The Axe-Helve

I've known ere now an interfering branchOf alder catch my lifted axe behind me.But that was in the woods, to hold my handFrom striking at another alder's roots,And that was, as I say, an alder branch.This was a man, Baptiste, who stole one dayBehind me on the snow in my own yardWhere I was working at the chopping-block,And cutting nothing not cut down already.He caught my axe expertly on the rise,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 knowWhat it was all about. There might be somethingHe had in mind to say to a bad neighborHe might prefer to say to him disarmed.But all he had to tell me in French-EnglishWas what he thought of--not me, but my axe;Me only as I took my axe to heart.It was the bad axe-helve some one had sold me--"Made on machine," he said, ploughing the grainWith a thick thumbnail to show how it ranAcross the handle's long drawn serpentine,Like the two strokes across a dollar sign."You give her one good crack, she's snap raght off.Den where's your hax-ead flying t'rough de hair?"Admitted; and yet, what was that to him?

"Come on my house and I put you one inWhat's las' awhile--good hick'ry what's grow crooked,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 stoveMy 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 meWhere I must judge if what he knew about an axeThat not everybody else knew was to countFor nothing in the measure of a neighbor.Hard if, though cast away for life with Yankees,A Frenchman couldn't get his human rating!

Mrs. Baptiste came in and rocked a chairThat 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 stoveIn time, had she not realized her dangerAnd 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,Then on Baptiste, as if she understoodWhat passed between us, she was only feigning.Baptiste was anxious for her; but no moreThan for himself, so placed he couldn't hopeTo keep his bargain of the morning with meIn time to keep me from suspecting himOf really never having meant to keep it.

Needlessly soon he had his axe-helves out,A quiverful to choose from, since he wished meTo have the best he had, or had to spare--Not for me to ask which, when what he tookHad beauties he had to point me out at lengthTo insure their not being wasted on me.He liked to have it slender as a whipstock,Free from the least knot, equal to the strainOf bending like a sword across the knee.He showed me that the lines of a good helveWere native to the grain before the knifeExpressed them, and its curves were no false curvesPut on it from without. And there its strength layFor the hard work. He chafed its long white bodyFrom 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 longFor love of it, and yet not waste time either.

Do you know, what we talked about was knowledge?Baptiste on his defence about the childrenHe kept from school, or did his best to keep--Whatever school and children and our doubtsOf laid-on education had to doWith the curves of his axe-helves and his havingUsed these unscrupulously to bring meTo see for once the inside of his house.Was I desired in friendship, partly as some oneTo leave it to, whether the right to holdSuch doubts of education should dependUpon the education of those who held them?

But now he brushed the shavings from his kneeAnd stood the axe there on its horse's hoof,Erect, but not without its waves, as whenThe snake stood up for evil in the Garden,--Top-heavy with a heaviness his short,Thick hand made light of, steel-blue chin drawn downAnd in a little--a French touch in that.Baptiste drew back and squinted at it, pleased;"See how she's cock her head!"