Rulers of kings : a novel

Front matter

CORNELL

UNIVERSITY

LIBRARY

II

Mr. Abbott sat in the rocking-chair by the hot stove regarding his son with his dreamy far-seeing eyes. For the first time Fessenden wondered who and what his father was. This man was like no one in the books he had read, like no one in the Adirondacks. He was a boy of direct methods, and was about to ask for information when his father spoke.

"I am more gratified at your physical development than you will ever know, my son," said Mr. Abbott, tenderly. "When I brought you here you were fragile and undersized; it was thought that your chance of becoming a strong man, or of reaching manhood at all, was perhaps two in ten. But I knew the magic of the mountains; I made my experiment, and I have succeeded. There are other things I wish to say to you, however, so sit down and listen attentively."

Fessenden, in a glow of expectation, fell upon a corner of the sofa, and Mr. Abbott continued.

" Originally I planned to speak to you decisively when you were thirteen or fourteen, but it seems to me that you are brighter than most boys of your age ; I think I cannot begin too soon to prepare you for the future. Some boys are taught to say their prayers. I presume you have been taught to say yours by our good Mrs.

Nettlebeck, and I am sure I hope you say them; but I want you to repeat, every Saturday night before you lie down, these words I am going to teach to you; if you forget them, to rise in the coldest and darkest night, stand in the middle of the room, and repeat them twice. The words are these — write them down : ' Life is a fight. Millions fail. Only the strong win. Failure is worse than death. Man's internal strength is created by watching Circumstance like a hawk, meeting her every spring stiff and straight, laughing at her pitfalls — which in the beginning of life are excess, excess, and always excess, and all manner of dishonor. Strength is created by adversity, by trying to win first the small battles of life, then the great, by casting out fear, by training the mind to rule in all things — the heart, the passions, the impulses, which if indulged make the brain the slave instead of the master. Success, for which alone a man lives, if he be honest with himself, comes to those who are strong, strong, strong.' When you have finished that I want you to repeat ' No ' aloud for ten minutes. The time will come when you will rejoice that ' No ' flies, instead of moving reluctantly, to your tongue. As for that prayer I have given you, you may not understand it all now, but you will as you grow older, better and better; you will analyze and ponder upon it. Life is choked and gasping with young men trying to get a decent living, with thousands besides struggling for a career, reputation. I shall do my best to educate you, but I want you to grow up with the distinct understanding that you must support yourself when that preparatory period is over. I may be able to help you to some sort of a position, but I may be dead — and I must do what I can for your sister — "

"My what?" shouted Fessenden. "You never told me I had a sister!"

" Did I not ? I should have thought I must have mentioned it. She was born when your mother died, and her name is Alexandra. Do not interrupt me again, and listen attentively. I wish you, as I have just said, to grow up with the clearly defined idea that you must make your own way in the world, make every dollar you spend, owe your position, and the respect you may be able to inspire, to your personality — to the dignity of your character and the brilliancy of your mind. I shall keep you here until you are ready for college, where I hope to be able to send you; for, unlike many Americans, I believe in educating a man like a gentleman. I have just met with a piece of extraordinary good fortune : the other day an old friend called on me for the first time in many years; he told me that his son, a Harvard man, and a profound student, was so delicate that he might be obliged to spend the remainder of his life in the high altitudes. I called on the young man immediately — his name is Stanley Morris — and persuaded him to come here, for I realized what such companionship would mean to my bright little son. He was very glad of the suggestion, and agreed, for the sake of a small annual sum, to become your teacher — in time to prepare you for college. It was a great relief to my mind, for I want you to remain in this healthy mountain region until you are grown, and, of course, expensive tutors and schools are out of the question. He will be able to teach you German and French among other things, and he has a large library. Therefore, I shall not send you any more books. Fortunately you need only these rough clothes up here. I feel quite confident that I shall be able to afford the small yearly sum Mr. Morris demands. But you are never to forget that you are studying for equipment, not as the mere routine of youth. Do you understand?"

"Yes, sir." Fessenden was deeply impressed, but longing, nevertheless, to get away from the stove and steer the conversation to lighter topics. His young brain felt as if it had been hammered. "Couldn't you send my sister up here?" he asked.

"No; you will have little in common till you are grown. You would act detrimentally upon each other. Girls have such a different part to play in life," he concluded, somewhat vaguely.

"I'd like her picture."

" I will send it to you, but you are to promise me first that you will not write to her. I want no sentimental nonsense."

"I hate to write letters, so I don't mind promising."

There was a long silence during which Mr. Abbott dreamed and Fessenden squirmed.

"Are you a success, father, or a failure?"

Mr. Abbott jumped. "I? — well — I will let you judge of that for yourself when you are grown."

"Do you keep a grocery store? — or teach school? — or write books?"

" No , " Mr . Abbott laughed. ' ' But I get my humble living honestly. I am a lawyer by profession."

"What is a lawyer?"

"Dear, happy child! All in good time, my boy. Now run out in the air if you like. Your cheeks are very red. Perhaps you will find an apple in my bag."

Ill

During the following week Fessenden read little and was too amiably excited for battle. He had seen few strangers in that primeval wilderness — no gentleman but his father; and Mr. Abbott had taken pains to admonish him that he was never to forget he was a gentleman — to criticise his table manners, gait, and carriage. In the course of his last visit, after he had twice swept his son's elbows off the table and arrested his knife on its flight to the butter-dish, he had said, severely: "I am not raising you to be a congressman from a backwoods district. Without manners your morals might just as well be bad as good. I am no democrat. I believe in hard work, and above all things I despise the idle fools that rich fathers foist upon the world; but I equally despise the man who ever forgets he was born a gentleman. You were. One reason why I have persuaded Stanley Morris to come here is that you may be reminded constantly that you are not to grow up a country lout, and disgrace — your sister, when the time comes for you to meet. Do you think that small head can remember all this tiresome advice?"

" Youbetcherlif e ! But can't I fight any more?" Fessenden had asked anxiously. "I feel my goodest when I've wiped the face off'n a chap."

" Oh, fight all you like. Never take an insult. Never see a woman insulted. Never take a back seat. If you did I'd disown you. But put on no airs, even when you are being properly educated by Morris. I despise a snob as much as I abhor a weakling."

"What is a snob?"

"The snob is a man who furnishes comedy for others and tragedy for himself."

Fessenden's eyes were a hard blue stare, but experience had taught him that when his father was cryptic he did not intend to be questioned further.

Two rooms on the second floor facing the south were put in such order as young Abbott had heretofore associated with the unlicensed imagination of the story-teller. Not only were the walls covered with heavy red paper, but a special car was switched off at a distant station, and its contents, when hauled the intervening miles and unpacked, proved to be worn but red and luxurious furniture, four bookcases, several heavy rugs, two stoves, and some nine hundred books. Fessenden unwrapped and shelved every book, his fingers tingling, unfaithful for the moment to his chipmunks and rabbits, his hidden places in the forest where he was the mighty leader of an invisible robber band.

When all was in order, Mr. Stanley Morris arrived. He was very tall and attenuated, with a bulging brow and long pale fingers. Nature had designed him for the ascetic and scholar, and doubtless had taken back a mere sufficiency of his lung cells to complete her purpose. On this shelf of the world he could live into old age, pack his avid brain with the master thoughts of other men, and one day, possibly, give to the world a thought system of his own.

"He kinder gives me the dumps," remarked Fritz Nettlebeck, as he filled his pipe in the kitchen that evening. " I don't take to people who looks as if their brains was distributed all over them. His head-piece is twice the size of an ordinary man's, but he looks as if he kept that for Sundays, and any other part of him would do as well for other days."

"You're gitten imagination," said Christina, with contempt. She was a sour and elderly virgin, hard-worked, now that her mother was growing old, and disapproving of her brothers in all their phases. Beaux were few in that vast and lonely wilderness, and these few had passed her by. Even the hired man had failed to succumb to the potencies of propinquity and the only woman. She was an uncommonly good cook for an American of her class — her parents were Hamburgers — and had won favor with the campers who ventured into this part of the

Adirondacks, Mr. Abbott among the number; but if her cake was delicate, her griddle-cakes light, her venison a culinary achievement, her temper had been bitter from childhood, her sarcasm a thing to make a strong man falter and slink away. Christina was very proud of this substitute for scholarship, and persuaded herself that it compensated her for all that lay buried in ligneous spinsterhood. "The young un '11 have to turn to now, I guess," she continued. "Much chores you'll git out of him if he's got to learn all them books. And he's real handy about the house, too. He's mended a power of things for me."

"You're sweet on that kid," said Nettlebeck, with borrowed sarcasm. "It's about the only soft spot you've got. But if you make him sick again on cocoanut-cake, and his father finds it out, he'll be packed off, I give you that."

' ' Who is that father of his , anyhow ? ' ' Christina never argued when she was sure of defeat; and having sat up all night ' with Fessenden — who had stolen the greater part of the cake— she was not prepared tb face the enemy. "I don't believe he's as poor as he makes out. The mortgage is paid' off this farm, I happen to know — "

"And you're insinuatin' that your two brothers ain't hard-workin' enough to pay it off theirselves!" cried Nettlebeck, bringing his fist down on the table with such violence that Christina's pile of clean plates rattled, and she gave a wholly feminine shriek. " If you ever insult me like that again I'll git a wife, and how'll you like that?"

This threat never failed to subdue Christina, for although she shrewdly guessed that no girl within a radius of a hundred miles had the courage to become her sisterin-law, she knew that a desperate man might make a pilgrimage to some distant town which her fame had not penetrated. She sniffed, muttered something about not being minded to insult her own family, whatever she might think of folks in general, and carried off her dishes to their shelves.

"Mr. Abbott," resumed Nettlebeck, having given his wrath such time to cool as a female could expect, "is a generous and self-sacrificin' father, and he just worships that kid; he'd wear one suit of clothes a year to give him what he needed, and of course keep don't cost much up here. As for this here Morris, he's spent all his money on books and furniture, thinkin' he was goin' to be a college professor. Mr. Abbott must have got him cheap. And the little we git from the old man's regular. Just you remember that."

"I ain't forgettin'. Nobody asked you to make excuses for Mr. Abbott bein' alive. I s'pose he ain't payin' fur that canoe, either."

"That there canoe is a second-handed one, and I got it dirt cheap. Mr. Abbott consulted me about it when he was here last, and asked me to do the best I could, as he'd like the kid to have a canoe if one could be got inside his means. But Fess ain't to know it's here till his birthday comes round; so mind your own business till the ice goes out, if you can." And Mr. Nettlebeck slouched off to join his brother in the barn and avoid further questions.

"I ain't no fool," confided Christina to herself, as she "covered " her fire. " But I know which side my bread's buttered on, and the young un '11 git no hint from me. Then when our share in raisin' him is over, there'll be a big present all round, or my name ain't Christina Nettlebeck. There's been too many campers in these woods in my time, and I know a rich man and a gentleman when I see one. Mr. Abbott was the worst-lookin' tramp in the

ii woods I ever saw, and that's a sure sign. It's lucky, though, the kid's what he is, for I couldn't stand a hateful brat, nohow."

IV

Like all invalids, Morris had little affection for any one but himself, but what he lacked in human sympathy he atoned for in courtesy of manner and nicety of conscience. He instructed Fessenden until that restless youngster besought Nettlebeck to find him many "chores." But Fessenden was still too small to chop down trees, to plough ice, or to saw wood, and there is little other work in the mountains in winter. There was no alternative but to accommodate himself to his new condition, and brace his endurance by repeating his father's advice and attempting to understand it. At the end of the- long winter he was studying hard and fighting less. Now that he did not recite on the neighboring farm, there was no one to fight with, except on such rare occasions as when a boy came to borrow of Christina after some culinary disaster at home or some unexpected shortage at the mountain "store." Fessenden, no matter how deep in study, seemed to scent the messenger from afar, and was standing in the middle of the slippery road, his muscles bunched, his eye glaring like a tiger's, when his expectant foe, uttering a hideous war-whoop, flung his bag into a snowdrift and hurled himself upon the champion. Upon these occasions, Dolf, the younger of the Nettlebeck brothers, always dropped his work and encouraged the sport. When it was over, no matter what the issue, Christina invariably cuffed Fessenden, then made him a cake; and gentle old Mrs. Nettlebeck wept profusely as she sponged him off, convinced that it would yet be her mournful duty to lay him out. Her own sons had the peaceful blood of the German peasant in them, and this enterprising American lad was a dear and perpetual mystery. Upon one occasion, when he looked like a blind puppy, and study was out of the question for two days, Morris improved the occasion in the interest of reform.

"You are a great fighter, Fess," he began, tactfully; "and it does my poor blood good to watch so much energy explode. Only it seems to me a waste. Why don't you concentrate your energy in your brain and become a leader by the force of superior will and intelligence?"

"When I fight with my head I fight with its outside," replied Fessenden dryly. "I've got to make myself understood, and I do, you bet. And I'm not complaining of the headache next day, neither."

"Think of what I've said, however. You have established your reputation as a fighter; you occupy the proud position of champion among boys of your own age and older. The raging hate which must saturate you when fighting like a savage would make me feel mean and terrified for days after. It is all very well to know how to use your fists, and no doubt they are of service to you here, and at your age; but they will play a small part in after-life, and your character will play a very great one. You are so constituted that if you would learn to control yourself you could command your fellows with little effort ; and at least when you fight try not to hate so hard."

"How would you like Christina's puddings with all the raisins left out? Would you mind reading to me?"

"As long as you like." And Morris made him comfortable on the sofa, and read from the lives of ancient warriors until the heir of the ages fell asleep.

Fessenden's mind at this time was a virgin field into which seeds fell to rise again and be tended by a curious young tiller. Those flung into a fertile crevice by Morris, who took the responsibility very seriously, put out their green heads in time. Fessenden nodded his recognition, and, although they were by no means his favorite products, between their insistency and a decreasing lack of opportunity, he arrived, in the course of another year, at the conclusion that it might be interesting to make boys follow his lead without resorting to primitive methods. " I suppose one might as well wait till one has a real call to fight," he remarked to himself with philosophy. "The animals don't fight till they have to — none, that is, but dogs, and perhaps that's living so much with us — we sickin' them on and all that. It's good to fight, though," he added, with a long sigh, "even if the headache does last longer than the fun — that's a point. Perhaps Mr. Morris is right, although I'd like to know what he knows about it. Maybe I'll try the other tack and see what there's in it, but there are some things will make my fists fly till I'm eighty. I guess I wasn't cut out for a Sundayschool teacher." Nevertheless; he worked himself into such a terrific rage the next time he was challenged — after an unusual period of virtuous abstinence — that he was thoroughly frightened at the result : for several days he felt flat and peevish, and more worn out in mind than in body. Morris came upon him in the forest where he was seated on a stump dismally chewing a cud, and embraced an obvious opportunity'.

"After all," he said sympathetically,' "what you fight for is supremacy, is it not ? Why not get it some other way ? Although you poison yourself with the hate you feel while actually fighting, hate is never the motive of battle with you. You like all these boys well enough, but you must find out who is the best man or burst. Find it out some other way — or rather, having decided that point, try others. Besides, the great man uses the brute force of others, he rarely indulges in it himself. Did not Napoleon sit aloft on a hill while his hundreds of thousands of nameless minions did the fighting? So long as they could see that being whom they looked upon as an emanation from the divine intellect, they were willing to fight like fanatics, but if he had rushed forward with a musket and fallen, the ranks would have scattered in irretrievable panic. Are you cultivating your prowess to fight years hence when a great man orders you out?"

"Not much," growled Fessenden.

"Well, take me out in your canoe now. We'll talk it over further this evening."

Fessenden's twelfth birthday occurred a week later, and he persuaded Christina to give him a party and invite his enemies. They came, howling through the mountain passes, brandishing big sticks as a manifest of their readiness for the fray. But although, having been invited to dinner and birthday cake, they expected a respite of perhaps two hours, they were disconcerted, and privately alarmed at being received by young Abbott quite in the style of the grand seigneur. He wore a new white sweater and a new pair of trousers, and he had been scrubbed and brushed by Mrs. Nettlebeck until, to mountain taste, he was offensively godly. He greeted his weather-beaten guests with a hearty grip of the hand, insinuated his appreciation of the forgiving spirit so touchingly displayed, and when he had them all seated about the table in the large kitchen he entertained them brilliantly with anecdotes from his most exciting books, while they devoured Christina's substantial dainties. When he had gorged them into a state of sleepy good-nature, he led them out into the woods, and, mounting a stump, invited them to spin yarns of personal prowess. Each youth in turn told a tale of terrible adventure and

IS glorious triumph, which Fessenden applauded as a host should. When they were alert once more and ready for action, he organized them into a band of pirates, and they scuttled several ships with such demoniacal vigor that they worked off all the steam that was left in them ; and departed at nightfall vowing that Fessenden — who was now dirty enough to satisfy the most exacting standard — was the finest fellow in the woods, and that they'd never had such a Time since they were born.

After supper Fessenden untied his canoe, Pocahontas — whom he loved better than any mortal except his father — and pulled out into the evening shadows. The Nettlebeck farm was on a clearing of some fifty acres on the north and east shores of a large lake. Surrounding it on three sides was the virgin unkempt forest, as yet undesecrated by the lumberman or the logger. Just beyond the clearing the forest grew to the shores of the lake — a body of water so clear that in the early morning and evening, until the ice came, or except when the winds raged, the great spruces and pines, the beeches and maples, looked as if petrified in one of the old glaciers which had ground this vast region into form. Beyond the lake, beyond the surrounding forest, rose the encircling chain of gentle peaks, some barren rocks of eccentric shape, others black with woods. This evening their upper slopes were white with a late fall of snow. The Nettlebecks, like all American farmers, had done what they could to make Nature hideous, and their big house with its haphazard additions, the barns and boat-house, the ragged orchard and vegetable garden, were like a patchwork apron on the robes of a goddess. But Fessenden had turned his back on the Nettlebeck outrage, and not a shingle could he see — not a column of smoke. The blue shadows on the mountains were melting as the stars came out. ' The silence was so intense that Nature seemed to laugh noiselessly at man's puny attempt to impress himself upon her higher solitudes.

Fessenden shot his canoe round a bend, and entered a long water-pass, irregular, half-choked with reeds and swamp, dark from the forest on the slopes of the gorge. It led to another lake, the second in a long chain of lakes great and small, on many of which some farmer had made his clearing and erected his monstrosities. But the gorge was long, and the next lake too wild and rocky to invite the attentions of man. Fessenden could paddle far, and fancy himself as alone in the great Adirondack wilderness as the first Red Indian. From the day when Mrs. Nettlebeck had allowed him to run unattended, much of his time had been spent apart. The nearest neighbor lived three miles away, on the farm where with several other boys he had attended school of a sort for four months in the year. The boys were kept busy at other times, and only sought him out when, like himself, they ached for a fight. Solitude had become as necessary in his life as his bed and his bread; and except when storms raged and the thermometer stood too far below zero, he left the house the moment his studies with his tutor were over, and took his reading into the woods or his canoe. On Saturdays and Sundays he was not permitted to open a book, and during the short summer there were no mental tasks. He spent these holidays in the woods or on the water, only returning to the house for his evening meal and his hard bed. Occasionally Morris accompanied him, and taught him much of practical forestry; but although the man and the boy were good friends, each preferred his solitudes — his long silences.

To-night Fessenden was in a strangely exultant mood which he was anxious to understand. He was tired, for he had played hard; but it was a pleasant languor beside the exhaustion which followed his pitched battles, to saynothing of their accompaniment of gaping wounds and nervous depression. He had passed successfully through his first attempt at diplomacy and self-command ; his fists had ached more than once, for Jeff Hunter was in fine fighting trim and invariably lashed his crimson tide ; and he tasted all the sweets of power, of dominating in a new r61e, of discovering unsuspected talents, and of using them easily in the control of his fellows. He looked back upon his career of fists and blood, this youngster of twelve, with much the same disgust and contempt as might animate a debauchee crossing the threshold of reform. He did not return home until midnight, and in those lonely hours under the stars, in the profoundest stillness that America can give us, his ambition was born. He felt able to go out and conquer the world then and there; but he was modest by an earlier endowment, and the value of a sound education had been impressed upon his responsive mind. But his soul took a long flight, and met on high vague and beautiful shapes, which, when he was older, he knew men called ideals — looked down upon a wonderful world far beyond these mountains, wherein was stored the records of an eternity of great deeds, where greater still were doing; where, in the nebulous galleries of time, things beyond human imaginings awaited the quickening touch of men still in the making.

Fessenden returned and raided the pantry for a glass of milk, but it was some time before he sought his bed. In the depths of his soul the sleeping man still muttered, and he felt like Mercury poised for a flight and not knowing which way to turn, but half drunk with wondrous possibilities. The full moon hung low on the reflecting lake. The mountain-tops were white, their lower forests black. The deer came noiselessly out of the woods and drank. The sublime and lonely scene murmured voicelessly of its greater kin in the highest valleys of the alpine world. Fessenden, standing on the upper veranda of the house, again saw only Nature, unchanged since a thousand years. Her silences might never have been broken.

"You — kid !" cried a shrill voice as a window flew open. "What on earth are you doin' up this time of night? Lands sakes! Git into bed this minute or I'll come out and cuff you good." And Fessenden, who had a wholesome respect for Christina, fled to his room and was asleep in ten minutes.

V

But although solitude moulded unceasingly in the structure of Fessenden Abbott's character, and with coincident intellectual development opened Gothic spaces in his soul which made him lastingly different from the city-bred man, yet was his life on the whole much like that of any healthy youngster of his age who lived his boyhood in an American wilderness. He played pioneer to his complete satisfaction, and blazed trails in all directions through the forest. In company with the redoubtable Jeff Hunter, he built a hut on an island in a lake of wild and uninhabitable surroundings, and impersonated Crusoe to his old enemy's Friday. This social triumph was not won without another struggle, partly fistic, partly diplomatic; and Fessenden regarded the issue as his greatest achievement. After the first supper, cooked by Friday and eaten with the graciousness of royalty by his master, Jeff succumbed amiably and followed Fessenden on such adventurous tramps as his hard-working father would permit. They spent many days and nights, during the summer months, on the island, from which they sallied forth into the forest or to the high peaks of the range in search of Nature's dearest terrors. They were once treed by a bear, whose cubs they stumbled over; but managed to escape, by climbing from tree-top to tree-top, when the bear was obliged to return to maternal duties ; they had, with what discrimination was possible, selected trees too slender for the bear to mount. During one of Mr. Abbott's visits he was entertained on the island; and by the light of a camp-fire and to the accompaniment of ominous sounds in the surrounding forest was regaled by an account of this adventure, to say nothing of one with a panther, and yet another with a catamount, told by Fessenden in a direct unvarnished style which made his father tingle with pride and an echo of youth.