BECKY AND THE CRADLEBOW.
"Teacher's got Beck's beau!"
"Teacher's got Beck's beau!" I heard it whispered among the school children. Rebecca heard, too, and paled a little, but looked up at me and smiled as frankly as ever.
Seeing her alone afterwards, I took occasion to remark, incidentally, "how kind it was of her friend, Mr. Rollin, to bring me home from church. Fanny was so slow! And I thought he was a very pleasant young man, but even the most estimable people, you know," I added, laughing, with an undertone of studied significance; "are not just fitted to enjoy each other's society always."
Then I blushed under the girl's clear, trustful gaze.
"You don't think I mind what the children talk!" she said.
Every day Rebecca appealed more and more, unconsciously, to what was most generous and grave and heedful in my nature. She seemed to be demanding of me, with mute, gentle importunity, to make real my ideal of life, to be what I knew she believed me to be. Her faith in my superior wisdom and goodness, her slow, timid way of confiding in me, with tears and blushes even; it was all very flattering, very captivating to one who had but so lately risen to occupy the pedestal of a moral instructress, and "my child," "my dear child," I said to her in many private discourses, with more than the tranquil grace and dignity with which such terms had been applied to me, only a year before, by the august principal of Mt. B—— Seminary.
Rebecca read my books, and I drew her out to talk with me about them. She prepared her lessons, with me, out of school. She knew that she might come whenever she chose to my little room at the Ark, which the chimney kept comfortably warm, and often I heard her footsteps on the stairs and her gentle knock at the door.
If I was troubled or perplexed on any account, Rebecca always seemed to understand in that quiet, unobtrusive way of hers, and followed my movements with a grave, restful sympathy in her eyes. On several occasions I had asked her, playfully, to walk up the lane with me after school. So it became a matter of course that she should wait for me. Often we took longer walks, for it was an "open winter," with only one or two light falls of snow.
Then I believed the "Tempter" came to me, in the form of another invitation to drive, from Mr. Rollin.
Occupied with my duties in the school-room, one afternoon, I was startled to observe these characters as suddenly and mysteriously raised as if by the unseen hand of a modern sibyl on the blackboard:—
"teecher's Bo is a setting On the Fens."
Involuntarily raising my eyes to the window, I was unable to discover on the fence opposite anything of the nature indicated in those words. I concluded that the whole was to be taken as one of those deeply allegorical expressions in which the Wallencamp tongue abounded.
Shortly afterward, a boy who had been playing truant and the Jews' harp at the same time, in a subdued and melancholy way under the window, and who had, doubtless, been bribed to undertake his present commission through some extraordinary means, entered the school-room, and laid on my desk a note from the auburn-haired fisherman. It was hastily scrawled in lead pencil, on a leaf torn from a memorandum.
The fisherman confessed to all the meekness and long suffering, without the cheerful intrepidity of Mary's little lamb! He would do all his waiting outside. Mr. Levi was down from West Wallen to-day, and said that he had heard somebody say that there were four letters came for the teacher in last night's mail. Would I like to drive over to West Wallen and get them. The fisherman did not believe that I had been in earnest in the prudish and unreasonable notions I had propounded when he left me the other evening.
"Prudish!" In my newly-acquired elevation of mind, I hugged the term with a deep, intense, and mysterious delight. Oh, if my mother could only know—if my elder sister could only know that I had actually been accused of prudishness! It was in the glow and inspiration of this idea that I indited the answer to Mr. Rollin's missive: "Why would he make it unpleasant and disagreeable for me to do what seemed so plainly my duty?"—and dispatched the same by the pensive and unpunished truant, who was soon heard again revelling in the stolen sweets of his Jews' harp beneath the window.
After this I had no further intercourse with the fisherman for some days. If I chanced to meet him in the lane, Rebecca was always with me. He came one evening to the Ark. The young people were there, singing.
Then I heard, from time to time, of his taking Rebecca to drive, and congratulated myself that, through my composed wisdom and forethought, the little world of Wallencamp was destined to move very smoothly, on the whole.
"I wonder why Mr. Rollin don't go home," observed Grandma Keeler, complacently, on one of those rare occasions when the Keeler family circle held quiet possession of the Ark before the songful company had arrived. "He didn't use to stay but a week or two at a time, and all the rest o' the fishermen have been gone some time now; and he keeps them horses down here, and goes loungin' around with no more object than a butterfly in December."
"I tell ye he's a makin' up to Beck," said Grandpa Keeler, with the knowing air of an old man accustomed to fathom mysteries of this peculiar nature.
A spark shot out of Madeline's great, black eyes. Then she laughed unpleasantly. "There's something in the wind besides Beck," said she.
"Why, I don't know," said Grandma; "he don't hang around there very much, may be, but they say he takes her to ride, and I'm sure he don't wait on nobody else. But I should think, if he was a going to speak out he'd ought to do it, and not waste his time a keepin' a puttin' it off. Why, my fust husband wasn't but a week makin' up his mind, and pa," she continued, referring openly to Grandpa Keeler, "he wan't quite so outspoken, to be sure; but he came around to it in the course of a month or two, and kind o' beat around the bush then, and wanted to know what I thought on't, and—wall, I told him 'yes,'—I didn't see no use in bein' squeamish so long as I'd once made up my mind to it."
"I asked ye as soon as I could!" exclaimed Grandpa, bristling on the defensive. "I wanted to be sure o' gittin' a house fust."
"There!" said Madeline briskly, putting down her foot, and tossing her head as she addressed the old couple. "Be good, children! Be good!—and now, do you mark my words, it isn't Becky Weir that Dave Rollin is hanging around here for. There's some folks to be made up to, and there's some folks, jest as good, to be stepped on. And Dave Rollin—what does he think of Wallencamp folks, anyway? He wouldn't take the trouble to kick 'em out of his road; he'd jest step on 'em, and he's steppin' on Beck Weir. He don't care enough about her to let her alone."
"Wall, I—don't—know!" said Grandma. "What's he stayin' for, then?"
"Staying! Lord, ma!" said Madeline sharply, with a strange cold glitter in her eye. "How do I know what he's stayin' for? Oh," she added, in a tone of lighter bitterness, "It's a mild winter and open roads. He's sketching they say, and exploring the Cape. Let him explore from one end to the other, he won't find such another fool as himself."
"We can't help nothin' by talkin' that way;" said Grandma Keeler, a little pale, though calmly cognizant of Madeline's emotion.
"You know I had an experience of my own once, ma," said Madeline, terribly white about the lips.
"I wouldn't rake up old wounds, daughter." There was nothing unfeeling in Grandma Keeler's tone.
The daughter shut her lips together tightly, as though more than she had intended to reveal had already escaped them, and applied herself desperately to her sewing.
I fancied that I had detected a personally aggressive quality in Madeline's indignant tone.
"I don't see why we should feel that way about Rebecca," I said. "The more one gets acquainted with her, the more lovable and worthy of respect she seems. I knew a great many girls, at school—girls with every advantage of wealth and culture, too, who had not half of Rebecca's grace and refinement, nor a tenth part of her beauty!"
Madeline said nothing, bending to her work with the same bitter compression of the lips.
"It's right you should stand up for her, teacher," said Grandma Keeler, pleasantly. "Miss Waite, she begun by makin' a kind o' pet o' her, but I don't think Rebecca ever set her heart on her as she has on you, and it's easy to see you've took lots o' pains with her. She's a gittin' them same kind o' sorter interestin' high-flowed ways—why, she used to be just like the rest of 'em—jest sich a rompin', roarin' thing as Drussilly Weir is now."
"Goodness gracious, ma!" Madeline put in again, sharply. "What good is it going to do Beck Weir to put on airs? Better stick to her own ways, and her own folks—she'll find they'll stand by her best in the end, I guess—than to be fillin' her head with notions to hurt her feelin's over by and by. She's a fool, I think, for treatin' George Olver as she does. He's worth a dozen Dave Rollins, if his coat don't set quite so fine, and would work his fingers off to suit her if she'd only settle down to him and be sensible."
"Wall," said Grandma Keeler, in a tone that was a curious contrast to Madeline's, "our feelin's won't always go as we'd ought to have em', daughter."
"No, they won't!" Madeline snapped out excitedly, "but, ma, you know I'm in the right of it just as well as I do; and there's Lute Cradlebow's got to dreamin' and moonin' around in the same way. Took it into his head he wanted to get an education—well, what hasn't he took into his head! So he must begin recitin' to teacher. Well, he had in his mind to study, I don't doubt, to begin with, and used to come two or three times a week, and rattle off a string, and now he's here every day of his life, and, if there's any reciting going on, I don't hear it—not that I want to meddle with other folks' business, but I've known those boys a good many years, and I hate to see anybody hurt and run over, even if they be young and ignorant, and making fools of themselves. Some folks are none too good, I think, for all their airs, and had better look out to see where they're going!"
"Why, thar', Madeline!" said Grandma, with a decided touch of disapproval in her voice. "R'a'ly, seems to me you're kind o' out. I'm sure Luther Larkin seems to be a gittin' along finely with his Latin and Algibbery—I'm sure I've heard a lot of it, when I've been goin' through the room, if you ain't; and if he's took it into his head to git book larnin', and maybe scratch enough together to go away somewheres to school, why, I'm sure, there's older boys than him, and not so bright, have ketched up if they set there minds to it, and as for our teacher—Madeline!"
"Oh, I've no doubt but what Miss Hungerford meant kindly," said Madeline, with the lightness she could so suddenly assume. "It's a mighty queer world, that's all!" she added presently, rising and putting on her bonnet; "and managed very queerly, for I suppose it is managed. I'm going out, ma. Those children have split my head with their noise to-day, and I promised Patty I'd come in and sit awhile. Now, if I've been cross and crazy, don't you and teacher talk me over," she said, looking back and trying hard to smile—and she did look very tired and white, as though she had been suffering—"and if those children wake up and begin to squall"—with a glance towards the little bedroom—"let 'em squall. If I've wished it once to-day, I have a hundred times, that they was the other side of sunset!"
"I wish you'd step into Lihu's—such a poor, sufferin' creetur as he is—with these," said Grandma, appearing from the pantry with some eggs in her apron. "I wish you could take the consolations of religion with you, Madeline," she continued gravely, as Mrs. Philander was closing the door.
"Lord, ma! my pocket's full now!" exclaimed Madeline. "Besides, they might break the eggs!" And the latch fell down with a click.
"I wish Madeline was a believer," Grandma sighed, purposely rattling about the cover of the stove to wake up Grandpa, who had fallen asleep in his chair.
Grandpa looked at me, and smiled feebly, then roused himself to meet this supposed challenge like a man.
"Believer, ma?" said he; "why ain't I a believer? As old Cap'n Gates said to me on his last voyage"—Grandpa yawned alarmingly (poor old man! he was but half awake), as this unlucky reminiscence of his sea-faring life flitted through his brain—"says he, 'I read my almanick and my Bible, both, Bijonah;' says he, 'I read 'em both, and I believe there's a great deal o' truth in both on 'em.'"
"Thar, pa!" said Grandma, solemnly, "you'd better go to sleep! you'd better close your eyes, Bijonah Keeler! What if you should never open 'em again on earthly scenes, and them words on your lips,—and you a perfessor!"
Grandpa scratched his head in drowsy bewilderment, passed his hand once or twice over the coarse stubble on his face, and again committed himself helplessly to the sweet obliviousness of slumber.
I drew my chair up confidentially close to Grandma Keeler's, and rested my arms on the table as I looked into her face.
"Grandma!" I said, for I knew that she was better pleased to have me call her that; "I begin to think that I ought never to have come to Wallencamp on a mission, that perhaps it would be just as well if I had never come to Wallencamp at all, I mean. I didn't think. At first, it seemed more than anything else, like something very new to entertain myself with. I didn't think enough of the responsibility. Then, perhaps, I thought too much of it. I don't know. I wish I were out of it all. Grandma, I never tried to do the right thing so hard before in my life. I never worked so hard before—and I don't mind that; but I meant it all for the best, and it's no use, it's just like all the rest. I'm tired. I wish I were out of it."
"Wall, thar' now, darlin'," said Grandma, employing to the full her tone of infinite consolation. "You ain't the first one as mistook a stump for livin' creetur in the night, and don't you talk about givin' up nor nothin' like it, darlin', for we couldn't do without you noways—nor you without us, for yet a while, I'm thinkin', though it does seem strange—and never you mind one straw for what Madeline said, for she was kind o' out to-night, anyway, not having got no letter from Philander, I suppose. But then she ought not to feel so. Why, there was time and time agin that I didn't git no letter from Bijonah Keeler when he was voyagin', and to be sure, they wasn't much better than nothin' when they did come; for pa"—Grandma cast a calmly comprehensive glance at her unconscious mate—"pa was a man that had a great many idees in general, but, when he set down to write a letter, somehow he seemed to consider that it wasn't no place for idees, a letter wasn't—seemed as though he managed a'most a purpose not to get none in."
"Grandma," I said, leaning forward, laughing, and folding my hands in her lap, "you're the best comforter I know of."
"Wall, thar'," said she; "it's a good deal in feelin's, and Madeline ain't r'al well, so she kind o' allows 'em to overcome her sometimes."
"And what did she mean by saying that about Rebecca?" I asked.
"Oh, she just meant girls will be girls, that's all!" replied Grandma; "why, mercy! I know all about that. I don't feel like nothin' much more than a girl myself, half the time; and we all have to have our experiences, to be sure. They ain't nobody else can wear 'em for us, but, dear me! the Lord ain't going to let our experiences hurt us; they're for our betterin'."
"And Lute Cradlebow, Grandma?" I said; "what did she mean about him?"
"Oh, she just meant boys will be boys, that's all—especially big ones—but thar'! I've known 'em to get over it a hundred times and not hurt 'em none. If you're always lookin' at human natur' on the dark side, it seems kind o' desp'rit. My first husband, he wasn't a fretful man, but he was always viewin' the dark side o' things. I suppose one reason was he didn't have no father nor mother, and so he kind o' begun life as a took-in boy, but Pollos Slocum, he done very well by him, for he hadn't no children of his own, but his brother—that was Daniel Slocum—he had six. There was two boys and four girls. Mary, she came fust. She was born February nineteenth"——
I was sorry that Grandma's thoughts had drifted into this hopeless and interminable channel.
I had considered carefully what Madeline had said, and determined on a little new advice for my friend, Rebecca. So, the next time we were alone in my room together, I directed the conversation with a view to this end.
"And I wouldn't trust any one, my dear," I said with cheerful earnestness; "then if people prove true, why, it's all the more delightful; and if not, one isn't disappointed; so you can hold the scales quite indifferently in your own hand, and are always master of the situation. Oh, I wouldn't trust people! It would be very nice if this were the sort of world that you could do it in, but it isn't. It's a very deceitful world."
"But I can trust you, can't I?" Rebecca held me with her gravely questioning eyes.
"Well, I don't know;" I began with the determination to be severely true to my text, but the look in Rebecca's eyes hurt me.
"Oh, yes! little girl," I continued, falling into the half-tender, half-playful tone that it was always easiest to assume with her; "of course, you must trust me I Haven't I been a good teacher to you, so far?" And I sought by smiling in the girl's face, to chase the grieved expression away from it. "What I meant was that I wouldn't trust people generally, because it's a selfish world, and such is the depravity of the human mind that if it appears at all convenient, we are apt, you know, to sacrifice other people to our own interests; so, with all the little kindnesses and politenesses which are current in society, it is still the common practice—and if is best that it should be so—to keep, in the main, a sharp look out for 'Number One!'"
Having proceeded so far, it occurred to me that the occasion was favorable for the discharge of another duty which I had been meditating in regard to Rebecca.
"You are what Grandma Keeler calls a believer, are you not, dear?" I said, with the same composedly dictatorial manner: "in distinction from a professor, I mean."
Rebecca gave a little gasp, and turned her head away, for an instant. When she looked back, there were tears of distress in her eyes.
I felt a vague wonder and regret.
"No," she said; "I thought, once—I wanted—I hoped——"
"Why, child!" I hastened to exclaim. "I didn't ask you because I had any reason to doubt that you were one—quite the contrary—but simply for this. It seems to me it would be such a desirable thing for you, situated as you are, here, with so few surroundings of a refining and elevating nature, if you could attach yourself, if it were merely for a feeling of fellowship and sympathy—for of course, you could not attend, often—to some simple Orthodox body of believers—like the Methodist church at West Wallen, for instance. It seems to me, that, in your case, believing simply and unquestionably, as I have no doubt you do, it would be a sort of assurance, a sort of continual rest and support to you. It would be a great relief to me if I felt that you were so guarded. Not that I consider it essential at all; to some people, indeed, of a deeply thoughtful and inquisitive mind, such a course would appear impossible. You have never troubled yourself, Becky," I continued, in a tone of reassuring lightness; "you have never troubled yourself with doubts and speculations on religious subjects?"
"I don't know," Becky replied, the look of perplexity and distress deepening in her eyes.
"Why should you?" I murmured, softly stroking her hair; "He carries the lambs in His bosom." I had been little in the habit of quoting Scripture—the words, coming to my mind, struck me as particularly Beautiful and applicable on this occasion. "And so what I have suggested, would be the easiest and most natural thing in the world for you to do. I suppose it might be necessary for you to have come to some conclusion in regard to the first principles of Theology; but probably you have already satisfied yourself as to these in your own mind."
Rebecca looked little like one who had arrived at the calm plane of philosophical conclusion of any sort.
"I don't know," she gasped.
"Well, take the Trinity, for instance," I continued, in a tone highly suggestive of calm and supreme forbearance with helpless ignorance. "Probably you believe in the Trinity?"
"Oh, I don't know," said Rebecca. "I don't know what it means. Nobody ever told me; nobody ever talked to me about those things before."
"It's simply," I said; "a term implying the existence of three persons in the Godhead. So the Trinitarians are distinguished from the Unitarians who believe that it consists of one. I'm not particularly informed as to the Methodist credentials of faith. You will always hear that they believe that salvation is free to all who will accept of it. Some people believe that man is a free agent, and may accept or refuse the means of grace, and if he refuses, is eternally lost. And then, again, there are the Universalists, who believe that all will be eventually saved. There is the Calvinistic element—those who believe in predestination—that is——"
Becky had laid her head down on the bed, and was quietly sobbing.
"My poor child," I exclaimed, with swift compassion, "don't think anything more about what I have said to you. Let it go. It isn't vital."
"You don't hate me for not knowing anything?" sobbed Becky. "Nobody ever tried to have me understand, before."
"You know enough; quite enough, dear!" I remarked hastily, producing from my trunk a quantity of illustrated magazines. These we looked over together, and when Becky went away, the tears were dried in her eyes, and she was laughing as merrily as ever.
With the severely implied reproach of Madeline's words still in my mind, I took pains to assume toward Luther Larkin a more elder-sisterly air even than before.
It was true, I felt that I had been unjustly stung, having, amid the press of other duties, undertaken the advancement of that bright youth, from motives, I believed, of an ideal and disinterested nature. It was also true, that, after the first enthusiasm with respect to his lessons had passed away, as well as the natural diffidence he had at first felt in my presence, Luther Larkin, though punctual to the hour of recitation, had gradually fallen into a habit of more lively and discursive inquiry than that furnished within the dull range of his text-books. He had a singularly fearless manner of challenging the inexplicable in thought and life, with a light conversational flow of much brilliancy. Moreover, he was a delightful dreamer.
We had our recitation, for quiet, in one of Grandma's gloomy and mysterious keepin'-rooms. The only object inviting to sedentary posture in this room was Grandpa's huge "chist," which occupied a position "along side" the East window. Those sacred window curtains, of green paper, flowered with crimson roses, were never rolled up; but as the light strayed in at one side, and fell on the Cradlebow's fine head, often I reflected that under certain other conditions of life, meaning conditions more favorable to Luther Larkin, I might have regarded him very tenderly, and invested the strength and beauty of his young manhood with heroic meaning.
As it was, I assumed that I was years beyond him in the gravest respects. And if there was any truth in what Madeline had intimated, possibly I had been at fault for not impressing this fact more deeply on his mind.
"So you are getting sadly behindhand with your lessons, Luther," I said. "I wish you would make a brave effort to catch up. There is no true attainment to be reached without a corresponding degree of effort—of perseverance."
I spoke with a serious and gracious air, as though this sentiment, gleaned from a profound experience, had occurred to me as an idea peculiarly my own.
"Never mind the lessons!" replied my audacious pupil, brightly. "Teacher," he added presently, having fallen into a gently musing attitude; "how shiny those crimples in your hair look, with that streak of sun lighting on 'em!"
"Luther," said I, very gravely: "you ought not to talk to me about my hair. Suppose we give our attention to these books. Now you were getting along so fast, I'm very sorry——"
"Do you think I'm to blame, teacher?" exclaimed Luther, earnestly, "There wasn't a stick of wood to be had in our house this morning! And I've had to be off, all day, chopping, with Scudder—you ought to have seen the black snake we killed this morning. It was six feet long. If you don't believe it, Scudder's got the carcass. It was lying all curled up in the bushes with its head up so—'you watch him, Lute,' says Scudder, 'and I'll run and get the axe!' I couldn't help laughing. The axe was over the other side of the bog, and the snake began to stretch himself out and slide along. I brought my boot-heel down once or twice on his head, about as quick and strong as I could make it. I killed him. It's a good sign to kill a snake, teacher. It's a good sign to dream of killing one; but you come across one so, accidentally, and kill it, and it's sure to bring good luck, Granny says."
"That's more significant than a great many of your signs and symbols," I said. "That means that you will slay the tempter in your path, and be successful in overcoming difficulties. In short, it means that whatever there has been to divert you, you are coming back to the resolve to study and improve yourself; to be all the stronger for having a few chance obstacles to dispose of."
Luther's head began to droop a little. I thought it was time that the melancholy atmosphere of the room should have begun to exercise its usual depressive effect on his spirits.
"You think I don't like the books, teacher," he said. "I do, but there's most always something else to be doing. Father's lame. He can't do any work, and there's the rest to take care of. First, I sat up nights to study, then I got so sleepy I couldn't. But I'd got so in the habit of coming in to talk a little while after you got home from school, teacher, that I—I forgot to forget it. Have I been a great bother to you? You've been real good. I don't want you to think I forget that. And if I'd had a chance at the books early, or to push right along with 'em now, I might make out something in that line."
Luther did not speak complainingly, nor even with hopeless regret. He rose and stretched himself, with solemn satisfaction, to the extent of his goodly proportions.
"But I'm a man now, teacher," he said. "I shall be twenty in June, and life is short. A man hasn't got time for everything. He'd be a fool to waste it crying for what he didn't happen to have. He'd better push along and work for the best. I meant to tell you. I'm going to sea, teacher! I'm going trading. I was down to New Bedford, to see Captain Sparhauk yesterday, for I was out with him once before, and got a good deal of the hang of the business then; and he offered me a place on his ship next time he sails."
Luther stood with flushed face, regarding me with a bright restless look of inquiry in his eyes.
"Are you going away, really, Luther? I'm very sorry!" I said.
"You don't care! what do you care?" he exclaimed almost rudely, with an unnatural touch of hardness in his laugh. "It's the way you talk to all the rest. A fellow might get to thinking too much about it. A fellow might get to caring—if he believed it—I don't."
"What makes you think I shouldn't care if you were going away?" I continued, with the dispassionately gentle and reproving tone I considered it wisest to assume on the occasion. "I should care, I should be very sorry. Come and sit down here, please, and tell me all about it, when you are going, and where, and what you are going for?"
Luther came slowly back to the light. He seemed verily to have grown older and handsomer in a moment. I experienced a deeper feeling of regret than ever before, that the circumstances of his life could not have been conducive to heroism.
"The captain couldn't tell me just when he should sail," said he; "and I'm going to get money. I know a good deal of the Spanish and Portugal, I learned to talk them before—and I shall go to a great many places, I may not come back when the ship does. Say, what strange eyes you've got, teacher; now they're brown—and now, they're black, and now, they're a sort of—a—purplish gray."
"Oh, my dear boy," I exclaimed, with a sudden accession of wisdom, sighing deeply; "you ought not to talk to me about the color of my eyes." At the same time to deepen the effect of this condescending tenderness, I pushed back lightly from his forehead a stray lock of hair that was hanging there.
"Don't do that!" the boy cried with startling impetuosity. "Don't call me that again! I mean, teacher," he went on in a gentler tone, though none the less excitedly;—"if you should know somebody, that had set his heart on something, very much, and didn't want anything else if he couldn't have that, and if he should know that he hadn't any right to ask for it now, but go off and work for it real hard, and, maybe come back lucky in a few years, with a right to ask for it then;—do you think, teacher, that there'd be any chance of his finding—of his getting what he wanted most? If you were in anybody's place, now, teacher, would you give him a word of encouragement to try?"
"I think that the person you speak of would be much more likely to succeed in a practical undertaking, without any hallucination of that sort before his eyes—and if, as you say, it isn't right that he should ask for it now, can we predict that it would be any more reasonable and expedient in the future? These idle fancies of ours soon pass away, Luther, and will look laughable and grotesque enough to us by and by. Life is so full of changes, and people change, oh, so much!"
In spite of the vanity of my soul, I comforted myself with the reflection that Luther would not care long. I did not really believe that he would go to sea. I stood with him a moment in the door of Grandma's kitchen. He looked over to the woods, behind which the water lay, and the fire and impatience had all gone out of his manner. His gentleness touched me deeply, yet I was determined not to feel his hurt, nor—"if only the circumstances of his life had been different"—what might have been mine also!
"Hark! It's high tide. It's making quite a fuss over there," he said. "I think a man feels more quiet somehow, when he's out there, teacher. Father says I'm a wild chap and uneasy. I guess that's so. I can take care of them just as well too if I go, and better. Only if I should die—" there was nothing affected or forlorn in the Cradlebow's tone—"I should like to be buried on the hill, with father's folks. You've been across there. You look one way and there's the river, oftenest still—and the other way, you hear the old Bay scooting along the sand. I like it, being used to hearing it go always. Granny says it makes a difference then, where you lie, about the resting easy. I don't know. Sometimes it seems as though I should rest easier there."
"A dissertation on the graveyard," I began in a tone of affected lightness, and then paused, convicted of untruth by the solemn light in the Cradlebow's strange, grand eyes.