TWO HAPPY TRAVELERS
How wonderfully the face of all the outer world changes with our
feelings.
It was so with Posey. As her heart grew light she began to feel the
brightness and charm of the sunny October morning, a late lingering
robin whose note when she first heard it a little while before she had
thought sad and sorrowful, now had a cheery sound; and the call of a
flock of blackbirds flying over she thought most musical.
Even the swamp, which had looked to her so dismal, as she rode through
it was transformed and became full of delights. Its thick crowding
bushes gleamed with coral-hued berries, its tangled depths were rich
with every tone of tint or color, and through the centre a little
river, set thick with lily pads, loitered along with the laziest
possible current. Not a few of the trees and shrubs which bordered the
narrow roadway, made, as Ben explained, by filling in earth through
the swamp—were draped with festoons of wild clematis vines in their
autumn beauty, set with fluffy masses of filmy, smoke-hued fringe. From
her high seat Posey reached out and pulled lengths of this, which she
twined about the dashboard, exclaiming with delight at its delicate
beauty. A few wild roses were still in blossom on the thickets, whose
gleaming red hips hinted at a wealth of earlier bloom, and here and
there the scarlet leaves of the poison ivy added their vivid hue to the
wealth of color.
For part of the way the trees beside the roadway met overhead, forming
an arch, now more of gold than green, through which the golden sunshine
filtered and flickered in delicious coolness. Once or twice the narrow
road widened into a grassy space; “Turning-out places,” Ben explained,
for teams to pass each other. Which set Posey to wondering what people
would do if they met in any other than the right spot.
“But they _have_ to meet there,” Ben asserted. “When one person sees
another coming he stops and waits. There’s no trouble when everybody
looks out.”
But what was to Posey the crowning charm was a wide drainage ditch
or canal, near the outer edge of the swamp, the cause of the fringe
of dead bushes she had already noticed. Ben stopped his horse on the
bridge that crossed it, that at their leisure they might look up the
long, straight stretch of water, whose clean-cut banks of velvety turf
narrowed in perspective till they seemed at last to meet in the level
distance, while on its still surface, trees, shrubs, clumps of nodding
blue asters, and the sky, bluer than all, were reflected as in a mirror.
“Oh, how lovely!” cried Posey. “I never saw so pretty a place in all my
life. I wish we could ride through it all day.”
“Yes, it is pretty,” answered practical Ben, “but it’s not good for
much as it is now. I suppose, though, it will all be dry land some day;
that’s what the man said where I stayed all night, and this big ditch
is to help. He thought some time it would all be dry land.”
“At any rate, I’m glad to have seen it as it is now,” declared Posey.
For Posey had yielded herself to the gladness of the day, and in after
years it stood apart in her memory. There was the delicious sense of
freedom as of a bird escaped from its cage, with that of triumph as the
distance widened between her and her late bondage; and in addition the
blissful reaction from anxiety, the rest after fatigue, the happiness
in her new-found friend, and of trusting confidence in his protecting
care and superior knowledge. She had shaken off the past, the future
was an unknown quantity, the happy present was enough.
For to Posey, whose life had held such a scanty store of pleasure,
one continued delight was that long ride in the soft, warm, October
sunshine. Through quiet country roads they wound, among fields green
with aftermath, and hills rich with October woods. Sometimes these were
so near that she could see the ripe leaves dropping softly down like
a golden rain, and again distant with all their varied hues of gold
and scarlet and crimson and russet blended by the misty autumn haze;
but whether near or far always a splendor of color. The cornfields
along the way were dotted with great sheaves of the harvested corn,
among which the orange spheres of the pumpkins lay thick, and where
the huskers were busy stripping the husks from the yellow ears that
overflowed baskets and heaped wagons.
Orchards, too, there were, fruity with scent of the red-cheeked apples
which loaded the trees. Occasionally they met loads of apples on
the way to be made into cider. Once they passed a cider mill by the
roadside, and stopped for a drink of the sweet juice as it came fresh
from the press. At another time they drove under a tree overgrown by a
wild grapevine, and Ben, standing on the seat, had gathered his hands
full of the little, spicy-flavored, frost grapes. While scattered
along the way were clumps of woodbine, its leaves flushed russet
crimson; bittersweet with its clustered orange berries beginning to
show their scarlet hearts; with lingering sprays of golden rod, and
lavender drifts of the wild aster. The farmhouses at which Ben stopped
to trade—for he was too faithful an employee to forget his business
for any pleasure—had for the most part, it seemed to Posey, a cozy,
homelike air, the yards of many gay with fall flowers that the frosts
had not yet killed.
And how their tongues did run! Ben Pancost had to hear in its fullest
detail Posey’s whole story, with especial interest in that part of her
life with Madam Atheldena Sharpe.
“How many different cities you have seen!” he exclaimed once with an
accent of almost envy.
“No, I never saw very much of them after all. You see, we always lived
in a crowded part, so one was a good deal like another.”
“And how did you use to feel when you were pretending to be a spirit?”
“Oh, sometimes I thought it was sort of fun. One day, I remember, at
school the teacher had us put our hands up and up as we sang, higher
and higher, like this,” and she raised her arms in a gently undulating
motion. “That evening I did it again as I came out, and the people at
the _séance_ all held their breath and whispered, ‘Oh, how beautiful!’
You ought to have heard them,” and Posey laughed as she recalled the
incident. “Yes, sometimes it was no end of fun, but most times I was
tired and sleepy and it was _so_ tiresome. The changing dresses, and
wigs, and all that, and I used to think how stupid the folks were not
to know that it was only me.”
“And were you frightened when they found you out?”
“Frightened? Well, I guess I was! I knew the Madam would be in a rage,
and I didn’t know what they would do to me, either. They tore my wig
off, and crowded round me, and everybody was talking at once, but I
pulled away, somehow, and ran. My, how I did run; ’way up into the
attic! I’d never been there before, but it was some place to hide,
and it wasn’t so bad, for I stumbled onto an old mattress, only I was
afraid there might be rats. But I wasn’t as afraid of the rats as I
was of the people downstairs, and by and by, when it was all still, I
went to sleep. Then in the morning when I waked up and went down the
Madam was gone. She knew that I had no other place in the world to go
to; but she never did care for anybody but herself. I tell you, it was
awful to be turned out so, and not know what to do. I felt almost as
bad as when you saw me this morning.”
“It was a shame,” Ben agreed heartily. “But then she couldn’t have been
a very good woman, anyway. And don’t you think it was just as wrong as
lying to deceive people so?”
“I suppose it was,” Posey admitted simply. “My mamma always told me
never to tell lies, and I don’t mean to; but I began to ‘manifest,’ as
she always called it, when I was so little that I didn’t think anything
about its being right or wrong. I should have had to done it whether I
wanted to or not, for when Madam was cross I tell you I had to stand
round. Besides, that was the way we made our living, and in the city
folks have to have money to live. Here in the country you don’t know
anything about it. Look at the apples in that orchard. I used to go to
the market for Madam and buy a quart of apples. Just six or seven, you
know. Sometimes I could get a market-woman to put on one more, and then
I had that to eat for myself. And milk! Why, we never bought more than
a pint at a time, more often half a pint; and a half a pound or a pound
of butter. You don’t know how strange it did seem to go out and pick
things off as they grew, and to see so much of everything.”
“I wouldn’t want to live that way,” admitted Ben.
“I guess not. Sometimes I felt so much older than the other girls
of my age at Horsham. They had fathers and mothers who bought them
everything. They never thought about the cost, and they all had
spending money—not a great deal, but some—to use as they pleased. And
I—why I can hardly remember when I didn’t have to think about the price
of everything. When Madam gave me money to go out and buy things she
used to say, ‘Now see how far you can make this go.’ She was always
telling me how much my shoes and clothes and what I ate cost. And as
for ever having any money to spend for my very own self, why I wouldn’t
know what that was.” She paused and an accent of bitterness crept into
her next words: “You may say what you please, but I believe God cares
a lot more for some folks than He does for others. He gives them such a
sight more. At any rate, I’m ‘most certain He doesn’t care anything for
me,” and she gave the red dashboard a little kick by way of emphasis.
“Why, Posey!” Ben cried in astonishment, “God cares for everybody!”
“Well, then,” protested Posey fiercely, “why did He make my mother die,
and why doesn’t He give me a home somewhere?”
Ben looked puzzled for a moment, then he brightened. “Did you ever ask
Him to take care of you?”
“Yes, I did last night. I asked Him to help me, and take care of me.
And where would I be now if it wasn’t for you?”
“Why, Posey!” cried Ben triumphantly. “Don’t you see that He sent me?”
“Do you think He did?” A sudden seriousness had come into Posey’s face.
“Of course. I know it. Why, once when I was a little boy I had a bow
and arrow. One day I shot my arrow away so far I couldn’t find it,
though I hunted and hunted. Finally I knelt right down in the grass
and asked God to help me find my arrow; and do you believe me, when I
opened my eyes the first thing I saw was my arrow, only a little way
from me. Perhaps if you had asked God to help you before he would have
done so.”
“But,” persisted Posey, “sometimes it doesn’t help people any when they
do pray. There was a woman in Horsham whose daughter was sick this
summer, and she had folks come and pray for her to get well, but she
died all the same.”
As she was speaking Ben drew out a handsome pocketknife. “Isn’t that
knife a dandy?” he asked, holding it out in his hand. “Five blades, all
the very best steel, and the handle inlaid. When I was seven years old
my Uncle Ben, in Nebraska, that I was named for, sent it to me. Father
said I was too little to have such a knife then, that I would be apt to
break it, and to cut me with it, so he laid it away till I was older.
Well, I wanted it then, and I used to tease and tease father for it,
and almost think it was unkind and mean in him to keep my own knife
away from me. The day I was ten years old he said:
“‘Ben, here is your knife. If I had given it to you at the first, as
you wanted me to, very likely it would by this time be broken or lost,
and you might have been badly hurt with it. Now you are old enough to
value and use it carefully. And when you look at it remember this, my
boy, that God often has to do by us as I have by you—refuse us the
thing we ask for because it might hurt us, or because the time has not
yet come when we are ready for it. Refuses us simply because He loves
us.’”
“Why, Ben!” exclaimed Posey with wide-open eyes, “I never heard
anything like that before. And you talk just like a minister.”
“I’m only telling you what my father said. Perhaps because he died so
soon afterwards is one reason I’ve always remembered it. And he was
good as any minister. I don’t believe there ever was a better father,”
and there was a tremble in Ben’s voice.
“Tell me about yourself now; I’ve told you all about myself,” urged
Posey.