| |
| I’VE known ere now an interfering branch | |
| Of alder catch my lifted axe behind me. | |
| But that was in the woods, to hold my hand | |
| From striking at another alder’s roots, | |
| And that was, as I say, an alder branch. | 5 |
| This was a man, Baptiste, who stole one day | |
| Behind me on the snow in my own yard | |
| Where I was working at the chopping-block, | |
| And cutting nothing not cut down already. | |
| He caught my axe expertly on the rise, | 10 |
| When all my strength put forth was in his favor, | |
| Held it a moment where it was, to calm me, | |
| Then took it from me—and I let him take it. | |
| I didn’t know him well enough to know | |
| What it was all about. There might be something | 15 |
| He had in mind to say to a bad neighbor | |
| He might prefer to say to him disarmed. | |
| But all he had to tell me in French-English | |
| Was what he thought of—not me, but my axe; | |
| Me only as I took my axe to heart. | 20 |
| It was the bad axe-helve someone had sold me— | |
| ‘Made on machine,’ he said, ploughing the grain | |
| With a thick thumbnail to show how it ran | |
| Across the handle’s long-drawn serpentine, | |
| Like the two strokes across a dollar sign. | 25 |
| |
| ‘You give her one good crack, she’s snap raght off. | |
| Den where’s your hax-’ead fling t’rough de hair?’ | |
| |
| Admitted; and yet, what was that to him? | |
| |
| ‘Come on my house and I put you one in | |
| What’s las’ awhile—good hick’ry what’s grow crooked, | 30 |
| De second growt’ I cut myself—tough, tough!’ | |
| |
| Something to sell? That wasn’t how it sounded. | |
| |
| ‘Den when you say you come? It’s cost you nothing. | |
To-naght?’
As well to-night as any night. | |
| |
| Beyond an over-warmth of kitchen stove | 35 |
| My welcome differed from no other welcome. | |
| Baptiste knew best why I was where I was. | |
| So long as he would leave enough unsaid, | |
| I shouldn’t mind his being overjoyed | |
| (If overjoyed he was) at having got me | 40 |
| Where I must judge if what he knew about an axe, | |
| That not everybody else knew, was to count | |
| For nothing in the measure of a neighbor. | |
| Hard if, though cast away for life ’mid Yankees, | |
| A Frenchman couldn’t get his human rating! | 45 |
| |
| Mrs. Baptiste came in and rocked a chair | |
| That had as many motions as the world: | |
| One back and forward, in and out of shadow, | |
| That got her nowhere; one more gradual, | |
| Sideways, that would have run her on the stove | 50 |
| In time, had she not realized her danger | |
| And caught herself up bodily, chair and all, | |
| And set herself back where she started from. | |
| ‘She ain’t spick too much Henglish—dat’s too bad.’ | |
| I was afraid, in brightening first on me, | 55 |
| Then on Baptiste, as if he understood | |
| What passed between us, she was only feigning. | |
| Baptiste was anxious for her; but no more | |
| Than for himself, so placed he couldn’t hope | |
| To keep his bargain of the morning with me | 60 |
| In time to keep me from suspecting him | |
| Of really never having meant to keep it. | |
| |
| Needlessly soon he had his axe-helves out, | |
| A quiverful to choose from, since he wished me | |
| To have the best he had, or had to spare— | 65 |
| Not for me to ask which, when what he took | |
| Had beauties he had to point me out at length | |
| To insure their not being wasted on me. | |
| He liked to have it slender as a whipstock, | |
| Free from the least knot, equal to the strain | 70 |
| Of bending like a sword across the knee. | |
| He showed me that the lines of a good helve | |
| Were native to the grain before the knife | |
| Expressed them, and its curves were no false curves | |
| Put on it from without. And there its strength lay | 75 |
| For the hard work. He chafed its long white body | |
| From end to end with his rough hand shut round it. | |
| He tried it at the eye-hole in the axe-head. | |
| ‘Hahn, hahn,’ he mused, ‘don’t need much taking down.’ | |
| |
| Baptiste knew how to make a short job long | 80 |
| For love of it, and yet not waste time either. | |
| Do you know, what we talked about was knowledge? | |
| Baptiste on his defense about the children | |
| He kept from school, or did his best to keep— | |
| Whatever school and children and our doubts | 85 |
| Of laid-on education had to do | |
| With the curves of his axe-helves and his having | |
| Used these unscrupulously to bring me | |
| To see for once the inside of his house. | |
| Was I desired in friendship, partly as some one | 90 |
| To leave it to, whether the right to hold | |
| Such doubts of education should depend | |
| Upon the education of those who held them? | |
| But now he brushed the shavings from his knee | |
| And stood the axe there on its horse’s hoof, | 95 |
| Erect, but not without its waves, as when | |
| The snake stood up for evil in the Garden,— | |
| Top-heavy with a heaviness his short, | |
| Thick hand made light of, steel-blue chin drawn down | |
| And in a little—a French touch in that. | 100 |
| Baptiste drew back and squinted at it, pleased: | |
| ‘See how she’s cock her head!’ | |
| |
