the farmer came in from the fields somewhat earlier than usual on this august afternoon. he walked, i remember, with a heavy step and bowed head, and, when he had come into the shade on the porch and taken off his hat, looked about him with a wearied air. the great heat, with its motionless atmosphere and sultry closeness, had well-nigh wilted everybody. but one could see that abner was suffering more than the rest, and from something beyond the enervation of dog-days.
he sank weightily into the arm-chair by the desk, and stretched out his legs with a querulous note in his accustomed grunt of relief. on the moment mrs. beech came in from the kitchen, with the big china wash-bowl filled with cold water, and the towel and clean socks over her arm, and knelt before her husband. she proceeded to pull off his big, dust-baked boots and the woollen foot-gear, put his feet into the bowl, bathe and dry them, and draw on the fresh covering, all without a word.
the ceremony was one i had watched many hundreds of times. mrs. beech was a tall, dark, silent woman, whom i could well believe to have been handsome in her youth. she belonged to one of the old mohawk-dutch families, and when some of her sisters came to visit at the farm i noted that they too were all dusky as squaws, with jet-black shiny curls and eyes like the midnight hawk. i used always to be afraid of them on this account, but i dare say they were in reality most kindly women. mrs. beech herself, represented to my boyish eyes the ideal of a saturnine and masterful queen. she performed great quantities of work with no apparent effort—as if she had merely willed it to be done. her household was governed with a cold impassive exactitude; there were never any hitches, or even high words. the hired girls, of course, called her “m’rye,” as the rest of us mostly did, but they rarely carried familiarity further, and as a rule respected her dislike for much talk. during all the years i spent under her roof i was never clear in my mind as to whether she liked me or not. her own son, even, passed his boyhood in much the same state of dubiety.
but to her husband, abner beech, she was always most affectionately docile and humble. her snapping black eyes followed him about and rested on him with an almost canine fidelity of liking. she spoke to him habitually in a voice quite different from that which others heard addressed to them. this, indeed, was measurably true of us all. by instinct the whole household deferred in tone and manner to our big, bearded chief, as if he were an arab sheik ruling over us in a tent on the desert. the word “patriarch” still seems best to describe him, and his attitude toward us and the world in general, as i recall him sitting there in the half-darkened living-room, with his wife bending over his feet in true oriental submission.
“do you know where jeff is?” the farmer suddenly asked, without turning his head to where i sat braiding a whiplash, but indicating by the volume of voice that his query was put to me.
“he went off about two o’clock,” i replied, “with his fish-pole. they say they are biting like everything down in the creek.”
“well, you keep to work and they won’t bite you,” said abner beech. this was a very old joke with him, and usually the opportunity of using it once more tended to lighten his mood. now, though mere force of habit led him to repeat the pleasantry, he had no pleasure in it. he sat with his head bent, and his huge hairy hands spread listlessly on the chair-arms.
mrs. beech finished her task, and rose, lifting the bowl from the floor. she paused, and looked wistfully into her husband’s face.
“you ain’t a bit well, abner!” she said.
“well as i’m likely ever to be again,” he made answer, gloomily.
“has any more of’em been sayin’ or doin’ anything?” the wife asked, with diffident hesitation.
the farmer spoke with more animation. “d’ye suppose i care a picayune what they say or do?” he demanded. “not i! but when a man’s own kith and kin turn agin him, into the bargain—” he left the sentence unfinished, and shook his head to indicate the impossibility of such a situation.
“has jeff—then—” mrs. beech began to ask.
“yes—jeff!” thundered the farmer, striking his fist on the arm of the chair. “yes—by the eternal!—jeff!”
when abner beech swore by the eternal we knew that things were pretty bad. his wife put the bowl down on a chair, and seated herself in another. “what’s jeff been doin’?” she asked.
“why, where d’ye suppose he was last night, ’n’ the night before that? where d’ye suppose he is this minute? they ain’t no mistake about it, lee watkins saw ’em with his own eyes, and ta’nted me with it. he’s down by the red bridge—that’s where he is—hangin’ round that hagadorn gal!”
mrs. beech looked properly aghast at the intelligence. even to me it was apparent that the unhappy jeff might better have been employed in committing any other crime under the sun. it was only to be expected that his mother would be horrified.
“i never could abide that lee watkins,” was what she said.
the farmer did not comment on the relevancy of this. “yes,” he went on, “the daughter of mine enemy, the child of that whining, backbiting old scoundrel who’s been eating his way into me like a deer-tick for years—the whelp that i owe every mean and miserable thing that’s ever happened to me—yes, of all living human creatures, by the eternal! it’s his daughter that that blamed fool of a jeff must take a shine to, and hang around after!”
“he’ll come of age the fourteenth of next month,” remarked the mother, tentatively.
“yes—and march up and vote the woollyhead ticket. i suppose that’s what’ll come next!” said the farmer, bitterly. “it only needed that!”
“and it was you who got her the job of teachin’ the school, too,” put in mrs. beech.
“that’s nothing to do with it,” abner continued. “i ain’t blamin’ her—that is, on her own account. she’s a good enough gal so far’s i know. but everything and everybody under that tumble-down hagadorn roof ought to be pizen to any son of mine! that’s what i say! and i tell you this, mother”—the farmer rose, and spread his broad chest, towering over the seated woman as he spoke—“i tell you this; if he ain’t got pride enough to keep him away from that house—away from that gal—then he can keep away from this house—away from me!”
the wife looked up at him mutely, then bowed her head in tacit consent.
“he brings it on himself!” abner cried, with clenched fists, beginning to pace up and down the room. “who’s the one man i’ve reason to curse with my dying breath? who began the infernal abolition cackle here? who drove me out of the church? who started that outrageous lie about the milk at the factory, and chased me out of that, too? who’s been a layin’ for years behind every stump and every bush, waitin’ for the chance to stab me in the back, an’ ruin my business, an’ set my neighbors agin me, an’ land me an’ mine in the poorhouse or the lockup? you know as well as i do—‘jee’ hagadorn! if i’d wrung his scrawny little neck for him the first time i ever laid eyes on him, it ’d ’a’ been money in my pocket and years added onto my life. and then my son—my son! must go taggin’ around—oh-h!”
he ended with an inarticulate growl of impatience and wrath.
“mebbe, if you spoke to the boy—” mrs. beech began.
“yes, i’ll speak to him!” the farmer burst forth, with grim emphasis. “i’ll speak to him so’t he’ll hear!” he turned abruptly to me. “here, boy,” he said, “you go down the creek-road an’ look for jeff. if he ain’t loafin’ round the school-house he’ll be in the neighborhood of hagadorn’s. you tell him i say for him to get back here as quick as he can. you needn’t tell him what it’s about. pick up your feet, now!”
as luck would have it, i had scarcely got out to the road before i heard the loose-spoked wheels of the local butcher’s wagon rattling behind me down the hill. looking round, i saw through the accompanying puffs of dust that young “ni” hagadorn was driving, and that he was alone. i stopped and waited for him to come up, questioning my mind whether it would be fair to beg a lift from him, when the purpose of my journey was so hostile to his family. even after he had halted, and i had climbed up to the seat beside him, this consciousness of treachery disturbed me.
but no one thought long of being serious with “ni.” he was along in the teens somewhere, not large for his years but extremely wiry and muscular, and the funniest boy any of us ever knew of. how the son of such a sad-faced, gloomy, old licensed exhorter as “jee” hagadorn could be such a running spring of jokes and odd sayings and general deviltry as “ni,” passed all our understandings. his very face made you laugh, with its wilderness of freckles, its snub nose, and the comical curl to its mouth. he must have been a profitable investment to the butcher who hired him to drive about the country. the farmers’ wives all came out to laugh and chat with him, and under the influence of his good spirits they went on buying the toughest steaks and bull-beef flanks, at more than city prices, year after year. but anybody who thought “ni” was soft because he was full of fun made a great mistake.
“i see you ain’t doin’ much ditchin’ this year,” “ni” remarked, glancing over our fields as he started up the horse. “i should think you’d be tickled to death.”
well, in one sense i was glad. there used to be no other such back-aching work in all the year as that picking up of stones to fill into the trenches which the hired men began digging as soon as the hay and grain were in. but, on the other hand, i knew that the present idleness meant—as everything else now seemed to mean—that the beech farm was going to the dogs.
“no,” i made rueful answer. “our land don’t need drainin’ any more. it’s dry as a powder-horn now.”
“ni” clucked knowingly at the old horse. “guess it’s abner that can’t stand much more drainin’,” he said. “they say he’s looking all round for a mortgage, and can’t raise one.”
“no such thing!” i replied. “his health’s poorly this summer, that’s all. and jeff—he don’t seem to take hold, somehow, like he used to.”
my companion laughed outright. “mustn’t call him jeff any more,” he remarked with a grin. “he was telling us down at the house that he was going to have people call him tom after this. he can’t stand answerin’ to the same name as jeff davis,” he says.
“i suppose you folks put him up to that,” i made bold to comment, indignantly.
the suggestion did not annoy “ni.” “mebbe so,” he said. “you know dad lots a good deal on names. he’s downright mortified that i don’t get up and kill people because my name’s benaiah. ‘why,’ he keeps on saying to me, ‘here you are, benaiah, the son of jehoiada, as it was in holy writ, and instid of preparin’ to make ready to go out and fall on the enemies of righteousness, like your namesake did, all you do is read dime novels and cut up monkey-shines generally, for all the world as if you’d been named pete or steve or william henry.’ that’s what he gives me pretty nearly every day.”
i was familiar enough with the quaint mysticism which the old abolitionist cooper wove around the scriptural names of himself and his son. we understood that these two appellations had alternated among his ancestors as well, and i had often heard him read from samuel and kings and chronicles about them, his stiff red hair standing upright, and the blue veins swelling on his narrow temples with proud excitement. but that, of course, was in the old days, before the trouble came, and when i still went to church. to hear it all now again seemed to give me a novel impression of wild fanaticism in “jee” hagadorn.
his son was chuckling on his seat over something he had just remembered. “last time,” he began, gurgling with laughter—“last time he went for me because i wasn’t measurin’ up to his idee of what a benaiah ought to be like, i up an’ said to him, ‘look a-here now, people who live in glass houses mustn’t heave rocks. if i’m benaiah, you’re jehoiada. well, it says in the bible that jehoiada made a covenant. do you make cove-nants? not a bit of it! all you make is butter firkins, with now an’ then an odd pork barrel.’”
“what did he say to that?” i asked, as my companion’s merriment abated.
“well, i come away just then; i seemed to have business outside,” replied “ni,” still grinning.
we had reached the corners now, and my companion obligingly drew up to let me get down. he called out some merry quip or other as he drove off, framed in a haze of golden dust against the sinking sun, and i stood looking after him with the pleasantest thoughts my mind had known for days. it was almost a shock to remember that he was one of the abhorrent and hated hagadorns.
and his sister, too. it was not at all easy to keep one’s loathing up to the proper pitch where so nice a girl as esther hagadorn was its object.
she was years and years my senior—she was even older than “ni”—and had been my teacher for the past two winters. she had never spoken to me save across that yawning gulf which separates little barefooted urchins from tall young women, with long dresses and their hair done up in a net, and i could hardly be said to know her at all. yet now, perversely enough, i could think of nothing but her manifest superiority to all the farm-girls round about. she had been to a school in some remote city, where she had relations. her hands were fabulously white, and even on the hottest of days her dresses rustled pleasantly with starched primness. people talked about her singing at church as something remarkable; to my mind, the real music was when she just spoke to you, even if it was no more than “good-morning, jimmy!”
i clambered up on the window-sill of the school-house, to make sure there was no one inside, and then set off down the creek-road toward the red or lower bridge. milking-time was about over, and one or two teams passed me on the way to the cheese-factory, the handles of the cans rattling as they went, and the low sun throwing huge shadows of drivers and horses sprawling eastward over the stubble-field. i cut across lots to avoid the cheese-factory itself, with some vague feeling that it was not a fitting spectacle for any one who lived on the beech farm.
a few moments brought me to the bank of the wandering stream below the factory, but so near that i could hear the creaking of the chain drawing up the cans over the tackle, or as we called it, the “teekle;” the willows under which i walked stretched without a break from the clump by the factory bridge. and now, lo and behold! beneath still other of these willows, farther down the stream, whom should i see strolling together but my schoolteacher and the delinquent jeff!
young beech bore still the fish-pole i had seen him take from our shed some hours earlier, but the line twisted round it was very white and dry. he was extremely close to the girl, and kept his head bent down over her as they sauntered along the meadow-path. they seemed not to be talking, but just idly drifting forward like the deep slow water beside them. i had never realized before how tall jeff was. though the school-ma’am always seemed to me of an exceeding stature, here was jeff rounding his shoulders and inclining his neck in order to look under her broad-brimmed leghorn hat.
there could be no imaginable excuse for my not overtaking them. instinct prompted me to start up a whistling tune as i advanced—a casual and indolently unobtrusive tune—at sound of which jeff straightened himself, and gave his companion a little more room on the path. in a moment or two he stopped, and looked intently over the bank into the water, as if he hoped it might turn out to be a likely place for fish. and the school-ma’am, too, after a few aimless steps, halted to help him look.
“abner wants you to come right straight home!” was the form in which my message delivered itself when i had come close up to them.
they both shifted their gaze from the sluggish stream below to me upon the instant. then esther hagadorn looked away, but jeff—good, big, honest jeff, who had been like a fond elder brother to me since i could remember—knitted his brows and regarded me with something like a scowl.
“did pa send you to say that?” he demanded, holding my eye with a glance of such stern inquiry that i could only nod my head in confusion.
“an’ he knew that you’d find me here, did he?”
“he said either at the school-house or around here somewhere,” i admitted, weakly. ‘an’ there ain’t nothin’ the matter at the farm?’
“he don’t want me for nothin’ special?” pursued jeff, still looking me through and through.
“he didn’t say,” i made hesitating answer, but for the life of me, i could not keep from throwing a tell-tale look in the direction of his companion in the blue gingham dress.
a wink could not have told jeff more. he gave a little bitter laugh, and stared above my head at the willow-plumes fora minute’s meditation. then he tossed his fish-pole over to me and laughed again.
“keep that for yourself, if you want it,” he said, in a voice not quite his own, but robustly enough. “i sha’n’t need it any more. tell pa i ain’t a-comin’!”
“oh, tom!” esther broke in, anxiously, “would you do that?”
he held up his hand with a quiet, masterful gesture, as if she were the pupil and he the teacher. “tell him,” he went on, the tone falling now strong and true, “tell him and ma that i’m goin’ to tecumseh to-night to enlist. if they’re willin’ to say good-by, they can let me know there, and i’ll manage to slip back for the day. if they ain’t willin’—why, they—they needn’t send word; that’s all.”
esther had come up to him, and held his arm now in hers.
“you’re wrong to leave them like that!” she pleaded, earnestly, but jeff shook his head.
“you don’t know him!” was all he said.
in another minute i had shaken hands with jeff, and had started on my homeward way, with his parting “good-by, youngster!” benumbing my ears. when, after a while, i turned to look back, they were still standing where i had left them, gazing over the bank into the water.
then, as i trudged onward once more, i began to quake at the thought of how farmer beech would take the news.
