Luke Baldwin's Vow Read online

  Screaming “Mrs. Jackson! Oh, please hurry, Mrs. Jackson!” Luke ran toward the house.

  Mrs. Jackson came out in her white apron, crying, “Oh, dear!” As she raised her hands to her head she knocked off her glasses and stumbled around in a circle. Luke picked up the glasses for her, but they were wet and muddied and she had to wipe them on her apron. Then she hurried into the house next door, and Mr. Hunter, a plump man, a lawyer, came out and with another neighbor, Mr. Willenski, carried Dr. Baldwin into the house while Mrs. Jackson phoned for another doctor.

  The old doctor who lived three blocks away and who came within twenty minutes said that Dr. Baldwin had had a heart attack. This doctor made disgusted clucking noises with his tongue, and he said to Mrs. Jackson as he stood in the hall putting on his coat, “To push a car. What a foolish gesture for any man his age. I can’t understand it. It’s simply irrational.”

  Now that Dr. Baldwin had regained consciousness and was safe in his own bed, Mrs. Jackson was more at ease. “He’s the best-hearted man on this earth, is the doctor,” she muttered. “But so utterly impractical. Now why should he have wasted his time bothering to see that silly old Mrs. Wilson? I told him not to bother.”

  Luke, who had been listening, scowled, for he didn’t like the way she was talking about his father, and he didn’t like this old doctor’s superior tone, and it seemed to him they were trying to make themselves important by making a fuss over his father.

  Nor did he like it when Aunt Helen, who as the wife of his father’s brother, came that night to stay with them for a few days. Her husband, Uncle Henry, who had a sawmill just outside Collingwood on the Georgian Bay, had insisted she stay with them both until Luke’s father was much better.

  Not that Aunt Helen wasn’t a kind and friendly woman, but she knew too well exactly what should be done, and to Luke she was a stranger in the house. Aunt Helen had a bright bustling cheerful manner. She was a small plump woman with brown hair and a glowing pink skin, a pink throat and plump hands, and she smelled of freshly laundered clothes and sensible soap. And she soon had old Mrs. Jackson hustling around the house and muttering glumly to herself.

  The next Thursday Dr. Baldwin had another heart attack, which came suddenly when he was sitting up in the bed.

  From that time on Luke knew that his father was expected to die. He knew it because two other doctors who had come to the house whispered together and looked grave, and Mrs. Jackson hurrying to her room with Luke tiptoeing after her had wept quietly on her bed, and Luke listening at her door had felt bewildered. Mrs. Jackson had always seemed like a stern scolding sensible woman who would never cry. When she came out of the room she put her arms around him. It frightened him. Other little things also began to convince Luke, and he would whisper to himself stupidly, “They think Dad is dying,” as if he were getting used to the sound of the word, which had no meaning for him; he couldn’t imagine that his father would ever really die and go away from him.

  In these days of loneliness Luke wanted companionship more than anything; but he wanted a kind of companionship these women could not offer him. He found himself longing again for Mike, the little Irish terrier – Mike, who had been killed by a milk wagon only three months ago. Luke’s father had wanted to get him another dog at once, but Luke would not let him. He had believed they were only trying to make him forget his own dog.

  So he kept to himself while Aunt Helen sent telegrams and whispered endlessly with Mrs. Jackson. And sometimes he asked, “Why can’t I talk to my father?” “Be a good boy, Luke,” Aunt Helen said. That was all she would say and Luke was angry. It was good to be able to feel angry.

  Only the doctors went into the bedroom until the last day; then Aunt Helen, looking flustered and unhappy in her new brown dress, was permitted to talk to her brother-in-law. As Luke waited in his own room he didn’t like the lonely call of the nighthawks swooping among the tress and the chimneys of the houses. So he walked along the hall to his father’s room. In his imagination he could see every detail of the room, the big chair by the window, the carved mahogany bed that had belonged to his grandmother and the bureau, hand-carved and mahogany too; thinking of these familiar things, seeing them so clearly in his mind, made him feel better.

  The young doctor from the hospital, who was very precise and clean and who looked like a smart young businessman in his double-breasted gray suit, came out of the bedroom and took Luke by the arm.

  “Luke,” he said in a confidential tone as if they were both the same age, “your father wants to have a little talk with you. He’s asked for you. It must be a very short talk, Luke. Understand? A big fellow like you will know how to take it easy, eh?”

  “Yes, sir,” Luke said.

  “Come on now, son,” the young doctor said, and he led Luke into the bedroom.

  But the familiar things in the bedroom all ceased to be familiar as soon as Luke entered the room. His father didn’t turn his head. Aunt Helen and the doctor remained there, and Luke, in a trance, moved close to the bed, not looking unhappy or scared, but with a fixed polite smile on his face to assure them all that nothing could jar him. But his father’s hand was on the bedcover and when Luke saw the hand he stared at it blankly. He touched it timidly. “Hello, Dad,” he said.

  “Luke, son,” his father said, his blue eyes opening and yet hardly seeing; turning his head a little, his eyes now surprisingly clear and calm, he tried to speak and had difficulty with his breathing. “Luke,” he whispered. “Luke.” His fingers clutched at the boy’s hand. There was a slight twist of his lips as if the grin Luke loved was hovering around his lips. The memory of all the little things they did together, the long walks they took together, the evenings a few years ago when his father read to him at bedtime, the explanations about the world, the legends told again and again, and the agreement that the world was bright and mysterious and not to be easily understood, all was offered to Luke in that twitching little smile. It was more immediate and more real to Luke than this scene in the bedroom; it was like a secret knowledge of his father’s strength. It had far more reality than the troubled face of Aunt Helen who waited so stiffly, or the alert and certain knowledge possessed by the young doctor who was watching at the foot of the bed. All Luke’s life with his father was dancing swiftly through his mind; a life which they shared and which he believed could never be broken. So he waited with his frightened little smile.

  “Luke, son,” his father went on slowly. “I may be leaving you for a little while. It’s just like going away . . . going a little farther away . . . but I’m there, Luke. Do you see, son?”

  “Sure, Daddy,” Luke whispered.

  “I want you to go and live with Aunt Helen and your Uncle Henry. He’s a fine man, Luke, and kind, too, and he’ll look after you. A small town is a great place for a boy. You go with them, Luke.”

  “Yes, but not now, Dad,” Luke protested.

  “No, in a little while, son.”

  “Yeah, a little while.”

  “And Luke,” the voice came more slowly now, coming from farther away and with a more painful effort, “I want you to learn things from Uncle Henry. All kinds of things about the world. Learn from him and remember. Will you, Luke?”

  “Yes, I will, Dad. I’ll learn from Uncle Henry.”

  “No one will have to worry about you then,” the doctor whispered, and he tried to move his head; his eyes did shift to his brother’s wife, who nodded quickly. A faint smile was on the doctor’s face. “Henry knew how to handle things, always did, didn’t he, Helen?” he whispered.

  “Of course, of course,” she said quickly.

  After a long pause Dr. Baldwin whispered, “Luke, are you still there?”

  “I’m here, Daddy.”

  “I’ll never be far away from you, son. Here and there . . . not far away.” He sighed and his breathing became very difficult. The young doctor motioned to Aunt Helen to take Luke away.

  Then he was standing by the door of the living room where
his aunt and Mrs. Jackson were talking in low tones.

  He didn’t like the way Mrs. Jackson’s face broke into heavy twitching frowns. It scared him. Her eyes were glazed and moist, and because she was trying not to cry as they whispered, she looked extraordinarily stern.

  Not knowing that both these women longed to offer him a comforting motherly tenderness, he eyed them uneasily. Mrs. Jackson, her voice breaking a little, said, “Come here, Luke,” and as he approached slowly she blurted out impulsively, “Oh, Luke, you’re like my own son, oh, my boy, my boy.”

  And Aunt Helen, her own eyes filling, stood up suddenly. “Luke . . . son, son,” she whispered, and though she never had a son of her own and had never particularly wanted children, she longed to embrace Luke because he was losing his father and would be alone; her feeling of motherly tenderness was so strange to her that she swallowed hard and couldn’t speak.

  Luke was surprised more than anything else at the way his aunt’s throat trembled, and the way her chin jerked.

  “Come here, Luke,” she pleaded.

  “Why?” he asked, drawing back suspiciously.

  “Oh, God bless you, Luke. Never mind,” Mrs. Jackson said gently. She too stood up and tried to put her arms around Luke, but he pushed her away almost fiercely. “What’s the matter with you?” he asked in a worried tone. “Why don’t you leave me alone?”

  He stood as he often stood, his hands straight at his sides, his wide, blue, steady eyes watchful, a lock of fair hair low on his forehead, looking as if he were ready to fight or run, yet feeling only a desperate resentment against them. It was as if they were suddenly trying to take somebody else’s place in his life.

  “My poor boy, what’s the matter?” Aunt Helen asked, growing bewildered because of the resentment in his eyes.

  “Nothing’s the matter,” he protested desperately. “Why do you go on as if something’s the matter?” he asked. As her arms came out to him and his head was held against her bosom he could smell the powder she used. Squirming away he protested, “Leave me alone. I’m all right.” He sounded angry and bewildered and the two women looked at each other helplessly.

  Again Luke had the feeling that Mike ought to have been with him, that he needed Mike especially now. A dog knows how to share your bewilderment and sadness without getting in the way; he knows how to sit beside you quietly without asking any recognition.

  He went out and sat down on the front steps and watched some bigger boys passing on the other side of the darkening street. “Hi,” he called mechanically. “Hi, Luke,” they answered in a tone which worried him. The nighthawk swooping over the house uttered its loud screeching complaint, and the cry suddenly bewildered him. All day he had been confused because nothing that had been happening seemed to have any reality. He knew he was expected to be alone. Yet he did not really believe he was to be alone.

  At four o’clock in the morning his father died, and when they told Luke he did not cry. He still couldn’t believe in his father’s death. He felt amazement more than anything.

  CHAPTER TWO

  An Old Dog and A Sensible Uncle

  When Luke got off the train at the Collingwood station that afternoon he looked around uneasily, wondering what this place was to mean in his life. Carrying his bag and wearing his best gray suit, he walked slowly along the station platform looking at the wide smooth water of the blue bay and at the horizon where a ship’s smoke trailed into a thin wisp and where rolling white clouds piled up into great vaulted cathedrals against the blue sky. To the north beyond the little station and the rows of houses were hills with farms, hills rising into a range of wonderfully blue mountains such as he had never seen before. Those mountains began to fascinate him and he relaxed a little. From the other side of the station came the whirring and pounding of drills on metal. Great steel beams rose against the sky. This was the shipyard. The hull of a vessel was there amid the steel network. Men suspended on little swinging seats pounded away at the steel plates. To the right was the long pier with the white grain elevator, and tied up at the pier was a ship loading grain.

  In those days Collingwood was a town of seven thousand, where the men worked overtime in the shipyard and the dry dock, for the grain boats came to the elevator from the northern lakes and from Chicago and Cleveland. And the town was built around the harbor and the shoreline, and then there were the hills and the farms extending up to the blue mountains.

  “Luke, oh, Luke,” cried his Aunt Helen, “here I am,” and she came hurrying along the station platform in her gray spring coat and her neat little blue hat. Her short plump legs seemed to be full of energy. Her bright round face was beaming. She offered him a warm welcome. And he offered to her the apologetic eager shyness of a boy who knew now he had no home of his own. Taking his bag and chattering cheerfully, she led him to the car and drove away from the station, going south on the dusty gravel road which twisted and turned following the line of the bay.

  “Ah, Luke,” she said warmly, for she was far too sensible a woman to be embarrassed by a boy’s shyness, “you’re going to have a fine time around the sawmill with your Uncle Henry. An intelligent boy like you growing up around our place is just the ticket for your uncle, Luke.”

  “I don’t remember Uncle Henry very well, Aunt Helen.”

  “Why should you? You haven’t seen him for years. But you’ll take to him, and he’ll always be there to give you a hand. No matter how busy he is.”

  “Is Uncle Henry very busy?” Luke asked politely.

  “Oh, yes, your Uncle Henry is a man who can’t bear to be idle. There’s always something doing when he’s around. What are you looking at, Luke?”

  “At the lake. Are those clouds?” he asked, pointing to heavy white clouds low on the water line which seemed to have strange depths like caverns or mountain valleys. “Or are they islands?”

  “There’s an island over there,” she said. “Christian Island, an Indian reservation, Luke. It’s a legendary spot.”

  “What’s a legendary spot, Aunt Helen?”

  “A spot where tragic things happened to people a long time ago,” she said. “Yes, I think that’s how you’d describe it.”

  A long time ago a band of Indians had retreated to that island and had held it against a more powerful tribe, she explained as the car passed the last of the outlying houses with single cows grazing in the fields. Ahead was the mouth of a river, and there the road turned. They followed this tree-lined river a few hundred yards, and there was the building that had served as a sawmill for over a hundred years. It had a big stone foundation with red clapboard, and a millpond and a dam and a fine abandoned moss-covered water wheel. There were piles of lumber and one great pile of sawdust at the back of a low red-brick building. Across the river were the thick woods rising like green mounds, which were wooded hills. And the air was filled with the wild screeching sound of great saws hacking through the logs in the mill.

  To the right, and well back from the mill, was a three-story house, the woodwork freshly painted white and green and with a green veranda. “Come on, Luke. Here we are,” Aunt Helen said. When he got out of the car he stood for a moment looking solemnly up at the roof of the house, then he looked at the sawmill, and as he turned to follow his aunt a dog which had been lying in the shade at the corner of the house came toward him slowly.

  He was an old collie with an amber-colored coat and one fine amber-colored eye. The other eye was blind. The left hind leg had a limp in it. No one had brushed or combed out the amber-colored fur.

  The collie saw Luke and stopped apprehensively, for the boy was a stranger. And Luke turned, and then they were both staring at each other.

  The dog’s black nose twitched a little; he flopped his tail back and forth in slow speculation. As Luke watched and wondered the collie dipped his head, took a few steps toward Luke, then lifted his head with what was almost a gesture of recognition, and wagged his tail again.

  “Where did you come from, mister?” Luke said.


  The dog kept wagging his heavy tail and sniffing, then he stopped all motion, looking up at Luke with that strange expression of recognition.

  “Well, hello, mister. You look as if you were waiting here for me,” Luke said. Dropping on his knees he said, “Come on, put your paw up.”

  As if he were fumbling for a forgotten motion, the collie slowly raised his right paw and they shook hands. Luke began to stroke his head, and this meeting with the old dog brought relief that was like happiness. “Wait awhile, will you, and I’ll see you later,” he said, for his aunt was calling from the hall.

  Hurrying in, he followed her up to the attic to the room that was to be his, a clean white room with a newly purchased serviceable iron bed, a new chest of drawers, a new hooked rug on the floor, and on the wall an etching of an English cathedral. Bright chintz curtains were on the window that overlooked the bay. But Luke hardly looked around. It was just another strange room to him.

  “I know you’ll be a clean neat boy, Luke,” his aunt said brightly as she began unpacking his clothes and hanging them in the closet. “And always hang your things up. Of course a lot of these things you have here won’t be suitable for playing and going to school in the country. First you’ll need a heavy pair of shoes.”

  “Aunt Helen, about that dog,” he said.

  “You mean Dan. What about Dan?”

  “Well, for one thing, he had the kindest face I ever saw on a dog.”

  “Yes, Dan’s a nice old dog,” she said casually. “I sometimes forget he’s around here, I’m so used to him. And he’s been around here so long.”

  “Is he a thoroughbred?”

  “Yes, he’s a thoroughbred, though you’d never believe it now.”

  “What do you use him for?”

  “Nothing, Luke. Nothing at all. He’s on a pension, you might say. Oh, you’re going to like it around here, Luke. Swimming in the river and romping in the woods. Do you know something, Luke, before you were born your father used to come up here and hunt with your uncle in the woods across the river.”