 | Clovernook, or, Recollections of our
neighborhood in the West |  |
THE REMORSE OF WILLIAM MARTIN.
The light of the long blue summer twinkled along the hills;
the trees, in full leaf, had lost the first freshness and gloss of
spring; heats held the drowsy winds in leash; the birds sang
less and less gaily, and clouds of yellow butterflies hovered
over the beds of streams that had gathered their lengths of
silver waves into dull stagnant pools. The reaping was done,
and the broad blades of the corn-fields rustled together now
and then, indicating the ripe ears and coming frosts. Autumn
yet hesitated on the borders of beauty for the blackening of the
flower-stalks, to twist in with his crown of golden-stemmed
wheat, left long ago, by the gleaners, shining along the stubblefields.
Among the apple-boughs, the light silvery net of the
spider hung all day unbroken. It was the still hazy time preceding
that “when the dull rain begins at shut of eve.”
The school had gone on, with the interruption of a day occasionally,
when the master was less well than usual, till within two
weeks of its close. “Just let him dare to show himself again,”
Bill Martin never failed to say, when such holidays recurred,
“and I'll twist him round my little finger.” And the whole
school heaped execrations on the head of the unfortunate young
man, who, hopeless and friendless, struggled and labored on,
“sick for home.” A great deal of unnecessary pain and vexation
his pupils gave him, for the strong are apt to despise the
weak; sometimes they hid away his favorite books, so that at
noon the solace they might have afforded, as he lay in the
shade, thinking and coughing, was denied him; sometimes they
slily clipped a button from his threadbare coat, on which occasions
the mirth became irrepressible; and sometimes they pursuance
dusty floor. There was no end to their mischievous and sometimes
cruel practices upon his weakness and apathy.
“I hope you are very well to-day,” said Ellie Hadly one
morning, as she presented him a sweet little bouquet of wild
flowers, gathered on her way to school.
The feelings of the earth are not easily overcome, and he
answered, smiling gaily, “I do feel well, just now—very well,”
and then he added, as he turned them tound and round in admiration,
“Did you gather them all, Ellie?” Had he glanced at
Rebecca, there could have been no need of other reply; she
was intent on the morning lesson, but her cheek, I fancy, was
not so crimsoned by any thing she read.
That day, life, as it were, sent its ebbing currents back; he
talked of the next session, the next year; how much his pupils
would have learned by such and such a time, and how proud
he should be of them; told them of the little presents he had
prepared for them the last day of the term; all, he said, would
merit them, he was sure.
“Then,” said Rebecca, timidly raising her eyes to his, “you
will not go back to your home on the mountain?” “Such had
been my intention,” he said, “if I grew worse—but I shall
not—with the cool airs I shall grow stronger.” A cough interrupted
him, and he added, “Perhaps I shall go back;” and
after a pause, “and if I do, you will get a better teacher than I
have been, I hope, but you will not get one that will like you
better, for,” he said, “you are all very dear to me.” “And I
am sure we all love you,” said Ellie, “don't we, Rebecca?”
But Rebecca asked something about the grammar lesson, and
did not reply to the question at all.
The school-house was a little wooden building, unsheltered
with trees, standing right against the road-side. Many trees
had been planted; none of them, however, were for any length
of time suffered to grow, and Bill Martin was accused of
knowing more of the causes of their death than he cared to say.
At the beginning of the present session the poor teacher, unequal
to so hard a task, had one enervating day labored hard to
plant some thrifty locusts and maples before the windows, but
dead. “I think,” said the master afterward, as he saw Bill
Martin cutting into one of the trunks to see if it were quite
dead, “I think this soil is not adapted to the growth of trees.”
“No, sir,” said Bill, with ill-suppressed laughter, “no tree what-somever
could grow here.” So saying, he ran away to tell the
other boys that their teacher was a bigger fool than he thought
he was.
A little way from the school-house, and on the opposite side
of the road, was a pleasant beech grove, where the boys played
bass ball, and where the girls carried disused benches and
see-sawed over fallen logs. Here, too, the master spent the
noon times with his books. The day on which he had promised
the presents, he took his book, as usual, and sought a favorite
retreat under the low-drooping boughs of an elm, and as he
half-reclined, he arranged between the leaves of his volume the
flowers which Ellie had given him. Dreams, vague and unshapen,
but of a soothing nature, trembled about his heart as
did the shadows upon the grass. “These flowers,” he thought,
“withered away from their stalks in the chilly airs last year—
all winter the bleak snows were over them—and the winds
moaned about their graves; but the spring came back, and the
stocks shot up fresh and green, and hung their buds and flowers,
pale and gold and red, in the bright sunshine. So perhaps the
sap of my nature has flowed into my heart, as the juice of the
plant to the root, and one shower of the tears of sympathy,
one fall of the sunshine of smiles, might roll it back again, and
I grow strong and well. If I should—and I am sure I shall: I
feel stronger to-day than for months.” So thinking, he arose
and essayed a trial of his powers on a green bole, standing close
at hand. It was not thicker than his wrist at the root, much
less toward the top, and catching at the boughs he drew it down
a little, but with all his efforts he could not bend it to his will.
“Let me help you,” said Bill Martin, rushing forward—like a
withe it bent before him, but he suddenly and purposely loosed
his hold, and the rebound was right in the face of the master.
He staggered back a little, put his hands to his face, and then sunk
on the grass, the blood trickling through his thin white fingers.
“Are you hurt—are you hurt?” exclaimed the boy, now
really, and for the first time in his life, terribly frightened: “I
didn't mean to do it; I didn't mean to do it;” and he repeated
this over and over, as some excuse to his conscience.
“Oh, William,” answered the teacher at last, looking at the
boy, or trying to look at him, “I cannot see any thing—I am
blind; but never mind,” he added, very sorrowfully, and knowing
by the boy's interjections and sobs how much he was
alarmed, “Never mind, I could not have seen much longer at
any rate. Give me your hand and lead me to the school-house;”
but the boy could not look on what he had done, and ran hastily
away. Presently he stopped, and pulled up some grass, which
he fed to a drove of starving pigs that he had pelted a thousand
times; then, seeing a cow standing in the sunshine, with a board
before her eyes, which he himself had tied there an hour before,
he ran to her, and taking it off, dashed it against a stone, and
split it to fragments.
“What is the matter, William?” Rebecca Hadly said, as
she returned slowly, and with an open book before her, toward
the school-house, for the occupation was an extraordinary one
for him, and she saw, too, his agitation, and the traces of recent
tears.
“There is nothing the matter with me!” and taking his slate-pencil
from his pocket, he began scratching straight marks on
the fence: “but the school-master is sick—I expect may be he
is—I don't know.”
“What makes you think he is sick?”
“I don't know,” said the boy, searce intelligibly, “I don't
know as it's him, but somebody lies under a tree down here in
the woods, and I expect he is sick. I don't know as it's the
master; and I don't know as he is sick.”
The girl closed her book and walked fast in the direction
which he indicated, having urged him in vain to go with her.
He prest his face against the fence-rails a moment, gazing after
the girl, and then turning away, sat down by the road side,
taking up his hands full of dust, sifting it from one to another,
and wondering whether, if a boy accidentally makes a man
blind, they would take him up and put him in jail.
“Oh, master!” exclaimed Rebecca as, drawing near, she saw
his awful plight, “what is the matter? and how did it chance?
Dear, dear master, you are badly hurt!” and stooping over him,
she pushed back his disordered hair, and wiped his face with
her handkerchief. “Rebecca, dear Rebecca,” he said at last,
and putting his arm about her, he drew her to his side; and
half-shrinking from him, she suffered his last and first embrace.
Thoughts and feelings long in the hearts of both, unuttered
but comprehended, thus sadly found a voice. An hour before,
and they could not have spoken one tithe of what they now
said very calmly. The flowers of their hope were cold gray
ashes now, and the crimson that would have sprung to their
cheeks was beaten down with tears. How the breath of affliction
sweeps away the barriers that divided us, and bears us full
into the arms of love!
Now that the light was folded away, as a mantle, and the
outer vision darkened for ever, the inner seemed correspondingly
quickened; and the truth, felt vaguely before, was clearly
perceived. As we sometimes feel the working of the mole
beneath our feet, the young, man sorrowful, but resigned, felt
the turning of the furrows of death. He had, perhaps, after the
first passionate burst of half-rebellious sorrow was hushed,
never been so happy as now. As the sun grows large and
bright among the sunset clouds, so his soul, in calmness and
trustfulness of faith, grew large among the shadows of death.
“Life has been a weary journey to me,” he said, “for I
walked alone, and with no sweet human hope to beckon me
forward; the way was long and rough, but now that I have met
you, Rebecca, though your soft hand is only in time to open for
me the door of death, I am ready and glad to go in.”
Rebecca was almost a child, but her heart had outgrown her
years; she knew that the gay blossoms of life must sooner or
later whiten in the frost; and when it fell, though heavier and
earlier than she expected, she loosened her arms away from her
idol, and took beneath them the cross. It is hard to see
gathered the shock of corn fully ripe; but when the green stalk
that might have borne much fruit is cut down, how sadly we
strike hands with the reaper.
The school-house with the withered trees before it had been
shut for ten days; very lonesome it looked, with no eager faces
peering out at the windows, even when the coach with its four
gray horses rattled by. “Is Billy at home?” said the voice of
a strange young man, reining in his horse, which he rode
without any saddle, at the gate of Mr. Martin. Billy was in
the garden gathering some dead pea vines; and hearing the
inquiry, he crouched trembling and silent beneath them, for he
verily believed he was to be arrested. To his further consternation,
Mrs. Martin, who was shaking the crumbs from the
table-cloth at the door, answered “Yes, sir, he is at home;”
and folding the cloth, as she looked east and west, she called in
a voice that wakened the distant echoes, “Bill-ee, Bill-ee, Billy
Martin,” all in vain. Then she walked slowly toward the man,
and Billy heard them say something which he could not understand,
but he was sure he caught the word school-master. I
need not attempt to describe his sufferings; it was long after
night, when he ventured to creep out and steal toward the
house; he listened at the door, but all was still; “Perhaps,”
he thought, “they are waiting for me, and if I go in, they will
catch me and tie me up with a rope.” Then he crept back again
into the dark. Finally he came once more, and putting his hand
through a broken pane in the window, drew the curtain softly
aside. There sat his mother, rocking the cradle with one foot
and finishing a pair of new blue trowsers for him. Could they
be to wear to prison?—surely not. Perhaps his father was
going to take him to Mr. Smith's vendue, for Mr. Smith was
going to sell his ploughs and harrows and fanning-mill and
sheep; together with six milch cows, and all his household
furniture, and move to Wisconsin. How he wished he was
going with him. If he could only go to the vendue—and what
else were the blue trowsers for—he would ask Mr. Smith to
take him, and when he got there, he would call himself William
Smith, and nobody would ever know how he hurt the schoolmaster.
At this happy thought he boldly, and at once, opened the
door. His mother asked him where he had been, and on his
replying, “Just in the garden pulling up the pea vines,” quietly
wished to know; but sitting down on the floor with his eyes
wide open, watched the progress of the blue trowsers. Whenever
his mother told him it was time little boys were in bed, he
replied that, “He didn't see why he couldn't get sleepy to-night.”
At last he said, fearfully, “Is father going to the vendue to-morrow?”
His mother answered, querulously that, “She did
not know,” adding as it were to herself, “I should like to know
how the feather beds will go; but when all is said and done,
I expect I shall never have a spare bed;” and, sighing, she
folded up the blue trowsers.
“Come, come,” said she, looking sternly at Billy, whose eyes
were still wide open, “it's high time little boys were in bed;”
and taking him by the ear, she led him the length of her arm
toward the door of his chamber. Poor boy! it was a long
time before he slept. The next morning as he sat on the wood-pile
intently watching the movements of his father, to see if he
were likely to go to the vendue, his mother, with a towel
pinned around her waist by way of apron, came to the door
and called him in. His blue trowsers, finished now, together
with his best shirt, were hanging over a chair before the fire,
and his mother, pointing to them, said, “Now go and wash
your face and hands as clean as ever you can, and then come
and put on these.” He hastened to obey; but his hopes fell
when he heard her say, “Bad boy, you don't deserve to have
new clothes.” He did not know whether this implied a general
rebuke for the whole tenor of his life, or whether she had especial
reference to his last crowning sin. The fear of being sent
to prison came back upon him; and with sad misgivings, he did
as he was bidden. When he was drest, he was obliged to wait
and wipe away the tears more than once, before going back
into the presence of his mother; nor was he much relieved
when she told him to put on his hat and go and see the schoolmaster.
“What for?” he inquired, sinking into a seat. “I
don't know what for—because I tell you to—and because he
took the pains to send for you, you naughty boy, you; you
don't deserve to go.” In vain the boy said he did not want
hanging back for a time, he set out at a snail's pace.
It was a lonesome old farm-house, with a broad meadow and
a strip of woods between it and the public road, where the master's
lodgings were. An old horse-mill stood near it, where
such of the neighbors as did not go to uncle Hillhouse's mill,
for the distance of several miles around, had their meal and
flour made; and its dull, homesick rumble was never still.
The yard about the house was enclosed with a strong post and
rail fence, to which, when Master William Martin came in
sight, some three or four horses were attached. A woman, tall
and dark, with black sunken eyes, over which drooped purple
lids, with brown hair, streaked with gray, combed straight back
from her forehead, and a thin, care-worn face, was standing on
a stone pavement near the door, churning. “Come in, little
boy,” she said, “come in—he won't hurt you!” as the gate
creaked on its hinges, and, looking up, she saw him hesitating,
afraid of the great watch-dog that, couchant half-way between
the door and the gate, raised himself on his forepaws, growling
furiously.
She stopped her work for a moment, and raising the “dasher”
looked at it intently to see if the butter were likely to “come,”
and then with an expression half weariness and irritation, half
kindness and sorrow, showed him through a wide, dark hall,
the floor of which was partly covered with some strips of coarse
carpet, and up a steep stair, the steps of ash wood, and scoured
exceedingly white. At the first landing, she paused, and said
to the trembling visitor, in a whisper, “He's dreadfully changed;
I don't expect you would know him hardly, he has suffered
every thing amost;” she then added, “the doctor put great
blisters on his arms and the back of his neck about midnight,
though it appeared like he didn't want it done, for he kept saying
all the while, `Oh, it will do no good.' ” She softly pushed
open the door, and going up to the beside, took the limber
white hand from off the coverlid in her own, and said in an encouraging
and cheerful tone, “Here is a little boy come to see
you.”
“I want water, give me just a little,” said the sick man.
“No, the doctor says you must not have it; when you get
well, I will bring you a big pitcher full, right out of the spring
—that great big white pitcher with the purple roses on it, and
you may have just as much as you want.”
“Can I not have it now, or in an hour?” he asked, beseechingly;
but the woman was back at her churning.
He suppressed the moan that rose to his lips, and taking
from an earthern pot covered with a saucer, which stood on a
table within reach, a drink of herb tea, resumed the smile of
patient quiet habitual to him. The room was large, with a low
ceiling, scantily furnished with two or three unpainted chairs, a
breakfast table from which one leaf was broken, a walnut
bureau and a small looking-glass in a frame of carved oak.
Beneath this hung the only ornaments of the room, the pale
checky skin of a snake, a wand of bright feathers, and a pincushion,
made of deep yellow silk, and to represent an orange.
The paper curtains, on which brown ships and green trees
were intermingled, were down over the windows, making a kind
of twilight in the room. The window near the head of the bed
was a little open, but a sickening smell of medicine pervaded
the atmosphere, and vials and papers were strewed over the
mantel.
The schoolmaster had requested that his pupils might all
come and see him, and most of them were there before Bill.
Half afraid and still, they sat or stood about the room, but as
far from the bed-side as they well could. Only Ellie, leaning
over the pillow, took the long damp locks in her hands, and
wiped the perspiration from the brow, sadly, silently—she began
to fear that one she loved could die.
A little bird, beating its wings for a moment against the
pane, flew into the room, and the children, diverted from their
fear, began to try to catch it, talking and laughing out as they
did so. At the familiar sounds, a smile came over the master's
face, but faded off as he said, “There is one voice I do not
hear.” Ellie understood him and said, “She will come to-night.”
“To-night, Ellie,” he said, repeating her words, “to-night—there
will never be any more morning for me.”
Presently he asked to be raised on his pillows, and removing
from the table, untied it, and displayed a great many little
volumes, in bright binding and with gilt edges. Calling the children
around him, he said, “These, my little friends, are for you; I
shall never teach you any more, for I am going a long, lonesome
journey, but they will make you wise beyond my poor
human wisdom. You have all loved me, and I am sorry to go
away and leave you,” and, one by one, he laid his thin hand
upon their heads, and asked God's blessing to come down and
brighten his own. Very brightly the sun shone without. A
bridal train swept along the distant road, and was gone, the
woman, weary and worn, sat down in the shadow to rest, and
in the dark chamber the children sobbed their farewells.
The shining arrows of sunset were lodging among the boughs
of the eastern wood; the weary laborer plodded home; the
cattle gathered about sheds and stackyards; and the busy
housewife plied her evening care. One sound—the rumble of
the mill—was over all.
Under the open window of his dark chamber, through which
the chill air came and went, there knelt a young but heavyhearted
girl, her fallen hair swept against the face, and her lips
touched the lips of the dead. Knocking at the gateway of
peace, eager for the waters of life, there was another soul.
| Clovernook, or, Recollections of our
neighborhood in the West | |