Cape Cod Folks Part 16

When she looked back, there were tears of distress in her eyes.

I felt a vague wonder and regret.

"No," she said; "I thought, once--I wanted--I hoped----"

"Why, child!" I hastened to exclaim. "I didn't ask you because I had any reason to doubt that you were one--quite the contrary--but simply for this. It seems to me it would be such a desirable thing for you, situated as you are, here, with so few surroundings of a refining and elevating nature, if you could attach yourself, if it were merely for a feeling of fellows.h.i.+p and sympathy--for of course, you could not attend, often--to some simple Orthodox body of believers--like the Methodist church at West Wallen, for instance. It seems to me, that, in your case, believing simply and unquestionably, as I have no doubt you do, it would be a sort of a.s.surance, a sort of continual rest and support to you. It would be a great relief to me if I felt that you were so guarded. Not that I consider it essential at all; to some people, indeed, of a deeply thoughtful and inquisitive mind, such a course would appear impossible.

You have never troubled yourself, Becky," I continued, in a tone of rea.s.suring lightness; "you have never troubled yourself with doubts and speculations on religious subjects?"

"I don't know," Becky replied, the look of perplexity and distress deepening in her eyes.

"Why should you?" I murmured, softly stroking her hair; "He carries the lambs in His bosom." I had been little in the habit of quoting Scripture--the words, coming to my mind, struck me as particularly Beautiful and applicable on this occasion. "And so what I have suggested, would be the easiest and most natural thing in the world for you to do. I suppose it might be necessary for you to have come to some conclusion in regard to the first principles of Theology; but probably you have already satisfied yourself as to these in your own mind."

Rebecca looked little like one who had arrived at the calm plane of philosophical conclusion of any sort.

"I don't know," she gasped.

"Well, take the Trinity, for instance," I continued, in a tone highly suggestive of calm and supreme forbearance with helpless ignorance.

"Probably you believe in the Trinity?"

"Oh, I don't know," said Rebecca. "I don't know what it means. n.o.body ever told me; n.o.body ever talked to me about those things before."

"It's simply," I said; "a term implying the existence of three persons in the G.o.dhead. So the Trinitarians are distinguished from the Unitarians who believe that it consists of one. I'm not particularly informed as to the Methodist credentials of faith. You will always hear that they believe that salvation is free to all who will accept of it. Some people believe that man is a free agent, and may accept or refuse the means of grace, and if he refuses, is eternally lost. And then, again, there are the Universalists, who believe that all will be eventually saved. There is the Calvinistic element--those who believe in predestination--that is----"

Becky had laid her head down on the bed, and was quietly sobbing.

"My poor child," I exclaimed, with swift compa.s.sion, "don't think anything more about what I have said to you. Let it go. It isn't vital."

"You don't hate me for not knowing anything?" sobbed Becky. "n.o.body ever tried to have me understand, before."

"You know enough; quite enough, dear!" I remarked hastily, producing from my trunk a quant.i.ty of ill.u.s.trated magazines. These we looked over together, and when Becky went away, the tears were dried in her eyes, and she was laughing as merrily as ever.

With the severely implied reproach of Madeline's words still in my mind, I took pains to a.s.sume toward Luther Larkin a more elder-sisterly air even than before.

It was true, I felt that I had been unjustly stung, having, amid the press of other duties, undertaken the advancement of that bright youth, from motives, I believed, of an ideal and disinterested nature. It was also true, that, after the first enthusiasm with respect to his lessons had pa.s.sed away, as well as the natural diffidence he had at first felt in my presence, Luther Larkin, though punctual to the hour of recitation, had gradually fallen into a habit of more lively and discursive inquiry than that furnished within the dull range of his text-books. He had a singularly fearless manner of challenging the inexplicable in thought and life, with a light conversational flow of much brilliancy. Moreover, he was a delightful dreamer.

We had our recitation, for quiet, in one of Grandma's gloomy and mysterious keepin'-rooms. The only object inviting to sedentary posture in this room was Grandpa's huge "chist," which occupied a position "along side" the East window. Those sacred window curtains, of green paper, flowered with crimson roses, were never rolled up; but as the light strayed in at one side, and fell on the Cradlebow's fine head, often I reflected that under certain other conditions of life, meaning conditions more favorable to Luther Larkin, I might have regarded him very tenderly, and invested the strength and beauty of his young manhood with heroic meaning.

As it was, I a.s.sumed that I was years beyond him in the gravest respects.

And if there was any truth in what Madeline had intimated, possibly I had been at fault for not impressing this fact more deeply on his mind.

"So you are getting sadly behindhand with your lessons, Luther," I said.

"I wish you would make a brave effort to catch up. There is no true attainment to be reached without a corresponding degree of effort--of perseverance."

I spoke with a serious and gracious air, as though this sentiment, gleaned from a profound experience, had occurred to me as an idea peculiarly my own.

"Never mind the lessons!" replied my audacious pupil, brightly.

"Teacher," he added presently, having fallen into a gently musing att.i.tude; "how s.h.i.+ny those crimples in your hair look, with that streak of sun lighting on 'em!"

"Luther," said I, very gravely: "you ought not to talk to me about my hair. Suppose we give our attention to these books. Now you were getting along so fast, I'm very sorry----"

"Do you think I'm to blame, teacher?" exclaimed Luther, earnestly, "There wasn't a stick of wood to be had in our house this morning! And I've had to be off, all day, chopping, with Scudder--you ought to have seen the black snake we killed this morning. It was six feet long. If you don't believe it, Scudder's got the carca.s.s. It was lying all curled up in the bushes with its head up so--'you watch him, Lute,' says Scudder, 'and I'll run and get the axe!' I couldn't help laughing. The axe was over the other side of the bog, and the snake began to stretch himself out and slide along. I brought my boot-heel down once or twice on his head, about as quick and strong as I could make it. I killed him. It's a good sign to kill a snake, teacher. It's a good sign to dream of killing one; but you come across one so, accidentally, and kill it, and it's sure to bring good luck, Granny says."

"That's more significant than a great many of your signs and symbols," I said. "That means that you will slay the tempter in your path, and be successful in overcoming difficulties. In short, it means that whatever there has been to divert you, you are coming back to the resolve to study and improve yourself; to be all the stronger for having a few chance obstacles to dispose of."

Luther's head began to droop a little. I thought it was time that the melancholy atmosphere of the room should have begun to exercise its usual depressive effect on his spirits.

"You think I don't like the books, teacher," he said. "I do, but there's most always something else to be doing. Father's lame. He can't do any work, and there's the rest to take care of. First, I sat up nights to study, then I got so sleepy I couldn't. But I'd got so in the habit of coming in to talk a little while after you got home from school, teacher, that I--I forgot to forget it. Have I been a great bother to you? You've been real good. I don't want you to think I forget that. And if I'd had a chance at the books early, or to push right along with 'em now, I might make out something in that line."

Luther did not speak complainingly, nor even with hopeless regret. He rose and stretched himself, with solemn satisfaction, to the extent of his goodly proportions.

"But I'm a man now, teacher," he said. "I shall be twenty in June, and life is short. A man hasn't got time for everything. He'd be a fool to waste it crying for what he didn't happen to have. He'd better push along and work for the best. I meant to tell you. I'm going to sea, teacher! I'm going trading. I was down to New Bedford, to see Captain Sparhauk yesterday, for I was out with him once before, and got a good deal of the hang of the business then; and he offered me a place on his s.h.i.+p next time he sails."

Luther stood with flushed face, regarding me with a bright restless look of inquiry in his eyes.

"Are you going away, really, Luther? I'm very sorry!" I said.

"You don't care! what do you care?" he exclaimed almost rudely, with an unnatural touch of hardness in his laugh. "It's the way you talk to all the rest. A fellow might get to thinking too much about it. A fellow might get to caring--if he believed it--I don't."

"What makes you think I shouldn't care if you were going away?" I continued, with the dispa.s.sionately gentle and reproving tone I considered it wisest to a.s.sume on the occasion. "I should care, I should be very sorry. Come and sit down here, please, and tell me all about it, when you are going, and where, and what you are going for?"

Luther came slowly back to the light. He seemed verily to have grown older and handsomer in a moment. I experienced a deeper feeling of regret than ever before, that the circ.u.mstances of his life could not have been conducive to heroism.

"The captain couldn't tell me just when he should sail," said he; "and I'm going to get money. I know a good deal of the Spanish and Portugal, I learned to talk them before--and I shall go to a great many places, I may not come back when the s.h.i.+p does. Say, what strange eyes you've got, teacher; now they're brown--and now, they're black, and now, they're a sort of--a--purplish gray."

"Oh, my dear boy," I exclaimed, with a sudden accession of wisdom, sighing deeply; "you ought not to talk to me about the color of my eyes."

At the same time to deepen the effect of this condescending tenderness, I pushed back lightly from his forehead a stray lock of hair that was hanging there.

"Don't do that!" the boy cried with startling impetuosity. "Don't call me that again! I mean, teacher," he went on in a gentler tone, though none the less excitedly;--"if you should know somebody, that had set his heart on something, very much, and didn't want anything else if he couldn't have that, and if he should know that he hadn't any right to ask for it now, but go off and work for it real hard, and, maybe come back lucky in a few years, with a right to ask for it then;--do you think, teacher, that there'd be any chance of his finding--of his getting what he wanted most? If you were in anybody's place, now, teacher, would you give him a word of encouragement to try?"

"I think that the person you speak of would be much more likely to succeed in a practical undertaking, without any hallucination of that sort before his eyes--and if, as you say, it isn't right that he should ask for it now, can we predict that it would be any more reasonable and expedient in the future? These idle fancies of ours soon pa.s.s away, Luther, and will look laughable and grotesque enough to us by and by.

Life is so full of changes, and people change, oh, so much!"

In spite of the vanity of my soul, I comforted myself with the reflection that Luther would not care long. I did not really believe that he would go to sea. I stood with him a moment in the door of Grandma's kitchen.

He looked over to the woods, behind which the water lay, and the fire and impatience had all gone out of his manner. His gentleness touched me deeply, yet I was determined not to feel his hurt, nor--"if only the circ.u.mstances of his life had been different"--what might have been mine also!

"Hark! It's high tide. It's making quite a fuss over there," he said. "I think a man feels more quiet somehow, when he's out there, teacher.

Father says I'm a wild chap and uneasy. I guess that's so. I can take care of them just as well too if I go, and better. Only if I should die--" there was nothing affected or forlorn in the Cradlebow's tone--"I should like to be buried on the hill, with father's folks. You've been across there. You look one way and there's the river, oftenest still--and the other way, you hear the old Bay scooting along the sand. I like it, being used to hearing it go always. Granny says it makes a difference then, where you lie, about the resting easy. I don't know. Sometimes it seems as though I should rest easier there."

"A dissertation on the graveyard," I began in a tone of affected lightness, and then paused, convicted of untruth by the solemn light in the Cradlebow's strange, grand eyes.

CHAPTER VII.

LUTE CRADLEBOW KISSES THE TEACHER.

Wallencamp had its peculiar seasons. After the season of hulled corn, came the reign of baked beans. It was during this latter dispensation that my courage failed considerably.