THE SHADE OF REUBEN
Arm in arm Reuben and Molly walked slowly home through the orchard.
Neither spoke until the old man called to Spot at his doorstep, and
then Molly noticed that his breath came with a whistling sound that was
unlike his natural voice.
"Are you tired, grandfather? What is the matter?"
"It's my chest, daughter. Let me sit down a while an' it will pass. Who
is that yonder on the bench?"
"Old Mr. Doolittle. Wait here a minute before you speak to him."
It was a perfect spring afternoon, and the air was filled with vague,
roving scents, as if the earth exhaled the sweetness of hidden flowers.
In the apple orchard the young grass was powdered with gold, and the
long grey shadows of the trees barred the ground like the sketchy
outlines in a impressionist painting.
On a bench at one end of the porch old Adam was sitting, and at sight of
them, he rose, and stood waiting with his pipe in his hand.
"As 'twas sech a fine day an' thar warn't any work on hand for a man of
my years, I thought I'd walk over an' pay my respects to you," he said.
"I've heard that 'twas yo' granddaughter's birthday an' that she's like
to change her name befo' it's time for another."
"Well, I'm glad to see you, old Adam," replied Reuben, sinking into a
chair while he invited his visitor to another. "I've gone kind of faint,
honey," he added, "an' I reckon we'd both like a sip of blackberry wine
if you've got it handy. Miss Kesiah gave me something to drink, but my
throat was so stiff I couldn't swallow it."
The blackberry wine was kept in a large stone crock in the cellar, and
while she filled the glasses, Molly heard the voice of old Adam droning
on above the chirping of the birds in the orchard.
"I've been settin' here steddyin' them weeds out thar over-runnin'
everything," he was saying, "an' it does appear to a considerin' body
that the Lord might have made 'em good grass an' grain with precious
little trouble to Himself an' a mortal lot of satisfaction to the po'
farmers."
"He knows best. He knows best," responded Reuben.
"Well, I used to think that way befo' I'd looked into the matter,"
rejoined the other, "but the deeper I get, the less reason I see to be
sartain sure. 'Tis the fashion for parsons, an' for some people outside
of the pulpit, to jump to conclusions, an' the one they've jumped the
farthest to get at, is that things are all as they ought to be. If you
ain't possessed of the gift of logic it takes with you, but if you are
possessed of it, it don't. Now, I tell you that if a farmer was to try
to run his farm on the wasteful scale on which this world is conducted,
thar wouldn't be one among us as would trust him with next season's
crops. 'Tis sech a terrible waste that it makes a frugal mind sick to
see it."
"Let's be thankful that it isn't any worse. He might have made it so,"
replied Reuben, shocked by his neighbour's irreverence, yet too modest
to dispute it with authority.
"Now, if that's logic I don't know what logic is, though I was born with
the gift of it," retorted old Adam. "When twenty seeds rot in the ground
an' one happens up, thar're some folks as would praise the Lord for
the one and say nothin' about the twenty. These same folks are forever
drawin' picturs of wild things hoppin' an' skippin' in the woods, as if
they ever had time to hop an' skip when they're obleeged to keep one
eye on the fox an' the hawk an' t'other on the gun of the hunter. Yet
to hear Mr. Mullen talk in the pulpit, you'd think that natur was all
hoppin' an' skippin'."
"You're a wicked unbeliever," said Reuben, mildly sorrowful, "an' you
ought to go home and pray over your thankless doubts."
"I'm as I was made," rejoined the other. "I didn't ax to be born
an' I've had to work powerful hard for my keep." Taking the glass of
blackberry wine from Molly's hand, he smacked his lips over it with
lingering enjoyment.
"Do you feel better, grandfather?" inquired the girl, in the pause.
"The wine does me good, honey, but thar's a queer gone feelin' inside
of me. I'm twenty years younger than you, old Adam, but you've got mo'
youth left in you than I have."
"'Tis my powerful belief in the Lord," chuckled the elder, wiping his
mouth with the back of his hand and placing the glass on the end of the
bench. "No, no, Reuben, when it comes to that I ain't any quarrel with
folks for lookin' al'ays at the pleasant side, but what staggers me is
why they should take it as a merit to themselves when 'tis nothin' less
than a weakness of natur. A man might jest as well pride himself that he
can't see out of but one eye or hear out of but one ear as that he can't
see nothin' but good when evil is so mixed up into it. Thar ain't all
of us born with the gift of logic, but even when we ain't we might set
silent an' listen to them that is."
A south wind, rising beyond the river, blew over the orchard, and the
barred shadows swung back and forth on the grass.
"'Tis the eye of sense we see with," remarked Reuben quietly.
"Eh, an' 'tis the eye of sense you're weak in," responded old Adam. "I
knew a blind man once that had a pictur of the world in his mind jest as
smooth an' pretty as the views you see on the backs of calendars--with
all the stink-weeds an' the barren places left out of it--an' he used to
talk to us seein' ones for all the earth as if he were better acquainted
with natur than we were."
"I ain't larned an' I never pretended to be," said Reuben, piously, "but
the Lord has used me well in His time an' I'm thankful to Him."
"Now that's monstrous odd," commented the ancient cynic, "for lookin' at
it from the outside, I'd say He'd used you about as bad as is His habit
in general."
He rose from the bench, and dusted the seat of his blue overalls,
while he gazed sentimentally over the blossoming orchard. "'Tis the
seventeenth of April, so we may git ahead with plantin'," he remarked.
"Ah, well, it's a fine early spring an' puts me in mind of seventy years
ago when I was courtin'. Thar ain't many men, I reckon, that can
enjoy lookin' back on a courtin' seventy years after it is over. 'Tis
surprisin' how some things sweeten with age, an' memory is one of 'em."
Reuben merely nodded after him as he went, for he had grown too tired
to answer. A curious stillness--half happiness, half indifference--was
stealing over him, and he watched as in a dream, the blue figure of old
Adam hobble over the sun-flecked path through the orchard. A few minutes
later Molly flitted after the elder, and Reuben's eyes followed her with
the cheerful look with which he had faced seventy years of life. On a
rush mat in the sunshine the old hound flicked his long black ear at a
fly of which he was dreaming, and from a bower of ivy in the eaves there
came the twitter of sparrows. Beyond the orchard, the wind, blowing from
the marshes, chased the thin, sketchy shadows over the lawn at Jordan's
Journey.
While he sat there Reuben began to think, and as always, his thoughts
were humble and without self-consciousness. As he looked under
the gnarled boughs of the orchard, he seemed to see his whole life
stretching before him--seventy years--all just the same except that
with each he appeared a little older, a little humbler, a little less
expectant that some miracle might happen and change the future. At the
end of that long vista, he saw himself young and strong, and filled with
a great hope for something--he hardly knew what--that would make things
different. He had gone on, still hoping, year by year, and now at
the end, he was an old, bent, crippled man, and the miracle had never
happened. Nothing had ever made things different, and the great hope had
died in him at last as the twenty seeds of which old Adam had spoken had
died in the earth. He remembered all the things he had wanted that he
had never had--all the other things he had not wanted that had made up
his life. Never had a hope of his been fulfilled, never had an event
fallen out as he had planned it, never had a prayer brought him the
blessing for which he had prayed. Nothing in all his seventy years had
been just what he had wanted--not just what he would have chosen if the
choice had been granted him--yet the sight of the birds in the apple
trees stirred something in his heart to-day that was less an individual
note of rejoicing than a share in the undivided movement of life which
was pulsing around him. Nothing that had ever happened to him as Reuben
Merryweather would he care to live over; but he was glad at the end that
he had been a part of the spring and had not missed seeing the little
green leaves break out in the orchard.
And then while he sat there, half dreaming and half awake, the stillness
grew suddenly full of the singing of blue birds. Spring blossomed
radiantly beneath his eyes, and the faint green and gold of the meadows
blazed forth in a pageant of colour.
"I'm glad I didn't miss it," he thought. "That's the most that can be
said, I reckon--I'm glad I didn't miss it."
The old hound, dreaming of flies, flapped his long ears in the sunshine,
and a robin, hopping warily toward a plate of seed-cakes on the arm of
Reuben's chair, winged back for a minute before he alighted suspiciously
on the railing. Then, being an old and a wise bird, he advanced again,
holding his head slightly sideways and regarding the sleeping man with
a pair of bright, inquisitive eyes. Reassured at last by the silence, he
uttered a soft, throaty note, and flew straight to the arm of the chair
in which Reuben was sitting. With his glance roving from the quiet man
to the quiet dog, he made a few tentative flutters toward the plate of
cake. Then, gathering courage from the adventure, he hopped deliberately
into the centre of the plate and began pecking greedily at the scattered
crumbs.