John Godfrey's fortunes : related by himself. A story of American life

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Chapter I

EST WHICH, AFTER THE VISIT OF NEIGHBOR NILES, MY CHILDHOOD SUDDENLY TERMINATES.

I was sitting at the front window, buried, chin-deep, in the perusal of " Sandford and Merton," when I heard the latch of the gate click. Looking up, I saw that it was only- Neighbor Mies, coming, as usual, in her sun-bonnet, with her bare arms wrapped in her apron, for a chat with mother. I therefore resumed my reading, for Neighbor Niles always burst into the house without knocking, and mother was sure to know who it was by the manner in which the door opened. I had gotten as far into the book as the building of the Robinson- Crusoe hut, and one half of my mind speculated, as I read, whether a similar hut might not be constructed in our garden, in the corner between the snowball-bush and Muley's stable. Bob Simmons would help me, I was sure ; only it was scarcely possible to finish it before winter, and then we could n't live in it without a fireplace and a chimney.

Mother was hard at work, making me a new jacket of gray satinet, lined with black chintz. My reading was interrupted by the necessity of jumping up every ten minutes, jerking off my old coat and trying on the new one, — - sometimes the body without the sleeves, sometimes one of 1 the sleeves alone. Somehow it would n't fit at the shoulders, and the front halves, instead of lying smoothly upon my breast as they should have done, continually turned and flew back against my arms, as if I had been running at full speed. A tailor would have done the work better, it can't be denied, but mother could not afford that " You can keep it buttoned, Johnny dear," she would say, " and then I think it '11 look very nice."

Presently the door burst open, and there was Neighbor Mies, voice * and figure all at once, loud, hearty, and bustling. Always hurried to " within an inch of her life," always working " like six yoke of oxen," (as she was accustomed to say,) she inveterately gossiped in the midst of her labor, and jumped up in sudden spirts of work when she might have rested. We knew her well and liked her. I believe, indeed, she was generally liked in the neighborhood ; but when some of the farmers, deceived by her own chatter, spoke of her as " a smart, doing woman," their wives would remark, with a slight toss of the head, " Them that talks the most does n't always do the most."

On this occasion, her voice entered the room, as nearly as I can recollect, in the following style : —

" Good mornin', Neighbor Godfrey ! Well, Johnny, how 's he ? Still a-readin' ? He '11 be gittin' too much in that head o? his'n. Jist pat my bakin' into th' oven, — six punkin-pies, ten dried-apple, and eight loaves o' bread, besides a pan o' rusk. If I had nothin' else to do but bake, 't would be enough for one woman : things goes in our house. Got the jacket most done ? Might ha' saved a little stuff if you 'd ha' cut that left arm more eatercornered, — 't would ha' been full long, I guess, and there a'n't no nap, o' no account, on satinet. Jane Koffmann, she was over at Readin' last week, and got some for her boys, a fippenny-bit a yard cheaper 'n this. Don't know, though, as it '11 wear so well. Laws ! are you sewin' with silk instead o' patent thread ? "

" I find it saves me work," said my mother, as Neighbor Niles popped into the nearest chair, drew her hands from under her apron, leaned over, and picked up a spool from the lap-board. " Patent thread soon wears out at the elbows and shoulders, and then there are rips, you know. Besides, the color don't hold, and the seams soon look shabby."

I resumed my reading, while our visitor exhausted the small budget of gossip which had accumulated since her last visit, two days before. Her words fell upon my ears mechanically, but failed to make any impression upon my mind, which was wholly fixed upon the book. After a while, however, my mother called to me, —

" Johnny, I think there 's some clearing up to do in the garden."

I knew what that meant. Mother wished to have some talk with Neighbor Niles, which I was not to hear. Many a time had I been sent into the garden, on the pretence of " clearing up things," when I knew, and mother also knew, that the beds were weeded, the alleys clean scraped, the rubbish gathered together and thrown into the little stable-yard, and all other work done which a strong inventive faculty could suggest. It was a delicate way of getting me out of the room.

I laid down my book with a sigh, but brightened up as the idea occurred to me that I might now, at once, select the site of my possible Crusoe hut, and take an inventory of the material available for its construction. As I paused on the oblong strip of turf, spread like a rug before the garden -door, and glanced in at the back-window, I saw that mother had already dropped her sewing, and that she and Neighbor Niles had put their heads together, in a strictly literal sense, for a private consultation.

The garden was a long, narrow plot of ground, running back to the stable of our cow, and the adjoining yard, which she was obliged to share with two well-grown and voracious pigs. I walked along the main alley, peering into the beds right and left for something to " clear up," in order to satisfy my conscience before commencing my castle- or rather hut-building ; but I found nothing more serious than three dry stalks of seed-radishes, which I pulled up and flung over the fence. Then I walked straight to the snowball-bush. I remember pacing off the length and breadth of the snug, grassy corner behind it, and discovering, to my grief, that, although there was room for a hut big enough for Bob and myself to sit in, it would be impossible to walk about, — much less swing a cat by the tail. In fact, we should have to take as model another small edifice, which, on the other side of the bush, already disturbed the needful solitude. Moreover, not a hand's-breadth of board or a stick of loose timber was to be found. " If I were only in Charley Rand's place ! " I thought. His father had a piece of woodland in which you might lose your way for as much as a quarter of an hour at a time, with enough of dead boughs and refuse bark to build a whole encampment of huts. Charley, perhaps, might be willing to join in the sport ; but he was not a favorite playfellow of mine, and would be certain to claim the hut as his exclusive property, after we other fellows had helped him to build it. He was that sort of a boy. Then my fancy wandered away to the real Crusoe on his island, and I repeated to myself Cowper's " Yerses, supposed to be written by Alexander Selkirk." Somehow, the lines gave an unexpected turn to my thoughts. Where would be the great fun of playing Crusoe, or even his imitators, Sandford and Merton, in a back-garden, where a fellow's mother might call him away at any moment ? I should not be out of humanity's reach, nor cease to hear the sweet music of speech ; the beasts that roam over the plain (especially McAllister's bull, in the next field) would not behold my form with indifference, nor would they suddenly become shockingly tame. It would all be a make-believe, from beginning to end, requiring even greater efforts of imagination than I had perpetrated a few years earlier, in playing at the village school, —

" Here come three lords, all out of Spain, A-courting of your daughter Jane,"

or in creating real terror by fancying a bear crouching behind the briers in the fence -corner.

A little ashamed of myself, I walked to the garden -paling, and looked over it, and across the rolling fields, to some low, hazy hills in the distance. I belong to that small class of men whose natures are not developed by a steady, gradual process of growth, but advance by sudden and seemingly arbitrary bounds, divided by intervals during which their faculties remain almost stationary. I had now reached one of those periods of growth, — the first, indeed, which clearly presented itself to my own consciousness. I had passed my sixteenth birthday, and the physical change which was imminent began to touch and give color to the operations of my mind. My vision did not pause at the farthest hill, but went on, eagerly, into the unknown landscape beyond. I had previously talked of the life that lay before me as I had talked of Sinbad and Gulliver, Robert Bruce and William Tell : all at once I became conscious that it was an earnest business.

What must I do ? What should I become ? The few occupations which found a place in our little village repelled me. My frame was slight, and I felt that, even if I liked it, I could never swing the blacksmith's hammer, or rip boards like Dick Brown, the carpenter. Moreover, I had an instinctive dislike to all kinds of manual labor, except the light gardening tasks in which I assisted my mother. Sometimes, in the harvest-season, I had earned a little pocket - money on the neighboring farms. It was pleasant enough to toss hay into cocks on the fragrant meadows, but I did n't like the smother of packing it in the steaming mows, and my fingers became painfully sore from binding sheaves. My ambition — at this time but a vague, formless desire — was to be a scholar, a man of learning. How this was to be attained, or what lay beyond it, I could not clearly see. I knew, without being able to explain why, that the Cross-Keys (as our village was called, from its tavern-sign) was no place for me. But, up to the afternoon I am describing, I had never given the subject a serious thought.

Many a boy of ten knows far more of the world than I then did. I doubt if any shepherd on the high Norwegian fjdds lives in greater seclusion than did we, — my mother and myself. The Cross- Keys lay aside from any of the main highways of the county, and the farmers around were mostly descendants of the original settlers of the soil, a hundred and fifty years before. Their lives were still as simple and primitive as in the last century. Few of them ever travelled farther than to the Philadelphia market, at the beginning of winter, to dispose of their pigs and poultry. A mixture of the German element? dating from the first emigration, tended still further to conserve the habits and modes of thought of the community. My maternal grandfather, Hatzfeld, was of this stock, and many of his peculiarities, passing over my mother, have reappeared in me, to play their part in the shaping of my fortunes.

My father had been a house- and sign-painter in the larger village of Honeybrook, four miles distant. Immediately after his death, which happened when I was eight years old, my mother removed to the Cross-Keys, principally because she had inherited the small cottage and garden from her spinster aunt, Christina Hatzfeld. There was nothing else, for my great-aunt had only a life-interest in the main estate, which — I do not know precisely how — had passed into the hands of the male heirs. My mother's means were scarcely sufficient to support us in the simplest way, and she was therefore in the habit of

"taking in sewing" from the wives of the neighboring farmers. Her labor was often paid in produce, and she sometimes received, in addition, presents of fruit, potatoes, and fuel from the kindly-hearted people. Thus we never reached the verge of actual want, though there were times when our daily fare was plainer than she cared to let the neighbors see, and when the new coat or shawl had to be postponed to a more fortunate season. For at least half the year I attended the village school, and had already learned nearly as much as a teacher hired for twenty dollars a month was capable of imparting. The last one, indeed, was unable to help me through quadratic equations, and forced me, unwillingly, upon a course of Mensuration.

Between mother and myself there was the most entire confidence, except upon the single subject of my future. She was at once mother and elder sister, entering with heart and soul into all my childish plans of work or play, listening with equal interest to the stories I read, or relating to me the humble incidents of her own life, with a sweet, fresh simplicity of language, which never lost by repetition. Her large black eyes would sparkle, and her round face, to which the old-fashioned puffs of hair on the temples gave such an odd charm, became as youthful in expression, I am sure, as my own. Her past and her present were freely shared with me, but she drew back when I turned with any seriousness towards the future. At one time, I think, she would have willingly stopped the march of my years, and been content to keep me at her side, a boy forever. I was incapable of detecting this feeling at the time, and perhaps I wrong her memory in alluding to it now. God knows I have often wished it could have been so ! Whatever of natural selfishness there may have been in the thought, she weighed it down, out of sight, by all those years of self-denial, and the final sacrifice, for my sake. No truer, tenderer, more single-hearted mother ever lived than Barbara Godfrey.

She was so cordially esteemed in our little community that no reproach, on my account, was allowed to reach her ears. A boy of my age, who had no settled occupation, was there considered to be in danger of becoming a useless member of society ; antipathy to hard, coarse manual labor implied a moral deficiency ; much schooling, for one without means, was a probable evil : but no one had the heart to unsettle the widow's comfort in her child. Now and then, perhaps, a visitor might ask, " What are you going to make of him, Barbara ? " whereupon my mother would answer, " He must make himself," — with a confident smile which put the question aside.

These words came across my mind as I leaned against the palings, trying to summon some fleeting outline of my destiny from the vapory distance of the landscape. I was perplexed, but not discouraged. My trials, thus far, had been few. When I first went to school, the boys had called me " Bricktop," on account of the auburn tinge of my hair, which was a source of great sorrow until Sam Haskell, whose head was of fiery hue, relieved me of the epithet. Emily Band, whose blue eyes and yellow ringlets confused my lessons, (I am not certain but her pink-spotted calico frock had something to do with it,) treated me scornfully, and even scratched my face when it was my turn to kiss her in playing " Love and War." The farmers' sons also laughed at my awkwardness and want of muscle ; but this annoyance was counterbalanced in the winter, when they came to measure another sort of strength with me at school. I had an impression that my value in the neighborhood was not estimated very highly, and had periodical attacks of shyness which almost amounted to self-distrust. On the other hand, I had never experienced any marked unkindness or injustice ; my mother spoke ill of no one, and I did not imagine the human race to be otherwise than honest, virtuous, and reciprocally helpful.

I soon grew tired of facing the sober aspect of reality, so unexpectedly presented, and wandered off, as was the habit of my mind, into vague and splendid dreams. If I had the Wonderful Lamp, — if a great roc should come sailing out of the western sky, pick me up in his claws, and carry me to the peaks overlooking the Valley of Diamonds, ■ — if there were still a country where a cat might be sold for a ship-load of gold, — if I might carry a loaf of bread under my arm, like Benjamin Franklin, and afterwards become rich and celebrated, (the latter circumstance being, of course, a result of the former,) — there would be no difficulty about my fate. It was hardly likely, however, that either of these things would happen to me ; but why not something else, equally strange and fortunate ?

A hard slap on a conspicuous, but luckily not a sensitive portion of my body caused me to spring almost over the paling. I whirled around, and with a swift instinct of retaliation, struck out violently with both fists.

" No, you don't ! " cried Bob Simmons, (for he it was,) dodging the blows and then catching me by the wrists. " I did n't mean to strike so hard, John ; don't be mad about it. I 'm going away soon, and came around to tell you."

Bob was my special crony, because I had found him to be the kindest-hearted of all the village boys. He was not bright at school, and was apt to be rough in his language and manners ; but from the day he first walked home with me, with his arm around my neck, I had faith in his affection. He seemed to like me all the better from my lack of the hard strength which filled him from head to foot. He once carried me nearly a quarter of a mile in his arms, when I had sprained my ankle in jumping down out of an apple-tree. He had that rough male nature which loves what it has once protected or helped. Besides, he was the only companion to whom I dared confide my vague projects of life, with the certainty of being not only heard, but encouraged.

" Yes," said Bob, " I am going away, maybe in a few weeks."

" Where ? Not going away for good, Bob ? " " Like as not. I 'm nearly eighteen, and Dad says it 's time to go to work on my own hook. The farm, you know, is n't big enough for him and me, and he can get along with Brewster now. So I must learn a trade ; what do you think it is ? "

" You said, Bob, that you 'd like to be a mason ? " " Would n't I, though ! But it 's the next thing to it. Dad says there a'n't agoin' to be many more stone houses built, — bricks has got to be the fashion. But they 're so light, it 's no kind o' work. All square, too ; you 've just to put one atop of t' other, and there 's your wall. Why, you could do it, John. Mort ! Mort ! hurry up with that 'ere hod ! "

Here Bob imitated the professional cry of the bricklayer with startling exactness. There was not a fibre about him that shrank from contact with labor, or from the rough tussle by which a poor boy must win his foothold in the world. I would, at that moment, have given my grammar and algebra (in which branches he was lamentably deficient) for a quarter of his unconscious courage. A wild thought flashed across my mind : I might also be a bricklayer, and his fellow-apprentice ! Then came the discouraging drawback.

" But, Bob," I said, " the bricks are so rough. I don't like to handle them."

" Should n't wonder if you did n't. Lookee there ! " And Bob laid my right hand in his broad, hard palm, and placed his other hand beside it. " Look at them two hands ! they 're made for different kinds o' work. There 's my thick fingers and broad nails, and your thin fingers and narrow nails. You can write a'most like copy-plate, and I make the roughest kind o' pot-hooks. The bones o' your fingers is no thicker than a girl's. I dunno what I 'd do if mine was like that."

I colored, from the sense of my own physical insignificance. " Oh, Bob," I cried, " I wish I was strong ! I '11 have to get my own living, too, and I don't know how to begin."

" Oh, there 's time enough for you, John," said Bob, consolingly. "You need n't fret your gizzard yet awhile. There 's teachin' school is n't so bad to start with. You '11 soon be fit to do it, and that 's what I 'd never be, I reckon."

We went into the little hay-mow over the stable, and sat down, side by side, in the dusky recess, where our only light came through the cracks between the shrunk clapboards. Bob had brought a horse to the smith to be shod all round, and there were two others in before him ; so he could count on a good hour before his turn came. It might be our last chat together for a long time, and the thought of this made our intercourse more frank and tender than usual.

" Tell me, Bob," said I, " what you '11 do after you 've learned the trade."

" Why, do journey-work, to be sure. . They get a dollar and a half a day, in Phildelphy."

" Well, — after that ? "

" Dunno. P'raps I may be boss, and do business on the wholesale. Bosses make money hand-over-fist. I tell you what, John, I 'd like to build a house for myself like Rand's, — heavy stone, two foot thick, and just such big willy-trees before it, — a hundred acres o' land, and prime stock on 't, ; would n't I king it, then ! Dad 's had a hard time, he has, — only sixty acres, you know, and a morgidge on it. Don't you tell nobody, — I 'm agoin' to help him pay it off, afore I put by for myself."

I had not the least idea of the nature of a mortgage, but was ashamed to ask for information. Sometimes I had looked down on Bob from the heights of my superior learning, but now he seemed to overtop me in everything, — - in strength, in courage, and in practical knowledge. For the first time, I would have been willing to change places with him, — ah, how many times afterwards !

When we went down out of the hay-mow it was nearly

12 JOHIST GODFREY'S FORTUNES.

evening, and I hurried back to our cottage. The fire which I was accustomed to make in the little back-kitchen was already kindled, and the table set for supper. Mother was unusually silent and preoccupied ; she did not even ask me where I had been. After the simple meal — made richer by the addition of four of Neighbor Niles's rusks — was over, we took our places in the sitting-room, she with her lap-board, and I with " Sandford and Merton." She did not ask me to read aloud, as usual, but went on silently and steadily with her sewing. Now and then I caught the breath of a rising sigh, checked as soon as she became conscious of it. Nearly an hour passed, and my eyelids began to grow heavy, when she suddenly spoke.

" Put away the book, John. You 're getting tired, I see, and we can talk a little. I have something to say to you."

I shut the book and turned towards her.

" It 's time, John, to be thinking of making something of you. In four or five years — and the time will go by only too fast — you'll be a man. I'd like to keep you here always, but I know that can't, be. I must n't think of myself: I must teach you to do without me."

" But I don't want to do without you, mother ! " I cried.

" I know it, Johnny dear ; but you must learn it, nevertheless. Who knows how soon I may be taken from you ? I want to give you a chance of more and better schooling, because you 're scarcely strong enough for hard work, and I think you 're not so dull but you could manage to get your living out of your head. At least, it would n't be right for me not to help you what little I can. I 've looked forward to it, and laid by whatever I could, — dear me, it 's not what it ought to be, but we must be thankful for what 's allowed us. I only want you to make good use of your time while it lasts ; you must always remember that every, day is an expense, and that the money was not easy to get."

" What do you want me to do? mother ? " I asked, after a pause.

" I have been talking with Neighbor Niles about it, and she seems to see it in the same light as I do. She 's a good neighbor, and a sensible woman. Charley Hand's father is going to send him this winter to Dr. Dymond's school, a mile the other side of Honeybrook. It 's the best in the neighborhood, and I would n't want you to be far away from me yet awhile. They ask seventy-five dollars for the session, but Charley goes for sixty, having his washing and Sunday's board at home. It seems like a heap of money, John, but I 've laid away, every year since we came here, twenty dollars out of the interest on the fifteen hundred your father left me, and that 's a hundred and sixty. Perhaps I could make out to let you have two years' schooling, if I find that you get on well with your studies. I 'm afraid that I could n't do more than that, because I don't want to touch the capital. It 's all we have. Not that you would n't be able to earn your living in a few years, but we never know what's in store for us. You might become sickly and unable to follow any regular business, or I "

Here my mother suddenly stopped, clasped her hands tightly together, and turned pale. Her lips were closed, as if in pain, and I could see by the tension of the muscles of her jaws that the teeth were set hard upon each other. Of late, I had several times noticed the same action. I could not drive away the impression that she was endeavoring not to cry out under the violence of some mental or physical torture. After a minute or two, the rigidity of her face softened ; she heaved a sigh, which, by a transition infinitely touching, resolved itself into a low, cheerful laugh, and said, —

" But there 's no use, after all, in worrying ourselves by imagining what may never happen. Only I think it best not to touch the capital ; and now you know, Johnny, what you have to depend on. There 's the money that I 've been saving for you, and you shall have the benefit of it, every penny. Some folks would say it ?s not wisely spent, but it 's you must decide that by the use you make of it. If I can see, every Saturday night when you come home, that you know a little more than you did the week before, I shall be satisfied."

I was already glowing and tingling with delight at the prospect held out to me. The sum my mother named seemed to me enormous. I had heard of Dr. Dymond's school as a paradise of instruction, unattainable to common mortals. The boys who went there were a lesser kind of seraphs, sitting in the shade of a perennial tree of knowledge. With such advantages, all things seemed suddenly possible to me ; and had my mother remarked, " I expect you to write a book as good as 'The Children of the Abbey,' — to make a better speech than Colonel McAllister, — to tell the precise minute when the next eclipse of the sun takes place," — I should have answered, " Oh, of course."