Glengarry School Days-a story of early days in Glengarry

by Connor, Ralph

  For some minutes they rolled about upon the soft moss and balsam-needles and the brown leaves of last year, till their hearts were running over with a deep and satisfying delight. It is hard to resist the ministry of the woods. The sympathetic silence of the trees, the aromatic airs that breathe through the shady spaces, the soft mingling of broken lights—these all combine to lay upon the spirit a soothing balm, and bring to the heart peace. And Hughie, sensitive at every pore to that soothing ministry, before long forgot for a time even Foxy, with his fat, white face and smiling mouth, and lying on the broad of his back, and looking up at the far-away blue sky through the interlacing branches and leaves, he began to feel again that it was good to be alive, and that with all his misery there were compensations.

  But any lengthened period of peaceful calm is not for boys of the age and spirit of Hughie and his companions.

  "What are you going to do?" asked Fusie, the man of adventure.

  "Do nothing," said Hughie from his supine position. "This is good enough for me."

  "Not me," said Fusie, starting to climb a tall, lithe birch, while Hughie lazily watched him. Soon Fusie was at the top of the birch, which began to sway dangerously.

  "Try to fly into that balsam," cried Hughie.

  "No, sir!"

  "Yes, go on."

  "Can't do it."

  "Oh, pshaw! you can."

  "No, nor you either. That's a mighty big jump."

  "Come on down, then, and let me try," said Hughie, in scorn. His laziness was gone in the presence of a possible achievement.

  In a few minutes he had taken Fusie's place a the top of the swaying birch. It did not look so easy from the top of the birch as from the ground to swing into the balsam-tree. However, he could not go back now.

  "Dinna try it, Hughie!" cried Davie to him. "Ye'll no mak it, and ye'll come an awfu' cropper, as sure as deith." But Hughie, swaying gently back and forth, was measuring the distance of his drop. It was not a feat so very difficult, but it called for good judgment and steady nerve. A moment too soon or a moment too late in letting go, would mean a nasty fall of twenty feet or more upon the solid ground, and one never knew just how one would light.

  "I wudna dae it, Hughie," urged Davie, anxiously.

  But Hughie, swaying high in the birch, heeded not the warning, and suddenly swinging out from the slender trunk and holding by his hands, he described a parabola, and releasing the birch dropped on to the balsam top. But balsam-trees are of uncertain fiber, and not to be relied upon, and this particular balsam, breaking off short in Hughie's hands, allowed him to go crashing through the branches to the earth.

  "Man! man!" cried Davie Scotch, bending over Hughie as he lay white and still upon the ground. "Are ye deid? Maircy me! he's deid," sobbed Davie, wringing his hands. "Fusie, Fusie, ye gowk! where are ye gone?"

  In a moment or two Fusie reappeared through the branches with a capful of water, and dashed it into Hughie's face, with the result that the lad opened his eyes, and after a gasp or two, sat up and looked about him.

  "Och, laddie, laddie, are ye no deid?" said Davie Scotch.

  "What's the matter with you, Scottie?" asked Hughie, with a bewildered look about him. "And who's been throwing water all over me?" he added, wrathfully, as full consciousness returned.

  "Man! I'm glad to see ye mad. Gang on wi' ye," shouted Davie, joyously. "Ye were deid the noo. Ay, clean deid. Was he no, Fusie?" Fusie nodded.

  "I guess not," said Hughie. "It was that rotten balsam top," looking vengefully at the broken tree.

  "Lie doon, man," said Davie, still anxiously hovering about him. "Dinna rise yet awhile."

  "Oh, pshaw!" said Hughie, and he struggled to his feet; "I'm all right." But as he spoke he sank down upon the moss, saying, "I feel kind of queer, though."

  "Lie still, then, will ye," said Davie, angrily. "Ye're fair obstinate."

  "Get me some water, Fusie," said Hughie, rather weakly.

  "Run, Fusie, ye gomeril, ye!"

  In a minute Fusie was back with a capful of water.

  "That's better. I'm all right now," said Hughie, sitting up.

  "Hear him!" said Davie. "Lie ye doon there, or I'll gie ye a crack that'll mak ye glad tae keep still."

  For half an hour the boys lay on the moss discussing the accident fully in all its varying aspects and possibilities, till the sound of wheels came up the road.

  "Who's that, Fusie?" asked Hughie, lazily.

  "Dunno me," said Fusie, peering through the trees.

  "Do you, Scotty?"

  "No, not I."

  Hughie crawled over to the edge of the brush.

  "Why, you idiots! it's Thomas Finch. Thomas!" he called, but Thomas drove straight on. In a moment Hughie sprang up, forgetting all about his weakness, and ran out to the roadside.

  "Hello, Thomas!" he cried, waving his hand. Thomas saw him, stopped, and looked at him, doubtfully. He, with all the Section, knew how the school was going, and he easily guessed what took Hughie there.

  "I'm not going to school to-day," said Hughie, answering Thomas's look.

  Thomas nodded, and sat silent, waiting. He was not a man to waste his words.

  "I hate the whole thing!" exclaimed Hughie.

  "Foxy, eh?" said Thomas, to whom on other occasions Hughie had confided his grievances, and especially those he suffered at the hands of Foxy.

  "Yes, Foxy," cried Hughie, in a sudden rage. "He's a fat-faced sneak! And the teacher just makes me sick!"

  Thomas still waited.

  "She just smiles and smiles at him, and he smiles at her. Ugh! I can't stand him."

  "Not much harm in smiling," said Thomas, solemnly.

  "Oh, Thomas, I hate the school. I'm not going to go any more."

  Thomas looked gravely down upon Hughie's passionate face for a few moments, and then said, "You will do what your mother wants you, I guess."

  Hughie said nothing in reply, while Thomas sat pondering.

  Finally he said, with a sudden inspiration, "Hughie, come along with me, and help me with the potatoes."

  "They won't let me," grumbled Hughie. "At least father won't. I don't like to ask mother."

  Thomas's eyes opened in surprise. This was a new thing in Hughie.

  "I'll ask your mother," he said, at length. "Get in with me here."

  Still Hughie hesitated. To get away from school was joy enough, to go with Thomas to the potato planting was more than could be hoped for. But still he stood making pictures in the dust with his bare toes.

  "There's Fusie," he said, "and Davie Scotch."

  "Well," said Thomas, catching sight of those worthies through the trees, "let them come, too."

  Fusie was promptly willing, but Davie was doubtful. He certainly would not go to the manse, where he might meet the minister, and meeting the minister's wife under the present circumstances was a little worse.

  "Well, you can wait at the gate with Fusie," suggested Hughie, and so the matter was settled.

  Fortunately for Hughie, his father was not at home. But not Thomas's earnest entreaties nor Hughie's eager pleading would have availed with the mother, for attendance at school was a sacred duty in her eyes, had it not been that her boy's face, paler than usual, and with the dawning of a new defiance in it, startled her, and confirmed in her the fear that all was not well with him.

  "Well, Thomas, he may go with you to the Cameron's for the potatoes, but as to going with you to the planting, that is another thing. Your mother is not fit to be troubled with another boy, and especially a boy like Hughie. And how is she to-day, Thomas?" continued Mrs. Murray, as Thomas stood in dull silence before her.

  "She's better," said Thomas, answering more quickly than usual, and with a certain eagerness in his voice. "She's a great deal better, and Hughie will do her no harm, but good."

  Mrs. Murray looked at Thomas as he spoke, wondering at the change in his voice and manner. The heavy, stolid face had changed since she had last seen it. It was finer, keener, than before
. The eyes, so often dull, were lighted up with a new, strange fire.

  "She's much better," said Thomas again, as if insisting against Mrs. Murray's unbelief.

  "I am glad to hear it, Thomas," she said, gently. "She will soon be quite well again, I hope, for she has had a long, long time of suffering."

  "Yes, a long, long time," replied Thomas. His face was pale, and in his eyes was a look of pain, almost of fear.

  "And you will come to see her soon?" he added. There was almost a piteous entreaty in his tone.

  "Yes, Thomas, surely next week. And meantime, I shall let Hughie go with you."

  A look of such utter devotion poured itself into Thomas's eyes that Mrs. Murray was greatly moved, and putting her hand on his shoulder, she said, gently, "'He will give His angels charge.' Don't be afraid, Thomas."

  "Afraid!" said Thomas, with a kind of gasp, his face going white. "Afraid! No. Why?" But Mrs. Murray turned from him to hide the tears that she could not keep out of her eyes, for she knew what was before Thomas and them all.

  Meantime Hughie was busy putting into his little carpet-bag what he considered the necessary equipment for his visit.

  "You must wear your shoes, Hughie."

  "Oh, mother, shoes are such an awful bother planting potatoes. They get full of ground and everything."

  "Well, put them in your bag, at any rate, and your stockings, too. You may need them."

  By degrees Hughie's very moderate necessities were satisfied, and with a hurried farewell to his mother he went off with Thomas. At the gate they picked up Fusie and Davie Scotch, and went off to the Cameron's for the seed potatoes, Hughie's heart lighter than it had been for many a day. And all through the afternoon, and as he drove home with Thomas on the loaded bags, his heart kept singing back to the birds in the trees overhead.

  It was late in the afternoon when they drove into the yard, for the roads were still bad in the swamp, where the corduroy had been broken up by the spring floods.

  Thomas hurried through unhitching, and without waiting to unharness he stood the horses in their stalls, saying, "We may need them this afternoon again," and took Hughie off to the house straight-way.

  The usual beautiful order pervaded the house and its surroundings. The back yard, through which the boys came from the barn, was free of litter; the chips were raked into neat little piles close to the wood-pile, for summer use. On a bench beside the "stoop" door was a row of milk-pans, lapping each other like scales on a fish, glittering in the sun. The large summer kitchen, with its spotless floor and white-washed walls, stood with both its doors open to the sweet air that came in from the fields above, and was as pleasant a room to look in upon as one could desire. On the sill of the open window stood a sweet-scented geranium and a tall fuschia with white and crimson blossoms hanging in clusters. Bunches of wild flowers stood on the table, on the dresser, and up beside the clock, and the whole room breathed of sweet scents of fields and flowers, and "the name of the chamber was peace."

  Beside the open window sat the little mother in an arm-chair, the embodiment of all the peaceful beauty and sweet fragrance of the room.

  "Well, mother," said Thomas, crossing the floor to her and laying his hand upon her shoulder, "have I been long away? I have brought Hughie back with me, you see."

  "Not so very long, Thomas," said the mother, her dark face lighting with a look of love as she glanced up at her big son. "And I am glad to see Hughie. He will excuse me from rising," she added, with fine courtesy.

  Hughie hurried toward her.

  "Yes, indeed, Mrs. Finch. Don't think of rising." But he could get no further. Boy as he was, and at the age when boys are most heartless and regardless, he found it hard to keep his lip and his voice steady and to swallow the lump in his throat, and in spite of all he could do his eyes were filling up with tears as he looked into the little woman's face, so worn and weary, so pathetically bright.

  It was months since he had seen her, and during these months a great change had come to her and to the Finch household. After suffering long in secret, the mother had been forced to confess to a severe pain in her breast and under her arm. Upon examination the doctor pronounced the case to be malignant cancer, and there was nothing for it but removal. It was what Dr. Grant called "a very beautiful operation, indeed," and now she was recovering her strength, but only slowly, so slowly that Thomas at times found his heart sink with a vague fear. But it was not the pain of the wound that had wrought that sweet, pathetic look into the little woman's face, but the deeper pain she carried in her heart for those she loved better than herself.

  The mother's sickness brought many changes into the household, but the most striking of all the changes was that wrought in the slow and stolid Thomas. The father and Billy Jack were busy with the farm matters outside, upon little Jessac, now a girl of twelve years, fell the care of the house, but it was Thomas that, with the assistance of a neighbor at first, but afterwards alone, waited on his mother, dressing the wound and nursing her. These weeks of watching and nursing had wrought in him the subtle change that stirred Mrs. Murray's heart as she looked at him that day, and that made even Hughie wonder. For one thing his tongue was loosed, and Thomas talked to his mother of all that he had seen and heard on the way to the Cameron's and back, making much of his little visit to the manse, and of Mrs. Murray's kindness, and enlarging upon her promised visit, and all with such brightness and picturesqueness of speech that Hughie listened amazed. For all the years he had known Thomas he had never heard from his lips so many words as in the last few minutes of talk with his mother. Then, too, Thomas seemed to have found his fingers, for no woman could have arranged more deftly and with gentler touch the cushions at his mother's back, and no nurse could have measured out the medicine and prepared her egg-nog with greater skill. Hughie could hardly believe his eyes and ears. Was this Thomas the stolid, the clumsy, the heavy-handed, this big fellow with the quick tongue and the clever, gentle hand?

  Meantime Jessac had set upon the table a large pitcher of rich milk, with oat cakes and butter, and honey in the comb.

  "Now, Hughie, lad, draw in and help yourself. You and Thomas will be too hungry to wait for supper," said the mother. And Hughie, protesting politely that he was not very hungry, proceeded to establish the contrary, to the great satisfaction of himself and the others.

  "Now, Thomas," said the mother, "we had better cut the seed."

  "Indeed, and not a seed will you cut, mother," said Thomas, emphatically. "You may boss the job, though. I'll bring the potatoes to the back door." And this he did, thinking it no trouble to hitch up the team to draw the wagon into the back yard so that his mother might have a part in the cutting of the seed potatoes, as she had had every year of her life on the farm.

  Very carefully, and in spite of her protests that she could walk quite well, Thomas carried his mother out to her chair in the shade of the house, arranging with tender solicitude the pillows at her back and the rug at her feet. Then they set to work at the potatoes.

  "Mind you have two eyes in every seed, Hughie," said Jessac, severely.

  "Huh! I know. I've cut them often enough," replied Hughie, scornfully.

  "Well, look at that one, now," said Jessac, picking up a seed that Hughie had let fall; "that's only got one eye."

  "There's two," said Hughie, triumphantly.

  "That's not an eye," said Jessac, pointing to a mark on the potato; "that's where the top grew out of, isn't it, mother?"

  "It is, isn't it?" appealed Hughie.

  Mrs. Finch took the seed and looked at it.

  "Well, there's one very good eye, and that will do."

  "But isn't that the mark of the top, mother?" insisted Jessac. But the mother only shook her head at her.

  "That's right, Jessac," said Thomas, driving off with his team; "you look after Hughie, and mother will look after you both till I get back, and there'll be a grand crop this year."

  It was a happy hour for them all. The slanting rays of the aft
ernoon sun filled the air with a genial warmth. A little breeze bore from the orchard near by a fragrance of apple-blossoms. A matronly hen, tethered by the leg to her coop, raised indignant protest against the outrage on her personal liberty, or clucked and crooned her invitations, counsels, warnings, and encouragements, in as many different tones, to her independent, fluffy brood of chicks, while a huge gobbler strutted up and down, thrilling with pride in the glossy magnificence of his outspread tail and pompous, mighty chest.

  Hughie was conscious of a deep and grateful content, but across his content lay a shadow. If only that would lift! As he watched Thomas with his mother, he realized how far he had drifted from his own mother, and he thought with regret of the happy days, which now seemed so far in the past, when his mother had shared his every secret. But for him those days could never come again.

  At supper, Hughie was aware of some subtle difference in the spirit of the home. As to Thomas so to his father a change had come. The old man was as silent as ever, indeed more so, but there was no asperity in his silence. His critical, captious manner was gone. His silence was that of a great sorrow, and of a great fear. While there was more cheerful conversation than ever at the table, there was through all a new respect and a certain tender consideration shown toward the silent old man at the head, and all joined in an effort to draw him from his gloom. The past months of his wife's suffering had bowed him as with the weight of years. Even Hughie could note this.

  After supper the old man "took the Books" as usual, but when, as High Priest, he "ascended the Mount of Ordinances to offer the evening sacrifice," he was as a man walking in thick darkness bewildered and afraid. The prayer was largely a meditation on the heinousness of sin and the righteous judgments of God, and closed with an exaltation of the Cross, with an appeal that the innocent might be spared the punishment of the guilty. The conviction had settled in the old man's mind that "the Lord was visiting upon him and his family his sins, his pride, his censoriousness, his hardness of heart." The words of his prayer fell meaningless upon Hughie's English ears, but the boy's heart quivered in response to the agony of entreaty in the pleading tones, and he rose from his knees awed and subdued.