The Eagle"s Heart.
by Hamlin Garland.
PART I
CHAPTER I
HIS YOUTH
Harold was about ten years of age when his father, the Rev. Mr. Excell, took the pastorate of the First Church in Rock River. Many of the people in his first congregation remarked upon "the handsome lad." The clear brown of his face, his big yellow-brown eyes, his slender hands, and the grace of his movements gave him distinction quite aside from that arising from his connection with the minister.
Rev. John Excell was a personable man himself. He was tall and broad shouldered, with abundant brown hair and beard, and a winning smile. His eyes were dark and introspective, but they could glow like sunlit topaz, or grow dim with tears, as his congregation had opportunity to observe during this first sermon--but they were essentially sad eyes.
Mrs. Excell, a colorless little woman who retained only the dim outline of her girlhood"s beauty, sat gracelessly in her pew, but her stepdaughter, Maud, by her side, was carrying to early maturity a dainty grace united with something strong and fine drawn from her father. She had his proud lift of the head.
"What a fine family!" whispered the women from pew to pew under cover of the creaking fans.
In the midst of the first sermon, a boy seated in front of Harold gave a shrill whoop of agony and glared back at the minister"s son with distorted face, and only the prompt action on the part of both mothers prevented a clamorous encounter over the pew. Harold had stuck the head of a pin in the toe of his boot and jabbed his neighbor in the calf of the leg. It was an old trick, but it served well.
The minister did not interrupt his reading, but a deep flush of hot blood arose to his face, and the lids of his eyes dropped to shut out the searching gaze of his parishioners, as well as to close in a red glare of anger. From that moment Harold was known as "that preacher"s boy," the intention being to convey by significant inflections and a meaning smile that he filled the usual description of a minister"s graceless son.
Harold soon became renowned in his own world. He had no hard-fought battles, though he had scores of quarrels, for he scared his opponents by the suddenness and the intensity of his rage, which was fairly demoniacal in fury.
"You touch me and I"ll _kill you_," he said in a low voice to the fat boy whose leg he had jabbed, and his bloodless face and blazing eyes caused the boy to leap frenziedly away. He carried a big knife, his playmates discovered, and no one, not even youths grown to man"s stature, cared to attempt violence with him. One lad, struck with a stone from his cunning right hand, was carried home in a carriage.
Another, being thrown by one convulsive effort, fell upon his arm, breaking it at the elbow. In less than a week every boy in Rock River knew something of Harry Excell"s furious temper, and had learned that it was safer to be friend than enemy to him.
He had his partisans, too, for his was a singularly attractive nature when not enraged. He was a hearty, buoyant playmate, and a good scholar five days out of six, but he demanded a certain consideration at all times. An accidental harm he bore easily, but an intentional injury--that was flame to powder.
The teachers in the public school each had him in turn, as he ran rapidly up the grades. They all admired him unreservedly, but most of them were afraid of him, so that he received no more decisive check than at home. He was subject to no will but his own.
The princ.i.p.al was a kind and scholarly old man, who could make a boy cry with remorse and shame by his Christlike gentleness, and Harold also wept in his presence, but that did not prevent him from fairly knocking out the brains of the next boy who annoyed him. In his furious, fickle way he often defended his chums or smaller boys, so that it was not easy to condemn him entirely.
There were rumors from the first Monday after Harold"s pin-sticking exploit that the minister had "lively sessions" with his boy. The old s.e.xton privately declared that he heard m.u.f.fled curses and shrieks and the sound of blows rising from the cellar of the parsonage--but this story was hushed on his lips. The boy admittedly needed thrashing, but the deacons of the church would rather not have it known that the minister used the rod himself.
The rumors of the preacher"s stern measures softened the judgment of some of the townspeople, who shifted some of the blame of the son to the shoulders of the sire. Harry called his father "the minister," and seemed to have no regard for him beyond a certain respect for his physical strength. When boys came by and raised the swimming sign he replied, "Wait till I ask "the minister."" This was considered "queer"
in him.
He ignored his stepmother completely, but tormented his sister Maud in a thousand impish ways. He disarranged her neatly combed hair. He threw mud on her dress and put carriage grease on her white stockings on picnic day. He called her "chiny-thing," in allusion to her pretty round cheeks and clear complexion, and yet he loved her and would instantly fight for her, and no one else dared tease her or utter a word to annoy her. She was fourteen years of age when Mr. Excell came to town, and at sixteen considered herself a young lady. As suitors began to gather about her, they each had a vigorous trial to undergo with Harold; it was indeed equivalent to running the gantlet. Maud was always in terror of him on the evenings when she had callers.
One day he threw a handful of small garter snakes into the parlor where his sister sat with young Mr. Norton. Maud sprang to a chair screaming wildly, while her suitor caught the snakes and threw them from the window just as the minister"s tall form darkened the doorway.
"What is the matter?" he asked.
Maud, eager to shield Harry, said: "Oh, nothing much, papa--only one of Harry"s jokes."
"Tell me," said the minister to the young man, who, with a painful smile on his face, stammeringly replied:
"Harry thought he"d scare me, that"s all. It didn"t amount to much."
"I insist on knowing the truth, Mr. Norton," the minister sternly insisted.
As Norton described the boy"s action, Mr. Excell"s face paled and his lips set close. His eyes became terrible to meet, and the beaded sweat of his furious anger stood thick on his face. "Thank you," he said with ominous calmness, and turning without another word, went to his study.
His wife, stealing up, found the door locked and her husband walking the floor like a roused tiger. White and shaking with a sort of awe, Mrs.
Excell ran down to the kitchen where Harold crouched and said:
"Harold, dear, you"d better go out to Mr. Burns" right away."
Harold understood perfectly what she meant and fled. For hours neither Mrs. Excell nor Maud spoke above a whisper. When the minister came down to tea he made no comment on Harry"s absence. He had worn out his white-hot rage, but was not yet in full control of himself.
He remained silent, and kept his eyes on his plate during the meal.
The last time he had punished Harold the scene narrowly escaped a tragic ending. When the struggle ended Harold lay on the floor, choked into insensibility.
When he had become calm and Harold was sleeping naturally in his own bed, the father knelt at his wife"s knee and prayed G.o.d for grace to bear his burden, and said:
"Mary, keep us apart when we are angry. He is like me: he has my fiendish temper. No matter what I say or do, keep us apart till I am calm. By G.o.d"s grace I will never touch his flesh again in anger."
Nevertheless he dared not trust himself to refer to the battles which shamed them all. The boy was deeply repentant, but uttered no word of it. And so they grew ever more silent and vengeful in their intercourse.
Harold early developed remarkable skill with horses, and once rode in the races at the County Fair, to the scandal of the First Church. He not only won the race, but was at once offered a great deal of money to go with the victor to other races. To his plea the father, with deep-laid diplomacy, replied:
"Very well; study hard this year and next year you may go." But the boy was just at the age to take on weight rapidly, and by the end of the year was too heavy, and the owner of the horse refused to repeat his offer. Harold did not fail to remark how he had been cheated, but said nothing more of his wish to be a jockey.
He was also fond of firearms, and during his boyhood his father tried in every way to keep weapons from him, and a box in his study contained a contraband collection of his son"s weapons. There was a certain pathos in this little a.r.s.enal, for it gave evidence of considerable labor on the boy"s part, and expressed much of buoyant hope and restless energy.
There were a half-dozen Fourth of July pistols, as many cannons for crackers, and three attempts at real guns intended to explode powder and throw a bullet. Some of them were "toggled up" with twine, and one or two had handles rudely carved out of wood. Two of them were genuine revolvers which he had managed to earn by working in the harvest field on the Burns" farm.
From his fifteenth year he was never without a shotgun and revolver. The shotgun was allowed, but the revolver was still contraband and kept carefully concealed. On Fourth of July he always helped to fire the anvil and fireworks, for he was deft and sure and quite at home with explosives. He had acquired great skill with both gun and pistol as early as his thirteenth year, and his feats of marksmanship came now and then to the ears of his father.
The father and son were in open warfare. Harold submitted to every command outwardly, but inwardly vowed to break all restraint which he considered useless or unjust.
His great ambition was to acquire a "mustang pony," for all the adventurous spirits of the dime novels he had known carried revolvers and rode mustangs. He did not read much, but when he did it was always some tale of fighting. He was too restless and active to continue at a book of his own accord for any length of time, but he listened delightedly to any one who consented to read for him. When his sister Maud wished to do him a great favor and to enjoy his company (for she loved him dearly) she read Daredevil Dan, or some similar story, while he lay out on his stomach in the gra.s.s under the trees, with restless feet swinging like pendulums. At such times his face was beautiful with longing, and his eyes became dark and dreamy. "I"m going there, Beauty,"
he would say as Maud rolled out the word _Colorado_ or _Brazos_. "I"m going there. I won"t stay here and rot. I"ll go, you"ll see, and I"ll have a big herd of cattle, too."
His gentlest moments were those spent with his sister in the fields or under the trees. As he grew older he became curiously tender and watchful of her. It pleased him to go ahead of her through the woods, to pilot the way, and to help her over ditches or fences. He loved to lead her into dense thickets and to look around and say: "There, isn"t this wild, though? You couldn"t find your way out if it wasn"t for me, could you?" And she, to carry out the spirit of the story, always shuddered and said, "Don"t leave me to perish here."
Once, as he lay with his head in the gra.s.s, he suddenly said: "Can"t you hear the Colorado roar?"
The wind was sweeping over the trees, and Maud, eager to keep him in this gentle mood, cried: "I hear it; it is a wonderful river, isn"t it?"
He did not speak again for a moment.
"Oh, I want to be where there is n.o.body west of me," he said, a look of singular beauty on his face. "Don"t you?"
"N--no, I don"t," answered Maud. "But, then, I"m a girl, you know; we"re afraid of wild things, most of us."