Tommy fled toward the house, blood running down his torn leg, and Jenny called sternly from her bedroom window: ‘Dan, pull Mat out of that hole and send him in to me.’
They were all sobered by the sight of Tommy’s blood, and they escorted a subdued Mat into the house where Jenny silently cleaned and bandaged Tommy’s wounds, bidding Mat stand and wait her pleasure, ignoring the uneasy and placating remarks of the older boys. When Tommy was bandaged, she took a silent and rather pale Mat by the hand and marched him up the stairs to her room.
The others waited, white and breathless, at the stair foot till they heard Mat’s first piercing cry. At that sound, Tommy frankly fled, and Will too edged away; but Dan stood his ground. The steady screams of mingled terror and pain which sounded from that upper room were after a moment more than he could bear. He ran up the stairs, himself by that time sobbing nervously, and burst open the door.
Mat’s outcries must have covered the sound of the opening door, for Dan’s mother did not turn her head. She was holding Mat, stark naked, face down on the bed, lashing him with that many-branched birch sapling Dan had watched her cut. At every stroke, red lines drew themselves on Mat’s soft white flesh, and his screams were shrill and terrible.
Dan ran forward and came on her from behind and caught her upraised arm, his muscular small hands gripping hard. She tried to fling him aside, but he still clung, crying: ‘Stop, mama! Stop! Please stop, mama!’ She released Mat to tear Dan’s hands off her arm, and in doing so she swung around and Dan saw his father there in the open bedroom door.
So Dan ran to his father, sure that now everything would be all right again, sobbing with relief as he clung to the big man’s hand.
VI
But in the weeks that followed, Dan slowly came to realize that the world was not all right again. His father and mother were pleasant together, and he never again heard between them an outright angry word; but neither did he ever again feel that comfortable, warm happiness which had seemed almost visibly to cloud around them when he was little; and the way his mother spoke to his father, in quiet, cruel tones, was often worse than quarrelling. Also there was a tangible change in their way of living. His father now slept in a small bedroom down the hall, and his clothes and all his things were there; and as far as Dan knew he never again went into the big room he and Dan’s mother had always shared.
For another thing, Dan’s father now seemed more anxious to do things with him and with his brothers. They had a picnic at Pushaw Lake with Aunt Meg and Uncle Line, and there were other occasions that summer when Dan and sometimes Will went on such excursions with their father but without the others. Twice John took Dan to fish for trout in near-by brooks, showing him how to select a properly straight and not too heavy black alder pole, and how to attach to it a band from Mrs. McGaw’s spinning wheel which Dan had at his father’s instigation begged, with a bit of black linen thread at the end to attach the hook.
‘For a trout has sharp eyes,’ his father explained, ‘and we have to try to fool him, make him think this worm has just dropped into his pool off the bank.’ At the brookside his father made Dan crawl under low-growing hemlocks till he was near enough to lower his worm into the water. ‘Now just let it lie on the bottom, Dan,’ John advised. ‘Wait till I tell you.’
Dan obediently waited, hardly breathing, till his father said: ‘All right, lift your pole a little; and if you feel anything, give a jerk to set the hook and then haul out your trout.’
Dan obeyed, cautiously raising the heavy pole. He felt a heavy, twitching tug, and jerked with spasmodic energy; but the low boughs of the trees over his head stopped the pole’s upward swing, and something almost frighteningly strong was yanking at the stiff pole. He crawled backward away from the brook, dragging the pole behind him, dragging thus ignominiously up over the low bank a tremendous trout, which thrashed and pounded on the ground till, abandoning his pole, he pounced upon it with both hands, gripping the cold, muscular body still full of vibrant strength, whooping with delight, and happiest of all when he saw the fine pride in his father’s eyes.
But though they had many such fine days together, during that summer and fall after the picnic at Pushaw Lake, two unhappy things happened to Dan. For one, Aunt Meg came one day and told them she would be married. Dan did not know Captain Pawl, and the name meant nothing to him, but he was very much in love with Aunt Meg; and to think of losing her—he had no doubt that when she married she would go out of their lives forever—was terrible. She was so pretty and jolly and nice in every way, and he loved to be with her and to talk to her, particularly about his father. Sometimes when they were thus together her eyes would shine and he felt in watching her the same peace and content which he found in being with his father and mother in their happy hours. That she should now marry someone and go away to Searsport to live seemed to him terrible, and he grieved in a secret wretchedness. She guessed this, and she took him in her arms and told him he mustn’t look so miserable; and he could not tell her what he really felt, so he tried to be very manly and told her he was all right, and she respected his reticence and said: ‘There, of course you are!’
But even worse than Aunt Meg’s approaching marriage was his father’s decision to go into the woods to be away all winter. He took Dan to town with him one day, and they had dinner together like two men, at the Bangor House, and afterward he announced his plan, and he told Dan what he would be doing up-river, locating logging camps and seeing that they were well run. Dan said miserably: ‘I wish I could go, too,’ and his father said: ‘I’ll take you, some day. But this winter, son, you’ll have to stay home and be the man of the family, take care of your mother and your brothers. Mother’s going to be lonely with me gone, so she’ll need all your love and thoughtfulness, and you must see to it that your brothers don’t make her unhappy. It’s a lot of responsibility for you, but I know you can handle it. I’m trusting you, son!’
So Dan swallowed hard, and promised to try, and soon afterward his father went away.
VII
That was a long and lonely winter. Dan and Will and Tommy went to school, and Dan’s mother was very busy with other ladies in the sewing circle and the temperance societies of which she was a member and in church affairs. One rather terrible experience—in which nevertheless Dan came to feel a secret pride-was the church entertainment when the three boys were required by their mother to memorize and perform a ‘dialogue’ for the delectation of their elders. This dialogue had been written by Miss Merrill, their teacher; and their mother devised and she and Mrs. McGaw made their costumes. The dialogue was called, ‘A Lump in the Side,’ and the characters were three. Dan himself played the part of Bill Johnson, a mechanic. Tommy was ‘Mr. Abbott, President of the Temperance Society,’ and Will was the villain of the piece, ‘The Landlord.’
Miss Merrill was tremendously pleased with her first dramatic effort, and she drilled the three boys tirelessly in their lines. When the great day came and their turn arrived, the improvised curtains were drawn back to reveal Dan, in rough clothes and a hat much too big for him, with a considerable bulge in the pocket of his shirt, alone upon the stage. He faced the pleased audience, his eyes shamedly avoiding every familiar countenance, and stiffly recited:
‘One year ago I was a miserable drunkard. One year ago today I signed the pledge, not only on paper but in my own heart; and I have kept it. What a change it has made! I am now a happy and prosperous man. Now that the year of my promise is up, shall I fall back into my old poverty and sin? No; I’ll sign again. Ah! Here comes Mr. Abbott, the President of the ‘Temperance Society; I’ll ask him about it.’
Dan realized as he finished that he had forgotten Miss Merrill’s instructions to look, as he spoke these last lines, toward where Tommy, as Mr. Abbott, in a beaver hat and a long black coat cut down and made over from one of his father’s, was waiting to make his entrance; but Tommy, even without that warning glance from Dan, picked up his cue. He marched stiffly up on the platform
and in his character of Mr. Abbott said as rapidly as possible:
‘Good morning, William. I was on my way to your home, to speak to you about that pledge. You know we let you have your own way of signing. There is your written promise.
He handed Dan a slip of paper. ‘It will not bind you after today.’
Dan reached for the paper and missed it, and it fluttered to the floor, slid off the edge of the platform and was irretrievably lost. Dan blushed to the ears and stared down at it hopelessly while he recited:
‘This little slip of paper has done great things for me. How well I remember when I wrote it.’ The bit of paper was beyond his reach, but he held up an imaginary slip with both hands, and pretended to read: ‘“I William Johnson pledge myself to drink no more intoxicating drinks for one year.” ’
Tommy demanded, all in one breath, so that it sounded like a single word: ‘Are you not going to renew the pledge?’
Dan was by this time determined to finish this ordeal as quickly as possible. He spoke almost as rapidly as Tommy. ‘Well, I don’t know but I will. I’ve done pretty well so far; will you let me sign it again my own way?’ Tommy blurted: ‘O yes, any way, so that you will not drink rum.’ Dan, as Tommy spoke, remembering what he was supposed to do next, felt a sudden stark alarm. He looked appealingly at Miss Merrill in the front row, hoping for rescue, but she was pale with helpless dismay. The emergency which he faced was a real one. He was expected at this point to write out a new pledge, and a table and pen and paper should have been provided for the purpose; but Miss Merrill had forgotten these properties!
She looked now so despairing that Dan was sorry for her, and in that moment of sympathy he rose to the occasion and proceeded magnificently to ad lib his lines.
‘I’ll need a piece of paper. This will do.’ he said, and jumped down off the platform, recaptured the lost pledge, climbed back up to the platform again and spread the paper on the palm of his hand and pretended to write, while he went on with his lines:
‘ “I, William Johnson, sign this pledge for nine hundred and ninety- nine years, and if living at the end of that time I intend to take out a lease for life” There, I think that’ll do, Squire Abbott; but here comes my old Landlord.’ A murmur of approbation from the audience had applauded his composure under difficulties, and stimulated by that approval he was now master of himself. He remembered to look at Will, waiting in his part of the villainous Landlord to come on. ‘He knows my time is up. See him eye me as a hawk does a chicken. Stand by, Mr. Abbott, you’ll see game.’ When Will stumped up the steps to the platform, his appearance was so satisfactorily villainous that he was greeted with a gust of applause. His very garments were sinister, his hands were in his pockets, he swaggered ominously, and a tremendous black mustache of burnt cork almost covered his small countenance. While he waited his turn, he had perspired in nervous excitement, and the mustache had run a little at either side of his mouth. The effect was tremendous, and Tommy incontinently giggled; but Dan, approaching his big scene, did not even grin. He bent double as though with pain, pressing his hand against that bulging shirt pocket, and in a high falsetto expressive of the most intense agony he cried:
‘O Landlord, I have such a lump on my side!’
Will grunted villainously. ‘That’s because you have stopped drinking; you won’t live two years longer at this rate.’
‘If I commence drinking ‘ Dan piteously begged, ‘will the lump go away?’
‘Yes; but if you don’t, you’ll have another just such a lump on the other side.’
‘Do you think so, Landlord?’
‘I know it,’ Will assured him. ‘You will have them on your arms, back, breast, and head; you will be covered all over with lumps.’ He spoke with a careful precision, went on in hearty tones: ‘Come, Bill, let’s drink together; come over to the tavern; I’ve got some prime brandy there.’ ‘No, I can’t, for I’ve signed the pledge again.’
‘You haven’t, though! Well, you are a fool!’
Dan said dolefully: ‘Yes, the Squire coaxed me hard. I couldn’t get off.’ ‘What a blockhead, to sign away your liberty.’
There was at this an embarrassing pause. Tommy had the next speech, but some stray fleck of dust, drifting through the air, had lodged in his nose, and it tickled and stung. He was rubbing his nose so hard that he forgot his lines till Dan nudged him. That brought him back to his immediate obligations, but at the same time it precipitated a volley of sneezes. His anxiety to say what he must say before the next sneeze could interrupt him increased the tempo of his utterances, so that he said—or exploded—something like this:
‘Ha-chew! Let-me-tell-you-friend-what-liberty-he—bla-chew!—has-signed- away-his-elbows’and-knees’are—lla-ha-hachewl—not-at-liberty-as-they-were- his-head-and-feet-are-not-so-much-at-liberty-the—-Ha-chewl—cold-wind-and- rain—Ha-chew!—have-no-liherty-to-enter-his-house-he-has-lost-the-liberty—Hfrchew! Ha-chewl Ha-ha-hachew!—to-lie-in-the-gutter-all-night-without- interruption-and-to-beathisfamilywhenhegoeshome. Ha-chew!’
He finished in an indistinguishable blur of words, but no one heard him, for even Miss Merrill joined in the peals of helpless laughter which swept the audience. Dan and Will ignored this disturbance, and their lips could be seen to move, even though no words at first were audible. Dan led off in this final interchange.
“Yes, thank Heaven; and 1 don’t want such liberties restored’
‘Well, how long do you go this time?’ Will raised his voice, trying to be heard.
‘For nine hundred and ninety-nine years!’ Dan bawled.
The audience began to quiet. ‘You won’t live a year!’ Will said, above the diminishing sound of laughter, finding himself suddenly shouting in a reasonably complete silence, and hurriedly and guiltily lowering his voice again on the last word.
‘Well, if I drink, you are sure the lump on my side will go away?’ Dan demanded.
‘Yes, in less than a week!’
Dan plunged with vast relief into his last lines. ‘Well, I guess I won’t drink; here’s the lump.’ He drew that bulge out of his pocket and revealed a handful of genuine bills which Jenny had provided for the occasion. ‘There’s a hundred dollars in it’ There was actually this amount in the roll, and Dan was so proud of this miraculous fact that his tone became increasingly impressive. ‘And you say I’ll have more such lumps if I don’t drink, and that’s what I want!’
The curtain, as he finished, was drawn hurriedly, and Miss Merrill came swiftly around from her seat to tell them—and particularly Dan—that they were wonderful. From beyond the curtain the storming applause confirmed her verdict. Now that the ordeal was over, Dan felt pleased. He guessed they had really been pretty good.
VIII
John Evered came home for Christmas, but this only made them miss him more when he went up-river again. Uncle Line for some reason now seldom called at the house, and when he did he seemed changed, awkward and uncomfortable and almost shy. As spring began to come, Will caught the measles, and Tommy and Mat and finally Dan fell ill in turn. The other boys recovered and went to Searsport to visit Aunt Meg while Dan was still sick in bed; but he began to get better, and then one day his mother came home from town with shining eyes, somehow excited and tensely happy, and told Dan he was well enough to go to Searsport too; and in no time at all he was bundled into the carriage with Pat and Ruth and their children for the long drive down the river road, and Dan was still weak enough so that the happiness of going to sec Aunt Meg made him cry, and young Pat jeered at him for crying like a baby, but Dan didn’t care.
He had a wonderful time at Aunt Meg’s. Captain Pawl was at home, and he and Aunt Meg took them for a two-day trip in a little sloop the Captain hired, down the western Bay and around Isle au Haut and home through Eggemoggin Reach; and they were allowed to steer and to help hoist the mainsail and jibs and to stow the sails neatly when they anchored for the night in a sheltered, solitary cove. Will decided that he would be a sailor when he grew up, bu
t Dan, thinking of his father, was sure he himself would be a lumberman.
His father was much away that summer; but whenever he was at home, he was forever planning excursions to delight his sons. Then in October something happened, something involving Mattie Hanson, who had done their washing for a while. Dan did not at all understand what this was till young Pat Tierney enlightened him. Young Pat said his father was a nigger lover, and Dan fought him for that, and whipped him soundly, beating Pat into the ground and pounding him till Pat squalled for mercy; but there was for Dan no satisfaction in that victory because he knew quite well that something was terribly wrong in his father’s world. So a day or two later he asked Pat for more information and got it, so explicitly that he was sick at his stomach.
‘My father wouldn’t do that!’ he cried.
Pat jeered at him. ‘Well, I guess he would. Everybody does.’
‘My father doesn’t!’
‘Your father does and your mother does too!’
Dan, choking with rage and shame, cried: ‘You’re a dirty old liar!’
‘Yah!’ Pat cried. ‘You’re a baby! Don’t know anything! They had to do it before you were born, and before Will was born, and Tommy, and Mat! Four times! They did too!’
Dan, helpless in his own ignorance, was nevertheless strong in his faith in his father and his mother; so he thrashed young Pat again, and when old Pat intervened and demanded to know what the matter was, Dan told him through sobs of hurt rage; and old Pat marched his son indoors by the ear, and young Pat’s squeals of anguish for a while came muffled from one of the empty stalls.
Through the days when the case was being tried, Dan and the other boys stayed home from school, and Dan suffered torments of fear—fear of the unknown; but he was happy afterward in the happiness of his father and Aunt Meg and Judge Saladine. The only shadow on his happiness was his secret feeling that his mother did not share it, and his vague understanding that in connection with the trial Uncle Line had done something for which he would not be forgiven. Uncle Line came no longer to the house, and when the following summer Dan asked where he had gone, his father could only say:
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