Babylon,
Volume 1 (of 3), by Grant Allen
CHAPTER
I. RURAL AMERICA.
|Whar's
Hiram, Het?' Deacon Zephaniah Winthrop asked of his wife,
tartly.
'Pears to me that boy's allus off somewhar, whenever he's wanted
to
do anything. Can't git along without him, any way, when we've got
to
weed
the spring peppermint. Whar's he off, I say, Mehitabel?'
Mrs.
Winthrop drew herself together from the peas she was languidly
shelling,
and answered in the dry withered tone of a middle-aged
northern
New Yorker, 'Wal, I s'pose, Zeph, he's gone down to the
blackberry
lot, most likely.'
'Blackberry
lot,' Mr. Winthrop replied with a fine air of irony.
'Blackberry
lot, indeed. What does he want blackberryin', I should like
to
know? I'll blackberry him, I kin tell you, whenever I ketch him.
Jest
you
go an' holler for him, Het, an' ef he don't come ruther sooner'n
lightnin',
he'll ketch it, an' no mistake, sure as preachin'. I've got
an
orful itchin', Mis' Winthrop, to give that thar boy a durned good
cow-hidin'
this very minnit.'
Mrs.
Winthrop rose from the basket of peas and proceeded across the
front
yard with as much alacrity as she could summon up, to call for
Hiram.
She was a tall, weazened, sallow woman, prematurely aged, with
a
pair of high cheekbones, and a hard, hungry-looking, unlovable
mouth;
but
she was averse to the extreme and unnecessary measure of
cowhiding
her
firstborn. 'Hiram,' she called out, in her loudest and shrillest
voice:
'Hiram!
Drat
the boy, whar is he? Hiram! Hi-ram!' It was a dreary and a
monotonous
outlook altogether, that view from the gate of Zephaniah
Winthrop's
freehold farm in Geauga County. The homestead itself, an
unpainted
frame house, consisted of planed planks set carelessly one
above
the other on upright beams, stood in a weedy yard, surrounded by
a
raw-looking paling, and unbeautified by a single tree, creeper,
shrub,
bush,
or scented flower. A square house, planted naked in the exact
centre
of a square yard, desolate and lonely, as though such an idea as
that
of beauty had never entered into the human heart. In front the
long
straight
township road ran indefinitely as far as the eye could reach in
either
direction, beginning at the horizon on the north, and ending at
the
horizon on the south, but leading nowhere in particular, that
anyone
ever heard of, meanwhile, unless it were to Muddy Creek Dépôt
(pronounced
_deepo_) on the Rome, Watertown, and Ogdens-burg Railroad.
At
considerable intervals along its course, a new but congenitally
shabby
gate opened here and there into another bare square yard, and
gave
access to another bare square frame house of unpainted pine
planks.
In the blanks between these oases of unvarnished ugliness the
road,
instead of being bordered by green trees and smiling hedgerows,
pursued
its gaunt way, unrejoicing, between open fields or long and
hideous
snake fences. If you have ever seen a snake fence, you know what
that
means; if you haven't seen one, sit down in your own easy chair
gratefully
and comfortably, and thank an indulgent heaven with all your
heart
for your happy ignorance.
Beyond
and behind the snake fences lay fields of wheat and meadows and
pasture
land; not, as in England, green and lush with grass or clover,
but
all alike bare, brown, weedy, and illimitable. There were no
trees
to
be seen anywhere (though there were plenty of stumps), for this
was
'a very fully settled section,' as Mr. Winthrop used to murmur to
himself
complacently: 'the country thar real beautiful: you might look
about
you, some parts, for a mile or two right away togither and never
see
a single tree a-standin' anywhar.' Indeed, it was difficult to
imagine
where on earth a boy could manage to hide himself in all that
long,
level, leafless district. But Mrs. Winthrop knew better: she knew
Hiram
was loafing away somewhere down in the blackberry lot beside the
river.
'Lot'
is a cheap and nasty equivalent in the great American language
for
field,
meadow, croft, copse, paddock, and all the other beautiful and
expressive
old-world names which denote in the tongue of the old country
our
own time-honoured English inclosures. And the blackberry lot, at
the
bottom of the farm, was the one joy and delight of young Hiram
Winthrop's
boyish existence. Though you could hardly guess it, as seen
from
the farm, there was a river running in the hollow down
yonder-Muddy
Creek,
in fact, which gave its own euphonious name to the naked little
Dépôt;
not here muddy, indeed, as in its lower reaches, but clear and
limpid
from the virgin springs of the Gilboa hillsides. Beside the
creek,
there stretched a waste lot, too rough and stony to be worth the
curse
of cultivation; and on that lot the blackberry bushes grew in
wild
profusion, and the morning-glories opened their great pink bells
blushingly
to the early sun, and the bobolinks chattered in the garish
noontide,
and the grey squirrels hid by day among the stunted trees,
and
the chipmunks showed their painted sides for a moment as they
darted
swiftly
in and out from hole to hole amid the tangled brushwood. What
a
charmed spot it seemed to the boy's mind, that one solitary patch
of
undesecrated
nature, in the midst of so many blackened stumps, and so
much
first-rate fall wheat, and such endless, hopeless, dreary
hillocks
of
straight rowed, dry leaved, tillering Indian corn!
'Hiram!
Hiram! Hi-ram!' cried Mrs. Winthrop, growing every moment
shriller
and shriller.
Hiram
heard, and leaped from the brink at once, though a kingfisher
was
at that very moment eyeing him with head on one side from the
half-concealing
foliage of the basswood tree opposite. 'Yes, marm,' he
answered
submissively, showing himself as fast as he was able in the
pasture
above the blackberry lot. 'Wal! What is it?'
'Hiram,'
his mother said, as soon as he was within convenient speaking
distance,
'you come right along in here, sonny. Where was you, say?
Here's
father swearin he'll thrash you for goin' loafin'. He wants you
jest
to come in at once and help weed the peppermint. I guess you've
bin
down
in the blackberry lot, fishin', or suthin'.'
'I
ain't bin fishin',' Hiram answered, with a certain dogged, placid
resignation.
'I've bin lookin' around, and that's so, mother. On'y
lookin'
around at the chipmunks an' bobolinks,'cause I was dreadful
tired.'
'Tired
of what?' asked his mother, not uncompassionately.
'Planin','
Hiram answered, with a nod. 'Planks. Father give me forty
planks
to plane, an' I've done'em.'
'Wal,
mind he don't thrash you, Hiram,' the sallow-faced woman said,
warningly,
with as much tenderness in her voice as lay within the
compass
of her nature. 'He's orful mad with you now, 'cause you didn't
answer
immejately when he hollered.'
'Then
why don't he holler loud enough?' asked Hiram, in an injured
tone--he
was an ill-clad boy of about twelve--'I can't never hear him
down
lot yonder.'
'What's
that you got in your pocket, sir?' Mr. Winthrop puts in, coming
up
unexpectedly to the pair on the long, straight, blinking
high-road.
'What's
that, naow, eh, sonny?'
Hiram
pulls the evidence of guilt slowly out of his rough tunic.
'Injuns,'
he answers, shortly, in the true western laconic fashion.
Mr.
Winthrop examines the object carelessly. It is a bit of blackish
stone,
rudely chipped into shape, and ground at one end to an artificial
edge
with some nicety of execution.
'Injuns!'
he echoes contemptuously, dashing it on the path: 'Injuns! Oh
yes,
this is Injuns! An' what's Injuns? Heathens, outlandish heathens;
and
a drunken, p'isonous crowd at that, too. The noble red man is a
fraud;
Injuns must go. It allus licks my poor finite understandin'
altogether
why the Lord should ever have run this great continent
so
long with nothin' better'n Injuns. It's one o' them mysteries o'
Providence
that 'taint given us poor wums to comprehend daown here,
noways.
Wal, they're all cleared out of this section naow, anyway, and
why
a lad that's brought up a Chrischun and Hopkinsite should want to
go
grubbin'
up their knives and things in this cent'ry is a caution to me,
that's
what it is, a reg'lar caution.'
'This
ain't a knife,' Hiram answered, still doggedly. 'This is a
tommyhawk.
Injun knives ain't made like this 'ere. I've had knives, and
they're
quite a different kinder pattern.'
Mr.
Winthrop shook his head solemnly.
'Seems
to me,' he said with a loud snort, ''taint right of any believin'
boy
goin' lookin' up these heathenish things, mother. He's allus
bringin'
'em home--arrowheads, he calls 'em, and tommyhawks, and Lord
knows
what rubbish--when he ought to be weedin' in the peppermint lot,
an'
earnin' his livin'. Why wasn't you here, eh, sonny? Why wasn't
you?
Why
wasn't you? Why wasn't you?'
As
Mr. Winthrop accompanied each of these questions by a cuff,
crescendo,
on either ear alternately, it is not probable that he himself
intended
Hiram to reply to them with any particular definiteness. But
Hiram,
drawing his sleeve across his eyes, and wiping away the tears
hastily,
proceeded to answer with due deliberation: ''Cause I was tired
planin'
planks. So I went down to the blackberry lot, to rest a bit. But
you
won't let a feller rest. You want him to be workin' like a nigger
all
day.'Taint reasonable.'
'Mother,'
Mr. Winthrop said again, more solemnly than before, 'it's
my
opinion that the old Adam is on-common powerful in this here lad,
on-common
powerful! Ef he had lived in Bible times, I should hev been
afeard
of a visible judgment on his head, like the babes that mocked at
Elijah.
(Or was it Elisha?' asked Mr. Winthrop to himself, dubitatively.
'I
don't'zackly recollect the pertickler prophet.) The eye that
mocketh
at
its father, you know, sonny; it's a dangerous thing, I kin tell
you,
to
mock at your father. Go an' weed that thar peppermint, sir; go
an'
weed
that thar peppermint.' And as he spoke the deacon gave Hiram a
parting
dig in the side with the handle of the Dutch hoe he was lightly
carrying.
Hiram
dodged the hoe quickly, and set off at a run to the peppermint
lot.
When he got there he waited a moment, and then felt in his pocket
cautiously
for some other unseen object. Oh joy, it wasn't broken! He
took
it out and looked at it tenderly. It was a bobolink's egg. He
held
it
up to the light, and saw the sunshine gleaming through it.
'Aint
it cunning?' he said to himself, with a little hug and chuckle
of
triumph. 'Ain't it a cunning little egg, either? I thought he'd
most
broke
it, I did, but he hadn't, seems. It's the first I ever found,
that
sort.
Oh my, ain't it cunning?' And he put the egg back lovingly in his
pocket,
with great cautiousness.
For
a while the boy went on pulling up the weeds that grew between
the
wide
rows of peppermint, and then at last he came to a big milk-weed
in
full flower. The flowers were very pretty, and so curious, too.
He
looked
at them and admired them. But he must pull it up: no room in the
field
for milk-weed (it isn't a marketable crop, alas!), so he caught
the
pretty thing in his hands, and uprooted it without a murmur. Thus
he
went on, row after row, in the hot July sun, till nearly half the
peppermint
was well weeded.
Then
he sat down to rest a little on the pile of boulders in the far
corner.
There was no tree to sit under, and no shade; but the boy could
at
least sit in the eye of the sun on the pile of ice-worn boulders.
As
he sat, he saw a wonderful and beautiful sight. In the sky above,
a
great
bald-headed eagle came wheeling slowly toward the corner of the
fall
wheat lot. From the opposite quarter of the sky his partner
circled
on
buoyant wings to meet him; and with wide curves to right and
left,
crossing
and recrossing each other at the central point like well-bred
setters,
those two magnificent birds swiftly beat the sunlit fields
for
miles around them. At last, one of the pair detected game; for an
instant
he checked his flight, to steady his swoop, and then, with wings
halffolded,
and a rushing noise through the air, he fell plump on the
ground
at a vague spot in the midst of the meadow. One moment more, and
he
rose again, with a quivering rabbit suspended from his yellow
claws.
Presently
he made towards the corn lot. It was fenced round, like all
the
others, with a snake fence, and, to Hiram's intense joy, the
eagle
finally
settled, just opposite him, on one of the two upright rails that
stand
as a crook or stake for the top rail, called the rider. Its big
white
head shone in the sunlight, its throat rang out a sharp, short
bark,
and it craned its neck this way and that, looking defiantly
across
the
field to Hiram.
'I
reckon,' the boy said to himself quietly, 'I could draw that thar
eagle.'
He
put his hand into his trousers pocket, and pulled out from it a
well-worn
stump of blacklead pencil. Then from another pocket he took
a
small blank book, an old account book, in fact, with one side of
the
pages
all unwritten, though the other was closely covered with rows
of
figures. It was a very precious possession to Hiram Winthrop,
that
dog-eared
little volume, for it was nearly-filled with his own tentative
pencil
sketches of beast and birds, and all the other beautiful things
that
lived together in the blackberry bottom. He had never seen
anything
beautiful
anywhere else, and that one spot and that one book were all
the
world to him that he loved or cared for.
He
laid the book upon his knee, and proceeded carefully to sketch
the
grand
whiteheaded eagle in his boyish fashion. 'He's the American
eagle,
I
guess,' the lad said to himself, as he looked from bird to paper
with
rapid glances; 'on'y he ain't so stiff-built as the one upon the
dollars,
neither. His head goes so. Aint it elegant? Oh my, not a bit,
ruther.
And his tail! That's how. The feathers runs the same as if it
was
shingles on the roof of a residence. I've got his tail just as
true
as Genesis, you bet. I can go the head and the tail, straight an'
square,
but what licks me is the wings. Seems as if you couldn't get
his
wing to show right, nohow, agin the body. Think it must be that
way,
pretty near; but I don't know. I wish thar was some feller here
in
Geauga
could show me how the folks that draw the illustriations in the
books
ud draw that thar wing. It goes one too high for me, altogether.'
Even
as Hiram thought that last thought he was
diml
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