CHAPTER XV
Notwithstandingher weariness Joyce did not sleep well that night. She heard the late travellers passing by and the milkman and grocery trucks on their way to a new day, and she tossed on her rattling, lumpy bed till almost dawn. Somehow all the happenings of the last few days seemed to have arrived in concrete form and to be standing about her couch for her to reckon with.
First, there was the matter of her leaving home. Ought she to have left at all? And if she should have left, was that the right way to have done it? The whole problem of her life took on a distorted form in the midnight and darkness that it had never presented before. She thought of her friends back in Meadow Brook who had loved her and Aunt Mary. What would they think of her going? Perhaps she should have waited to tell them all, and yet how could she make explanations? It would only bring discredit upon Eugene and Nannette and that she did not want to do. No, she could not have asked her friends, or even have told them good-bye without more explanation than she was ready to give. There was the minister, and Judge Peterson, the Browns and Ridgeways, and a host of others. They never would have let her go alone out into the world without even a destination, and no chance of a job. They would have worked it somehow for her to stay with one of them. She would never have been free, and Eugene and Nannette would have been furious at her making a display of their family quarrels in the town. No, she could have come away in no othermanner. And she had to come. She could not have stayed much longer even if she had not started that night.
These questions somewhat conquered, her thoughts turned to the first night away from home, the awful experience in the cemetery, and the look on the face of her old friend when she had asked him what he was doing.
And now she knew what had been the underlying thorn in her soul that had made the pain ever since.
Long ago, perhaps ten years before, when she had been a little girl, there had been a holiday when she and Aunt Mary had started off with a neatly packed luncheon and a handful of books to spend the day in the woods, a long promised, eagerly anticipated excursion. There were chicken sandwiches neatly wrapped in wax paper. How well she remembered helping to make them! And little blackberry turnovers rich with gummy sweetness. Hard-boiled eggs, tiny sweet pickles from the summer’s vintage, sponge cakes, big purple grapes, and a bottle of milk to drink. Plenty of everything. Aunt Mary never stinted a lunch and she always put in enough for a guest if one should turn up.
And that day the guest really came.
It was a warm, sunny day in October and the leaves were just beginning to turn. As they climbed the hill above Meadow Brook and came within sight of the valley, great splashes of crimson flung out like banners across the valley and yellow glinted across the purples and browns like patches of gold in the sunshine. There was a smell of burning leaves and sunshine in the air and the earth was sweet with autumn. Blue and yellow and white asters bordered the road that wound along the hill and dippedagain into the valley among the trees. Purple grackles were stalking the fields in battalions, their stiff, black silk armor glinting in the sun, cawing of the weather and their coming need of flight. She could hear their hoarse, throaty voices as she lay and stared at the ceiling in her little lonely house under the maples.
And the air! How sweet and winey it had been!
She and Aunt Mary had climbed a fence and crossed a field till they reached the deep, sweet woods with its solemn cathedral silences and its lofty vaulted ceiling. How far away the world had seemed as they entered and trod the pine-strewn aisles and penetrated deep into the cloistered vistas. She remembered thinking that this must be where God stayed a good deal, it was so sweet and perfect. Above in the branches strange birds sent out wild, sweet notes, like snatches of celestial anthems. Favored birds to live in such safe and holy fastnesses. She remembered wondering if they ever flew down to Meadow Brook and fellowed with the common birds, picking up worms in garden paths, and draggling their feathers in the dust of the world like sparrows, or did they always stay here alone with God and praise?
They had found a mossy log to sit upon and a carpet of pine needles fragrant and deep, and there they had established themselves, the little girl lying full length upon the sweet bed of needles, the older woman sitting upon the log and reading. It was a story book they were reading, one of Louisa Alcott’s, was it “Under the Lilacs” or “Little Women”? “Under the Lilacs” of course, because it was where the little white circus dog Sancho appeared that she remembered first noticing the boy’s back.
There had been crickets droning somewhere, and a tinkling brook that murmured not far off, and no other sound save now and then a falling stick or bit of branch from some high tree top hurtling down, until, with the advent of that dog there had been a tiny human stir, an almost imperceptible sound of giving attention, and her eyes had been fastened on the gray-brown back, the tousled bright head topped by the torn old baseball cap just a few steps away in the dim shadowed aisle down which she was looking. At first she scarcely recognized it as not a part of the woods, so still it sat, that square, young back in its faded flannel shirt, held in a listening attitude. Then gradually she had become aware of the boy’s presence, of the fishing rod in his hand, of the bank that he must be sitting on which had seemed but a level stretch to her first vision. She had turned a quick glance to Aunt Mary, but Aunt Mary only looked up an instant, paused to recognize that there was some one there, smiled knowingly and went on with the story.
It must have been an hour they sat thus listening to the reading, the boy and the fishing rod not moving, the little girl watching with fascinated, dreamy eyes as if she were looking at a picture that might come alive any minute, and then suddenly something happened. The rod bent quickly down with a jerk, the boy’s arm went out with a quick, involuntary motion, and a fish swept up from below somewhere in a great circle and landed floundering on the grassy bank.
Joyce sat up quickly with round eyes watching the boy’s manœuvres with the fish, and Aunt Mary stopped reading and looked on with interest too. The boy looked up at last shame-faced and flushed:
“Aw, gee!” he said, “I didn’t go to interrupt you. That fish just got on my hook an’ I pulled it before I thought. That’s a cracker-jack story you’re reading.”
“Why, I’m glad to be interrupted by such an interesting happening,” Aunt Mary answered him. “What a beautiful fish! What kind is it?”
“That’s a trout. You don’t find many of ’em any more. They been all fished out. Want it? I c’n find some more when I want ’em.”
“Oh, thank you, I couldn’t take your fish,” said Aunt Mary with a smile, “But I’ve enjoyed seeing you catch it. You better take it home to your mother.”
The boy’s head bowed a little lower and he said in a low, gruff voice:
“Haven’t got any mother. She’s dead. They don’t want to bother with fish at home. D’you like me to cook it for you? They’re awful good cooked outdoors like this right on the coals.”
He began to gather sticks and twigs together, and placed them in a little pile.
“Well, that certainly would be wonderful,” said Aunt Mary smiling, “Then you can take lunch with us. We always bring along enough for a guest—”
The boy looked up wistfully and grinned, and then was off for more sticks.
In a little clearing he built a fire while the little girl watched him, and put his fish to cook, and then they spread out the lunch on a big white cloth on a rock the boy showed them, and they had a great laugh over the bugs and ants that kept coming to dinner with them.
The boy ate lunch with them, carving his fish proudly with a big jackknife and serving the biggest portions tohis guests, saying he didn’t care for fish anyhow, he could get it whenever he wanted it. But he ate the sandwiches and little pies and cakes hungrily, and watched the little girl with shy, furtive glances.
Afterwards he washed the dishes for them in the brook and packed them back in the basket, then curled down at Aunt Mary’s feet while she went on reading.
Oh, the memory of that long, beautiful afternoon among the pines, with the sun sifting down through the leaves and the taller trees waving way up almost touching the sky it seemed, and the drone of bees somewhere, the distant whetting of a scythe—how it all came back as she thought it over!
And then the book was finished and they sat back, sorry it was done, dreamy with the loveliness of the story in which they had been absorbed.
“That’s a cracker-jack tale,” declared the boy. “Gee, I’d like to have that dog. My dog died,” he ended sadly. “Got run over by a truck.”
They talked a little about the dog and the boy got out a dirty little snap shot of himself with the dog in his arms when it was only a little puppy, and the little girl smiled and said it was a darling.
Then somehow Aunt Mary led them around to talk of other things, of how still it was in the woods, and how beautiful, and how God must love it there. The boy’s face grew sober and wistful and wonder came in his eyes with a kind of softness. Aunt Mary got out her little Testament and read the story of the healing of the man who was born blind, in the ninth chapter of John. How they thrilled to the story all the way through, as the differentactors came and went, the blind man himself, his wondering neighbors, the scornful Jews, the cowardly parents, Jesus, who came to find him after they had all left him, even down to the words that Jesus spoke to the fault-finding Jews: “If ye were blind, ye should have no sin: but now ye say, We see; therefore your sin remaineth.” How strange that those words should sound even after these years, with the murmuring of the pines among the words, and the holy stillness afterward, while the shadows grew long and violet within the sanctuary of trees where they sat, and dusk was all about them. The boy’s lashes drooped thoughtfully and his whole face took on a far-away look. Then Aunt Mary’s voice came again softly praying: “Dear Jesus, we know You are here today just as then. Help us for Christ’s sake to have our eyes open to sin, so that we shall always know when we are not pleasing Thee. Amen.”
They had gone out together silently through the quiet aisles with only the tall singing of the pines and the distant melody of thrushes in their evening song above them. The boy had gathered up the basket and his fishing rod, and helped them over the fence with a kind of reverence upon him.
They had walked down the road to the village with that beautiful intimacy still upon them, like friends who had seen a vision together and would never forget. All the way to their door the boy had gone, saying very little, but with an uplifted look upon his face. Aunt Mary had asked him to come and see them sometime, and he had suddenly grown shy and silent, dropped his eyes and set his young shoulders as if he had come to a hard spot.“Well, g’bye!” he said gruffly, and turning, darted out the gate and down the street, flashing them a wonderful smile as he went. He had become suddenly all boy again.
He had come again several times with gifts—a splendid plant of squawberry vine with bright red berries hanging to it, a great sheaf of crimson leaves and sumac berries, a handkerchief full of ripe chestnuts.
When winter came again they sometimes found their paths shovelled around the house very early in the morning and caught a glimpse of a red sweater and gray cap going down the street as they arose.
There had been several times at school when Joyce felt his protection against the larger boys who snowballed most unmercifully.
Once he drew her on her sled through a drifted place. And once she found a rose upon her desk and looking up saw his eyes upon her suddenly averted and knew he had put it there. But he never came again into their intimate family circle as he had done that wonderful day in the woods. His family moved to another part of the town, and she seldom saw him, yet they always spoke when they met, and something would flash from eye to eye that was different from an ordinary acquaintance. They could not forget that day and that holy cathedral of the woods where they had companioned so richly together.
She had not seen him often through the years, but he had come to Aunt Mary’s funeral, and at the cemetery stood close to the open grave looking down with bared head as if he loved the one who was being laid to rest. A handsome fellow with a distinguished look about him, and that wonderful wistfulness in his eyes that had not lostthe child look and could still flash a smile that lit the hearts of those who saw it.
That! And then to see him there in the dark—at a gruesome task of some sort, and to have seen his eyes as she asked him what he had been doing!
She had not spoken to him in years. Their sole communication had been through smiles till she asked him that question wrung from her lips at cost of pain. Somehow her words seemed to strike a blow at the dear past and shatter something that had been most precious.
And now she had gone over it again in the watches of the night the pain was still there. He had somehow gone wrong. She had to admit that to her loyal heart. Perhaps he had been wrong all the time, a bad, wild boy. She had sometimes heard hints of that floating about the village but had not believed it. She had clung to that day when they had readUnder the Lilacstogether, and then heard the story of the blind man and gone out together again into life with the blessing of Jesus resting upon them. She could not bear to think that the boy who had been so gentle and kind, so interested and happy in that sweet, simple place, could have been bad all the time, and only dropped out of his regular life for the day just out of curiosity. He must be right and true somehow. And if he had been doing wrong he must be sorry perhaps, for he had looked ashamed. She could not get away from that. She covered her face with her hands to pray and found there were tears upon her cheeks, and then she prayed with all her heart, “Oh, Jesus, go and find him and make him understand. Open his eyes that he may see and sin no more.”
About that time a man under cover of the darkness came down the road from the Meadow Brook Cemetery and stole into Julia Hartshorn’s gate, and silently over the grass to the hammock under the trees; pausing a moment to look furtively up at the dark house, he stooped and felt all over that hammock. He had passed the house that day, slowly, in his automobile and he was sure he had seen the form of an object sagging in the middle. He had observed it most minutely. He was come now to find out. It might give him no clue even if he found it, but he was here.
His hand moved carefully and came in contact with a book, yes—and something soft like cloth, a handkerchief with a faint smell of lavender drifting from it. He slipped them in his pocket and went silently away into the night on rubber shod feet that made no sound, and after he was gone for a season, came another shadow, stealing as silently into the yard and up to the hammock. It is doubtful if Julia Hartshorn and her niece would have ever recovered from the fright if they had known what went on in their yard that night. But they were slumbering deeply and did not even see the tiny spot of light that flashed over the hammock, and down upon the ground, bringing out in clear relief a scrap of paper with writing across it. A hand reached for it, and again the flashlight focused for a scrutiny. “oyce Radw” the paper read and that was all. It was torn on all its edges, and evidently a part of a larger writing. The man searched again, but could find nothing more. So he stole away as he had come, but he kept the paper safely for future reference.