David Dunne

In an instant, however, she had recalled herself to earth, and David’s dancing eyes renewed her hostility toward him. Toward the end of the day she began to feel somewhat appeased by his docility and evident repentance. Her manner had perceptibly changed by the time the closing exercise began. This was the writing of words on the blackboard for the pupils to use in sentences. She pointed to the first word, “income.”

“Who can make a sentence and use that word correctly?” she asked.

“Do call on Tim,” whispered David. “He so loves to be the first to tell anything.”

She smiled her appreciation of Tim’s prominent characteristic, and looked at the youngster, who was wringing his hand in an agony of eagerness. She gave him the floor, and he jumped to his feet in triumph, yelling:

“In come a mouse!”

This was too much for David’s composure, and he gave way to an infectious fit of laughter, in which the pupils joined.

Little Teacher found the allusion personal and uncomfortable. She at once assumed her former distant mien, demanding David’s presence after school closed.

“You have no gratitude, David,” she stated emphatically.

The boy winced, and his eyes darkened with concern, as he remembered his mother’s parting injunction.

Little Teacher softened slightly.

“You are sorry, aren’t you, David?” she asked gently.

He looked at her meditatively.

“No, Teacher,” he answered quietly.

She flushed angrily.

“David Dunne, you may go home, and you needn’t come back to school again until you tell me you are sorry.”

David took his books and walked serenely from the room. He went home by the way of Jim Block’s farm.

“Hullo, Dave!” called Big Jim, who was in the barnyard.

“Hello, Jim! I came to tell you some good news. You said if you were only sure there was something Teacher was afraid of, you wouldn’t feel so scared of her.”

“Well,” prompted Jim eagerly.

“I thought I’d find out for you, so I took a mouse to school and let it loose.”

“Gee!”

David then related the occurrences of the morning, not omitting the look in Little Teacher’s eyes when she beheld Jim from the window.

“I’ll hook up this very night and go to see her,” confided Jim.

“Be sure you do, Jim. If you find your courage slipping, just remember that you owe it to me, because she won’t let me come back to school unless she knows why I wasn’t sorry.”

“I give you my word, Dave,” said Jim earnestly.

The next morning Little Teacher stopped at the Brumble farm.

“I came this way to walk to school with you and Janey,” she said sweetly and significantly to David.

When they reached the road, and Janey had gone back to get her sled, Little Teacher looked up and caught the amused twinkle in David’s eye. A wave of conscious red overspread her cheeks.

“Must I say I am sorry now?” he asked.

“David Dunne, there are things you understand which you never learned from books.”

CHAPTER XI

Late spring brought preparations for M’ri’s wedding. Rhody Crabbe’s needle and fingers flew in rapturous speed, and there was likewise engaged a seamstress from Lafferton. Rhody had begged for the making of the wedding gown, and when it was finished David went to fetch it home.

“It’s almost done, David, and you tell M’ri the last stitch was a loveknot. It’s most a year sence you wuz here afore, a-waitin’ fer her blue waist tew be finished. Remember, don’t you, David?”

He remembered, and as she stitched he sat silently reviewing that year, the comforts received, the pleasures pursued, and, best of all, the many things he had learned, but the recollection that a year ago his mother had been living brought a rush of sad memories and blotted out happier thoughts.

“I wish yer ma could hev seen Mart and M’ri merried. She was orful disapp’inted when they broke off.”

There was no reply. Rhody’s sharp little eyes, in upward glance, spied the trickling tear; she looked quickly away and stitched in furious haste.

“But, my!” she continued, as if there had been no pause, “how glad she would be to know ’t was you as fetched it around.”

David looked up, diverted and inquiring.

“Yes; I learnt it from M’ri. She told me about the flowers you give him. I thought it was jest sweet in you, David. You done good work thar.”

“Miss Rhody,” said David earnestly, “maybe some day I can get you a sweetheart.”

“’T ain’t no use, David,” she sighed. “No one wants a plain critter like me.”

“Lots of them don’t marry for looks,” argued David sagely. “Besides, you look fine in your black silk, and your hair crimped. Joe thinks your picture is great. He’s got it on a shelf over his fireplace at the ranch.”

“Most likely some cowboy’ll see it and lose his heart,” laughed Miss Rhody, “but thar, the weddin’ dress is all done. You go home and quit thinkin’ about gittin’ me a man. I ain’t ha’nted by the thought of endin’ single.”

Great preparations for the wedding progressed at the Brumble farm. For a week Pennyroyal whipped up eggs and sugar, and David ransacked the woods for evergreens and berries with which to decorate the big barn, where the dance after the wedding was to take place.

The old farmhouse was filled to overflowing on the night of the wedding. After the ceremony, Miss Rhody, resplendent in the black silk and waving hair loosed from the crimping pins that had confined it for two days and nights, came up to David.

“My, David, I’ve got the funniest all over feelin’ from seein’ Mart and M’ri merried! I was orful afeerd I’d cry.”

“Sit down, Miss Rhody,” said David, gallantly bringing her a chair.

“Didn’t M’ri look perfeckly beyewtiful?” she continued, after accomplishing the pirouette that prevented creases. “And Mart, he looked that proud, and solemn too. It made me think of that gal when she spoke ‘Curfew shall not ring tewnight’ at the schoolhouse. Every one looks fine. I hain’t seen Barnabas so fussed up sence Libby Sukes’ funyral. It makes him look real spry. And whoever got Larimer Sasser to perk up and put on a starched shirt!”

“I think,” confided David, “that Penny got after him. She had him in a corner when he came, and she tied his necktie so tight I was afraid she would choke him.”

“Look at old Miss Pankey, David. She, as rich as they make ’em, and a-wearin’ that old silk! It looks as ef it hed bin hung up fer you and Jud to shoot at. Ain’t she a-glarin’ and a-sniffin’ at me, though? Say, David, you write Joe that if M’ri did look the purtiest of any one that my dress cost more’n any one’s here, and showed it, too. I hope thar’ll be a lot of occasions to wear it to this summer. M’ri is a-goin’ to give a reception when she gits back from her tower, and that’ll be one thing to wear it at. Ain’t Jud got a mean look? He’s as crooked as a dog’s hind leg. But, say, David, that’s a fine suit you’re a-wearin’. You look handsome. Thar ain’t a stingy hair on Barnabas’ head. He’s doin’ jest as good by you as he is by Jud. Don’t little Janey look like an angel in white, and them lovely beads Joe give her? I can’t think of nothin’ else but that little Eva you read me about. I shouldn’t wonder a bit, David, if I come to yer and Janey’s weddin’ yet!” she said, as Janey came dancing up to them.

A slow flush mounted to his forehead, but Janey laughed merrily.

“I’ve promised Joe I’d wait for him,” she said roguishly.

“She’s only foolin’ and so wuz he,” quickly spoke Miss Rhody, seeing the hurt look in David’s eyes. “Barnabas,” she asked, stopping him as he passed, “you air a-goin’ to miss M’ri turrible. You could never manige if it wa’n’t fer Penny. Won’t she hev the time of her life cleanin’ up after this weddin’? She’ll enjoy it more’n she did gettin’ ready fer it.”

“I hope Penny won’t go to gittin’ merried–not till Janey’s growed up.”

“David’s a great help to you, too, Barnabas.”

“Dave! I don’t know how I ever got along afore he came. He’s so willin’ and so honest. He’s as good as gold. Only fault he’s got is a quick temper. He’s doin’ purty fair with it, though. If only Jud–”

He stopped, with a sigh, and Rhody hastened to change the subject.

“You’re a-lookin’ spry to-night, Barnabas. I hain’t seen you look so spruce in a long time.”

“You look mighty tasty yerself, Rhody.”

This interchange of compliments was interrupted by the announcement of supper.

“I never set down to sech a repast,” thought Miss Rhody. “I’m glad I didn’t feed much to-day. I don’t know whether to take chickin twice, or to try all them meltin’, flaky lookin’ pies. And jest see them layer cakes!”

After supper adjournment was made to the barn, where the fiddles were already swinging madly. Every one caught the spirit, and even Miss Rhody finally succumbed to Barnabas’ insistence. Pennyroyal captured Uncle Larimy, and when Janey whirled away in the arms of a schoolmate, David, who had never learned to dance, stood isolated. He felt lonely and depressed, and recalled the expression in which Joe Forbes had explained life after he had acquired a stepmother. “I was always on the edge of the fireside,” he had said.

“Dave,” expostulated Uncle Barnabas, as soon as he could get his breath after the last dance, “you’d better eddicate yer heels as well as yer head. It’s unnateral fer a colt and a boy not to kick up their heels. You don’t never want to be a looker-on at nuthin’ excep’ from ch’ice. You’d orter be a stand-in on everything that’s a-goin’ instead of a stand-by. The stand-bys never git nowhar.”

PART TWO

CHAPTER I

David Dunne at eighteen was graduated from the high school in Lafferton after five colorless years in which study and farm work alternated. Throughout this period he had continued to incur the rancor of Jud, whose youthful scrapes had gradually developed into brawls and carousals. The Judge periodically extricated him from serious entanglements, and Barnabas continued optimistic in his expectations of a time when Jud should “settle.” On one occasion Jud sneeringly accused David of “working the old man for a share in the farm,” and taunted him with the fact that he was big enough and strong enough to hustle for himself without living on charity. David started on a tramp through the woods to face the old issue and decide his fate. He had then one more year before he could finish school and carry out a long-cherished dream of college.

He was at a loss to know just where to turn at the present time for a home where he could work for his board and attend school. The Judge and M’ri had gone abroad; Joe was on his ranch; the farmers needed no additional help.

He had been walking swiftly in unison with his thoughts, and when he came out of the woods into the open he was only a mile downstream from town. Upon the river bank stood Uncle Larimy, skillfully swirling his line.

“Wanter try yer luck, Dave?”

“I have no luck just now, Uncle Larimy,” replied the boy sadly.

Uncle Larimy shot him a quick, sidelong glance.

“Then move on, Dave, and chase arter it. Thar’s allers luck somewhar. Jest like fishin’. You can’t set in one spot and wait for luck tew come to you like old Zeke Foss does. You must keep a-castin’.”

“I don’t know where to cast, Uncle Larimy.”

Uncle Larimy pondered. He knew that Jud was home, and he divined David’s trend of thought.

“You can’t stick to a plank allers, Dave, ef you wanter amount tew anything. Strike out bold, and swim without any life presarvers. You might jest as well be a sleepy old cat in a corner as to go smoothsailin’ through life.”

“I feel that I have got to strike out, and at once, Uncle Larimy, but I don’t just know where to strike.”

“Wal, Dave, it’s what we’ve all got to find out fer ourselves. It’s a leap in the dark like, and ef you don’t land nowhere, take another leap, and keep a-goin’ somewhar.”

David wended his way homeward, pondering over Uncle Larimy’s philosophy. When he went with Barnabas to do the milking that night he broached the subject of leaving the farm.

“I know how Jud feels about my being here, Uncle Barnabas.”

“What did he say to you?” asked the old man anxiously.

“Nothing. I overheard a part of your conversation. He is right. And if I stay here, he will run away to sea. He told the fellows in Lafferton he would.”

“You are going to stay, Dave.”

“You won’t like to think you drove your son away. If he gets into trouble, both you and I will feel we are to blame.”

“Dave, I see why the Jedge hez got it all cut out fer you to be a lawyer. You’ve got the argyin’ habit strong. But you can’t argue me into what I see is wrong. This is the place fer you to be, and Jud ’ll hev to come outen his spell.”

“Then let me go away until he does. You must give him every chance.”

“Where’ll you go?” asked Barnabas curiously.

“I don’t know, yet,” said the boy, “but I’ll think out a plan to-night.”

It was Jud, after all, who cut the Gordian knot, and made one of his welcome disappearances, which lasted until David was ready to start in college. His savings, that he had accumulated by field work in the summers and a very successful poultry business for six years, netted him four hundred dollars.

“One hundred dollars for each year,” he thought exultantly. “That will be ample with the work I shall find to do.”

Then he made known to his friends his long-cherished scheme of working his way through college. The Judge laughed.

“Your four hundred dollars, David, will barely get you through the first year. After that, I shall gladly pay your expenses, for as soon as you are admitted to the bar you are to come into my office, of course.”

David demurred.

“I shall work my way through college,” he said firmly.

He next told Barnabas of his intention and the Judge’s offer which he had declined.

“I’m glad you refused, Dave. You’ll only be in his office till you’re ripe fer what I kin make you. I’ve larnt that the law is a good foundation as a sure steppin’ stone tew it, so you kin hev a taste of it. But the Jedge ain’t a-goin’ to pay yer expenses.”

“I don’t mean that he shall,” replied David. “I want to pay my own way.”

“I’m a-goin’ to send you tew college and send you right. No starvin’ and garret plan fer you. I’ve let Joe and the Jedge do fer you as much as they’re a-goin’ to, but you’re mine from now on. It’s what I’d do fer my own son if he cared fer books, and you’re as near to me ez ef you were my son.”

“It’s too much, Uncle Barnabas.”

“And, David,” he continued, unheeding the interruption, “I hope you’ll really be my son some day.”

A look of such exquisite happiness came into the young eyes that Barnabas put out his hand silently. In the firm hand-clasp they both understood.

“I am not going to let you help me through college, though, Uncle Barnabas. It has always been my dream to earn my own education. When you pay for anything yourself, it seems so much more your own than when it’s a gift.”

“Let him, Barnabas,” again counseled Uncle Larimy. “Folks must feed diff’rent. Thar’s the sweet-fed which must allers hev sugar, but salt’s the savor for Dave. He’s the kind that flourishes best in the shade.”

Janey wrote to Joe of David’s plan, and there promptly came a check for one thousand dollars, which David as promptly returned.

CHAPTER II

A few days before the time set for his departure David set out on a round of farewell visits to the country folk. It was one of those cold, cheerless days that intervene between the first haze of autumn and the golden glow of October. He had never before realized how lonely the shiver of wind through the poplars could sound. Two innovations had been made that day in the country. The rural delivery carrier, in his little house on wheels, had made his first delivery, and a track for the new electric-car line was laid through the sheep meadow. This inroad of progress upon the sanctity of their seclusion seemed sacrilegious to David, who longed to have lived in the olden time of log houses, with their picturesque open fires and candle lights. Following some vague inward call, he went out of his way to ride past the tiny house he had once called home, and which in all his ramblings he had steadfastly avoided. He had heard that the place had passed into the hands of a widow with an only son, and that they had purchased surrounding land for cultivation. He had been glad to hear this, and had liked to fancy the son caring for his mother as he himself would have cared for his mother had she lived.

As he neared the little nutshell of a house his heart beat fast at the sight of a woman pinning clothes to the line. Her fingers, stiff and swollen, moved slowly. The same instinct that had guided him down this road made him dismount and tie his horse. The old woman came slowly down the little path to meet him.

“I am David Dunne,” he said gently, “and I used to live here. I wanted to come to see my old home once more.”

He thought that the dim eyes gazing into his were the saddest he had ever beheld.

“Yes,” she replied, with the slow, German accent, “I know of you. Come in.”

He followed her into the little sitting room, which was as barren of furnishings as it had been in the olden days.

“Sit down,” she invited.

He took a chair opposite a cheap picture of a youth in uniform. A flag of coarse material was pinned above this portrait, and underneath was a roughly carved bracket on which was a glass filled with goldenrod.

“You lived here with your mother,” she said musingly, “and she was taken. I lived here with my son, and–he was taken.”

“Oh!” said David. “I did not know–was he–”

His eyes sought the picture on the wall.

“Yes,” she replied, answering his unspoken question, as she lifted her eyes to her little shrine, “he enlisted and went to the Philippines. He died there of fever more than a year ago.”

David was silent. His brown, boyish hand shaded his eyes. It had been his fault that he had not heard of this old woman and the loss of her son. He had shrunk from all knowledge and mention of this little home and its inmates. The country folk had recognized and respected his reticence, which to people near the soil seems natural. This had been the only issue in his life that he had dodged, and he was bitterly repenting his negligence. In memory of his mother, he should have helped the lonely old woman.

“You were left a poor, helpless boy,” she continued, “and I am left a poor, helpless old woman. The very young and the very old meet in their helplessness, yet there is hope for the one–nothing for the other.”

“Yes, memories,” he suggested softly, “and the pride you feel in his having died as he did.”

“There is that,” she acknowledged with a sigh, “and if only I could live on here in this little place where we have been so happy! But I must leave it.”

“Why?” asked David quickly.

“After my Carl died, things began to happen. When once they do that, there is no stopping. The bank at the Corners failed, and I lost my savings. The turkeys wandered away, the cow died, and now there’s the mortgage. It’s due to-morrow, and then–the man that holds it will wait no longer. So it is the poorhouse, which I have always dreaded.”

David’s head lifted, and his eyes shone radiantly as he looked into the tired, hopeless eyes.

“Your mortgage will be paid to-morrow, and–Don’t you draw a pension for your son?”

She looked at him in a dazed way.

“No, there is no pension–I–”

“Judge Thorne will get you one,” he said optimistically, as he rose, ready for action, “and how much is the mortgage?”

“Three hundred dollars,” she said despairingly.

“Almost as much as the place is worth. Who holds the mortgage?”

“Deacon Prickley.”

“You see,” said David, trying to speak casually, “I have three hundred dollars lying idle for which I have no use. I’ll ride to town now and have the Judge see that the place is clear to you, and he will get you a pension, twelve dollars a month.”

The worn, seamed face lifted to his was transfigured by its look of beatitude.

“You mustn’t,” she implored. “I didn’t know about the pension. That will keep me, and I can find another little place somewhere. But the money you offer–no! I have heard how you have been saving to go through school.”

He smiled.

“Uncle Barnabas and the Judge are anxious to pay my expenses at college, and–you must let me. I would like to think, don’t you see, that you are living here in my old home. It will seem to me as if I were doing it for my mother–as I would want some boy to do for her if she were left–and it’s my country’s service he died in. I would rather buy this little place for you, and know that you are living here, than to buy anything else in the world.”

The old face was quite beautiful now.

“Then I will let you,” she said tremulously. “You see, I am a hard-working woman and quite strong, but folks won’t believe that, because I am old; so they won’t hire me to do their work, and they say I should go to the poorhouse. But to old folks there’s nothing like having your own things and your own ways. They get to be a part of you. I was thinking when you rode up that it would kill me not to see the frost on the old poplar, and not to cover up my geraniums on the chill nights.”

Something stirred in David’s heart like pain. He stooped and kissed her gently. Then he rode away, rejoicing that he had worked to this end. Four hours later he rode back to the little home.

“The Judge has paid over the money to Old Skinflint Prickley,” he said blithely, “and the place is all yours. The deacon had compounded the interest, which is against the laws of the state, so here are a few dollars to help tide you over until the Judge gets the pension for you.”

“David,” she said solemnly, “an old woman’s prayers may help you, and some day, when you are a great man, you will do great deeds, but none of them will be as great as that which you have done to-day.”

David rode home with the echo of this benediction in his ears. He had asked the Judge to keep the transaction secret, but of course the Judge told Barnabas, who in turn informed Uncle Larimy.

“I told the boy when his ma died,” said Uncle Larimy, “that things go ’skew sometimes, but that the sun would shine. The sun will allers be a-shinin’ fer him when he does such deeds as this.”

CHAPTER III

The fare to his college town, his books, and his tuition so depleted David’s capital of one hundred dollars that he hastened to deposit the balance for an emergency. Then he set about to earn his “keep,” as he had done in the country, but there were many students bent on a similar quest and he soon found that the demand for labor was exceeded by the supply.

Before the end of the first week he was able to write home that he had found a nice, quiet lodging in exchange for the care of a furnace in winter and the trimming of a lawn in other seasons, and that he had secured a position as waiter to pay for his meals; also that there was miscellaneous employment to pay for his washing and incidentals.

He didn’t go into details and explain that the “nice quiet lodging” was a third-floor rear whose gables gave David’s six feet of length but little leeway. It was quiet because the third floor was not heated, and its occupants therefore stayed away as much as possible. His services as waiter were required only at dinner time, in exchange for which he received that meal. His breakfast and luncheon he procured as best he could; sometimes he dispensed with them entirely. Crackers, milk, and fruit, as the cheapest articles of diet, appeared oftenest on his ménu. Sometimes he went fishing and surreptitiously smuggled the cream of the catch up to his little abode, for Mrs. Tupps’ “rules to roomers,” as affixed to the walls, were explicit: “No cooking or washing allowed in rooms.” But Mrs. Tupps, like her fires, was nearly always out, for she was a member of the Woman’s Relief Corps, Ladies’ Aid, Ladies’ Guild, Woman’s League, Suffragette Society, Pioneer Society, and Eastern Star. At the meetings of these various societies she was constant in attendance, so in her absence her roomers “made hay,” as David termed it, cooking their provender and illicitly performing laundry work in the bathtub. Still, there must always be “on guard” duty, for Mrs. Tupps was a stealthy stalker. One saw her not, but now and then there was a faint rustle on the stair. David’s eyes and ears, trained to keenness, were patient and vigilant, so he was generally chosen as sentinel, and he acquired new caution, adroitness, and a quietness of movement.