I ran away––closed my door upon this wretched behavior, but could not shut its ghastly sauciness and treachery from the chambers of my memory. The habit of faith and affection was strong: I was no longer concerned for my friend John Cather, but was mightily ashamed of this failure in duty to the grotesque old hook-and-line man who had without reserve of sacrifice or strength nourished me to the lusty years of that night. As I lay in bed, I recall, downcast, self-accusing, flushed with shame, I watched the low clouds scud across the starlit sky, and I perceived, while the torn, wind-harried masses rushed restlessly on below the high, quiet firmament, that I had fallen far away from the serenity my uncle would teach me to preserve in every fortune.
“I’ll not fail again!” thinks I. “Not I!”
’Twas an experience profitable or unprofitable, as you shall presently judge.
XVIII
A LEGACY OF LOVE
Moses Shoos, I recall, carried the mail that winter. ’Twas a thankless task: a matter of thirty miles to Jimmie Tick’s Cove and thirty back again. Miles hard with peril and brutal effort––a way of sleet and slush, of toilsome paths, of a swirling mist of snow, of stinging, perverse winds or frosty calm, of lowering days and the haunted dark o’ night––to be accomplished, once a week, afoot and alone, by way of barren and wilderness and treacherous ice. ’Twas a thankless task, indeed; but ’twas a task to which the fool of Twist Tickle addressed himself with peculiar reverence.
“Mother,” says he, “always ’lowed that a man ought t’ serve his Queen: an’ mother knowed. ‘Moses,’ says she, afore she died, ‘a good man haves just got t’ serve the Queen: for an good men don’t,’ says she, ‘the poor Lady is bound t’ come t’ grief along o’ rascals. Poor, poor Lady!’ says she. ‘She’ve a wonderful lot t’ put up with along o’ stupid folk an’ rascals. I’m not knowin’ how she bears it an’ lives. ’Tis a mean, poor dunderhead, with heart an’ brains in his gullet,’ says she, ‘that wouldn’t serve the Queen. God save the Queen!’ says 220 mother. ‘What’s a man worth,’ says she, ‘that on’y serves hisself?’”
Not much, thinks I!