The Brimming Cup

CHAPTER XIII
ALONG THE EAGLE ROCK BROOK

Paul was very much pleased that Mr. Welles agreed with him so perfectly about the hour and place for lunch. But then Mr. Welles was awfully nice about agreeing. He said, now, "Yes, I believe this would be the best place. Here by the pool, on that big rock, as you say. We'll be drier there. Yesterday's rain has made everything in the woods pretty wet. That's a good idea of yours, to build our fire on the rock, with water all around. The fire couldn't possibly spread." Paul looked proudly at the rain-soaked trees and wet soggy leaves which his forethought had saved from destruction and strode across the brook in his rubber boots, with the first installment of dry pine branches.

"Aren't you tired?" he said protectingly to his companion. "Whyn't you sit down over there and undo the lunch-basket? I'll make camp. Father showed me how to make a campfire with only one match."

"All right," said Mr. Welles. "I do feel a little leg-weary. I'm not so used to these mountain scrambles as you are."

"I'll clean the fish, too," said Paul; "maybe you don't like to. Elly can't abide it." He did not say that he did not like it very well himself, having always to get over the sick feeling it gave him.

"I never did it in my life," confessed Mr. Welles. "You see I always lived in towns till now."

Paul felt very sorry for Mr. Welles, and shook his head pityingly as he went off for more firewood.

When he had collected a lot, he began to lay the sticks. He did it just as Father had showed him, but it seemed lots harder to get them right. And it took a lot more than one match to get it started. He didn't have a bit of breath left in him, by the time he finally got it going. And my, weren't his hands black! But he felt very much set up, all the same, that he had done it. In his heart Paul knew that there was nothing anybody could do which he could not.

They hung the slimpsy slices of bacon from forked sticks, Paul showing Mr. Welles how to thread his on, and began to cook them around the edges of the fire, while the two little trout frizzled in the frying-pan. "I'm so glad we got that last one," commented Paul. "One wouldn't have been very much."

"Yes, it's much better to have one apiece," agreed Mr. Welles.

When the bacon was done (only burned a little at the edges, and still soft in the thicker places in the center of the slice), and the fish the right brown, and 'most shrunk up to nothing, they each of them put a trout and a piece of bacon on his slice of bread and butter, and gracious! didn't it taste good.

"You must have done this before," said Mr. Welles, respectfully; "you seem to know a good deal about camping."

"Oh, I'm a good camper, all right," agreed Paul. "Mother and I have gone off in the woods, lots of times. When I was littler, I used to get spells when I was bad. I do still, even now, once in a while."

Mr. Welles did not smile, but continued gravely eating his bread and bacon, his eyes on the little boy.

"I don't know what's the matter. I feel all snarled up inside. And then the first thing you know I've done something awful. Mother can tell when it first gets started in me, the least little teenty bit. How can she tell? And then she takes me off camping. She pretends it's because she's feeling snarled up, herself. But it's not. She never is. Why not?"

He considered this in silence, chewing slowly on a vast mouthful of bread. "Anyhow, we leave the little children with Touclé, if she's there," (he stopped here an instant to inspect Mr. Welles to make sure he was not laughing because he had called Elly and Mark the "little children." But Mr. Welles was not laughing at him. He was listening, really listening, the way grown-ups almost never did, to hear what you had to say. He did like Mr. Welles. He went on,) "or if Touclé's off somewheres in the woods herself, we leave them down at the Powers' to play with Addie and Ralph, and we light out for the woods, Mother and I. The snarleder up I feel, the further we go. We don't fish or anything. Just leg it, till I feel better. Then we make a fire and eat."

He swallowed visibly a huge lump of unchewed bread, and said, uncorking a thermos bottle, "I asked Mother to put up some hot coffee."

Mr. Welles seemed surprised. "Why, do you drink coffee?"

"Oh no, none of us kids ever take it. But I thought you'd like some. Grown-up folks mostly do, when they eat out-of-doors."

Mr. Welles took the cup of steaming coffee, ready sugared and creamed, without even saying thank you, but in a minute, as they began their second round of sandwiches, filled this time with cold ham from home, he said, "You've got quite a way of looking out for folks, haven't you?

"I like to," said Paul.

"I always liked to," said Mr. Welles.

"I guess you've done quite a lot of it," conjectured the little boy.

"Quite a lot," said the old man, thoughtfully.

Paul never liked to be left behind and now spoke out, "Well, I expect I'll do a good deal, too."

"Most likely you will," agreed the old man.

He spoke a little absently, and after a minute said, "Paul, talking about looking out for folks makes me think of something that's bothering me like everything lately. I can't make up my mind about whether I ought to go on, looking out for folks, if I know folks that need it. I keep hearing from somebody who lives down South, that the colored folks aren't getting a real square deal. I keep wondering if maybe I oughtn't to go and live there and help her look out for them."

Paul was so astonished at this that he opened his mouth wide, without speaking. When he could get his breath, he shouted, "Why, Mr. Welles, go away from Ashley to live!" He stared hard at the old man, thinking he must have got it twisted. But Mr. Welles did not set him straight, only stared down at the ground with a pale, bothered-looking face and sort of twitched his mouth to one side.

The little boy moved over closer to him, and said, looking up at him with all his might, "Aw, Mr. Welles, I wish't you wouldn't! I like your being here. There's lot of things I've got planned we could do together."

It seemed to him that the old man looked older and more tired at this. He closed his eyes and did not answer. Paul felt better. Mr. Welles couldn't have been in earnest.

How still it was in the woods that day. Not the least little flutter from any leaf. The sunlight looked as green, as green, coming down through the trees that way, like the light in church when the sun came in through the stained-glass windows.

The only thing that budged at all was a bird . . . was it a flicker? . . . he couldn't make out. It kept hopping around in that big beech tree across the brook. Probably it was worried about its nest and didn't like to have people so near. And yet they sat as still, he and Mr. Welles, as still as a tree, or the shiny water in the pool.

Mr. Welles opened his eyes and took the little boy's rough, calloused hand in his. "See here, Paul, maybe you can help me make up my mind."

Paul squared his shoulders.

"It's this way. I'm pretty nearly used up, not good for much any more. And the Electrical Company wanted to fix everything the nicest way for me to live. And they have. I hadn't any idea anything could be so nice as living next door to you folks in such a place as Crittenden's. And then making friends with you. I'd always wanted a little boy, but I thought I was so old, no little boy would bother with me."

He squeezed the child's fingers and looked down on him lovingly. For a moment Paul's heart swelled up so he couldn't speak. Then he said, in a husky voice, "I like to." He took a large bite from his sandwich and repeated roughly, his mouth full, "I like to."

Neither said anything more for a moment. The flicker . . . yes, it was a flicker . . . in the big beech kept changing her position, flying down from a top-branch to a lower one, and then back again. Paul made out the hole in the old trunk of the tree where she'd probably put her nest, and wondered why she didn't go back to it.

"Have you got to the Civil War, in your history yet, Paul?"

"Gee, yes, 'way past it. Up to the Philadelphia Exposition."

Mr. Welles said nothing for a minute and Paul could see by his expression that he was trying to think of some simple baby way to say what he wanted to. Gracious! didn't he know Paul was in the seventh grade? "I can understand all right," he said roughly.

Mr. Welles said, "Well, all right. If you can, you'll do more than I can. You know how the colored people got their freedom then. But something very bad had been going on there in slavery, for ever so long. And bad things that go on for a long time, can't be straightened out in a hurry. And so far, it's been too much for everybody, to get this straightened out. The colored people . . . they're made to suffer all the time for being born the way they are. And that's not right . . . in America . . ."

"Why don't they stand up for themselves?" asked Paul scornfully. He'd like to see anybody who would make him suffer for being born the way he was.

Mr. Welles hesitated again. "It looks to me this way. People can fight for some things . . . their property, and their vote and their work. And I guess the colored people have got to fight for those, themselves. But there are some other things . . . some of the nicest . . . why, if you fight for them, you tear them all to pieces, trying to get them."

Paul did not have the least idea what this meant.

"If what you want is to have people respect what you are worth, why, if you fight them to make them, then you spoil what you're worth. Anyhow, even if you don't spoil it, fighting about it doesn't put you in any state of mind to go on being your best. That's a pretty hard job for anybody."

Paul found this very dull. His attention wandered back to that queer flicker, so excited about something.

The old man tried to get at him again. "Look here, Paul, Americans that happen to be colored people ought to have every bit of the same chance to amount to their best that any Americans have, oughtn't they?"

Paul saw this. But he didn't see what Mr. Welles could do about it, and said so.

"Well, I couldn't do a great deal," said the old man sadly, "but more than if I stayed here. It looks as though they needed, as much as anything else, people to just have the same feeling towards them that you have for anybody who's trying to make the best of himself. And I could do that."

Paul got the impression at last that Mr. Welles was in earnest about this. It made him feel anxious. "Oh dear!" he said, kicking the toe of his rubber boot against the rock. He couldn't think of anything to say, except that he hated the idea of Mr. Welles going.

But just then he was startled by a sharp cry of distress from the bird, who flew out wildly from the beech, poised herself in the air, beating her wings and calling in a loud scream. The old man, unused to forests and their inhabitants, noticed this but vaguely, and was surprised by Paul's instant response. "There must be a snake after her eggs," he said excitedly. "I'll go over and chase him off."

He started across the pool, gave a cry, and stood still, petrified. Before their eyes, without a breath of wind, the hugh beech solemnly bowed itself and with a great roar of branches, whipping and crushing the trees about, it fell, its full length thundering on the ground, a great mat of shaggy roots uptorn, leaving an open wound in the stony mountain soil. Then, in a minute, it was all as still as before.

Paul was scared almost to death. He scrambled back to the rock, his knees shaking, his stomach sick, and clung to Mr. Welles with all his might. "What made it fall? There's no wind! What made it fall?" he cried, burying his face in the old man's coat. "It might just as easy have fallen this way, on us, and killed us! What made it fall?"

Mr. Welles patted Paul's shoulder, and said, "There, there," till Paul's teeth stopped chattering and he began to be a little ashamed of showing how it had startled him. He was also a little put out that Mr. Welles had remained so unmoved. "You don't know how dangerous a big tree is, when it falls!" he said, accusingly, to defend himself. "If you'd lived here more, and heard some of the stories . . . ! Nate Hewitt had his back broken with a tree falling on him. But he was cutting that one down, and it fell too soon. Nobody had touched this one! And there isn't any wind. What made it fall? Most every winter, some man in the lumber camp on the mountain gets killed or smashed up, and lots of horses too."

He felt much better now, and he did want to find out whatever had made that tree fall. He sat up, and looked back at it, just a mess of broken branches and upset leaves, where a minute before there had been a tall living tree! "I'm going over to see what made it fall," he said.

He splashed across the pool and poked around with a stick in the hole in the ground, and almost right away he saw what the reason was. He ran back to tell Mr. Welles. "I see now. The brook had kept sidling over that way, and washed the earth from under the rocks. It just didn't have enough ground left to hold on to."

He felt all right now he knew some simple reason for what had looked so crazy. He looked up confidently at the old man, and was struck into awed silence by the expression of Mr. Welles' face.

"Paul," said Mr. Welles, and his voice wasn't steady, "I guess what I ought to try to be is one more drop of water in the brook."

Paul stared hard. He did not understand this either, but he understood the expression in that tired, old face. Mr. Welles went on, "That wrong feeling about colored people, not wanting them to be respected as much as any American, is . . . that's a tree that's got to come down. I'm too old to take an axe to it. And, anyhow, if you cut that sort of thing down with an axe, the roots generally live and start all over again. If we can just wash the ground out from under it, with enough people thinking differently, maybe it'll fall, roots and all, of its own weight. If I go and live there and just am one more person who respects them when they deserve it, it'll help that much, maybe, don't you think?"

Paul had understood more what Mr. Welles' face and voice said to him than the words. He kept on looking into the old man's eyes. Something deep inside Paul said "yes" to what Mr. Welles' eyes were asking him.

"How about it, Paul?" asked the old man.

The child gave a start, climbed up beside him, and took hold of his hand. "How about it? How about it?" asked Mr. Welles in a very low tone.

The little boy nodded. "Maybe," he said briefly. His lips shook. Presently he sniffed and drew his sleeve across his nose. He held the old hand tightly.

"Oh dear!" he said again, in a small, miserable voice.

The old man made no answer.

The two sat motionless, leaning against each other. A ray of sun found the newly opened spot in the roof of the woods, and it seemed to Paul it pointed a long steady finger down on the fallen beech.

At first Paul's throat ached, and his eyes smarted. He felt heavy and sore, as though he hadn't eaten the right thing for lunch.

But by and by this went away. A quiet came all over him, so that he was better than happy. He laid his head against Mr. Welles' shoulder and looked up into the worn, pale old face, which was now also very quiet and still as though he too were better than happy.

He held Paul close to him.

Paul had a great many mixed-up thoughts. But there was one that was clear. He said to himself solemnly, "I guess I know who I want to be like when I grow up."

---

By and by, he stirred and said, "Well, I guess I better start to pack up. Don't you bother. I'll pack the things away. Mother showed me how to clean the frying-pan with sand and moss."

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