Chapter 10

"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 the _volante_ of 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. "He _is_ ornery, 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 my _real_ uncle. 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?"