When she joined us at supper--she had kept her room all day--I saw that her eyes were red, as if she had been crying. I knew then that I had offended her.
"Ruby, I really couldn"t go," I said. "You don"t feel cross about it, do you?"
"Oh, no," she answered, with some earnestness. "And I knew you were busy."
"And about Jim--what"s the matter with the wheel?" I asked, greatly relieved at the discovery that whatever troubled her, my staying at home had not caused it.
"One of the buckets is broken--Uncle Jim always fixes it," and she turned her head away to hide her tears.
"Is Jim a carpenter, too?" I asked, with a smile.
"Why, yes," she replied. "Didn"t you know that? They often send for him to fix the mill. There"s no one else about here who can." And she changed the conversation and began talking of the beauty of that part of the brook where they had been to fish, and of the rich brown tint of the water in the pools, and how lovely the red sumachs were reflected in their depths.
The next morning, and without any previous warning, Ruby appeared in her cloth dress and jacket and announced her intention of taking the stage back to Plymouth, adding that as Jim had not returned, Marvin must drive her over to the cross-roads. I offered my services, but she declined them graciously but firmly, bidding me good-by and saying with one of her earnest looks, as she held my hand in hers, that she should never forget my kindness to Jim, and that she would always remember me for what I had done for him, and then she added with peculiar tenderness:
"And dear Uncle Jim won"t forget you, either."
And so she had gone, and with her had faded all the light and joyousness of the place.
When Jim returned the next day I was at work in the pasture painting a group of white birches. I hallooed to him as he shambled along within a hundred yards of me, swinging his arms, but he did not answer except to turn his head.
That night at table he replied to my questions in monosyllables, explaining his not stopping when I had called in the morning by saying that he didn"t want to ""sturb me," and when I laughed and told him--using his own words--that Ruby "wouldn"t pa.s.s a fellow and give him the dead, cold shake," he pushed back his chair with a sudden impatient gesture, said he had forgotten something, and left the table without a word or look in reply.
I knew then that I had hurt him in some way.
"What"s the matter with Jim, Mr. Marvin? He seems put out about something. Did he say anything to you?" I asked, astonished at Jim"s behavior, and anxious for some clew by which to solve its mystery.
"Got one o" his spells on. Gits that way sometimes, and when he does ye can"t git no good out o" him. I want them turnips dug, and he"s got to do it or git out. I ain"t hired him to loaf "round all day with Ruby and to sulk when she"s gone. I"m a-payin" him wages right along, ain"t I?"
he added with some fierceness as he stopped at the door. "What he gits for fixin" the mill ain"t nothin" to me--I don"t git a cent on it."
III
When the morning came and Jim had not returned I started for the mill. I found him alone, sitting idly on a bench near the water-wheel. I had heard the hum of the saw before I reached the dam and knew that he had finished his work.
"Jim," I said, walking up to him and extending my hand, "if I have done anything to hurt your feelings, I"m sorry. If I had known you would have been put out by my not going with Ruby I would have let the mail wait."
He took my hand mechanically, but he did not raise his eyes. The old look had returned to his face, as if he were afraid of some sudden blow.
"I did all I could to make Ruby"s visit a happy one--don"t you know I did?" I continued.
He leaned forward, his elbows resting on his knees, his eyes still on the ground. There was something infinitely pathetic in the att.i.tude.
"Ye ain"t done nothin" to me," he answered, slowly, "and ye ain"t done nothin" to Ruby. I cottoned to ye fust time I see ye, and so did Ruby, and we still do. It ain"t that."
"Well, what is it, then? Why have you kept away from me?"
He arose wearily until his whole length was erect, hooked his long arms behind his back, and began walking up and down the platform. He was no longer my comrade of the woods. The spring and buoyancy of his step had gone out of him. He seemed shrivelled and bent, as if some sudden weakness had overcome him. His face was white and drawn, and the eyelids drooped, as if he had not slept.
At the second turn he stopped, gazed abstractedly at the boards under his feet, as a man sometimes does when his mind is on other things.
Mechanically he stooped to pick up a small iron nut that had slipped from one of the bolts used in repairing the wheel, and in the same abstracted way, still ignoring me, raised it to his eye, looked through the hole for a moment, and then tossed it into the dam. The splash of the iron striking the water frightened a bird, which arose in the air, sang a clear, sweet note, and disappeared in the bushes on the opposite bank. Jim started, turned his head quickly, following the flight of the bird, and sank slowly back upon the bench, his face in his hands.
"There it is again," he cried out. "Every way I turn it"s the same thing. I can"t even chuck nothin" overboard but I hear it."
"Hear what?" The keen anguish expressed in his voice had alarmed me.
"That song-sparrow--did ye hear it? I tell ye this thing"ll drive me crazy. I tell ye I can"t stand it--I can"t stand it." And he turned his head and covered his face with his sleeve.
The outburst and gesture only intensified my anxiety. Was Jim"s mind giving away? I arose from my seat and bent over him, my hand on his arm.
"Why, that"s only a bird, Jim--I saw it--it"s gone into the bushes."
"Yes, I know it; I seen it; that"s what hurts me; that"s what"s allus goin" to hurt me. And "tain"t only goin" to be the birds. It"s goin" to be the trees and the gray-backs and the trout we catched, and everywhere I look and every place I go to it"s goin" to be the same thing. And it ain"t never goin" to be no better--never--never--long as I live. She said so. Them was her very words I ain"t never goin" to forgit "em." And he leaned his head in a baffled, tired way against the planking of the mill.
"Who said so, Jim?" I asked.
Jim raised his head, looked me straight in the face and, with the tears starting in his eyes, answered in a low voice:
"Ruby. She loves "em--loves every one o" "em. Oh, what"s goin" to become o" me now, anyhow?"
"Well, but I don"t--" The revelation came to me before I could complete the sentence. Jim"s face had told the story of his heart!
"Jim," I said, laying my hand on his shoulder, "do you love Ruby?"
"Sit down here," he said, in a hopeless, despondent voice, "and mebbe I"ll git grit enough to tell ye. I ain"t never told none o" the folks that comes up here o" how things was, but I"m goin" to tell you. And I"m goin" to tell it to ye plumb from the beginnin". too." And a sigh like the moan of one in pain escaped him.
"Twelve years ago I come here from New York. I"d been cleaned out o"
everything I had by a man I trusted, and I was flat broke. I didn"t care where I went, so"s I got away from the city and from people. I wanted to git somewheres out into the country, and so I got aboard the train and kep" on till I"d struck Plymouth. There my money gin out and I started up the road into the mountains. I thought I"d hire out to some choppers for the winter. When night come I see a light and knocked at the door and Jed opened it. He warn"t goin" to keep me, but he was a-buildin" the shed where the old mare is now, and he found out I was handy with the tools and didn"t want no wages, only my board, so he let me stay. The next spring he hired me regular and give me wages every month. I kep"
along, choppin" in the winter and helpin" "round the place, and in summer goin" out with the parties that come up from the city, helpin."
"em fish and hunt. I liked that, for I loved the woods ever since I was a boy, when I used to go off by myself and stay days and nights with nothin" but a tin can o" grub and a blanket. That"s why I come here when I went broke.
"One summer there come a feller from Boston to fish. He brought his wife along, and T used to go out with both o" "em. The man"s wife was puttin"
up for some o" them children"s homes, and she used to talk to Marm Marvin about takin" one o" the children and what a comfort it would be to the child to git out into the fresh air, and one mornin" "fore she left she took Jed down in the woods and talked to him, and the week after she left for home Marm Marvin sent me over to the station--same place I fetched ye--and out she got with a tag sewed on her jacket and her name on it, and a bundle o" clothes no bigger"n your head. She was "bout seven or eight years old, and the cunnin"est young un ye ever see.
Jus" the same eyes she"s got now, only they looked bigger, "cause her cheeks was caved in."
"Not Ruby, Jim!" I cried, in astonishment.
"Yes, Ruby. That"s what was on the tag."
"And she isn"t Marvin"s child?"
"No more"n she"s yourn, nor mine. She ain"t n.o.body"s child that anybody knows about. She"s jus" Ruby, and that"s all there is to her.
"Well, by the time I"d got her out to the farm and had heared her talk and seen her clap her hands at the chippies, and laugh at the birds, and go half wild over every little thing she"d see, I knowed I"d got hold o"
something that filled up every crack o" my heart. And she didn"t come a day too soon, for Jed had got so ugly there warn"t no livin" with him, and I"d made up my mind to quit, and I would if he hadn"t took a streak ag"in Ruby at the start. Then I knowed where my trail led. And arter that I never let her out o" my sight. Marm Marvin was different. She never had no child o" her own, and she warmed up to Ruby more"n more every day, and she loves her now much as she kin love anything.
"That fust winter we had a good deal o" snow and I made a pair o"
leggins for her out o" a deer"s skin I"d killed, and rigged up a sled, and I"d haul her after me wherever I went, and when school opened down to the cross-roads I"d haul her down and bring her back if the snow warn"t too deep, and when summer come she"d go "long jus" the same. I taught her to fish and shoot, and often she"d stay out in camp with me all night when I was tendin" the sugar-maples--she sleepin" on the balsams with my coat throwed over her.
"Things went on this way till "bout three years ago, when I see she warn"t gittin" ahead fast as she could, and I went for the old man to send her to school down to Plymouth. Marm Marvin was willin", but Jed held out, and at last he give in after my talkin" to him. So I hooked up the buck-board and drove her down to Plymouth and left her, with her arms "round my neck and the tears streamin" down her face. But she was game all the same, only she hated to have me leave her.