Glengarry Schooldays

R >> Ralph Connor >> Glengarry Schooldays


"Stop, now, Hughie," she entreated. "You will be setting the house on
fire."

Hughie hesitated a moment, and then turned from her, and going into his
room, banged the door in her face, and Jessie, not knowing what to make
of it all, went slowly downstairs again, forgetting once more Robbie's
stockings.

"The old cat!" said Hughie to himself. "She just stopped me. I was going
to put it back."

The memory that he had resolved to undo his wrong brought him a curious
sense of relief.

"I was just going to put it back," he said, "when she had to interfere."

He was conscious of a sense of injury against Jessie. It was not his
fault that that money was not now in the drawer.

"I'll put it back in the morning, anyhow," he said, firmly. But even as
he spoke he was conscious of an infinality in his determination, while
he refused to acknowledge to himself a secret purpose to leave the
question open till the morning. But this determination, inconclusive
though it was, brought him a certain calm of mind, so that when his
mother came into his room she found him sound asleep.

She stood beside his bed looking down upon him for a few moments, with
face full of anxious sadness.

"There's something wrong with the boy," she said to herself, stooping to
kiss him. "There's something wrong with him," she repeated, as she left
the room. "He's not the same."

During these weeks she had been conscious that Hughie had changed in
some way to her. The old, full, frank confidence was gone. There was
a constraint in his manner she could not explain. "He is no longer
a child," she would say to herself, seeking to allay the pain in her
heart. "A boy must have his secrets. It is foolish in me to think
anything else. Besides, he is not well. He is growing too fast." And
indeed, Hughie's pale, miserable face gave ground enough for this
opinion.

"That boy is not well," she said to her husband.

"Which boy?"

"Hughie," she replied. "He is looking miserable, and somehow he is
different."

"Oh, nonsense! He eats well enough, and sleeps well enough," said her
husband, making light of her fears.

"There's something wrong," repeated his wife. "And he hates his school."

"Well, I don't wonder at that," said her husband, sharply. "I don't see
how any boy of spirit could take much pleasure in that kind of a school.
The boys are just wasting their time, and worse than that, they have
lost all the old spirit. I must see to it that the policy of those
close-fisted trustees is changed. I am not going to put up with those
chits of girls teaching any longer."

"There may be something in what you say," said his wife, sadly, "but
certainly Hughie is always begging to stay at home from school."

"And indeed, he might as well stay home," answered her husband, "for all
the good he gets."

"I do wish we had a good man in charge," replied his wife, with a great
sigh. "It is very important that these boys should have a good, strong
man over them. How much it means to a boy at Hughie's time of life! But
so few are willing to come away into the backwoods here for so small a
salary."

Suddenly her husband laid down his pipe.

"I have it!" he exclaimed. "The very thing! Wouldn't this be the very
thing for young Craven. You remember, the young man that Professor
MacLauchlan was writing about."

His wife shook her head very decidedly.

"Not at all," she said. "Didn't Professor MacLauchlan say he was
dissipated?"

"O, just a little wild. Got going with some loose companions. Out here
there would be no temptation."

"I am not at all sure of that," said his wife, "and I would not like
Hughie to be under his influence."

"MacLauchlan says he is a young man of fine disposition and of fine
parts," argued her husband, "and if temptation were removed from him he
believes he would turn out a good man."

Mrs. Murray shook her head doubtfully. "He is not the man to put Hughie
under just now."

"What are we to do with Hughie?" replied her husband. "He is getting no
good in the school as it is, and we cannot send him away yet."

"Send him away!" exclaimed his wife. "No, no, not a child like that."

"Craven might be a very good man," continued her husband. "He might
perhaps live with us. I know you have more than enough to do now," he
added, answering her look of dismay, "but he would be a great help to
Hughie with his lessons, and might start him in his classics. And then,
who knows what you might make of the young man."

Mrs. Murray did not respond to her husband's smile, but only replied,
"I am sure I wish I knew what is the matter with the boy, and I wish he
could leave school for a while."

"O, the boy is all right," said her husband, impatiently. "Only a little
less noisy, as far as I can see."

"No, he is not the same," replied his wife. "He is different to me."
There was almost a cry of pain in her voice.

"Now, now, don't imagine things. Boys are full of notions at Hughie's
age. He may need a change, but that is all."

With this the mother tried to quiet the tumult of anxious fear and pain
she found rising in her heart, but long after the house was still, and
while both her boy and his father lay asleep, she kept pouring forth
that ancient sacrifice of self-effacing love before the feet of God.



CHAPTER IX

HUGHIE'S EMANCIPATION


Hughie rose late next morning, and the hurry and rush of getting off to
school in time left him no opportunity to get rid of the little packages
in his pocket, that seemed to burn and sting him through his clothes. He
determined to keep them safe in his pocket all day and put them back in
the drawer at night. His mother's face, white with her long watching,
and sad and anxious in spite of its brave smile, filled him with such
an agony of remorse that, hurrying through his breakfast, he snatched a
farewell kiss, and then tore away down the lane lest he should be forced
to confess all his terrible secret.

The first person who met him in the school-yard was Foxy.

"Have you got that?" was his salutation.

A sudden fury possessed Hughie.

"Yes, you red-headed, sneaking fox," he answered, "and I hope it will
bring you the curse of luck, anyway."

Foxy hurried him cautiously behind the school, with difficulty
concealing his delight while Hughie unrolled his little bundles and
counted out the quarters and dimes and half dimes into his hand.

"There's a dollar, and there's a quarter, and--and--there's another," he
added, desperately, "and God may kill me on the spot if I give you any
more!"

"All right, Hughie," said Foxy, soothingly, putting the money into his
pocket. "You needn't be so mad about it. You bought the pistol and the
rest right enough, didn't you?"

"I know I did, but--but you made me, you big, sneaking thief--and then
you--" Hughie's voice broke in his rage. His face was pale, and his
black eyes were glittering with fierce fury, and in his heart he was
conscious of a wild longing to fall upon Foxy and tear him to pieces.
And Foxy, big and tall as he was, glanced at Hughie's face, and saying
not a word, turned and fled to the front of the school where the other
boys were.

Hughie followed slowly, his heart still swelling with furious rage, and
full of an eager desire to be at Foxy's smiling, fat face.

At the school door stood Miss Morrison, the teacher, smiling down
upon Foxy, who was looking up at her with an expression of such sweet
innocence that Hughie groaned out between his clenched teeth, "Oh, you
red-headed devil, you! Some day I'll make you smile out of the other
side of your big, fat mouth."

"Who are you swearing at?" It was Fusie.

"Oh, Fusie," cried Hughie, "let's get Davie and get into the woods. I'm
not going in to-day. I hate the beastly place, and the whole gang of
them."

Fusie, the little, harum-scarum French waif was ready for anything in
the way of adventure. To him anything was better than the even monotony
of the school routine. True, it might mean a whipping both from the
teacher and from Mrs. McLeod; but as to the teacher's whipping, Fusie
was prepared to stand that for a free day in the woods, and as to the
other, Fusie declared that Mrs. McLeod's whipping "wouldn't hurt a
skeeter."

To Davie Scotch, however, playing truant was a serious matter. He had
been reared in an atmosphere of reverence for established law and order,
but when Hughie gave command, to Davie there seemed nothing for it but
to obey.

The three boys watched till the school was called, and then crawling
along on their stomachs behind the heavy cedar-log fence, they slipped
into the balsam thicket at the edge of the woods and were safe. Here
they flung down their schoolbags, and lying prone upon the fragrant bed
of pine-needles strewn thickly upon the moss, they peered out through
the balsam boughs at the house of their bondage with an exultant sense
of freedom and a feeling of pity, if not of contempt, for the unhappy
and spiritless creatures who were content to be penned inside any house
on such a day as this, and with such a world outside.

For some minutes they rolled about upon the soft moss and balsam-needles
and the brown leaves of last year, till their hearts were running over
with a deep and satisfying delight. It is hard to resist the ministry of
the woods. The sympathetic silence of the trees, the aromatic airs
that breathe through the shady spaces, the soft mingling of broken
lights--these all combine to lay upon the spirit a soothing balm, and
bring to the heart peace. And Hughie, sensitive at every pore to that
soothing ministry, before long forgot for a time even Foxy, with his
fat, white face and smiling mouth, and lying on the broad of his back,
and looking up at the far-away blue sky through the interlacing branches
and leaves, he began to feel again that it was good to be alive, and
that with all his misery there were compensations.

But any lengthened period of peaceful calm is not for boys of the age
and spirit of Hughie and his companions.

"What are you going to do?" asked Fusie, the man of adventure.

"Do nothing," said Hughie from his supine position. "This is good enough
for me."

"Not me," said Fusie, starting to climb a tall, lithe birch, while
Hughie lazily watched him. Soon Fusie was at the top of the birch, which
began to sway dangerously.

"Try to fly into that balsam," cried Hughie.

"No, sir!"

"Yes, go on."

"Can't do it."

"Oh, pshaw! you can."

"No, nor you either. That's a mighty big jump."

"Come on down, then, and let me try," said Hughie, in scorn. His
laziness was gone in the presence of a possible achievement.

In a few minutes he had taken Fusie's place a the top of the swaying
birch. It did not look so easy from the top of the birch as from the
ground to swing into the balsam-tree. However, he could not go back now.

"Dinna try it, Hughie!" cried Davie to him. "Ye'll no mak it, and ye'll
come an awfu' cropper, as sure as deith." But Hughie, swaying gently
back and forth, was measuring the distance of his drop. It was not
a feat so very difficult, but it called for good judgment and steady
nerve. A moment too soon or a moment too late in letting go, would mean
a nasty fall of twenty feet or more upon the solid ground, and one never
knew just how one would light.

"I wudna dae it, Hughie," urged Davie, anxiously.

But Hughie, swaying high in the birch, heeded not the warning, and
suddenly swinging out from the slender trunk and holding by his hands,
he described a parabola, and releasing the birch dropped on to the
balsam top. But balsam-trees are of uncertain fiber, and not to be
relied upon, and this particular balsam, breaking off short in Hughie's
hands, allowed him to go crashing through the branches to the earth.

"Man! man!" cried Davie Scotch, bending over Hughie as he lay white
and still upon the ground. "Are ye deid? Maircy me! he's deid," sobbed
Davie, wringing his hands. "Fusie, Fusie, ye gowk! where are ye gone?"

In a moment or two Fusie reappeared through the branches with a capful
of water, and dashed it into Hughie's face, with the result that the lad
opened his eyes, and after a gasp or two, sat up and looked about him.

"Och, laddie, laddie, are ye no deid?" said Davie Scotch.

"What's the matter with you, Scottie?" asked Hughie, with a bewildered
look about him. "And who's been throwing water all over me?" he added,
wrathfully, as full consciousness returned.

"Man! I'm glad to see ye mad. Gang on wi' ye," shouted Davie, joyously.
"Ye were deid the noo. Ay, clean deid. Was he no, Fusie?" Fusie nodded.

"I guess not," said Hughie. "It was that rotten balsam top," looking
vengefully at the broken tree.

"Lie doon, man," said Davie, still anxiously hovering about him. "Dinna
rise yet awhile."

"Oh, pshaw!" said Hughie, and he struggled to his feet; "I'm all right."
But as he spoke he sank down upon the moss, saying, "I feel kind of
queer, though."

"Lie still, then, will ye," said Davie, angrily. "Ye're fair obstinate."

"Get me some water, Fusie," said Hughie, rather weakly.

"Run, Fusie, ye gomeril, ye!"

In a minute Fusie was back with a capful of water.

"That's better. I'm all right now," said Hughie, sitting up.

"Hear him!" said Davie. "Lie ye doon there, or I'll gie ye a crack
that'll mak ye glad tae keep still."

For half an hour the boys lay on the moss discussing the accident fully
in all its varying aspects and possibilities, till the sound of wheels
came up the road.

"Who's that, Fusie?" asked Hughie, lazily.

"Dunno me," said Fusie, peering through the trees.

"Do you, Scotty?"

"No, not I."

Hughie crawled over to the edge of the brush.

"Why, you idiots! it's Thomas Finch. Thomas!" he called, but Thomas
drove straight on. In a moment Hughie sprang up, forgetting all about
his weakness, and ran out to the roadside.

"Hello, Thomas!" he cried, waving his hand. Thomas saw him, stopped, and
looked at him, doubtfully. He, with all the Section, knew how the school
was going, and he easily guessed what took Hughie there.

"I'm not going to school to-day," said Hughie, answering Thomas's look.

Thomas nodded, and sat silent, waiting. He was not a man to waste his
words.

"I hate the whole thing!" exclaimed Hughie.

"Foxy, eh?" said Thomas, to whom on other occasions Hughie had confided
his grievances, and especially those he suffered at the hands of Foxy.

"Yes, Foxy," cried Hughie, in a sudden rage. "He's a fat-faced sneak!
And the teacher just makes me sick!"

Thomas still waited.

"She just smiles and smiles at him, and he smiles at her. Ugh! I can't
stand him."

"Not much harm in smiling," said Thomas, solemnly.

"Oh, Thomas, I hate the school. I'm not going to go any more."

Thomas looked gravely down upon Hughie's passionate face for a few
moments, and then said, "You will do what your mother wants you, I
guess."

Hughie said nothing in reply, while Thomas sat pondering.

Finally he said, with a sudden inspiration, "Hughie, come along with me,
and help me with the potatoes."

"They won't let me," grumbled Hughie. "At least father won't. I don't
like to ask mother."

Thomas's eyes opened in surprise. This was a new thing in Hughie.

"I'll ask your mother," he said, at length. "Get in with me here."

Still Hughie hesitated. To get away from school was joy enough, to go
with Thomas to the potato planting was more than could be hoped for. But
still he stood making pictures in the dust with his bare toes.

"There's Fusie," he said, "and Davie Scotch."

"Well," said Thomas, catching sight of those worthies through the trees,
"let them come, too."

Fusie was promptly willing, but Davie was doubtful. He certainly would
not go to the manse, where he might meet the minister, and meeting the
minister's wife under the present circumstances was a little worse.

"Well, you can wait at the gate with Fusie," suggested Hughie, and so
the matter was settled.

Fortunately for Hughie, his father was not at home. But not Thomas's
earnest entreaties nor Hughie's eager pleading would have availed with
the mother, for attendance at school was a sacred duty in her eyes, had
it not been that her boy's face, paler than usual, and with the dawning
of a new defiance in it, startled her, and confirmed in her the fear
that all was not well with him.

"Well, Thomas, he may go with you to the Cameron's for the potatoes, but
as to going with you to the planting, that is another thing. Your mother
is not fit to be troubled with another boy, and especially a boy like
Hughie. And how is she to-day, Thomas?" continued Mrs. Murray, as Thomas
stood in dull silence before her.

"She's better," said Thomas, answering more quickly than usual, and with
a certain eagerness in his voice. "She's a great deal better, and Hughie
will do her no harm, but good."

Mrs. Murray looked at Thomas as he spoke, wondering at the change in his
voice and manner. The heavy, stolid face had changed since she had last
seen it. It was finer, keener, than before. The eyes, so often dull,
were lighted up with a new, strange fire.

"She's much better," said Thomas again, as if insisting against Mrs.
Murray's unbelief.

"I am glad to hear it, Thomas," she said, gently. "She will soon
be quite well again, I hope, for she has had a long, long time of
suffering."

"Yes, a long, long time," replied Thomas. His face was pale, and in his
eyes was a look of pain, almost of fear.

"And you will come to see her soon?" he added. There was almost a
piteous entreaty in his tone.

"Yes, Thomas, surely next week. And meantime, I shall let Hughie go with
you."

A look of such utter devotion poured itself into Thomas's eyes that
Mrs. Murray was greatly moved, and putting her hand on his shoulder,
she said, gently, "'He will give His angels charge.' Don't be afraid,
Thomas."

"Afraid!" said Thomas, with a kind of gasp, his face going white.
"Afraid! No. Why?" But Mrs. Murray turned from him to hide the tears
that she could not keep out of her eyes, for she knew what was before
Thomas and them all.

Meantime Hughie was busy putting into his little carpet-bag what he
considered the necessary equipment for his visit.

"You must wear your shoes, Hughie."

"Oh, mother, shoes are such an awful bother planting potatoes. They get
full of ground and everything."

"Well, put them in your bag, at any rate, and your stockings, too. You
may need them."

By degrees Hughie's very moderate necessities were satisfied, and with a
hurried farewell to his mother he went off with Thomas. At the gate they
picked up Fusie and Davie Scotch, and went off to the Cameron's for the
seed potatoes, Hughie's heart lighter than it had been for many a day.
And all through the afternoon, and as he drove home with Thomas on
the loaded bags, his heart kept singing back to the birds in the trees
overhead.

It was late in the afternoon when they drove into the yard, for the
roads were still bad in the swamp, where the corduroy had been broken up
by the spring floods.

Thomas hurried through unhitching, and without waiting to unharness
he stood the horses in their stalls, saying, "We may need them this
afternoon again," and took Hughie off to the house straight-way.

The usual beautiful order pervaded the house and its surroundings.
The back yard, through which the boys came from the barn, was free
of litter; the chips were raked into neat little piles close to the
wood-pile, for summer use. On a bench beside the "stoop" door was a row
of milk-pans, lapping each other like scales on a fish, glittering
in the sun. The large summer kitchen, with its spotless floor and
white-washed walls, stood with both its doors open to the sweet air that
came in from the fields above, and was as pleasant a room to look
in upon as one could desire. On the sill of the open window stood
a sweet-scented geranium and a tall fuschia with white and crimson
blossoms hanging in clusters. Bunches of wild flowers stood on the
table, on the dresser, and up beside the clock, and the whole room
breathed of sweet scents of fields and flowers, and "the name of the
chamber was peace."

Beside the open window sat the little mother in an arm-chair, the
embodiment of all the peaceful beauty and sweet fragrance of the room.

"Well, mother," said Thomas, crossing the floor to her and laying his
hand upon her shoulder, "have I been long away? I have brought Hughie
back with me, you see."

"Not so very long, Thomas," said the mother, her dark face lighting with
a look of love as she glanced up at her big son. "And I am glad to see
Hughie. He will excuse me from rising," she added, with fine courtesy.

Hughie hurried toward her.

"Yes, indeed, Mrs. Finch. Don't think of rising." But he could get no
further. Boy as he was, and at the age when boys are most heartless and
regardless, he found it hard to keep his lip and his voice steady and to
swallow the lump in his throat, and in spite of all he could do his eyes
were filling up with tears as he looked into the little woman's face, so
worn and weary, so pathetically bright.

It was months since he had seen her, and during these months a great
change had come to her and to the Finch household. After suffering long
in secret, the mother had been forced to confess to a severe pain in
her breast and under her arm. Upon examination the doctor pronounced the
case to be malignant cancer, and there was nothing for it but removal.
It was what Dr. Grant called "a very beautiful operation, indeed," and
now she was recovering her strength, but only slowly, so slowly that
Thomas at times found his heart sink with a vague fear. But it was not
the pain of the wound that had wrought that sweet, pathetic look into
the little woman's face, but the deeper pain she carried in her heart
for those she loved better than herself.

The mother's sickness brought many changes into the household, but the
most striking of all the changes was that wrought in the slow and
stolid Thomas. The father and Billy Jack were busy with the farm matters
outside, upon little Jessac, now a girl of twelve years, fell the care
of the house, but it was Thomas that, with the assistance of a neighbor
at first, but afterwards alone, waited on his mother, dressing the wound
and nursing her. These weeks of watching and nursing had wrought in him
the subtle change that stirred Mrs. Murray's heart as she looked at him
that day, and that made even Hughie wonder. For one thing his tongue
was loosed, and Thomas talked to his mother of all that he had seen and
heard on the way to the Cameron's and back, making much of his little
visit to the manse, and of Mrs. Murray's kindness, and enlarging upon
her promised visit, and all with such brightness and picturesqueness
of speech that Hughie listened amazed. For all the years he had known
Thomas he had never heard from his lips so many words as in the last few
minutes of talk with his mother. Then, too, Thomas seemed to have found
his fingers, for no woman could have arranged more deftly and with
gentler touch the cushions at his mother's back, and no nurse could have
measured out the medicine and prepared her egg-nog with greater skill.
Hughie could hardly believe his eyes and ears. Was this Thomas the
stolid, the clumsy, the heavy-handed, this big fellow with the quick
tongue and the clever, gentle hand?

Meantime Jessac had set upon the table a large pitcher of rich milk,
with oat cakes and butter, and honey in the comb.

"Now, Hughie, lad, draw in and help yourself. You and Thomas will be
too hungry to wait for supper," said the mother. And Hughie, protesting
politely that he was not very hungry, proceeded to establish the
contrary, to the great satisfaction of himself and the others.

"Now, Thomas," said the mother, "we had better cut the seed."

"Indeed, and not a seed will you cut, mother," said Thomas,
emphatically. "You may boss the job, though. I'll bring the potatoes to
the back door." And this he did, thinking it no trouble to hitch up the
team to draw the wagon into the back yard so that his mother might have
a part in the cutting of the seed potatoes, as she had had every year of
her life on the farm.

Very carefully, and in spite of her protests that she could walk quite
well, Thomas carried his mother out to her chair in the shade of the
house, arranging with tender solicitude the pillows at her back and the
rug at her feet. Then they set to work at the potatoes.

"Mind you have two eyes in every seed, Hughie," said Jessac, severely.

"Huh! I know. I've cut them often enough," replied Hughie, scornfully.

"Well, look at that one, now," said Jessac, picking up a seed that
Hughie had let fall; "that's only got one eye."

"There's two," said Hughie, triumphantly.

"That's not an eye," said Jessac, pointing to a mark on the potato;
"that's where the top grew out of, isn't it, mother?"

"It is, isn't it?" appealed Hughie.

Mrs. Finch took the seed and looked at it.

"Well, there's one very good eye, and that will do."

"But isn't that the mark of the top, mother?" insisted Jessac. But the
mother only shook her head at her.

"That's right, Jessac," said Thomas, driving off with his team; "you
look after Hughie, and mother will look after you both till I get back,
and there'll be a grand crop this year."