Chapter 2

“I always said 't was she that begun on Rube Hobson, not him on her,” remarked the Widow Buzzell. “Their land joinin' made courtin' come dretful handy. His critters used to git in her field 'bout every other day (I always suspicioned she broke the fence down herself), and then she'd hev to go over and git him to drive 'em out. She's wed his onion bed for him two summers, as I happen to know, for I've been ou' doors more 'n common this summer, tryin' to fetch my constitution up. Diademy, don't you want to look out the back way 'n' see if Rube's come home yet?”

“He ain't,” said old Mrs. Bascom, “so you needn't look; can't you see the curtains is all down? He's gone up to the Mills, 'n' it's my opinion he's gone to speak to the minister.”

“He hed somethin' in the back o' the wagon covered up with an old linen lap robe; 't ain't at all likely he 'd 'a' hed that if he'd ben goin' to the minister's,” objected Mrs. Jot.

“Anybody'd think you was born yesterday, to hear you talk, Diademy,” retorted her mother-in-law. “When you 've set in one spot's long's I hev, p'raps you'll hev the use o' your faculties! Men folks has more 'n one way o' gettin' married, 'specially when they 're ashamed of it. ... Well, I vow, there's the little Hobson girls comin' out o' the door this minute, 'n' they 're all dressed up, and Mote don't seem to be with 'em.”

Every woman in the room rose to her feet, and Diadema removed her murderous eye from a fly which she had been endeavoring to locate for some moments.

“I guess they 're goin' up to the church to meet their father 'n' Eunice, poor little things,” ventured the Widow Buzzell.

“P'raps they be,” said old Mrs. Bascom sarcastically; “p'raps they be goin' to church, takin' a three-quart tin pail 'n' a brown paper bundle along with 'em. ... They 're comin' over the bridge, just as I s'posed. ... Now, if they come past this house, you head 'em off, Almiry, 'n' see if you can git some satisfaction out of 'em. ... They ain't hardly old enough to hold their tongues.”

An exciting interview soon took place in the middle of the road, and Almira reentered the room with the expression of one who had penetrated the inscrutable and solved the riddle of the Sphinx. She had been vouch-safed one of those gleams of light in darkness which almost dazzle the beholder.

“That's about the confirmingest thing I've heern yet!” she ejaculated, as she took off her shaker bonnet. “They say they're goin' up to their aunt Hitty's to stay two days. They're dressed in their best, clean to the skin, for I looked; 'n' it's their night gownds they've got in the bundle. They say little Mote has gone to Union to stop all night with his uncle Abijah, 'n' that leaves Rube all alone, for the smith girl that does his chores is home sick with the hives. And what do you s'pose is in the pail? _Fruit_ _cake_,--that's what 't is, no more 'n' no less! I knowed that Smith girl didn't bake it, 'n' so I asked 'em, 'n' they said Miss Emery give it to 'em. There was two little round try-cakes, baked in muffin-rings. Eunice hed took some o' the batter out of a big loaf 'n' baked it to se how it was goin' to turn out. That means wedding-cake, or I'm mistaken!”

“There ain't no gittin' round that,” agreed the assembled company, “now is there, Mis' Bascom?”

Old Mrs. Bascom wet her finger, smoothed the parting of her false front, and looked inscrutable.

“I don't see why you're so secret,” objected Diadema.

“I've got my opinions, and I've had 'em some time,” observed the good lady. “I don't know 's I'm bound to tell 'em and have 'em held up to ridicule. Let the veal hang, I say. If any one of us is right, we'll all know to-morrow.”

“Well, all any of us has got to judge from is appearances,” said Diadema, “and how you can twist 'em one way, and us another, stumps me!”

“Perhaps I see more appearances than you do,” retorted her mother-in-law. “Some folks mistakes all they see for all there is. I was reading a detective story last week. It seems there was an awful murder in Schenectady, and a mother and her two children was found dead in one bed, with bullet holes in their heads. The husband was away on business, and there wasn't any near neighbors to hear her screech. Well, the detectives come from far and from near, and begun to work up the case. One of 'em thought 't was the husband,--though he set such store by his wife he went ravin' crazy when he heard she was dead,--one of 'em laid it on the children,--though they was both under six years old; and one decided it was suicide,--though the woman was a church member and didn't know how to fire a gun off, besides. And then there come along a detective younger and smarter than all the rest, and says he, 'If all you bats have seen everything you can see, I guess I'll take a look around,' says he. Sure enough, there was a rug with 'Welcome' on it layin' in front of the washstand, and when he turned it up he found an elegant diamond stud with a man's full name and address on the gold part. He took a train and went right to the man's house. He was so taken by surprise (he hadn't missed the stud, for he had a full set of 'em) that he owned right up and confessed the murder.”

“I don't see as that's got anything to do with this case,” said Diadema.

“It's got this much to do with it,” replied old Mrs. Bascom, “that perhaps you've looked all round the room and seen everything you had eyes to see, and perhaps I've had wit enough to turn up the rug in front o' the washstand.”

“Whoever he marries now, Mis' Bascom'll have to say 't was the one she meant,” laughed the Widow Buzzell.

“I never was caught cheatin' yet, and if I live till Saturday I shall be seventy-one years old,” said the old lady with some heat. “Hand me Jot's lead pencil, Diademy, and that old envelope on the winder sill. I'll write the name I think of, and shut it up in the old Bible. My hand's so stiff to-day I can't hardly move it, but I guess I can make it plain enough to satisfy you.”

“That's fair 'n' square,” said Hannah Sophia, “and for my pat I hope it ain't Eunice, for I like her too well. What they're goin' to live on is more 'n I can see. Add nothin' to nothin' 'n' you git nothin',--that's arethmetic! He ain't hed a cent o' ready money sence he failed up four years ago, 'thout it was that hundred dollars that fell to him from his wife's aunt. Eunice'll hev her hands full this winter, I guess, with them three hearty children 'n' him all wheezed up with phthisic from October to April!... Who's that coming' down Tory Hill? It's Rube's horse 'n' Rube's wagon, but it don't look like Rube.”

“Yes, it's Rube; but he's got a new Panama hat, 'n' he 's hed his linen duster washed,” said old Mrs. Bascom. ... “Now, do you mean to tell me that that woman with a stuck-up hat on is Eunice Emery? It ain't, 'n' that green parasol don't belong to this village. He's drivin' her into his yard!... Just as I s'posed, it's that little, smirkin' worthless school-teacher up to the Mills.--Don't break my neck, Diademy; can't you see out the other winder?--Yes, he's helpin' her out, 'n' showin' her in. He can't 'a' ben married more'n ten minutes, for he's goin' clear up the steps to open the door for her!”

“Wait 'n' see if he takes his horse out,” said Hannah Sophia. “Mebbe he'll drive her back in a few minutes. ... No, he's onhitched! ... There, he's hangin' up the head-stall!”

“I've ben up in the attic chamber,” called the Widow Buzzell, as she descended the stairs; “she's pulled up the curtains, and took off her hat right in front o' the winder, 's bold as a brass kettle! She's come to stay! Ain't that Rube Hobson all over,--to bring another woman int' this village 'stid o' weedin' one of 'em out as he'd oughter. He ain't got any more public sperit than a--hedgehog, 'n' never had!”

Almira drew on her mitts excitedly, tied on her shaker, and started for the door.

“I'm goin' over to Eunice's,” she said, “and I'm goin' to take my bottle of camphire. I shouldn't wonder a mite if I found her in a dead faint on the kitchen floor. Nobody need tell me she wa'n't buildin' hopes.”

“I'll go with you,” said the Widow Buzzell. “I'd like to see with my own eyes how she takes it, 'n' it'll be too late to tell if I wait till after supper. If she'd ben more open with me 'n' ever asked for my advice, I could 'a' told her it wa'n't the first time Rube Hobson has played that trick.”

“I'd come too if 't wa'n't milkin' but Jot ain't home from the Centre, and I've got to do his chores; come in as you go along back, will you?” asked Diadema.

Hannah Sophia remained behind, promising to meet them at the post-office and hear the news. As the two women walked down the hill she drew the old envelope from the Bible and read the wavering words scrawled upon it in old Mrs. Bascom's rheumatic and uncertain hand,--

_the_ _milikins_ _Mills_ _Teecher._

“Well Lucindy, you do make good use o' your winder,” she exclaimed, “but how you pitched on anything so onlikely as her is more'n I can see.”

“Just because 't was onlikely. A man's a great sight likelier to do an onlikely thing than he is a likely one, when it comes to marryin'. In the first place, Rube sent his children to school up to the Mills 'stid of to the brick schoolhouse, though he had to pay a little something to get 'em taken in to another deestrick. They used to come down at night with their hands full o' 'ward o' merit cards. Do you s'pose I thought they got 'em for good behavior, or for knowin' their lessons? Then aunt Hitty told me some question or other Rube had asked examination day. Since when has Rube Hobson 'tended examinations, thinks I. And when I see the girl, a red-and-white paper doll that wouldn't know whether to move the churn-dasher up 'n' down or round 'n' round, I made up my mind that bein' a man he'd take her for certain, and not his next-door neighbor of a sensible age and a house 'n' farm 'n' cow 'n' buggy!”

“Sure enough,” agreed Hannah Sophia, “though that don't account for Eunice's queer actions, 'n' the pa'cels 'n' the fruit cake.”

“When I make out a case,” observed Mrs. Bascom modestly, “I ain't one to leave weak spots in it. If I guess at all, I go all over the ground 'n' stop when I git through. Now, sisters or no sisters, Maryabby Emery ain't spoke to Eunice sence she moved to Salem. But if Eunice has ben bringin' pa'cels home, Maryabby must 'a' paid for what was in 'em; and if she's ben bakin' fruit cake this hot day, why Maryabby used to be so font o' fruit cake her folks were afraid she'd have fits 'n' die. I shall be watchin' here as usual to-morrow morning', 'n' if Maryabby don't drive int' Eunice's yard before noon I won't brag any more for a year to come.”

Hannah Sophia gazed at old Mrs. Bascom with unstinted admiration. “You do beat all,” she said; “and I wish I could stay all night 'n' see how it turns out, but Almiry is just comin' over the bridge, 'n' I must start 'n' meet her. Good-by. I'm glad to see you so smart; you always look slim, but I guess you'll tough it out's long 's the rest of us. I see your log was all right, last time I was down side o' the river.”

“They say it 's jest goin' to break in two in the middle, and fall into the river,” cheerfully responded Lucinda. “They say it's just hanging' on by a thread. Well, that's what they 've ben sayin' about me these ten years, 'n' here I be still hanging! It don't make no odds, I guess, whether it's a thread or a rope you 're hangin' by, so long as you hang.”

* * *

The next morning, little Mote Hobson, who had stayed all night with his uncle in Union, was walking home by the side of the river. He strolled along, the happy, tousle-headed, barefooted youngster, eyes one moment on the trees in the hope of squirrels and birds'-nests, the next on the ground in search of the first blueberries. As he stooped to pick up a bit of shining quartz to add to the collection in his ragged trousers' pockets he glanced across the river, and at that very instant Lucinda's log broke gently in twain, rolled down the bank, crumbling as it went, and, dropping in like a tired child, was carried peacefully along on the river's breast.

Mote walked more quickly after that. It was quite a feather in his cap to see, with his own eyes, the old landmark slip from its accustomed place and float down the stream. The other boys would miss it and say, “It's gone!” He would say, “I saw it go!”

Grandpa Bascom was standing at the top of the hill. His white locks were uncovered, and he was in his shirt-sleeves. Baby Jot, as usual, held fast by his shaking hand, for they loved each other, these two. The cruel stroke of the sun that had blurred the old man's brain had spared a blessed something in him that won the healing love of children.

“How d' ye, Mote?” he piped in his feeble voice. “They say Lucindy's dead. ... Jot says she is, 'n' Diademy says she is, 'n' I guess she is. ... It 's a dretful thick year for fol'age; ... some o' the maples looks like balls in the air.”

Mote looked in at the window. The neighbors were hurrying to and fro. Diadema sat with her calico apron up to her face, sobbing; and for the first morning in thirty years, old Mrs. Bascom's high-backed rocker was empty, and there was no one sitting in the village watch-tower.

TOM O' THE BLUEB'RY PLAINS.

The sky is a shadowless blue; the noon-day sun glows fiercely; a cloud of dust rises from the burning road whenever the hot breeze stirs the air, or whenever a farm wagon creaks along, its wheels sinking into the deep sand.

In the distance, where the green of the earth joins the blue of the sky, gleams the silver line of a river.

As far as the eye an reach, the ground is covered with blueberry bushes; red leaves peeping among green ones; bloom of blue fruit hanging in full warm clusters,--spheres of velvet mellowed by summer sun, moistened with crystal dew, spiced with fragrance of woods.

In among the blueberry bushes grow huckleberries, “choky pears,” and black-snaps.

Gnarled oaks and stunted pines lift themselves out of the wilderness of shrubs. They look dwarfed and gloomy, as if Nature had been an untender mother, and denied them proper nourishment.

The road is a little-traveled one, and furrows of feathery grasses grow between the long, hot, sandy stretches of the wheel-ruts.

The first goldenrod gleams among the loose stones at the foot of the alder bushes. Whole families of pale butterflies, just out of their long sleep, perch on the brilliant stalks and tilter up and down in the sunshine.

Straggling processions of wooly brown caterpillars wend their way in the short grass by the wayside, where the wild carrot and the purple bull-thistle are coming into bloom.

The song of birds is seldom heard, and the blueberry plains are given over to silence save for the buzzing of gorged flies, the humming of bees, and the chirping of crickets that stir the drowsy air when the summer begins to wane.

It is so still that the shuffle-shuffle of a footstep can be heard in the distance, the tinkle of a tin pail swinging musically to and fro, the swish of an alder switch cropping the heads of the roadside weeds. All at once a voice breaks the stillness. Is it a child's, a woman's, or a man's? Neither yet all three.

“I'd much d'ruth-er walk in the bloom-in' gy-ar-ding, An' hear the whis-sle of the jol-ly --swain.”

Everybody knows the song, and everybody knows the cracked voice. The master of this bit of silent wilderness is coming home: it is Tom o' the blueb'ry plains.

He is more than common tall, with a sandy beard, and a mop of tangled hair straggling beneath his torn straw hat. A square of wet calico drips from under the back of the hat. His gingham shirt is open at the throat, showing his tanned neck and chest. Warm as it is, he wears portions of at least three coats on his back. His high boots, split in foot and leg, are mended and spliced and laced and tied on with bits of shingle rope. He carries a small tin pail of molasses. It has a bail of rope, and a battered cover with a knob of sticky newspaper. Over one shoulder, suspended on a crooked branch, hangs a bundle of basket stuff,--split willow withes and the like; over the other swings a decrepit, bottomless, three-legged chair.

I call him the master of the plains, but in faith he had no legal claim to the title. If he owned a habitation or had established a home on any spot in the universe, it was because no man envied him what he took; for Tom was one of God's fools, a foot-loose pilgrim in this world of ours, a poor addle-pated, simple-minded, harmless creature,--in village parlance, a “softy.”

Mother or father, sister or brother, he had none, nor ever had, so far as any one knew; but how should people who had to work from sun-up to candlelight to get the better of the climate have leisure to discover whether or no Blueb'ry Tom had any kin?

At some period in an almost forgotten past there had been a house on Tom's particular patch of the plains. It had long since tumbled into ruins and served for fire-wood and even the chimney bricks had disappeared one by one, as the monotonous seasons came and went.

Tom had settled himself in an old tool-shop, corn-house, or rude out-building of some sort that had belonged to the ruined cottage. Here he had set up his house-hold gods; and since no one else had ever wanted a home in this dreary tangle of berry bushes, where the only shade came from stunted pines that flung shriveled arms to the sky and dropped dead cones to the sterile earth, here he remained unmolested.

In the lower part of the hut he kept his basket stuff and his collection of two-legged and three-legged chairs. In the course of evolution they never sprouted another leg, those chairs; as they were given to him, so they remained. The upper floor served for his living-room, and was reached by a ladder from the ground, for there was no stairway inside.

No one had ever been in the little upper chamber. When a passer-by chanced to be-think him that Tom's hermitage was close at hand, he sometimes turned in his team by a certain clump of white birches and drove nearer to the house, intending to remind Tom that there was a chair to willow-bottom the next time he came to the village. But at the noise of the wheels Tom drew in his ladder; and when the visitor alighted and came within sight, it was to find the inhospitable host standing in the opening of the second-story window, a quaint figure framed in green branches, the ladder behind him, and on his face a kind of impenetrable dignity, as he shook his head and said, “Tom ain't ter hum; Tom's gone to Bonny Eagle.”

There was something impressive about his way of repelling callers; it was as effectual as a door slammed in the face, and yet there was a sort of mendacious courtesy about it. No one ever cared to go further; and indeed there was no mystery to tempt the curious, and no spoil to attract the mischievous or the malicious. Any one could see, without entering, the straw bed in the far corner, the beams piled deep with red and white oak acorns, the strings of dried apples and bunches of everlastings hanging from the rafters, and the half-finished baskets filled with blown bird's-eggs, pine cones, and pebbles.

No home in the village was better loved than Tom's retreat in the blueberry plains. Whenever he approached it, after a long day's tramp, when he caught the first sight of the white birches that marked the gateway to his estate and showed him where to turn off the public road into his own private grounds, he smiled a broader smile than usual, and broke into his well-known song:

“I'd much d'ruth-er walk in the bloom-in' gy-ar-ding, An' hear the whis-sle of the jol-ly --swain.”

Poor Tom could never catch the last note. He had sung the song for more than forty years, but the memory of this tone was so blurred, and his cherished ideal of it so high (or so low, rather), that he never managed to reach it.

Oh, if only summer were eternal! Who could wish a better supper than ripe berries and molasses? Nor was there need of sleeping under roof nor of lighting candles to grope his way to pallet of straw, when he might have the blue vault of heaven arching over him, and all God's stars for lamps, and for a bed a horse blanket stretched over an elastic couch of pine needles. There were two gaunt pines that had been dropping their polished spills for centuries, perhaps silently adding, year by year, another layer of aromatic springiness to poor Tom's bed. Flinging his tired body on this grateful couch, burying his head in the crushed sweet fern of his pillow with one deep-drawn sigh of pleasure,--there, haunted by no past and harassed by no future, slept God's fool as sweetly as a child.

Yes, if only summer were eternal, and youth as well!

But when the blueberries had ripened summer after summer, and the gaunt pine-trees had gone on for many years weaving poor Tom's mattress, there came a change in the aspect of things. He still made his way to the village, seeking chairs to mend; but he was even more unkempt than of old, his tall figure was bent, and his fingers trembled as he wove the willow strands in and out, and over and under.

There was little work to do, moreover, for the village had altogether retired from business, and was no longer in competition with its neighbors: the dam was torn away, the sawmills were pulled down; husbands and fathers were laid in the churchyard, sons and brothers and lovers had gone West, and mothers and widows and spinsters stayed on, each in her quiet house alone. “'T ain't no hardship when you get used to it,” said the Widow Buzzell. “Land sakes! a lantern 's 's good 's a man any time, if you only think so, 'n' 't ain't half so much trouble to keep it filled up!”

But Tom still sold a basket occasionally, and the children always gathered about him for the sake of hearing him repeat his well-worn formula,--“Tom allers puts two handles on baskets: one to take 'em up by, one to set 'em down by.” This was said with a beaming smile and a wise shake of the head, as if he were announcing a great discovery to an expectant world. And then he would lay down his burden of basket stuff, and, sitting under an apple-tree in somebody's side yard, begin his task of willow-bottoming an old chair. It was a pretty sight enough, if one could keep back the tears,--the kindly, simple fellow with the circle of children about his knees. Never a village fool without a troop of babies at his heels. They love him, too, till we teach them to mock.

When he was younger, he would sing,

“Rock-a-by, baby, on the treetop,”

and dance the while, swinging his unfinished basket to and fro for a cradle. He was too stiff in the joints for dancing nowadays, but he still sang the “bloomin' gy-ar-ding” when ever they asked him, particularly if some apple-cheeked little maid would say, “Please, Tom!” He always laughed then, and, patting the child's hand, said, “Pooty gal,--got eyes!” The youngsters dance with glee at this meaningless phrase, just as their mothers had danced years before when it was said to them.

Summer waned. In the moist places the gentian uncurled its blue fringes; purple asters and gay Joe Pye waved their colors by the roadside; tall primroses put their yellow bonnets on, and peeped over the brooks to see themselves; and the dusty pods of the milkweed were bursting with their silky fluffs, the spinning of the long summer. Autumn began to paint the maples red and the elms yellow, for the early days of September brought a frost. Some one remarked at the village store that old Blueb'ry Tom must not be suffered to stay on the plains another winter, now that he was getting so feeble,--not if the “_se_leckmen” had to root him out and take him to the poor-farm. He would surely starve or freeze, and his death would be laid at their door.