第9章

Shivering,we followed her up the hill,the spectators of the tragedy,who by this time had come around the pond,trailing after.Nancy was not among them.Inside the shanty into which we were thrust were two small children crawling about the floor,and the place was filled with steam from a wash-tub against the wall and a boiler on the stove.With a vigorous injunction to make themselves scarce,the Irishwoman slammed the door in the faces of the curious and ordered us to remove our clothes.

Grits was put to bed in a corner,while Tom and I,provided with various garments,huddled over the stove.There fell to my lot the red flannel shirt which I had seen on the clothes-line.She gave us hot coffee,and was back at her wash-tub in no time at all,her entire comment on a proceeding that seemed to Tom and me to have certain elements of gravity being,"By's will be by's!"The final ironical touch was given the anti-climax when our rescuer turned out to be the mother of the chief of the head-hunters himself!He had lingered perforce with his brothers and sister outside the cabin until dinner time,and when he came in he was meek as Moses.

Thus the ready hospitality of the poor,which passed over the heads of Tom and me as we ate bread and onions and potatoes with a ravenous hunger.It must have been about two o'clock in the afternoon when we bade good-bye to our preserver and departed for home....

At first we went at a dog-trot,but presently slowed down to discuss the future looming portentously ahead of us.Since entire concealment was now impossible,the question was,--how complete a confession would be necessary?Our cases,indeed,were dissimilar,and Tom's incentive to hold back the facts was not nearly so great as mine.It sometimes seemed to me in those days unjust that the Peterses were able on the whole to keep out of criminal difficulties,in which I was more or less continuously involved:for it did not strike me that their sins were not those of the imagination.The method of Tom's father was the slipper.

He and Tom understood each other,while between my father and myself was a great gulf fixed.Not that Tom yearned for the slipper;but he regarded its occasional applications as being as inevitable as changes in the weather;lying did not come easily to him,and left to himself he much preferred to confess and have the matter over with.I have already suggested that I had cultivated lying,that weapon of the weaker party,in some degree,at least,in self-defence.

Tom was loyal.Moreover,my conviction would probably deprive him for six whole afternoons of my company,on which he was more or less dependent.But the defence of this case presented unusual difficulties,and we stopped several times to thrash them out.We had been absent from dinner,and doubtless by this time Julia had informed Tom's mother of the expedition,and anyone could see that our clothing had been wet.So Ilingered in no little anxiety behind the Peters stable while he made the investigation.Our spirits rose considerably when he returned to report that Julia had unexpectedly been a trump,having quieted his mother by the surmise that he was spending the day with his Aunt Fanny.So far,so good.The problem now was to decide upon what to admit.For we must both tell the same story.

It was agreed that we had fallen into Logan's Pond from a raft:my suggestion.Well,said Tom,the Petrel hadn't proved much better than a raft,after all.I was in no mood to defend her.

This designation of the Petrel as a "raft"was my first legal quibble.

The question to be decided by the court was,What is a raft?just as the supreme tribunal of the land has been required,in later years,to decide,What is whiskey?The thing to be concealed if possible was the building of the "raft,"although this information was already in the possession of a number of persons,whose fathers might at any moment see fit to congratulate my own on being the parent of a genius.It was a risk,however,that had to be run.And,secondly,since Grits Jarvis was contraband,nothing was to be said about him.

I have not said much about my mother,who might have been likened on such occasions to a grand jury compelled to indict,yet torn between loyalty to an oath and sympathy with the defendant.I went through the Peters yard,climbed the wire fence,my object being to discover first from Ella,the housemaid,or Hannah,the cook,how much was known in high quarters.It was Hannah who,as I opened the kitchen door,turned at the sound,and set down the saucepan she was scouring.

"Is it home ye are?Mercy to goodness!"(this on beholding my shrunken costume)"Glory be to God you're not drownded!and your mother worritin'her heart out!So it's into the wather ye were?"I admitted it.

"Hannah?"I said softly.

"What then?"

"Does mother know--about the boat?"

"Now don't ye be wheedlin'."

I managed to discover,however,that my mother did not know,and surmised that the best reason why she had not been told had to do with Hannah's criminal acquiescence concerning the operations in the shed.I ran into the front hall and up the stairs,and my mother heard me coming and met me on the landing.

"Hugh,where have you been?"

As I emerged from the semi-darkness of the stairway she caught sight of my dwindled garments,of the trousers well above my ankles.Suddenly she had me in her arms and was kissing me passionately.As she stood before me in her grey,belted skirt,the familiar red-and-white cameo at her throat,her heavy hair parted in the middle,in her eyes was an odd,appealing look which I know now was a sign of mother love struggling with a Presbyterian conscience.Though she inherited that conscience,I have often thought she might have succeeded in casting it off--or at least some of it--had it not been for the fact that in spite of herself she worshipped its incarnation in the shape of my father.Her voice trembled a little as she drew me to the sofa beside the window.

"Tell me about what happened,my son,"she said.