"Jim!" called Mrs. Marshall, as the old man, carrying a basket in one
hand and a spade in the other, was trudging steadily by. His blue
overalls and jumper were threadbare under the soft brown they had
achieved through his strenuous kneeling and the general intimacy of
weeds and sod. He had a curious neutrality of expression--perhaps an
indifference to what his blue eyes fell upon, save when they looked out
from under their rugged brows at the growing things he tended. Then the
lines about them multiplied and deepened, and his face took on new life.
Mrs. Marshall, the large lady at the gate, splendidly starched in her
afternoon calico, regarded him without personal interest. He was merely
an old resident likely to clear up a matter that had been blurred during
her years of absence in the West. Jim's eyes traveled past her to the
garden in the rear of the house, where yellow flower-de-luce was
beginning to blow.
"They'd ought to put some muck on them pinies last fall," said he, in a
soft voice which his gnarled aspect had not foretold.
"Now you stop thinkin' gardins for a minute an' pay some heed to me,"
said Mrs. Marshall. "How was I goin' to look out for the pinies, when I
only come into the property this spring? Uncle'd ha' seen 'em mowed down
for fodder before he'd ha' let you or anybody else poke round over
anything 'twas his. But what I want to know is--what was 't the Miller
twins had their quarrel about, all them years ago?"
Jim answered without hesitation or interest: "'Twas about a man. They
both on 'em set by one man, an' he led 'em on. He made trouble betwixt
'em. 'Twas thirty year ago an' more."
"An' they ain't spoke sence! My! what fools anybody can make of
themselves over a man! He's dead now, ain't he?"
"I dunno," said Jim. Abstraction had settled upon him. "Say, Mis'
Marshall, what if I should drop in an' 'tend to them pinies?"
"Fush on the pinies!" said Mrs. Marshall heartily. "You can, if 't'll be
any comfort to ye. 'Twas they that made me think o' the Miller twins.
Husband never got over talkin' about their pinies. I'd ruther have a
good head o' lettuce than all the pinies that ever blowed."
Jim dropped his traps, opened the gate, walked past her without a word,
and began a professional examination of the garden-beds. When he came to
a neglected line of box, he made a sympathetic clucking of the tongue,
and before a rosebush, coming out in meagre leafage, he stayed a long
time.
"Too bad!" he said, as if the bush appealed to him for comfort. "Too
bad!"
Mrs. Marshall had gone contentedly back to her sewing by the window, and
a cautious voice challenged her from the bedroom, where her daughter,
Lily, was changing her dress.
"Well," said Lily, "I guess you've done it this time. Didn't you know
'twas Jim's wife the man run off with? Well, it was."
Mrs. Marshall paused in her work.
"Well," said she, "I don't know whether to laugh or cry. I believe
husband did use to say so. I ain't thought of it for years. How'd you
find out so much?"
"I guess I don't have to be in a place long without hearin' all there is
to hear," said Lily, coming out in her crisp pink muslin. "Here, you
hook me up. Why, mother, he's Wilfred's own uncle! Wilfred told me. He
said his uncle never'd been the same man since his wife run away."
Jim was wandering back to the road, deflected now and then by some
starveling plant.
"Anything you want to do," called Mrs. Marshall, with a compensatory
impulse, "you're welcome to. I may put in a few seeds."
Jim stood there, shaking his head in great dissatisfaction.
"It wouldn't ha' done a mite o' good for me to come here while he was
alive," he said, as if he accounted to himself for that grievous lapse.
"He'd ha' turned me out, neck an' crop, if I'd laid a finger on it."
"Well, you come when you can," said Mrs. Marshall. She was benevolently
willing to fall in with Gardener Jim's peculiarities, because, being
love-cracked, he had no particular occupation save this self-chosen one.
"What you s'pose I said to the new minister about you, Jim?" she
continued kindly.
"Dunno," returned Jim, in his soft voice. "Dunno."
"Well, he says to me, 'I never see such a lot o' nice gardins as there
is round here.' 'Don't you know the reason?' says I. 'Why, Gardener Jim
goes round an' takes care of 'em without money an' without price.' Wake
up, Jim. That's what I said."
The look of response had vanished from his face. He had taken a knife
from his pocket and was clipping a dead branch from the prairie queen at
the window. When the deed had been done with great nicety, he closed the
knife, returned it to his pocket, and took his way silently out of the
yard. Mrs. Marshall, glancing up from her sewing, saw him again
trudging toward his lonely home.
When Jim went along like that, his head bent and his eyes fixed upon the
ground, people often wondered whether he was thinking of anything at
all, or whether such intentness did betoken a grave preoccupation.
Sometimes they tested him. "What you thinkin' about, Jim?" one would ask
him, when they met upon the road; but Jim never replied in any
illuminating way. If he answered at all, it was only to query, "How's
your gardin?" and then, as soon as the response was given, to nod and
hurry on again. If the garden was reported as not doing very well, Jim
was there next morning, like the family doctor.
To-day, when he reached the cross-road leading to his little black
house, he paused a moment, as if he were working out something and must
wait for the answer. Then he continued on the way he had been going, and
a quarter of a mile farther on stopped before a great house of a dull
and time-worn yellow, where, in the corresponding front window of the
upper chambers, two women sat, each in her own solitary state, binding
shoes. These were the Miller twins. Sophy saw him as he opened the side
gate and went along her path to the back of the house. She rose, tossed
her work on the table, and ran into an overlooking chamber to watch
him. Sophy had been the pretty one of the family. Now her fair face had
broadened, her blond hair showed a wide track at the parting, and her
mouth dropped at the corners; but her faded blue eyes still looked
wistfully through their glasses. They had a grave simplicity, like that
of a child.
As she watched Gardener Jim, a frown came upon her forehead. "What under
heavens?" she muttered; and then she saw. Jim was examining her
neglected garden, and the wonder was not in that. It was that after all
these years, when he had worked for other people, suddenly he had come
to her. A moment after, he looked up, to find her at his elbow.
"I should think anybody'd be ashamed," said he, "to let things go to
wrack an' ruin this way." The paths were thick with weeds. Faithful
sweet-william and phlox had evidently struggled for years and barely
held their own against misfortune, and bouncing-bet was thrifty. But
others of the loved in old-time gardens had starved and died. "You used
to have the handsomest canterbury-bells anywhere round," said Jim. He
spoke seriously, as if it pained him to find things at such a pass.
"Don't look as if you'd sowed a seed sence nobody knows when. Where's
your pinies?"
Sophy turned toward the high board-fence that ran from the exact middle
of the house down through the garden.
"Over there," she said.
"Over where?"
"In her part."
"Her part o' the place? What you been an' cut it up this way for?"
If Gardener Jim had ever heard of the feud that separated the two
sisters he had apparently forgotten it, and Sophy, knowing his reputed
state, felt no surprise.
"She lives in t'other part o' the house," she vouchsafed cautiously.
"Well," he grumbled, "that's no reason, as I see, why you should ha'
gone an' sliced up the gardin." He gave one more estimating look at the
forlorn waste. "Well, I'll be over in the mornin'."
"You needn't," Sophy called after him. "I don't want any gardenin'
done," she cried the louder; but Jim paid no attention.
He was at the other gate now, leading into Eliza's grounds, and there he
found Eliza waiting for him. She looked older than her sister. She was
thinner, her eyes were sharp, and her chin was square and firm.
"Well," said she, "what is it?"
Jim hardly seemed to see her.
"Where's your pinies?" he asked.
Eliza resolutely refrained from looking at the grassy plot where they
sat in their neglected state.
"I dunno 's they're comin' up this year," she returned speciously.
"Yes, they be, too," said Jim, with vigor. He had gone straight over to
the spot where the juicy red-brown stalks were pushing up among the
grass. "Well, if I don't git round this fall an' feed up them pinies I
sha'n't have a wink o' sleep all winter."
Eliza had followed him, and now she stood regarding the peonies absently
and with almost a wistful curiosity, as if they recalled something she
had long forgotten to enjoy.
"I ain't done much in the gardin for a good many year," she said. "I got
kinder stiff, an' then I give it up. It's too late to do anything to 'em
now, I s'pose?"
"No, it ain't neither," said Jim. "I'll be round to-morrer an' git the
grass out an' put suthin' on to make 'em grow. Trouble is, 'tain't so
easy to do it in spring as 'tis in the fall, them stalks are so brittle.
Don't you touch 'em, now. I'll see to 'em myself."
Eliza followed him to the gate. She was curious, and yet she hardly knew
how to put her question with the indifference she sought. As he was
taking up his spade, she found the words:--
"What's started you up to come here arter so many years?"
His eyes dropped. The shaggy brows met over them in a defense.
"I kinder thought I would," said he. Then he went soberly back to his
own house.
Jim had no garden. Years ago, when his wife had left him, to run away
with another man, he had tried to wipe out every sign of his life with
her. It was in the early spring of the year when it happened, and the
first thing he did, after he came back from the field and found her
letter, was to drive the oxen into the home-plot and plough up the
garden she had loved. The next day he had harrowed it and sown it down
to grass, and then had taken to his bed, where the neighbors found him,
and, one and another, nursed him through his fever. When he got up
again, he was not entirely the same, but he went about his work, making
shoes in the winter and in summer going from house to house to tend the
gardens. At first the neighbors had deprecated his spending so much
unrewarded time, or even forcing them to resuscitate old gardens against
their will; but they had been obliged to yield. He continued his task
with a gentle persistency, and the little town became resplendent in
gardens--great tangles of cherished growth, or little thrifty squares
like patchwork quilts. Jim was not particular as to color and effect. He
was only determined that every plant should prosper. Only the Miller
sisters he had neglected until to-day, and nobody knew whether he
remembered that it was at their house the man had stayed, charming
hearts, before he went away again upon his travels, taking the prettiest
woman of all with him, or whether it was merely connected with a vague
discomfort in his mind.
To-night Jim went into his kitchen and cooked his supper with all a
woman's deftness. His kitchen was always clean, though, to the end of
keeping it so, he had discarded one thing or another, not imperatively
needed. One day he had made a collection of articles only used in a less
primitive housekeeping, from nutmeg-grater to fluting-iron, and tossed
them out of the window into a corner of the yard. There they stayed,
while he added to them a footstool, a crib, and a mixed list of
superfluities; then some of the poorer inhabitants of the town, known as
"Frenchies," discovered that such treasure was there, and grew into the
habit of stealing into the yard twice a week or so and, unmolested,
taking away the plunder.
To-night Jim determined to go to bed early. He had more to do next day
than could possibly be done. As he sat on the front steps, having his
after-supper smoke, he heard the beat of hoofs, and looked up to see
Wilfred whirling by. Lily Marshall sat beside him, all color and
radiance, in her youthful bloom. As Wilfred looked over at him, with a
nod, Jim threw out his arm in a wild beckoning.
"Here!" he called. "Here, you stop a minute!"
Wilfred drew up at the gate, and Jim hurried down to them.
"Which way you goin'?" he called, while Lily looked at him curiously and
Wilfred reddened with shame. He was sorry that this new girl come into
town must see for herself how queer his uncle was.
"Oh, 'most anywheres!" he answered bluffly. "We're just takin' a ride."
"Well, you go down over Alewife Bridge, then, an' cast a look into Annie
Darling's gardin. She's gone away an' left it as neat as wax, an' that
gate o' hern swings open sometimes an' them 'tarnal ducks'll git in. You
wait a minute. I'll give ye a mite o' wire I kep' to twist round the
gate." He sought absorbedly in his pocket and pulled out a little coil.
"There!" said he, "that's the talk."
Wilfred accepted the wire in silence, and drove along.
"Who's Annie Darling?" asked Lily with innocence.
She had not been long in the town without hearing that Wilfred had been
"going" with Annie Darling before his sudden invitation to her, that
night after prayer-meeting, "May I have the pleasure of seeing you
home?" Wilfred himself could not have told why he asked that question
when Annie, he knew, was only a pace behind. The one thing he could
remember was that, when he saw Lily coming, he realized that he had
never in his life known there were cheeks so red and eyes so dark.
"Who is she?" asked Lily, again, tightening her veil. It had been
blowing against his cheek.
"Annie Darling?" said Wilfred, with difficulty. "Why, she's a girl lives
round here. Her mother died last winter, and she's been tryin' to go out
nursin'. That's where she's gone now, I guess."
Lily Marshall laughed.
"It's a funny name," she said. "I should think folks'd turn it round and
make it 'Darling Annie.'"
Wilfred felt a hot wave sweeping over him, the tide of recollection.
"Well," said he, "I guess they have--some of 'em."
Lily gave him a swift glance, and wondered how much she really liked
him. He seemed "pretty country" sometimes beside the young hardware man
who was writing her from the West. But she was one to "make things go,"
and she talked glibly on until they had crossed Alewife Bridge and
Wilfred drew up before a gray house with a garden in front, marked out
in little prim beds defined by pebbles, and all without a weed. The
iris, purple and yellow, seemed to be holding banners, it was so gay,
and the lilacs were in bloom. He left the reins in Lily's hands, and
stood a moment at the gate, glancing at the beds. Then he went inside,
tried the front door, and shut a blind that had failed to catch, and
after a second frowning look at all the beds, came out and wired the
gate.
"Well," said Lily, as they drove away, "ain't you good, takin' all that
trouble!"
Wilfred frowned again.
"I don't like to see things go to wrack and ruin," he remarked.
"How's she look?"
"How's who look?"
"Annie Darling."
"I can't tell how folks look," said Wilfred. He spoke roughly, and she
glanced at him in a calculated show of surprise. "Why, you've seen her.
She was at the meetin' the night I walked home with you."
"Was she?" said Lily. "Well, I never noticed the folks here very much
till I begun to get acquainted."
But she had brought back to him a picture he had been forgetting: Annie,
standing in her garden, sweet, serious, and so kind. He had hardly
thought before of Annie's looks. People never spoke of them when they
were recalling her. She was simply a person they liked to live beside.
The next morning Jim was at Mrs. Marshall's before breakfast--almost
before light, she thought, because through her last nap she had heard
his hoe clicking, and when she went out, there was the track of his
wheelbarrow through the dew, and the liberated peonies, free of grass,
stood each in its rich dark circle of manure.
A little later the Miller twins saw him coming, and Sophy was at the
door awaiting him.
"Don't you want a cup o' tea?" she asked.
Sophy looked quite eager. It seemed to her that, with the garden
resurrected, something was going to happen. Jim shook his head.
"I'll dig round them rose-bushes," said he. "Then I'll go an' git some
dressin'."
"I'll pay for it," said Sophy. "You sha'n't have that to do."
"It's no consequence," returned Jim indifferently. "I can git all I want
out o' Squire's old yard. I pay him for it in the fall, cobblin'. It's
no great matter, anyways."
Sophy disappeared into the house, and came out again, hurriedly, with a
trowel in her hand.
"I don't know but I'll work a mite myself," she said, "if you was to
tell me where 'twas worth while to begin."
"Don't ye touch the spring things," said Jim briefly. He was loosening
the ground about the roses, with delicacy and dispatch. "Let it be as it
may with 'em this year. Come November, we'll overhaul 'em. You might see
if you can git some o' the grass out o' that monkshood over there."
Sophy, in her sun-bonnet, bent over her task, and for an hour they
worked absorbedly. Suddenly she looked up, to find herself alone. But
there were voices in the other yard. He was working for Eliza. But Eliza
was not helping him. She walked back and forth--Sophy could see her
passing the cracks in the high board-fence--and once she called to Jim
in a nervous voice, "I wisht you'd go away."
Jim apparently did not hear. He went on freeing the peonies.
"No wonder things git pindlin' under this old locust-tree," Sophy heard
him grumble. "Throwin' down leaves an' branches every day in the year.
Half on 't's rotten. It ought to come down."
"Well," said Eliza, "if it ought to come down, let it come. You know
where to find the axe."
Sophy, on the other side of the fence, could hardly bear the horror and
surprise of it. She forgot she was "not speaking" to her sister.
"O 'Liza!" she cried piercingly. "That was mother's tree. She set it out
with her own hands. I dunno what she'd say."