Darrel of the Blessed Isles by Irving Bacheller
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Irving Bacheller >> Darrel of the Blessed Isles
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16 DARREL OF THE BLESSED ISLES
BY
IRVING BACHELLER
AUTHOR OF
EBEN HOLDEN
D'RI AND I
CANDLE-LIGHT, Etc.
ILLUSTRATED BY
ARTHUR I. KELLER
1903
To the Memory of my Father
PREFACE
The author has tried to give some history of that uphill road,
traversing the rough back country, through which men of power came
once into the main highways, dusty, timid, foot-sore, and curiously
old-fashioned. Now is the up grade eased by scholarships; young
men labour with the football instead of the buck-saw, and wear high
collars, and travel on a Pullman car, and dally with slang and
cigarettes in the smoking-room. Altogether it is a new Republic,
and only those unborn shall know if it be greater.
The man of learning and odd character and humble life was quite
familiar once, and not only in Hillsborough. Often he was born out
of time, loving ideals of history and too severe with realities
around him. In Darrel it is sought to portray a force held in
fetters and covered with obscurity, yet strong to make its way and
widely felt. His troubles granted, one may easily concede his
character, and his troubles are, mainly, no fanciful invention.
There is good warrant for them in the court record of a certain
case, together with the inference of a great lawyer who lived a
time in its odd mystery. The author, it should be added, has given
success to a life that ended in failure. He cares not if that
success be unusual should any one be moved to think it within his
reach.
A man of rugged virtues and good fame once said: "The forces that
have made me? Well, first my mother, second my poverty, third
Felix Holt. That masterful son of George Eliot became an ideal of
my youth, and unconsciously I began to live his life."
It is well that the boy in the book was nobler than any who lived
in Treby Magna.
As to "the men of the dark," they have long afflicted a man living
and well known to the author of this tale, who now commits it to
the world hoping only that these poor children of his brain may
deserve kindness if not approval.
NEW YORK CITY,
March, 1903.
CONTENTS
PRELUDE
CHAPTER
I. The Story of the Little Red Sleigh
II. The Crystal City and the Traveller
III. The Clock Tinker
IV. The Uphill Road
V. At the Sign o' the Dial
VI. A Certain Rich Man
VII. Darrel of the Blessed Isles
VIII. Dust of Diamonds in the Hour-glass
IX. Drove and Drovers
X. An Odd Meeting
XI. The Old Rag Doll
XII. The Santa Claus of Cedar Hill
XIII. A Christmas Adventure
XIV. A Day at the Linley Schoolhouse
XV. The Tinker at Linley School
XVI. A Rustic Museum
XVII. An Event in the Rustic Museum
XVIII. A Day of Difficulties
XIX. Amusement and Learning
XX. At the Theatre of the Woods
XXI. Robin's Inn
XXII. Comedies of Field and Dooryard
XXIII. A New Problem
XXIV. Beginning the Book of Trouble
XXV. The Spider Snares
XXVI. The Coming of the Cars
XXVII. The Rare and Costly Cup
XXVIII. Darrel at Robin's Inn
XXIX. Again the Uphill Road
XXX. Evidence
XXXI. A Man Greater than his Trouble
XXXII. The Return of Thurst Tilly
XXXIII. The White Guard
XXXIV. More Evidence
XXXV. At the Sign of the Golden Spool
XXXVI. The Law's Approval
XXXVII. The Return of Santa Claus
DARREL OF THE BLESSED ISLES
Prelude
Yonder up in the hills are men and women, white-haired, who love to
tell of that time when the woods came to the door-step and God's
cattle fed on the growing corn. Where, long ago, they sowed their
youth and strength, they see their sons reaping, but now, bent with
age, they have ceased to gather save in the far fields of memory.
Every day they go down the long, well-trodden path and come back
with hearts full. They are as children plucking the meadows of
June. Sit with them awhile, and they will gather for you the
unfading flowers of joy and love--good sir! the world is full of
them. And should they mention Trove or a certain clock tinker that
travelled from door to door in the olden time, send your horse to
the stable and God-speed them!--it is a long tale, and you may
listen far into the night.
"See the big pines there in the dale yonder?" some one will ask.
"Well, Theron Allen lived there, an' across the pond, that's where
the moss trail came out and where you see the cow-path--that's near
the track of the little red sleigh."
Then--the tale and its odd procession coming out of the far past.
I
The Story of the Little Red Sleigh
It was in 1835, about mid-winter, when Brier Dale was a narrow
clearing, and the horizon well up in the sky and to anywhere a
day's journey.
Down by the shore of the pond, there, Allen built his house.
To-day, under thickets of tansy, one may see the rotting logs, and
there are hollyhocks and catnip in the old garden. He was from
Middlebury, they say, and came west--he and his wife--in '29. From
the top of the hill above Allen's, of a clear day, one could look
far across the tree-tops, over distant settlements that were as
blue patches in the green canopy of the forest, over hill and dale
to the smoky chasm of the St. Lawrence thirty miles north. The
Allens had not a child; they settled with no thought of school or
neighbour. They brought a cow with them and a big collie whose
back had been scarred by a lynx. He was good company and a brave
hunter, this dog; and one day--it was February, four years after
their coming, and the snow lay deep--he left the dale and not even
a track behind him. Far and wide they went searching, but saw no
sign of him. Near a month later, one night, past twelve o'clock,
they heard his bark in the distance. Allen rose and lit a candle
and opened the door. They could hear him plainer, and now, mingled
with his barking, a faint tinkle of bells.
It had begun to thaw, and a cold rain was drumming on roof and
window.
"He's crossing the pond," said Allen, as he listened. "He's
dragging some heavy thing over the ice."
Soon he leaped in at the door, the little red sleigh bouncing after
him. The dog was in shafts and harness. Over the sleigh was a
tiny cover of sail-cloth shaped like that of a prairie schooner.
Bouncing over the door-step had waked its traveller, and there was
a loud voice of complaint in the little cavern of sail-cloth.
Peering in, they saw only the long fur of a gray wolf. Beneath it
a very small boy lay struggling with straps that held him down.
Allen loosed them and took him out of the sleigh, a ragged but
handsome youngster with red cheeks and blue eyes and light, curly
hair. He was near four years of age then, but big and strong as
any boy of five. He stood rubbing his eyes a minute, and the dog
came over and licked his face, showing fondness acquired they knew
not where. Mrs. Allen took the boy in her lap and petted him, but
he was afraid--like a wild fawn that has just been captured--and
broke away and took refuge under the bed. A long time she sat by
her bedside with the candle, showing him trinkets and trying to
coax him out. He ceased to cry when she held before him a big,
shiny locket of silver, and soon his little hand came out to grasp
it. Presently she began to reach his confidence with sugar. There
was a moment of silence, then strange words came out of his
hiding-place. "Anah jouhan" was all they could make of them, and
they remembered always that odd combination of sounds. They gave
him food, which he ate with eager haste. Then a moment of silence
and an imperative call for more in some strange tongue. When at
last he came out of his hiding-place, he fled from the woman. This
time he sought refuge between the knees of Allen, where soon his
fear gave way to curiosity, and he began to feel her face and gown.
By and by he fell asleep.
They searched the sleigh and shook out the robe and blanket,
finding only a pair of warm bricks.
A Frenchman worked for the Allens that winter, and the name, Trove,
was of his invention.
And so came Sidney Trove, his mind in strange fetters, travelling
out of the land of mystery, in a winter night, to Brier Dale.
II
The Crystal City and the Traveller
The wind, veering, came bitter cold; the rain hardened to hail; the
clouds, changed to brittle nets of frost, and shaken to shreds by
the rough wind, fell hissing in a scatter of snow. Next morning
when Allen opened his door the wind was gone, the sky clear. Brier
Pond, lately covered with clear ice, lay under a blanket of snow.
He hurried across the pond, his dog following. Near the far shore
was a bare spot on the ice cut by one of the sleigh-runners. Up in
the woods, opposite, was the Moss Trail. Sunlight fell on the
hills above him. He halted, looking up at the tree-tops. Twig,
branch, and trunk glowed with the fire of diamonds through a lacy
necking of hoar frost. Every tree had put on a jacket of ice and
become as a fountain of prismatic hues. Here and there a dead pine
rose like a spire of crystal; domes of deep-coloured glass and
towers of jasper were as the landmarks of a city. Allen climbed
the shore, walking slowly. He could see no track of sleigh or dog
or any living thing. A frosted, icy tangle of branches arched the
trail--a gateway of this great, crystal city of the woods. He
entered, listening as he walked. Branches of hazel and dogwood
were like jets of water breaking into clear, halted drops and foamy
spray above him. He went on, looking up at this long sky-window of
the woods. In the deep silence he could hear his heart beating.
"Sport," .said he to the dog, "show me the way;" but the dog only
wagged his tail.
Allen returned to the house.
"Wife," said he, "look at the woods yonder. They are like the city
of holy promise. 'Behold I will lay thy stones with fair colours
and thy foundations with sapphires, and I will make thy windows of
agate.'"
"Did you find the track of the little sleigh?" said she.
"No," he answered, "nor will any man, for all paths are hidden."
"Theron--may we keep the boy?" she inquired.
"I think it is the will of God," said Allen.
The boy grew and throve in mind and body. For a time he prattled
in a language none who saw him were able to comprehend. But he
learned English quickly and soon forgot the jargon of his babyhood.
The shadows of mystery that fell over his coming lengthened far
into his life and were deepened by others that fell across them.
Before he could have told the story, all memory of whom he left or
whence he came had been swept away. It was a house of riddles
where Allen dwelt--a rude thing of logs and ladders and a low roof
and two rooms. Yet one ladder led high to glories no pen may
describe. The Allens, with this rude shelter, found delight in
dreams of an eternal home whose splendour and luxury would have
made them miserable here below. What a riddle was this! And then,
as to the boy Sid, there was the riddle of his coming, and again
that of his character, which latter was, indeed, not easy to solve.
There were few books and no learning in that home. For three
winters Trove tramped a trail to the schoolhouse two miles away,
and had no further schooling until he was a big, blond boy of
fifteen, with red cheeks, and eyes large, blue, and discerning, and
hands hardened to the axe helve. He had then discovered the beauty
of the woods and begun to study the wild folk that live in holes
and thickets. He had a fine face. You would have called him
handsome, but not they among whom he lived. With them handsome was
as handsome did, and the face of a man, if it were cleanly, was
never a proper cause of blame or compliment. But there was that in
his soul, which even now had waked the mother's wonder and set
forth a riddle none were able to solve.
III
The Clock Tinker
The harvesting was over in Brier Dale. It was near dinner-time,
and Allen, Trove, and the two hired men were trying feats in the
dooryard. Trove, then a boy of fifteen, had outdone them all at
the jumping. A stranger came along, riding a big mare with a young
filly at her side. He was a tall, spare man, past middle age, with
a red, smooth-shaven face and long, gray hair that fell to his
rolling collar. He turned in at the gate. A little beyond it his
mare halted for a mouthful of grass. The stranger unslung a strap
that held a satchel to his side and hung it on the pommel.
"Go and ask what we can do for him," Allen whispered to the boy.
Trove went down the drive, looking up at him curiously.
"What can I do for you?" he inquired.
"Give me thy youth," said the stranger, quickly, his gray eyes
twinkling under silvered brows.
The boy, now smiling, made no answer.
"No?" said the man, as he came on slowly. "Well, then, were thy
wit as good as thy legs it would be o' some use to me."
The words were spoken with dignity in a deep, kindly tone. They
were also faintly salted with Irish brogue.
He approached the men, all eyes fixed upon him with a look of
inquiry.
"Have ye ever seen a drunken sailor on a mast?" he inquired of
Allen,
"No."
"Well, sor," said the stranger, dismounting slowly, "I am not that.
Let me consider--have ye ever seen a cocoanut on a plum tree?"
"I believe not," said Allen, laughing.
"Well, sor, that is more like me. 'Tis long since I rode a horse,
an' am out o' place in the saddle."
He stood erect with dignity, a smile deepening the many lines in
his face.
"Can I do anything for you?" Allen asked.
"Ay--cure me o' poverty--have ye any clocks to mend?"
"Clocks! Are you a tinker?" said Allen.
"I am, sor, an' at thy service. Could beauty, me lord, have better
commerce than with honesty?"
They all surveyed him with curiosity and amusement as he tied the
mare.
All had begun to laugh. His words came rapidly on a quick
undercurrent of good nature. A clock sounded the stroke of midday.
"What, ho! The clock," said he, looking at his watch. "Thy time
hath a lagging foot, Marry, were I that slow, sor, I'd never get to
Heaven."
"Mother," said Allen, going to the doorstep, "here is a tinker, and
he says the clock is slow."
"It seems to be out of order." said his wife, coming to the step.
"Seems, madam, nay, it is," said the stranger. "Did ye mind the
stroke of it?"
"No," said she.
"Marry, 'twas like the call of a dying man."
Allen thought a moment as he whittled.
"Had I such a stroke on me I'd--I'd think I was parralyzed," the
stranger added.
"You'd better fix it then," said Allen.
"Thou art wise, good man," said the stranger. "Mind the two hands
on the clock an' keep them to their pace or they'll beckon thee to
poverty."
The clock was brought to the door-step and all gathered about him
as he went to work.
"Ye know a power o' scripter," said one of the hired men.
"Scripter," said the tinker, laughing. "I do, sor, an' much of it
according to the good Saint William. Have ye never read
Shakespeare?"
None who sat before him knew anything of the immortal bard.
"He writ a book 'bout Dan'l Boone an' the Injuns," a hired man
ventured.
"'Angels an' ministers o' grace defend us!'" the tinker exclaimed,
Trove laughed.
"I'll give ye a riddle," said the tinker, turning to him.
"How is it the clock can keep a sober face?"
"It has no ears," Trove answered.
"Right," said the old tinker, smiling. "Thou art a knowing youth.
Read Shakespeare, boy--a little of him three times a day for the
mind's sake. I've travelled far in lonely places and needed no
other company."
"Ever in India?" Trove inquired. He had been reading of that far
land.
"I was, sor," the stranger continued, rubbing a wheel. "I was five
years in India, sor, an' part o' the time fighting as hard as ever
a man could fight."
"Fighting!" said Trove, much interested.
"I was, sor," he asserted, oiling a pinion of the old clock.
"On which side?"
"Inside an' outside."
"With natives?"
"I did, sor; three kinds o' them,--fever, fleas, an' the divvle."
"Give us some more Shakespeare," said the boy, smiling.
The tinker rubbed his spectacles thoughtfully, and, as he resumed
his work, a sounding flood of tragic utterance came out of him--the
great soliloquies of Hamlet and Macbeth and Richard III and Lear
and Antony, all said with spirit and appreciation. The job
finished, they bade him put up for dinner.
"A fine colt!" said Allen, as they were on their way to the stable.
"It is, sor," said the tinker, "a most excellent breed o' horses."
"Where from?"
"The grandsire from the desert of Arabia, where Allah created the
horse out o' the south wind. See the slender flanks of the
Barbary? See her eye?"
He seemed to talk in that odd strain for the mere joy of it, and
there was in his voice the God-given vanity of bird or poet.
He had caught the filly by her little plume and stood patting her
forehead.
"A wonderful thing, sor, is the horse's eye," he continued. "A
glance! an' they know if ye be kind or cruel. Sweet Phyllis! Her
eyelids are as bows; her lashes like the beard o' the corn. Have
ye ever heard the three prayers o' the horse?"
"No," said Allen.
"Well, three times a day, sor, he prays, so they say, in the
desert. In the morning he thinks a prayer like this, 'O Allah!
make me beloved o' me master.' At noon, 'Do well by me master that
he may do well by me.' At even, 'O Allah! grant, at last, I may
bear me master into Paradise.'
"An' the Arab, sor, he looks for a hard ride an' many jumps in the
last journey, an' is kind to him all the days of his life, sor, so
he may be able to make it."
For a moment he led her up and down at a quick trot, her dainty
feet touching the earth lightly as a fawn's.
"Thou'rt made for the hot leagues o' the great sand sea," said he,
patting her head. "Ah! thy neck shall be as the bowsprit; thy dust
as the flying spray."
"In one thing you are like Isaiah," said Allen, as he whittled.
"The Lord God hath given thee the tongue of the learned."
"An' if he grant me the power to speak a word in season to him that
is weary, I shall be content," said the tinker.
Dinner over, they came out of doors. The stranger stood filling
his pipe. Something in his talk and manner had gone deep into the
soul of the boy, who now whispered a moment with his father.
"Would you sell the filly?" said Allen. "My boy would like to own
her."
"What, ho, the boy! the beautiful boy! An' would ye love her,
boy?" the tinker asked.
"Yes, sir," the boy answered quickly,
"An' put a ribbon in her forelock, an' a coat o' silk on her back,
an', mind ye, a man o' kindness in the saddle?"
"Yes, sir."
"Then take thy horse, an' Allah grant thou be successful on her as
many times as there be hairs in her skin."
"And the price?" said Allen.
"Name it, an' I'll call thee just."
The business over, the tinker called to Trove, who had led the
filly to her stall,--
"You, there, strike the tents. Bring me the mare. This very day
she may bear me to forgiveness."
Trove brought the mare.
"Remember," said the old man, turning as he rode away, "in the day
o' the last judgment God 'll mind the look o' thy horse."
He rode on a few steps and halted, turning in the saddle.
"Thou, too, Phyllis," he called. "God 'll mind the look o' thy
master; see that ye bring him safe."
The little filly began to rear and call, the mother to answer. For
days she called and trembled, with wet eyes, listening for the
voice that still answered, though out of hearing, far over the
hills. And Trove, too, was lonely, and there was a kind of longing
in his heart for the music in that voice of the stranger.
IV
The Uphill Road
For Trove it was a day of sowing. The strange old tinker had
filled his heart with a new joy and a new desire. Next morning he
got a ride to Hillsborough--fourteen miles--and came back, reading,
as he walked, a small, green book, its thin pages covered thick
with execrably fine printing, its title "The Works of Shakespeare."
He read the book industriously and with keen pleasure. Allen
complained, shortly, that Shakespeare and the filly had interfered
with the potatoes and the corn.
The filly ceased to take food and sickened for a time after the dam
left her. Trove lay in the stall nights and gave her milk
sweetened to her liking. She grew strong and playful, and forgot
her sorrow, and began to follow him like a dog on his errands up
and down the farm. Trove went to school in the autumn--"Select
school," it was called. A two-mile journey it was, by trail, but a
full three by the wagon road. He learned only a poor lesson the
first day, for, on coming in sight of the schoolhouse, he heard a
rush of feet behind him and saw his filly charging down the trail.
He had to go back with her and lose the day, a thought dreadful to
him, for now hope was high, and school days few and precious. At
first he was angry. Then he sat among the ferns, covering his face
and sobbing with sore resentment. The little filly stood over him
and rubbed her silky muzzle on his neck, and kicked up her heels in
play as he pushed her back. Next morning he put her behind a
fence, but she went over it with the ease of a wild deer and came
bounding after him. When, at last, she was shut in the box-stall
he could hear her calling, half a mile away, and it made his heart
sore. Soon after, a moose treed him on the trail and held him
there for quite half a day. Later he had to help thrash and was
laid up with the measles. Then came rain and flooded flats that
turned him off the trail. Years after he used to say that work and
weather, and sickness and distance, and even the beasts of the
field and wood, resisted him in the way of learning.
He went to school at Hillsborough that winter. His time, which
Allen gave him in the summer, had yielded some forty-five dollars.
He hired a room at thirty-five cents a week. Mary Allen bought him
a small stove and sent to him, in the sleigh, dishes, a kettle,
chair, bed, pillow, and quilt, and a supply of candles.
She surveyed him proudly, as he was going away that morning in
December,
"Folks may call ye han'some," she said. "They'd like to make fool
of ye, but you go on 'bout yer business an' act as if ye didn't
hear."
He had a figure awkward, as yet, but fast shaping to comeliness.
Long, light hair covered the tops of his ears and fell to his
collar. His ruddy cheeks were a bit paler that morning; the curve
in his lips a little drawn; his blue eyes had begun to fill and the
dimple in his chin to quiver, slightly, as he kissed her who had
been as a mother to him. But he went away laughing.
Many have seen the record in his diary of those lank and busy days.
The Saturday of his first week at school he wrote as follows:--
"Father brought me a small load of wood and a sack of potatoes
yesterday, so, after this, I shall be able to live cheaper. My
expenses this week have been as follows:--
Rent 35 cents
Corn meal 14 "
Milk 20 "
Bread 8 "
Beef bone 5 "
Honey 5 "
Four potatoes, about 1 "
--
88 cents.
"Two boys who have a room on the same floor got through the week
for 75 cents apiece, but they are both undersized and don't eat as
hearty. This week I was tempted by the sight of honey and was fool
enough to buy a little which I didn't need. I have some meal left
and hope next week to get through for 80 cents. I wish I could
have a decent necktie, but conscience doth make cowards of us all.
I have committed half the first act of 'Julius Caesar.'"
And yet, with pudding and milk and beef bone and four potatoes and
"Julius Caesar" the boy was cheerful.
"Don't like meat any more--it's mostly poor stuff anyway," he said
to his father, who had come to see him.
"Sorry--I brought down a piece o' venison," said Allen.
"Well, there's two kinds o' meat," said the boy; "what ye can have,
that's good, an' what ye can't have, that ain't worth havin'."
He got a job in the mill for every Saturday at 75 cents a day, and
soon thereafter was able to have a necktie and a pair of fine
boots, and a barber, now and then, to control the length of his
hair.
Trove burnt the candles freely and was able but never brilliant in
his work that year, owing, as all who knew him agreed, to great
modesty and small confidence. He was a kindly, big-hearted fellow,
and had wit and a knowledge of animals and of woodcraft that made
him excellent company. That schoolboy diary has been of great
service to all with a wish to understand him. On a faded leaf in
the old book one may read as follows:--
"I have received letters in the handwriting of girls, unsigned.
They think they are in love with me and say foolish things. I know
what they're up to. They're the kind my mother spoke of--the kind
that set their traps for a fool, and when he's caught they use him
for a thing to laugh at. They're not going to catch me.
"Expenses for seven days have been $1.14. Clint McCormick spent 60
cents to take his girl to a show and I had to help him through the
week. I told him he ought to love Caesar less and Rome more."
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