CHAPTER IXTWO HAPPY TRAVELERS
How wonderfully the face of all the outer world changes with our feelings.
It was so with Posey. As her heart grew light she began to feel the brightness and charm of the sunny October morning, a late lingering robin whose note when she first heard it a little while before she had thought sad and sorrowful, now had a cheery sound; and the call of a flock of blackbirds flying over she thought most musical.
Even the swamp, which had looked to her so dismal, as she rode through it was transformed and became full of delights. Its thick crowding bushes gleamed with coral-hued berries, its tangled depths were rich with every tone of tint or color, and through the centre a little river, set thick with lily pads, loitered along with the laziest possible current. Not a few of the trees and shrubs which bordered the narrow roadway, made,as Ben explained, by filling in earth through the swamp—were draped with festoons of wild clematis vines in their autumn beauty, set with fluffy masses of filmy, smoke-hued fringe. From her high seat Posey reached out and pulled lengths of this, which she twined about the dashboard, exclaiming with delight at its delicate beauty. A few wild roses were still in blossom on the thickets, whose gleaming red hips hinted at a wealth of earlier bloom, and here and there the scarlet leaves of the poison ivy added their vivid hue to the wealth of color.
For part of the way the trees beside the roadway met overhead, forming an arch, now more of gold than green, through which the golden sunshine filtered and flickered in delicious coolness. Once or twice the narrow road widened into a grassy space; “Turning-out places,” Ben explained, for teams to pass each other. Which set Posey to wondering what people would do if they met in any other than the right spot.
“But theyhaveto meet there,” Ben asserted. “When one person sees anothercoming he stops and waits. There’s no trouble when everybody looks out.”
But what was to Posey the crowning charm was a wide drainage ditch or canal, near the outer edge of the swamp, the cause of the fringe of dead bushes she had already noticed. Ben stopped his horse on the bridge that crossed it, that at their leisure they might look up the long, straight stretch of water, whose clean-cut banks of velvety turf narrowed in perspective till they seemed at last to meet in the level distance, while on its still surface, trees, shrubs, clumps of nodding blue asters, and the sky, bluer than all, were reflected as in a mirror.
“Oh, how lovely!” cried Posey. “I never saw so pretty a place in all my life. I wish we could ride through it all day.”
“Yes, it is pretty,” answered practical Ben, “but it’s not good for much as it is now. I suppose, though, it will all be dry land some day; that’s what the man said where I stayed all night, and this big ditch is to help. He thought some time it would all be dry land.”
“At any rate, I’m glad to have seen it as it is now,” declared Posey.
For Posey had yielded herself to the gladness of the day, and in after years it stood apart in her memory. There was the delicious sense of freedom as of a bird escaped from its cage, with that of triumph as the distance widened between her and her late bondage; and in addition the blissful reaction from anxiety, the rest after fatigue, the happiness in her new-found friend, and of trusting confidence in his protecting care and superior knowledge. She had shaken off the past, the future was an unknown quantity, the happy present was enough.
For to Posey, whose life had held such a scanty store of pleasure, one continued delight was that long ride in the soft, warm, October sunshine. Through quiet country roads they wound, among fields green with aftermath, and hills rich with October woods. Sometimes these were so near that she could see the ripe leaves dropping softly down like a golden rain, and again distant with all their varied hues of gold and scarlet and crimson and russet blended by the misty autumn haze;but whether near or far always a splendor of color. The cornfields along the way were dotted with great sheaves of the harvested corn, among which the orange spheres of the pumpkins lay thick, and where the huskers were busy stripping the husks from the yellow ears that overflowed baskets and heaped wagons.
Orchards, too, there were, fruity with scent of the red-cheeked apples which loaded the trees. Occasionally they met loads of apples on the way to be made into cider. Once they passed a cider mill by the roadside, and stopped for a drink of the sweet juice as it came fresh from the press. At another time they drove under a tree overgrown by a wild grapevine, and Ben, standing on the seat, had gathered his hands full of the little, spicy-flavored, frost grapes. While scattered along the way were clumps of woodbine, its leaves flushed russet crimson; bittersweet with its clustered orange berries beginning to show their scarlet hearts; with lingering sprays of golden rod, and lavender drifts of the wild aster. The farmhouses at which Ben stopped to trade—for he was too faithfulan employee to forget his business for any pleasure—had for the most part, it seemed to Posey, a cozy, homelike air, the yards of many gay with fall flowers that the frosts had not yet killed.
And how their tongues did run! Ben Pancost had to hear in its fullest detail Posey’s whole story, with especial interest in that part of her life with Madam Atheldena Sharpe.
“How many different cities you have seen!” he exclaimed once with an accent of almost envy.
“No, I never saw very much of them after all. You see, we always lived in a crowded part, so one was a good deal like another.”
“And how did you use to feel when you were pretending to be a spirit?”
“Oh, sometimes I thought it was sort of fun. One day, I remember, at school the teacher had us put our hands up and up as we sang, higher and higher, like this,” and she raised her arms in a gently undulating motion. “That evening I did it again as I came out, and the people at theséanceall held their breath and whispered, ‘Oh, howbeautiful!’ You ought to have heard them,” and Posey laughed as she recalled the incident. “Yes, sometimes it was no end of fun, but most times I was tired and sleepy and it wassotiresome. The changing dresses, and wigs, and all that, and I used to think how stupid the folks were not to know that it was only me.”
“And were you frightened when they found you out?”
“Frightened? Well, I guess I was! I knew the Madam would be in a rage, and I didn’t know what they would do to me, either. They tore my wig off, and crowded round me, and everybody was talking at once, but I pulled away, somehow, and ran. My, how I did run; ’way up into the attic! I’d never been there before, but it was some place to hide, and it wasn’t so bad, for I stumbled onto an old mattress, only I was afraid there might be rats. But I wasn’t as afraid of the rats as I was of the people downstairs, and by and by, when it was all still, I went to sleep. Then in the morning when I waked up and went down the Madam was gone. She knew that I had no other place in theworld to go to; but she never did care for anybody but herself. I tell you, it was awful to be turned out so, and not know what to do. I felt almost as bad as when you saw me this morning.”
“It was a shame,” Ben agreed heartily. “But then she couldn’t have been a very good woman, anyway. And don’t you think it was just as wrong as lying to deceive people so?”
“I suppose it was,” Posey admitted simply. “My mamma always told me never to tell lies, and I don’t mean to; but I began to ‘manifest,’ as she always called it, when I was so little that I didn’t think anything about its being right or wrong. I should have had to done it whether I wanted to or not, for when Madam was cross I tell you I had to stand round. Besides, that was the way we made our living, and in the city folks have to have money to live. Here in the country you don’t know anything about it. Look at the apples in that orchard. I used to go to the market for Madam and buy a quart of apples. Just six or seven, you know. Sometimes I could get a market-woman to put on one more, and then I hadthat to eat for myself. And milk! Why, we never bought more than a pint at a time, more often half a pint; and a half a pound or a pound of butter. You don’t know how strange it did seem to go out and pick things off as they grew, and to see so much of everything.”
“I wouldn’t want to live that way,” admitted Ben.
“I guess not. Sometimes I felt so much older than the other girls of my age at Horsham. They had fathers and mothers who bought them everything. They never thought about the cost, and they all had spending money—not a great deal, but some—to use as they pleased. And I—why I can hardly remember when I didn’t have to think about the price of everything. When Madam gave me money to go out and buy things she used to say, ‘Now see how far you can make this go.’ She was always telling me how much my shoes and clothes and what I ate cost. And as for ever having any money to spend for my very own self, why I wouldn’t know what that was.” She paused and an accent of bitterness crept into her next words:“You may say what you please, but I believe God cares a lot more for some folks than He does for others. He gives them such a sight more. At any rate, I’m ‘most certain He doesn’t care anything for me,” and she gave the red dashboard a little kick by way of emphasis.
“Why, Posey!” Ben cried in astonishment, “God cares for everybody!”
“Well, then,” protested Posey fiercely, “why did He make my mother die, and why doesn’t He give me a home somewhere?”
Ben looked puzzled for a moment, then he brightened. “Did you ever ask Him to take care of you?”
“Yes, I did last night. I asked Him to help me, and take care of me. And where would I be now if it wasn’t for you?”
“Why, Posey!” cried Ben triumphantly. “Don’t you see that He sent me?”
“Do you think He did?” A sudden seriousness had come into Posey’s face.
“Of course. I know it. Why, once when I was a little boy I had a bow and arrow. One day I shot my arrow away so far I couldn’t find it, though I hunted and hunted.Finally I knelt right down in the grass and asked God to help me find my arrow; and do you believe me, when I opened my eyes the first thing I saw was my arrow, only a little way from me. Perhaps if you had asked God to help you before he would have done so.”
“But,” persisted Posey, “sometimes it doesn’t help people any when they do pray. There was a woman in Horsham whose daughter was sick this summer, and she had folks come and pray for her to get well, but she died all the same.”
As she was speaking Ben drew out a handsome pocketknife. “Isn’t that knife a dandy?” he asked, holding it out in his hand. “Five blades, all the very best steel, and the handle inlaid. When I was seven years old my Uncle Ben, in Nebraska, that I was named for, sent it to me. Father said I was too little to have such a knife then, that I would be apt to break it, and to cut me with it, so he laid it away till I was older. Well, I wanted it then, and I used to tease and tease father for it, and almost think it was unkind and mean in him to keep my own knife awayfrom me. The day I was ten years old he said:
“‘Ben, here is your knife. If I had given it to you at the first, as you wanted me to, very likely it would by this time be broken or lost, and you might have been badly hurt with it. Now you are old enough to value and use it carefully. And when you look at it remember this, my boy, that God often has to do by us as I have by you—refuse us the thing we ask for because it might hurt us, or because the time has not yet come when we are ready for it. Refuses us simply because He loves us.’”
“Why, Ben!” exclaimed Posey with wide-open eyes, “I never heard anything like that before. And you talk just like a minister.”
“I’m only telling you what my father said. Perhaps because he died so soon afterwards is one reason I’ve always remembered it. And he was good as any minister. I don’t believe there ever was a better father,” and there was a tremble in Ben’s voice.
“Tell me about yourself now; I’ve told you all about myself,” urged Posey.