I
The man was a little sawed-off, red-headed Irishman, with twinkling, gimlet eyes, two up-curved lips always in a broad smile, and a pair of thin, caliper-shaped legs.
His name was as brief as his stature.
"Fin, your honor, by the grace of God. F-i-n, Fin. There was a 'Mac' in front of it once, and an 'n' to the tail of it in the old times, so me mother says, but some of me ancisters—bad cess to 'em!—wiped 'em out. Plain Fin, if you plase, sor."
The punt was the ordinary Thames boat: a long, narrow, flat-bottomed, shallow craft with tapering ends decked over to serve as seats, the whole propelled by a pole the size of a tight-rope dancer's and about as difficult to handle.
Chartering the punt had been easy. All I had had to do was to stroll down the path bordering the river, run my eye over a group of boats lying side by side like a school of trout with their noses up-stream, pick out the widest, flattest, and least upsettable craft in the fleet, decorate it with a pair of Turkey-red cushions from a pile in the boathouse, and a short mattress, also Turkey-red—a good thing at luncheon-hour for a tired back is a mattress—slip the key of the padlock of the mooring-chain in my pocket and stroll back again.
The hiring of the man for days after my arrival at Sonning-on-Thames, was more difficult, well-nigh impossible, except at a price per diem which no staid old painter—they are all an impecunious lot—could afford. There were boys, of course, for the asking; sunburnt, freckle-faced, tousle-headed, barefooted little devils who, when my back was turned, would do handsprings over my cushions, landing on the mattress, or break the pole the first day out, leaving me high and dry on some island out of calling distance; but full-grown, sober-minded, steady men, who could pole all day or sit beside me patiently while I worked, hand me the right brush or tube of color, or palette, or open a bottle of soda without spilling half of it—that kind of man was scarce.
Landlord Hull, of the White Hart Inn—what an ideal Boniface is this same Hull, and what an ideal inn—promised a boatman to pole the punt and look after my traps when the Henley regatta was over; and the owner of my own craft, and of fifty other punts besides, went so far as to say that he expected a man as soon as Lord Somebody-or-Other left for the Continent, when His Lordship's waterman would be free, adding, meaningly:
"Just at present, zur, when we do be 'avin' sich a mob lot from Lunnon, 'specially at week's-end, zur, we ain't got men enough to do our own polin'. It's the war, zur, as has took 'em off. Maybe for a few day, zur, ye might take a 'and yerself if ye didn't mind."
I waved the hand referred to—the forefinger part of it—in a deprecating manner. I couldn't pole the lightest and most tractable punt ten yards in a straight line to save my own or anybody else's life. Then again, if I should impair the precision of my five fingers by any such violent exercise, my brush would wabble as nervously over my canvas as a recording needle across a steam-gauge. Poling a rudderless, keelless skiff up a crooked stream by means of a fifteen-foot balancing pole is an art only to be classed with that of rowing a gondola. Gondoliers and punters, like poets, are born, not made. My own Luigi comes of a race of gondoliers dating back two hundred years, and punters must spring from just such ancestors. No, if I had to do the poling myself, I should rather get out and walk.
Fin solved the problem—not from any special training (rowing in regattas and the like), but rather from that universal adaptability of the Irishman which fits him for filling any situation in life, from a seat on a dirt-cart to a chair in an aldermanic chamber.
"I am a paper-hanger by trade, sor," he began, "but I was brought up on the river and can put a punt wid the best. Try me, sor, at four bob a day; I'm out of a job."
I looked him over, from his illuminated head down to his parenthetical legs, caught the merry twinkle in his eyes, and a sigh of relief escaped me. Here was not only a seafaring man, accustomed to battling with the elements, skilled in the handling of poles, and acquainted with swift and ofttimes dangerous currents, but a brother brush, a man conversant with design and pigments; an artist, keenly sensitive to straight lines, harmony of tints, and delicate manipulation of surfaces.
I handed him the key at once. Thenceforward I was simply a passenger depending on his strong right arm for guidance, and at luncheon-hour upon his alert and nimble, though slightly incurved, legs for sustenance, the inn being often a mile away from my subject.
And the inns!—or rather my own particular inn—the White Hart at Sonning.
There are others, of course—the Red Lion at Henley; the old Warboys hostelry at Cookham; the Angler at Marlowe; the French Horn across the black water and within rifle-shot of the White Hart—a most pretentious place, designed for millionnaires and spendthrifts, where even chops and tomato-sauce, English pickles, chowchow and the like, ales in the wood and other like commodities and comforts, are dispensed at prices that compel all impecunious, staid painters like myself to content themselves with a sandwich and a pint of bitter—and a hundred other inns along the river, good, bad, and indifferent. But yet with all their charms I am still loyal to my own White Hart.
Mine is an inn that sets back from the river with a rose-garden in front the like of which you never saw nor smelt of: millions of roses in a never-ending bloom. An inn with low ceilings, a cubby-hole of a bar next the side entrance on the village street; two barmaids—three on holidays; old furniture; a big fireplace in the hall; red-shaded lamps at night; plenty of easy-chairs and cushions. An inn all dimity and cretonne and brass bedsteads upstairs and unlimited tubs—one fastened to the wall painted white, and about eight feet long, to fit the largest pattern of Englishman. Out under the portico facing the rose-garden and the river stand tables for two or four, with snow-white cloths made gay with field-flowers, and the whole shaded by big, movable Japanese umbrellas, regular circus-tent umbrellas, their staffs stuck in the ground wherever they are needed. Along the sides of this garden on the gravel-walk loll go-to-sleep straw chairs, with little wicker tables within reach of your hand for B.& S., or tea and toast, or a pint in a mug, and down at the water's edge seafaring men like Fin and me find a boathouse with half a score of punts, skiffs, and rowboats, together with a steam-launch with fires banked ready for instant service.
And the people in and about this White Hart inn!
There are a bride and groom, of course. No well-regulated Thames inn can exist a week without a bride and groom. He is a handsome, well-knit, brown-skinned young fellow, who wears white flannel trousers, chalked shoes, a shrimp-colored flannel jacket and a shrimp-colored cap (Leander's colors) during the day, and a faultlessly cut dress-suit at night.
She has a collection of hats, some as big as small tea-tables; fluffy gowns for mornings; short frocks for boating; and a gold belt, two shoulder-straps, and a bunch of roses for dinner. They have three dogs between them—one four inches long—well, perhaps six, to be exact—another a bull terrier, and a third a St. Bernard as big as a Spanish burro. They have also a maid, a valet, and a dog-cart, besides no end of blankets, whips, rugs, canes, umbrellas, golf-sticks, and tennis-bats. They have stolen up here, no doubt, to get away from their friends, and they are having the happiest hours of their lives.
"Them two, sor," volunteers Fin, as we pass them lying under the willows near my morning subject, "is as chuck-full of happiness as a hive's full of bees. They was out in their boat yisterday, sor, in all that pour, and it rolled off 'em same as a duck sheds water, and they laughin' so ye'd think they'd split. What's dresses to them, sor, and her father? Why, sor, he could buy and sell half Sonnin'. He's jist home from Africa that chap is—or he was the week he was married—wid more lead inside him than would sink a corpse. You kin see for yerself that he's made for fightin'. Look at the eye on him!"
Then there is the solitary Englishman, who breakfasts by himself, and has the morning paper laid beside his plate the moment the post-cart arrives. Fin and I find him half the time on a bench in a cool place on the path to the Lock, his nose in his book, his tightly furled umbrella by his side. No dogs nor punts nor spins up the river for him. He is taking his holiday and doesn't want to be meddled with or spoken to.
There are, too, the customary maiden sisters—the unattended and forlorn—up for a week; and the young fellow down from London, all flannels and fishing-rods—three or four of them in fact, who sit round in front of the little sliding wicket facing the row of bottles and pump-handles—divining-rods for the beer below, these pump-handles—chaffing the barmaids and getting as good as they send; and always, at night, one or more of the country gentry in for their papers, and who can be found in the cosey hall discussing the crops, the coming regatta, the chance of Leander's winning the race, or the latest reports of yesterday's cricket-match.
Now and then the village doctor or miller—quite an important man is the miller—you would think so if you could see the mill—drops in, draws up a chair, and ventures an opinion on the price of wheat in the States or the coal strike or some kindred topic, the coming country fair, or perhaps the sermon of the previous Sunday.
"I hope you 'eard our Vicar, sir—No? Sorry you didn't, sir. I tell yer 'e's a nailer."
And so much for the company at the White Hart Inn.
II
You perhaps think that you know the Thames. You have been at Henley, no doubt, during regatta week, when both banks were flower-beds of blossoming parasols and full-blown picture-hats, the river a stretch of silver, crowded with boats, their occupants cheering like mad. Or you know Marlowe with its wide stream bordered with stately trees and statelier mansions, and Oxford with its grim buildings, and Windsor dominated by its huge pile of stone, the flag of the Empires floating from its top; and Maidenhead with its boats and launches, and lovely Cookham with its back water and quaint mill and quainter lock. You have rowed down beside them all in a shell, or have had glimpses of them from the train, or sat under the awnings of the launch or regular packet and watched the procession go by. All very charming and interesting, and, if you had but forty-eight hours in which to see all England, a profitable way of spending eight of them. And yet you have only skimmed the beautiful river's surface as a swallow skims a lake.
Try a punt once.
Pole in and out of the little back waters, lying away from the river, smothered in trees; float over the shallows dotted with pond-lilies; creep under drooping branches swaying with the current; stop at any one of a hundred landings, draw your boat up on the gravel, spring out and plunge into the thickets, flushing the blackbirds from their nests, or unpack your luncheon, spread your mattress, and watch the clouds sail over your head. Don't be in a hurry. Keep up this idling day in and day out, up and down, over and across, for a month or more, and you will get some faint idea of how picturesque, how lovely, and how restful this rarest of all the sylvan streams of England can be.
If, like me, you can't pole a punt its length without running into a mud-bank or afoul of the bushes, then send for Fin. If he isn't at Sonning you will hear of him at Cookham or Marlowe or London—but find him wherever he is. He will prolong your life and loosen every button on your waistcoat. Fin is the unexpected, the ever-bubbling, and the ever-joyous; restless as a school-boy ten minutes before recess, quick as a grasshopper and lively as a cricket. He is, besides, brimful and spilling over with a quality of fun that is geyserlike in its spontaneity and intermittent flow. When he laughs, which he does every other minute, the man ploughing across the river, or the boy fishing, or the girl driving the cow, turn their heads and smile. They can't help it. In this respect he is better than a dozen farmers each with his two blades of grass. Fin plants a whole acre of laughs at once.
On one of my joyous days—they were all joyous days, this one most of all—I was up the backwater, the "Mud Lark" (Fin's name for the punt) anchored in her element by two poles, one at each end, to keep her steady, when Fin broke through a new aperture and became reminiscent.
I had dotted in the outlines of the old footpath with the meadows beyond, the cotton-wool clouds sailing overhead—only in England do I find these clouds—and was calling to the restless Irishman to sit still or I would send him ashore ... wet, when he answered with one of his bubbling outbreaks:
"I don't wonder yer hot, sor, but I git that fidgety. I been so long doin' nothin'; two months now, sor, since I been on a box."
I worked on for a minute without answering. Hanging wall-paper by standing on a box was probably the way they did it in the country, the ceilings being low.
"No work?" I said, aimlessly. As long as he kept still I didn't care what he talked or laughed about.
"Plinty, sor—an' summer's the time to do it. So many strangers comin' an' goin', but they won't let me at it. I'm laid off for a month yet; that's why your job come in handy, sor."
"Row with your Union?" I remarked, listlessly, my mind still intent on watching a sky tint above the foreground trees.
"No—wid the perlice. A little bit of a scrimmage wan night in Trafalgar Square. It was me own fault, sor, for I oughter a-knowed better. It was about three o'clock in the mornin', sor, and I was outside one o' them clubs just below Piccadilly, when one o' them young chaps come out wid three or four others, all b'ilin' drunk—one was Lord Bentig—jumps into a four-wheeler standin' by the steps an' hollers out to the rest of us: 'A guinea to the man that gits to Trafalgar Square fust; three minutes' start,' and off he wint and we after him, leavin' wan of the others behind wid his watch in his hand."
I laid down my palette and looked up. Paper-hanging evidently had its lively side.
"Afoot?"
"All four of 'em, sor—lickety-split and hell's loose. I come near runnin' over a bobbie as I turned into Pall Mall, but I dodged him and kep' on and landed second, with the mare doubled up in a heap and the rig a-top of her and one shaft broke. Lord Bentig and the other chaps that was wid him was standin' waitin', and when we all fell in a heap he nigh bu'st himself a-laughin'. He went bail for us, of course, and give the three of us ten bob apiece, but I got laid off for three months, and come up here, where me old mother lives and I kin pick up a job."
"Hanging paper?" I suggested with a smile.
"Yes, or anything else. Ye see, sor, I'm handy carpenterin', or puttin' on locks, or the likes o' that, or paintin', or paper-hangin', or mendin' stoves or tinware. So when they told me a painter chap wanted me, I looked over me perfessions and picked out the wan I tho't would suit him best. But it's drivin' a cab I'm good at; been on the box fourteen year come next Christmas. Ye don't mind, do ye, sor, my not tellin' ye before? Lord Bentig'll tell ye all about me next time ye see him in Lunnon." This touch was truly Finian. "He's cousin, ye know, sor, to this young chap what's here at the inn wid his bride. They wouldn't know me, sor, nor don't, but I've driv her father many a time. My rank used to be near his house on Bolton Terrace. I had a thing happen there one night that—more water? Yes, sor—and the other brush—the big one? Yes, sor—thank ye, sor. I don't shake, do I, sor?"
"No, Fin; go on."
"Well, I was tellin' ye about the night Sir Henry's man—that's the lady's father, sor—come to the rank where I sat on me box. It was about ten o'clock—rainin' hard and bad goin', it was that slippery.
"'His Lordship wants ye in a hurry, Fin,' and he jumped inside.
"When I got there I see something was goin' on—a party or something—the lights was lit clear up to the roof.
"'His Lordship's waitin' in the hall for ye,' said his man, and I jumped off me box and wint inside.
"'Fin,' said His Lordship, speakin' low, 'there's a lady dinin' wid me and the wine's gone to her head, and she's that full that if she waits until her own carriage comes for her she won't git home at all! Go back and get on yer cab wid yer fingers to yer hat, and I'll bring her out and put her in meself. It's dark and she won't know the difference. Take her down to Cadogan Square—I don't know the number, but ye can't miss it, for it's the fust white house wid geraniums in the winders. When ye git there ye're to git down, help her up the steps, keepin' yer mouth shut, unlock the door, and set her down on the sofa. You'll find the sofa in the parlor on the right, and can't miss it. Then lay the key on the mantel—here it is. After she's down, step out softly, close the door behind ye, ring the bell, and some of her servants will come and put her to bed. She's often took that way and they know what to do.' Then he says, lookin' at me straight, 'I sent for you, Fin, for I know I kin trust ye. Come here tomorrow and let me know how she got through and I'll give ye five bob.'
"Well, sor, in a few minutes out she come, leanin' on His Lordship's arm, steppin' loike she had spring-halt, and takin' half the sidewalk to turn in.
"'Good-night, Your Ladyship,' says His Lordship.
"'Good-night, Sir Henry,' she called back, her head out of the winder, and off I driv.
"I turned into the Square, found the white house wid the geraniums, helps her out of me cab and steadied her up the steps, pulled the key out, and was just goin' to put it in the lock when she fell up agin the door and open it went. The gas was turned low in the hall, so that she wouldn't know me if she looked at me.
"I found the parlor, but the lights were out; so widout lookin' for the sofa—I was afraid somebody'd come and catch me—I slid her into a rockin'-chair, laid the key on the hall-table, shut the door softlike, rang the bell as if there was a fire next door, jumped on me box, and driv off.
"The next mornin' I went to see His Lordship.
"'Did ye land her all right, Fin?'
"'I did, sor,' I says.
"'Had ye any trouble wid the key?'
"'No, sor,' I says, 'the door was open.'
"'That's queer,' he says; 'maybe her husband came in earlier and forgot to shut it. And ye put her on the sofa——'
"'No, sor, in a big chair.'
"'In the parlor on the right?'
"'No, sor, in a little room on the left—down one step——'
"He stopped and looked at me.
"'Te're sure ye put her in the fust white house?'
"'I am, sor.'
"'Wid geraniums in the winder?'
"'Yes, sor.'
"'Red?' he says.
"'No, white,' I says.
"'On the north side of the Square?
"'No,' I says, 'on the south.'
"'My God! Fin,' he says, 'ye left her in the wrong house!'"
It was I who shook the boat this time.
"Oh, ye needn't laugh, sor; it was no laughin' matter. I got me five bob, but I lost His Lordship's custom, and I didn't dare go near Cadogan Square for a month."
These disclosures opened up a new and wider horizon. Heretofore I had associated Fin with simple country life—as a cheery craftsman—a Jack-of-all-trades: one day attired in overalls, with paste-pot, shears, and ladder, brightening the walls of the humble cottagers, and the next in polo cap and ragged white sweater, the gift of some summer visitor (his invariable costume with me), adapting himself to the peaceful needs of the river. Here, on the contrary and to my great surprise, was a cosmopolitan; a man versed in the dark and devious ways of a great city; familiar with life in its widest sense; one who had touched on many sides and who knew the cafés, the rear entrances to the theatres, and the short cut to St. John's Wood with the best and worst of them. These discoveries came with a certain shock, but they did not impair my interest in my companion. They really endeared him to me all the more.
After this I was no longer content with listening to his rambling dissertations on whatever happened to rise in his memory and throat. I began to direct the output. It was not a difficult task; any incident or object, however small, served my purpose.
The four-inch dog acted as valve this morning.
Somebody had trodden on His Dogship; some unfortunate biped born to ill-luck. In and about Sonning to tread on a dog or to cause any animal unnecessary pain is looked upon as an unforgiveable crime. Dogs are made to be hugged and coddled and given the best cushion in the boat. "A man, a girl, and a dog" is as common as "a man, a punt, and an inn."
Instantly the four-inch morsel—four inches, now that I think of it, is about right; six inches is too long—this morsel, I say, gave a yell as shrill as a launch-whistle and as fetching as a baby's cry. Instantly three chambermaids, two barmaids, the two maiden sisters who were breakfasting on the shady side of the inn gable, and the dog's owner, who, in a ravishing gown, was taking her coffee under one of the Japanese umbrellas, came rushing out of their respective hiding-places, impelled by an energy and accompanied by an impetuousness rarely seen except perhaps in some heroic attempt to save a drowning child sinking for the last time.
"The darlin'"—this from Katy the barmaid, who reached him first—"who's stomped on him?"
"How outrageous to be so cruel!"—this from the two maiden sisters.
"Give him to me, Katy—oh, the brute of a man!"—this from the fair owner.
The solitary Englishman with his book and his furled umbrella, who in his absorption had committed the crime, strode on without even raising his hat in apology.
"D——d little beast!" I heard him mutter as he neared the boat-house where Fin and I were stowing cargo. "Ought to be worn on a watch-chain or in her buttonhole."
Fin had his hand on his lips keeping his laughing apparatus in order until the solitary disappeared down the path to the trees, then he leaned my way.
"I know him, sor," he whispered. "He's a barrister down in Temple Bar. He don't remember me, sor, but I know him. He's always treadin' on something—something alive—always, sor, and wid both feet! He trod on me once. I thought it was him when I see him fust—but I wasn't sure till I asked Landlord Hull about him."
"How came you to know him?"
"Well, sor, he had an old lady on his list two years ago that was always disputin' distances and goin' to law about her cab-fares. I picked her up one day in St. James Street and druv her to Kensington Gardens and charged her the rates, and she kicked and had me up before the magistrate, and this old ink-bottle appeared for her. She's rich and always in hot water. Well, we had it measured and I was right, and it cost her me fare and fifteen bob besides. When it was figured up she owed me sixpence more measurement I hadn't charged her for the first time, and I summoned her and made her pay it and twelve bob more to teach her manners. What pay he got I don't know, but I got me sixpence. He was born back here about a mile—that's why he comes here for his holiday."
Fin stopped stowing cargo—two bottles of soda, a piece of ice in a bucket, two canvases, my big easel and a lunch-basket—and moving his cap back from his freckled forehead said, with as much gravity as he could maintain:
"I ought to have been a barrister, sor; I started as one."
The statement did not surprise me. Had he added that he had coached the winning crew of the regatta the year before, laid the marquetry floors of Cliveden (not far away), or led the band at the late Lord Mayor's show, I should have received his statements with equal equanimity. So I simply remarked, "When was that, Fin"? quite as I should had I been gathering details for his biography—my only anxiety being to get the facts chronologically correct.
"When I was a gossoon of twenty, sor—maybe eighteen—I'm fifty now, so it's far back enough, God knows. And it all happened, too, not far from that old ink-bottle's place in Temple Bar. I was lookin' at it wan day last winter when I had a fare down there that I took up in old Bond Street. I did the sweepin' out and startin' fires. Wan day wan of the clerks got fired because he couldn't serve a writ on another barrister chap who owed a bill that me boss was tryin' to collect. Nobody could git into his rooms, try every way they could. He had nigh broke the head o' wan o' the young fellers in the office who tried it the day before. He niver come out, but had his grub sent him. This had been goin' on for a month. All kinds o' games had been put up on him and he beat 'em all.
"'I'll do it,' I says, 'in a week's time or less.' The manager was goin' through the office and heard the laugh they give me. 'What's this?' he says, cross like. 'Fin says he kin serve the writ,' the clerk says. 'I kin,' I says, startin' up, 'or I'll throw up me job.'
"'Give him the writ,' he says, 'and give him two days off. It kin do no harm for him to try.'
"Well, I found the street, and went up the stairs and read the name on the door and heard somebody walkin' around, and knew he was in. Then I lay around on the other side o' the street to see what I could pick up in the way o' the habits o' the rat. I knew he couldn't starve for a week at a time, and that something must be goin' in, and maybe I could follow up and git me foot in the door before he could close it; but I soon found that wouldn't work. Pretty soon a can o' milk come and went up in a basket that he let down from his winder. As he leaned out I saw his head, and it was a worse carrot than me own. Then along come a man with a bag o' coal on his back and a bit o' card in his hand with the coal-yard on it and the rat's name underneath, a-lookin' up at the house and scratchin' his head as to where he was goin'.
"I crossed over and says, 'Who are ye lookin' for'? And he hands me the card. 'I'm his man,' I says, 'and I been waitin' for ye—me master's sick and don't want no noise, and if ye make any I'll lose me place. I'll carry the bag up and dump it and bring ye the bag back and, shillin' for yer trouble. Wait here. Hold on,' I says; 'take me hat and let me have yours, for I don't git a good hat every day, and the bag's that dirty it'll spile it.'
"'Go on,' he says; 'I've carried it all the way from the yard and me back's broke.' Well, I pulled his hat ever me eyes and started up the stairs wid the bag on me shoulder. When I got to the fust landin' I run me hands over the bag, gittin' 'em good and black, then I smeared me face, and up I went another flight.
"'Who's there?' he says, when I knocked.
"'Coals,' I says.
"'Where from?' he says.
"I told him the name on the card. He opened the door an inch and I could see a chain between the crack.
"'Let me see yer face,' he says. I twisted it out from under the edge of the bag. 'All right,' he says, and he slipped back the chain and in I went, stoopin' down as if it weighed a ton.
"'Where'll I put it?' I says.
"'In the box,' he says, walkin' toward the grate. 'Have ye brought the bill?'
"'I have,' I says, still keepin' me head down. 'It's in me side pocket. Pull it out, please, me hand's that dirty'—and out come the writ!
"Ye ought to have seen his face when he read it. He made a jump for the door, but I got there fust and downstairs in a tumble, and fell in a heap at the foot with everything he could lay his hands on comin' after me—tongs, shovel, and poker.
"I got a raise of five bob when I went back and ten bob besides from the boss.
"I ought to have stayed at the law, sor; I'd be a magistrate by now a-sittin' on a sheepskin instead of ———
"Where'll I put this big canvas, sor—up agin the bow or laid flat? The last coat ain't dry yet," he muttered to himself, touching my picture with his finger in true paper-hanger style. "Oh, yes, I see—all ready, sor, ye kin step in. Same place we painted yesterday, sor?—up near the mill? All right, sor." And we pushed out into the stream.
These talks with Fin are like telephone messages from the great city hardly an hour away. They always take place in the open, while I am floating among pond-lilies or drifting under wide-spreading trees, their drooping leaves dabbling in the silent current like children's fingers, or while I am sitting under skies as blue as any that bend above my Beloved City by the Sea; often, too, when the delicious silence about me is broken only by the lapping of the water around my punt, the sharpening of a bit of charcoal, or the splash of a fish. That his stories are out of key with my surroundings, often reminding me of things I have come miles over the sea to forget, somehow adds to their charm.
There is no warning given. Suddenly, and apparently without anything that leads up to the subject in mind, this irrepressible Irishman breaks out, and before I am aware of the change, the glory of the morning and all that it holds for me of beauty has faded out of the slide of my mental camera and another has taken its place. Again I am following Fin's cab through the mazes of smoky, seething London, now waiting outside a concert-hall for some young blood, or shopping along Regent Street, or at full tilt to catch a Channel train at Charing Cross—each picture enriched by a running account of personal adventure that makes them doubly interesting.
"You wouldn't mind, sor," he begins, "if I tell ye of a party of three I took home from a grand ball—one of the toppy balls of the winter, in one o' them big halls on the Strand? Two o' them Was dressed like the Royal family in satins that stuck out like a haystack and covered with diamonds that would hurt your eyes to look at 'em—" And then in his inimitable dialect—impossible to reproduce by any combination of vowels at my command, and punctured every few minutes by ringing laughs that can be heard half a mile away—follows a description of how one of his fares, Ikey by name, the son of the stoutest of the women, by a sudden lurch of his cab—Ikey rode outside—while rounding into a side street, was landed in the mud.
"Oh, that was a great night, sor," he rattles on. "Ye ought to 'a' seen him when I picked him up. He looked as if they'd been a-swobbin' the cobbles wid him. 'Oh, me son! me son! it's kilt ye are!' she hollered out, clawin' him wid both hands, and up they hauled him all over them satin dresses! And where do ye think I took 'em, sor? To Hanover Square, or out by St. James Park? No, sor, not a bit of it! Down in an alley in Whitechapel, sor, that ye'd be afraid to walk through after sundown, and into a shop wid three balls over it. What do ye think o' that, sor?"
Or he launches forth into an account of how he helped to rescue a woman's child from the clutches of her brutal husband; and of the race out King's Road followed by the husband in a hansom, and of the watchful bobbie who, to relieve a threatened block in the street, held up the pursuing hansom at the critical moment, thus saving the escaping child, half-smothered in a blanket, tight locked in its mother's arms, and earning for Fin the biggest fare he ever got in his life.
"Think of it, sor! Fifteen bob for goin' a mile, she a-hollerin' all the time that she'd double the fare if I kep' ahead. But, Lord love ye, sor, she needn't 'a' worried; me old plug had run in the Derby wance, and for a short spurt like that he was game back to the stump of his tail."
When the last morning of his enforced exile arrived and Fin, before I was half-dressed, presented himself outside my bedroom door, an open letter in his hand, not a trace of the punt-poling Irishman was visible in his make-up!
He wore a glazed white tile, a yellow-brown coat with three capes, cut pen-wiper fashion, and a pair of corduroy trousers whose fulness concealed in part the ellipse of his legs.
"Here's a letter from me boss, sor," he blurted out, holding it toward me. "He says I kin go to work in the mornin'. Ye don't mind, do ye, sor?"
"Of course I mind, Fin; I'll have trouble to fill your place. Are you sorry to leave?"
"Am I sorry, sor? No!—savin' yer presence, I'm glad. What's the good of the country, anyhow, sor, except to make picters in? Of course, it's different wid you, sor, not knowin' the city, but for me—why God rest yer soul, sor, I wouldn't give one cobble of the Strand no bigger'n me fist for the best farm in Surrey.
"Call me, sor, next time ye're passin' my rank—any time after twelve at night, and I'll show ye fun enough to last ye yer life."
Something dropped out of the landscape that day—something of its brilliancy, color, and charm. The water seemed sluggish, the sky-tones dull, the meadows flat and commonplace.
It must have been Fin's laugh!
Jim met me at the station. I knew it was Jim when I caught sight of him loping along the platform, craning his neck, his head on one side as if in search of someone. He had the same stoop in his shoulders; the same long, disjointed, shambling body—six feet and more of it—that had earned him his soubriquet.
"Guess you be him," he said, recognizing me as easily, his face breaking suddenly into a broad smile as I stepped on to the platform. "Old man 'lowed I'd know ye right away, but I kind o' mistrusted till I see ye stop and look 'raound same's if ye'd lost the trail. I'll take them traps and that bag if ye don't mind," and he relieved me of my sketch-kit and bag. "Buck-board's right out here behind the freight shed," and he pointed across the track. "Old mare's kinder skeery o' the engine, so I tied her a piece off."
He was precisely the man I had expected to find—even to his shaggy gray hair matted close about his ears, wrinkled, leathery face, and long, scrawny neck. He wore the same rough, cowhide boots and the very hat I had seen so often reproduced—such a picturesque slouch of a hat with that certain cant to the rim which betokens long usage and not a little comfort, especially on balsam boughs with the sky for a covering, and only the stars to light one to bed.
I had heard all these several details and appointments described ever so minutely by an enthusiastic brother brush who had spent the preceding summer with old man Marvin—Jim's employer—but he had forgotten to mention, or had failed to notice, the peculiar softness of Jim's voice and his timid, shrinking eyes—the eyes of a dog rather than those of a man—not cowardly eyes, nor sneaking eyes—more the eyes of one who had suffered constantly from sudden, unexpected blows, and who shrank from your gaze and dodged it as does a hound that misunderstands a gesture.
"Old man's been 'spectin' ye for a week," Jim rambled on as he led the way to the shed, hitching up his one leather suspender that kept the brown overalls snug up under his armpits. "P'raps ye expected him to meet ye," he continued, "but ye don't know him. He ain't that kind. He won't go even for Ruby."
"Who's Ruby?" The brother brush had not mentioned him. "Mr. Marvin's son?"
"No, she's Mother Marvin's girl. She's away to Plymouth to school. Stand here a minute till I back up the buck-board."
The buck-board is the only vehicle possible over these mountain-roads. It is thevolanteof the Franconia range, and rides over everything from a bowlder to a wind-slash. This particular example differed only in being a trifle more rickety and mud-bespattered than any I had seen; and the mare had evidently been foaled to draw it—a fur-coated, moth-eaten, wisp-tailed beast, tied to the shafts with clothes-lines and scraps of deerhide—a quadruped that only an earthquake could have shaken into nervousness. And yet Jim backed her into position as carefully as if she had felt her harness for the first time, handing me the reins until he strapped my belongings to the hind axle, calling "Whoa, Bess!" every time she rested a tired muscle. Then he lifted one long leg over the dash-board and took the seat beside me.
It was my first draught of a long holiday; my breathing-spell; my time for loose neckties and flannel shirts and a kit slung over my shoulder crammed with brushes and color-tubes; my time for loafing and inviting my soul. It felt inexpressibly delightful to be once more out in the open—out under the wide sweep of the sky; rid of the choke of narrow streets; exempt of bens, mails, and telegrams, and free of him who knocks, enters, and sits—and sits—and sits. And it was the Indian summer of the year; when the air is spicy with the smoke of burning leaves and the mountains are lost in the haze; when the unshaven cornfields are dotted with yellow pumpkins and under low-branched trees the apples lie in heaps; when the leaves are aflame and the round sun shines pink through opalescent clouds.
"Ain't it a hummer of a day?" Jim exclaimed, suddenly, looking toward the valley swimming in a silver mist below us. "By Jiminy! it makes a man feel like livin', don't it?"
I turned to look at him. He, too, seemed to have caught the infection. His shoulders had straightened, his nostrils were dilated like a deer's that sniffs some distant scent; his face was aglow. I began to wonder if, with my usual luck, I had not found the companion I always looked for in my outings—that rare other fellow of the right kind, who responds to your slightest wish with all the enthusiasm and gusto of a boy, and so vagabondish in his tendencies that he is delighted to have you think for him and to follow your lead.
I had not long to wait. Before we had gone a mile into the forest Jim jerked the mare back upon her haunches and, pointing to a great hemlock standing sentinel over us, cried out with boyish enthusiasm:
"Take a look at him once. Ain't he a ring-tailed roarer? Seems to me a tree big as him must be awful proud just o' bein' a tree. Ain't nothin' 'raound here kin see's fur as he kin, anyways." "My luck again," I thought to myself. I knew I could not be mistaken in the outward signs.
"You like trees, then?" I asked, watching the glow on his face.
"Like 'em! Well, wouldn't you if ye'd lived 'mong 'em long's I have? Trees don't never go back on ye, and that's what ye can't say o' everything." The analogy was obscure, but I attributed it to Jim's slender stock of phrases. "I've knowed that hemlock ever since I come here, and he's just the same to me as the fust day I see him. Ain't never no change in trees; once they're good to ye they're allus good to ye. Birds is different—so is cattle—but trees and dogs ye kin tie to. Don't the woods smell nice? Do ye catch on to them spruces dead ahead of us? Maybe ye can't smell 'em till ye git yer nose cleared out o' them city nosegays," he continued, with a kindly interest in his voice. "But ye will when ye've been here a spell. Folks that live in cities think there ain't nothin' smells sweet but flowers and cologne. They ain't never slep' on balsam-boughs nor got a whiff o' a birchbark fire, nor tramped a bed o' ferns at night. There's a cool, fresh smell for ye! I tell ye there's a heap o' perfumes 'raound that ye can't buy at a flower-store and cork up in a bottle. Well, I guess—Git up, Bess!" and he flopped the reins once more along the ridges and hollows of the mare's back while he encouraged her to renewed efforts with that peculiar clucking sound heeded only by certain beasts of burden.
At the end of the tenth mile he stopped the mare suddenly.
"Hold on," he cried, excitedly, "there's that scraggy-tail. I missed him when I come down. See! there he is on that green log. I was feared he'd passed in his chips." I looked and saw a huge gray squirrel with a tail like a rabbit. "That's him. Durn mean on his tail, warn't it? And one paw gone, too. The dog catched him one day last year and left him tore up that way. I found him limping along when I was a-sugaring here in the spring and kinder fixed him up, and he's sorter on the lookout for me when I come along. He's got a hole 'round here somewheres."
Jim sprang out of the buck-board. Fumbling under the seat he brought out a bag of nuts. The squirrel took them from his hand, stuffing his mouth full, five at a time, limping away to hide them, and back again for more until the bag was empty, Jim, contented and unhurried, squatting on the ground, his long knees bent under him. The way in which he did this gave me infinite delight. No vagabond I had ever known ignored time and duty more complacently.
We drove on in silence, Jim taking in everything we passed. This shambling, slenderly educated, and clay-soiled man was fast looming up as a find of incalculable value—the most valuable of my experience. The most important thing, however, was still to be settled if a perfect harmony of interests was to be established between us—would he like me?
Marvin's cabin, in which I was to spend my holiday, lay on a clearing half a mile or more outside the woods and at the foot of a hill that helped prop up the Knob. The stage road ran to the left. The house was a small two-story affair built of logs and clapboards, and was joined to the outlying stable by a covered passage which was lined with winter firewood. Marvin, who met us at the pasture-gate, carried a lantern, the glow of the twilight having faded from the mountain-tops. He was a small, thick-set man, smooth-shaven as far as the under side of his chin and jaws, with a whisk-broom beard spread over his shirt-front and half of his waistcoat. His forehead was low, and his eyes set close together—sure sign of a close-fisted nature.
To my great surprise his first words, after a limp handshake and a perfunctory "pleased to see you," were devoted to an outbreak on Jim for having been so long on the road. "Been waitin' here an hour," he said. "What in tarnation kep' ye, anyway? Them cows ain't milked yit!"
"Don't worry. I won't go back on them cows," replied Jim, quietly, as he drove through the gateway, following Marvin, who walked ahead swinging the lantern to show the mare the road.
Mrs. Marvin's manner was as abrupt as that of her husband.
"Well, well!" she said, as I stepped upon the porch, "guess you must be beat out comin' so fur. Come in and set by the stove," and she resumed her work in the pantry without another word.
I was not offended at her curtness. These denizens of the forest pass too many hours alone and speak too seldom to understand the value of politeness for politeness' sake. The wife, moreover, redeemed herself the next morning when I found her on the back porch feeding the birds.
"Snow ain't fur off," she remarked, in explanation, as she scattered the crumbs about, "and I want 'em to larn early where they kin find something to eat. Ruby'd never forgive me if I didn't feed the birds. She loves 'em 'bout as much as Jim does."
Neither she nor her husband became any more cordial as they knew me better. To them I was only the boarder whose weekly stipend helped to decrease the farm debt, and who had to be fed three times a day and given a bed at night. It was Jim who made me feel at home. He was the fellow I had longed for; the round peg of a chance acquaintance that exactly fitted into the round hole of my holiday life, and he fulfilled my every expectation. He would fish or hunt or carry a sketch-trap or wash brushes, or loaf, or go to sleep beside me—or get up at daylight—whatever the one half of me wanted to do, Jim, the other half, agreed to with instant cheerfulness.
And yet, in spite of this constant companionship, I never crossed a certain line of reserve which he had set up between us. He would ramble on by the hour about the things around us; about the trees, the birds, and squirrels; of the way the muskrats lived by the sawmill dam, and their cleverness in avoiding his traps; about the deer that "yarded" back of Taft's Knob last winter, and their leanness in the spring. Sometimes he would speak of Mother Marvin, saying she "thought a heap of Ruby, and ought to," and now and then he would speak of Ruby with a certain tender tone in his voice, telling me of the prizes she had won at school, and how nobody could touch her in "'rithmetic and readin'." But, to my surprise, he never discussed any of his private affairs with me. I say "surprise," for until I met Jim I had found that men of his class talked of little else, especially when over campfires smouldering far into the night.
This reticence also extended to Marvin's affairs. The relations between them, I saw, were greatly strained, although Jim always discharged his duties conscientiously, never failing to render a strict account of the time he spent with me, which Marvin always itemized in the weekly bill. I used often to wonder if he were not under some obligation to his employer which he could not requite; it might be for food and shelter in his earlier days, or perhaps that he was weighted by a money debt he was unable to pay.
One morning, after a particularly ugly outbreak in which Jim had been denounced for some supposed neglect of his duties, I asked him, then lying beside me, his head cupped upon his saucer of a slouch hat, why he stayed on with a man like Marvin, so different from himself in every way. I had often wondered why Jim stood it, and wished that he had the spirit to try his fortunes elsewhere. In my sympathy for him I had even gone so far as to hint once or twice at my finding him other employment. Indeed, I must confess that the only cloud between us dimming my confidence in him was this very lack of independence.
"Well, I got to git along with him for a spell yit," Jim answered, slowly, his eyes turned up to the sky. "Heisornery, and no mistake, and I git mad at him sometimes; but then ag'in I feel kinder sorry for him somehow. He's a queer kind, ain't he, to be livin' up here all his life with trees and mountains all 'round him, all doin' their best to please him—and I don't know nothin' friendlier nor honester—and yet him bein' what he is? I'd 'a' thought they'd thawed him out 'fore this. And he's so dog-goned close, too, if I must say it. Why, if it warn't for Mother Marvin, some o' us 'raound here"—and he stopped and lowered his voice—"would be out in the cold; some ye wouldn't suspect, too."
This apparently studied reticence only incited my curiosity to learn something more of the man for whom I had begun to have a real affection. I wanted particularly to know something of his life before he came to Marvin's!—twelve years now. I could not, of course, ask Marvin or his wife for any details—my intimacy with Jim forbade such an invasion of his privacy—and I met no one else in the forest. I saw plainly that he was not a mountaineer by birth. Not only did his dialect differ from those about him, but his habits were not those of a woodsman. For instance, he would always carry his matches loose in his pocket, instead of in a dry box; then, again, he would wear his trousers rolled up like a fireman's, as if to keep out the wet, instead of tucking them into his boots to tramp the woods the better. Now and then, too, he would let fall some word or expression which would betray greater familiarity with the ins and outs of the city than with the intricacies of the forest.
"It was fixed up in a glass case like one Abe Condit used to have in his place in the Bowery," he said once in describing a prize trout some city fisherman had stuffed and framed. But when I asked him, with some surprise, if he knew the Bowery, he looked at me quickly, with the slightest trace of offended dignity in his eyes, as if I had meant to overstep the line between us, and answered quickly:
"I knowed Abe Condit," and immediately changed the conversation.
And yet I must admit that there was nothing in the way he answered this and all my other questions that weakened my confidence in his sincerity. If there were any blackened pages in his past record that he did not want to lay bare even to me, they were discolored, I felt sure, more by privations and suffering than by any stains he was ashamed of.
II
One morning at daybreak I was awakened by Jim swinging back my door. He had on his heavy overcoat and carried a lantern. His slouch hat was flattened on the back of his head; the rim flared out, framing his face, which was wreathed in smiles. He seemed to be under some peculiar excitement, for his breath came thick and fast.
"Sorry to wake ye, but I'm goin' to Plymouth," and he lowered his head and stepped inside my room. "Ruby's comin'. Feller brought me a letter she'd sent on by the stage. The driver left it at the sawmill. I'd 'a' told ye las' night, but ye'd turned in."
"When will you be back?" I called out from between the bedclothes. We had planned a trip to the Knob the next day, and were to camp out for the night. He evidently saw my disappointment in my face, for he answered quickly, as he bent over me:
"Oh, to-night, sure; and maybe Ruby'll go along. There ain't nothin' ye kin teach her 'bout campin', and she'll go anywheres I'll take her—leastways, she allus has." This last was said with some hesitation, as if he had suddenly thought that my presence might make some difference to her. "Leave yer brushes where I kin git 'em," he continued, anxious to make up for my disappointment. "I'll wash 'em when I git back," and he clattered down the steep stairs and slammed the door behind him.
I jumped from my bed, threw up the narrow, unpainted sash and watched his tall, awkward figure swinging the lantern as he hurried away toward the shed where the gray mare lived in solitude. Then I crept back to bed again to plan my day anew.
When I joined Marvin at breakfast I found him in one of his ugliest moods, with all his bristles out; not turned toward me, nor even toward his wife, but toward the world in general. Strange to say, he made no allusion to his daughter's return nor to Jim's absence.
Suddenly his wife blurted out, as if she could restrain her joy no longer:
"You ain't never seen Ruby. She's comin' tonight. Jim's gone for her. The head teacher's sick and some o' the girls has got a holiday."
"Yes," I answered, quietly; "Jim told me."
"Oh, he did!" And she put down her cup and leaned across the table. "Well, I'm awful glad she's comin', just so ye kin see her. Ye won't never forgit her when ye do. She's got six months more, then she's comin' home for a spell until she goes teachin'," and a look of exultant pride and joy of which I had never believed her capable came into her eyes.
Marvin turned his head and in a half-angry way said:
"It's 'bout time. Little good ye've had o' her for the last four years with yer fool notions 'bout eddication." And he put on his hat and went out.
"How old is your daughter?" I asked, more to soften the effect of Marvin's brutal remark than anything else.
"She's seventeen, I guess, but she's big for her age."
The announcement came as a surprise. I had supposed from the way Jim had always spoken of her that she was a child of twelve. The possibilities of her camping out became all the more remote.
"And has she been away from you long this time?"
"'Bout four months. I didn't 'spect her to come till Christmas, till she wrote Jim to come for her. He allus fetches her. They'll be 'long 'bout dark."
I instantly determined to extend the heartiest of welcomes to this little daughter, not alone because of the mother and Jim, but because the home-coming of a young girl had always appealed to me as one of the most satisfying of all family events. My memory instinctively went back to the return of my own little bird, and of the many marvellous preparations begun weeks before in honor of the event. I saw again in my mind the wondrous curtains, stiff and starched, hung at the windows and about the high posts of the quaint bedstead that had sheltered her from childhood; I remembered the special bakings and brewings and the innumerable bundles, big and little, that were tucked away under secretive sofas and the thousand other surprises that hung upon her coming. This little wood-pigeon should have my best attention, however simple and plain might be her plumage.
Moreover, I was more than curious to see what particular kind of a fledgling could be born to these two parent birds—one so hard and unsympathetic and the other so kind and simple. Jim, I remembered, had always spoken enthusiastically of Ruby, but then Jim always spilled over the edges whenever he spoke of the things he loved, whether they were dogs, trees, flowers, or brilliant young maidens.
At nine o'clock that night my ear caught the sound of wheels; then came Jim's "Whoa! Bess," and the mother threw wide the door and caught her daughter in her arms.
"Oh, mother!" the girl cried, "wasn't it good I could come?" and she kissed her again. Then she turned to me—I had followed out in the starlight—"Uncle Jim sent me word you were here, and I was so glad. I've always wanted to see somebody paint, and Uncle Jim says he's sure you will let me go sketching with you. I wasn't coming home with the other girls until I got his letter and knew that you were here."
She said this frankly and simply, without the slightest embarrassment, and without a trace of any dialect in her speech. Jim evidently had not exaggerated her attainments. She had, too, unconsciously to herself, solved one of the mysteries that surrounded me. If Jim was her uncle it must be on her mother's side; it certainly could not be on Marvin's.
"And I'm glad, too," I replied. "Of course you shall go, and Jim tells me also that you are as good a woodsman as he is. And so Jim's your uncle, is he? He never told me that."
"Oh, no," she answered quickly, with a little deprecatory air. "He isn't myrealuncle. He's just Jim, but I've always called him Uncle Jim ever since I was a little girl. And I love him dearly; don't I, Uncle Jim?" and she turned toward him as he entered the door carrying her bundle, followed by her father with the kerosene lamp, Marvin having brought it out to help Jim unload the buck-board.
"That's what ye allus says, baby-girl," answered Jim, "so I got to believe it. And if I didn't, there wouldn't be no use o' livin'—not a mite." There was a vibrating tenderness in the man's voice, and an indescribable pathos in its tone, as he spoke, that caused me instinctively to turn my head and look into his face.
The light shone full upon it—so full and direct that there were no shadows anywhere. Whether it was because of the lamp's direct rays or because of his long ride in the crisp November air, I could not decide, but certain it was that Jim's face was without a wrinkle, and that he looked twenty years younger. Even the hard, drawn lines about his mouth and nose had disappeared.
With the light of the lamp came another revelation. While the girl's cheap woollen dress and jacket, of a pattern sold in the country stores, showed her to be the product of Marvin's home and the recipient of his scanty bounty, her trim, well-rounded figure, soft, glossy hair—now that her hat was off—and small hands and feet, classed her as one of far gentler birth. There was, too, as she passed in and out of the room helping her mother with the supper-table, a certain grace and dignity, especially in the way in which she bent her head on one side to listen, a gesture often seen in a drawing-room, but never, in my experience, in a cabin. What astonished me most, however, were her hands—her exquisitely modelled hands, still ruddy from the fresh night air, but so wonderfully curved and dimpled. And then, too, the perfect graciousness and simplicity of her manner and its absolute freedom from coquetry or self-consciousness. Her mother was right—I would not soon forget her. And yet, by what freak of Nature, I found myself continually repeating, had this flower been made to bloom on this soil? Through what ancestor's veins had this blood trickled, and through what channels had it reached these humble occupants of a forest home?
But if her mother was the happier for her coming, Jim, radiant with joy, seemed to walk on air. His head was up, his arms were swinging free, and there was a lightness and spring in his movements that made me forget the grotesqueness of his gait. Nor, as the days went by, did this buoyant happiness ever fail him. He and Ruby were inseparable from the time she opened the rude door of her bedroom in the morning until she bade us all good-night and carried with her all the light and charm and joyousness of the day. The camping-out, I may as well state, had been given up as soon as I had mentioned it, she saying to me with a little start, as if frightened at the proposition, that she thought she'd better stay home and help her mother. Then, seeing Jim's face fall, she added, "But we can be off all day, can't we?"
And Jim answered that it was all right, just as Ruby said—that we would go fishing instead, and that he had spotted an old trout that lived in a hole down the East Branch that he'd been saving for her, and that he had tied the day before the "very fly that will fix him"—all of which was true, for Ruby landed him the next day with all the skill of a professional, besides a dozen smaller ones whose haunts Jim knew.
And so the weeks flew by, Ruby tramping the forest daily between us or sitting beside me as I painted, noting every stroke of my brush and asking me innumerable questions as to the choice of colors and the mixing of the tints. At other times she would ply me with questions, making me tell her of the things I had seen abroad and of the cities and peoples she had read of; or she would talk of the books she had studied, and of others she wanted to read. Jim would listen eagerly, with a certain pride in his eyes that she knew so much and could talk so well, and when we were alone he would comment on it:
"Nearly catched ye, didn't she? I see once or twice ye were stumped clean out o' yer boots on them questions she fired. How her little head holds it all is what bothers me. But I always knowed how it would be; I told the old man so ten year ago. Ain't one o' 'em 'raound here kin touch her."
At night, under the kerosene lamp in the cabin, she would ask me to read aloud, she looking up into my face and drinking in every word, the others listening, Jim watching every expression that crossed her face.
Dear old Jim! I still see your tender, shrinking eyes peering at her from under your bushy eyebrows and still hear the low ripple of your merry laugh over her volleys of questions. You were so proud of her and so happy in those days! So tender in touch, so gentle of voice, so constant in care!
One morning I had some letters to write, and Ruby and Jim took the rods and went up the brook without me. They both begged me to go, Ruby being particularly urgent, I thought, but I had already delayed the mail too long and so refused point-blank—too abruptly, perhaps, as I thought afterward, when I remembered the keen look of disappointment in her face. When she re-entered the cabin alone an hour later she passed me hurriedly, and calling out to her father that Jim was wanted at the sawmill to fix the wheel and would not be back until morning, shut herself into her room before I could offer myself in Jim's place—which I would gladly have done, now that her morning's pleasure had been spoiled.
When she joined us at supper—she had kept her room all day—I saw that her eyes were red, as if she had been crying. I knew then that I had offended her.
"Ruby, I really couldn't go," I said. "You don't feel cross about it, do you?"
"Oh, no," she answered, with some earnestness. "And I knew you were busy."
"And about Jim—what's the matter with the wheel?" I asked, greatly relieved at the discovery that whatever troubled her, my staying at home had not caused it.
"One of the buckets is broken—Uncle Jim always fixes it," and she turned her head away to hide her tears.
"Is Jim a carpenter, too?" I asked, with a smile.
"Why, yes," she replied. "Didn't you know that? They often send for him to fix the mill. There's no one else about here who can." And she changed the conversation and began talking of the beauty of that part of the brook where they had been to fish, and of the rich brown tint of the water in the pools, and how lovely the red sumachs were reflected in their depths.
The next morning, and without any previous warning, Ruby appeared in her cloth dress and jacket and announced her intention of taking the stage back to Plymouth, adding that as Jim had not returned, Marvin must drive her over to the cross-roads. I offered my services, but she declined them graciously but firmly, bidding me good-by and saying with one of her earnest looks, as she held my hand in hers, that she should never forget my kindness to Jim, and that she would always remember me for what I had done for him, and then she added with peculiar tenderness:
"And dear Uncle Jim won't forget you, either."
And so she had gone, and with her had faded all the light and joyousness of the place.
When Jim returned the next day I was at work in the pasture painting a group of white birches. I hallooed to him as he shambled along within a hundred yards of me, swinging his arms, but he did not answer except to turn his head.
That night at table he replied to my questions in monosyllables, explaining his not stopping when I had called in the morning by saying that he didn't want to "'sturb me," and when I laughed and told him—using his own words—that Ruby "wouldn't pass a fellow and give him the dead, cold shake," he pushed back his chair with a sudden impatient gesture, said he had forgotten something, and left the table without a word or look in reply.
I knew then that I had hurt him in some way.
"What's the matter with Jim, Mr. Marvin? He seems put out about something. Did he say anything to you?" I asked, astonished at Jim's behavior, and anxious for some clew by which to solve its mystery.
"Got one o' his spells on. Gits that way sometimes, and when he does ye can't git no good out o' him. I want them turnips dug, and he's got to do it or git out. I ain't hired him to loaf 'round all day with Ruby and to sulk when she's gone. I'm a-payin' him wages right along, ain't I?" he added with some fierceness as he stopped at the door. "What he gits for fixin' the mill ain't nothin' to me—I don't git a cent on it."
III
When the morning came and Jim had not returned I started for the mill. I found him alone, sitting idly on a bench near the water-wheel. I had heard the hum of the saw before I reached the dam and knew that he had finished his work.
"Jim," I said, walking up to him and extending my hand, "if I have done anything to hurt your feelings, I'm sorry. If I had known you would have been put out by my not going with Ruby I would have let the mail wait."
He took my hand mechanically, but he did not raise his eyes. The old look had returned to his face, as if he were afraid of some sudden blow. "I did all I could to make Ruby's visit a happy one—don't you know I did?" I continued.
He leaned forward, his elbows resting on his knees, his eyes still on the ground. There was something infinitely pathetic in the attitude. "Ye ain't done nothin' to me," he answered, slowly, "and ye ain't done nothin' to Ruby. I cottoned to ye fust time I see ye, and so did Ruby, and we still do. It ain't that."
"Well, what is it, then? Why have you kept away from me?"
He arose wearily until his whole length was erect, hooked his long arms behind his back, and began walking up and down the platform. He was no longer my comrade of the woods. The spring and buoyancy of his step had gone out of him. He seemed shrivelled and bent, as if some sudden weakness had overcome him. His face was white and drawn, and the eyelids drooped, as if he had not slept.
At the second turn he stopped, gazed abstractedly at the boards under his feet, as a man sometimes does when his mind is on other things. Mechanically he stooped to pick up a small iron nut that had slipped from one of the bolts used in repairing the wheel, and in the same abstracted way, still ignoring me, raised it to his eye, looked through the hole for a moment, and then tossed it into the dam. The splash of the iron striking the water frightened a bird, which arose in the air, sang a clear, sweet note, and disappeared in the bushes on the opposite bank. Jim started, turned his head quickly, following the flight of the bird, and sank slowly back upon the bench, his face in his hands.