“And even when you had both forgot Nance time out of mind, and tuck you two of as nice women as the wind ever blowed on, you still cherished deadly hatred in your hearts, and handed it down to your innocent offsprings as they come along, so that as they growed up they holp you in your devilment, and there was war betwixt every man and boy that bore the name of Goodloe and Talbert, shootings every Christmas and election, and battles and ambushings at odd times, till I allow there hain’t a man here that hain’t got a lot of scars to show. And the worst come fifteen years gone, when your two oldest, as likely and handsome a pair as ever drawed breath, and with young wives and babes depending on them, fit the terriblest battle of all, and fell both with six bullets in ’em, stone-dead. Yes, having nothing ag’in’ each other, they died, a living sacrifice to the hatred in your hearts. Jeems, John, it was a costly price to pay. I seed John, and heared of Jeems, aging twenty-year’ in a week. The fight was right smart took out of both of you, though the pride wa’n’t; you continued to go about with hate in your eyes and guns in your pockets.
“John and Jeems, you know it’s the truth I’m a-laying down when I say it is pride, and naught but pride, that stands betwixt you now at this present time. You know well you hain’t neither of you forgot, or can forget, them fair early days when you was nigher than brothers, and never had a thought you couldn’t share, and that it is them very ricollections that has give’ such a keen edge to your hate. You know well that, being sixty year’ old now, and considable past your youth, and widows at that, with many of your acquaintance’ drapped off and gone, you would both injoy fine having a boyhood friend and brother to set by the fire and talk old times with. I know myself how lonesome it is to git old and outlive everybody.
“Jeems and John, the message comes to you this bright Christmas day straight from the tongue of angels, ‘Peace and good-will’; no more hate, no more pride, no more projeckin’ and devilment, but ‘Peace on earth, good-will toward men.’ I charge you both, boys, hearken to the words, put by your stubbornness, tromple on your pride; for Christ’s sake and your old mother’s, be j’ined together ag’in in brotherly love!”
The two grizzled, scarred men were staring across the intervening space now into each other’s eyes, fixedly, painfully, awfully, as though they saw ghosts. Suddenly the hand of Jeems dropped to his hip-pocket, he drew forth his revolver, and flung it far up on the mountain-side. John’s pistol rose almost simultaneously in the opposite direction. Then, with working faces, the two advanced and silently clasped hands.
Weeping and shouting, little granny caught the big men to the shrunken bosom from which they had once drawn life. Goodloes fell on the necks of Talberts; men embraced and wrung hands solemnly, women wept hysterically on one another’s shoulders, children cried, not knowing why; Anne and Luke shed happy tears on the face of little John Jeems between them.
After a long while granny released the two men from her clasp, held them at arms’-length a moment, looking at them hungrily and joyously, and then laid a hand on the arm of each.
“Come along home now, boys,” she said; “it’s a-gitting on late, and I allow you’ll both injoy a good batch of gingercake for supper.”
HENRI BERGSON
PRONOUNCED “THE FOREMOST THINKER OF FRANCE”