Part 17

“My journey!” he repeated to himself,--“my journey! why shouldn't I start on it now? Start off, and never come back?”

It was a very little thing, after all, which annoyed him, but the mention of it always touched a sore nerve of his nature. A dozen years before, when a boy at school, he had made a temporary friendship with another boy of his age, and had one day said to the latter, in the warmth of his first generous confidence: “When I am a little older, I shall make a great journey, and come back rich, and buy Whitney's place!”

Now, Whitney's place, with its stately old brick mansion, its avenue of silver firs, and its two hundred acres of clean, warm-lying land, was the finest, the most aristocratic property in all the neighborhood, and the boy-friend could not resist the temptation of repeating Jacob's grand design, for the endless amusement of the school. The betrayal hurt Jacob more keenly than the ridicule. It left a wound that never ceased to rankle; yet, with the inconceivable perversity of unthinking natures, precisely this joke (as the people supposed it to be) had been perpetuated, until “Jake Flint's Journey” was a synonyme for any absurd or extravagant expectation. Perhaps no one imagined how much pain he was keeping alive; for almost any other man than Jacob would have joined in the laugh against himself and thus good-naturedly buried the joke in time. “He's used to that,” the people said, like Becky Morton, and they really supposed there was nothing unkind in the remark!

After Jacob had passed the thickets and entered the lonely hollow in which his father's house lay, his pace became slower and slower.

He looked at the shabby old building, just touched by the moonlight behind the swaying shadows of the weeping-willow, stopped, looked again, and finally seated himself on a stump beside the path.

“If I knew what to do!” he said to himself, rocking backwards and forwards, with his hands clasped over his knees,--“if I knew what to do!”

The spiritual tension of the evening reached its climax: he could bear no more. With a strong bodily shudder his tears burst forth, and the passion of his weeping filled him from head to foot. How long he wept he knew not; it seemed as if the hot fountains would never run dry. Suddenly and startlingly a hand fell upon his shoulder.

“Boy, what does this mean?”

It was his father who stood before him.

Jacob looked up like some shy animal brought to bay, his eyes full of a feeling mixed of fierceness and terror; but he said nothing.

His father seated himself on one of the roots of the old stump, laid one hand upon Jacob's knee, and said with an unusual gentleness of manner, “I'd like to know what it is that troubles you so much.”

After a pause, Jacob suddenly burst forth with: “Is there any reason why I should tell you? Do you care any more for me than the rest of 'em?”

“I didn't know as you wanted me to care for you particularly,” said the father, almost deprecatingly. “I always thought you had friends of your own age.”

“Friends? Devils!” exclaimed Jacob. “Oh, what have I done--what is there so dreadful about me that I should always be laughed at, and despised, and trampled upon? You are a great deal older than I am, father: what do you see in me? Tell me what it is, and how to get over it!”

The eyes of the two men met. Jacob saw his father's face grow pale in the moonlight, while he pressed his hand involuntarily upon his heart, as if struggling with some physical pain. At last he spoke, but his words were strange and incoherent.

“I couldn't sleep,” he said; “I got up again and came out o' doors. The white ox had broken down the fence at the corner, and would soon have been in the cornfield. I thought it was that, maybe, but still your--your mother would come into my head. I was coming down the edge of the wood when I saw you, and I don't know why it was that you seemed so different, all at once--”

Here he paused, and was silent for a minute. Then he said, in a grave, commanding tone: “Just let me know the whole story. I have that much right yet.”

Jacob related the history of the evening, somewhat awkwardly and confusedly, it is true; but his father's brief, pointed questions kept him to the narrative, and forced him to explain the full significance of the expressions he repeated. At the mention of “Whitney's place,” a singular expression of malice touched the old man's face.

“Do you love Becky Morton?” he asked bluntly, when all had been told.

“I don't know,” Jacob stammered; “I think not; because when I seem to like her most, I feel afraid of her.”

“It's lucky that you're not sure of it!” exclaimed the old man with energy; “because you should never have her.”

“No,” said Jacob, with a mournful acquiescence, “I can never have her, or any other one.”

“But you shall--and will I when I help you. It's true I've not seemed to care much about you, and I suppose you're free to think as you like; but this I say: I'll not stand by and see you spit upon! 'Covered with as much as it'll bear!' THAT'S a piece o' luck anyhow. If we're poor, your wife must take your poverty with you, or she don't come into MY doors. But first of all you must make your journey!”

“My journey!” repeated Jacob.

“Weren't you thinking of it this night, before you took your seat on that stump? A little more, and you'd have gone clean off, I reckon.”

Jacob was silent, and hung his head.

“Never mind! I've no right to think hard of it. In a week we'll have finished our haying, and then it's a fortnight to wheat; but, for that matter, Harry and I can manage the wheat by ourselves. You may take a month, two months, if any thing comes of it. Under a month I don't mean that you shall come back. I'll give you twenty dollars for a start; if you want more you must earn it on the road, any way you please. And, mark you, Jacob! since you ARE poor, don't let anybody suppose you are rich. For my part, I shall not expect you to buy Whitney's place; all I ask is that you'll tell me, fair and square, just what things and what people you've got acquainted with. Get to bed now--the matter's settled; I will have it so.”

They rose and walked across the meadow to the house. Jacob had quite forgotten the events of the evening in the new prospect suddenly opened to him, which filled him with a wonderful confusion of fear and desire. His father said nothing more. They entered the lonely house together at midnight, and went to their beds; but Jacob slept very little.