Sevenoaks: A Story of Today

by J. G. Holland

"An' tell her when ye've had yer quarrel," said Jim, "that there'll allers be a place for her in Number Ten."

They chaffed one another until Mike passed out of sight among the trees; and Jim, notwithstanding his new society, felt lonelier, as he turned back to his cabin, than he had ever felt when there was no human being within twenty miles of him.

The sun of early May had begun to shine brightly, the willows were growing green by the side of the river, the resinous buds were swelling daily, and making ready to burst into foliage, the birds returned one after another from their winter journeyings, and the thrushes filled the mornings and the evenings alike with their carolings. Spring had come to the woods again, with words of promise and wings of fulfillment, and Jim's heart was full of tender gladness. He had gratified his benevolent impulses, and he found upon his hands that which would tax their abounding energies. Life had never seemed to him so full of significance as it did then. He could see what he had been saving money for, and he felt that out of the service he was rendering to the poor and the distressed was growing a love for them that gave a new and almost divine flavor to his existence.

Benedict mended slowly, but he mended daily, and gave promise of the permanent recovery of a healthy body and a sound mind. It was a happy day for Jim when, with Harry and the dog bounding before him, and Benedict leaning on his arm, he walked over to his old cabin, and all ate together at his own rude table. Jim never encouraged his friend's questions. He endeavored, by every practical way, to restrain his mind from wandering into the past, and encouraged him to associate his future with his present society and surroundings. The stronger the patient grew, the more willing he became to shut out the past, which, as memory sometimes—nay, too often—recalled it, was an unbroken history of trial, disappointment, grief, despair, and dreams of great darkness.

There was one man whom he could never think of without a shudder, and with that man his possible outside life was inseparably associated. Mr. Belcher had always been able, by his command of money and his coarse and despotic will, to compel him into any course or transaction that he desired. His nature was offensive to Benedict to an extreme degree, and when in his presence, particularly when he entered it driven by necessity, he felt shorn of his own manhood. He felt him to be without conscience, without principle, without humanity, and was sure that it needed only to be known that the insane pauper had become a sound and healthy man to make him the subject of a series of persecutions or persuasions that would wrest from him the rights and values on which the great proprietor was foully battening. These rights and values he never intended to surrender, and until he was strong and independent enough to secure them to himself, he did not care to expose his gentler will to the machinations of the great scoundrel who had thrived upon his unrewarded genius.

So, by degrees, he came to look upon the woods as his home. He was there at peace. His wife had faded out of the world, his life had been a fatal struggle with the grossest selfishness, he had come out of the shadows into a new life, and in that life's simple conditions, cared for by Jim's strong arms, and upheld by his manly and cheerful companionship, he intended to build safely the structure of his health, and to erect on the foundation of a useful experience a better life.

In June, Jim did his planting, confined almost entirely to vegetables, as there was no mill near enough to grind his wheat and corn should he succeed in growing them. By the time the young plants were ready for dressing, Benedict could assist Jim for an hour every day; and when the autumn came, the invalid of Number Ten had become a heavier man than he ever was before. Through the disguise of rags, the sun-browned features, the heavy beard, and the generous and almost stalwart figure, his old and most intimate friends would have failed to recognize the delicate and attenuated man they had once known. Jim regarded him with great pride, and almost with awe. He delighted to hear him talk, for he was full of information and overflowing with suggestion.

"Mr. Benedict," said Jim one day, after they had indulged in one of their long talks, "do ye s'pose ye can make a house?"

"Anything."

"A raal house, all ship-shape for a woman to live in?"