CHAPTER X
THE BALDFACED HOUSE
But Leon did not study signaling and the Morse alphabet that afternoon.He was presently dispatched by his father, who owned a pleasant home onthe outskirts of the town, on an errand to a farm some two miles distanton the uplands that skirted the woods.
The afternoon had all the spicy beauty of early November, with a slightfrost in the air. The fresh breeze laughed like a tomboy as it rompedover the salt-marshes. Each eddying dimple in the tidal river shone likea star sapphire, while the broad, brackish channel wound in and outbetween the marshes with as many wriggles as a lively trout.
"Those little creeks look like runaways," thought Leon as he paused uponthe uplands and beamed down upon the wide panorama of golden marsh-landand winding water. "They're for all the world like schoolboys that havecut school, giggling an' running to hide!" His eye dreamily followed thecourse of many a truant creek that half-turned its head, looking underthe tickling sunbeams as if it were glancing back over its shoulder,while it burrowed into the marshes vainly trying to hide where therelentless schoolmaster, called, for want of a better name, SolarAttraction, might not find it and compel its return to the ocean.
"And the Sugarloaf Sand-Dunes; don't they look fine?" reflected the boyscout further, his eye traveling off downstream to where the curvingtidal channel broadened into pearly plains of water, bounded at onedistant point, near the juncture of river and sea, by a dazzlingly whitebeach.
There the fine colorless sand, which when viewed closely had very muchthe hue of skim milk, the white being shot with a faint gray-blue tinge,had been piled by the winds of ages into tall sand-hills, into pyramidsand columns: one dazzling pillar, in especial, being named the Sugarloaffrom its crystalline whiteness, had given its name to the whole expanseof dune and beach.
The tall Sugarloaf gleamed in the distance now like a snowy lighthousewhose lamps are sleeping, presiding over the mouth of the tidal river;its brother sand-hills capped by vegetation might have been the purebright cliffs of some fairy shore.
The boy scout stood for many minutes upon the uplands, gazing afar, hismouth open as if he were physically drinking in that distant beauty.
"Gee whiz! this is gr-reat; isn't it, Blinkie?" he murmured to thesquatting dog by his side. "I never before saw that old Sugarloaf lookas it does to-day; did you, Mr. Dog?"
It had appeared just as radiantly beautiful, off and on, during all theseasons of Leon's life. But his powers of observation had not beentrained as was the case of late. In the years prior to his becoming ascout, when his inseparable companion on uplands and marsh had been ashotgun--from the time he was permitted free use of one--and theall-absorbing idea in his mind how to contrive a successful shot atshore bird or animal, he had gone about "lak wit' eye shut," so far asmany things just now beginning to fill him with a wonderful, speechlessgladness were concerned.
"Well, we're not heading for that farmhouse, are we, pup?" he said atlength, turning from the contemplation of runaway creeks and radiantdunes to the completion of his father's errand.
But the sunlit beauty at which he had been gazing coursed through hisevery vein, finding vent in a curly, ecstatic whistle that ascended inspirals until it touched the high keynote of exultation and there hungsuspended; while the rest of the trip to that upland farmhouse wasaccomplished in a series of broad jumps, the terrier being as wild withdelight as his master.
The errand performed and the boy scout having put in half an hourcondescendingly amusing the farmer's two small children, while Blinkexchanged compliments with his kind, master and dog started upon thereturn walk.
"Oh! it's early yet; don't you want to come a little way into the woods,doggie?" said Leon, doubling backward after they had taken a few steps."We haven't had many runs together lately. Your nose has been out ofjoint; poor pup!" stooping to caress the terrier. "Toiney says we can'ttake you on our scout hikes, because you'd scare every 'littal wil'an-ni-mal' within a mile. You would, too; wouldn't you? But there's anoutdoor scout meeting to-night to be held over in Sparrow Hollow, eachfellow lighting his own camp-fire--using not more than two matches--andcooking his own supper. And you may come. Yes, I said you might come!"as the dog, gyrating like a feather, seized his coat-sleeve betweenstrong white teeth in his eagerness not to be excluded from any more funthat might be afoot.
They were soon on the sere skirts of the woodland, prancing throughleafy drifts.
"We can't go far," said Leon. "We must get back to the town and buy ourhalf-pound of beefsteak that we're to cook without the use of anyordinary cooking-utensil, and so pass one of the tests for becoming asecond-class scout. I'll divvy up with you, pup! But whew! isn't thisjust fine?... The woods in November can put it all over the Septemberwoods to my mind."
He added the last words to himself. There was something about the ruggedstrength of the stripped trees, with the stealing blue haze of eveningsoftening their bareness, about the evergreen grandeur of pine andhemlock lording it over their robbed brethren, about the drab,parchment-like leaves clinging with eerie murmur to the oak-tree, andthe ruddy twigs of bare berry-bushes, that appealed to the element ofrugged daring in the boy himself.
He could not so soon break away from the woods as he had intended,though he only explored their outskirts.
Dusk was already falling when he found himself on the open uplandsagain, bound back toward the distant town.
"The scouts are to start for Sparrow Hollow at six o'clock: we musthustle, if we want to start with them," he said to the dog. "The onlyway we can make it is by taking a short cut across the marshes andwading through the river; that would be a quick way of reaching the townand the butcher's shop, to buy our beefsteak," muttering rapidly, partlyto himself, partly to his impatient companion. "The tide is full outnow, the water will be shallow; I can take off my shoes and stockingsand carry you, pup. Who cares if it's cold?"
The boy scout, with an anticipatory glow all over him, felt imperviousto any extreme of temperature as he bounded down the uplands, with thebreeze--the freshening, freakish breeze--driving across the salt-marshesdirectly in his face, racing through every vein in him, stirring up awhirligig within, presently bringing waste things to the top even as itstirred up dust and refuse in the roadway.
"Hullo! there's the old _baldfaced house_," he cried suddenly to thedog. "Here we are on our old stamping-ground, Blink! Wonder if 'MomBaldwin' is doing her witch stunts still? We haven't said 'Howdy!' toher for a long time; have we, pup?"
Slackening pace, for that fickle breeze was blowing away many thingsthat he ought to have remembered, among them the lateness of the hour,he turned aside a few steps to where a lonely old house stood at thefoot of the slope as the uplands melted into the salt-marshes.
It was a shallow shell of a dwelling--all face and no rearapparently--and that face was bald, almost stripped of paint by theelements. Just as storm-stripped was the heart of the one old woman wholived in it, and whom Leon had been wont to call a "solitary crank!"
To the neighborhood generally she was known as Ma'am Baldwin, mother ofthe young scape-grace, Dave Baldwin, who had so troubled the peacefultown by his pranks that he had finally been shut up in a reformatory,and who was now, a year after his release, a useless vagrant, spending,according to report, most of his time loafing between the whitesand-dunes on one side of the river and the woods on theother--incidentally breaking his mother's heart at the same time.
She had lived here in the old baldfaced house, with him, her youngestboy, the child of her middle age, until his wild doings brought thelaw's hand upon him. After his imprisonment shame prevented her leavingthe isolated dwelling and going to live with her married daughter nearthe town, though that daughter's one child, her little grandson Jack,possessed all the love-spots still green in her withered heart.
In her humiliation and loneliness "Mom Baldwin," as the boys called her,had become rather eccentric.
She had more than once been seen by those town boys--Leon and hisgang--stationed be
hind the smeared glass of her paintless window, doingstrange signaling "stunts" with a lighted lantern, whose pale raysdescribed a circle, dipped and then shot up as, held aloft in her bonyold hand, it sent an amber gleam over the salt-marshes.
"She's a witch--a witch like Dark Tammy, who lived on the edge of thewoods over a hundred years ago and who washed her clothes at the WitchRock," whispered Starrie Chase and his companions one to another as theylay low among the rank grass of the dark marshes, spying upon her."She's a witch, working spells with that lantern!"
Older people surmised that she was signaling to her vagabond son, whomight be haunting the distant marshes, trying to lure him home; shameand grief on his account had half-unbalanced her, they said.
But the boys pretended to stick to their own superstitious belief,because, to them, it offered some shabby excuse for tormenting her.
Leon Chase in particular made her rank little garden his nightlystamping-ground, and was the most ingenious in his persecutingattentions.
He it was who devised the plan of anchoring a shingle or other lightpiece of wood by a short string to the longest branch of the apple-treethat grew near her door.
When the wind blew directly across the marshes, as it did this evening,and drove against that paintless door, it operated the impromptuknocker; the wooden shingle would keep up an intermittent tapping,playing ticktack upon the painted panels all night.
Sometimes Ma'am Baldwin had come to the door a dozen times and peeredforth over the dark salt-marshes, believing that it was her vagrant sonwho demanded entrance, while the perpetrators of the trick, Leon Chase,Godey Peck and others of their gang--tickled in the meanest part of themby the fact that they "kept her guessing"--hid among the marsh-grassand watched.
Hardly any prank could have been more senseless, childish, andunfeeling. Yet Starrie Chase had actually believed that he got some shamexcitement out of it.
And to-night as his feet pressed his old stamping-ground beneath thatapple-tree beside the house, while the wind raked the marshes andwhipped his thoughts into dusty confusion, the old waste impulses whichprompted the trick were mysteriously whirled uppermost again.
The mischievous tide rip boiled in him once more.
Just as he became conscious of its yeasty bubbling, his foot touchedsomething on the ground--a hard winter apple. He picked it up and threwit against the house, imposing silence on his dog by dictatorial gestureand word.
There was a stir within the paintless dwelling. Through the blurredwindow-panes he caught sight of a shrunken form moving.
"Ha! there's the old 'witch' herself. She looks like a witheredcorn-stalk with all those odds and ends of shawls dangling about her.Ssh-ssh! Blinkie. Down, doggie! _Quiet, sir!_"
Leon's fingers groped upon the ground, where twilight shadows weremerging into darkness, for another apple. Since he enlisted as a boyscout mischief had been sentenced and shut up in a dark little cellinside him. But Malign Habit, though a captive, dies hard.
Those seeking fingers touched something else, a worm-eaten shingle blownfrom the old roof. He picked it up and considered it in the darkness,while his left hand felt in his pocket for some twine.
"Gee! it would be a great night for that trick to work," he mutteredwith a low chuckle that had less depth to it than a parrot's. "The windis just in the right direction--driving straight through the house. Eh,Blink! Shall we 'get her on a string' again?"
The dog whined softly with impatience. Of late, in his short excursionswith his master, he had not been used to such stealthy doings. With theexception of the trailing expeditions through the woods from whichcanines were debarred, movements had been open, manly, and aboveboardsince the master became a boy scout.
But Leon had forgotten that he was a scout, had momentarily forgotteneven the outdoor test in Sparrow Hollow, and the necessary preparationstherefor.
His fingers trifled with the shingle and string. His brain going aheadof those fingers was already attaching the one to the other when--thepaintless door opened and Ma'am Baldwin stepped out.
She did look like a wind-torn corn-stalk, short and withered, with thebreeze catching at the many-colored strips of shawls that hung aroundher, uniting to protect her somewhat against that marsh-wind drivingstraight from the river through her home.
From her left hand drooped a pale lantern, the one with which boyishimagination had accused her of working spells.
It made an island of yellow light about her as she stepped slowly forthinto the dusk. And Leon saw her raise her right arm to her breast withthat timid, pathetic movement characteristic of old people--especiallyof those whom life has treated harshly--as if she was afraid of whatmight spring upon her out of the gusty darkness.
Not for nothing had Starrie Chase been for two months a boy scout! Priorto those eight weeks of training that feebly defensive arm would havemeant naught to him; hardly would he have noticed it. But just as hiseyes had been opened to consider at length, with a dazzled thrill, thatdistant Sugarloaf Sand-Pillar and other of Nature's beauties as he hadseldom or never contemplated them before; so those scout's eyes werebeing trained to remark each significant gesture of another person andto read its meaning.
Somehow, that right arm laid across an old woman's breast told a tale ofloneliness and lack of defenders which made the boy wince. The distancewidened between his two hands holding respectively the shingle andstring.
There was a wood-pile within a few yards of him. Ma'am Baldwin steppedtoward it, breathing heavily and ejaculating: "My sen-ses! How it doblow!" While Leon restrained the terrier with a "_Quiet_, Blink! Don'tgo for her!"
Ma'am Baldwin, intent on holding fast to her shawls and procuring somechunks from the wood-pile--nearsighted as she was, to boot--did notnotice the boy and dog standing in the blackness beneath the bareapple-tree.
She set the lantern atop of the pile. As she bent forward, groping for ahatchet, its yellow rays kindled two other lanterns in her eyes by whoselight the lurking boy gazed through into her heart and saw for a briefmoment how tired, lonely, and baffled it was.
At the glimpse he straightened up very stiffly. There was a gurgle inhis throat, a stirring as of panic at the roots of his hair.
But not scare produced the rigidity! It was caused by a sudden greatthroe within which scraped his throat and sent a dimness to his eyes.The captive, Malign Habit, imprisoned before, was dying now in the graspof the Scout.
To put it otherwise,--at sight of an old woman's arm patheticallyshielding her breast, at a startled peep into her heart, the tightlittle bud of chivalry in Leon, watered of late by his scout training,fostered by the good turn to somebody every day, burst suddenly,impetuously into flower!
With a low snarl at himself, he thrust the coil of string deep into hispocket, and flung the shingle as far as he could into the night.
"Ughr-r-r! Guess I was meaner'n you'd be, Blink!" he muttered,swallowing the discovery that sometimes of yore, in his dealings withhis own kind, he had been less of a gentleman than his dog.
To which Blink, freed from restraint, returned a sharp, glad "Wouf!"that said: "I'm glad you've come to your senses, old man!"
"Hullo! 'Mom Baldwin,'" Leon stepped forward as the bowed woman startedat the monosyllabic bark, and peered fearfully into the darkness. "Don'tyou want me to split those chunks for you? You can't manage thehatchet."
Ma'am Baldwin's experience had taught her to distrust boys--Leonespecially! As her peering eyes recognized him, she backed away, raisingher right arm to her breast again with that helpless gesture of defense.
Starrie Chase blenched in turn. That pathetic old arm warding him offhurt him more at the core than a knockdown blow from a stronger limb.
But remembering all at once that he was a scout, trained to promptaction, he picked up the hatchet where she had dropped it, and set towork vigorously, chopping wood.
"Now! I'll carry these chunks into the house for you," he saidpresently. "Aw! let me. I'd just as soon do it!"
Ma'am Baldwin had
no alternative. Leon pushed the paintless door openand carried the wood inside, while she hobbled after him, well-nigh asmuch astonished as if Gabriel's trump had suddenly awoke the echoes ofthe gusty marshland.
The scout went to and fro for another ten minutes, splitting morechunks, piling them ready to her hand within.
Meanwhile his beneficiary, the old woman, seemed to have got a littlelight on the surprising situation. Grunting inarticulately, chewing herbewilderment between her teeth, she disappeared into a room off thekitchen and returned holding forth a ten-cent piece to her knight.
"No, thanks! I'm a boy scout. We don't take money for doing a goodturn." Leon shook his head. "Say! this old house is so draughty; youburn all the wood you want to-night; I'll run over to-morrow or next dayan' split some more. Is there anything else I can do for you before Igo? You've got enough water in from the well," he peered into thewater-pail, which winked satisfactorily.
Ma'am Baldwin had sunk upon a chair, alternately looking in perplexityat the energetic boy, and listening to the frisky gusts: "My sen-ses!Whatever's come over you, Leon?" she gasped; and then wailingly: "Dearyme! if it should blow up a gale to-night, some things in this house'llride out."
"No, it isn't going to blow up a storm," Leon reassured her. "The wind'snot really high, only it gets such a rake over the marshes. Here, I'lltie these old shutters together for you, the fastening is broken," andthe coil of string was produced from his pocket for a new purpose. "Butit must be _awful_ lonely for you, living here by yourself, Ma'amBaldwin. You'll be snowed in later on; we'll have to come and dig youout."
Still chewing the cud of her bewilderment, she stared at him, mumbling,nodding, and stroking the gray hair from her forehead with nervousfingers. But there was a humid light in the old eyes that spilled overon the boy as he worked.
"Why don't you go to live with your daughter an' your grandson in thetown?" went on Leon as he tied together the last pair of flappingshutters. "And you're so fond of little Jack too; he's a nice kid!"
"So he is!" nodded the grandmother; a change overspread her entire facenow, she looked tender, grandmotherly, half-hopeful, as if for themoment trouble on behalf of her ne'er-do-well son was forgotten. "Well!perhaps I will move there before the winter sets in hard, Leon. I'm notso smart as I was. I'm sure I don't know how to thank you! Good-night!"
"Good-night!" returned the scout. "You can untie those shutters easilyenough in the morning."
And he found himself outside again upon the dark marshland, with theobedient terrier who had trotted at his heels during the lateproceedings, waltzing excitedly at his side.
"Ah, la! la! as Toiney says, it's too late now, Blink, for us to putback to the town to buy our supper--half a pound of beefsteak and twopotatoes, to be cooked over each one's special fire," muttered the boy,momentarily irresolute. "Well! we'll have to let the grub go, and raceback across the uplands, over to the Hollow. Stir your trotters, Mr.Dog!"
As the two regained the crest of the hilly uplands, Leon paused forbreath. On his left hand stretched the dark, solemn woods, where thebreeze hooted weirdly among leafless boughs. On his right, beyond uplandand broad salt-marsh, wound the silver-spot river in whose now shallowripples bathed a rising moon.
Quarter of a mile ahead of him a rosy flush upon the cheek of darknesstold that in the sheltered hollow, between a clump of pines that servedas a windbreak and the woods, the Owls' camp-fires were already blazing.
"Tooraloo! I feel as if I could start my fire to-night without using amatch at all--just by snapping my fingers at it, or with a piece of dampbark and a snowball, as the woodsmen say," he confided half-audibly tothe dog.
Whence this feeling of prowess, of being a firebrand--a genialone--capable of kindling other and better lights in the world than acamp-fire?
Starrie Chase did not analyze his sensations of magnificence, whichbloomed from a discovery back there on the marshes of the secret whichis at the root of the Boy Scout Movement, at the base of all ChristianChivalry, at the foundation of golden labor for mankind in every age:namely, that the excitement of helping people is vastly, vitally, andblissfully greater than the spurious excitement of hurting them!