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 attitude.
"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 nobody'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.
"Every July and Christmas I'd go for her, and she'd allus be waitin' for
me at the head o' the stairs or would come runnin' down with her arms
wide open, and she'd kiss me and hug me and call me dear Uncle Jim, and
tell me how she loved me, and how there warn't nothin' in the world she
loved so much; and then when she'd git home we'd tramp the woods
together every chance we got."
Jim stopped and bent forward, his face in his hands, his elbows on his
knees. For a time he was silent; then he went on:
"This last time when I went for her she pretty nigh took my breath away.
She seemed just as glad to see me, but she didn't git into my arms as
she ueeter, and she looked different, too. She had growed every way
bigger, and wider, and older. I kep' a-lookin' at her, tryin' to find
the little girl I'd left some months afore, but she warn't there. She
acted different, too--more quiet like and still, so that I was feared to
touch her like I useter, and took it out in talkin' to her and listenin'
to all she told me o' what she was larnin' and how this winter she was
goin' to git through and git her certificate, and then she was goin' to
teach and help her mother--she allus called Marm Marvin mother. Then she
told me o' how one o' the teachers--a young fellow from a college--was
goin' to set up a school o' his own and goin' to git some o' the
graduates to help teach when he got started, and how he had asked her to
be one o' 'em, and how she was goin' with him.
"Since you been here and us three been together and I begun to see how
happy she was a-talkin' to you and askin' you questions, I got worse'n
ever over her. I begun to see that I warn't what I had been to her. When
we was trampin' and fishin' it was all right and she'd talk to me 'bout
the ways o' the birds and what flowers come up fust and all that, but
when it got to geography and history I warn't in it with her, and you
was. That sickened me more'n ever. Pretty soon I began to feel as if
everything I had in life war slippin' away from me. I didn't want her to
shut me out from anything she had. I wanted to have half, same's we
allus had--half for me and half for her. Why, lately, when I lay awake
nights a-thinkin' it over, I've wished sometimes that she hadn't growed
up at all, and that she'd allus be my baby-girl and I her Uncle Jim.
"Yesterday mornin'--" Jim's voice broke, and he cleared his throat.
"Yesterday mornin' we went down the branch, as ye know, and she was
a-settin' on a log throwin' her fly into the pool, when one o' them
song-sparrows lit on a bush and looked at her, and begin to sing like
he'd bust his little chest, and she sung back at him with her eyes
a-laughin' and her hair a-flyin', and I stood lookin' at her and my
heart choked up in my throat, and I leaned over and took the rod out
o' her hand.
"'Baby-girl,' I says, 'there ain't a bird 'round here that ain't got a
mate; and that's what makes 'em so happy. I ain't got nobody but you,
Ruby--don't go 'way from me, child--stay with me.' And I told her. She
looked at me startled like, same as a deer does when he hears a dog
bark; then she jumped up and begin to cry.
"'Oh, Jim--Jim--dear Jim!' she says. 'I love you so, and you've been so
good to me all my life, but don't--don't never say that to me again.
That can never be--not so long as we live.' And she dropped down on the
ground and cried till she couldn't git her breath. Then she got up and
kissed my hands and went home, leavin' me there alone feelin' like I'd
fell off a scaffoldin' and struck the sidewalk."
Jim arose from his seat and began pacing the platform again. I had not
spoken a word through his long story.
"Jim," I began, "how old are you?"
"Forty-two," he said, in a patient, listless way.
"More than twice as old as Ruby, aren't you? Old enough, really, to be
her father. You love her, don't you--love her for herself--not yourself?
You wouldn't let anything hurt her if you could help it. You were right
when you said every bird has its mate. That's true, Jim, and the way it
ought to be--but they mate with _this_ year's birds, not _last_ year's.
When men get as old as you and I we forget these things sometimes, but
they are true all the same."
"I know it," he broke out, "I know it; you can't tell me nothin' about
it. I thought it all over more'n a hundred times lately. I could bite my
tongue off for sayin' what I did to her, and spilin' her visit, but it's
done now and I can't help it, and I've got to stay here and bear it."
"No, Jim, don't stay here. So long as she sees you around here she'll be
unhappy, and you will be equally miserable. Go away from here; find work
somewhere else."
"When?" he said, quietly.
"Now; right away; before she comes back at Christmas."
"No, I can't do it, and I won't. Not till she graduates and gits her
certificate. That'll be next June."
"What's that got to do with it?"
"Got a good deal to do with it. If I should leave now jes's winter's
comin' on I mightn't git another job, and she'd have to come home and
her eddication be sp'ilt."
"What would bring her home?" I asked in surprise.
"What would bring her home?" he repeated, with some irritation. "Why
they'd send her if the bills warn't paid--that's what Marm Marvin
couldn't help her, and Jed wouldn't give her a cent. Them school-bills,
you know, I've always paid out o' my wages--that's why Jed let her go.
No; I'll stick it out here till she finishes, if it kills me. Baby-girl
sha'n't miss nothin' through me."
One beautiful spring day I swung back the gate of a garden on the
outskirts of the village of Plymouth and walked up a flower-bordered
path to a cottage porch smothered in vines.
Ruby was standing in the door, her hands held out to me. I had not seen
her for years. Her husband had not returned yet from their school, but
she expected him every minute.
"And dear old Jim?" I asked. "What has become of him?"
"Look," she said, pointing to a shambling, awkward figure stooping under
the apple-trees, which were in full bloom. "There he is, picking
blossoms with little Ruby. He never leaves her for a minute."