IF you had seen little Jo standing at the street corner in the rain, you
would hardly have admired him. It was apparently an ordinary autumn
rainstorm, but the water which fell upon Jo (who was hardly old enough to
be either just or unjust, and so perhaps did not come under the law of
impartial distribution) appeared to have some property peculiar to
itself: one would have said it was dark and adhesive—sticky. But that
could hardly be so, even in Blackburg, where things certainly did occur
that were a good deal out of the common.
For example, ten or twelve years before, a shower of small frogs had
fallen, as is credibly attested by a contemporaneous chronicle, the
record concluding with a somewhat obscure statement to the effect that
the chronicler considered it good growing-weather for Frenchmen.
Some years later Blackburg had a fall of crimson snow; it is cold in
Blackburg when winter is on, and the snows are frequent and deep. There
can be no doubt of it—the snow in this instance was of the color of blood
and melted into water of the same hue, if water it was, not blood. The
phenomenon had attracted wide attention, and science had as many
explanations as there were scientists who knew nothing about it. But the
men of Blackburg—men who for many years had lived right there where the
red snow fell, and might be supposed to know a good deal about the
matter—shook their heads and said something would come of it.
And something did, for the next summer was made memorable by the
prevalence of a mysterious disease—epidemic, endemic, or the Lord knows
what, though the physicians didn’t—which carried away a full half of the
population. Most of the other half carried themselves away and were slow
to return, but finally came back, and were now increasing and multiplying
as before, but Blackburg had not since been altogether the same.
Of quite another kind, though equally “out of the common,” was the
incident of Hetty Parlow’s ghost. Hetty Parlow’s maiden name had been
Brownon, and in Blackburg that meant more than one would think.
The Brownons had from time immemorial—from the very earliest of the old
colonial days—been the leading family of the town. It was the richest
and it was the best, and Blackburg would have shed the last drop of its
plebeian blood in defense of the Brownon fair fame. As few of the
family’s members had ever been known to live permanently away from
Blackburg, although most of them were educated elsewhere and nearly all
had traveled, there was quite a number of them. The men held most of the
public offices, and the women were foremost in all good works. Of these
latter, Hetty was most beloved by reason of the sweetness of her
disposition, the purity of her character and her singular personal
beauty. She married in Boston a young scapegrace named Parlow, and like
a good Brownon brought him to Blackburg forthwith and made a man and a
town councilman of him. They had a child which they named Joseph and
dearly loved, as was then the fashion among parents in all that region.
Then they died of the mysterious disorder already mentioned, and at the
age of one whole year Joseph set up as an orphan.
Unfortunately for Joseph the disease which had cut off his parents did
not stop at that; it went on and extirpated nearly the whole Brownon
contingent and its allies by marriage; and those who fled did not return.
The tradition was broken, the Brownon estates passed into alien hands and
the only Brownons remaining in that place were underground in Oak Hill
Cemetery, where, indeed, was a colony of them powerful enough to resist
the encroachment of surrounding tribes and hold the best part of the
grounds. But about the ghost:
One night, about three years after the death of Hetty Parlow, a number of
the young people of Blackburg were passing Oak Hill Cemetery in a
wagon—if you have been there you will remember that the road to Greenton
runs alongside it on the south. They had been attending a May Day
festival at Greenton; and that serves to fix the date. Altogether there
may have been a dozen, and a jolly party they were, considering the
legacy of gloom left by the town’s recent somber experiences. As they
passed the cemetery the man driving suddenly reined in his team with an
exclamation of surprise. It was sufficiently surprising, no doubt, for
just ahead, and almost at the roadside, though inside the cemetery, stood
the ghost of Hetty Parlow. There could be no doubt of it, for she had
been personally known to every youth and maiden in the party. That
established the thing’s identity; its character as ghost was signified by
all the customary signs—the shroud, the long, undone hair, the “far-away
look”—everything. This disquieting apparition was stretching out its
arms toward the west, as if in supplication for the evening star, which,
certainly, was an alluring object, though obviously out of reach. As
they all sat silent (so the story goes) every member of that party of
merrymakers—they had merry-made on coffee and lemonade only—distinctly
heard that ghost call the name “Joey, Joey!” A moment later nothing was
there. Of course one does not have to believe all that.
Now, at that moment, as was afterward ascertained, Joey was wandering
about in the sage-brush on the opposite side of the continent, near
Winnemucca, in the State of Nevada. He had been taken to that town by
some good persons distantly related to his dead father, and by them
adopted and tenderly cared for. But on that evening the poor child had
strayed from home and was lost in the desert.
His after history is involved in obscurity and has gaps which conjecture
alone can fill. It is known that he was found by a family of Piute
Indians, who kept the little wretch with them for a time and then sold
him—actually sold him for money to a woman on one of the east-bound
trains, at a station a long way from Winnemucca. The woman professed to
have made all manner of inquiries, but all in vain: so, being childless
and a widow, she adopted him herself. At this point of his career Jo
seemed to be getting a long way from the condition of orphanage; the
interposition of a multitude of parents between himself and that woeful
state promised him a long immunity from its disadvantages.
Mrs. Darnell, his newest mother, lived in Cleveland, Ohio. But her
adopted son did not long remain with her. He was seen one afternoon by a
policeman, new to that beat, deliberately toddling away from her house,
and being questioned answered that he was “a doin’ home.” He must have
traveled by rail, somehow, for three days later he was in the town of
Whiteville, which, as you know, is a long way from Blackburg. His
clothing was in pretty fair condition, but he was sinfully dirty. Unable
to give any account of himself he was arrested as a vagrant and sentenced
to imprisonment in the Infants’ Sheltering Home—where he was washed.
Jo ran away from the Infants’ Sheltering Home at Whiteville—just took to
the woods one day, and the Home knew him no more forever.
We find him next, or rather get back to him, standing forlorn in the cold
autumn rain at a suburban street corner in Blackburg; and it seems right
to explain now that the raindrops falling upon him there were really not
dark and gummy; they only failed to make his face and hands less so. Jo
was indeed fearfully and wonderfully besmirched, as by the hand of an
artist. And the forlorn little tramp had no shoes; his feet were bare,
red, and swollen, and when he walked he limped with both legs. As to
clothing—ah, you would hardly have had the skill to name any single
garment that he wore, or say by what magic he kept it upon him. That he
was cold all over and all through did not admit of a doubt; he knew it
himself. Anyone would have been cold there that evening; but, for that
reason, no one else was there. How Jo came to be there himself, he could
not for the flickering little life of him have told, even if gifted with
a vocabulary exceeding a hundred words. From the way he stared about him
one could have seen that he had not the faintest notion of where (nor
why) he was.
Yet he was not altogether a fool in his day and generation; being cold
and hungry, and still able to walk a little by bending his knees very
much indeed and putting his feet down toes first, he decided to enter one
of the houses which flanked the street at long intervals and looked so
bright and warm. But when he attempted to act upon that very sensible
decision a burly dog came bowsing out and disputed his right.
Inexpressibly frightened and believing, no doubt (with some reason, too)
that brutes without meant brutality within, he hobbled away from all the
houses, and with gray, wet fields to right of him and gray, wet fields to
left of him—with the rain half blinding him and the night coming in mist
and darkness, held his way along the road that leads to Greenton. That
is to say, the road leads those to Greenton who succeed in passing the
Oak Hill Cemetery. A considerable number every year do not.
Jo did not.
They found him there the next morning, very wet, very cold, but no longer
hungry. He had apparently entered the cemetery gate—hoping, perhaps,
that it led to a house where there was no dog—and gone blundering about
in the darkness, falling over many a grave, no doubt, until he had tired
of it all and given up. The little body lay upon one side, with one
soiled cheek upon one soiled hand, the other hand tucked away among the
rags to make it warm, the other cheek washed clean and white at last, as
for a kiss from one of God’s great angels. It was observed—though
nothing was thought of it at the time, the body being as yet
unidentified—that the little fellow was lying upon the grave of Hetty
Parlow. The grave, however, had not opened to receive him. That is a
circumstance which, without actual irreverence, one may wish had been
ordered otherwise.