IN WHICH JIM FENTON IS INTRODUCED TO THE READER AND INTRODUCES HIMSELF
TO MISS BUTTERWORTH.
Miss Butterworth, while painfully witnessing the defeat of her hopes
from the last seat in the hall, was conscious of the presence at her
side of a very singular-looking personage, who evidently did not belong
in Sevenoaks. He was a woodsman, who had been attracted to the hall by
his desire to witness the proceedings. His clothes, originally of strong
material, were patched; he held in his hand a fur cap without a visor;
and a rifle leaned on the bench at his side. She had been attracted to
him by his thoroughly good-natured face, his noble, muscular figure, and
certain exclamations that escaped from his lips during the speeches.
Finally, he turned to her, and with a smile so broad and full that it
brought an answer to her own face, he said: "This 'ere breathin' is
worse nor an old swamp. I'm goin', and good-bye to ye!"
Why this remark, personally addressed to her, did not offend her, coming
as it did from a stranger, she did not know; but it certainly did not
seem impudent. There was something so simple and strong and manly about
him, as he had sat there by her side, contrasted with the baser and
better dressed men before her, that she took his address as an honorable
courtesy.
When the woodsman went out upon the steps of the town-hall, to get a
breath, he found there such an assembly of boys as usually gathers in
villages on the smallest public occasion. Squarely before the door stood
Mr. Belcher's grays, and in Mr. Belcher's wagon sat Mr. Belcher's man,
Phipps. Phipps was making the most of his position. He was proud of his
horses, proud of his clothes, proud of the whip he was carelessly
snapping, proud of belonging to Mr. Belcher. The boys were laughing at
his funny remarks, envying him his proud eminence, and discussing the
merits of the horses and the various points of the attractive
establishment.
As the stranger appeared, he looked down upon the boys with a broad
smile, which attracted them at once, and quite diverted them from their
flattering attentions to Phipps--a fact quickly perceived by the latter,
and as quickly revenged in a way peculiar to himself and the man from
whom he had learned it.
"This is the hippopotamus, gentlemen," said Phipps, "fresh from his
native woods. He sleeps underneath the banyan-tree, and lives on the
nuts of the hick-o-ree, and pursues his prey with his tail extended
upward and one eye open, and has been known when excited by hunger to
eat small boys, spitting out their boots with great violence. Keep out
of his way, gentlemen! Keep out of his way, and observe his wickedness
at a distance."
Phipps's saucy speech was received with a great roar by the boys, who
were surprised to notice that the animal himself was not only not
disturbed, but very much amused by being shown up as a curiosity.
"Well, you're a new sort of a monkey, anyway," said the woodsman, after
the laugh had subsided. "I never hearn one talk afore."
"You never will again," retorted Phipps, "if you give me any more of
your lip."
The woodsman walked quickly toward Phipps, as if he were about to pull
him from his seat.
Phipps saw the motion, started the horses, and was out of his way in an
instant.
The boys shouted in derision, but Phipps did not come back, and the
stranger was the hero. They gathered around him, asking questions, all
of which he good-naturedly answered. He seemed to be pleased with their
society, as if he were only a big boy himself, and wanted to make the
most of the limited time which his visit to the town afforded him.
While he was thus standing as the center of an inquisitive and admiring
group, Miss Butterworth came out of the town-hall. Her eyes were full of
tears, and her eloquent face expressed vexation and distress. The
stranger saw the look and the tears, and, leaving the boys, he
approached her without the slightest awkwardness, and said:
"Has anybody teched ye, mum?"
"Oh, no, sir," Miss Butterworth answered.
"Has anybody spoke ha'sh to ye?"
"Oh, no, sir;" and Miss Butterworth pressed on, conscious that in that
kind inquiry there breathed as genuine respect and sympathy as ever had
reached her ears in the voice of a man.
"Because," said the man, still walking along at her side, "I'm spilin'
to do somethin' for somebody, and I wouldn't mind thrashin' anybody
you'd p'int out."
"No, you can do nothing for me. Nobody can do anything in this town for
anybody until Robert Belcher is dead," said Miss Butterworth.
"Well, I shouldn't like to kill 'im," responded the man, "unless it was
an accident in the woods--a great ways off--for a turkey or a
hedgehog--and the gun half-cocked."
The little tailoress smiled through her tears, though she felt very
uneasy at being observed in company and conversation with the
rough-looking stranger. He evidently divined the thoughts which
possessed her, and said, as if only the mention of his name would make
him an acquaintance:
"I'm Jim Fenton. I trap for a livin' up in Number Nine, and have jest
brung in my skins."
"My name is Butterworth," she responded mechanically.
"I know'd it," he replied. "I axed the boys."
"Good-bye," he said. "Here's the store, and I must shoulder my sack and
be off. I don't see women much, but I'm fond of 'em, and they're pretty
apt to like me."
"Good-bye," said the woman. "I think you're the best man I've seen
to-day;" and then, as if she had said more than became a modest woman,
she added, "and that isn't saying very much."
They parted, and Jim Fenton stood perfectly still in the street and
looked at her, until she disappeared around a corner. "That's what I
call a genuine creetur'," he muttered to himself at last, "a genuine
creetur'."
Then Jim Fenton went into the store, where he had sold his skins and
bought his supplies, and, after exchanging a few jokes with those who
had observed his interview with Miss Butterworth, he shouldered his sack
as he called it, and started for Number Nine. The sack was a contrivance
of his own, with two pouches which depended, one before and one behind,
from his broad shoulders. Taking his rifle in his hand, he bade the
group that had gathered around him a hearty good-bye, and started on his
way.
The afternoon was not a pleasant one. The air was raw, and, as the sun
went toward its setting, the wind came on to blow from the north-west.
This was just as he would have it. It gave him breath, and stimulated
the vitality that was necessary to him in the performance of his long
task. A tramp of forty miles was not play, even to him, and this long
distance was to be accomplished before he could reach the boat that
would bear him and his burden into the woods.
He crossed the Branch at its principal bridge, and took the same path up
the hill that Robert Belcher had traveled in the morning. About half-way
up the hill, as he was going on with the stride of a giant, he saw a
little boy at the side of the road, who had evidently been weeping. He
was thinly and very shabbily clad, and was shivering with cold. The
great, healthy heart within Jim Fenton was touched in an instant.
"Well, bub," said he, tenderly, "how fare ye? How fare ye? Eh?"
"I'm pretty well, I thank you, sir," replied the lad.
"I guess not. You're as blue as a whetstone. You haven't got as much on
you as a picked goose."
"I can't help it, sir," and the boy burst into tears.
"Well, well, I didn't mean to trouble you, boy. Here, take this money,
and buy somethin' to make you happy. Don't tell your dad you've got it.
It's yourn."
The boy made a gesture of rejection, and said: "I don't wish to take it,
sir."
"Now, that's good! Don't wish to take it! Why, what's your name? You're
a new sort o' boy."
"My name is Harry Benedict."
"Harry Benedict? And what's your pa's name?"
"His name is Paul Benedict."
"Where is he now?"
"He is in the poor-house."
"And you, too?"
"Yes, sir," and the lad found expression for his distress in another
flow of tears.
"Well, well, well, well! If that ain't the strangest thing I ever hearn
on! Paul Benedict, of Sevenoaks, in Tom Buffum's Boardin'-house!"
"Yes, sir, and he's very crazy, too."
Jim Fenton set his rifle against a rock at the roadside, slowly lifted
off his pack and placed it near the rifle, and then sat down on a stone
and called the boy to him, folding him in his great warm arms to his
warm breast.
"Harry, my boy," said Jim, "your pa and me was old friends. We have
hunted together, fished together, eat together, and slept together
many's the day and night. He was the best shot that ever come into the
woods. I've seed him hit a deer at fifty rod many's the time, and he
used to bring up the nicest tackle for fishin', every bit of it made
with his own hands. He was the curisist creetur' I ever seed in my life,
and the best; and I'd do more fur 'im nor fur any livin' live man. Oh, I
tell ye, we used to have high old times. It was wuth livin' a year in
the woods jest to have 'im with me for a fortnight. I never charged 'im
a red cent fur nothin', and I've got some of his old tackle now that he
give me. Him an' me was like brothers, and he used to talk about
religion, and tell me I ought to shift over, but I never could see
'zactly what I ought to shift over from, or shift over to; but I let 'im
talk, 'cause he liked to. He used to go out behind the trees nights, and
I hearn him sayin' somethin'--somethin' very low, as I am talkin' to ye
now. Well, he was prayin'; that's the fact about it, I s'pose; and ye
know I felt jest as safe when that man was round! I don't believe I
could a' been drownded when he was in the woods any more'n if I'd a'
been a mink. An' Paul Benedict is in the poor-house! I vow I don't
'zactly see why the Lord let that man go up the spout; but perhaps it'll
all come out right. Where's your ma, boy?"
Harry gave a great, shuddering gasp, and, answering him that she was
dead, gave himself up to another fit of crying.
"Oh, now don't! now don't!" said Jim tenderly, pressing the distressed
lad still closer to his heart. "Don't ye do it; it don't do no good. It
jest takes the spunk all out o' ye. Ma's have to die like other folks,
or go to the poor-house. You wouldn't like to have yer ma in the
poor-house. She's all right. God Almighty's bound to take care o' her.
Now, ye jest stop that sort o' thing. She's better off with him nor she
would be with Tom Buffum--any amount better off. Doesn't Tom Buffum
treat your pa well?"
"Oh, no, sir; he doesn't give him enough to eat, and he doesn't let him
have things in his room, because he says he'll hurt himself, or break
them all to pieces, and he doesn't give him good clothes, nor anything
to cover himself up with when it's cold."
"Well, boy," said Jim, his great frame shaking with indignation, "do ye
want to know what I think of Tom Buffum?"
"Yes, sir."
"It won't do fur me to tell ye, 'cause I'm rough, but if there's
anything awful bad--oh, bad as anything can be, in Skeezacks--I should
say that Tom Buffum was an old Skeezacks."
Jim Fenton was feeling his way.
"I should say he was an infernal old Skeezacks. That isn't very bad, is
it?"
"I don't know sir," replied the boy.
"Well, a d----d rascal; how's that?"
"My father never used such words," replied the boy.
"That's right, and I take it back. I oughtn't to have said it, but
unless a feller has got some sort o' religion he has a mighty hard time
namin' people in this world. What's that?"
Jim started with the sound in his ear of what seemed to be a cry of
distress.
"That's one of the crazy people. They do it all the time.'"
Then Jim thought of the speeches he had heard in the town-meeting, and
recalled the distress of Miss Butterworth, and the significance of all
the scenes he had so recently witnessed.
"Look 'ere, boy; can ye keep right 'ere," tapping him on his breast,
"whatsomever I tell ye? Can you keep yer tongue still?--hope you'll die
if ye don't?"
There was something in these questions through which the intuitions of
the lad saw help, both for his father and himself. Hope strung his
little muscles in an instant, his attitude became alert, and he replied:
"I'll never say anything if they kill me."
"Well, I'll tell ye what I'm goin' to do. I'm goin' to stay to the
poor-house to-night, if they'll keep me, an' I guess they will; and I'm
goin' to see yer pa too, and somehow you and he must be got out of this
place."
The boy threw his arms around Jim's neck, and kissed him passionately,
again and again, without the power, apparently, to give any other
expression to his emotions.
"Oh, God! don't, boy! That's a sort o' thing I can't stand. I ain't used
to it."
Jim paused, as if to realize how sweet it was to hold the trusting
child in his arms, and to be thus caressed, and then said: "Ye must be
mighty keerful, and do just as I bid ye. If I stay to the poor-house
to-night, I shall want to see ye in the mornin', and I shall want to see
ye alone. Now ye know there's a big stump by the side of the road,
half-way up to the old school-house."
Harry gave his assent.
"Well, I want ye to be thar, ahead o' me, and then I'll tell ye jest
what I'm a goin' to do, and jest what I want to have ye do."
"Yes, sir."
"Now mind, ye mustn't know me when I'm about the house, and mustn't tell
anybody you've seed me, and I mustn't know you. Now ye leave all the
rest to Jim Fenton, yer pa's old friend. Don't ye begin to feel a little
better now?"
"Yes, sir."
"You can kiss me again, if ye want to. I didn't mean to choke ye off.
That was all in fun, ye know."
Harry kissed him, and then Jim said: "Now make tracks for yer old
boardin'-house. I'll be along bimeby."
The boy started upon a brisk run, and Jim still sat upon the stone
watching him until he disappeared somewhere among the angles of the
tumble-down buildings that constituted the establishment.
"Well, Jim Fenton," he said to himself, "ye've been spilin' fur
somethin' to do fur somebody. I guess ye've got it, and not a very small
job neither."
Then he shouldered his pack, took up his rifle, looked up at the cloudy
and blustering sky, and pushed up the hill, still talking to himself,
and saying: "A little boy of about his haighth and bigness ain't a bad
thing to take."