第33章

The love of labour was counted a great virtue there in Faraway. As for myself I could never put my heart in a hoe handle or in any like tool of toil. They made a blister upon my spirit as well as upon my hands. I tried to find in the sweat of my brow that exalted pleasure of which Mr Greeley had visions in his comfortable retreat on Printing House Square. But unfortunately I had not his point of view.

Hanging in my library, where I may see it as I write, is the old sickle of Uncle Eb. The hard hickory of its handle is worn thin by the grip of his hand. It becomes a melancholy symbol when I remember how also the hickory had worn him thin and bent him low, and how infinitely better than all the harvesting of the sickle was the strength of that man, diminishing as it wore the wood. I cannot help smiling when I look at the sickle and thank of the soft hands and tender amplitude of Mr Greeley.

The great editor had been a playmate of David Brower when they were boys, and his paper was read with much reverence in our home.

'How quick ye can plough a ten-acre lot with a pen,' Uncle Eb used to say when we had gone up to bed after father had been reading aloud from his Tribune.

Such was the power of the press in that country one had but to say of any doubtful thing, 'Seen it in print,' to stop all argument. If there were any further doubt he had only to say that he had read it either in the Tribune or the Bible, and couldn't remember which.

Then it was a mere question of veracity in the speaker. Books and other reading were carefully put away for an improbable time of leisure.

'I might break my leg sometime,' said David Brower, 'then they'll come handy.' But the Tribune was read carefully every week.

I have seen David Brower stop and look at me while I have been digging potatoes, with a sober grin such as came to him always after he had swapped 'hosses' and got the worst of it. Then he would show me again, with a little impatience in his manner, how to hold the handle and straddle the row. He would watch me for a moment, turn to Uncle Eb, laugh hopelessly and say: 'Thet boy'll hev to be a minister. He can't work.'

But for Elizabeth Brower it might have gone hard with me those days. My mind was always on my books or my last talk with Jed Feary, and she shared my confidence and fed my hopes and shielded me as much as possible from the heavy work. Hope had a better head for mathematics than I, and had always helped me with my sums, but I had a better memory and an aptitude in other things that kept me at the head of most of my classes. Best of all at school I enjoyed the 'compositions' - I had many thoughts, such as they were, and some facility of expression, I doubt not, for a child.

Many chronicles of the countryside came off my pen - sketches of odd events and characters there in Faraway. These were read to the assembled household. Elizabeth Brower would sit looking gravely down at me, as I stood by her knees reading, in those days of my early boyhood. Uncle Eb listened with his head turned curiously, as if his ear were cocked for coons. Sometimes he and David Brower would slap their knees and laugh heartily, whereat my foster mother would give them a quick glance and shake her head.

For she was always fearful of the day when she should see in her children the birth of vanity, and sought to put it off as far as might be. Sometimes she would cover her mouth to hide a smile, and, when I had finished, look warningly at the rest, and say it was good, for a little boy. Her praise never went further, and indeed all those people hated flattery as they did the devil and frowned upon conceit She said that when the love of flattery got hold of one he would lie to gain it I can see this slender, blue-eyed woman as I write. She is walking up and down beside her spinning-wheel. I can hear the dreary buz-z-z-z of the spindle as she feeds it with the fleecy ropes. That loud crescendo echoes in the still house of memory. I can hear her singing as she steps forward and slows the wheel and swings the cradle with her foot:

'On the other side of Jordan, In the sweet fields of Eden, Where the tree of Life is blooming, There is rest for you.

She lays her hand to the spokes again and the roar of the spindle drowns her voice.

All day, from the breakfast hour to supper time, I have heard the dismal sound of the spirmng as she walked the floor, content to sing of rest but never taking it.

Her home was almost a miracle of neatness. She could work with no peace of mind until the house had been swept and dusted. A fly speck on the window was enough to cloud her day. She went to town with David now and then - not oftener than once a quarter - and came back ill and exhausted. If she sat in a store waiting for David, while he went to mill or smithy, her imagination gave her no rest. That dirt abhorring mind of hers would begin to clean the windows, and when that was finished it would sweep the floor and dust the counters. In due course it would lower the big chandelier and take out all the lamps and wash the chimneys with soap and water and rub them till they shone. Then, if David had not come, it would put in the rest of its time on the woodwork. With all her cleaning I am sure the good woman kept her soul spotless.

Elizabeth Brower believed in goodness and the love of God, and knew no fear. Uncle Eb used to say that wherever Elizabeth Brower went hereafter it would have to be clean and comfortable.

Elder Whitmarsh came often to dinner of a Sunday, when he and Mrs Brower talked volubly about the Scriptures, he taking a sterner view of God than she would allow. He was an Englishman by birth, who had settled in Faraway because there he had found relief for a serious affliction of asthma.

He came over one noon in the early summer, that followed the event of our last chapter, to tell us of a strawberry party that evening at the White Church.

'I've had a wonderful experience,' said he as he took a seat on the piazza, while Mrs Brower came and sat near him. 'I've discovered a great genius - a wandering fiddler, and I shall try to bring him to play for us.'

'A fiddler! why, Elder!' said she, 'you astonish me!'