The Light in the Clearing Part 24

Then laugh, if ye can an' do it quickly, lad, an' she will pa.s.s on."

The last words were spoken in a whisper, with one hand on my breast.

He tuned the strings and played the _Fisher's Hornpipe_. What a romp of merry music filled the house! I had never heard the like and was soon smiling at him as he played. His bow and fingers flew in the wild frolic of the Devil's Dream. It led me out of my sadness into a world all new to me.

"Now, G.o.d bless your soul, boy!" he exclaimed, by and by, as he put down his instrument. "We shall have a good time together--that we will. Not a stroke o' work this day! Come, I have a guide here that will take us down to the land o' the fairies."

Then with his microscope he showed me into the wonder world of littleness of which I had had no knowledge.

"The microscope is like the art o' the teacher," he said. "I've known a good teacher to take a brain no bigger than a fly's foot an' make it visible to the naked eye."

One of the children, of which there were four in the Hacket home, called us to supper. Mrs. Hacket, a stout woman with a red and kindly face, sat at one end of the table, and between them were the children--Mary, a pretty daughter of seventeen years; Maggie, a six-year-old; Ruth, a delicate girl of seven, and John, a noisy, red-faced boy of five. The chairs were of plain wood--like the kitchen chairs of to-day. In the middle of the table was an empty one--painted green. Before he sat down Mr. Hacket put his hand on the back of this chair and said:

"A merry heart to you, Michael Henry."

I wondered at the meaning of this, but dared not to ask. The oldest daughter acted as a kind of moderator with the others.

"Mary is the constable of this house, with power to arrest and hale into court for undue haste or rebellion or impoliteness," Mr. Hacket explained.

"I believe that Sally Dunkelberg is your friend," he said to me presently.

"Yes, sir," I answered.

"A fine slip of a girl that and a born scholar. I saw you look at her as the Persian looks at the rising sun."

I blushed and Mary and her mother and the boy John looked at me and laughed.

"_Puer pulcherrime!_" Mr. Hacket exclaimed with a kindly smile.

Uncle Peabody would have called it a "stout snag." The schoolmaster had hauled it out of his brain very deftly and chucked it down before me in a kind of challenge.

"What does that mean?" I asked.

"You shall know in a week, my son," he answered. "I shall put you into the Latin cla.s.s Wednesday morning, and G.o.d help you to like it as well as you like Sally."

Again they laughed and again I blushed.

"Hold up yer head, my brave lad," he went on. "Ye've a perfect right to like Sally if ye've a heart to."

He sang a rollicking ballad of which I remember only the refrain:

_A lad in his teens will never know beans if he hasn't an eye for the girls_.

It was a merry supper, and when it ended Mr. Hacket rose and took the green chair from the table, exclaiming:

"Michael Henry, G.o.d bless you!"

Then he kissed his wife and said:

"Maggie, you wild rose of Erin! I've been all day in the study. I must take a walk or I shall get an exalted abdomen. One is badly beaten in the race o' life when his abdomen gets ahead of his toes. Children, keep our young friend happy here until I come back, and mind you, don't forget the good fellow in the green chair."

Mary helped her mother with the dishes, while I sat with a book by the fireside. Soon Mrs. Hacket and the children came and sat down with me.

"Let's play backgammon," Mary proposed.

"I don't want to," said John.

"Don't forget Michael Henry," she reminded.

"Who is Michael Henry?" I asked.

"Sure, he's the boy that has never been born," said Mrs. Hacket. "He was to be the biggest and n.o.blest one o' them--kind an' helpful an' cheery hearted an' beloved o' G.o.d above all the others. We try to live up to him."

He seemed to me a very strange and wonderful creature--this invisible occupant of the green chair.

I know now what I knew not then that Michael Henry was the spirit of their home--an ideal of which the empty green chair was a constant reminder.

We played backgammon and Old Maid and Everlasting until Mr. Hacket returned.

He sat down and read aloud from the _Letters of an Englishwoman in America_.

"Do you want to know what sleighing is?" she wrote. "Set your chair out on the porch on a Christmas day. Put your feet in a pail-full of powdered ice. Have somebody jingle a bell in one ear and blow into the other with a bellows and you will have an exact idea of it."

When she told of a lady who had been horned by a large insect known as a snapdragon, he laughed loudly and closed the book and said:

"They have found a new peril of American life. It is the gory horn of the snapdragon. Added to our genius for boastfulness and impiety, it is a crowning defect. Ye would think that our chief aim was the cuspidor.

Showers of expectoration and thunder claps o' profanity and braggart gales o' Yankee dialect!--that's the moral weather report that she sends back to England. We have faults enough, G.o.d knows, but we have something else away beneath them an' none o' these writers has discovered it."

The sealed envelope which Mr. Wright had left at our home, a long time before that day, was in my pocket. At last the hour had come when. I could open it and read the message of which I had thought much and with a growing interest.

I rose and said that I should like to go to my room. Mr. Hacket lighted a candle and took me up-stairs to a little room where my chest had been deposited. There were, in the room, a bed, a chair, a portrait of Napoleon Bonaparte and a small table on which were a dictionary, a Bible and a number of school books.

"These were Mary's books," said Mr. Hacket. "I told yer uncle that ye could use them an' welcome. There's another book here which ye may study if ye think it worth the bother. It's a worn an' tiresome book, my lad, but I pray G.o.d ye may find no harm in it. Use it as often as ye will. It is the book o' my heart. Ye will find in it some kind o' answer to every query in the endless flight o' them that's coming on, an' may the good G.o.d help us to the truth."

He turned and bade me good night and went away and closed the door.

I sat down and opened the sealed envelope with trembling hands, and found in it this brief note:

"DEAR PARTNER: I want you to ask the wisest man you know to explain these words to you. I suggest that you commit them to memory and think often of their meaning. They are from Job:

"'His bones are full of the sin of his youth, which shall lie down with him in the dust.'

"I believe that they are the most impressive in all the literature I have read.

"Yours truly, SILAS WRIGHT, JR."

I read the words over and over again, but knew not their meaning. Sadly and slowly I got ready for bed. I missed the s.h.i.+ngles and the familiar rustle of the popple leaves above my head and the brooding silence of the hills. The noises of the village challenged my ear after I had put out my candle. There were many barking dogs. Some hors.e.m.e.n pa.s.sed, with a creaking of saddle leather, followed by a wagon. Soon I heard running feet and eager voices. I rose and looked out of the open window. Men were hurrying down the street with lanterns.

"He's the son o' Ben Grimshaw," I heard one of them saying. "They caught him back in the south woods yesterday. The sheriff said that he tried to run away when he saw 'em coming."