The time drawed near for me to go to Tamer’s and visit with Celestine, and I cooked up good vittles and sights of ’em, knowin’ that in my absence no paneky would soothe like that. I didn’t mean to stay but two nights, but didn’t know what might happen, they wuz such cases to urge me to stay when I got there.
I arrove on the appinted day with no casualities, and they wuz dretful glad to see me, Anna and Jack specially, Tamer and Cicero seemed to be sort o’ absent-minded, I most knew they had got holt of some new novel, and so it turned out, it wuz “The Roaring Avenger of the Bloody Path” that wuz under perusal, and they couldn’t hardly brook to have their attentions drawed off a minute, but Tamer finished it the afternoon of the day I got there, and then she seemed inclined to talk more, but her talk wuz real deprestin’. She had got the sinevetus she said beyend the doubt.
And I said, “Don’t you believe you got it runnin’ after Arabeller?”
And she said, with a sithe, “Mebby it wuz so, and,” sez she, “if it wuzn’t so onfashionable to keep house without a servant I wouldn’t keep her an hour, for she acts worse than ever and makes me more trouble than she duz good, enough sight.”
Celestine seemed real glad to see me when she could git her attentions offen her landscapes and views and placks and things. She is a tall, wapey lookin’ woman and wears spectacles, and I don’t spoze she sees much through them specks only her pictures, and works of Art, as she calls ’em. She don’t seem to see her little girl hardly any, a sweet, pretty child, too, a gentle, quiet little thing with eyes that seem to be on the lookout for tender looks, and a sweet, sad mouth that seems sort o’ grievin’ for the kisses she don’t git.
For sure as I am alive durin’ them three days and two nights I wuz there I didn’t see Celestine take one mite of notice of little Mary, only to hook up her dress once or twice and tie back her hair, and she did them in a kind of a absent-minded, dreamy way as if the child’s waist might have been a distant range of mountains, and her hair a waterfall or runnin’ stream. It wuz some such color, anyway, some of the color of water with the gold light of sunset burnin’ on it, and it hung all round her sweet face in waves and ringlets. She wuz a dretful pretty child. And it seemed as if I couldn’t keep my hands offen her, I wanted to hold her in my arms and pat down them shinin’ tresses so. And it wuzn’t more’n several minutes, anyway, till she wuz nestlin’ up aginst me and I wuz holdin’ her real fondly on my left side while Jack wuz hangin’ round my right side. He didn’t act jealous a mite, either, for he seemed to be jest as fond of little Mary as I wuz. They played together real good. And I held that child in my arms and looked down into the tender, confidin’ little face, a sort of believin’ face, jest the sort I like, and sez to myself:
“What under the sun can her Ma be thinkin’ of to be makin’ up fancy pictures and set so much store by ’em and slight the sweetest and prettiest livin’ picture, all finished off perfect, right before her?” But Celestina did, she jest slighted her, and acted as if she wuzn’t half so much worth as the blank pieces of canvas she handled from day to day, for them she could cover with her own idees and images. It seemed queer to me, queer as a dog.
Anna wuz not in very good sperits, but she went round the house good tempered if ruther sad, helpin’ her Ma all she could, and, in fact, takin’ the brunt of the work on herself, for Arabeller wuz not to be depended on, and Tamer’s various diseases wuz worse and more aggravatin’ than they had been. Cicero, as usual, wuz steeped to the chin in cigarettes and his wild novels of buckaneers and pirates and couldn’t be depended on for help only at meal times, then he come out strong and helped to make way with the food in a masterful way.
Hamen and his brother John wuz real busy about their bizness, and I didn’t see much on ’em, only at the table when they partook of their food hastily and departed. But Tamer seemed to want to make it as pleasant as she could for me, and as Celestine spent so much time outdoors engrossed with her painting, she and I had lots of time to visit together, though, as I always did at Hamen’s, I see lots of things I didn’t fancy, though I hain’t no hand to complain.
I don’t believe in relations findin’ fault with each other, and I am very close mouthed, but of course I can’t help seein’ every time I am there that Tamer is sot and overbearin’ and very onreasonable. Why, she don’t think that Tirzah Ann is the best housekeeper in Jonesville, she jest the same as told me there wuz others jest as good. And she believes that in the big cities there is lawyers that know as much as our Thomas Jefferson.
I pity Tamer from the bottom of my heart, she is failin’ in her mind. But she can’t help it, she has weakened her faculties, I think, broodin’ on her diseases, and then half the time she thinks she is a female Amazon. And how I do pity little Jack! Tamer kep’ the best sort of clothes on him, dressed and fed him jest as well as a child could be, only when she wuz down with the most curiousest of her diseases, or in one of her tempers.
But while, as I have said, she took good care of his body, oh! how she neglected and misused the mind, the heart, the imagination, the true life of little Jack, misused it like a dog. She would fly at him and whip him unmercifully for what he wuzn’t to blame for, and then set over one of her novels and let him go on with what he ort to have been stopped doin’. To use the words of another, she let him do the things he ortn’t to do and whipped him for what he ort. Her mind wuz such.
Now, to give a sample of her onjestice, the very next day after I wuz there Jack wuz sent to a neighbor’s on a errent. His mother told him to go cross lots, she wuz in such a hurry to have her errent done she didn’t give him enough particulars about the way, and when the poor little creeter wuz doin’ jest the best he could and hurryin’ on jest as near as he could where his Ma told him to go, he got into a swampy place and got his best clothes all dirty and wuz too late to do his errent.
Tamer Ann wanted to send by the neighbor to the city where he wuz goin’ for a certain new blood curdlin’ novel, jest issued, and, owin’ to Jack’s misfortune in losin’ his way when he got there, the man wuz gone. And when poor Jack come meachin’ home with his nice clothes all muddy and wet, as forlorn lookin’ a little creeter as I ever see, Tamer wuz voylently mad about his clothes, and when he said (for Jack is naturally truthful) that he got there too late to do the errent, Tamer’s face got red as blood with white patches shinin’ through the red, like a lurid sky with white thunder caps showin’ on it, and she took Jack by the hand and jerked him up the stairs into her own room.
She jest tore the clothes offen him, as I learn afterwards, and whipped him onmercifully, first with her hand, and then afterwards, as Jack wouldn’t own up that he had been wicked and wuz sorry for it, she grew madder and madder, and voyalenter and voyalenter, and ketched off her slipper, not a soft one (that might be applied with safety to the place best fitted for such blows), but one with a high French heel, and she struck Jack with that till great blue marks wuz left on his little quiverin’, shrinkin’ body.
She whipped him till the sharp pain made him yield, as greater heroes have before, and he owned up that he had been awful wicked and wuz sorry. And then Tamer wuz satisfied and dressed Jack in a handsome suit and give him half a pound of candy and a lot of indigestible fruit (which he threw up with great pain before midnight), and come down lookin’ perfectly satisfied and contented, and Jack went out to divide his spoils with Mary, jest as many a outwardly successful hero has brung home his spoils obtained by truckling to Evil to lavish on some beloved female. And that evenin’, jest before sundown, I give Tamer a-talkin’ to, sez I, “Jack thought he wuz doing right, he thought he wuz on the right road.”
“If he had looked and kep’ his mind on it all the time he would have come out right.”
Sez I, “Tamer Ann, mebby Jack didn’t think to look.”
“Well, I’ll let you know that Jack has got to think. I’ll whip him jest as hard for not thinkin’ as I will for anything else, what bizness has he not to think?”
Sez I, “Tamer Ann, do you and I always think before we do things?”
“I can’t speak for you,” sez she, “but as for me, I always do.”
Sez I, “Is it always easy for you to decide right, Tamer, when two or three paths are in front of you to decide from? Do you always choose the right one?”
“I always have!” sez she severely.
“Well,” sez I, “you’re different from most folks; most of us git into the wrong paths time and agin, and go blunderin’ along over rocks and sand and stun and weeds, etc., and we may count ourselves happy if we ever git back into the right road agin.”
“Well,” sez Tamer, “Jack might have known he wuz goin’ wrong, it wuzn’t a blunder, he chose deliberate.”
Sez I, “Jack said he thought he wuz goin’ right, and I believe him. But even if he had chosen the wrong road deliberate, lots of us look back onto times when we had to choose different paths to walk in, and deliberately, though unbeknown to us, chose the wrong way. There is so many paths to choose from in this life, the roads branch out into so many different ways, why, if the compass had as many pints on it as the porcupine has quills it couldn’t begin to pint to the different paths we have to choose from.
“Sometimes,” sez I, growin’ real eloquent, “they go down into the shadows with the pale shapes of Renunciation and Martyrdom, and a cross shinin’ faint and far down in the gloom. Some through the garden of the gods, where the air is fine and clear, and music and chanted song float along down the beautiful pathway. Some through the crowds of bizness, and gay pleasure-seekers through pleasures and palaces. Some into the dark highways, where Want and Misery walk hand in hand. Some down into the tomb, some up the mount of crucifixion. There are paths, long, cold, shinin’, that go up the mountain side, where the glitterin’ tops gleam and beckon, and we are willin’ to drop every weight that would hender us from climbin’.
“Oh, those times to look back upon when life wuz to be chosen, or what proved to be (onbeknown to us) a livin’ death! How calm the fields lay under the light of that autumn sky, long flat fields, green and calm and stretchin’ back to the quiet woods. How the road in front lengthened out in a long, shinin’, yellow-brown ribbon with cozy sheltered homes layin’ by its side. How soft and cloud flecked wuz the sky overhead, broodin’ down over the sheltered home nests. Only a question to be made and answered, a breath of air, light thing indeed, lighter than the lightest fleck of soft blue-gray cloud overhead, maybe a few tears, a farewell not so loud as the lowest bird song in the branches along the brown wayside fences. Ah! but has there not been times since when that low word has risen into a mighty voice that filled the skies of the worlds, this world and the onknown? The great dread that it wuz indeed final, that nowhere, nowhere could the lives that touched each other, and then drifted so wide asunder, would ever meet side by side agin.
“Oh, the blindness, the fatal blindness of ignorance, the mistakes that arise from pride, from ambition, from any and every cause, and whose fatality cannot be seen until afterward, until the sun has gone down and the night brings reflection and—heartache! These are the true tragedies of life, enacted by them who weep with no grave for their tears to fall upon. These are the real mourners who do not go about the streets, but who sit inside the gayly curtained box and see the play of life go on before them till the lights are put out, the curtain down, and the real play of life is at an end.
“But they watch the gayly plumed puppets play and act their part, and applaud and smile and the play goes on. Poor playgoers, poor actors on the stage, all, all waiting for the finale of the seen.
“Everywhere, everywhere, on each side, before us, under us, over us, the roads branch off, and we with our poor, weak eyesight can’t choose right time and agin, we can’t and don’t. Even with the experience of maturity, with all the wisdom gathered from the words of them who have gone the way before, with all the experience of the travelers through the past to guide us, with the lamp of Caution in our hand, the shoes of Watchfulness to creep along on, and the great book of God’s will open before us, His strength to lean on—if with all these helps we stumble and blunder, how can we condemn the children so harshly, with no guide but the waverin’ will, the undeveloped conscience and understandin’, if they make mistakes?
“And you whipped Jack,” sez I impressively, “for making just a little mistake; you whipped him till his poor back is black and blue, Tamer.”
“I didn’t mean to whip so hard, Cousin Samantha, but my temper got up so after I got to whippin’ him because he wouldn’t own that he had been wicked and say he wuz sorry for it, that I whipped him harder than I meant to.”
Sez I, “Then you wuz whippin’ him for not tellin’ a lie, and you made him tell one, for, at last, to stop the cruel sting of the blows on his poor little back, you did finally succeed in makin’ him say he had been wicked, when he hadn’t been, and sorry, when he wuzn’t sorry, poor little creeter!”
“You always take Jack’s part, Samantha.”
“Not before Jack, Tamer Smith.”
“No, you don’t say anything before him, but you kinder act in such a way that he knows you are on his side, that you are his friend.”
“Well, I should think he needed one, poor little creeter!”
“Don’t you spoze, Samantha Allen, a mother knows what is best and right for her children? Don’t you spoze she acts for his best good?”
“Not when she leaves blue, livid marks on his back, not when she whips him into tellin’ a lie.”
“What you mean by that, I don’t know,” sez Tamer.
“He wuzn’t sorry,” sez I; “not a particle, and you whipped him till he said he wuz.”
“Well, he ought to be sorry if he wuzn’t, and I would like to know what you would have me do.”
“I would have you never make a child say a thing that wuzn’t true, and if you had sot your mind on havin’ him say he wuz sorry, reason with him and tell him why he ort to be sorry till he wuz sorry. But you jest sprung at him and whipped him, as sudden and voyalent as a hailstorm that ravages down on a flower garden, cuttin’ and peltin’ and slashin’ and killin’ all the dainty leaves and blossoms. And it didn’t do any more good and jest as much hurt as that voyalent storm would, with no soft rain to go down to the root of the flowers and nourish ’em.
“Why, if them posies ever lift their heads agin, which many of ’em won’t, there will be on ’em the cuts and scars of the icy, drivin’ hailstuns. If the sweet posies of Truth and Candor and Honesty hain’t entirely cut down and pelted out of sight in Jack’s poor little soul I’ll be glad on’t, but if they do live, Tamer Ann, there will be cuts and scars on ’em, and I’d advise you as a friend to turn short round and do different by him.”
Sez Tamer, tosstin’ her head, “I shall probable do as I like with my own child, he is mine.”
Sez I, “Tamer Smith, there is where you make another mistake. He is not yours, as you may find out to your sorrow some day, he belongs to Another who let you take him for a spell, to train him up for higher service. He will claim him agin when He gits ready.”
And, though I didn’t say it outside of me, I said it inside, that I should be most glad if He would take him, much as I loved him. It would be such a comfort, I thought, to lay my head down at night on my goose-feather pillow and think that dear little Jack wuz safe. Safe from the cruel blows that fell on him anywhere, hard blows that beat the little, tender body and soft, dimpled limbs, leavin’ blue, livid marks where there should be nothin’ but dimples. Safe from the deeper marks and scars that deface the eager, seekin’ mind, the active, impressionable nature, the little white soul. But while I wuz so sorry for Jack that my heart most melted inside of me and the tears run down my face many a time faster than they did down Jack’s when I would hear Tamer whippin’ him, and he cryin’——
Though I wuz sorry for Jack and pitiful towards him, as pitiful could be, I tried to be and wuz about half the time, I should say, sorry for Tamer, or mebby it wuz a quarter of the time I wuz sorry for her, or half a quarter, I can’t tell exactly, because I would have my ups and downs about it, for Jack it wuz a full, deep, complete pity and sympathy and sorrow all the time. But sometimes I would say to myself, now Tamer has got a bad temper, she got it through Heaven only knows by what cause, ancestral or local. If it come down to her with her Roman nose and thin lips from some ancestor, then how fur is she to blame for not subduin’ it entirely? No amount of rubbin’ down and smoothin’ and grindin’ could make that nose of hers into a Greecy one. No amount of stimulatin’ liniment could make them thin lips soften out into more generous and sweeter curves. She might git up early and set up late and she couldn’t make them changes, and who knows whether she could with all her efforts entirely soften and make sweet that sour, dissatisfied disposition and fiery temper?
And then would be the time, for four or five minutes mebby, I would be sorry for Tamer. And then agin I would say to myself she has lived in a onreal, onnatural world and is livin’ there still. And when pirates and burglars and murderers and arsoners and rapiners and robbers and Injuns are continually roamin’ and stalkin’ and war-whoopin’ and murderin’ and dashin’ and skulkin’ and prancin’ through anybody’s brain, hain’t it reasonable that that brain should be tuckered out, too tuckered, too trompled and beat down to take fresh, vigorous thought on any subject?
I would say in such a wild, trompled, dust-blown, whoopin’ highway what chance is there for such a little mite of a lonesome wayfarer as Jack, and I don’t know that it is any wonder that he is sometimes entirely overlooked, and sometimes ridin’ up in high ease, and sometimes stomped and trompled on. Poor little creeter! And then I would think of her different diseases, and wantin’ to do my best for her even in my thoughts (for, though I gin her advice through duty, I always tried to be charitable to her in my mind), I would say over to myself some of her most lengthy distempers and curious ones, I would say, in a low, deep voice, “basler mangetus, sinevetus, singletus, tonsiletus, pironitus,” etc., etc., till sometimes I would git real sorry for her as much as six minutes. Well, just such seens as I have mentioned I would witness from hour to hour and from day to day, and finally I got heartsick with lookin’ at it and wuz glad when the time drawed near for me to return to the bosom of my family (a gingham bosom week days, and a fine linen one Sundays, with five pleats on a side). Jack cried when I spoke of goin’ home, but Cicero didn’t care at all, he wuz to school daytimes, and the very minute he got home at night he wuz pourin’ over them novels, and his mother would proudly say to me:
“Cicero is so much like me, so different from Jack, he is so studious, such a reader, he will make a great thinker.”
Not through the nourishment he gits from such food, I sez to myself. And I tried several times to talk with Cicero about readin’ such books, but he would look up so coldy at me from across “The Boody Gulch” or “The Fiend Haunted Hollow” that it fairly stunted me. He would look up middlin’ respectful to hear my remonstrances about readin’ ’em, would listen with his finger between the pages, and the minute I stopped, resoom his occupation, in the meantime answerin’ me nothin’, not a word, till I declare it stunted me, his looks wuz so cold and resolved and sort o’ blood curdlin’, and his mean so determined that I wuz positively afraid to tackle him.
But he had his thoughts, and while I wuz there one mornin’ it wuz found that Cicero wuz missin’, he wuz searched for one day and two nights; Tamer, in the meantime, fallin’ from one hysterick into another, the third day he wuz found in the woods milds from there, on top of a big rock; he had built a fortification in front of it, and barricaded himself from enemies, had built a sort of an outlook in a tree nigh by, where he could look out for prowlin’ foes, and wuz found there smokin’ cigarettes and readin’ “The Lone Bandit of the Haunted Woods” when he wuz discovered. He wuz made to go home, though he rebelled and wuz moody for days afterwards.