Across the Years

by Eleanor H. Porter

“Well, he came. He was taller an’ thinner than when he went away, an’ there was a tired look in his eyes that went straight ter my heart. ‘Most the whole town was out ter meet him, an’ that seemed ter bother him. He was cordial enough, in a way, but he seemed ter try ter avoid folks, an’ he asked me right off ter get him ‘out of it.’ I could see he wan’t hankerin’ ter be made a lion of, so we got away soon’s we could an’ went ter his home.

“You should have seen Mis’ Hadley’s eyes when she saw him, tall an’ straight in the doorway. And Sam--Sam cried like a baby, he was so proud of that boy. As fer Jimmy, his eyes jest shone, an’ the tired look was all gone from them when he strode across the room an’ dropped on his knees at his mother’s bedside with a kind of choking cry. I come away then, and left them.

“We was kind of divided about Jimmy, after that. We liked him, ’most all of us, but we didn’t like his ways. He was too stand-offish, an’ queer, an’ we was all mad at the way he treated the girl.

“’Twas given out that the engagement was broken, but we didn’t believe ’t was her done it, ‘cause up ter the last minute she’d been runnin’ down ter the house with posies and goodies. Then he came, an’ she stopped. He didn’t go there, neither, an’, so far as we knew, they hadn’t seen each other once. The whole town was put out. We didn’t relish seein’ her thrown off like an old glove, jest ’cause he was somebody out in the world now, an’ could have his pick of girls with city airs and furbelows. But we couldn’t do nothin’, ’cause he he was good ter his folks, an’ no mistake, an’ we did like that.

“Mis’ Hadley got better in a couple of weeks, an’ he begun ter talk of goin’ back. We wanted ter give him a banquet an’ speeches and a serenade, but he wouldn’t hear a word of it. He wouldn’t let us tell him how pleased we was at his success, either. The one thing he wouldn’t talk about was his work, an’ some got most mad, he was so modest.

“He hardly ever left the house except fer long walks, and it was on one of them that the accident happened. It was in the road right in front of the field where I was ploughing, so I saw it all. Bessie Townsend, on her little gray mare, came tearin’ down the Townsend Hill like mad.

“Jimmy had stopped ter speak ter me, at the fence, but the next minute he was off like a shot up the road. He ran an’ made a flyin’ leap, an’ I saw the mare rear and plunge. Then beast and man came down together, and I saw Bessie slide to the ground, landin’ on her feet.

“When I got there Bessie Townsend was sittin’ on the ground, with Jimmy’s head in her arms, which I thought uncommon good of her, seein’ the mortification he’d caused her. But when I saw the look in her eyes, an’ in his as he opened them an’ gazed up at her, I reckoned there might be more ter that love-story than most folks knew. What he said ter her then I don’t know, but ter me he said jest four words, ’Don’t--tell--the--folks,’ an’ I didn’t rightly understand jest then what he meant, for surely an accident like that couldn’t be kept unbeknownst. The next minute he fell back unconscious.

“It was a bad business all around, an’ from the very first there wan’t no hope. In a week ‘twas over, an’ we laid poor Jimmy away. Two days after the funeral Sam come ter me with a letter. It was addressed ter Jimmy, an’ the old man couldn’t bring himself ter open it. He wanted, too, that I should go on ter New York an’ get Jimmy’s things; an’ after I had opened the letter I said right off that I’d go. I was mad over that letter. It was a bill fer a suit of clothes, an’ it asked him purty sharplike ter pay it.

“I had some trouble in New York findin’ Jimmy’s boardin’-place. There had been a fire the night before, an’ his landlady had had ter move; but at last I found her an’ asked anxiously fer Jimmy’s things, an’ if his pictures had been hurt.