The Light in the Clearing
By Irving Bacheller

Chapter XI

A PARTY AND–MY FOURTH PERIL?

“A dead fish can swim down-stream but only a live one can swim up it," said Uncle Peabody as we rode toward the village together. We had been talking of that strong current of evil which had tried to carry us along with it. I understood him perfectly.

It was a rainy Sunday. In the middle of the afternoon Uncle Peabody and I had set out in our spring buggy with the family umbrella–a faded but sacred implement, always carefully dried, after using, and hung in the clothes press. I remember that its folded skirt was as big around as my coat sleeve and that Uncle Peabody always grasped it in the middle, with hand about its waist, in a way of speaking, when he carried it after a shower. The rain came on again and with such violence that we were drenched to the skin in spite of the umbrella. It was still raining when we arrived at the familiar door in Ashery Lane. Uncle Peabody wouldn’t stop.

“Water never scares a live fish,” he declared with a chuckle as he turned around. “Good-by, Bart.”

He hurried away. We pioneers rarely stopped or even turned out for the weather. Uncle Peabody used to say that the way to get sick was to change your clothes every time you got wet. It was growing dusk and I felt sorry for him.

“Come in,” said the voice of the schoolmaster at the door. “There’s good weather under this roof.”

He saw my plight as I entered.

“I’m like a shaggy dog that’s been in swimming,” I said.

“Upon my word, boy, we’re in luck,” remarked the schoolmaster.

I looked up at him.

“Michael Henry’s clothes!–sure, they’re just the thing for you!”

“Will they go on me?” I asked, for, being large of my age, I had acquired an habitual shyness of things that were too small for me, and things, too, had seemed to have got the habit of being too small.

“As easily as Nick Tubbs goes on a spree, and far more becoming, for I do not think a spree ever looks worse than when Tubbs is on it. Come with me.”

I followed him up-stairs, wondering how it had happened that Michael Henry had clothes.

He took me into his room and brought some handsome soft clothes out of a press with shirt, socks and boots to match.

“There, my laddie buck,” said he, “put them on.”

“These will soon dry on me,” I said.

“Put them on–ye laggard! Michael Henry told me to give them to you. It’s the birthday night o’ little Ruth, my boy. There’s a big cake with candles and chicken pie and jellied cookies and all the like o’ that. Put them on. A wet boy at the feast would dampen the whole proceedings.”

I put them on and with a great sense of relief and comfort. They were an admirable fit–too perfect for an accident, although at the time I thought only of their grandeur as I stood surveying myself in the looking-glass. They were of blue cloth and I saw that they went well with my blond hair and light skin. I was putting on my collar and necktie when Mr. Hacket returned.

“God bless ye, boy,” said he. “There’s not a bear in the township whose coat and trousers are a better fit. Sure if ye had on a beaver hat ye’d look like a lawyer or a statesman. Boy! How delighted Michael Henry will be! Come on now. The table is spread and the feast is waiting. Mind ye, give a good clap when I come in with the guest.”

We went below and the table was very grand with its great frosted cake and its candles, in shiny brass sticks, and its jellies and preserves with the gleam of polished pewter among them. Mrs. Hacket and all the children, save Ruth, were waiting for us in the dining-room.

“Now sit down here, all o’ ye, with Michael Henry,” said the schoolmaster. “The little lady will be impatient. I’ll go and get her and God help us to make her remember the day.”

He was gone a moment, only, when he came back with Ruth in lovely white dress and slippers and gay with ribbons, and the silver beads of Mary on her neck. We clapped our hands and cheered and, in the excitement of the moment, John tipped over his drinking glass and shattered it on the floor.

“Never mind, my brave lad–no glass ever perished in a better cause. God bless you!”

What a merry time we had in spite of recurring thoughts of Uncle Peabody and the black horse toiling over the dark hills and flats in the rain toward the lonely farm and the lonelier, beloved woman who awaited him! There were many shadows in the way of happiness those days but, after all, youth has a way of speeding through them–hasn’t it?

We ate and jested and talked, and the sound of our laughter drowned the cry of the wind in the chimney and the drumming of the rain upon the windows.

In the midst of it all Mr. Hacket arose and tapped his cup with his spoon.

“Oh you merry, God-blessed people,” he said. “Michael Henry has bade me speak for him.”

The schoolmaster took out of his pocketbook a folded sheet of paper. As he opened it a little, golden, black-tipped feather fell upon the table.

“Look! here is a plume o’ the golden robin,” the schoolmaster went on. “He dropped it in our garden yesterday to lighten ship, I fancied, before he left, the summer’s work and play being ended. Ye should ’a’ seen Michael Henry when he looked at the feather. How it tickled his fancy! I gave him my thought about it.

“’Nay, father,’ he answered. ’Have ye forgotten that to-morrow is the birthday o’ our little Ruth? The bird knew it and brought this gift to her. It is out o’ the great gold mines o’ the sky which are the richest in the world.’

“Then these lines came off his tongue, with no more hesitation about it than the bird has when he sings his song on a bright summer morning and I put them down to go with the feather. Here they are now:

“To Ruth

     “’Little lady, draw thy will
     With this Golden Robin’s quill–
     Sun-stained, night-tipped, elfish thing–
     Symbol of thy magic wing!

     “’Give to me thy fairy lands
     And palaces, on silver sands.
     Oh will to me, my heart implores,
     Their alabaster walls and floors!
     Their gates that ope on Paradise
     Or earth, or Eden in a trice.
     Give me thy title to the hours
     That pass in fair Aladdin towers.
     But most I’d prize thy heavenly art
     To win and lead the stony heart.
     Give these to me that solemn day
     Thou’rt done with them, I humbly pray.

     “’Little lady, draw thy will
     With this Golden Robin’s quill.’”

He bowed to our young guest and kissed her hand and sat down in the midst of our cheering.

I remember well the delightful sadness that came into my heart on the musical voice of the reader. The lines, simple as they were, opened a new gate in my imagination beyond which I heard often the sound of music and flowing fountains and caught glimpses, now and then, of magic towers and walls of alabaster. There had been no fairies in Lickitysplit. Two or three times I had come upon fairy footprints in the books which Mr. Wright had sent to us, but neither my aunt nor my uncle could explain whence they came or the nature of their errand.

Mr. Hacket allowed me to write down the lines in my little diary of events and expenses, from which I have just copied them.

We sang and spoke pieces until nine o’clock and then we older members of the party fell to with Mrs. Hacket and washed and dried the dishes and put them away.

Next morning my clothes, which had been hung by the kitchen stove, were damp and wrinkled. Mr. Racket came to my room before I had risen.

“Michael Henry would rather see his clothes hanging on a good boy than on a nail in the closet,” said he. “Sure they give no comfort to the nail at all.”

“I guess mine are dry now,” I answered.

“They’re wet and heavy, boy. No son o’ Baldur could keep a light heart in them. Sure ye’d be as much out o’ place as a sunbeam in a cave o’ bats. If ye care not for your own comfort think o’ the poor lad in the green chair. He’s that proud and pleased to see them on ye it would be a shame to reject his offer. Sure, if they were dry yer own garments would be good enough, God knows, but Michael Henry loves the look o’ ye in these togs and then the President is in town.”

That evening he discovered a big stain, black as ink, on my coat and trousers. Mr. Hacket expressed the opinion that it might have come from the umbrella but I am quite sure that he had spotted them to save me from the last home-made suit I ever wore, save in rough work, and keep Michael Henry’s on my back. In any event I wore them no more save at chore time.

I began to make good progress in my studies that week and to observe the affection with which Mr. Hacket was regarded in the school and village. I remember that his eyes gave out and had to be bandaged but the boys and girls in his room behaved even better than before. It was curious to observe how the older ones controlled the younger in that emergency.

Sally came and went, with the Wills boy, and gave no heed to me. In her eyes I had no more substance than a ghost, it seemed to me, although I caught her, often, looking at me. I judged that her father had given her a bad report of us and had some regrets, in spite of my knowledge that we were right, although they related mostly to Amos.

Next afternoon I saw Mr. Wright and the President walking back and forth on the bridge as they talked together. A number of men stood in front of the blacksmith shop, by the river shore, watching them, as I passed, on my way to the mill on an errand. The two statesmen were in broadcloth and white linen and beaver hats. They stopped as I approached them.

“Well, partner, we shall be leaving in an hour or so,” said Mr. Wright as he gave me his hand. “You may look for me here soon after the close of the session. Take care of yourself and go often to see Mrs. Wright and obey your captain and remember me to your aunt and uncle.”

“See that you keep coming, my good boy,” said the President as he gave me his hand, with playful reference, no doubt, to Mr. Wright’s remark that I was a coming man.

“Bart, I’ve some wheat to be threshed in the barn on the back lot,” said the Senator as I was leaving them. “You can do it Saturdays, if you care to, at a shilling an hour. Stack the straw out-of-doors until you’ve finished then put it back in the bay. Winnow the wheat carefully and sack it and bring it down to the granary and I’ll settle with you when I return.”

I remember that a number of men who worked in Grimshaw’s saw-mill were passing as he spoke.

“Yes, sir,” I answered, much elated by the prospect of earning money.

I left with a feeling of keen disappointment that I was to see so little of my distinguished friend and a thought of the imperious errands of men which put the broad reaches of the earth between friend and friend.

I remember repeating to myself the words of the Senator which began: “You may look for me here soon after the close of the session,” in the tone in which he had said them. As of old, I admired and tried to imitate his dignity of speech and bearing.

When I returned from the mill they were gone.

The examination of Amos was set down for Monday and the people of the village were stirred and shaken by wildest rumors regarding the evidence to be adduced. Every day men and women stopped me in the Street to ask what I knew of the murder. I followed the advice of Bishop Perkins and kept my knowledge to myself.

My life went on at the same kindly, merry pace in the home of the schoolmaster. The bandages over his eyes had in no way clouded his spirit.

“Ah, now, I wish that I could see you,” he said one evening when we were all laughing at some remark of his. “I love the look of a merry face.”

I continued to wear the mysterious clothes of Michael Henry, save at chore time, when I put on the spotted suit of homespun. I observed that it made a great difference with my social standing. I was treated with a greater deference at the school, and Elizabeth Allen invited me to her party, to which, however, I had not the courage to go, having no idea what happened to one at a village party.

I asked a boy in my Latin class to tell me.

“Oh, ye just fly around an’ kiss and git kissed till ye feel like a fool.”

That settled it for me. Not that I would have failed to enjoy kissing Sally, but we were out, as they used to say, and it would have embarrassed both of us to meet at a party.

Saturday came and, when the chores were done, I went alone to the grain barn in the back lot of the Senator’s farm with flail and measure and broom and fork and shovel and sacks and my luncheon, in a push cart, with all of which Mrs. Wright had provided me.

It was a lonely place with woods on three sides of the field and a road on the other. I kept laying down beds of wheat on the barn-floor and beating them out with the flail until the sun was well over the roof when I sat down to eat my luncheon. Then I swept up the grain and winnowed out the chaff and filled one of my sacks. That done, I covered the floor again and the thump of the flail eased my loneliness until in the middle of the afternoon two of my schoolmates came and asked me to go swimming, with them. The river was not forty rods away and a good trail led to the swimming hole. It was a warm bright day and I was hot and thirsty. The thought of cool waters and friendly companionship was too much for me. I went with them.

More ancient than the human form is that joy of the young in the feel of air and water on the naked skin, in the frog-like leap and splash and the monkey-chatter of the swimming hole. There were a number of the “swamp boys” in the water. They lived in cabins on the edges of the near swamp. I stayed with them longer than I intended. I remember saying as I dressed that I should have to work late and go without my supper in order to finish my stent.

It was almost dark when I was putting the last sack of wheat into my cart, in the gloomy barn, and getting ready to go.

A rustling in the straw near where I stood stopped me suddenly. My skin prickled and began to stir on my head and my feet and hands felt numb with a new fear. I heard stealthy footsteps in the darkness. I stood my ground and demanded:

“Who’s there?”

I saw a form approaching in the gloom with feet as noiseless as a cat’s. I took a step backward and, seeing that it was a woman, stopped.

“It’s Kate,” the answer came in a hoarse whisper as I recognized her form and staff.

“Run, boy–they have just come out o’ the woods. I saw them. They will take you away. Run.”

She had picked up the flail and now she put it in my hands and gave me a push toward the door. I ran, and none too quickly, for I had not gone fifty feet from the barn in the stubble when I heard them coming after me, whoever they were. I saw that they were gaining and turned quickly. I had time to raise my flail and bring it down upon the head of the leader, who fell as I had seen a beef fall under the ax. Another man stopped beyond the reach of my flail and, after a second’s hesitation, turned and ran away in the darkness.

I could hear or see no other motion in the field. I turned and ran on down the slope toward the village. In a moment I saw some one coming out of the maple grove at the field’s end, just ahead, with a lantern.

Then I heard the voice of the schoolmaster saying:

“Is it you, my lad?”

“Yes,” I answered, as I came up to him and Mary, in a condition of breathless excitement.

I told them of the curious adventure I had had.

“Come quick,” said the schoolmaster. “Let’s go back and find the man in the stubble.”

I remembered that I had struck the path in my flight just before stopping to swing the flail. The man must have fallen very near it. Soon we found where he had been lying and drops of fresh blood on the stubble.

“Hush,” said the schoolmaster.

We listened and heard a wagon rattling at a wild pace down the road toward the river.

“There he goes,” said Mr. Hacket. “His companions have carried him away. Ye’d be riding in that wagon now, yerself, my brave lad, if ye hadn’t ’a’ made a lucky hit with the flail–God bless ye!”

“What would they ’a’ done with me?” I asked.

“Oh, I reckon they’d ’a’ took ye off, lad, and kep’ ye for a year or so until Amos was out o’ danger,” said Mr. Hacket. “Maybe they’d drowned ye in the river down there an’ left yer clothes on the bank to make it look like an honest drowning. The devil knows what they’d ’a’ done with ye, laddie buck. We’ll have to keep an eye on ye now, every day until the trial is over–sure we will. Come, we’ll go up to the barn and see if Kate is there.”

Just then we heard the receding wagon go roaring over the bridge on Little River. Mary shuddered with fright. The schoolmaster reassured us by saying:

“Don’t be afraid. I brought my gun in case we’d meet a painter. But the danger is past.”

He drew a long pistol from his coat pocket and held it in the light of the lantern.

The loaded cart stood in the middle of the barn floor, where I had left it, but old Kate had gone. We closed the barn, drawing the cart along with us. When we came into the edge of the village I began to reflect upon the strange peril out of which I had so luckily escaped. It gave me a heavy sense of responsibility and of the wickedness of men.

I thought, of old Kate and her broken silence. For once I had heard her speak. I could feel my flesh tingle when I thought of her quick words and her hoarse passionate whisper. She must have come into the barn while I was swimming and hidden behind the straw heap in the rear end of it and watched the edge of the woods through the many cracks in the boarding.

I knew, or thought I knew, why she took such care of me. She was in league with the gallows and could not bear to see it cheated of its prey. For some reason she hated the Grimshaws. I had seen the hate in her eyes the day she dogged along behind the old money-lender through the streets of the village when her pointing finger had seemed to say to me: “There, there is the man who has brought me to this. He has put these rags upon my back, this fire in my heart, this wild look in my eyes. Wait and you shall see what I will put upon him.”

I knew that old Kate was not the irresponsible, witless creature that people thought her to be. I had begun to think of her with a kind of awe as one gifted above all others. One by one the things she had said of the future seemed to be coming true.

When we had pulled the cart into the stable I tried to shift one of the bags of grain and observed that my hands trembled and that it seemed very heavy.

As we were going into the house the schoolmaster said:

“Now, Mary, you take this lantern and go across the street to the house o’ Deacon Binks, the constable. You’ll find him asleep by the kitchen stove. Arrest his slumbers, but not rudely, and, when he has come to, tell him that I have news o’ the devil.”

“This shows the power o’ knowledge. Bart,” he said to me when we entered the house.

I wondered what he meant and he went on:

“You have knowledge of the shooting that no other man has. You could sell it for any money ye would ask. Only ye can’t sell it, now, because it’s about an evil thing. But suppose ye knew more than any other man about the law o’ contracts, or the science o’ bridge building, or the history o’ nations or the habits o’ bugs or whatever. Then ye become the principal witness in a different kind o’ case. Then it’s proper to sell yer knowledge for the good o’ the world and they’ll be as eager to get it as they are what ye know about the shooting. And nobody’ll want to kill ye. Every man o’ them’ll want to keep ye alive. But mind, ye must be the principal witness.”

Deacon Binks arrived, a fat man with a big round body and a very wise and serious countenance between side whiskers bending from his temple to his neck and suggesting parentheses of hair, as if his head and its accessories were in the nature of a side issue. He and the schoolmaster went out-of-doors and must have talked together while I was eating a bowl of bread and milk which Mrs. Hacket had brought to me.

When I went to bed, by and by, I heard somebody snoring on the little porch under my window. The first sound that reached my ear at the break of dawn was the snoring of the same sleeper. I dressed and went below and found the constable in his coon-skin overcoat asleep on the porch with a long-barreled gun at his side. While I stood there the schoolmaster came around the corner of the house from the garden. He smiled as he saw the deacon.

“Talk about the placid rest of Egyptian gods!” he exclaimed. “Look at the watchful eye o’ Justice. How well she sleeps in this peaceful valley! Sometimes ye can hardly wake her up at all, at all.”

He put his hand on the deacon’s shoulder and gave him a little shake.

“Awake, ye limb o’ the law,” he demanded. “Prayer is better than sleep.”

The deacon arose and stretched himself and cleared his throat and assumed an air of alertness and said it was a fine morning, which it was not, the sky being overcast and the air dank and chilly. He removed his greatcoat and threw it on the stoop saying:

“Deacon, you lay there. From now on I’m constable and ready for any act that may be necessary to maintain the law. I can be as severe as Napoleon Bonaparte and as cunning as Satan, if I have to be.”

I remember that through the morning’s work the sleepy deacon and the alert constable contended over the possession of his stout frame.

The constable shouldered the gun and followed me into the pasture where I went to get the cow. I saw now that his intention was to guard me from further attacks. While I was milking, the deacon sat on a bucket in the doorway of the stable and snored until I had finished. He awoke when I loosed the cow and the constable went back to the pasture with me, yawning with his hand over his mouth much of the way. The deacon leaned his elbow on the top of the pen and snored again, lightly, while I mixed the feed for the pigs.

Mr. Hacket met us at the kitchen door, where Deacon Binks said to him:

“If you’ll look after the boy to-day, I’ll go home and get a little rest.”

“God bless yer soul, ye had a busy night,” said the schoolmaster with a smile.

He added as he went into the house:

“I never knew a man to rest with more energy and persistence. It was a perfect flood o’ rest. It kept me awake until long after midnight.”

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This eBook of “The Light in the Clearing - A Tale of the North Country in the Time of Silas Wright” (1917) by Irving Bacheller belongs to the public domain. Complete book.
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