Nov. 1, 19--.
Dearest Winnies:
Well, Justice Sherman may be a sheep herder and a son of the pasture, but
I hae me doots. I know a hawk from a handsaw if I was born and bred in
the backwoods. I know it isn't polite to doubt people's word, and he
seemed to be telling an absolutely straight story when he told how he
beat his way across from Texas, but for all that there's some mystery
about him. His manners betrayed him the first time he ever sat down to
the table with us. Even though he limped badly and was still awfully
wobbly, he stood behind my mother's chair and shoved it in for her and
then hobbled over and did the same for me.
You can see it, can't you? The table set in the kitchen--for our humble
cot does not boast of a dining room--father and Jim Wiggin collarless and
in their shirtsleeves, and the stranded sheep herder waiting upon mother
and me as if we were queens. For no reason at all I suddenly became
abashed. I felt my face flaming to the roots of my hair, and
absentmindedly began to eat my soup with a fork, whereat Jim Wiggin set
up a great thundering haw! haw! Jim had been a sheep herder before he
came to take care of father's horses, and it struck me forcibly just then
that there was a wide difference between him and the stranger within our
gates.
I said something to father about it that night when we were out in the
stable together giving Sandhelo his nightly dole. Father rubbed his nose
with the back of his hand, a sign that a thing is of no concern to him.
"Don't you get to worryin' about the stranger's affairs," he advised
mildly. "If he's got something he doesn't want to tell, you ain't got no
business tryin' to find it out. Tend to your own affairs, I say, and
leave others' alone. There ain't nobody goin' to be pestered with
embarrassing questions while they're under my roof."
So I promised not to ask any questions. Just about the time the
stranger's foot was well enough to walk on, Jim Wiggin stepped on a rusty
nail and laid himself up. Justice Sherman was a godsend just then because
men were so hard to get, and father hired him to help with the horses
until Jim was about again. Father begged me again at this time not to ask
him anything about his past.
"Just as soon as he thinks we're gettin' curious he'll up and leave," he
said, "and that would put us in a bad way. Help is so scarce now I don't
know where I _would_ get an extra man. Seems almost as though the hand of
Providence had sent him to us."
It was perfectly true. Since so many men had gone into the army it was
next thing to impossible to get any help on the farms except
good-for-nothing negroes that weren't worth their salt. It seemed,
indeed, an act of Providence to cast an able man at our door just at this
juncture. So I promised again not to bother the man with questions.
Indeed, it bade fair to be an easy matter not to ask him any questions.
Beyond a few polite words at meals he never said anything at all, and as
he had moved his sleeping quarters to a small cabin away from the house I
saw very little of him, and I suppose we never would have gotten any
better acquainted if your letter hadn't come that Friday. Friday is the
worst day of the week for me, because after five days of constant
set-to-ing with Absalom Butts my philosophy is at its lowest ebb. This
week was the worst because I had a visitation from the school board to
see how I was getting on, and, of course, none of the pupils knew a thing
and most of them acted as if the very devil of mischief had gotten into
them. Elijah Butts gave me a solemn warning that I would have to keep
better order if I wanted to stay in the school, and Absalom, who had been
hanging around listening, made an impudent grimace at me and laughed in a
taunting manner. If I hadn't needed the money so badly I would have
thrown up the job right there.
Then, on top of that, came your letter describing the supergorgeousness
of your college rooms, and when I thought of the room I had planned to
have at college this winter, adjoining yours, my heart turned to water
within me and melancholy marked me for its own. I wept large and pearly
tears which Niagara-ed over the end of my nose and sizzled on the hot
stove, as I stood in the kitchen stirring a pudding for supper. Get the
effect, do you? Me standing there with the spoon in one hand and your
letter in the other, doing the Niobe act, quite oblivious to the fact
that I was not the only person in the county. I was just in the act of
swallowing a small rapid which had gotten side-tracked from the main
channel and gone whirlpooling down my Sunday throat, when a voice behind
me said, "Did you get bad news in your letter?"
I jumped so I dropped the letter right into the pudding. I made a savage
dab at my eyes with the corner of my apron and wheeled around furiously.
There stood the Justice Sherman person looking at me with his solemn
black eyes. I was ready to die with shame at being caught.
"No, I didn't," I exploded, mopping my face vehemently with my apron, and
thereby capping the climax. For while I had been reading your letter and
absently stirring the pudding it had slopped over and run down the front
of my apron, and, of course, I had to use just that part to wipe my face
with. The pudding was huckleberry, and what it did to my features is
beyond description. I caught one glimpse of myself in the mirror over the
sink and then I sank down into a chair and just yelled. Justice Sherman
doubled up against the door frame in a regular spasm of mirth, although
he tried not to make much noise about it. Finally he bolted out of the
door and came back with a basin of water from the pump, which he set down
beside me.
"Here," he said, "remove the marks of bloody carnage, before you scare
the wolf from the door."
So I scrubbed, wishing all the while that he would go away, and still
furious for having made such a spectacle of myself. But he stayed around,
and when I resembled a human being once more (if I ever could be said to
resemble one), he came over and handed me the letter, which he had fished
out of the pudding.
"Here's the fatal missive," he said, "or would you rather leave it in the
pudding?"
"Throw it into the fire," I commanded.
"That's the right way," he said approvingly. "I always burn bad news
myself."
"It wasn't bad news," I insisted.
"Then why the tears?" he inquired curiously. "Tears, idle tears, I know
not what they mean----"
He was smiling, but somehow I had a feeling that he was trying to cheer
me up and not making fun of me. I was so low in my mind that afternoon
that anyone who acted in the least degree sympathetic was destined to
fall a victim. Before I knew it I had told him of my shipwrecked hopes
and how your letter had opened the flood gates of disappointment and
nearly put out the kitchen fire.
"College--you!" I heard him exclaim under his breath. He stared at me
solemnly for a moment and then he exclaimed, "O tempora, O mores! What's
to hinder?"
"What's to hinder?" I repeated blankly.
"Yes," he said, "having the room anyway."
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"Why," he explained, "you have a room of your own, haven't you? Why don't
you fix it up just the way you had planned to have your room in college?
Then you can go there and study and make believe you're in college."
I stared at him open-mouthed. "Make-believe has never been my long suit,"
I said.
"Come on," he urged. "I'll help you fix it up. If you have any more tears
prepare to shed them now into the paint pot and dissolve the paint."
Before I knew what had happened we had laid forcible hands on the bare
little cell I had indifferently been inhabiting all these years and
transformed it into the study of my dreams. We cut a window in the side
that faces in the direction of the mountains and made a corking window
seat out of a packing case, on which I piled cushions stuffed with
thistle down. We papered the whole place with light yellow paper, tacked
up my last year's school pennants and put up a book shelf. This last
proved to be a delusion and a snare, because one end of it came down in
the middle of the night not long afterward and all the books came
tobogganing on top of me in bed. As a finishing touch, I brought out the
snowshoes and painted paddle that were a relic of my Golden Age, and
which I had never had the heart to unpack since I came home. When
finished the effect was quite epic, though I suppose it would make
Hinpoha's artistic eye water.
Of course, it will never make up for not going to college, but it helped
some, and in working at it I got very well acquainted with Justice
Sherman all of a sudden. We had long talks about everything under the
sun, and he continually bubbled over with funny sayings. He confided to
me that he had never been so surprised in all his life as when I told him
I wanted to go to college. You see, he had thought we were like the other
poor whites in the neighborhood, and I was like the other girls he had
seen. He didn't take any interest in me until I bowled him over with the
statement that I had already passed my college entrance exams.
All this time I never hinted that I suspected he was not the simple sheep
herder he pretended to be. I had given father my word and, of course, had
to keep it. But one afternoon the Fates had their fingers crossed, and
Pandora like, I got my foot in it. I had driven Justice over to Spencer
in the rattledy old cart with Sandhelo. On the way we talked of many
things, and I came home surer than ever that he was no sheep herder. Once
when the conversation lagged and in the silence Sandhelo's heels seemed
to be beating out a tune as they clicked along, I remarked ruminatingly,
"There's a line in Virgil that is supposed to imitate the sound of
galloping horses."
"_Quadrupedante putrem sonitu quatit angula campam,_"
quoted Justice promptly.
So he was on quoting terms with Virgil! But I remembered my promise and
made no remarks.
A little later I was telling about the winter hike we had taken on
snowshoes last year.
"You ought to see the sport they have on snowshoes in Switzerland," he
began with kindling eyes. Then he broke off suddenly and changed the
subject.
So Texas sheep herders learn their trade in Switzerland! But again I
yanked on the curb rein of my curiosity. I apparently took no notice of
his remark, for just then a negro stepped suddenly from behind the bushes
along the road and startled Sandhelo so that he promptly became
temperamental and sat up on his haunches to get a better look at the
apparition, and the mess he made of the harness furnished us plenty of
theme for conversation for the next ten minutes.
"Lord, what an ape," remarked Justice, gazing after the departing form of
the negro shambling along the road, "he looks like the things you see in
nightmares."
Accustomed as I was to seeing low-down niggers, this one struck me as
being the worst specimen nature had ever produced. He had the features of
a baboon, and the flapping rags of the grotesque garments he wore made
him look like a wild creature.
"Do you have many such intellectual-looking gentlemen around here?" asked
Justice, twisting his neck around for a final look at the fellow. "I'd
hate to meet that professor at the dark of the moon."
"Oh, they're really not as bad as they look," I replied. "They look like
apes, but they're quite harmless. They're shiftless to the last degree,
but not violent. They're too lazy to do any mischief."
"Just the same, I'd rather not get into an argument with that particular
brother, if it's all the same to you," answered Justice. "He looks like
mischief to me."
"He _doesn't_ look like a prize entry in a beauty contest," I admitted.
With all that talk about the negro Justice's remark about Switzerland
went unheeded, but I didn't forget it just the same. I thought about it
all the rest of the afternoon and it was as plain as the nose on your
face that there was some mystery about Justice Sherman. A sheep herder
who spouted Virgil at a touch, quoted continually from the classics, had
refined manners and had traveled abroad, couldn't hide his light under a
bushel very well. Another thing; he wasn't a Texan as he had led us to
believe. He talked with the crisp, clear accent of the North, and the
fuss he made about the negro in the road that afternoon betrayed the fact
that he was no southerner. Nobody around here pays any attention to
niggers, no matter how tattered they are. We're used to them, but
northerners always make a fuss.
The question bubbled up and down in my mind, keeping time to the bubbling
of the soup on the stove; why was this educated and refined young man
working for thirty dollars a month as a handy man around horses on a
third-rate stock farm in this God-forsaken part of the country? Then a
suspicion flashed into my mind and at the dreadful thought I stopped
stirring with the upraised spoon frozen in mid-air. Then I gathered my
wits together and started resolutely for the table. I had promised father
I would never ask Justice Sherman anything about his past, but here was
something that swept aside all personal obligations and promises. I found
him with father in the stable working over a sick colt. I marched
straight up to him and began without any preamble.
"See here, Justice Sherman," I said, "are you hiding yourself to avoid
military service? Are you a slacker?"
Justice Sherman straightened up and looked at me with flashing eyes. "No,
I'm not!" he shouted in a voice quite unlike his.
I never saw anyone in such a rage. His face was as red as a beet and his
hair actually stood on end. "I registered for the service," he went on
hotly, "and wasn't called in the draft. I tried to enlist and they
wouldn't take me. I was under weight and had a weak throat. If anyone
thinks I'm a slacker, I'll----" Here he choked and had a violent coughing
spell.
I stared at him, dazed. I never thought he could get so angry. He looked
at me with hostile, indignant eyes. Then he straightened up stiffly and
walked out of the stable.
"I won't stay here any longer," he exploded, still at the boiling point.
"I won't be insulted."
"I apologize," I said humbly. "I spoke in haste. Won't you please
consider it unsaid?"
No, he wouldn't consider it unsaid. He wouldn't listen to father's
pathetic plea not to leave him without a helper. We suspected him of
being a slacker and that finished it. He would leave immediately. Down
the road he marched as fast as he could go without ever turning his head.
A worm in the dust was much too exalted to describe the way I felt. With
the best of intentions I had precipitated a calamity, taking away
father's best helper at a critical time, to say nothing of my losing him
as a companion. I was too disgusted with myself to live and chopped wood
to relieve my feelings. After supper I hitched up Sandhelo and drove to
Spencer to post a letter. I am not in the least sentimental--you know
that--but all along the road I kept seeing things that reminded me of
Justice Sherman and the fun we had had together. Now that he was gone the
days ahead of me seemed suddenly very empty, and desolation laid a firm
hand on my ankle.
Also, I had an uncomfortable recollection that it was right along here we
had met the horrid negro, and I became filled with fear that I would meet
him again. The fear grew, and turned into absolute panic when I
approached that same clump of bushes and in the dusk saw a figure rise
from behind them and lurch toward the road. I pulled Sandhelo up sharply,
thinking to turn around and flee in the opposite direction, but Sandhelo
refused to be turned. When I pulled him up he sat back and mixed up the
harness so he got the bit into his teeth, and then he jumped up and went
straight on forward, with a squeal of mischief. When we were opposite the
figure in the road Sandhelo stopped short and poked his nose forward just
the way he used to do when Justice Sherman came into his stall.
"Hello," said a voice in the darkness, and then I saw that the figure in
the road was Justice Sherman. His bad ankle had given out on him and he
had been sitting there on the ground waiting for some vehicle to come
along and give him a lift to Spencer.
"Get in," I said briefly, helping him up, and he got in beside me without
a word. We drove to Spencer in silence and he made no move to get out
when we got there. I mailed my letter and then turned and drove homeward.
About half way home he spoke up and apologized for being so hasty, and
wondered if father would take him back again. I reassured him heartily
and we were on the old footing of intimacy by the time we reached home.
We found father standing in front of the house talking to a negro whom we
recognized as the one we had met in the road that afternoon. Father
greeted Justice Sherman with joy and relief.
"You pretty nearly came back too late," he said. "Here I was just hiring
a man to take your place." Then he turned to the negro and said, "It's
all off, Solomon. I don't need you. My own man has come back. You go
along and get a job somewhere else."
The negro shuffled off and I fancied that he looked rather resentful at
being sent away.
"Father," I said, when the creature was out of earshot, "you surely
weren't going to hire that ape to work here?"
"Why not?" answered father. "I have to have a man to help with the
horses, and this fellow came up to the door and asked for work, so I
promised him a job."
"But he's such a terrible looking thing," I said.
Father only laughed and dismissed the subject with a wave of his hands.
"I wasn't hiring him for his looks," he answered. "He said he could
handle horses and that was enough for me."
So Justice Sherman came back to us and the subject of military service
was never broached again.
About a week after his return, and when Jim Wiggin was able to be about
again, Justice Sherman walked into the kitchen with a mincing air quite
unlike his ordinary free stride. He had been to Spencer for the mail.
"Tread softly when you see me," he advised. "I'm a perfessor, I am."