A group of pretty Girls sat on the porchA group of pretty Girls sat on the porch
A group of pretty girls sat on the porch steps, between the white rose-twined pillars. One of them was tying up the cue of an old-fashioned wig with a black ribbon; another was mending the gold lace on a velvet coat, and the others were busy with the various costumes which they were to wear in the tableaux. Now and then a gay trill or a snatch from some popular song floated out above their laughing chatter. Suddenly one of them lookedup and saw John Jay standing in the gravelled drive.
"Look, girls!" she exclaimed. "Here's the very thing we want for our old Virginia days! Hallie looks like a picture in that lovely brocaded satin of her grandmother's, and Raleigh Stanford does the cavalier to perfection in that farewell scene. All it lacks is some little Jim Crow to hold his horse, and there is one now. Oh, Hallie! come out here a minute!"
In response to her call, a beautiful dark-haired girl came out on the porch from the hall, carrying a pasteboard shield which she had just finished covering with tinfoil. John Jay's mouth opened still wider as it flashed a dazzling light into his eyes. He thought it was silver.
"Isn't it fine?" she asked, waltzing around with it on her arm for them to admire the effect. Then she dropped down on the step above them. "Was it you who called me, Sally Lou?" she asked.
"Yes," answered the girl, who had finished tying up the cue, and now had the wig pulled coquettishly over her blonde curls. "Look at the little darkey over there. I was just tellingthe girls that he is all that is needed to complete your cavalier tableau. Call him over here and tell him that he must come to-night." Just then the boy turned and started on a trot to the kitchen. "Why, it's John Jay!" exclaimed Hallie. "Old Lucy has been scolding about those eggs for the last two hours. His grandmother promised to send them over immediately after breakfast. I'll go down and see what kept him so long. He is always getting into trouble."
"Make him come up here," begged Sally Lou, "and get him to talk for us. I know he'll be lots of fun, for he has such a bright face."
In a few moments the laughing young hostess was back among her guests, with John Jay following her. "Don't you want to see all my birthday presents?" she asked, leading the way into the library and beckoning the girls to follow. "See! I found this mandolin in my chair when I went to the breakfast-table this morning, and this watch was under my napkin. This tennis-racquet was on the piano when I came up-stairs, and I've been finding books and things all morning." She opened a great boxof chocolate bonbons as she spoke, and filled both his hands.
Filled both his handsFilled both his hands
He looked about him with round, astonished eyes, but never said a word in answer to the eager questions of the girls, beyond a bashful "yessa" or "no'm."
The arrival of Raleigh Stanford and one of his friends, on their wheels, put an end to the girls' interest in John Jay. He was dismissed with a message to Sheba that sent him flying home through the woods like an excited little whirlwind. The lid of the basket flopped up and down, in time to the motion of his scampering feet. At the foot of the hill he began calling "Mammy!" and kept it up until he reached the door. By that time, he was so out of breath that he could only gasp his message. Sheba was expected to be at Rosehaven at seven o'clock, and John Jay was to take part in the performance on the lawn.
It took a great deal of cross-questioning before Mammy fully understood the arrangement. She could readily see that her services might be desired in the kitchen, but it puzzled her to know what anybody could want of John Jay. She shook her head a great many times before she finally promised that he might go.
Bud had passed a very dull morning without his adventurous brother. Now he came up with a bit of rope with which to play horse. But John Jay was looking down on such sports at present.
"Aw, go way, boy," he said, with a lofty air. "I ain't no hawse. I'se goin' to a buthday-pa'ty to-night. Miss Hallie done give me an invite—me an' Mammy."
"Whose goin' to stay with me an' Ivy?" asked Bud, anxiously.
"Aunt Susan, I reckon," answered John Jay. "Mammy tole me to go ask her. Come along with me, an' I'll tell you what all Miss Hallie got for her buthday. I reckon she had mos' a thousand presents, an' a box of candy half as big as Ivy."
Bud opened his eyes in amazement.
"Deed she did," persisted John Jay, enjoying the sensation he was making. "She gave me some, and I saved a piece for you." After much searching through his pockets, John Jay handed out a big chocolate cream that had been mashed flat. Bud ate it gratefully as they walked on, and wiped his lips with his little red tongue, longing for more.
After supper, as Mammy and John Jay went down the narrow meadow path in Indian file, he ventured a question that he had pondered all day. "Mammy, does we all have buthdays same as white folks?"
"Of co'se," answered the old woman, tramping on ahead with her skirts held high out of the dewy grass.
"When's yoah's?" he asked, after a pause.
"Well," she began reflectively, not willing to acknowledge that she had never known the exact date, "I'm nevah ve'y p'tick'lah 'bout its obsa'vation. It's on a Monday, long in early garden-makin' time."
They had come to a little brook, bridged by a wide, hewed log. When they had crossed in careful silence, John Jay began again. "Mammy, when's my buthday?"
"I kaint tell 'zactly, honey," she answered, "'twel I adds it up." As she began counting on her fingers, her skirts slipped lower and lower from her grasp, until they brushed the dew of the wayside weeds.
"Yes, that's it," she announced at last. "Miss Hallie is nineteen this Satiddy, and you'll be nine next Satiddy. A week from to-day is yoah buthday. Pity it hadn't a-happened to be the same day, then maybe Mis' Haven mought a give you somethin' like Mis' Alice give Jintsey's boy."
John Jay had that same thought all the restof the way to Rosehaven, but after they entered the brilliantly illuminated grounds he seemed to stop thinking altogether. It was a sight beyond all that his wildest imaginings had pictured. He did not recognize the place. All the lanterns were lighted now, hanging like strings of stars around the porches, and from tree to tree. Violins played softly, somewhere out of sight, and everywhere on the night air was the breath of myriads of roses. Handsomely dressed people passed in and out of the house, and across the lawn. The light, the music, and the perfume made the place seem enchanted ground to the bewildered little John Jay, and when he reached the illuminated fountain just in front of the house, he clung to Mammy's skirts as if he had suddenly found himself in some strange Eden, and was frightened by its unearthly beauty.
The fountain into which, only that morning, he had thrust his hot little face for a drink, now seemed bewitched. It was no longer a flow of sparkling water, but of splashing rainbows. From palest green to ruby red, from amethyst to amber it paled and deepened and glowed.
All the evening he moved about like one in a dream. The tableaux with their shifting scenesof knights and ladies and marble statuary were burned on his memory as heavenly visions. He knew nothing of the tinsel and flour and red lights which produced the effect. He stood about as Miss Hallie told him: he held a horse in one tableau, and posed as a bronze statue in another. Then he went back to the fountain, and sat dreamily watching it, while the violins played again,—in the long parlors this time, where the dancing had begun.
Raleigh Stanford, still in his cavalier costume, and with Miss Sally Lou on his arm, spied him as they passed by. "Oh, there's that funny little fellow that was here this morning!" she said. "We tried to make him talk, but he just kept his head on one side, and was too embarrassed to say anything."
"Hey, Sambo," called the young man suddenly in his ear. "What do you know?"
John Jay gave a start, and looked up at the amused faces above him. He took the question seriously, and thought he must really tell what he knew; but just at that moment he could remember only one thing in all the wide world. Every other bit of information seemed to desert him. So he stammered, "I—I know M—MissHallie, she's nineteen this Satiddy, an' I'll be nine next Satiddy."
Miss Sally Lou laughed so gaily that her young cavalier made another effort to please her.
"Is that so!" he exclaimed, as if surprised. "It's a mighty lucky thing you told me that, now, or I never would have thought to bring you anything. You didn't know that I am a sort of birthday Santa Claus, did you? Just look out for me next Saturday. If I'm not there by breakfast-time, wait till noon, and if I don't get there by that time it'll be because something has happened; anyway, somebody'll be prancing along about sundown."
"Oh, come along, Raleigh," said Miss Sally Lou, moving off toward the house. "You're such a tease."
John Jay, sitting beside that wonderful fountain and surrounded by so many strange, beautiful things, did not think it at all queer that such an unheard-of person as a birthday Santa Claus should suddenly step out from the midst of the enchantment and speak to him.
"A blue velvet cape on," he said to himself, thinking how he should describe him to Bud."An' gole buckles on his shoes, an' a sword on, an' a long white feathah in his hat. Cricky! An' it was his hawse I done held! Maybe it will be somethin' mighty fine what he's goin' to bring me, 'cause I did that!"
Later he found his way to the kitchen, where Sheba was washing dishes. The cook gave him a plate of ice-cream and some scraps of cake. She was telling Sheba how beautiful Miss Hallie's birthday cake looked at dinner, with its nineteen little wax candles all aflame. That was the last thing John Jay remembered, until some one shook him, and told him it was time to go home. He had fallen asleep with a spoon in his hand.
Mammy was afraid to take the short cut through the woods after dark, so she led him away round by the toll-gate. He was so sleepy that he staggered up against her every few steps, and he would have dropped down on the first log he came to, if she had not kept tight hold of his hand all the way.
When they reached Uncle Billy's house, he had just gone out to draw a pitcher of water. Mammy stopped to get a drink, and John Jay leaned up against the well-shed. The rumblingof the windlass and the fall of the bucket against the water below aroused him somewhat, and by the time he had swallowed half a gourdful of the cold well-water he was wide awake.
Uncle Billy went up to the cabin with them in order to hear an account of the party, and to walk back with Aunt Susan. John Jay fell behind. He could not remember ever having been out so late at night before, and he had never seen the sky so full of stars. They made him think of something that Aunt Susan had told him. She said that if he counted seven stars for seven nights, at the same time repeating a charm which she taught him, and making a wish, he'd certainly get what he wanted at the end of the week.
Now he stopped still in the path, and slowly pointing to each star with his little black forefinger, as he counted them, solemnly repeated the charm:
"Star-light, star bright,Seventh star I've seen to-night;I wish I may and I wish I mightHave the wish come true I wish to-night."
"Star-light, star bright,Seventh star I've seen to-night;I wish I may and I wish I mightHave the wish come true I wish to-night."
"Come on in, chile! What you gawkin' at?" called Mammy from the doorway. John Jaymade no answer. It would have broken the charm to have spoken again before going to sleep. He hurried into the house, glad that Mammy was so occupied with her company that she could pay no attention to him. She stood in the door with them so long that John Jay was in bed by the time she came in. Although he pretended to be asleep, inwardly he was in a quiver of excitement.
"I'll count 'em every night," he thought. The wish that burned in his little heart was a very earnest one, fraught with hopes for his coming birthday.
Late hours did not agree with John Jay. Next morning he felt too tired to stir. He groaned when he remembered that it was Sunday, for he thought of the long, hot walk down to Brier Crook church. To his great surprise, Mammy did not insist on his going with her: she had been offered a seat in a neighbor's spring-wagon, and there was no room for him.
So he spent a long, lazy morning, stretched out in the shade of the apple-tree. A smell of clover and ripening orchards filled the heated air. The hens clucked around drowsily with drooping wings. A warm breeze stirred the grasses where he lay.
Ivy dug in the dirt with a broken spoon, while Bud kicked up his heels beside John Jay, listening to a marvellous account of Miss Hallie's party. It lost nothing in the telling. For years after, John Jay looked back upon that night as a John of Patmos might have looked, rememberingsome vision of the opened heavens. The lights, the music, the white-robed figures, and above all, that wonderful fountain looking as if it must have sprung from some "sea of glass mingled with fire," did not belong to the earth with which he was acquainted. He repeated some part of that recollection to Bud every day for a week, always ending with the sentence uppermost in his thought: "And next SatiddyIhas a buthday."
Under the apple-treeUnder the apple-tree
Of course he knew that his celebration could be nothing like Miss Hallie's; but he had a vague idea that something would happen to make the day unusual and delightful. Everynight after he had gone to bed, and when Mammy was drowsing on the doorstep, he raised himself to his knees, and looked through a wide hole in the wall where the chinking had dropped out from between the logs. Through this he could see a strip of sky studded with twinkling stars. One by one he pointed out the magic seven, repeating the charm and whispering the wish.
It was a long week, because he was in such a hurry for it to go by. But Friday night came at last; and, as he counted the stars for the seventh time, the little flutter of excitement in his veins made them seem to dance before his eyes.
Early Saturday morning he was awakened by Mammy's stirring around outside among the chickens, and instantly he remembered that the long-looked-for day had come. Somehow, a feeling of expectancy made it seem different from other days. He wanted it to last just as long as possible, so he lay there thinking about it, and wondering what would happen first.
As soon as he was dressed, Mammy sent him to the spring for water. He was gone some time, for he had a faint hope that the birthdaySanta Claus whom he had met at Miss Hallie's party might come early, and he spent several minutes looking down the road.
Breakfast was ready when he reached the house, and he set the pail down in such a hurry that some of the water slopped out on his bare toes. His wistful eyes scanned the table quickly. There was a better breakfast than usual—bacon and eggs this morning. There was no napkin on the table under which some gift might lie in hiding, but remembering Miss Hallie's other experiences, he pulled out his chair. A little shade of disappointment crept into his face when he found it empty.
After he had speared a piece of bacon with his two-tined fork, and landed it safely on his plate, he rolled his eyes around the table. "Did you know this is my buthday, Mammy?" he asked. "I'm nine yeahs ole to-day."
"That's so, honey," she answered, cheerfully. "You'se gettin' to be a big boy now, plenty big enough to keep out o' mischief an' take keer o' yo' clothes. I'll declare if there isn't anothah hole in yo' shirt this blessed minute!"
The lecture that followed was not of the gala-day kind, but John Jay consoled himselfby thinking that he would probably have had a cuffing instead had it happened on any other day.
After breakfast Mammy went away to do a day's scrubbing at Rosehaven. The children spent most of the morning in watching the road. Every cloud of dust that tokened an approaching traveller raised a new hope. Many people went by on horses or in carriages. Once in a while there was a stray bicycler, but nobody turned in towards the cabin.
After a while, in virtue of its being his especial holiday, John Jay ordered the smaller children to stay in the yard, while he took a swim in the pond. But the pleasure did not last long. He could only splash and paddle around dog-fashion, and the sun burnt his back so badly that he was glad to get out of the water.
Afternoon came, and nothing unusual had happened, but John Jay kept up his courage and looked around for something to do to occupy the time. A wide plank leaned up against the little shed at one side of the cabin. It made him think of Uncle Billy's cellar door, where he had spent many a happy hour sliding.
"I'm goin' to have a coast," he said to Bud. A smooth board which he found near thewoodpile furnished him with a fine toboggan. By the help of an overturned chicken-coop, which he dragged across the yard, he managed to climb to the top of the shed. Squatting down on the board, he gave himself a starting push with one hand. The downward progress was not so smooth or so rapid as he desired.
"Needs greasin'," he said, looking at the plank with a knowing frown. A rummage through the old corner cupboard where the provisions were kept provided him with a wide strip of bacon rind, such as Uncle Billy used to rub on his saw. John Jay carried it out of doors and carefully rubbed the plank from one end to the other. Then he greased the underside of the little board on which he intended to sit. The result was all he could wish. He slid down the plank at a speed that took his breath. Up he climbed from the coop to the shed, carrying his board with him, and down he slid to the ground, time and again, yelling and laughing as he went, until Bud began to be anxious for his turn. When the little fellow was boosted to the shed, he did not make a noise as John Jay had done; he slid in solemn silence and unspoken delight.
Over an hour of such sport had gone by when Bud remarked, "Ivy's a-missin' all the fun."
"She's too little to go down by herself," answered John Jay; "but if I had another little board I'd take her down in front of me."
He began looking around the wood-pile for one. Then he caught sight of the big dish-pan, which had been set outside on the logs to sun.
"That's the ve'y thing!" he exclaimed. "It'll jus' hole her." The bacon rind was nearly rubbed dry by this time, but the pan, heated by sitting so long in the sun, drew out all the grease that remained. It took the united strength of both boys to get Ivy to the top of the shed, but at last she was seated, with John Jay just behind her on his little board, his legs thrown protectingly around the pan. They shot down so fast that Ivy was terrified. No sooner was she dumped out of the pan on to the ground than she retired to a safe distance, and stuck her thumb in her mouth. Nothing could induce her to get in again.
"I'm goin' down in the dish-pan by myself," announced Bud from the shed roof. "It jus' fits me."
John Jay grinned, and stood a little to one side to watch the performance. "Go it, Brer Tarrypin!" he shouted.
Maybe Bud leaned a little too much to one side. Maybe the pan missed the guiding legs that had held it steady before. At any rate something was amiss, for half-way down the plank it spun dizzily around to one side, and spilled the luckless Bud out on the chicken-coop. Usually he made very little fuss when he was hurt, but this time he set up such a roar that John Jay was frightened. When he saw blood trickling out of the child's mouth, he began to cry himself. He was just about to run for Aunt Susan, when Bud suddenly stopped crying, and turned toward him with a look of terror.
"Aw, I done knock a tooth out!" he exclaimed, and began crying harder than before, feeling that he had been damaged beyond repair.
John Jay laughed when he found that nothing worse had happened than the loss of a little white front tooth, and soon dried Bud's tears by promising that a new one would certainly fill the hole in time.
"Keep yoah mouf shet much as you can when Mammy comes home to-night," he cautioned; "for I sut'n'ly don't want to ketch a lickin' on my buthday. It's mighty lucky the pan didn't get a hole knocked in her."
Mammy came home just before dark. The children were on the fence waiting for her. John Jay felt sure that if Miss Hallie knew that it was his birthday she would send him something. He wondered if Mammy had told her. The basket on the old woman's head was always interesting to these children, for it never came back from Rosehaven empty. The cook always saved the scraps for Sheba's hungry little charges. This evening John Jay kept his eyes fixed on it expectantly, as he followed it up the walk. He had thrown one foot up behind him, and rested the toes of it in his clasped hands as he hopped along on the other. Maybe there might be a birthday cake in that basket, with little candles on it. He didn't know, of course,—but—maybe.
They all crowded around, as Sheba put the basket on the table and took out some scraps of boiled ham, a handful of cookies, and half of an apple pie. That was all. John Jay lookedat them a moment with misty eyes, and turned away with a lump in his throat. He was beginning to grow discouraged.
Mammy was so tired that she did not cook anything for supper, as she had intended, but set out the contents of the basket beside the corn bread left from dinner. Before they were through eating somebody called for sis' Sheba to come quick, that Aunt Susan was having one of her old spells.
"Like enough I won't get back for a good while," said Mammy, as she hurriedly left the table. "Put Ivy to bed as soon as you wash her face, John Jay, an' go yo'self when the propah time comes. Be a good boy now, and don't forget to close the doah tight when you go in."
When Ivy was safely tucked away among the pillows, the two boys sat down on the door-step to wait once more for the birthday Santa Claus. John Jay repeated what the thoughtless fellow had said:
"If I don't get there by noon, it'll be because something has happened; anyway, somebody'll be prancing along about sundown." In the week just passed, Bud hadcome to believe in the birthday Santa Claus as firmly as John Jay.
"Wondah wot he's doin' now?" he said, after a long pause and an anxious glance down the darkening road.
Ah, well for those two trusting little hearts that they could not know! He was sitting on the steps of the porch at Rosehaven with a guitar on his knee, and smiling tenderly into Sally Lou's blue eyes as he sang, "Oh, yes, I ever will be true!"
It grew darker and darker. The katydids began their endless quarrel in the trees. A night-owl hooted dismally over in the woods. The children stopped talking, and sat in anxious silence. Presently Bud edged up closer, and put a sympathetic arm around his brother. A moment after, he began to cry.
"What you snufflin' for?" asked John Jay savagely. "'Tain't yo' buthday."
"But I'm afraid you ain't goin' to have any eithah," sobbed the little fellow, strangely wrought upon by this long silent waiting in the darkness.
"Aw, you go 'long to bed," said John Jay, with a careless, grown-up air. "If anythingcomes I'll wake you up. No use for two of us to be settin' heah."
Bud was sleepy, and crept away obediently; but the day was spoiled, and he went to bed sore with his brother's disappointment.
John Jay sat down again to keep his lonely tryst. He looked up at the faithless stars. They had failed to help him, but in his desperation he determined to appeal to them once more. So he picked out the seven largest ones he could see and repeated very slowly, in a voice that would tremble, the old charm:
"Star-light, star bright,Seventh star I've seen to-night;I wish I may and I wish I mightHave the wish come true I wish to-night."
"Star-light, star bright,Seventh star I've seen to-night;I wish I may and I wish I mightHave the wish come true I wish to-night."
Then he made his wish again, with a heart felt earnestness that was almost an ache. Oh, surely the day was not going to end in this cruel silence! Just then he heard the thud of a horse's hoofs on the wooden bridge, far down the road. Nearer and louder it came. Somebody was prancing by at last. He stood up, straining his eyes in his smiling eagerness to see. Nearer and nearer the hoof-beatscame in the starlight. "Bookity book! Bookity book!" The horseman paused a moment in front of Uncle Billy's.
John Jay hopped from one foot to the other in his impatient gladness. Then his heart sank as the hoof-beats went on down the road,Bookity book! Bookity book!growing fainter and fainter, until at last they were drowned by the voices of the noisy katydids.
He stood still a moment, so bitterly disappointed that it seemed to him he could not possibly bear it. Then he went in and shut the door,—shut the door on all his bright hopes, on all his fond dreams, on the day that was to have held such happiness, but that had brought instead the cruelest disappointment of his life.
The tears ran down his little black face as he undressed himself. He sat on the edge of the trundle-bed a moment, whispering brokenly, "They wasn't anybody livin' that cared 'bout it's bein' my buthday!" Then throwing himself face downward on his pillow, he cried softly with long choking sobs, until he fell asleep.
Although John Jay bore many a deep scar, both in mind and body, very little of his life had been given to sackcloth and ashes.
"Wish I could take trouble as easy as that boy," sighed Mammy. "It slides right off'n him like watah off a duck's back."
"He's like the rollin' stone that gethah's no moss," remarked Uncle Billy. "He goes rollickin' through the days, from sunup 'twel sundown, so fast that disappointment and sorrow get rubbed off befo' they kin strike root."
Despite all his troubles, if John Jay had been marking his good times with white stones, there would have been enough to build a wall all around the little cabin by the end of the summer. There were two days especially that he remembered with deepest satisfaction: one was the Saturday when Mars' Nat took him to the circus, and the other was the Fourth of July, when all the family went to the Oak Grove barbecue.
Uncle BillyUncle Billy
But now blackberry season had begun,—a season that he hated, because Mammy expected him to help her early and late in the patch. So many of the shining berries slipped down his throat, so many things called his attention away from the brambly bushes, that sometimes it took hours for him to fill his battered quart cup.
Usually his reward was a juicy pie, but this year Mammy changed her plan. Berries were in demand at Rosehaven, and she had very little time to spend in going after them.
"I'll give you five cents a gallon for all you'll pick," she said to John Jay. He looked at her in amazement. As he had never had any money in his life, this seemed a princely offer. He was standing outside by the stick chimney when she made the promise. After one sidelong glance, to see if she were in earnest, he threw his feet wildly into the air and walked off on his hands; then, after two or three somersaults backward, he stood up, panting.
"Where's the buckets at?" he demanded, "I'm goin' to pick every bush in this neck o' woods as clean as you'd pick a chicken."
Now it was Mammy's turn to be surprised.She had expected that her offer would lure him on for an hour or two, maybe for a whole day. She had not supposed that it would keep him faithfully at work for a week, but it did. His nimble fingers stripped every roadside vine within a mile of the cabin. His hands and legs, and even his face, were criss-crossed with many brier scratches. The sun beat down on him unmercifully, but he stuck to his task so closely that he seemed to see berries even when his eyes were shut. Every day great pailfuls of the shining black beads were sent over to Rosehaven, and every night he dropped a few more nickels into the stocking foot hidden under his pillow.
"Berries is all mighty nigh cleaned out," he said one noon, when he was about to start out again after dinner. "Uncle Billy says there's lots of 'em down in the gandah thicket, but I'se mos' afeered to go there."
"Nothin' won't tech you in daylight, honey," answered Mammy, encouragingly, "but I would n't go through there at night for love or money I'd as lief go into a lion's cage."
"Did you ever see any ghos'es down there Mammy?" asked John Jay with eager interest,yet cautiously lowering his voice and taking a step nearer.
"No," admitted Mammy, "but oldah people than I have seen 'em. All night long there's great white gandahs flappin' round through that thicket 'thout any heads on. You know they's an awful wicked man buried down there in the woods, an' the sperrits of them he's inju'ed ha'nts the thicket every night. There isn't anybody, that I know of, that 'ud go down there aftah dark for anything on this livin' yearth."
"Then who sees 'em?" asked John Jay, with a skeptical grin.
"Who sees 'em?" repeated Mammy wrathfully, angry because of the doubt implied by his question and his face. "Who sees 'em? They've been seen by generations of them as is dead and gone. Who is you, I'd like to know, standin' up there a-mockin' at me so impident and a-askin' 'Who sees 'em?'"
She turned to begin her dish washing, with a scornful air that seemed to say that he was beneath any further notice. Still, no sooner had she piled the dishes up in the pan than she turned to him again, with her hands on her hips.
"Go down and ask Uncle Mose," she said, still indignant. "He can tell you tales that'll send cole chills up an' down yo' spine. He saw an awful thing in there once with his own eyes. 'Twan't a gandah, but somethin' long an slim flyin' low in the bushes—he reckoned it was twenty feet long. It had a little thin head like a snake, an' yeahs that stuck up like rabbit's. It was all white, an' had fo' little short legs an' two little short wings, an' it was moah'n flesh an' blood could stand, he say, to see that long, slim, white thing runnin' an' a-flyin' at the same time through the bushes, low down neah the groun'. You jus' go ask him."
John Jay swung his buckets irresolutely. "I don't believe I'll go down there aftah berries," he said. "I don't know what to do. They isn't any moah anywhere else."
Mammy wished that she had not gone to such pains to convince him. "Nothin' evah comes around in the daytime," she insisted, "an' I reckon berries is mighty plentiful, too," she added, persuasively. "Nobody evah saw anything down there in the daylight, honey. I'd go if I was you."
John Jay stood on one foot. He was afraidof the headless ganders, but he did want those berries. He walked out through the door, hesitated, and stood on one foot again. Then he went slowly down the hill. Mammy, standing in the door with her apron flung over her head, watched him climb up on the fence and sit there to consider. Finally, he dropped down to the other side, and started in the direction of the gander thicket.
It was a place that the negroes had been afraid of since her earliest recollection. It was only a little stretch of woodland, where the neglected underbrush had grown into a tangled thicket. No one remembered now what had given rise to the name, and no one living had ever seen the ghostly white ganders that were said to haunt the place at night. Still, the story was handed down from one to another, and the place was shunned as much as possible.
Brier Crook church stood at one end, with its desolate little graveyard, where the colored people buried their dead under its weeping willows and gloomy cedars.
John Jay avoided the lonely road that led in that direction, and took the one that wound around the other end of the thicket, past a desertedmill. Yet, when he reached the ruined old building, with its staring windows and sunken roof, he was half sorry that he had not gone the other way.
The berries were on the far side of the thicket, and he was obliged to pass either the graveyard or the old mill to reach them. The possibility of plunging boldly into the thicket and pushing his way through to the other side had never occurred to him, although it is doubtful if he would have dared to do so even had he thought of it. He ran down the dry bed of the stream, and past the silent moss-grown wheel, breathing a sigh of relief when he came out into an open field beyond.
Balancing himself on the top rail of the fence, he looked cautiously along the edge of the thicket. It did not look so dismal in there, after all. A woodpecker's cheerful tapping sounded somewhere within. Butterflies flitted fearlessly down into its shady ravines. A squirrel ran out on a limb, and sat chattering at him saucily. Then a big gray rabbit rustled through the leaves, and went loping away into the depths of the thicket.
"I don't believe there's anything skeery inthere at all!" exclaimed John Jay aloud. After starting several times, and stopping to look all around and listen, he followed the rabbit into the bushes. Plunging down a narrow cow-path which wound in and out, he came to an open space where a few trees had fallen. Here, with an exclamation of delight, he pounced upon the finest, largest berries he had ever seen. They dropped into the tin pail with a noisy thud at first, and then with scarcely a sound, as they rapidly piled higher and higher.
Both pails were filled in a much shorter time than usual, and then he sat down on a wide log to enjoy the lunch he had brought with him. There were two big slices of bread and jam in one pocket, and a big apple in the other. As he sat there, slowly munching, he began to feel drowsy. He had awakened early that morning, and had worked hard in the hot sun. He stretched himself out full length on the log, to rest his back while he finished eating his apple.
The branches overhead swayed gently back and forth. His eyes followed them as they kept up that slow, monotonous motion against the bright sky. He had no intention ofclosing them; in fact, he did not know they were closed, for in that same moment he was sound asleep.
The woodpecker went on tapping; the squirrel whisked back and forth along the limb; the same gray rabbit came out and hopped along beside the log where he lay. Suddenly, it raised itself up to look at the strange sight, and then bounded away again. The sun dropped lower and lower. In the open fields there was still light, but the thicket was gray with the subdued shadows of the gloaming.
John Jay might have slept on all night had not a leaf fluttered slowly down from the tree above, and brushed across his face. He opened his eyes, looking all around him in a bewildered way. Then he sat up, and peered through the bushes. A cold perspiration covered him when he realized that it was dusk and that he was in the middle of the gander thicket. He snatched up the blackberries, a pail in each hand, and stood looking helplessly around him, for he could not decide which way to go. In front of him stretched half a mile of the haunted thicket. It was either to push his way through that as quickly as possible, or to go back bythe long, lonesome road over which he had come.
Just then a harmless flock of geese belonging to an old market-gardener who lived near came waddling up from the creek, on the way home to their barn-yard. They moved along in a silent procession, pushing their long, thin necks through the underbrush. John Jay was too terrified to see that their heads were properly in place, and that they were as harmless as the flock that fed in Aunt Susan's dooryard.
"They'll get me! They'll get me!" he whimpered, as they came nearer and nearer, for his feet seemed so heavy that he could not lift them when he tried to run. Made desperate by his fear, he raised first one pail of berries and then the other, hurling them at the startled geese with all the force his wiry little arms could muster.
Instantly their long white wings shot up through the bushes. There was an angry fluttering and hissing, as half running, half flying, they waddled faster towards home. John Jay did not look to see what direction they were taking. He was sure they were after him. He could hear their long wings flapping justbehind him; at least, he thought he could, but the noise he heard was the snapping of the twigs he trampled in his headlong flight. No greyhound ever bounded through a wood with lighter feet than those which carried him. His eyes were wide with fright. His heart beat so hard in his throat he thought he would surely die before he could reach the cabin. At every step the light seemed to be growing dimmer and the thicket denser, although he thought he certainly must have been running long enough to have reached the clearing. Still he ran on, and on, and on. The recollection of one of Mammy's stories flashed across his mind.
The ganders had chased him aroundThe ganders had chased him around
Once a man had lost his way in this wood, and the ganders had chased him around and around until daylight. The thought made himso weak in the knees that he was ready to drop from fright and exhaustion. Then he recalled a superstition that he had often heard, that anyone who has lost his way may find it again by turning his pocket wrong side out. He was twitching at his with trembling hands, looking with eyes too frightened to see, and fumbling with fingers too stiff with fear to feel, but the pocket seemed to have disappeared. "It's conju'ed too," he wailed, as he ran heedlessly on.
Something long and white slapped across his face. An unearthly, wavering voice sounded a hoarse, long-drawn "Moo-oo-oo!" just in front of him. He sank down in a helpless little heap, blubbering and groaning aloud, with his teeth chattering, and the tears running down his clammy face. There was a louder crackling, and out of the bushes walked an old spotted cow, calmly switching her white tail and looking at John Jay in gentle-eyed wonder.
Strength came back to the boy with that familiar sight, but not being sure that the cow was not as ghostly as the ganders, he scrambled to his feet and started to run again. To avoid passing the cow, he turned in anotherdirection. This time, it happened to be the right one, and in a few moments more he had dashed into the open. Then he saw that it was not yet dark in the fields.
Mammy heard the sound of rapid running up the path, and came to the door. John Jay dropped at her feet, trembling and cold, and so frightened that he could only cling to her skirts, sobbing piteously. When, at last, he found his breath, all he could gasp was, "Oh, Mammy! the gandahs are aftah me! the gandahs are aftah me!"
Big boy as he was, Mammy stooped and lifted him in her arms, and holding him close, with his head on her shoulder, rocked back and forth in the big wooden chair until he grew calmer. Not until he had sobbed out the whole story, and wiped his eyes several times on her apron, did he see that there was company in the room.
George Chadwick was sitting by the door. It was the first time he had been in the cabin since his return from college. He had ridden up from the toll-gate on a passing wagon to see his old friend, Sheba, and had been there the greater part of the afternoon, listening toher tales of his mother in the old slavery days. He had not intended to accept her urgent invitation to stay to supper, but when he saw that she shared John Jay's fright, he decided to remain. Had it not been for his protecting presence in the house, Mammy was so affected by the boy's story that she would have barred every opening. Then, cowering around one little flickering candle, they would have fed each other's superstitious fears until bedtime. George knew this, and so he stayed to reassure them by his matter-of-fact explanations, and his cheerful common sense. While he could not convince them that they had been needlessly alarmed, he drew their attention to other things, by stories of college life and experiences at the North, while Sheba bustled about, bringing out the best of her meagre store to do him honor.
Ivy, scrubbed until she shone, and in a stiffly starched apron, sat on his knee and sucked her thumb. Bud squatted at his feet in silence, sticking his little red tongue in and out of the hole where the lost tooth had been. As for John Jay, his hero-worship passed that night into warmest love. From that time on, he would have gone through fire and water toserve his "Rev'und Gawge,"—anywhere in fact, save one place. Never any more was there motive deep enough or power strong enough to drag him within calling distance of the gander thicket.
Now that berry picking was at an end, John Jay slipped back into his old lazy ways. Errands were run with lagging feet; work was done in the easiest way possible, and everything was left undone that he could by any means avoid. Mammy scolded when she came home at night and found both water-pail and wood-box empty, but he went serenely on with his supper. No matter what happened, nothing ever interfered with his appetite.
"Those chillun are gettin' as bad as little young turkeys 'bout strayin' away from home," mumbled Aunt Susan one morning, as she watched them slip through the fence soon after Sheba had left the house. "An' they ain't anything wussah than young turkeys for runnin' off. 'Peahs like that kind of poultry is nevah satisfied with where they is, but always want to be where they isn't. It's the same with those chillun."
Although Aunt Susan did not know it, there was one place where John Jay and his flock of two were always content to stay; that was on the steps at the side door of the church. Nearly every afternoon found them sitting there in a solemn row, waiting for the shadows to grow long across the grass, for it was then that George oftenest came to play on the organ. He always smiled on the three grave little figures, waiting so patiently for the music of his vesper hymns.
It touched the lonely man to have John Jay follow him about, with that same wistful look in his eyes that a faithful dog has for its master. Sometimes he sat down on the steps beside the children and talked to them awhile, just to see the boy's face light up with pleasure.
It was a mystery to Sheba, how a dignified minister could care for the companionship of such a harum-scarum little creature as her grandson. She did know the tie that bound them, but their natures were as near akin as the acorn and the oak. In John Jay the man saw his own childhood with all its unanswered questions and dumb, groping ambitions; while the boy, looking up to his "Rev'und Gawge"as the highest standard of all manliness, felt faint stirrings within, of the possibility of such growth for himself.
Early one morning George sent a message to Sheba, asking that John Jay might be allowed to spend the day with him and help watch the toll-gate, while Mars' Nat was in town. That morning still stands out in the boy's memory, as one of the happiest he ever spent.
Along in the middle of the afternoon, when travel on the turnpike had almost ceased on account of the heat, George went into his room and lay down. John Jay sat on the floor of the porch, holding the old hound's head in his lap, and lazily smoothing its long soft ears. He felt very important when a wagon rattled up and the toll was dropped into his fingers. He wished that everybody he knew would ride by and find him sitting there in charge; but no one else came for more than an hour. It had seemed as long as ten hours, with nothing to do but slap at the flies and talk to the sleepy hound. John Jay grinned when he saw the arrival, for it was a man whom he knew.
"Good evenin', Mistah Boden," he called, eagerly. The man stopped his horses.
"Hello!" he said. "You're in charge, are you? Where's the rest of the folks?"
"Mars' Nat, he's gone to town to-day," answered John Jay, proudly. "I'm keepin' toll-gate this evenin', Mistah Boden."
"So!" exclaimed the man, with a cunning gleam in his little eyes. "That's the lay of the land, is it?"
Instead of taking out his pocket-book, he threw one foot over his knee, and began to ask questions in a friendly manner that flattered John Jay.
"Let's see. Your name's Hickman, hain't it?"
"Yessa, John Jay Hickman," answered the boy.
"Yes," drawled the man, gnawing at a plug of tobacco which he took from his pocket. "I know all about you. Your mammy used to cook for my wife, and your gran'mammy washed at our house one summer. How is the old woman, anyhow?"
"She's well, thank you, Mistah Boden," was the pleased answer.
"And then there's that brother of her's—Billy! old Uncle Billy! How's he getting on?"
"Oh, he's mighty complainin', Mistah Boden; he's got such a misery in his back all the time that he say he jus' aint got ambition 'nuff to get out'n his own way."
"Is that so?" was the reply, in a tone of flattering interest. The man beckoned him with his whip to step closer.
"Look here, boy," he said, in a confidential tone, "it's a mighty lucky thing for me that Nat Chadwick left you here instead of a stranger. Every penny of change I started with this morning dropped out through a hole in my pocket somewhere. I didn't find it out until I got within sight of the place; then, thinks I to myself, 'oh, it won't make any difference. Nat and I are old friends; he'll pass me.' I guess you can do the same, can't you, being as you're in his place, and I'm an old friend of your family? You needn't say anything about it, and I'll do as much for you some day."
John Jay looked puzzled. Before he could reply George walked out on the porch and stood beside him. He bowed to the man politely. "I'll take the toll, if you please, Mr. Boden. Put up the bar, John."
The man hesitated a moment, then tossed him the change, and gave the horses a cut with his whip that sent them dashing down the road.
"If he wasn't jus' tryin' to sneak his way through 'thout payin'!" exclaimed John Jay, indignantly. George made no comment, but John Jay seemed unable to quit talking about the occurrence. Half an hour later he broke out again: "He thought 'cause I was jus' a little boy he could cheat me, an' nobody would evah know the difference. I nevah in all my life befo' heard tell of anything so mean!"
"Haven't you?" asked George, with such peculiar emphasis and such a queer little smile that John Jay felt guilty, although he could not have told why.
"No, I nevah did," he insisted.
George leaned against the door-casing, and looked thoughtfully across the fields. "There are more turnpikes in life than one, my boy," he said kindly, "and every one has its toll-gate. There is the road to learning. I gave up everything to get through that gate, even my health. One cannot be anything or do anything worth while without paying some sort of toll. It maybe time or strength or hard work or patience, and sometimes we have to give them all."
"'Peahs like I've nevah struck any such roads in my travellin'," answered John Jay, carelessly, who often understood George's little parables far better than he cared to acknowledge.
"But I know one road that you are on now, where you try to slip out of paying what you owe every day."
John Jay hung his head, and rubbed his bare feet together in embarrassed silence. If the Reverend George said it was so, it must be so, although he did not know just what he was hinting at.
"Mr. Boden knows very well," continued George, "that the money that is paid here goes to keep the road in good condition for him to travel over. He is very glad to have such a good pike provided for him, but he wants it for nothing. I know a poor old woman who keeps the road smooth for somebody. She works early and late, in hot weather and cold, to earn food and shelter and clothes for somebody; and that somebody eats her bread, and wears out the clothes, and sleeps under her roof, andnever pays any toll. He owes her thanks and willing service,—all the help he can give her poor, tired old body, but she never gets even the thanks. He takes all her drudgery as a matter of course."
John Jay's head dropped lower and lower, as he screwed his toes around in the dust of the path, mortified and embarrassed. All the whippings of his life had never stung him so deeply as George's quiet words. He was used to being scolded for his laziness. He never paid any attention to that; but to have his "Rev'und Gawge" regard him as dishonest as Mr. Boden hurt him more than words could express.
Another wagon came rattling up in a cloud of dust. Without waiting to see the newcomer, he dodged around the corner of the house and ran down to the barn. A pair of puppies came frisking out ready for a romp, and an old Maltese cat, stretched out in the sun, stood up and arched its back at his approach. He took no notice of them, but crawling up into the hay, threw himself down in a dark corner with his face hidden in his arms.
Mars' Nat came home after awhile. John Jay could hear Ned putting the horse into thestall, and throwing the corn into the feed-box. Then everything was still for a long time. The sun stole through the cracks of the barn in wide shining streaks, with little motes of dust dancing up and down in the golden light, but John Jay did not see them. A shadow darkened the doorway. He did not see that, for his face was still hidden. There was a step on the barn floor, and a rustling in the hay beside him; then George's hand rested lightly on his head, and his voice said, soothingly, "There, there! I wouldn't cry about it."
"Oh, I nevah thought about things that way befo'!" sobbed John Jay. "I'll nevah sneak out of the work again. I'll tote the wood and watah 'thout waitin' to be asked, an' I'll nevah lick out my tongue at her behine her back as long as I live!"
George bit his lips to keep from laughing, although he was touched by the little penitent's distress.
"Do you know why I said such hard things to you?" he asked. "It was to open your eyes. I want to make a man of you, John Jay. Let me tell you some things about your grandmother that you have never heard. Her wholelife has been a struggle, and such a very sad one."
John Jay rubbed his shirt sleeve across his eyes and gave a final snuffle. Some people never have the awakening that came to him that afternoon. Some people go along all their days with no other thought in life than to burrow through their own mole-hills. There in the hay, with the shining dust of the sunbeams falling athwart the old barn floor, the boy lay and listened. Thoughts that he had no words for, ambitions that he could not express, yet that filled him with vague longing, seemed to vibrate along the earnest voice, and tremble from the fulness of George's heart into his. Even after George stopped talking and began to whistle softly in the pause that followed, John Jay lay quite still with his face hidden in his arms.
Ned came in presently, rustling around through the hay after eggs, and singing at the top of his voice. The sound seemed to bring John Jay back to his common every-day self. He sat up, grinning as if he had never heard of such things as tears; but those he had shed must have made his eyesight clearer. As heslid down from the hay and walked along beside George, he noticed for the first time how slow and faltering the steps beside his had grown. As they climbed up the hill to the church, it seemed to him that the beloved face looked unusually thin and haggard in the strong light of the sunset.
George did not play long this evening. He knew that the quiet little listener on the steps bent as readily to the changing moods of his melody as the clover does to the fitful breezes; so he changed abruptly from the minor chords that his fingers instinctively reached for, to an old hymn that smoothed away the pathetic pucker of the boy's forehead. Then he pulled out the stops and began a loud burst of martial music, so glad and triumphant, that, listening, one felt all great things possible of achievement. John Jay stood up, swinging his cap on the end of a stick which he carried, with all the curves and rythmic motions of a drum major.
After George came out and locked the door, he stood for a moment looking out fondly across the peaceful fields, still fair with the fading glow of the summer sun. John Jay looked too, feeling at the same time the touchof a caressing hand laid lightly on his bare head, but he could not see the lips above him that moved in a silent benediction.
When Mammy came home that night, there was wood in the box and water in the pail. The loose boards lying around the yard had been piled up neatly, and the paths were freshly swept. All that evening John Jay's eyes followed her with curious glances whichever way she turned, as if he found her changed. The change was in John Jay.
Next day, when she came home, she found the same state of affairs. It was early in the afternoon, and the children were out playing. She hung up her sun-bonnet, and dropped wearily down into a chair. Then, remembering a pile of clothes that must be mended before dark, she got up and began to hunt for her thimble and thread.
"That tawmentin' boy must have lost 'em," she exclaimed, after a vain search through her work-basket. The clothes were lying on the bed where she had put them. As she gathered them in her arms the thimble rolled out, and a spool of thread with a needle sticking in it fell to the floor.