Читать книгу The Smoking Flax - Robert James Campbell Stead - Страница 5

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Long vistas of undulating prairies checkered in black, moist fields. Here and there a grove of green poplars; here and there a farmhouse, white and peaceful in their shadows. Grass, green and moist, with a purple carpeting of anemones. Water shining from many tiny lakes. Coveys of white clouds, like ruffled swans, afloat in an infinite sky.

A long road, running straight on forever. Up and down the sweeping vistas of prairie-land; by the checkered black fields breathing deep the still sunshine of early May; through an interminable lane bordered with barbed wire fences. A gopher by the roadside, bolt upright and whistling. Fresh, damp earth from a badger hole mounded on the trail. The hum of telephone wires. Water gurgling through a culvert. A crow silent upon a neighboring post.

Over the ridge to the eastward an atom suddenly appears where the road leaps out of the sky. It grows rapidly, flashing a heliograph in the sunlight as it approaches. Presently it defines itself as that most familiar of all objects on the prairie trail, ouster of horse and saddle and buckboard and prairie schooner—a Ford automobile. Another hundred yards and it proclaims itself an old Ford automobile, sagging and rumbling and flapping its fenders like a spaniel's ears.

A man and a boy occupy the front seat, the man at the steering wheel. The boy is of not more than eight or nine years, and his keen little face, upturned to his companion, is flushed with interest and childish enthusiasm. The two are deep in discussion, and, as we are to travel with them through the pages of this narrative, let us stop them here and climb aboard.

“No, I wouldn’t exactly say there was a feud between the oak and the elm; it wasn’t quite so bad as that—”

“What is a feud, Daddy X?”

“Why, a feud is when one family feels aggrieved with another and—”

“What is aggrieved, Daddy X?”

“That is when you think someone has been unfair—hasn’t been a good sport, you know. Like the man who wouldn’t pull us out of the mud-hole yesterday until I gave him a dollar.”

“Was that a feud?”

“No, but for a moment it threatened to be,” and the driver’s lips disclosed a glint of white teeth. “You see, that happened to be our last dollar, and one always feels a sentimental attachment for his last dollar quite different from—”

“What is a sen-ti-mental ’tachment, Daddy X?”

“Something you will not begin to understand until you are about fourteen or fifteen, and will not have finished understanding when you are an old man, like me, at twenty-six. Now—where were we? Oh, yes! At the quarrel between the oak and the elm. As I was saying—”

Bump! The dog’s ear fenders flapped against the wheels.

“Whoa, Ante! Watch your step! Mustn’t hit a culvert like that!”

The child’s voice was raised in sturdy protest. “You promised, yesterday, Daddy X; don’t you remember?”

“What did I promise, Reed? It slips me.”

“Don’t you remember? When we were stuck in the mud you took the wheel in both hands and you said, ‘Ante, get us out of this and I will be more respectful to you, and I won’t ask you to wade in the mud, and I’ll call you by your full name, always—“Ante-lope”,’like that.”

“Dear me, so I did! But then, she didn’t get us out of the mud, did she? We had to have a farmer haul us with his team, at the price of our last dollar—”

“It was a promise, and we got out,” said the boy, solidly.

They were bowling along and had just crested the next hill. Suddenly the shining surface of the lake broke upon their vision.

“Whoa, Ante-lope!” and the driver brought his car to a stop.

For a full minute the two companions gazed in silence at the scene outspread before them. The prairie levels broke abruptly into a deep valley, blazoned on its higher slopes with vivid patches of light green poplars and balm-o’-gileads; on its lower reaches with the darker hues of stately elms. Between the broad banks, and filling all the bed of the valley, lay the lake, its surface shining like a mirror of quicksilver.

“This must be the lake shown on our map,” said Calvin Beach. “See, there, at the western end, is the deep green of the marshes. Beyond those marshes, according to the map, the road swings across the valley, and there is a bridge over the river that feeds the lake.”

“And we are to camp there to-night, aren’t we, Daddy X?”

“That is the intention, if Ante-lope only continues faithful to the end.”

Along the crest of the northern shore of the lake they skirted, the boy silent in wonder at the great cloud reflections floating far below, the driver busy with his car and with thoughts which, even in this peaceful setting, may have had in them something of cloud and shadow, too. The shades of evening trailed farther and farther behind; the sunlight blazed more squarely in their faces; the road unwound itself like an endless belt beneath their flying wheels.

At length they began to drop down a steep and winding road into the valley, and the car demanded the undivided attention of the man at the wheel. Reed had come to know such moments by instinct, and noted in silence how, on the steep pitches, the brake-bands gripped and the gravel flew from the tires as the wheels dragged on the stony road. But it always was a delightful experience, and the steeper the hill the more he liked it. He had a child’s faith, unmeasured and immeasurable, in “Daddy X.”

Presently they reached the valley levels. Cal released the brakes and the car floated forward with its pent-up momentum. Here they turned to the south, and a tall shadow-car, with funny oval wheels and a very top-heavy body, glided silently on their left until they plunged into a grove of ancient elms.

“Oh, Daddy X!” the boy cried, clapping his hands. “We’ve won! See, it was racing Ante—Ante-lope, and watching us instead of the road, and it ran right into the elms!”

“A driver always should watch the road,” said Cal.

“Yes,” the boy agreed. “There might be a high culvert.”

The young man made a feint of having received a blow in a vital part of his anatomy. “That’s one to you, Reed,” he admitted. “But watch out—”

For what he was to watch Cal did not say, and the boy did not ask. He had become engrossed in the bars of yellow sunlight which, streaming through aisles between the trees, flicked his face in rapid succession of light and shadow. “It’s like that funny band you used to wear on your hat,” he explained to Daddy X.

Suddenly the winding road, as though by a wiggle of its great backbone, straightened out before them. It led along a well-graded turnpike to the yawning arches of a steel bridge, but off to the side, almost buried in a growth of grass and infant poplars, a side trail led down to an old ford where the settlers had braved the river for a score of years before the building of the bridge.

“This should be a good place to camp; what say you, Ante-lope?”

Cal bounced up and down in his seat until the car nodded her nose. “‘Very good,’you say. A fellow feeling, I suppose; Ford for ford. Well, we’ll turn down here,” and he guided it along the deserted trail. Down by the river there widened out a gravelly shelf. Against its pebbly shore the blue-brown water of the stream confided strange things whisperingly on its way to the marshes and the lake.

They climbed out and stretched their limbs. “To the big stump and back!” Reed suddenly challenged and was off like the wind, while his companion dallied for a moment to make a race of it at the finish. Panting, they came up together, but it was the boy’s hand that touched the dog-eared fender first.

Reed brought the “grub box” out of the car as Cal started a fire with a few twigs on the gravel. Presently sausages were sizzling in the frying-pan and the smell of steaming tea went up like sweet incense from their little altar. A hot sausage, split and laid between two stout slabs of bread, and supper was served.

When they had put away the remnants of their meal and scoured their utensils in the sand, the boy stood down by the water and skipped stones across the stream. He amused himself at this until the yellow bars of light faded out between the trees and the reflection of the steel bridge died in the darkness. Once or twice the sharp whistle of a wild duck’s flight broke upon his ear, and his quick eye located the speedy traveller just as he faded into the grey of heaven; once a muskrat ventured forth from the opposite bank and dived, silent and graceful, at the challenge of Reed’s stone; once a team and wagon rumbled over the bridge; otherwise all was silence save the low murmur of the water and the skip and chuckle of the stones which he threw upon it.

“All right, Reed,” said a voice behind him. “Almost time to turn in.”

“Oh, aren’t we to have a fire and a story, Daddy X?”

“The fire is ready for starting, and the story, too, I think,” said Cal. “What shall it be?”

“The few, the few—what was it, between the oak and the elm?”

“I didn’t say it was quite a feud, did I? Well, let us start a fire, and then we shall hear.”

Cal gathered some branches into a little heap, and now, kneeling beside the pile, he struck a match. The glow lit up his face, very brown and friendly in its ruddy light; a moment more and the dry limbs were writhing as the flame curled about their knotted wrists and fingers. Reed and Cal rolled an old tree trunk near to the fire and sat down together.

“The quarrel between the oak and the elm was over the spruce,” Cal began. “Both the oak and the elm were in love with the beautiful spruce. The oak wooed her in midday, when the sun poured its hot brilliance through the still boughs and wove on the grass beneath a carpet of light and shadow. It was then the oak would lean gently toward his evergreen companion and whisper in her ear, ‘Spruce, I love you, dear,’but the spruce—”

“Oh, Daddy X, you are making poetry! You said, ‘Whisper in her ear, Spruce, I love you, dear’—”

“Well, well, so I did! But poetry is the language of love, and no doubt the oak made poetry with the gentle rustle of his leaves in the sunlight. But the spruce only bowed her head, bashfully.

“In the evening the elm, which also stood near the spruce, would tremble toward her and say, ‘Look at me, Spruce! Am I not beautiful? See my straight trunk; see my shapely limbs! See how all my branches reach to the same height and make a green umbrella in the sky. Think of that when you are tempted to look upon the knotty, knarled, twisted oak. Will you not come under that umbrella, dear Spruce, and let me shelter you when the winds blow and the snow falls and the world is white and still in the cold grip of winter?’But the spruce only bowed her head, bashfully.

“Then the oak said, gruffly: ‘Elm, why do you make love to Spruce? She has been my companion since childhood. I have watched her grow from a tiny Christmas-tree to a beautiful maiden with lovely symmetrical green arms that stretch toward me, and with green hair that trembles in the wind, but never grows ruffled or fuzzy and never falls to the ground like yours and mine. Spruce belongs to me, I tell you,’said the oak, gruffly. ‘Leave her alone.’

“Then the elm answered in his big, sighing voice, which came down from among his stately limbs, ‘Oak, you shall not interfere in my love for Spruce. It is I who have grown beside her all these years; it is I who have pointed her skyward while you were tempting her down to the musty earth. Leave her to me.’

“But the oak said gruffly, ‘She is mine, I tell you. I will not leave her to you!’

“Then the great elm shouted down, ‘Now, Oak, I will have your sap for this! When the northwest wind blows I will fall upon you, and crush you into the earth, and everyone who passes shall laugh and say, “Look what Elm has done to Oak!”’

“Then the beautiful spruce, when she heard these loud and angry words, trembled silently, and tears came to her many eyes and fell like dew on the warm grass, for she loved both the oak and the elm, and could not have told you which she loved the better. And as the spruce trembled and wept she made a great resolve.

“And when the night was deep upon them she arose from the rich black earth which had been her home since she was a little Christmas-tree and stole silently away to a sandy ridge, where no other tree could grow, because she could not bear to hear her friends quarreling about her. And in the morning when the oak and the elm awoke they saw their beautiful love away on the ridge, where neither of them could grow at all. And there she has lived for ever since.”

“And did the elm fight the oak, Daddy X?” the lad inquired, raising his gaze from the fire to the face of his friend.

“Oh, no! The elm was so sorry for his high words that he, too, departed, but he went to the valley, not far from the river. And so the oak and elm live apart, but under their gruff surfaces they are very, very sad.”

“But very beautiful,” said the boy.

Reed poked the fire with a stick and watched a slender tongue of flame whipping the smoke upwards. The bedtime story was always to him a season of delight, a ten-minute ramble into fairyland. And this strange friend of his, whom he knew only as Daddy X, always had a new story every night, and never needed to read it out of a book. What a wonderful Daddy X he was!

“Now you must say your verse and go to bed,” said Cal, after they had watched the fire smoulder for a while.

The lad clasped his hands, and, raising his face to the bright stars, repeated solemnly the words, “A bruiséd reed shall he not break, and the smoking flax shall he not quench.”

“That was what my mother said, last, wasn’t it, Daddy X?” said the boy.

“Yes, Reed.”

“And that is why you called me Reed, because my mother was a bruiséd reed, isn’t it, Daddy X?”

“Yes, lad. But you cannot understand. Some day, perhaps, you will understand.” But under his breath he renewed the promise given to the boy’s dead mother: “He never shall; he never shall!”