Part 7

Ivan slunk off behind the station, head down and the old stoop to his shoulders. He had eaten no dinner and his head reeled. Stumbling into the general store close to the station, he bought a hunk of cheese and a small loaf, and going down the road a short way, he climbed up the wooded bank and finding some soft moss, threw himself down and whittling his bread and cheese into mouthfuls, ate from necessity rather than with relish, for all of a sudden he felt strangely and intensely weary. A little nap could do no harm, so coat under head, Ivan fell soddenly asleep, like the wayfarer he had once been.

* * * * *

The six-thirty train came slowly into the Glen station, for it was both long and heavy with freight cars, a single combination passenger and baggage car being at the very end. This same halted far below the station, where the water-tank made a barrier between the railroad ground and the open fields.

Slowly four clumsy, heavy-laden figures in petticoats crawled down the high steps, assisting a little boy in curious trousers, while a good-natured brakeman helped to steady and replace the various bundles that were fastened to head and shoulders. As they huddled together, straightening their garments and belongings, the whistle blew three times shrilly, and the train creaked and moved heavily on.

Is there any stillness more intense than that which closes around the countryside after the bustle of a train has ceased? The evensong of the birds and the peeping frogs only serve to deepen silence from the purely human standpoint.

The heads of the three elder women were covered by kerchiefs, the little girl was bareheaded, and the boy wore an odd cap, but all alike had an expression of fatigue and resigned anxiety. The elder woman must have been pretty once, but her face was lined and thin with toil and poor feeding, while the other woman, of twenty perhaps, was round-eyed and plump.

“Where is he, Maria? Where is Ivan my brother? He leaves us here alone in a strange place at nightfall?” she asked in her foreign tongue. “I can see no houses, it is like a green desert.”

“Perhaps it is Siberia, then!” said the girl of twelve, with a shiver.

“Hush,” said Maria, “thy father has not forgotten us in all these years, he will not now,” but nevertheless dread was creeping over her, and she raised her hands nervously to loose the band that bound the bundle to her forehead.

“I’m hungry and I want to go to sleep,” piped the little boy, and crouching toward him on the bare ground his mother strove to comfort him.

* * * * *

Ivan slept like one dead, until a shrill whistling sound waked him with a start, and reading the time by the shadows that had not only lengthened, but were vanishing, he rolled to his feet, and half slid, half stumbled down to the road, across the head of which the evening train was moving.

Pulling on his coat, he tried to run, but his feet, numb with inaction, refused to do more than walk. Would he ever reach the station?

At last he felt the boards under his feet, but the long platform was empty, and the station master was setting his night light and preparing to leave. “No, there had been no passengers on the evening train,” he answered curtly, wondering if this wild-eyed man who had been there thrice in one day was a bit out of his head.

For the third time Ivan was about to turn away, when something fluttering far down by the water-tank caught his eye, and as he stared the forlorn group came into view, walking slowly up the track. Another moment, suspense was over, and they stood facing one another.

“Maria and all.”

“Ivan.”

Then at last the women began to cry softly, and Ivan with wet cheeks ran from one to the other, untying the burdens that bound head and throat, and that never more should choke them.

Halting suddenly, Ivan gasped, “But where is Paul, my baby?”

Then Maria laughed in earnest. “This is Paul, a well-grown boy; he has not been a baby these seven years. Have you lost count of time, Ivan, my friend?”

And truly, he had, and flushed when he thought of the little one he had expected to fondle, and the jingling toy at home, and with the knowledge came a certain tinge of disappointment.

Then was the procession formed for the homeward march, Ivan heaped high with the bedding; but they had gone but a few yards when a team, rumbling up from behind, came to a halt, and a jolly voice called, “Hi, Ivan, I think your people had better have a ride.”

Turning, he saw Peter Salop, who was driving his ice wagon, newly painted, with white canopy, red wheels, and blue body, home from the shop.

“It is the master,” Ivan whispered, and the group stood with bent heads, hardly daring to look at the magnificence.

Climbing in, the children’s tongues loosened among themselves. “At home, the master flogs us with a whip, sometimes, if he meets us on the roads,” murmured ’Tiana, “but here in this new country he takes us to ride in his beautiful chariot.”

Once at the house, Ivan and Maria wandered through the rooms, hand in hand, smiling shyly, and then laughing with pleasure. As Maria stopped before the little mirror to unwrap her head and set the hair-pins, Ivan snatched up the jingling toy and thrust it in the mantel closet, for somehow it wounded him to think of his mistake. But Maria cautioned him not to break it, saying: “It may be useful yet, who knows? Ah, who knows anything?”

Then leading her about the yard, her eyes rested on the sprouting wheat field and again tears filled them. “What is it that speaks, Ivan, my friend?” she asked.

“Something we have left behind and wish to forget,” he answered shortly.

“Yes, but what we are glad to leave, we are more glad to find here before us,” and she laid her face against his, which was also wet, but smiling; and high above their heads shot a wild goose arrow.

“What is that?” asked Maria, pointing.

“It is a sign of spring, and a good omen of birds,” Ivan answered.

V TREE OF LIFE

=MAY=—THE PLANTING MOON

One day, Evan and I played _make believe_ and went a-Maying. This was not very long ago, yet in those days, high-road and byways were divided between horse and man only and therefore were our own, while we jogged along plucking at the branches and trailers that we passed, letting the horses browse, reins upon neck without risk of danger.

The _make believe_ was that we were a couple of carefree children playing at going on a journey to seek the Tree of Life, which, should we chance to find in blossom and walk in its shadow, would enable us to live as long as we wished. This had been one of my childhood’s plays, a hybrid born of Genesis and Pilgrim’s Progress, belonging to days spent alone in the garden when father had gone a day’s journey to see some patients over the hills, and Aunt Lot was immersed in preserves and forgot me. Blissful forgetfulness of children by their elders that is one of the gates to wonderland!

We took the idea as a motive for _make believe_, and if one plays at being a child, one must complete the game, turn loose the overworked horses of every day, Proof and Reason, and harness in their places Instinct and Belief, steeds who may be trusted to know the straightest road to happiness. As to the Maying part, that is a play also, and, at least in the New England country, a game of chance if you do not know the moves, but an ecstasy if the combinations fall right.

The Red Men waited for the May Moon to wax full and the truce flowers of the white dogwood to signal frost’s surrender from the wood edges before they planted their maize. We wait for the first blooming of an apple tree to tell us that the springtide is at its height. Not one of the opulent, well-fed orchard trees, having all the advantages of a protected location, but a wayside, ungrafted scion of the old orchard standing alone in a field, on the north side of the spruce wind break. We called this tree “the Messenger.” It is the bearer of inconsequent fruit akin to the wild, but in May it is garlanded with firm-fleshed, deep rose-hued blossoms. When this tree opens its buds, we know that its kindred of the hill country will also be decked, and it is our time to go forth, for here the Maying is the festival of the Apple Blossoms, and the blushing snow of it veils the grim gray hills, and brocades the silken emerald of the grassy lowlands every May as completely as the gold and purple of golden-rod and aster mantle the land in autumn.

People make journeys to the Orient to see the Festival of Fruit Blossoms, where many of the trees enclosed in gardens are shown with suggestion both of art and artifice; all this is deemed wonderful because it is far away. Distance promises change, and change is seemingly the key-note of current life. Perpetuity was the ambition of our forbears, else we should not be here. Yet when the near-by holds a Festival of Apple Blossoms reaching from our doors to the horizon line that travels before us, when we try to reach it, do we make a national event of it? Who goes out? Who sees? The reeds shaking in the wind, perhaps; the bluebirds that nest in the hollow tree trunks; the flaming orioles that, grown wanton with spring joy, rifle the honeyed blossoms; but people, where are they? No parties of school children playing in the abandoned orchards, no others sauntering along the highways like ourselves. For the twenty years that we have gone up through the hill country for this Maying, we have never met any others bent upon the same errand. So we call this festival our own, and as we stray along, we conjure up companions from the past to bear us company; the people who planted the orchards that still remain and blossom through all the neglect and moss that Time has dropped upon them.

Each year, though we traverse mainly the same roads, by some fashion we always come upon some place or sign that has before escaped us, though rarely anything that brings past and present together as happened on the day that we played _make believe_ and set out to find the Tree of Life.

* * * * *

After we left Oaklands and the Bluffs behind, and dipped into the valley north of Hemlock hill, we began to look for signs and symptoms; for in this country, one can never tell what a winter may bring forth, what tottering chimneys may have collapsed into a stone heap, or piece of primal woodland disappear into the maw of a travelling saw-mill to emerge in form of railway ties. Yes, the overshot water-wheel had disappeared from the Mill in the cedar woods, and the back of the lilac house on the hilltop overlooking the Moosatuck was broken, though the giant lilac bushes that hedged it seemed striving to hide its crippled state.

Here was our first stop. I love to sit on that which was a door-stone; well-sweep on one side, wood-shed on the other, across the road the skeleton of the oak-timbered barn where the rays of sunlight and swallows in intimate kinship, shoot in and out through chinks and knot-holes. Before me, the old orchard sloping downhill to the bush-screened Moosatuck, tall flowering ferns, the cinnamon and royal blending with spreading brakes to hide the tumble-down stone-walls. Then only to close the eyes and think backward, and the people come; only do not think too far. I do not care, even in make believe, for the company of the Indians, the stone heads of whose arrows are scattered through the valley. They were no kin of mine; they left no trace, neither making the world happier or more fruitful.

* * * * *

In the apple orchards runs the blood of our race, the blood of the sweat and toil of our pioneer forefathers; all these old orchards are peopled, for those who have the eyes to see, and so there is no loneliness for us in this silent hill country.

The ancients had it that every child was born under the influence of a particular star; a more spiritual age, that each child has its guardian angel. I have always believed that my particular guardian is a tree, and that one an apple, for this was the first tree that I remember lying under and looking up through the flower-laden branches at the sky, as mother sat upon the round seat that encircled the big trunk, the great fragrant Russian violets growing at her feet.

The first two birds I learned to call by name lived in that apple tree,—a robin who had saddled his untidy nest of mud and straws on a drooping branch, and a pair of purling bluebirds, who lived in a little hole where a broken limb had let in the rain and consequently decay followed,—while my first remembrance of being hurt was when a heavy Baldwin apple fell from the tip-top of the tree and bumped me on the forehead. As I grew up and left dolls behind, my kinship with the tree grew more material,—four apples and a book, to be taken at regular intervals in the depths of the big leather chair in father’s study, being my formula for comfort on a rainy Autumn afternoon.

* * * * *

When we had looked and dreamed our fill, we turned into one of the meandering cross-roads that traverse Lonetown converging toward Pine Ridge, to crawl slowly upward to our watch-tower. This is the place of all others in our haunts for looking down upon the country as if mirrored in a pool or seen as mirage—Tuck Hill in May time, and there is nothing more to be desired! Evan and I crouched on the summit in the shelter of an old tree, still brave with blossoms though the trunk had fallen forward as if on its knees, and gazed our fill.

For days after, I felt the rush of the wind through my hair, for at this spot the wind of the hills meets the breath of the salt-water. Below, two rivers, that give the hill its name, shot their silvery arrows through the overhanging foliage; Tuck being an Indian term for river, as Moosa_tuck_, Aspe_tuck_.

No Druids crowned with oak leaves, or men of myth and marvel, came to us there, such as Puck could conjure from his charmed British hill home; only pictures of the simple settlers who planted their dwellings in the wilderness near ways that are remote even now from the pulse of things. These humble settlers dared and suffered and won out in spirit unconquerable; and though people and homes have vanished without written history, yet God in Nature has made record of them. Far and near throughout the land the festival of Apple Blossoms is celebrating them in the orchards, some still vigorous in age, and others all of gnarled trees that are leaning slowly earthward, as though making ready to fall to final sleep. Again others, young limbed and smooth of bark, unlicensed gypsy scions of the old race, often bitter of fruit, and yet sometimes chancing to bring forth a blend incomparable. These striplings, that wandered from the parent close, had ventured in stony pastures, sought shelter in wood edges, and followed the watercourses, and one and all seemed to whisper to the winds that bore their vital pollen, “Yes, they are all gone who planted us, but we try to shift for ourselves and live forever, for we cannot forget our mother, the Tree that stood in the midst of the First Garden!”

All these things I said half aloud, ending with the query, “Why has no one hereabout planted an orchard for thirty years at least?”

“You are forgetting that we are playing make believe,” muttered Evan, who had been lying so still that I thought he must be trying to ‘hear the grass grow,’ which is the outdoor man’s cover for sleep.

“If we are children, we mustn’t preach or think about why the orchards are running out or why no one plants apple trees,” he continued. “Children never look behind or before, but make a whole lifetime of a single happy day, and it’s because people nowadays are like restless children that they do not plant orchards; what do they care for the future; it seems too long before the fruiting time; they want a quicker crop.”

“Who is talking a sermon?” I cried. “Come down through that lane where we tied the horses; it’s full of dogwood and pinxter flowers; we will fill the chaise and bury ourselves in them; being children, it does not matter if they fade by noon so that we can gather more,” and then we wandered down and on, choosing the pleasantest ways, and letting the horses lead so long as we kept due north, or fancied we did.

* * * * *

“We should cross the Ridge before noon,” said Evan, after we had driven for many miles without keeping track of time. “I wonder if there is a short cut: here is a green lane that runs in the right direction, but it has a gate to it, and may either be a pent road or a private way.” Strangely enough, the old gray horses turned toward the gate, nosed it, and whinnied in unison.

“See the wild fruit trees and bushes that hedge it,” I cried; “apples, cherries, a peach or two, tall blackberries; I wonder if there ever was a garden in this corner? There are all the signs, the lilac bushes, stones that might have been a chimney, and there are new horse tracks in the turf, and colts pasturing yonder in that field. The way is pretty enough to lead to the land of Forbidden Fruit, and we may find the Tree of Life we are looking for at the end. Do let us go in; as we are only children, no one will have the heart to scold us if we should find ourselves in some one’s yard.” So Evan opened the gate, which was made of rough-sawn chestnut boards, and followed rather than led the horses along the way, for the trees closed low above our heads and shut out the distance.

In a glimpse across the fields we saw the tower and broken outlines of a little church.

“That’s not Pine Ridge Church!” exclaimed Evan, stopping short. “The Ridge Church has a pointed steeple, and that is”—“A Christopher Wren box,” I said, the name by which Evan had once designated that particular style of architecture with a tower top that looks like a turned-over table, legs pointing skyward.

“Where are we, Barbara? You were born in this country, not I; this lane seems to be leading us due west, and I’m getting hungry, a natural feeling for a child.”

“I do not know,” I confessed; “there is a place back of Banbury somewhere in this direction called Fool’s Hill because of its cross-purpose roads, where father once had a patient, but I’ve never been there. Wherever we are, we can stop for lunch at the first flat rock that we see.”

Still another sweep of lane and the sound of running water. The horses pricked up their ears and whinnied again, and their call, evidently of interrogation, was answered. Suddenly we emerged from the trees into an open space; a rushing brook crossed the meadow, and was itself crossed by a railed bridge of logs and wide chestnut planks.

“Why didn’t I think to bring my trout pole,” sighed Evan.

“It’s not at all necessary; I can supply a bent pin, and boys always have string in their pockets; while you cut a hickory pole, I will dig for worms with one of these tin spoons; Martha never gives us anything but tin when we go a-Maying.”

Evan looked about as though inclined to accept my offer, and then he stood transfixed, pointing toward a tree on the other side of the river we were preparing to cross; it was a slender white birch that leaned out over the water as if keeping watch, both up and down stream, while its pointed, silver-lined leaves trembled and tittered as it swayed. Halfway up the trunk was a small board that said in unmistakable letters,—“_No hunting, fishing, or trespassing—by request of Father Adam._”

I pinched myself to see if I were awake, and I believe that Evan did the same, though he would not acknowledge it. Now, indeed, had _make believe_ come true. “Why?” I began, but Evan promptly replied, “Why not?” Hearing a rustling among the bushes, I half expected the bodiless head of the Cheshire cat to appear, but instead there stood a tall man with a strong, smooth-shaven, sunburned face capped with curling white hair, and dark eyes that, though their flash could be seen even across stream, had a genial sort of twinkle at their corners. Save that he was coatless, his clothes were neat almost to precision, even to a clean linen collar turned down over a loose black tie, something unusual in any part of the hill country.

Then Evan spied the man, who stood gazing at us more in amazement than anger. “We were looking for something quite different when we saw your sign,” said Evan, awkwardly, “and now we’ll go away as soon as I can turn the horses.”

“Are you Father Adam?” I asked.

“That is what people call me,” he answered; “and who are you, and what are you trying to find?” This time his gaze took a sweep that included not only ourselves but the horses and the chaise, which we had forgotten was decked like a bower.

“We? Oh, we are only two children out a-Maying,” I said, the spirit of make believe taking complete possession, “and we are searching for the Tree of Life, so that we may pass under its branches and live as long as we choose. Do you know where we might find it?”

“Yes; it grows up yonder in the midst of my orchard. How did I come by it? Ah, that is a story that I only tell those who promise to believe it. Now it is my turn to ask questions,” said Father Adam. “Where did you get those horses?”

“We borrowed them from father, who is Dr. Russell and lives down at Oaklands.”

“So then you are _his_ daughter; well, I know that you are telling the truth, for I sold him those gray colts, as they were then, sixteen years ago.”

“They whinnied when we turned in the gate, and rather led us on; can horses remember a place for sixteen years?”

“Yes, and longer if it is the home where they were foaled; but the time has been broken, for the doctor has chanced in every few years.”

Then I began to wonder about this man’s age, who spoke of a few years as if they were but days; was he fifty, or seventy, which?

“Come, let us go up into the cleared land, and I will show you the tree and tell you its story,” said Father Adam, as he took Gray Tom by the bit to lead him, the horse nosing and nibbling at his hand familiarly.

“Is it far?” asked Evan; “because if it is, I think we’d better eat our luncheon first; children always listen better when they’re not hungry.” Something in the tone made Father Adam laugh, and a different expression took possession of his features, as though at first he had doubts as to our entire sanity which were now removed.

“It’s only a few hundred yards, and if those who only pass under the shadow of the tree may have their wish, how much more will happen to those who eat bread beneath it!”

So we two followed him hand in hand, over the bridge and through another bit of lane, and then a vision of peace broke upon our sight,—a green hill sloping upward to a group of elms that shaded a low, rambling house, on one side of which was a bit of garden gay with tulips, bleeding hearts, and columbine, flanked by rows of beehives, tilled fields showing beyond. But it was the right slope that held the eyes; row upon row the apple trees, in first full maturity, made endless aisles into green space—aisles so wide that we traversed them side by side and yet had room to spare.

Then, again, we came upon an open, a square court of grass, and in the centre an apple tree such as I had never seen before,—tall, with two main trunks, high-branched, straight and spreading at the top, elm fashion, half was covered with dazzling white flowers, the other half with pink, after the pattern of a florist’s formal bouquet.

“Sit ye down there,” said Father Adam, “and hear my story. Will I eat with ye? Well, I’ll break a bit of bread for company, for I dined at noon, and it’s now past two.” While he was speaking, the man had slipped the harness from the horses and left them to graze and roll at will.