WAR
And so Jason went away to study medicine. He worked very hard and progressed very rapidly. By the time he was twenty he was no longer "the doctor's boy." He was a real assistant in all but fees. He had no share in the doctor's income and always was desperately hard up.
At first, he did not ask his father and mother for help. He did all sorts of odd chores to pay his way. But as he progressed in his profession, he had less and less time for earning his up-keep and had finally to write home for money. His mother always answered his letters and she never failed to send him money when he asked for it. How she managed it, Jason never asked. Perhaps he was ashamed to know.
In all these four years he did not come home. He would have liked to but the trip was prohibitively expensive.
Late in the fall of 1861, he received a letter from his mother containing a ten-dollar bill. It was a short letter. "Your father can't live more than a week. Come at once."
Jason put his head down on that letter and sobbed, then dried his eyes and sought the doctor, who loaned him the rest of the money needed for the trip.
The minister's circuit had swung him round again to High Hill. Jason disembarked from the packet late one November afternoon, carrying his carpet bag. Even in November, High Hill was beautiful. Through his sadness, Jason again felt the thrill of the giant headlands, the thousand hills of his boyish imaginings.
There was the same little cottage, more weather-beaten than he had remembered it. His mother was waiting for him at the door. The four years had changed her, yet she seemed to Jason more beautiful than his mental picture of her had been.
She kissed him with trembling lips. "He's still with us," she whispered. "I'm sure he waited for you."
"What is the matter with him?" asked Jason, huskily, as he deposited his carpet bag on the sitting-room table.
"Lung fever. He took a bad cold a month ago coming home from West Virginia in the rain. He was absent-minded, you know. If it hadn't been for Pilgrim, I don't think he'd ever got here."
"Pilgrim?" asked Jason, warming his hands at the fire.
"Surely I've written you about Pilgrim. Father bought him soon after you left. He's the wisest horse that ever lived. If you're warm, now, Jason, come to your father."
He followed her into the bedroom which opened off the kitchen. His father lay on the feather bed, his eyes closed. O how worn—O how changed! Young Jason was hardened to suffering and death. He had not realized that to the sickness and death of one's own, nothing can harden us. He stood breathing hard while his mother stooped over the bed.
"Ethan," she said softly, "our boy is here."
Brother Wilkins opened his eyes and smiled faintly. He tried to say something and Jason sprang to take his hand.
"Oh, he wants to speak to you and can't. O my poor dear! O Ethan, my dearest."
Jason's mother broke down. Jason put his finger on his father's wrist.
After a long moment, "Mother, he's gone," he whispered.
After the funeral, Jason wandered about the village for a day or so, trying to plan for his mother's future and his own. All the townspeople were kind to him.
"Haven't forgot how you loaned me those Harper's Monthlies before you read 'em yourself," said Mr. Inchpin. "Anything I can do for you or your mother, let me know."
The two had met in Hardwich's store, which was also the post office and the evening club for the males of High Hill. Jason had dropped in to post a letter.
A tall scraggly man joined in. "Your father was the best preacher in Ohio. We was all glad when he got back here."
"He had the gift of prayer," said an old man, in the back of the store.
There was a silence which Jason struggled in vain to break.
Then a young fellow who carried a buggy whip and smoked a cigar said, "How does the doctoring go, Jason?"
"Well, thanks," returned Jason, looking at the young fellow, intently. It was Billy Ames, he of the striped pants.
Back through Jason's heart, until now strangely softened by the happenings of the past few days, surged the accumulated bitterness of his poverty-stricken youth. He turned abruptly and left the store.
His mother was watching for him, anxiously. "Jason, Pilgrim had an accident. He's got a frightful cut on his right fore shoulder. He must have got caught on a nail somehow."
"Let's have a look at him," said Jason.
The big gray was standing stolidly in his stall. Mrs. Wilkins held the candle while Jason examined him. On the right fore shoulder was a great three-cornered tear from which the skin hung in a bloody fold.
"I'll have to sew it up." Jason was all surgeon now. "Do you think he'll stand still for us?"
"Stand still," replied Jason's mother, indignantly. "Why, he'll know exactly what you are doing, and why."
"All right then. You get me some clean rags and a darning-needle and I'll get the rest of the things I'll need."
In a few moments the operation was well in hand.
Pilgrim kept his ears back and his eyes on his mistress. He breathed heavily, but otherwise he did not stir. He was a large horse, with a small, intelligent head and a mighty chest. Jason's mother held the candle with one hand while she stroked the big gray's nose with the other.
"Be careful, Jason, do!" she said softly.
Jason grunted. "You keep him from biting or kicking and I'll do my share," he said.
"Pilgrim bite!" cried Jason's mother indignantly.
Again Jason grunted, working swiftly, with the skill of trained and accustomed fingers. The candle flickered on his cool young face, on his black hair and on his long, strong, surgeon's fingers. It flickered too on his mother's sweet lips, on her tired brown eyes and iron-gray hair. It put high-lights on the cameo at her throat and made a grotesque shadow of her hoop-skirts on the stable wall.
Finally Jason straightened himself with a sigh and wiped his hands on a towel.
"That's a good job," he said. "Must be some bad spikes here or in the pasture fence to have given him that rip. I'll hunt them up tomorrow.—Get over there!"
This last to Pilgrim, who suddenly had put his head on Jason's shoulder with a soft nuzzling of his nose against the young doctor's cheek and a little whinny that was almost human.
"Why, Jason, he's thanking you!" cried his mother. "He'll never forget what you've done for him tonight."
Jason gave the horse a careless slap and started out the stable door.
"You'll be having it that he speaks Greek next," he said.
"You don't know him," replied Jason's mother. "This is the first time you ever saw him, remember. These last three years of your father's life he's been like one of the family." She followed Jason into the cottage. "Often and often before your poor father died he said he'd never have been able to keep on with the circuit-riding and the preaching if he'd had to depend on any other horse than Pilgrim. That horse just knew father was forgetful. He wouldn't budge if father forgot the saddle-bags. When Pilgrim balked, father always knew he'd forgotten something and he'd go back for it. I'll have supper on by the time you've washed up, Jason."
The little stove that was set in the fireplace roared lustily. The kettle was singing. The old yellow cat slept cozily in the wooden rocker on the patch-work cushion. All the furniture, so simple and worn, was as familiar to Jason as the back of his hand.
Jason washed at the bench in the corner, then sat down while his mother put the supper before him—fried mush, fried salt pork, tea and apple sauce.
"Well," said Jason soberly, "what are we going to do now, mother? Father's gone and—"
His mother's trembling lips warned him to stop.
"It doesn't seem possible," she said, "that it's only a week since we laid him away."
Jason interrupted gently. "I know, mother; but you and I have got to go on living!"
"It's you I'm worrying about," said his mother.
"I've been wondering if you hadn't better come back to Baltimore with me," mused Jason. "I can eke out a living somehow for the two of us."
"No," said Mrs. Wilkins decidedly. "You've got burden enough to take care of yourself. I can get along till you're doctoring for yourself. Mr. Inchpin will let me have the cottage near the wharf if I'll go up to his house and cook his dinner for him. Then with a little sewing and a little nursing here in the village, the cow, the chickens and Pilgrim, I can get along. But I don't see how I can send you anything, Jason."
Jason had brightened perceptibly. "If I can just get through this year, mother, I'll be on my feet. But I've got to pay Dr. Edwards back. He's a hard driver. If we can get together enough for that, I'll manage, somehow."
Jason's mother sighed. "It does seem as if, all through the years, I ought to have saved something, but I haven't, not a cent, except what I raked and scraped together for your doctoring. Two hundred and fifty dollars a year beside donation parties is quite a sum, Jason, and I feel guilty that I haven't saved anything for you. But it all went, especially after father got sickly. I've sold a lot of things, Jason, so as to send you the money. I'm most at my wit's end now. Grandma's silver teapot, that kept you three months, and your father's watch, nearly six. That's the way the things have gone. My, how thankful I was we had 'em."
Jason was still so very like his mother, so very unlike. Where her face was sweet and tremulous, his was cool and still. His brown eyes were careless and yet eager. Hers were not inscrutable now. The light had gone out of them from weeping. Jason's long, strong hands were smooth and quiet. Hers were knotted and work calloused and a little uncertain.
As if something in her words irritated him, Jason said quickly, "Well, what did you and father start me on this doctor idea for, if you thought it was going to cost too much?"
"O, Jason, you know that thought never occurred to either of us! There are still some things to go that I've sort of hung on to. Take the St. Bartholomew candlestick to Mr. Inchpin. That will give you the money you need right now."
Jason looked up at the queerly wrought silver candlestick that was more like an old oil lamp than a candlestick. His mother's people had brought it from France with them. The family legend was that some Huguenot ancestor had come through the massacre of St. Bartholomew with this only relic of his home wrapped in his bosom.
"Good!" said Jason eagerly. "The old thing is neither fish nor flesh, anyhow. Too big mouthed for a candle and folks are going to use coal oil more and more, anyhow. I can be off tomorrow."
"Tomorrow's Thanksgiving, Jason."
"I'll be glad to forget it," grumbled Jason. "What have we to be thankful for?"
His mother looked at him a little curiously, but she said nothing. Jason caught the expression in her eyes.
"Don't look at me that way, mother," he burst forth angrily, "I can't forgive father, with his big brain and body for doing so little for you and me. I can't forgive him for what he dragged us through—those donation parties! He had no right to put me through what he did that year at High Hill. And what did he get out of his life? They lay him away with the remark that he had a gift of prayer! And his widow may starve, for all of them."
"Jason, be silent," cried his mother. She had risen and stood facing him, her face deathly white. "Not one word against your father. Because you never could appreciate him, you needn't belittle him now. Not one word," as Jason would have spoken. "He was my husband and I loved him, God knows. O Ethan, Ethan, how shall I finish my span of years alone!" she broke down utterly.
Jason put his arms about her. "Mother, I didn't mean to hurt you. Truly I didn't. It's only that—" he stopped and set his lips tightly while he petted her in silence.
"I pray, Jason," said his mother, finally, "that you will never have a grief or a punishment great enough to soften your heart."
Jason did not answer. He went up to see Mr. Inchpin that night, and the following day started back East again.
