The lake

Front matter

• •

BY

MARGARET ASHMUN

Chapter I

A mile and a half from the village the house was; and the village, in turn, was seven miles from town. A lane ran from the curve of the road to the side of the house, and around to the big ramshackle barns backed by a tamarack swamp. The house faced a little lake, toward which the low ground at the front descended. White paint had grown dingy with years, and the slatted green shutters showed dull and rusty. High above the roof rose a group of native hemlocks, which had stood there long before the house was built, when roving Indians kindled their camp fires from the pitchy twigs and cones. Beyond the hemlocks were woods, varying from the light green of butternut to the dark bluish green of spruce.

Ten years ago, the traffic on country roads in the Middle West was not so notable as it is now. In a summer’s day, hardly a dozen vehicles passed over the road at the end of the lake. There were farm wagons drawn by slow plodding horses, and top-carriages drawn by single nags or trotting spans. At times an alien honk¬ ing and chugging warned of the laborious flight of an •automobile, plowing painfully through the sand. The white house seemed to claim a remoteness which was 1 more than its due, because it faced the little lake, and took note of passing caravans only through side windows screened for six months of the year by snowball bushes and highbushed cranberries.

* * * * * * *

Hubert Faraday used to run down to the foot of the lane when he heard wheels grating over the pebbly place at the end of the lake. Standing on the lower board of the wide wagon gate, and clinging on with his bare toes, he could see the driver’s hat or the top of the carriage which was coming. Sometimes a farmer turned from the road into the shallow edge of the lake, and let his unchecked horses put their heads down and drink. Hubert could spy them through a gap in the birches, and he liked to see the eager way in which the horses plunged their noses into the water and held them there, sucking the cool cleanness through their necks. Sometimes they drank so long that the farmer grew impatient, and spatted the lines on the horses’ flanks, or called out with uncouth vituperation. Then the horses would lift their dribbling mouths, and shake their heads in the heavy collars, and reluctantly bend their strength to pulling the wagon through the sand and pebbles beneath the water. Hubert did not like to hear the creak of the whiffle-trees and the screech of the wheels. He was too far away to hear the labored breathing of the horses, but he knew how it sounded; he had been with his father when Wil¬ lard Faraday had driven Whitey and Jack through the little arc of the shore, and he had held to the wagon seat in misery when the horses had been harried from their draught, and hustled up the bank with whip-crackings and sputtering oaths. It was worse when Willard Faraday was in one of his fits of anger; for then the whip came down on the horses’ backs, and they snorted with exertion and pain. Hubert bit his lips then, to keep from crying out, and he thought of fierce reproaches which he would like to hurl at his father if he dared.

*******

Hubert was twelve now, a square-framed, brown-faced little boy, with blue-grey eyes, too often downcast, and a country lad’s allowance of freckles. Hubert was not like his mother, who had black hair and a smooth white face; nor yet, it seemed, like his father,, who was dark, too, but thin-featured and spare.

Willard Faraday was a kind man enough, if he had not been subject to periods of melancholy or emotional irritation. In the main, he was good to Hubert. He would speak to him in a friendly way, and would buy him good clothes, and bring home little treats for him from town. But there were times when he would scowl at the boy, or push him aside and pretend not to see him. At these same times he would speak in loud passionate tones to Hubert’s mother.

Averil Faraday was a quiet woman, who would have been thought beautiful in a different environment. The country people did not like her black hair, which she wore braided and wound about her head, coronetwise; nor her deep-set eyes, which seemed to them too know¬ ing; nor her white skin, which kept its smoothness in the heat of summer and the cold of winter. She was a country woman, like any other housewife in the dis¬ trict; but somehow there was a difference. The mother who, back in New York State, had called her little girl Averil had made an unconscious blunder. There was nothing of the freshness of April about Averil Faraday; she should have been called Octavia, if it is true that that name suggests a dark and somber quiescence.

The situation of the farm was not a cheerful one for a woman, though its air of seclusion was produced chiefly by its facing away from the road and toward the lake, and by its background of tall hemlocks and shadowed grove. Any woman might feel that she could do with a more neighbourly place to live, thought the women who drove by on their way to the village or the town, from their own houses, set out flat in the fields, with rows of Lombardy poplars along the road in front. Most of the women drove by. Not many of them stopped to visit with Averil Faraday.

Neighbours were not lacking, though none lived actu¬ ally near. Three-quarters of a mile away, toward the old Indian Trail bridge, were the Hunts—Libbie and her two children, and her husband Benjamin, when he chose to be there. Beyond the bridge lived Alexander McLean, a bachelor and an intimate friend of the Fara¬ days. Alexander, a broad-shouldered fellow of Scot¬ tish descent, had thick light brown hair with a tinge of the sandy in it, and eyes that were either blue or grey. Most people did not notice that his eyes could be hard or sad or restless, because he was always laughing. Peo¬ ple laughed with him, and did not look at his eyes.

*******

One Saturday morning in June, Hubert had a birth¬ day. He was twelve.

“You’ll have to grow faster,” said his mother with a smile, as she gave him his present. It was a base-ball mitt, which he had long coveted. His father’s present had been a silver dollar. Hubert held it in his hand as he took the base-ball mitt. He did not like to be told that he was too small for his age, but he could not feel hurt at what his mother said, because underneath there was always something wistful which he felt, but was too ignorant to define. “You’ll have to hurry up and get a start,” she repeated.

“I know it!” he said, gulping. “Don’t I eat enough?”

“Oh, yes, you eat enough.” Averil was standing in the doorway, looking out at the lake. She wore a pinkchecked gingham dress, open at the neck. Hubert, glancing up at her, perceived vaguely that she did not look old; even that she looked surprisingly young. One’s mother was supposed to be old. He could not bother to think about the problem. “I think that when you do start to grow, you’ll be a big man, Bertie,” she said.

Bertie! Hubert detested the name. At school the other boys called out to him on the sly, “Bertie, Bertie, fat and dirty.”

He knew that he was neither fat nor dirty, and that the boys had just put the words together because they “went”; but he hated the name no less. He retaliated as best he could with “Howard, Howard, he’s a cow¬ ard,” and “Billy, Billy, ain’t he silly?” But his efforts did not seem to carry the significance of the rhyme which was directed at him.

“I don’t like to be called Bertie,” he had said once or twice of late, to his mother.

“Why?” she had asked.

“I don’t know,” he had replied evasively. This morn¬ ing he did not feel that he could protest, because his mother had been so nice about giving him the present;

and she was going to make cocoanut pie for dinner, espe¬ cially for him. Besides, school would soon be out, and he was not likely to be badgered much by the other boys till fall. He shifted the dollar in his sweaty hand, and looked out across the lake as his mother was doing.

There had been rain the night before, and the air was humid; but the wind was cool. The leaves, turning up their edges, shone like glass. The house faced the west, and the sun was not yet high; so that the long shadows of the grove lay on the surface of the lake, richly blue, with tiny fluted ripples, flecked with white. Along the edge grew purple irises, and in the yard were looselimbed acacias, heavy with their scented white racemes. They made a kind of frame for the blueness of the lake and the sky.

“What a lovely morning,” said Mrs. Faraday. She sighed. “I must wash my dishes.”

“Come out on the lake a little while, ma,” begged Hubert.

“No, I must wash my dishes,” his mother answered.

“Why?” queried Hubert, frowning. Dishes seemed to him of infinitesimal importance. It was a glorious morn¬ ing to go on the lake.

Averil Faraday glanced down at him, a flicker of a smile on her lips. “I suppose because I’m a woman,” she said. “Don’t women always wash their dishes, even if they want to go on the lake?”

“I s’pose they do,” muttered Hubert. Hidden in his mother’s tone was something which made him feel un¬ comfortable.

“And if they do go on the lake when they ought to be washing their dishes—they’re sorry,” she said; “they’re sorry.” She was not smiling now. There was a pause. Presently she turned back through the entry¬ way, to the dining-room at the back of the upright part of the house. “Put your presents away, dear, and go and weed a little in the lettuce bed.” She spoke briskly, as if to put out of their minds what she had said. “The rain will bring up the weeds by the million.”

“Can I take off my shoes ’n’ stockings?” asked Hubert eagerly.

“Why, I don’t care. It doesn’t hurt,” she answered. “You’re getting to be a pretty big boy to go barefooted— but I guess it’s all right when you’re around the place.”

“I thought you said I wasn’t very big,” returned Hu¬ bert slyly, looking over his shoulder. He had sat down on the step of the dining-room door, to unfasten his shoes.

“Well, maybe I meant you’re to old to go barefooted.”

“I wish I’d never get too old for that.”

The boy was peeling off his long ribbed black stock¬ ings. He looked down at his white legs. “I guess I’ll put on my overalls,” he said. So much white leg showing seemed somehow indecent. When he got them good and brown- “But how’ll I get ’em brown if I wear over¬

alls?” he mumbled. “Guess I’ll wear ’em to-day, any¬ how.” He went upstairs and changed, and then ran out into the garden, along the path bordered with currant bushes, and rhubarb flaunting huge crumpled leaves on rose-coloured stalks.

The lettuce was thickly grown along the rows, and weeds had made good progress between. Hubert let his toes dig down into the damp earth, still pleasantly cool after the rain. He tugged away at the weeds. He was not thinking of much; or rather his mind was a confusion of what he would do with the silver dollar, and how he wished his mother would call him Bert, as his father did, and what there was to be for dinner. Lower down, there were vague motions of mind—how nice his mother had looked in the pink dress, and how good his father had been lately, and whether Uncle Alec (Mr. Alexan¬ der McLean) would give him anything for his birthday. Sometimes he did, and sometimes he didn’t. That was the queer thing about it. When he did, it was something splendid, that almost made you hold your breath.

For what seemed to Hubert a long time, he kept on weeding the lettuce, stopping now and then to look around. The place was silent, except for the twittering of birds and the cackling of hens. Willard Faraday was down in the last of his fields, on the other side of the road, mending fences. A faint tapping of a hammer gave a hint of his existence. Hubert was too far away from the house to catch the sound of his mother’s work; she was always quiet at her tasks.

The boy came to the end of a row, and stood up to ease his back. The silence was broken by a step on the pebbly place where the road ran along the end of the lake. It was not the noise of a team. Hubert craned his neck, to look past the snowball bushes and apple trees. He saw a man’s hat of soft grey felt, moving be¬ hind the shrubbery. His heart leaped. Uncle Alec! “Bet you he’s bringing a present.”

He stood staring, speculating. His first impulse was to run to the house, to see what Mr. McLean had brought; but he thought better of that. It might look as if he expected something. And then, too, his mother had given him quite clearly to understand that one must not burst in suddenly and unasked when people were calling—even friends like Uncle Alec. She had been cross with him at times, when he had not waited to be called. So he crouched at the lettuce rows again. He heard the sound of footsteps, and then they died away on the grass.

Nobody called him, and after a while he saw Uncle Alec going away again. He walked slowly, with his head down, as if he were thinking. “I got to have a drink of water/' said Bert, aloud. He took off his hat, to let the wind blow across his forehead. He went up the walk quietly, in his bare feet. They made no sound on the step. He halted in the flood of sunshine just beyond the trellised rambler rose. The screen door had been left wide open, flung back against the trellis by an un¬ heeding hand. Averil Faraday was lying half across the table with the blue-checked cloth. Her arms were stretched out, and her fingers were clenched so hard that her hands seemed stiff, like wood. Her face was hidden on her arms, and only her black braids showed, and the white skin at the back of her neck, above the collar of her gingham dress. She was almost still, but a faint shivering ran through her body.

Bert stood motionless. At first he was going to run to her, and ask what was the matter. But already he had learned not to give rein to his impulses, where his mother was concerned. He stood staring, and shuffling sound¬ lessly, but his mother did not move nor look up. He turned and went down the steps, and out into the garden again. He forgot about the drink of water for a while. Then he thought of it, and went back. This time he went in through the shed, and pumped a pailful of water very loudly before he ventured into the summer kitchen for a cup. He liked a glass from the dining¬ room cupboard, but he decided that a cup would do.

When he took it back, his mother came to the dining¬ room door. “Well, Bertie,” she said cheerfully, “how did you get along with the weeding?” She was smiling now, though Bert thought that she looked queer.

“Pretty good,” he said. “Uncle Alec was here, wasn t he? I saw him.”

“Yes. And what do you think?” Mrs. Faraday had a sprightly air. “He brought a present for you. That s why he didn't stay. He thought it would be more of a surprise if he didn’t give it to you himself.”

“What is it?” The boy was all agog with eagerness.

“It’s here—a package. I haven’t opened it, of course.”

The boy took the parcel in his hands. It was in the shape of two boxes, tied together under a wrapping paper. He pulled at the string, broke it, and tore off the wrap¬ pings. Sure enough, here were two boxes, one long, and one square. Neither was very large. “Oh, what do you s’pose it is?” he mumbled, as he tried awkwardly to open the smaller box. His mother took the other one from him, so that he might open the smaller first. The cover came off—and there, on blue cotton, lay a silver watch. Its white face stared up familiarly, and the little black second-hand was going round and round in a hurry, with a friendly tick. “Oh, oh!” Hubert was too much de¬ lighted to speak. “A watch, a watch, a watch,” he cried at last. He took it up in his fingers, and felt its smooth rim, and the pure glass of the crystal. It was a much finer watch than he knew. It was the sort of silver watch that a man would buy who wanted to get the most perfect gold, but did not dare. “It’s a cracker-jack, ain’t it?” said Hubert.

“It’s splendid,” agreed Mrs. Faraday, staring at her boy.

"It’s awful good of him to give it to me.” Hubert held the watch to his ear, or, really, he pressed it against his cheek, under the pretense of listening.

“He said that every boy should have a watch when he’s twelve years old,” Mrs. Faraday remarked, after a pause.

“You bet he ought to,” grinned the lad.

He had forgotten about the other parcel. “Better open this one, too,” said his mother.

“You hold this, then.” He gave the watch into her curiously reluctant palm. The other box contained an electric flash-light, the first that the boy had ever seen. “Golly! Ain’t it a funny thing?” he said breathlessly, when its purpose had been made clear. “You don’t have to have a lantern, ner anything.

“No. When you have to shut the window in the night, when it rains, you can go right over to it, without falling under the table,” his mother laughed; “and when you’re hunting for eggs in the dark places in the barn, you can use it, too; and when you forget to bring in the wood, in the winter, until after dark. You mustn’t wear it out by putting it off and on, but keep it till you need it. You’ll use the current up too much, Uncle Alec said, if you aren’t careful.”

“Golly,” the boy repeated, out of the paucity of his vocabulary. He was overwhelmed with his good fortune. Two such presents in one day, not to mention the silver dollar and the base-ball mitt. He hardly knew what to say or think.

“I must get on with my work,” said Averil. “I’ll put the watch away in the dining-room.” She set about her tasks in the old dark-walled kitchen, which was a store¬ room in the winter. Its windows looked out upon the trunks of the hemlock trees and the clustered stems of the high bushed cranberries. It was a cool place in the summer, but shadowed, not an exhilarating room for a woman to spend her time in, at the round of woman’s work.

Hubert stood a long time at the dining-room table, handling his wonderful new possessions. At last he laid them aside, and went down to wade in the lake, and fish for clams in the marl. It was fun to see them spurt out a stream of water from their shells, as they closed the doors against the enemy. Hubert put the clams care¬ fully into the water, after they had shut themselves in. He was not given to destruction, and could not bear to kill anything.

*******

Willard Faraday came home from his work in the field, humming and swinging his hammer. It was the most flawless of June days, a day to be happy in, and forget trouble. The dinner was on the table—the farmer’s hearty meal. Mrs. Faraday was a good cook. On the cheap oak sideboard (Willard had bought it from some people who were moving away) there was a cocoanut custard pie, with a dewy meringue at the top: a birthday treat for the boy arrived at youth’s estate.

“Weill” Willard threw down his hat and his hammer on the seat of the rocking chair, and went into the kitchen to wash his hands. “It smells fine. I’m hungry as a hero. Long time since breakfast.” He was rubbing his hands with the towel. He hung it on the wooden peg, and turned toward the dining-room. Hubert came to¬ ward his father with his two new presents in his hands.

“See, pa, what I got,” he exulted, displaying the gifts. “See what I got.”

Faraday stopped and stared. His eyes narrowed. “Where’d you get those?” he asked. His hands were hanging at his sides, and his fingers worked convul¬ sively.

“Uncle Alec gave 'em to me—he left ’em here for me. I was weeding in the garden. See—a watch, and one of these here things that flash a light.” The boy snapped on the glow of the electric flash, which showed sickly yellow in the sun.

Willard, ominously silent, took a step forward into the room. He stretched his hand for the watch. Hubert gave it hesitatingly. His fingers fumbled on the smooth rim, the fluted knob at the stem. Willard stood looking at it for a long time. He turned it over and turned it back. “A damned fine watch,” he said at last. He turned upon his wife. She was standing behind' him, her eyes wide, her face tense. “So Alec was here this morn¬ ing, was he?” the man asked, in a studiedly casual tone.

“Yes. Just a minute,” she said hurriedly. “He came to bring Bertie his things.”

“His birthday presents,” the man corrected her. “He called you in, of course, Bert, to get your birthday pres¬ ents.”

“No, I was working out in the lettuce bed,” Hubert hastened to say. He looked alarmed, but still proud and happy.

“Oh, he didn’t ask you to come in?”

“Come, let’s have dinner,” said Averil, with an at¬ tempt at carrying off the situation. “It’ll get cold.”

“There’s cocoanut pie,” cried Bert, willing now to dis¬ tract his father’s attention. “Come on.”

“A damned fine watch,” said Willard Faraday, gazing down at the timepiece in his hand. His face was dis¬ torted, and his whole body quivered. “Such a good watch that it ought to be put where nothing can happen to it.” He walked toward the entry which led to the front door.

Mrs. Faraday gasped. “What are you going to do?” she asked breathlessly. She clutched at the door jamb as she followed him.

“Put it where nothing can happen to it.” Faraday opened the door to the entry, and walked toward the front door.

“Oh, pa, what are you doing?” quavered Bert, run¬ ning behind. Faraday, without a glance at the boy, stood on the threshold and raised his arm. “Oh, pa, my watch, my watch!” screamed the lad, reaching futile hands for his treasure. “Oh, pa, please-”

With a strong downward skimming motion, Faraday had thrown the watch far out over the water. It glit¬ tered, cast up sparkles, disappeared. Hubert shrieked as it went down.

“Where’s that other thing?” Faraday turned back. His hard narrowed eyes ignored both wife and child.

“You shan’t, you shan’t!” Hubert was sobbing, and tears were flowing down his cheeks. “Don’t let him, ma, don’t let him.” Averil shrank from the man as he went past her. She did not speak. A sick look of terror and despair were on her face. Hubert dashed into the dining¬ room, snatched his flash-light, and threw himself on the old sofa, face down, the flash under him. “You shan’t, you shan’t,” he was screaming. His little bare feet were beating the floor. Willard strode over to him, and seized him by the arm.

“Stop, Willard, stop!” Averil’s voice was high with fear. “Don’t you do that. Whatever you think, it isn’t fair for you to hurt the boy. It isn’t fair, it isn’t fair,” she repeated passionately, pushing him away.

The man stood facing her, his mouth working, with¬ out speech. He let go his hold upon the boy. The hammer lay where he had laid it, upon the seat of the rocking chair. He stepped forward and grasped it. For a moment the woman was frozen with horror, but when she saw what he was going to do, she kept quiet, con¬ temptuously. The hammer came down on the table, with its neat array of crockery and glass. Again and again he struck, smashing the big platter, the tureen, the tumblers full of water, the tea cups, the brown tea pot full of hot tea, the bread plate, the butter dish, the pile of smaller plates set aside for the dessert, the favour¬ ite flowered, plate holding the little boy’s birthday treat.

Silenced, the lad on the sofa raised his head and stared, cowering and blanching. The last stroke completed the devastation. Willard, white as a dead man, cast the hammer on the floor and fled, leaving the screen door wide open, as another man had left it that day. The woman and the boy heard him crunching the gravel in the path which led to the barn. Then they heard him shouting at the horses as he hitched them to the light buggy. Hubert had resumed his sobbing, and his mother knelt with her arm around him. They did not speak until they saw the buggy lunging past the house, and down the lane to the road. The furious screeching of the wheels mingled with the cracking of the whip and the muttering and swearing of the driver.

Now Hubert cried, heartbroken for his watch, the beautiful lost treasure. “Oh, mama, why did he do it?”

he stammered, sinking against his mother’s breast. “Why did he throw it away?”

Averil Faraday, her tearless eyes hidden against his hair, could only murmur, “I’m so sorry, so sorry. My poor little boy!”

*******

Late that night, Averil Faraday, lying awake in her room at the front of the house, heard Willard come driv¬ ing into the yard. The wheels made a slow scraping on the pebbles, and the horses’ hoofs sank almost without noise into the sand and grass. After a while, she heard the man come in through the shed, and she detected the subdued thud of parcels being put down on the dining¬ room table, now clear of the havoc of noon-time, and placidly covered with its checked blue cloth. Heavy, yet restrained, footsteps mounted the stairs, and entered the room across the narrow hall. Muffled movements fol¬ lowed, then the creaking of the bed. There was not to be much sleeping in the house that night. Even Hubert had had another fit of weeping at bed time, and had slept only uneasily, with starts and cries. Averil had gone twice to his room to comfort him.

Now she lay with her arm across her eyes, to shut out even the faint light of the moon reflected from the lake. She heard the wind swishing in the sedges along the shore, and the lapping of the waves against the little space of sand where the boat was drawn up, and where Bertie played at digging trenches and catching clams. Her mind was almost torpid. What was the use of thinking? She had thought and thought until she seemed incapable of further effort. The only thing that stirred her to emotion was the remembered voice of the boy, as he had asked her, with sobbing, “Why, why, mother? Why, why?” She writhed, burying her face and its pro¬ tecting arm deep in the pillow.

*******

The next morning, Faraday was up early, and out looking after the stock. Averil rose and dressed and went downstairs. Upon the table in the dining-room lay several large parcels, which rattled when she touched them. They contained dishes, pretty ones, she noted as she took off their wrappings; better dishes than those which had been broken. She sighed, caressing the blue spray across the plates. She had said more than once that she liked dishes with blue figures on them, pale and scattered figures, not heavy and coarse. It was strange that Willard had remembered. She hurried to wash them and put them away, that nothing need be said. Willard had built the fire in the stove, and Averil set about her share of the morning’s tasks. Breakfast was ready, and the dishes and their wrappings had disappeared, when Willard came in. Averil had set the table with crockery from the cupboard, the plain white ironstone which was used “for common.” Willard was haggard, and he did not speak, as he washed his hands and dried them. Yet his silence was not that of fury, but of shame. His anger was so mad, so raging, while it lasted, and then it died out into the bitterest self-condemnation and abase¬ ment. Averil had seen it all before. Every time, it had seemed as if she could never feel anything but contempt for him again; and then she could not stifle her pity, not for his wrath, but for his humiliation.