VIII. THIS WAY, OR THAT WAY?
“My times are in Thy hand, and Thou
Wilt guide my footsteps at Thy will.”
It was six o’clock that May evening, and Joe was running away. He did not know he was running away. He had never been taught to read, and no one had ever told him a story, and his own experience of life was so limited, that he did not know that he was starting out in the world to find adventures, to find good or evil, to find a new life, and that new life, shaped more by what was inside of himself, than what was outside of himself. If the man who just passed him had asked him what he was doing, he would have said, had he not been overcome by one of his fits of shyness, that he was “gittin’ out.”
The air was damp, and sweet with the scent of blossoms. At his right ran a range of low hills, abrupt and green; at his left, as far as he could see, stretched the swamp, miles of meadow, over-flooded in the spring, waving with grass in the summer, and homely with unpainted one-story houses, and out-buildings in various stages of decay; it was a pasture land for the cattle of the farmers in the upland district, and Joe’s bare feet had trodden its miles morning and night ever since he had been old enough to drive the cows.
He went on slowly, with his hands in his pockets, too heavy-hearted to whistle, not thinking about anything, only feeling, with something in his throat that would not be swallowed down, miserable and defiant; remembering nothing in his past to regret not having learned that there was anything in his future to hope for, he was conscious only of something stirring within, stirring to action, to wideness, to freedom, and therefore he must “git out” to find it; therefore he was getting out.
His plan, if he had a plan, was to find a woman in the village who had once spoken kindly to him, and given him a huge slice of warm bread and butter; in the swamp he knew he might find work among the Germans, but the swamp was so lonely at night, and he did not like the ways of the Germans; in all the world he had but one friend, this woman who had spoken kindly to him.
She might not give him work, or a bed, but she would look at him, as no one else ever looked, and she would speak kindly. The road over the hill drew his lagging feet, then he stood, hesitating, at the turn of the hill road and swamp road; the hill road led to people, and a church, a store, where boys and men gathered at night to read the newspaper, and smoke, and have fun; to the blacksmith’s shop, and, most of all, to the little house next door, where the woman lived who had cut that large slice across her big, hot loaf.
A German, in the swamp, had told him to come to him for a home and work, if he ever wanted to leave his place; work he must, and a home—the woman’s face came between him and the German, his heart began to beat very fast, he wondered why his heart beat so fast sometimes, and he took his life in his hands, and started on a run for the road over the hill, where was the only thing in the world that seemed like love, although of love he had never had one thought. Then he began to walk slowly again; he had decided there was no need of hurrying, there was no need of doing anything—he had never been given a reason for doing anything excepting that one or the other of the old men with whom he had lived all his remembered life bade him do it. He had done things because he was told; he did not know why, excepting that because he was told.
If he were being told now to run away, he did not know; he had never thought that he might tell himself to do things. Not for a moment did he believe that the two old men would take the trouble to look for him, or to wish him back; every day, one, or both, said to each other or to him that he was not worth his salt, and would never amount to anything; they must be glad he was gone. But the cows. They would be sorry, especially Beauty; one of the old men would milk her to-night, but they would not pat her and talk to her, and ask her if she were glad she was a cow and not a boy, and was worth her salt, and all her feed beside; she had no friend but him, and she would look around for him with her big eyes; again he stood hesitating—Beauty wanted him—his tears fell fast; but he must go on, he wanted something better than Beauty.
So he went on down the hill, past the pretty parsonage and the church—wondering, if he had no place to sleep, if he might sleep in the church; then past the school-house, with its large play-ground, and turned by the liberty-pole, and walked very slowly along the street until he reached the blacksmith’s shop, and there, in the doorway of the small house, stood the woman looking for him.
“Why, Joe, what are you doing here at milking time?” she asked in a brisk tone, as the boy stopped before the gate.
“I’m done milking for them two old men,” he said, in a voice he tried hard to make brave. “Chris and Sam don’t want me any longer; I’m gittin’ out.” And then, big boy as he was, feeling lost in a strange world, he began to cry.
“There! there! Sonny,” soothed the voice, changing from its briskness into sympathy, as the woman stepped down the three steps; “Come and eat supper with me; I know what I’ll do with you. I’m glad you happened to come along this way.”
Pushing open the gate, she laid her hand on his arm and drew him into the house by his soiled and ragged sleeve.
“We don’t want a boy, haven’t work enough; but I know somebody who does, late in the season as it is. Mr. Brush, Mr. Cephas Brush, he farms the Sparrow place, you know; while he was waiting at the shop this very morning, he came to the well for a drink, and I went out to give him a glass so he needn’t drink out of that rusty tin cup, and he asked me if I knew where he could find a boy. His boy went off in March. He’s a good master, and that’s a good home; Miss Affy is like a mother to every stray thing and you won’t mind if Miss Rody does scold, she never means any harm. I’ll take you down there right after supper. Mr. Evans had his early because he wanted to go to town, and I was feeding my chickens, two hundred and five now,—Nettie puts down every new brood in a book—and couldn’t stop to eat. I didn’t think I was going to have company for supper. Nettie had hers earlier than usual because she was tired, and wanted to go to bed.” She pulled him through the narrow hall as she talked, Joe, once in a while, giving a quick, hard sob, and opened the door into the tiny kitchen.
The tea-kettle on the stove was singing a cheery welcome, the white cloth and pink dishes on the round table in the centre of the room gave him another welcome, and the touch and tone of the woman who had been kind to him brought him the cheeriest welcome of all, as she pushed him down into the chair opposite her own at the table, saying: “I know what men’s cooking is, and I know you are half-starved. Who made the bread?”
“I got that at the store.”
“You had potatoes, of course.”
“Oh, yes, and fried pork, lots of it, and pan-cakes. My! can’t Chris make good pan-cakes!”
“Can he?” inquired Mrs. Evans, doubtfully, taking the tea-pot off the stove and setting it on the table.
“Now, here’s hot fried potatoes for you, and good bread and butter, and a big saucer of rice pudding—Mr. Evans is never tired of rice pudding,—and sponge cake that little Judith brought to Nettie to-day because it is her own baking. Nettie took a bite and said I must put the rest on the supper-table. And you can have tea or milk, or both.”
After bustling about in the shed, Mrs. Evans seated herself at the table opposite her guest.
“Who would have thought I was going to eat supper with you, Joe? The world does turn on its axis once every twenty-four hours, and unexpected things do happen. I’ll tell Nettie all about it tomorrow; it will make a happening in her poor little life.”
Joe gave her a shy, quick glance, then bowed his head; some time, somewhere, not with the old men, certainly, he had bowed his head and said something at the table; he did not remember where it was, or what words he said, or why he said anything at all, but the pretty tea-table, or the savory food reminded him of a life he had once lived; he listened for a chorus of voices:—
“For what we are about to receive—receive—truly thankful.”
It was like music in the boy’s heart; he lifted his head with a light shining in his tear-blurred eyes.
“Well, I never,” ejaculated Mrs. Evans.
The boy held his knife and fork with a grace her husband had not acquired, taking his food as slowly and daintily as a girl.
“Those Tucker men, that old Chris and Sam have no claim on you, and they haven’t done as well by you as they promised they would when they took you, a little fellow, out of the Christie Home. I’ve often spoken to Mr. Evans about it, but he’s so easy going I might as well have talked to the wind. I told our new minister that he must ‘high-way and hedge’ you; he has noticed you; but he is feeling his way among the people, and couldn’t make a stir as soon as he came.”
“Is that where I was?” asked astonished Joe. “I thought I used to be somewhere. They never told me. I seem to remember things that happened before I can remember. They told me that I hadn’t any father or mother, and wouldn’t have any home if they had not taken me in.”
“People thought you ought to be sent to school and Sunday-school, but what is everybody’s business is nobody’s business. I’m glad enough you have left them, but you should have told them you wanted to leave.”
“It wouldn’t have done any good,” he muttered “they wouldn’t have said anything.”
“Now, I’ll put out the cat, and leave the table standing, and bolt the shed door, and lock the front door, and put on my things, and we’ll be off. Nettie is fast asleep and will never miss me.”
“I will wash the dishes for you; we put them under the pump, then wipe them on anything.”
“That wouldn’t suit me, thank you,” laughed Mrs. Evans; “you can hoe corn better than wipe dishes, and Mr. Brush has acres and acres of corn to hoe, and potatoes too: he’s making that old Sparrow farm pay.”
Joe did not know that he had been lost, but he began to feel very much found.
“I’m glad you went out to the well with that glass,” he said, as his hostess wrapped a shawl about her shoulders and tied the blue ribbons of a blue wool hood under her chin.
“I’m usually glad of kind things I do; I suppose that’s one reason I do them.”
Joe unlatched the gate, holding it open for her to pass through, then pushed it shut; Beauty and this woman seemed to belong to the same order of creaturehood; the woman’s eyes were like Beauty’s, soft, and big and brown, and they answered you. She took his hand and drew it under her arm in a sort of comradeship, and then they went on, the woman and the boy, to find the gate that would swing open into a world of which it had never entered the boy’s heart to dream.
The gate was shut and a man in shirt-sleeves with a pipe in his mouth was standing on the mysterious and happy side of it resting his elbows on the pickets, and, attracted by voices, looking up the road in the starlight towards the two figures.
“You stay here, Joe—that’s Mr. Brush. I’ll tell him all your story.”
“My story?” repeated Joe, in amazement.
“You didn’t know you had any,” she laughed. “Well, folks don’t usually until it is all lived through. I didn’t know I had any girlhood until I married and lost it.”
“I haven’t lost anything,” said Joe, bewildered.
“No; and I think you have got something—stand back, till I call you.”
She went on, and Joe heard the two voices exchange a friendly “Good evening,” and then to escape his “story” climbed up the steep, green bank, and waited under a cherry tree. Cherry blossoms were not as pretty as apple blossoms, he meditated; it was queer how the blossoms would fall off, and the hard, green fruit come—but it always did, somehow.
He wished Mrs. Evans would come back and take his hand again, making him feel ashamed and glad, and say, “Joe, you are going home with me. That man doesn’t want you, and I do.”
And there he stood, not still, but first on one bare foot, and then on the other, and then he whistled; the stars shining down through the cherry blossoms were almost as kind as Beauty’s eyes, but they were so far off.
The low voices talked on and on; at last, to the great relief of the boy who was waiting to know if anybody in the world wanted to own him, the man’s voice was raised in a cheerful: “Well, I’ll see Mr. Chris Tucker to-morrow, and make it right.”
And, then, in her brisk way, Mrs. Evans called, “Come, Joe; it is all right.”
The barefoot, ragged boy emerged out of the shade of the cherry limbs and went, faint-heartedly to answer the call.
“Well, Joe,” welcomed the old man, unlatching the gate and throwing it wide open, “come in and stay with me awhile. I guess I want you and you want me.”
But Joe begun to cry, and rub his eyes with the back of his dirty brown hand: “I am sixteen years old, and I am a stump of a thing, and will eat you out of house and home, and shan’t never amount to much.”
“Tut, nonsense!” exclaimed the old man; “don’t you like to work?”
“I never did nothing else; I don’t like nothing else,” replied Joe, dropping his hand, somewhat reassured.
“Who said you are sixteen? Come in and let me have a look at you.”
Joe stepped inside the gate; kind, strong hands drew him within the light that streamed from the kitchen windows and open door.
“Good night, Joe,” said Mrs. Evans.
“Good night,” said Joe.
He had not learned how to say “thank you.”
“They said so,” he replied to the latest question.
“Those men. The Tucker twins. They are seventy, and hale old fellows. I’ll warrant you know how to work. You are not fourteen. You shall do a boy’s work and be a boy. You may grow to be as tall as old Christopher himself. There’s plenty of man-timber in you. Now come and see what the women-folks will say to you.”
Joe shrank back.
“I thought I was going to live with you.”
“And you thought I lived alone like the other old men? I’m a miserable old bachelor, but I’ve got plenty of women-folks, thank the Lord.”
A little girl rushed to the door, and a barking Scotch terrier made a spring at the new-comer.
“Oh, what a dog,” Joe exclaimed, stooping to catch frisking, curly Doodles into his arms. Homesick for Mrs. Evans, frightened and glad, he followed the old man into the kitchen with the curly dog in his arms.
“Affy, here’s the boy I’ve been looking for, and you’ve been praying for, I’ve no doubt.”
Aunt Affy turned and looked at the boy: short, stout, dirty, ragged, with a shock of uncombed black hair, a lock falling over his forehead, long black eyelashes concealed the eyes he kept shyly fixed upon the curly bundle in his arms.
“What is your name, dear?” she inquired.
Joe had never heard “dear” before, but supposed she must be speaking to him; he raised his eyes and smiled; they were shy, honest eyes; Aunt Affy smiled too.
“I am Joe,” he said, pulling Doodles’ ears.
“Do you remember your father and mother?”
“No; I don’t remember nobody but Chris and Sam.”
“Is your name Joseph?”
“I don’t know; I never thought. I guess it’s Joseph—or Jo—no, now I remember another name: Josiah. Is that a boy’s name?”
“A boy’s name, and a king’s name. I am glad your name is Josiah. I will tell you about him some time.”
The little girl stood near the lady, but she did not stare at him, and Joe gave her glances now and then from under his long lashes; he would like to know her name, and what she was here for. A man’s fur cap covered the black head; when he left the house, angry and discouraged, he had put upon his head the first thing he seized.
“Doodles hasn’t given you time to take your hat off, Joe, or did you forget?” suggested Aunt Affy’s unreproachful voice.
“Didn’t forget it,” said Joe, pulling it off and dropping it on the floor. “They used to eat with their hats on, but I always took mine off.”
“I should think you would,” exclaimed indignant Judith.
Joe put his cheek down upon Doodles’ head, smoothing the sleeping head with his brown cheek.
“What is the dog’s name?” he inquired.
“Doodles,” answered Judith, hastening to speak to the rude, strange boy who had traveled from an unknown country.
“O, Doodles, Doodles, Doodles,” whispered Joe, in a fond voice, rubbing his cheek on the soft head.
“Well, Joe, do you love cows as well as dogs?” inquired Mr. Brush.
“Yes,” said Joe, thinking of the cow that was missing him to-night. He hoped she was asleep now. “But I’m glad I found Doodles.”
“Now, Joe, drop Doodles,” said Aunt Affy, “and follow me up these kitchen stairs. I have a room ready for an obedient, truthful, industrious boy.”
“Now, Joe, drop Doodles,” said Aunt Affy,
“and follow me up these kitchen stairs.”
“Where is he?” asked Joe, lifting his shaggy head.
They all laughed, and laughing, also, Joe followed the plump, sweet-faced lady up the kitchen stairs.