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Plain Mary Smith: A Romance of Red Saunders

<h2>II</h2> <h3>"THE VILLAGE PRIDE"</h3> Well, mother gave me a long talking to, after that. Not scolding, but conversation, just as if I was a human being. Somehow it's easier to get along with me that way. I reckon I averaged three sessions a week in the woodshed, but father might as well have walloped a lime-kiln, for all the tears he drew out of me. Yet let mother talk to me in her quiet way—easy and gentle, the words soaking in, and the first thing you knew, I had a lump in my throat, and some blamed thing got in my eyes. I wanted to do what was right by all of them, I certainly did. It was a misfit all round, there's where the trouble come. Father couldn't possibly enter into my feelings. Sixteen I was, staggering with strength, red-headed, and aching to be at something all the time. It ain't in reason I could remember to put one foot before the other—right-left, right-left, day in and day out. Then, as soon as I'd cleaned up all the boys in our place, every young man for miles around who made pretensions to being double-handed came to find what I was made of. It's all right to say don't fight, but when this young man slouched along and cast disparagin' eyes in my direction, it was plain somebody had to be hurt, and it might as well not be me. Honest, I'd rather have been in the woods, fishing, or just laying on my back, watching the pines swinging over me, so slow, so regular, tasting the smell of 'em, and fancying I was an Injun or Mr. Ivanhoe, or whatever idee was uppermost at the time, than out in the dusty road, smiting my fellow-man. But if you should be mean enough to ask me if I took no pleasure in the art of assault and battery, I'd have to admit a slight inclination. Not that I wanted to hurt anybody, either—small malice there was in those mix-ups! I reckon, with the other lad, as with me, it was more a case of doing your little darnedest—of letting out all you held, once in so often—that made the interest. But father was powerful opposed to scrapping, and, of course, mother didn't like it, neither. The only place a woman likes a row is in a book. Women is fond of bargains. They like a fine fight with no bills to pay. It was a little that way with mother. This time she was talking to me, she brought up for my instruction Great-grandfather Saunders, who fought in the Revolution. He was one of 'em that clubbed their muskets at Bunker Hill. When they asked the old man about it afterward he said he acted that way because he was too darned scart to run. Howsomever, he was a fair-to-medium quarrelsome old gentleman when his blood was up. Mother carefully explained to me that was different—he was fighting for his country. Yet, at the same time, I recollect seeing a letter the old man wrote, calling his neighbors a lot of rum-swilling, psalm-singing hypocrites. Now a man's neighbors are his country. I think Grandpa Saunders liked a row, myself. Next, mother told me about my French forebears, and a nice peaceful lot they were, for sure. The head of the outfit—the Sieur De La Tour—sassed the king himself to his teeth—he didn't care no more about a king than I do—unless it happened to match on a two-card draw. There was some racket about a friend of Many-times-great-grandfather De La Tour's offending the king. He took refuge with the old man, while the king sent the sheriff after him. "You must yield him to the king!" says the sheriff. "Not to any king under God!" says Many-times-great-grandfather De La Tour. Hence, trouble. My! How mother's eyes shone when she repeated that proud answer. Yet suppose I sassed father like that? There's something about distance lending enchantment to the view. Well, they downed the old man, although he stacked the posse around him in great shape. Meantime his friend was using both feet to acquire some of that distance to lend enchantment to the view, I just spoke of. One thing stuck out in these old-timers. Whatever their faults might be, meanness wasn't one of 'em. Therefore I indorsed the lot. I left her that day determined to be such a son as anybody would be proud of. Why, in half an hour's time I was wondering how I could make the virtuous jobs last. Already my chest swelled, as I see myself pointed to on the street as a model boy. My first stagger at being the Village Pride come off next day—Sunday. It would take a poet to describe how much I didn't like Sunday, and a large, black-whiskered poet, at that. Man! Sitting in that little old church of a warm day, with the bees bumbling outside, and all kinds of smells coaxing, coaxing me to the woods, and a kind of uneasy, dry feeling of the skin, that only the water-hole by the cider-mill could cure. Then to know, too, that the godless offspring of the unregenerate were at that minute diving from the dam—chow!—into the slippery cool water—and me the best diver in the crowd.... I wriggled, squirmed my fingers into knots, and let my fancy roam. Roaming fancy was my one amusement in church. We had the kind of minister who roars one minute and whispers the next. I always imagined he shouted as loud as he dared, short of waking the baby. I never was done being surprised, after he'd hissed the conclusion through his teeth in a way that should have sent chills down your backbone, to hear him rattle off a bunch of notices as fast as he could talk. I couldn't get interested in the sermon, so my mind wandered. At times an elephant sneaked through the back door and blew a barrel of water down the preacher's back. Then there was the monkey. He skipped gaily from pew to pew, yanking the women's bonnets off, pulling the men's hair, hanging from the roof-beams by his tail, and applying a disrespectful thumb to his nose. That elephant and monkey got to be as real as anything. Sometimes they'd jump into life when I wasn't thinking of 'em at all. This Sunday, however, I made a manful stand against temptation. As soon as the elephant peeked through the door, I took a long breath and forced him out. I didn't let the monkey much more 'n bob his head over Deacon Anker's pew, although one of my pet delights was when he grabbed the deacon's top-knot and twisted it into a rope. And my reward for an honest try was to listen to as lovely a tale of treachery and unladylike behavior as I can remember. The sermon was about a Mrs. Jael. She took in one of the enemy, fed him fine, and while he was asleep, grabbed a hammer and a railroad spike and nailed him to the floor by his head. Whilst I was revolving in my mind how, and on what person, I could best apply these teachings, another thought occurred to me. "Mother!" I whispers, pulling her sleeve. "Sssh!" says she; "what is it, Will?" "You never could have done that," I says. She squeezed my hand and whispered back, "You're right, Will," with an approving smile. "No," says I, still full of my discovery, "you'd have pounded your thumb." Her face went ten different ways and then she snorted right out. It was a scandal. It took her so by surprise she couldn't get the best of it, so we two had to leave the church. When we got outside she sat down and laughed for five minutes. "Whatever does possess you to say such things?" she says. "It was dreadful!" Next day father patted me on the back with a nice limber sapling, for misbehavior in church. This caused the first show of rebellion I ever saw in mother. She came out to the woodshed when court was in session. "I'd like to speak to you a minute," she says to father. "I have no time now," he answers short. "I'd like to speak to you a minute," repeats mother: there was a hint of Many-times-great-grandfather De La Tour in her tones. Father considered for a minute; then laid down the club and went out. First they talked quietly. Next, I heard mother—not because she spoke loud, but because there was such a push behind the words: "I am as much a culprit as he is," she says; "why not use the whip on me?" Father talked strong about being master in his own house, and like that. It was bluff—boy that I was, I caught the hollow ring of it. Yet mother changed her tone instantly. She turned gently to argument. "You are the master," she says; "but would you make your own son a slave? Why do you treat mistakes as crimes? Why do you expect a man's control in a sixteen-year-old boy? I have never asked for much, but now I ask—" They walked so far away I couldn't hear what she asked. I didn't care. She was on my side; I'll swear I didn't feel the ridges on my back. When father returned and said, "Well, you can go now," I left that woodshed a happy boy. I made up my mind even stronger to be a monument of behavior. Whether it was mother's talk, or that I did really keep out of scrapes, at least I got through the week without a thrashing. Then come Sunday again. My Sunday-school teacher was a maiden lady by the name of Mehitabel Demilt—aunt to Thomas F., my present partner. Miss Hitty wasn't much to look at. Growing her nose had absorbed most of her vitality, and her years was such she could have looked on a good part of mankind right motherly, if she'd been inclined that way. Howsomever, she wore the styles of sweet sixteen, and whenever a man come around she frisked like a clothes-horse. But a kinder woman never lived. When with the boys she dropped her tomfoolery, too. Trouble was, them young clothes stood for all she dreamt of—give them dreams the go-by, and the race was lost for poor Miss Hitty. Feathers flyin' and ribbons streaming, she made herself believe she was still in the running; without 'em, she knew only too well what it was to be a lonely, long-nosed, forsaken, homely old maid. I don't blame her a particle. Her finery stood to her like whisky to a busted man. Take a little wine for your stomachache, and a few clothes for your heartache. A trifle gay for father's crowd was Miss Hitty, but they didn't dast to say a word. She belonged to one of our best families, and her brother-in-law, who could be as ungodly a man under provocation as you ever see, held a mortgage on the church. He'd 'a' dumped the outfit into the snows of winter, and never a second thought, if they didn't treat Miss Hitty right. So they overlooked things and gave her the Bible class to run. Mighty nice to us boys she was; she certainly was. Curious mix of part child and part horse-sense woman. The woman savvied her place all right, but the child part couldn't stand for the pain of it. If there was anything that made Miss Hitty warlike it was cruelty. Seems the Mrs. Jael sermon riled her plumb through. I suppose, perhaps, she didn't understand how any woman could be so recklessly extravagant as to drive a nail through a sound man's head, and spoil him. Miss Hitty might have spiked his coat-tails to the floor, but his head? Never. Joshing aside, she beat the tom-tom over that sermon, giving us boys a medicine talk that sticks still: how we were all fools not to make the earth as pleasant as we could, so long 's we got to live here. It seemed reasonable. I thought about it all that night, trying to find a subject to make better and happier, as Miss Hitty said. Before I went to sleep I'd located my victim. First thing in the morning I went and told mother all about it. You know I'm medium enthusiastic over what I'm going to do, so I was laying it off to her in great shape, when I brought up short, seeing her eyes full of tears. I plumped down and hugged her. "What's the matter? I didn't mean to make you cry," I says, feeling it was my luck to do the wrong thing, and not half try. "I'm not crying, little boy," she says; "I'm only one of those ladies in the books who don't want their true-loves to go to war." She kissed me. We often used to play parts of those books, so I took it just as she said, thinking it astonishing how well she acted the part; not much realizing what it meant to a mother who loved her boy, and knew he meant no harm, to have him clubbed all the time. But she shook off the tears right away. "Arise!" says she, laughing, and putting a flower in my coat. "Arise, Sir William of the Hot Heart! Go thy way and conquer." So I giggled and looked simple, give her one of them boys' kisses that would come under the head of painful operations to anybody but a mother, and skipped, as graceful as legs four foot long would permit, to my new job. <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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