One morning at daybreak I was awakened by Jim swinging back my door. He
had on his heavy overcoat and carried a lantern. His slouch hat was
flattened on the back of his head; the rim flared out, framing his face,
which was wreathed in smiles. He seemed to be under some peculiar
excitement, for his breath came thick and fast.
"Sorry to wake ye, but I'm goin' to Plymouth," and he lowered his head
and stepped inside my room. "Ruby's comin'. Feller brought me a letter
she'd sent on by the stage. The driver left it at the sawmill. I'd 'a'
told ye las' night, but ye'd turned in."
"When will you be back?" I called out from between the bedclothes. We
had planned a trip to the Knob the next day, and were to camp out for
the night. He evidently saw my disappointment in my face, for he
answered quickly, as he bent over me:
"Oh, to-night, sure; and maybe Ruby'll go along. There ain't nothin' ye
kin teach her 'bout campin', and she'll go anywheres I'll take
her--leastways, she allus has." This last was said with some hesitation,
as if he had suddenly thought that my presence might make some
difference to her. "Leave yer brushes where I kin git 'em," he
continued, anxious to make up for my disappointment. "I'll wash 'em when
I git back," and he clattered down the steep stairs and slammed the door
behind him.
I jumped from my bed, threw up the narrow, unpainted sash and watched
his tall, awkward figure swinging the lantern as he hurried away toward
the shed where the gray mare lived in solitude. Then I crept back to bed
again to plan my day anew.
When I joined Marvin at breakfast I found him in one of his ugliest
moods, with all his bristles out; not turned toward me, nor even toward
his wife, but toward the world in general. Strange to say, he made no
allusion to his daughter's return nor to Jim's absence.
Suddenly his wife blurted out, as if she could restrain her joy no
longer:
"You ain't never seen Ruby. She's comin' tonight. Jim's gone for her.
The head teacher's sick and some o' the girls has got a holiday."
"Yes," I answered, quietly; "Jim told me."
"Oh, he did!" And she put down her cup and leaned across the table.
"Well, I'm awful glad she's comin', just so ye kin see her. Ye won't
never forgit her when ye do. She's got six months more, then she's
comin' home for a spell until she goes teachin'," and a look of exultant
pride and joy of which I had never believed her capable came into
her eyes.
Marvin turned his head and in a half-angry way said:
"It's 'bout time. Little good ye've had o' her for the last four years
with yer fool notions 'bout eddication." And he put on his hat and
went out.
"How old is your daughter?" I asked, more to soften the effect of
Marvin's brutal remark than anything else.
"She's seventeen, I guess, but she's big for her age."
The announcement came as a surprise. I had supposed from the way Jim had
always spoken of her that she was a child of twelve. The possibilities
of her camping out became all the more remote.
"And has she been away from you long this time?"
"'Bout four months. I didn't 'spect her to come till Christmas, till she
wrote Jim to come for her. He allus fetches her. They'll be 'long
'bout dark."
I instantly determined to extend the heartiest of welcomes to this
little daughter, not alone because of the mother and Jim, but because
the home-coming of a young girl had always appealed to me as one of the
most satisfying of all family events. My memory instinctively went back
to the return of my own little bird, and of the many marvellous
preparations begun weeks before in honor of the event. I saw again in my
mind the wondrous curtains, stiff and starched, hung at the windows and
about the high posts of the quaint bedstead that had sheltered her from
childhood; I remembered the special bakings and brewings and the
innumerable bundles, big and little, that were tucked away under
secretive sofas and the thousand other surprises that hung upon her
coming. This little wood-pigeon should have my best attention, however
simple and plain might be her plumage.
Moreover, I was more than curious to see what particular kind of a
fledgling could be born to these two parent birds--one so hard and
unsympathetic and the other so kind and simple. Jim, I remembered, had
always spoken enthusiastically of Ruby, but then Jim always spilled over
the edges whenever he spoke of the things he loved, whether they were
dogs, trees, flowers, or brilliant young maidens.
At nine o'clock that night my ear caught the sound of wheels; then came
Jim's "Whoa! Bess," and the mother threw wide the door and caught her
daughter in her arms.
"Oh, mother!" the girl cried, "wasn't it good I could come?" and she
kissed her again. Then she turned to me--I had followed out in the
starlight--"Uncle Jim sent me word you were here, and I was so glad.
I've always wanted to see somebody paint, and Uncle Jim says he's sure
you will let me go sketching with you. I wasn't coming home with the
other girls until I got his letter and knew that you were here."
She said this frankly and simply, without the slightest embarrassment,
and without a trace of any dialect in her speech. Jim evidently had not
exaggerated her attainments. She had, too, unconsciously to herself,
solved one of the mysteries that surrounded me. If Jim was her uncle it
must be on her mother's side; it certainly could not be on Marvin's.
"And I'm glad, too," I replied. "Of course you shall go, and Jim tells
me also that you are as good a woodsman as he is. And so Jim's your
uncle, is he? He never told me that."
"Oh, no," she answered quickly, with a little deprecatory air. "He isn't
my _real_ uncle. He's just Jim, but I've always called him Uncle Jim
ever since I was a little girl. And I love him dearly; don't I, Uncle
Jim?" and she turned toward him as he entered the door carrying her
bundle, followed by her father with the kerosene lamp, Marvin having
brought it out to help Jim unload the buck-board.
"That's what ye allus says, baby-girl," answered Jim, "so I got to
believe it. And if I didn't, there wouldn't be no use o' livin'--not a
mite." There was a vibrating tenderness in the man's voice, and an
indescribable pathos in its tone, as he spoke, that caused me
instinctively to turn my head and look into his face.
The light shone full upon it--so full and direct that there were no
shadows anywhere. Whether it was because of the lamp's direct rays or
because of his long ride in the crisp November air, I could not decide,
but certain it was that Jim's face was without a wrinkle, and that he
looked twenty years younger. Even the hard, drawn lines about his mouth
and nose had disappeared.
With the light of the lamp came another revelation. While the girl's
cheap woollen dress and jacket, of a pattern sold in the country stores,
showed her to be the product of Marvin's home and the recipient of his
scanty bounty, her trim, well-rounded figure, soft, glossy hair--now
that her hat was off--and small hands and feet, classed her as one of
far gentler birth. There was, too, as she passed in and out of the room
helping her mother with the supper-table, a certain grace and dignity,
especially in the way in which she bent her head on one side to listen,
a gesture often seen in a drawing-room, but never, in my experience, in
a cabin. What astonished me most, however, were her hands--her
exquisitely modelled hands, still ruddy from the fresh night air, but so
wonderfully curved and dimpled. And then, too, the perfect graciousness
and simplicity of her manner and its absolute freedom from coquetry or
self-consciousness. Her mother was right--I would not soon forget her.
And yet, by what freak of Nature, I found myself continually repeating,
had this flower been made to bloom on this soil? Through what ancestor's
veins had this blood trickled, and through what channels had it reached
these humble occupants of a forest home?
But if her mother was the happier for her coming, Jim, radiant with joy,
seemed to walk on air. His head was up, his arms were swinging free, and
there was a lightness and spring in his movements that made me forget
the grotesqueness of his gait. Nor, as the days went by, did this
buoyant happiness ever fail him. He and Ruby were inseparable from the
time she opened the rude door of her bedroom in the morning until she
bade us all good-night and carried with her all the light and charm and
joyousness of the day. The camping-out, I may as well state, had been
given up as soon as I had mentioned it, she saying to me with a little
start, as if frightened at the proposition, that she thought she'd
better stay home and help her mother. Then, seeing Jim's face fall, she
added, "But we can be off all day, can't we?"
And Jim answered that it was all right, just as Ruby said--that we would
go fishing instead, and that he had spotted an old trout that lived in a
hole down the East Branch that he'd been saving for her, and that he had
tied the day before the "very fly that will fix him"--all of which was
true, for Ruby landed him the next day with all the skill of a
professional, besides a dozen smaller ones whose haunts Jim knew.
And so the weeks flew by, Ruby tramping the forest daily between us or
sitting beside me as I painted, noting every stroke of my brush and
asking me innumerable questions as to the choice of colors and the
mixing of the tints. At other times she would ply me with questions,
making me tell her of the things I had seen abroad and of the cities and
peoples she had read of; or she would talk of the books she had studied,
and of others she wanted to read. Jim would listen eagerly, with a
certain pride in his eyes that she knew so much and could talk so well,
and when we were alone he would comment on it:
"Nearly catched ye, didn't she? I see once or twice ye were stumped
clean out o' yer boots on them questions she fired. How her little head
holds it all is what bothers me. But I always knowed how it would be; I
told the old man so ten year ago. Ain't one o' 'em 'raound here kin
touch her."
At night, under the kerosene lamp in the cabin, she would ask me to read
aloud, she looking up into my face and drinking in every word, the
others listening, Jim watching every expression that crossed her face.
Dear old Jim! I still see your tender, shrinking eyes peering at her
from under your bushy eyebrows and still hear the low ripple of your
merry laugh over her volleys of questions. You were so proud of her and
so happy in those days! So tender in touch, so gentle of voice, so
constant in care!
One morning I had some letters to write, and Ruby and Jim took the rods
and went up the brook without me. They both begged me to go, Ruby being
particularly urgent, I thought, but I had already delayed the mail too
long and so refused point-blank--too abruptly, perhaps, as I thought
afterward, when I remembered the keen look of disappointment in her
face. When she re-entered the cabin alone an hour later she passed me
hurriedly, and calling out to her father that Jim was wanted at the
sawmill to fix the wheel and would not be back until morning, shut
herself into her room before I could offer myself in Jim's place--which
I would gladly have done, now that her morning's pleasure had
been spoiled.
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 pass 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.