Chapter 3

Tom was interviewed. Persuasion, logic, sharp words, all failed to move him one jot or tittle. He stood in his castle door, with the ladder behind him, smiling, always smiling (none but the fool smiles always, nor always weeps), and saying to all visitors, “Tom ain't ter hum; Tom's gone to Bonny Eagle; Tom don' want to go to the poor-farm.”

November came in surly.

The cheerful stir and bustle of the harvest were over, the corn was shocked, the apples and pumpkins were gathered into barns. The problem of Tom's future was finally laid before the selectmen; and since the poor fellow's mild obstinancy had defeated all attempts to conquer it, the sheriff took the matter in hand.

The blueberry plains looked bleak and bare enough now. It had rained incessantly for days, growing ever colder and colder as it rained. The sun came out at last, but it shone in a wintry sort of way,--like a duty smile,--as if light, not heat, were its object. A keen wind blew the dead leaves hither and thither in a wild dance that had no merriment in it. A blackbird flew under an old barrel by the wayside, and, ruffling himself into a ball, remarked despondently that feathers were no sort of protection in this kind of climate. A snowbird, flying by, glanced in at the barrel, and observed that anybody who minded a little breeze like that had better join the woodcocks, who were leaving for the South by the night express.

The blueberry bushes were stripped bare of green. The stunted pines and sombre hemlocks looked in tone with the landscape now; where all was dreary they did not seem amiss.

“Je-whilikins!” exclaimed the sheriff as he drew up his coat collar. “A madhouse is the place for the man who wants to live ou'doors in the winter time; the poor-farm is too good for him.”

But Tom was used to privation, and even to suffering. “Ou'doors” was the only home he knew, and with all its rigors he loved it. He looked over the barren plains, knowing, in a dull sort of way, that they would shortly be covered with snow; but he had three coats, two of them with sleeves, and the crunch-crunch of the snow under his tread was music to his ears. Then, too, there were a few hospitable firesides where he could always warm himself; and the winter would soon be over, the birds would come again,--new birds, singing the old songs,--the sap would mount in the trees, the buds swell on the blueberry bushes, and the young ivory leaves push their ruddy tips through the softening ground. The plains were fatherland and mother-country, home and kindred, to Tom. He loved the earth that nourished him, and he saw through all the seeming death in nature the eternal miracle of the resurrection. To him winter was never cruel. He looked underneath her white mantle, saw the infant spring hidden in her warm bosom, and was content to wait. Content to wait? Content to starve, content to freeze, if only he need not be carried into captivity.

The poor-farm was not a bad place, either, if only Tom had been a reasonable being. To be sure, when Hannah Sophia Palmer asked old Mrs. Pinkham how she liked it, she answered, with a patient sigh, that “her 'n' Mr. Pinkham hed lived there goin' on nine year, workin' their fingers to the bone 'most, 'n' yet they hadn't been able to lay up a cent!” If this peculiarity of administration was its worst feature, it was certainly one that would have had no terrors for Tom o' the blueb'ry plains. Terrors of some sort, nevertheless, the poor-farm had for him; and when the sheriff's party turned in by the clump of white birches and approached the cabin, they found that fear had made the simple wise. Tom had provished the little upper chamber, and, in place of the piece of sacking that usually served him for a door in winter, he had woven a defense of willow. In fine, he had taken all his basket stuff, and, treating the opening through which he entered and left his home precisely as if it were a bottomless chair, he had filled it in solidly, weaving to and fro, by night as well as by day, till he felt, poor fool, as safely intrenched as if he were in the heart of a fortress.

The sheriff tied his horse to a tree, and Rube Hobson and Pitt Packard got out of the double wagon. Two men laughed when they saw the pathetic defense, but the other shut his lips together and caught his breath. (He had been born on a poor-farm, but no one knew it at Pleasant River.) They called Tom's name repeatedly, but no other sound broke the silence of the plains save the rustling of the wind among the dead leaves.

“Numb-head!” muttered the sheriff, pounding on the side of the cabin with his whip-stock. “Come out and show yourself! We know you're in there, and it's no use hiding!”

At last in response to a deafening blow from Rube Hobson's hard fist, there came the answering note of a weak despairing voice.

“Tom ain't ter hum,” it said; “Tom's gone to Bonny Eagle.”

“That's all right!” guffawed the men; “but you've got to go some more, and go a diff'rent way. It ain't no use fer you to hold back; we've got a ladder, and by Jiminy! you go with us this time!”

The ladder was put against the side of the hut, and Pitt Packard climbed up, took his jack-knife, slit the woven door from top to bottom, and turned back the flap.

The men could see the inside of the chamber now. They were humorous persons who could strain a joke to the snapping point, but they felt, at last, that there was nothing especially amusing in the situation. Tom was huddled in a heap on the straw bed in the far corner. The vacant smile had fled from his face, and he looked, for the first time in his life, quite distraught.

“Come along, Tom,” said the sheriff kindly; “we 're going to take you where you can sleep in a bed, and have three meals a day.”

“I'd much d'ruth-er walk in the bloom-in' gy-ar-ding,”

sang Tom quaveringly, as he hid his head in a paroxysm of fear.

“Well, there ain't no bloomin' gardings to walk in jest now, so come along and be peaceable.”

“Tom don' want to go to the poor-farm,” he wailed piteously.

But there was no alternative. They dragged him off the bed and down the ladder as gently as possible; then Rube Hobson held him on the back seat of the wagon, while the sheriff unhitched the horse. As they were on the point of starting, the captive began to wail and struggle more than ever, the burden of his plaint being a wild and tremulous plea for his pail of molasses.

“Dry up, old softy, or I'll put the buggy robe over your head!” muttered Rube Hobson, who had not had much patience when he started on the trip, and had lost it all by this time.

“By thunder! he shall hev his molasses, if he thinks he wants it!” said Pitt Packard, and he ran up the ladder and brought it down, comforting the shivering creature thus, for he lapsed into a submissive silence that lasted until the unwelcome journey was over.

Tom remained at the poorhouse precisely twelve hours. It did not enter the minds of the authorities that any one so fortunate as to be admitted into that happy haven would decline to stay there. The unwilling guest disappeared early on the morrow of his arrival, and, after some search, they followed him to the old spot. He had climbed into his beloved retreat, and, having learned nothing from experience, had mended the willow door as best he could, and laid him down in peace. They dragged him out again, and this time more impatiently; for it was exasperating to see a man (even if he were a fool) fight against a bed and three meals a day.

The second attempt was little more successful than the first. As a place of residence, the poor-farm did not seem any more desirable or attractive on near acquaintance than it did at long range. Tom remained a week, because he was kept in close confinement; but when they judged that he was weaned from his old home, they loosed his bonds, and--back to the plains he sped, like an arrow shot from the bow, or like a bit of iron leaping to the magnet.

What should be done with him?

Public opinion was divided. Some people declared that the village had done its duty, and if the “dog-goned lunk-head” wanted to starve and freeze, it was his funeral, not theirs. Others thought that the community had no resource but to bear the responsibility of its irresponsible children, however troublesome they might be. There was entire unanimity of view so far as the main issues were concerned. It was agreed that nobody at the poor-farm had leisure to stand guard over Tom night and day, and that the sheriff could not be expected to spend his time forcing him out of his hut on the blueberry plains.

There was but one more expedient to be tried, a very simple and ingenious but radical and comprehensive one, which, in Rube Hobson's opinion, would strike at the root of the matter.

Tom had fled from captivity for the third time.

He had stolen out at daybreak, and, by an unexpected stroke of fortune, the molasses pail was hanging on a nail by the shed door. The remains of a battered old bushel basket lay on the wood-pile: bottom it had none, nor handles; rotundity of side had long since disappeared, and none but its maker would have known it for a basket. Tom caught it up in his flight, and, seizing the first crooked stick that offered, he slung the dear familiar burden over his shoulder and started off on a jog-trot.

Heaven, how happy he was! It was the rosy dawn of an Indian summer day,--a warm jewel of a day, dropped into the bleak world of yesterday without a hint of beneficent intention; one of those enchanting weather surprises with which Dame Nature reconciles us to her stern New England rule.

The joy that comes of freedom, and the freedom that comes of joy, unbent the old man's stiffened joints. He renewed his youth at every mile. He ran like a lapwing. When his feet first struck the sandy soil of the plains, he broke into old song of the “bloom-in' gy-ar-ding” and the “jolly swain,” and in the marvelous mental and spiritual exhilaration born of the supreme moment he almost grasped that impossible last note. His heard could hardly hold its burden of rapture when he caught the well-known gleam of the white birches. He turned into the familiar path, boy's blood thumping in old man's veins. The past week had been a dreadful dream. A few steps more and he would be within sight, within touch of home,--home at last! No--what was wrong? He must have gone beyond it, in his reckless haste! Strange that he could have forgotten the beloved spot! Can lover mistake the way to sweetheart's window? Can child lose the path to mother's knee?

He turned,--ran hither and thither, like one distraught. A nameless dread flitted through his dull mind, chilling his warm blood, paralyzing the activity of the moment before. At last, with a sob like that of a frightened child who flies from some imagined evil lurking in darkness, he darted back to the white birches and started anew. This time he trusted to blind instinct; his feet knew the path, and, left to themselves, they took him through the tangle of dry bushes straight to his--

It had vanished!

Nothing but ashes remained to mark the spot,--nothing but ashes! And these, ere many days, the autumn winds would scatter, and the leafless branches on which they fell would shake them off lightly, never dreaming that they hid the soul of a home. Nothing but ashes!

Poor Tom o' the blueb'ry plains!

THE NOONING TREE.

The giant elm stood in the centre of the squire's fair green meadows, and was known to all the country round about as the “Bean ellum.” The other trees had seemingly retired to a respectful distance, as if they were not worthy of closer intimacy; and so it stood alone, king of the meadow, monarch of the village.

It shot from the ground for a space, straight, strong, and superb, and then bust into nine splendid branches, each a tree in itself, all growing symmetrically from the parent trunk, and casting a grateful shadow under which all the inhabitants of the tiny village might have gathered.

It was not alone its size, its beauty, its symmetry, its density of foliage, that made it the glory of the neighborhood, but the low grown of its branches and the extra-ordinary breadth of its shade. Passers-by from the adjacent towns were wont to hitch their teams by the wayside, crawl through the stump fence and walk across the fields, for a nearer view of its magnificence. One man, indeed, was known to drive by the tree every day during the summer, and lift his hat to it, respectfully, each time he passed; but he was a poet and his intellect was not greatly esteemed in the village.

The elm was almost as beautiful in one season as in another. In the spring it rose from moist fields and mellow ploughed ground, its tiny brown leaf buds bursting with pride at the thought of the loveliness coiled up inside. In summer it stood in the midst of a waving garden of buttercups and whiteweed, a towering mass of verdant leafage, a shelter from the sun and a refuge from the storm; a cool, splendid, hospitable dome, under which the weary farmer might fling himself, and gaze upward as into the heights and depths of an emerald heaven. As for the birds, they made it a fashionable summer resort, the most commodious and attractive in the whole country; with no limit to the accommodations for those of a gregarious turn of mind, liking the advantages of select society combined with country air. In the autumn it held its own; for when the other elms changed their green to duller tints, the nooning tree put on a gown of yellow, and stood out against the far background of sombre pine woods a brilliant mass of gold and brown. In winter, when there was no longer dun of upturned sod, nor waving daisy gardens, nor ruddy autumn grasses, it rose above the dazzling snow crust, lifting its bare, shapely branches in sober elegance and dignity, and seeming to say, “Do not pity me; I have been, and, please God, I shall be!”

Whenever the weather was sufficiently mild, it was used as a “nooning” tree by all the men at work in the surrounding fields; but it was in haying time that it became the favorite lunching and “bangeing” place for Squire Bean's hands and those of Miss Vilda Cummins, who owned the adjoining farm. The men congregated under the spreading branches at twelve o' the clock, and spent the noon hour there, eating and “swapping” stories, as they were doing to-day.

Each had a tin pail, and each consumed a quantity of “flour food” that kept the housewives busy at the cook stove from morning till night. A glance at Pitt Packard's luncheon, for instance, might suffice as an illustration, for, as Jabe Slocum said, “Pitt took after both his parents; one et a good deal, 'n' the other a good while.” His pail contained four doughnuts, a quarter section of pie, six buttermilk biscuits, six ginger cookies, a baked cup custard, and a quart of cold coffee. This quantity was a trifle unusual, but every man in the group was lined throughout with pie, cemented with buttermilk bread, and riveted with doughnuts.

Jabe Slocum and Brad Gibson lay extended slouchingly, their cowhide boots turned up to the sky; Dave Milliken, Steve Webster, and the others leaned back against the tree-trunk, smoking clay pipes, or hugging their knees and chewing blades of grass reflectively.

One man sat apart from the rest, gloomily puffing rings of smoke into the air. After a while he lay down in the grass with his head buried in his hat, sleeping to all appearances, while the others talked and laughed; for he had no stories, though he put in an absent-minded word or two when he was directly addressed. This was the man from Tennessee, Matt Henderson, dubbed “Dixie” for short. He was a giant fellow,--a “great gormin' critter,” Samantha Ann Milliken called him; but if he had held up his head and straightened his broad shoulders, he would have been thought a man of splendid presence.

He seemed a being from another sphere instead of from another section of the country. It was not alone the olive tint of the skin, the mass of wavy dark hair tossed back from a high forehead, the sombre eyes, and the sad mouth,--a mouth that had never grown into laughing curves through telling Yankee jokes,--it was not these that gave him what the boys called a “kind of a downcasted look.” The man from Tennessee had something more than a melancholy temperament; he had, or physiognomy was a lie, a sorrow tugging at his heart.

“I'm goin' to doze a spell,” drawled Jabe Slocum, pulling his straw hat over his eyes. “I've got to renew my strength like the eagle's, 'f I'm goin' to walk to the circus this afternoon. Wake me up, boys, when you think I'd ought to sling that scythe some more, for if I hev it on my mind I can't git a wink o' sleep.”

This was apparently a witticism; at any rate, it elicited roars of laughter.

“It's one of Jabe's useless days; he takes 'em from his great-aunt Lyddy,” said David Milliken.

“You jest dry up, Dave. Ef it took me as long to git to workin' as it did you to git a wife, I bate this hay wouldn't git mowed down to crack o' doom. Gorry! ain't this a tree! I tell you, the sun 'n' the airth, the dew 'n' the showers, 'n' the Lord God o' creation jest took holt 'n' worked together on this tree, 'n' no mistake!”

“You're right, Jabe.” (This from Steve Webster, who was absently cutting a _D_ in the bark. He was always cutting _D_'s these days.) “This ellum can't be beat in the State o' Maine, nor no other state. My brother that lives in California says that the big redwoods, big as they air, don't throw no sech shade, nor ain't so han'some, 'specially in the fall o' the year, as our State o' Maine trees; 'assiduous trees,' he called 'em.”

“_Assidyus_ trees? Why don't you talk United States while you're about it, 'n' not fire yer long-range words round here? _Assidyus!_ What does it mean, anyhow?”

“Can't prove it by me. That's what he called 'em, 'n' I never forgot it.”

“Assidyus--assidyus--it don't sound as if it meant nothing', to me.”

“Assiduous means 'busy,'” said the man from Tennessee, who had suddenly waked from a brown study, and dropped off into another as soon as he had given the definition.

“Busy, does it? Wall, I guess we ain't no better off now 'n we ever was. One tree's 'bout 's busy as another, as fur 's I can see.”

“Wall, there is kind of a meanin' in it to me, but it'sturrible far fetched,” remarked Jabe Slocum, rather sleepily. “You see, our ellums and maples 'n' all them trees spends part o' the year in buddin' 'n' gittin' out their leaves 'n' hangin' em all over the branches; 'n' then, no sooner air they full grown than they hev to begin colorin' of 'em red or yeller or brown, 'n' then shakin' 'em off; 'n' this is all extry, you might say, to their every-day chores o' growin' 'n' cirkerlatin' sap, 'n' spreadin' 'n' thickenin' 'n' shovin' out limbs, 'n' one thing 'n' 'nother; 'n' it stan's to reason that the first 'n' hemlocks 'n' them California redwoods, that keeps their clo'es on right through the year, can't be so busy as them that keeps a-dressin' 'n' ondressin' all the time.”

“I guess you're 'bout right,” allowed Steve, “but I shouldn't never 'a' thought of it in the world. What yer takin' out o' that bottle, Jabe? I thought you was a temperance man.”

“I guess he 's like the feller over to Shandagee schoolhouse, that said he was in favor o' the law, but agin its enforcement!” laughed Pitt Packard.

“I ain't breakin' no law; this is yarb bitters,” Jabe answered, with a pull at the bottle.

“It's to cirkerlate his blood,” said Ob Tarbox; “he's too dog-goned lazy to cirkerlate it himself.”

“I'm takin' it fer what ails me,” said Jabe oracularly; “the heart knoweth its own bitterness, 'n' it 's a wise child that knows its own complaints 'thout goin' to a doctor.”

“Ain't yer scared fer fear it'll start yer growth, Laigs?” asked little Brad Gibson, looking at Jabe's tremendous length of limb and foot. “Say, how do yer git them feet o' yourn uphill? Do yer start one ahead, 'n' side-track the other?”

The tree rang with the laughter evoked by this sally, but the man from Tennessee never smiled.

Jabe Slocum's imperturbable good humor was not shaken in the very least by these personal remarks. “If I thought 't was a good growin' medicine, I'd recommend it to your folks, Brad,” he replied cheerfully. “Your mother says you boys air all so short that when you're diggin' potatoes, yer can't see her shake the dinner rag 'thout gittin' up 'n' standing on the potato hills! If I was a sinikitin feller like you, I wouldn't hector folks that had made out to grow some.”

“Speakin' o' growin',” said Steve Webster, “who do you guess I seen in Boston, when I was workin' there? That tall Swatkins girl from the Duck Pond, the one that married Dan Robinson. It was one Sunday, in the Catholic meetin'-house. I'd allers wanted to go to a Catholic meetin', an' I declare it's about the solemnest one there is. I mistrusted I was goin' to everlastin'ly giggle, but I tell yer I was the awedest cutter yer ever see. But anyway, the Swatkins girl--or Mis' Robinson, she is now--was there as large as life in the next pew to me, jabberin' Latin, pawin' beads, gettin' up 'n' kneelin' down, 'n' crossin' herself north, south, east, 'n' west, with the best of 'em. Poor Dan! 'Grinnin' Dan,' we used to call him. Well, he don't grin nowadays. He never was good for much, but he 's hed more 'n his comeuppance!”

“Why, what 's the matter with him? Can't he git work in Boston?”

“Matter? Why, his wife, that I see makin' believe be so dreadful pious in the Catholic meetin', she 's carried on wuss 'n the Old Driver for two years, 'n' now she 's up 'n' left him,--gone with a han'somer man.”

Down on Steve Webster's hand came Jabe Slocum's immense paw with a grasp that made him cringe.

“What the”--began Steve, when the man from Tennessee took up his scythe and slouched away from the group by the tree.

“Didn't yer know no better 'n that, yer thunderin' fool? Can't yer see a hole in a grindstun 'thout it's hung on yer nose?”

“What hev I done?” asked Steve, as if dumfounded.

“Done? Where 've yer ben, that yer don't know Dixie's wife 's left him?”

“Where 've I ben? Hain't I ben workin' in Boston fer a year; 'n' since I come home last week, hain't I ben tendin' sick folks, so 't I couldn't git outside the dooryard? I never seen the man in my life till yesterday, in the field, 'n' I thought he was one o' them dark-skinned Frenchies from Guildford that hed come up here fer hayin'.”

“Mebbe I spoke too sharp,” said Jabe apologetically; “but we 've ben scared to talk wives, or even women folks, fer a month o' Sundays, fer fear Dixie 'd up 'n' tumble on his scythe, or do somethin' crazy. You see it's this way (I'd ruther talk than work; 'n' we ain't workin' by time to-day, anyway, on account of the circus comin'): 'Bout a year 'n' a half ago, this tall, han'some feller turned up here in Pleasant River. He inhailed from down South somewheres, but he didn't like his work there, 'n' drifted to New York, 'n' then to Boston; 'n' then he remembered his mother was a State o' Maine woman, 'n' he come here to see how he liked. We didn't take no stock in him at first,--we never hed one o' that nigger-tradin' secedin' lot in amongst us,--but he was pleasant spoken 'n' a square, all-round feller, 'n' didn't git off any secesh nonsense, 'n' it ended in our likin' him first-rate. Wall, he got work in the cannin' fact'ry over on the Butterfield road, 'n' then he fell in with the Maddoxes. You 've hearn tell of 'em; they're relation to Pitt here.”

“I wouldn't own 'em if I met 'em on Judgement Bench!” exclaimed Pitt Packard hotly. “My stepfather's second wife married Mis' Maddox's first husband after he got divorced from her, 'n' that's all there is to it; they ain't no bloody-kin o' mine, 'n' I don't call 'em relation.”