Notwithstanding her weariness Joyce did not sleep well that night.
She heard the late travellers passing by and the milkman and grocery
trucks on their way to a new day, and she tossed on her rattling, lumpy
bed till almost dawn. Somehow all the happenings of the last few days
seemed to have arrived in concrete form and to be standing about her
couch for her to reckon with.
First, there was the matter of her leaving home. Ought she to have left
at all? And if she should have left, was that the right way to have
done it? The whole problem of her life took on a distorted form in the
midnight and darkness that it had never presented before. She thought
of her friends back in Meadow Brook who had loved her and Aunt Mary.
What would they think of her going? Perhaps she should have waited to
tell them all, and yet how could she make explanations? It would only
bring discredit upon Eugene and Nannette and that she did not want to
do. No, she could not have asked her friends, or even have told them
good-bye without more explanation than she was ready to give. There was
the minister, and Judge Peterson, the Browns and Ridgeways, and a host
of others. They never would have let her go alone out into the world
without even a destination, and no chance of a job. They would have
worked it somehow for her to stay with one of them. She would never
have been free, and Eugene and Nannette would have been furious at her
making a display of their family quarrels in the town. No, she could
have come away in no other manner. And she had to come. She could not
have stayed much longer even if she had not started that night.
These questions somewhat conquered, her thoughts turned to the first
night away from home, the awful experience in the cemetery, and the
look on the face of her old friend when she had asked him what he was
doing.
And now she knew what had been the underlying thorn in her soul that
had made the pain ever since.
Long ago, perhaps ten years before, when she had been a little girl,
there had been a holiday when she and Aunt Mary had started off with
a neatly packed luncheon and a handful of books to spend the day in
the woods, a long promised, eagerly anticipated excursion. There were
chicken sandwiches neatly wrapped in wax paper. How well she remembered
helping to make them! And little blackberry turnovers rich with gummy
sweetness. Hard-boiled eggs, tiny sweet pickles from the summer’s
vintage, sponge cakes, big purple grapes, and a bottle of milk to
drink. Plenty of everything. Aunt Mary never stinted a lunch and she
always put in enough for a guest if one should turn up.
And that day the guest really came.
It was a warm, sunny day in October and the leaves were just beginning
to turn. As they climbed the hill above Meadow Brook and came within
sight of the valley, great splashes of crimson flung out like banners
across the valley and yellow glinted across the purples and browns like
patches of gold in the sunshine. There was a smell of burning leaves
and sunshine in the air and the earth was sweet with autumn. Blue and
yellow and white asters bordered the road that wound along the hill
and dipped again into the valley among the trees. Purple grackles
were stalking the fields in battalions, their stiff, black silk armor
glinting in the sun, cawing of the weather and their coming need of
flight. She could hear their hoarse, throaty voices as she lay and
stared at the ceiling in her little lonely house under the maples.
And the air! How sweet and winey it had been!
She and Aunt Mary had climbed a fence and crossed a field till they
reached the deep, sweet woods with its solemn cathedral silences and
its lofty vaulted ceiling. How far away the world had seemed as they
entered and trod the pine-strewn aisles and penetrated deep into the
cloistered vistas. She remembered thinking that this must be where God
stayed a good deal, it was so sweet and perfect. Above in the branches
strange birds sent out wild, sweet notes, like snatches of celestial
anthems. Favored birds to live in such safe and holy fastnesses.
She remembered wondering if they ever flew down to Meadow Brook and
fellowed with the common birds, picking up worms in garden paths, and
draggling their feathers in the dust of the world like sparrows, or did
they always stay here alone with God and praise?
They had found a mossy log to sit upon and a carpet of pine needles
fragrant and deep, and there they had established themselves, the
little girl lying full length upon the sweet bed of needles, the older
woman sitting upon the log and reading. It was a story book they were
reading, one of Louisa Alcott’s, was it “Under the Lilacs” or “Little
Women”? “Under the Lilacs” of course, because it was where the little
white circus dog Sancho appeared that she remembered first noticing the
boy’s back.
There had been crickets droning somewhere, and a tinkling brook that
murmured not far off, and no other sound save now and then a falling
stick or bit of branch from some high tree top hurtling down, until,
with the advent of that dog there had been a tiny human stir, an
almost imperceptible sound of giving attention, and her eyes had been
fastened on the gray-brown back, the tousled bright head topped by the
torn old baseball cap just a few steps away in the dim shadowed aisle
down which she was looking. At first she scarcely recognized it as not
a part of the woods, so still it sat, that square, young back in its
faded flannel shirt, held in a listening attitude. Then gradually she
had become aware of the boy’s presence, of the fishing rod in his hand,
of the bank that he must be sitting on which had seemed but a level
stretch to her first vision. She had turned a quick glance to Aunt
Mary, but Aunt Mary only looked up an instant, paused to recognize that
there was some one there, smiled knowingly and went on with the story.
It must have been an hour they sat thus listening to the reading, the
boy and the fishing rod not moving, the little girl watching with
fascinated, dreamy eyes as if she were looking at a picture that might
come alive any minute, and then suddenly something happened. The rod
bent quickly down with a jerk, the boy’s arm went out with a quick,
involuntary motion, and a fish swept up from below somewhere in a great
circle and landed floundering on the grassy bank.
Joyce sat up quickly with round eyes watching the boy’s manœuvres with
the fish, and Aunt Mary stopped reading and looked on with interest
too. The boy looked up at last shame-faced and flushed:
“Aw, gee!” he said, “I didn’t go to interrupt you. That fish just got
on my hook an’ I pulled it before I thought. That’s a cracker-jack
story you’re reading.”
“Why, I’m glad to be interrupted by such an interesting happening,”
Aunt Mary answered him. “What a beautiful fish! What kind is it?”
“That’s a trout. You don’t find many of ’em any more. They been all
fished out. Want it? I c’n find some more when I want ’em.”
“Oh, thank you, I couldn’t take your fish,” said Aunt Mary with a
smile, “But I’ve enjoyed seeing you catch it. You better take it home
to your mother.”
The boy’s head bowed a little lower and he said in a low, gruff voice:
“Haven’t got any mother. She’s dead. They don’t want to bother with
fish at home. D’you like me to cook it for you? They’re awful good
cooked outdoors like this right on the coals.”
He began to gather sticks and twigs together, and placed them in a
little pile.
“Well, that certainly would be wonderful,” said Aunt Mary smiling,
“Then you can take lunch with us. We always bring along enough for a
guest--”
The boy looked up wistfully and grinned, and then was off for more
sticks.
In a little clearing he built a fire while the little girl watched him,
and put his fish to cook, and then they spread out the lunch on a big
white cloth on a rock the boy showed them, and they had a great laugh
over the bugs and ants that kept coming to dinner with them.
The boy ate lunch with them, carving his fish proudly with a big
jackknife and serving the biggest portions to his guests, saying he
didn’t care for fish anyhow, he could get it whenever he wanted it. But
he ate the sandwiches and little pies and cakes hungrily, and watched
the little girl with shy, furtive glances.
Afterwards he washed the dishes for them in the brook and packed them
back in the basket, then curled down at Aunt Mary’s feet while she went
on reading.
Oh, the memory of that long, beautiful afternoon among the pines, with
the sun sifting down through the leaves and the taller trees waving way
up almost touching the sky it seemed, and the drone of bees somewhere,
the distant whetting of a scythe--how it all came back as she thought
it over!
And then the book was finished and they sat back, sorry it was done,
dreamy with the loveliness of the story in which they had been absorbed.
“That’s a cracker-jack tale,” declared the boy. “Gee, I’d like to have
that dog. My dog died,” he ended sadly. “Got run over by a truck.”
They talked a little about the dog and the boy got out a dirty little
snap shot of himself with the dog in his arms when it was only a little
puppy, and the little girl smiled and said it was a darling.
Then somehow Aunt Mary led them around to talk of other things, of how
still it was in the woods, and how beautiful, and how God must love it
there. The boy’s face grew sober and wistful and wonder came in his
eyes with a kind of softness. Aunt Mary got out her little Testament
and read the story of the healing of the man who was born blind, in
the ninth chapter of John. How they thrilled to the story all the way
through, as the different actors came and went, the blind man himself,
his wondering neighbors, the scornful Jews, the cowardly parents,
Jesus, who came to find him after they had all left him, even down
to the words that Jesus spoke to the fault-finding Jews: “If ye were
blind, ye should have no sin: but now ye say, We see; therefore your
sin remaineth.” How strange that those words should sound even after
these years, with the murmuring of the pines among the words, and the
holy stillness afterward, while the shadows grew long and violet within
the sanctuary of trees where they sat, and dusk was all about them. The
boy’s lashes drooped thoughtfully and his whole face took on a far-away
look. Then Aunt Mary’s voice came again softly praying: “Dear Jesus,
we know You are here today just as then. Help us for Christ’s sake to
have our eyes open to sin, so that we shall always know when we are not
pleasing Thee. Amen.”
They had gone out together silently through the quiet aisles with
only the tall singing of the pines and the distant melody of thrushes
in their evening song above them. The boy had gathered up the basket
and his fishing rod, and helped them over the fence with a kind of
reverence upon him.
They had walked down the road to the village with that beautiful
intimacy still upon them, like friends who had seen a vision together
and would never forget. All the way to their door the boy had gone,
saying very little, but with an uplifted look upon his face. Aunt Mary
had asked him to come and see them sometime, and he had suddenly grown
shy and silent, dropped his eyes and set his young shoulders as if he
had come to a hard spot. “Well, g’bye!” he said gruffly, and turning,
darted out the gate and down the street, flashing them a wonderful
smile as he went. He had become suddenly all boy again.
He had come again several times with gifts--a splendid plant of
squawberry vine with bright red berries hanging to it, a great sheaf of
crimson leaves and sumac berries, a handkerchief full of ripe chestnuts.
When winter came again they sometimes found their paths shovelled
around the house very early in the morning and caught a glimpse of a
red sweater and gray cap going down the street as they arose.
There had been several times at school when Joyce felt his protection
against the larger boys who snowballed most unmercifully.
Once he drew her on her sled through a drifted place. And once she
found a rose upon her desk and looking up saw his eyes upon her
suddenly averted and knew he had put it there. But he never came again
into their intimate family circle as he had done that wonderful day in
the woods. His family moved to another part of the town, and she seldom
saw him, yet they always spoke when they met, and something would flash
from eye to eye that was different from an ordinary acquaintance. They
could not forget that day and that holy cathedral of the woods where
they had companioned so richly together.
She had not seen him often through the years, but he had come to Aunt
Mary’s funeral, and at the cemetery stood close to the open grave
looking down with bared head as if he loved the one who was being laid
to rest. A handsome fellow with a distinguished look about him, and
that wonderful wistfulness in his eyes that had not lost the child
look and could still flash a smile that lit the hearts of those who saw
it.
That! And then to see him there in the dark--at a gruesome task of some
sort, and to have seen his eyes as she asked him what he had been doing!
She had not spoken to him in years. Their sole communication had been
through smiles till she asked him that question wrung from her lips at
cost of pain. Somehow her words seemed to strike a blow at the dear
past and shatter something that had been most precious.
And now she had gone over it again in the watches of the night the pain
was still there. He had somehow gone wrong. She had to admit that to
her loyal heart. Perhaps he had been wrong all the time, a bad, wild
boy. She had sometimes heard hints of that floating about the village
but had not believed it. She had clung to that day when they had read
_Under the Lilacs_ together, and then heard the story of the blind
man and gone out together again into life with the blessing of Jesus
resting upon them. She could not bear to think that the boy who had
been so gentle and kind, so interested and happy in that sweet, simple
place, could have been bad all the time, and only dropped out of his
regular life for the day just out of curiosity. He must be right and
true somehow. And if he had been doing wrong he must be sorry perhaps,
for he had looked ashamed. She could not get away from that. She
covered her face with her hands to pray and found there were tears upon
her cheeks, and then she prayed with all her heart, “Oh, Jesus, go and
find him and make him understand. Open his eyes that he may see and sin
no more.”
About that time a man under cover of the darkness came down the road
from the Meadow Brook Cemetery and stole into Julia Hartshorn’s gate,
and silently over the grass to the hammock under the trees; pausing a
moment to look furtively up at the dark house, he stooped and felt all
over that hammock. He had passed the house that day, slowly, in his
automobile and he was sure he had seen the form of an object sagging in
the middle. He had observed it most minutely. He was come now to find
out. It might give him no clue even if he found it, but he was here.
His hand moved carefully and came in contact with a book, yes--and
something soft like cloth, a handkerchief with a faint smell of
lavender drifting from it. He slipped them in his pocket and went
silently away into the night on rubber shod feet that made no sound,
and after he was gone for a season, came another shadow, stealing as
silently into the yard and up to the hammock. It is doubtful if Julia
Hartshorn and her niece would have ever recovered from the fright if
they had known what went on in their yard that night. But they were
slumbering deeply and did not even see the tiny spot of light that
flashed over the hammock, and down upon the ground, bringing out in
clear relief a scrap of paper with writing across it. A hand reached
for it, and again the flashlight focused for a scrutiny. “oyce Radw”
the paper read and that was all. It was torn on all its edges, and
evidently a part of a larger writing. The man searched again, but could
find nothing more. So he stole away as he had come, but he kept the
paper safely for future reference.