; and I remember that my father remarked something about my being “a precocious curiosity.” He had a bad habit of speaking about me before my face, never crediting that I would cherish his mysterious remarks until I understood them. Mark me, all children do this.
Autumn went by; and winter came. We had an unusually heavy fall of snow for Virginia. Only a redbird and some occasional sparrows could be seen in the leafless poplar. I remember it was the week before Christmas, because I received my sled in advance so that I would go down to the duck pond and not disturb my mother, who was very sick again. That night I was kept down in the kitchen with Uncle Robert and Aunt Maria. Sandy has told me that he was there too. We were all huddled about the brick oven; and my childish intuition perceived a hush over the old servants. Of a sudden, we heard way off down the plantation road the jingle, jingle of bells, coming nearer and nearer.
“It am the sleigh comin’ with those town doctors;” said Uncle Robert, and he went out to meet it with his lantern. Even Aunt Maria, who was usually the bulwark of our household, was uneasy and troubled.
“I doan’t lak to see them touch my young Mistus!” she said, defiantly, as she held my hand.
Jingle! jingle! the sleigh was at the door! I broke away from her and rushed out in the snow to see the doctors who had come from Richmond. I remember how my childish imagination was roused by the sight of three men in soft hats and storm coats, carrying small valises, as they hastened up the porch steps to where my father stood, holding a lamp aloft to light their way. Aunt Maria came and caught me and whisked me off to bed. That was all that I knew until the next morning when I was awakened by a strange white nurse, who had been with us a few days. She said that my father had sent for me “to come and kiss my mamma good-bye.”
I went with her without realizing what I was doing. I heard one of the doctors say that he had seen my mother’s father die of the same kind of heart failure. Die? There was that word again. My mother die? No, no, that could not be. I ran out of the room without their knowing that my child’s faith in God, which she had tried to restore in me, was now actually restored. I climbed again to the garret and knelt by the black trunk and held up my little hands in prayer. This time I did not cry. I made up my mind that I must be brave on my father’s account, for when I left the sick-room, I saw that his hands covered his face; and he spoke not a word; and I went and took down his hands, and when he looked at me, I saw his eyes film with tears.
Oh, dear, I do not want to tell the rest. I have heard others say that the sight of my father, holding my hand, as we stood beside my mother’s snow-bordered grave, was as bleak a scene as they ever cared to witness, that we both looked so utterly forlorn, and that I looked as though I tried to take my mother’s place.
I know that I wanted to do so. I know that where he went, I went; where he slept, I slept. We went North for a while. We came back in the spring when the fields were being plowed.
My little sister, Louise, was four years old when she died, before I was born. I was four years old when my mother died. How often have I envied little Louise, for at that age I reached the culmination of my happiness. In all this world there is one truth: a motherless son is a friendless child.
As I grew up, my father and I became more and more companionable, though we were totally different. Up to a certain point, my father was one of the most lovable of men, generous, unpretentious, true to the memory of my mother. He had a unique faith in mankind. He assumed that because he liked a man, that man was honest in all respects. Naturally, he was imposed upon, because he could not separate his affections from his observation; and therefore lacked discrimination. In like manner, he assumed that if his son had good in him, that good would come out; and if he thought that a child were bad, his favorite axiom was that no man could save his brother’s soul, or be his brother’s keeper. In fine, my father lived his whole existence upon assumption, and he never discovered whether his assumptions were sound or false. He brought me up on the theory of an ideal conception of human nature, very beautiful in its faith, but unfortunately not practical. He had faith in my developing only the bright and best side of myself; and here is the point: he assumed that I did so! He was proud of me and put me upon a pedestal and gave me sympathy at a distance, with the result that I could not leap into his arms and tell him that it was not so, that my little life was not bright! And so throughout my entire childhood I was hungry for the little details of affection which a man does not know how to give. The fact is, I never had any young boyhood. Fate also robbed me forever of the grand schemes and the unconscious fun which a few playmates give a child. My father and his club friends who came up from Richmond were my playmates. They used to sit at table, and sip their claret after dinner; and I would sit with them, too, “always looking and listening,” as I overheard one of them describe me. Then they would walk out over the plantation; and I would walk with them, too, and hear the stories at which they laughed, many of which I used to ponder over in order to find out what was so funny in them. One especially I used to remember, that my father would tell whenever we walked through the old red gate in the woods. It was told of my name-sake, the famous Mr. William Wirt. He told how Mr. Wirt used to visit in the neighborhood, and how one day at the time when my grandfather had just had that gate hung, Mr. Wirt passed by and said:
“Ah, sir, anybody can hang a gate, but only men can propagate!”
Then they would laugh. I puzzled for years over that story.
My father had a tutor for me whom they called “Doctor.” The truth is, he was a pensioner on us with whom my father liked to converse. He did not teach me one iota of the usual textbook knowledge. He did not believe in machine-made learning. But it was a general education for me to go about in his company and browse here and there in our library. Actually, I have not read thirty books in my life all told; but that good man taught me that if a book is worth reading at all, it is worth reading slowly.
“What conceit!” he used to say, “for one to try to digest in a few hours what has taken another years to think out!”
He told me that it took him a year to read “The Newcomes.”
I have to thank him for one inestimable heritage, which laid the foundation of my religion. He taught me concerning the Omnipotence of Truth. In this lies all my faith. He taught me ‘to dare to stand alone, to dare to have an opinion of my own and to dare to make it known.’
“Beware though,” said he, “it is the part or mark of youthful vigor to discover that things are not altogether right in this unintelligible world; and youth sets about to mould things over to his own satisfaction, only to find that he has himself been cast in a mould.”
I think that he and my father, who dearly loved to moralize, used to sit and talk and smoke on our back porch for fourteen hours out of many a day, calling out occasional suggestions to the negroes as they worked in the garden. So I used often to leave them and go fishing in the canal. I used to catch chub with a pin hook. Oh, to watch again those old canal boats as they glided under me, as I sat upon the bridge; oh, to dream again that they were moving fairy lands, going up and down to realms, marvelous and weird, to which I might some day travel and enjoy their unlimited pleasures. That was my chief source of delight.
The day when I was to take one of them came sooner than I had hoped. My father took me on a visit down in Goochland, and I met little Susanne, she was twelve and I was thirteen. A flood of warm light seemed to fall upon me and to thaw out my boyish spirit. But I am not going to write about her any more. I can not stand it. She had my mother’s eyes, “wistful and mild.” My father was as pleased as Punch over our fondness for each other. Poor man! I thank God that he was spared the end of that long attachment. He died even before I lost Susanne. He rode off one day on a new stallion. I climbed on the zig-zag fence and watched him disappear down the plantation road. When he reached the creek, the stallion threw him against the rocks and broke his neck. Uncle Robert and Sandy and I brought him home.
Don’t pity me. Call me a mad dog, say that I am a peculiar idiot, say that I have been a fool and wasted my life; but don’t pity me! And if there is one thing more abhorrent to me than self-praise, it is self-pity. I am disgusted with myself, who might have amounted to some one. Then I would not have been lonely, physically lonely. And there is mental loneliness, more galling, more gnawing, than murky solitude.
The following blames no one except myself:
“I felt myself pressed onward by an internal force, which I could not resist.—Let us look into this a little, and see whether the direction you gave to your life has not had for its object to make this force irresistible.”
That may be. But I prefer to know what I actually am, than to be proud and contented in a cul-de-sac. Tumble-bugs roll from rut to rut, clinging to their eggs, never knowing that they are tumble-bugs. I would rather be unhappy than be the man with illusions, snug in his own pettiness. If contentment comes only from rolling in a rut, then I choose discontent.
“Come, review your days and your years, call them to account! Tell us how much time you have allowed to be stolen from you by a creditor, by a mistress, by a patron, by a client.” Which of us can read those lines without blushing?
This night is my birth night. Nine and twenty years ago, at eleven o’clock, when the July sun had sunk out of the valley of the James, when the cattle were at rest, and the whippoorwills uttered forth their conscience-stricken notes, “Whippoorwill! Whippoorwill!” the moon had arisen and shone upon the purple bloom of the fox-grapes, hidden above the brook, then a deep joy came over my mother and she was delivered of me. It must have been the blessed, unspeakable, sacred joy of labour, which men never know. My father told me once that she wept in the midst of her joy—that is how I know.