Ole Mammy's Torment Part 6

John Jay looked puzzled. Before he could reply George walked out on the porch and stood beside him. He bowed to the man politely. "I'll take the toll, if you please, Mr. Boden. Put up the bar, John."

The man hesitated a moment, then tossed him the change, and gave the horses a cut with his whip that sent them dashing down the road.

"If he wasn't jus' tryin' to sneak his way through 'thout payin'!"

exclaimed John Jay, indignantly. George made no comment, but John Jay seemed unable to quit talking about the occurrence. Half an hour later he broke out again: "He thought 'cause I was jus' a little boy he could cheat me, an' n.o.body would evah know the difference. I nevah in all my life befo' heard tell of anything so mean!"

"Haven't you?" asked George, with such peculiar emphasis and such a queer little smile that John Jay felt guilty, although he could not have told why.

"No, I nevah did," he insisted.

George leaned against the door-casing, and looked thoughtfully across the fields. "There are more turnpikes in life than one, my boy," he said kindly, "and every one has its toll-gate. There is the road to learning.

I gave up everything to get through that gate, even my health. One cannot be anything or do anything worth while without paying some sort of toll. It may be time or strength or hard work or patience, and sometimes we have to give them all."

"'Peahs like I've nevah struck any such roads in my travellin',"

answered John Jay, carelessly, who often understood George's little parables far better than he cared to acknowledge.

"But I know one road that you are on now, where you try to slip out of paying what you owe every day."

John Jay hung his head, and rubbed his bare feet together in embarra.s.sed silence. If the Reverend George said it was so, it must be so, although he did not know just what he was hinting at.

"Mr. Boden knows very well," continued George, "that the money that is paid here goes to keep the road in good condition for him to travel over. He is very glad to have such a good pike provided for him, but he wants it for nothing. I know a poor old woman who keeps the road smooth for somebody. She works early and late, in hot weather and cold, to earn food and shelter and clothes for somebody; and that somebody eats her bread, and wears out the clothes, and sleeps under her roof, and never pays any toll. He owes her thanks and willing service,--all the help he can give her poor, tired old body, but she never gets even the thanks.

He takes all her drudgery as a matter of course."

John Jay's head dropped lower and lower, as he screwed his toes around in the dust of the path, mortified and embarra.s.sed. All the whippings of his life had never stung him so deeply as George's quiet words. He was used to being scolded for his laziness. He never paid any attention to that; but to have his "Rev'und Gawge" regard him as dishonest as Mr.

Boden hurt him more than words could express.

Another wagon came rattling up in a cloud of dust. Without waiting to see the newcomer, he dodged around the corner of the house and ran down to the barn. A pair of puppies came frisking out ready for a romp, and an old Maltese cat, stretched out in the sun, stood up and arched its back at his approach. He took no notice of them, but crawling up into the hay, threw himself down in a dark corner with his face hidden in his arms.

Mars' Nat came home after awhile. John Jay could hear Ned putting the horse into the stall, and throwing the corn into the feed-box. Then everything was still for a long time. The sun stole through the cracks of the barn in wide shining streaks, with little motes of dust dancing up and down in the golden light, but John Jay did not see them. A shadow darkened the doorway. He did not see that, for his face was still hidden. There was a step on the barn floor, and a rustling in the hay beside him; then George's hand rested lightly on his head, and his voice said, soothingly, "There, there! I wouldn't cry about it."

"Oh, I nevah thought about things that way befo'!" sobbed John Jay.

"I'll nevah sneak out of the work again. I'll tote the wood and watah 'thout waitin' to be asked, an' I'll nevah lick out my tongue at her behine her back as long as I live!"

George bit his lips to keep from laughing, although he was touched by the little penitent's distress.

"Do you know why I said such hard things to you?" he asked. "It was to open your eyes. I want to make a man of you, John Jay. Let me tell you some things about your grandmother that you have never heard. Her whole life has been a struggle, and such a very sad one."

John Jay rubbed his shirt sleeve across his eyes and gave a final snuffle. Some people never have the awakening that came to him that afternoon. Some people go along all their days with no other thought in life than to burrow through their own mole-hills. There in the hay, with the shining dust of the sunbeams falling athwart the old barn floor, the boy lay and listened. Thoughts that he had no words for, ambitions that he could not express, yet that filled him with vague longing, seemed to vibrate along the earnest voice, and tremble from the fulness of George's heart into his. Even after George stopped talking and began to whistle softly in the pause that followed, John Jay lay quite still with his face hidden in his arms.

Ned came in presently, rustling around through the hay after eggs, and singing at the top of his voice. The sound seemed to bring John Jay back to his common every-day self. He sat up, grinning as if he had never heard of such things as tears; but those he had shed must have made his eyesight clearer. As he slid down from the hay and walked along beside George, he noticed for the first time how slow and faltering the steps beside his had grown. As they climbed up the hill to the church, it seemed to him that the beloved face looked unusually thin and haggard in the strong light of the sunset.

George did not play long this evening. He knew that the quiet little listener on the steps bent as readily to the changing moods of his melody as the clover does to the fitful breezes; so he changed abruptly from the minor chords that his fingers instinctively reached for, to an old hymn that smoothed away the pathetic pucker of the boy's forehead.

Then he pulled out the stops and began a loud burst of martial music, so glad and triumphant, that, listening, one felt all great things possible of achievement. John Jay stood up, swinging his cap on the end of a stick which he carried, with all the curves and rythmic motions of a drum major.

After George came out and locked the door, he stood for a moment looking out fondly across the peaceful fields, still fair with the fading glow of the summer sun. John Jay looked too, feeling at the same time the touch of a caressing hand laid lightly on his bare head, but he could not see the lips above him that moved in a silent benediction.

When Mammy came home that night, there was wood in the box and water in the pail. The loose boards lying around the yard had been piled up neatly, and the paths were freshly swept. All that evening John Jay's eyes followed her with curious glances whichever way she turned, as if he found her changed. The change was in John Jay.

Next day, when she came home, she found the same state of affairs. It was early in the afternoon, and the children were out playing. She hung up her sun-bonnet, and dropped wearily down into a chair. Then, remembering a pile of clothes that must be mended before dark, she got up and began to hunt for her thimble and thread.

"That tawmentin' boy must have lost 'em," she exclaimed, after a vain search through her work-basket. The clothes were lying on the bed where she had put them. As she gathered them in her arms the thimble rolled out, and a spool of thread with a needle sticking in it fell to the floor.

[Ill.u.s.tration: George came out and locked the door]

She shook out Ivy's little blue dress, and began turning it around to find the seam that was ripped. It was drawn together with queer straggling st.i.tches that only the most awkward of fingers could have made. The white b.u.t.tons on Bud's shirt-waist had been sewed on with black thread, and a spot of blood told where somebody's thumb had felt the sharp thrust of a needle. John Jay's trousers lay at the bottom of the pile, with a little round, puckered patch of calico on each knee.

The tears came into Mammy's eyes as she saw the boy's poor attempt to help. "I'se afeerd he's goin' to die," she muttered in alarm. "I sut'n'ly is. Poah little fellow: he's mighty tryin' to a body's patience sometimes, an' he's made a mess of this mendin', for suah, but I reckon he means all right. He's not so onthinkin' an' onthankful aftah all."

She laid the spool and thimble on the window-sill, and folded her hands to rest awhile. There was a tremulous smile on her careworn old face.

For one day, at least, John Jay had paid his toll.

CHAPTER VIII.

Boys do not grow into saints in a single night, in the way that Jack's beanstalk grew from earth to sky. Sainthood comes slowly, like the blossom on a century plant; there must be a hundred years of th.o.r.n.y stem-life first.

Mammy soon lost all her fears of John Jay's dying. Although the promise made to George on the haymow was faithfully kept, he could no more avoid getting into mischief than a weatherc.o.c.k can keep from turning when the wind blows.

The October frosts came, sweetening the persimmons and ripening the nuts in the hazel copse; but it nipped the children's bare feet, and made the thinly clad little shoulders shiver. John Jay gladly shuffled into the old clothes sent over from Rosehaven. They were many sizes too big, but he turned back the coat sleeves and hitched up his suspenders, regardless of appearances. Bud fared better, for the suit that fell to his lot was but slightly worn, and almost fitted him. As for Ivy, she was decked out in such finery that the boys scarcely dared to touch her.

She had been given a long blue velvet cloak that the youngest Haven could no longer squeeze into. It was trimmed with s.h.a.ggy fur that had once been white. Ivy admired it so much that when she was not wearing it out of doors she was carrying it around in the house in a big roll, as tenderly as if it had been a great doll.

It was an odd little procession that filed past Uncle Billy's house every day, on the way to the woods for autumn stores. John Jay came first, with a rickety wagon he had made out of a soap-box and two solid wooden wheels. He looked like a little old man, with his long coat and turned up trowsers. Bud came next in his new suit, but he had lost his hat, and was obliged to wear a handkerchief tied over his ears. Ivy brought up the rear, continually tripping on her long cloak, and jolting her white toboggan cap down over her eyes at almost every step.

Nuts and persimmons and wild fox-grapes filled the little wagon many times, and made a welcome addition to Mammy's meagre bill of fare.

Late one evening John Jay came running up the path all out of breath.

The yellow candle-light streamed out through the cabin window. He stopped and looked in, sniffing the air with keen enjoyment, for Mammy was stewing the rabbit he had caught that morning in a snare.

He could see Bud sitting on the floor, with his feet harnessed up as horses. He was sawing the reins back and forth and remorselessly switching his own legs until they flew up and down in fine style. John Jay watched him with a grin on his face.

Presently Mammy, turning to season the stew, saw the black face pressed close against the window-pane. With a startled shriek she gave the pepper-pot such a shake that the lid flew off, and nearly all of the pepper went into the stew.

"Jus' see what you done!" she scolded, as John Jay walked into the house an instant later. "Next time you come gawkin' in the window at me in the dark, I'll peppah _you_ 'stid o' the rabbit!"

John Jay hastened to change the subject. "I sole a bushel of hickory nuts to Mistah Bemis jus' now," he stammered, "an' he's goin' to take some mo' next week. I'm savin' up to get you all somethin' mighty nice for Chrismus." He jingled his pockets suggestively; but Mammy was too busy skimming the pepper out of the stew to make any reply.

One warm, mellow afternoon when the golden-rod was at its sunniest, and the iron-weed flaunted its royal purple across the fields in the trail of the Indian summer, John Jay went down to the toll-gate cottage. He found his Reverend George sitting on the porch in his overcoat, with a shawl thrown over his knees. A book lay in his lap, but his hands were folded on the open pages, and he was looking far away across the brown fields of tattered corn-stalks. He was much better than he had been for several weeks, and welcomed John Jay so gaily, that the child felt that a weight had somehow been lifted from him. Mammy and Uncle Billy had been whispering together many times of late, and the little listener shared their fears. He had made so many visits to the toll-gate since the day he was left in charge, that he felt almost as much at home there as Mars' Nat himself. Once George did all the talking while John Jay listened with his head bashfully tipped to one side; now they seemed to have changed places. It was George who listened.

John Jay had been kept at home for several days, and had much to tell.

For an hour or more he entertained George with accounts of his rabbit snares, his nutting expeditions, and his persimmon hunts. He told about the dye Mammy had made from the sumach berries which he had carried home, and how Ivy had dropped her pet duck into it. He imitated Bud's antics when he upset the kettle of soft soap, and he had much to say about the young owl which they had caught, and caged under a wash-tub.

He did not notice that he was doing all the talking this afternoon, but filled the pauses that sometimes fell between them by idly playing jack-stones with a handful of acorns. George was thinking as they sat there that this might be the last time that they two would ever sit in this way together, and he was searching for some words with which to prepare the child for a sudden leave-taking in case it should be soon.

At last he cleared his throat. John Jay looked up expectantly, but just then Mars' Nat walked around the house.