In the distance, where the green of the earth joins the blue of the sky, gleams the silver line of a river.
As far as the eye an reach, the ground is covered with blueberry bushes; red leaves peeping among green ones; bloom of blue fruit hanging in full warm clusters,—spheres of velvet3 mellowed4 by summer sun, moistened with crystal dew, spiced with fragrance5 of woods.
In among the blueberry bushes grow huckleberries, “choky pears,” and black-snaps.
Gnarled oaks and stunted6 pines lift themselves out of the wilderness7 of shrubs8. They look dwarfed9 and gloomy, as if Nature had been an untender mother, and denied them proper nourishment10.
The road is a little-traveled one, and furrows11 of feathery grasses grow between the long, hot, sandy stretches of the wheel-ruts.
The first goldenrod gleams among the loose stones at the foot of the alder12 bushes. Whole families of pale butterflies, just out of their long sleep, perch13 on the brilliant stalks and tilter14 up and down in the sunshine.
Straggling processions of wooly15 brown caterpillars16 wend their way in the short grass by the wayside, where the wild carrot and the purple bull-thistle are coming into bloom.
The song of birds is seldom heard, and the blueberry plains are given over to silence save for the buzzing of gorged17 flies, the humming of bees, and the chirping18 of crickets that stir the drowsy19 air when the summer begins to wane20.
It is so still that the shuffle-shuffle of a footstep can be heard in the distance, the tinkle21 of a tin pail swinging musically to and fro, the swish of an alder switch cropping the heads of the roadside weeds. All at once a voice breaks the stillness. Is it a child's, a woman's, or a man's? Neither yet all three.
“I'd much d'ruth-er walk in the bloom-in' gy-ar-ding,
An' hear the whis-sle of the jol-ly
—swain.”
Everybody knows the song, and everybody knows the cracked voice. The master of this bit of silent wilderness is coming home: it is Tom o' the blueb'ry plains.
He is more than common tall, with a sandy beard, and a mop of tangled22 hair straggling beneath his torn straw hat. A square of wet calico drips from under the back of the hat. His gingham shirt is open at the throat, showing his tanned neck and chest. Warm as it is, he wears portions of at least three coats on his back. His high boots, split in foot and leg, are mended and spliced24 and laced and tied on with bits of shingle25 rope. He carries a small tin pail of molasses. It has a bail26 of rope, and a battered27 cover with a knob of sticky newspaper. Over one shoulder, suspended on a crooked28 branch, hangs a bundle of basket stuff,—split willow29 withes and the like; over the other swings a decrepit30, bottomless, three-legged chair.
I call him the master of the plains, but in faith he had no legal claim to the title. If he owned a habitation or had established a home on any spot in the universe, it was because no man envied him what he took; for Tom was one of God's fools, a foot-loose pilgrim in this world of ours, a poor addle-pated, simple-minded, harmless creature,—in village parlance31, a “softy.”
Mother or father, sister or brother, he had none, nor ever had, so far as any one knew; but how should people who had to work from sun-up to candlelight to get the better of the climate have leisure to discover whether or no Blueb'ry Tom had any kin2?
At some period in an almost forgotten past there had been a house on Tom's particular patch of the plains. It had long since tumbled into ruins and served for fire-wood and even the chimney bricks had disappeared one by one, as the monotonous32 seasons came and went.
Tom had settled himself in an old tool-shop, corn-house, or rude out-building of some sort that had belonged to the ruined cottage. Here he had set up his house-hold gods; and since no one else had ever wanted a home in this dreary33 tangle23 of berry bushes, where the only shade came from stunted pines that flung shriveled arms to the sky and dropped dead cones34 to the sterile35 earth, here he remained unmolested.
In the lower part of the hut he kept his basket stuff and his collection of two-legged and three-legged chairs. In the course of evolution they never sprouted36 another leg, those chairs; as they were given to him, so they remained. The upper floor served for his living-room, and was reached by a ladder from the ground, for there was no stairway inside.
No one had ever been in the little upper chamber37. When a passer-by chanced to be-think him that Tom's hermitage was close at hand, he sometimes turned in his team by a certain clump38 of white birches and drove nearer to the house, intending to remind Tom that there was a chair to willow-bottom the next time he came to the village. But at the noise of the wheels Tom drew in his ladder; and when the visitor alighted and came within sight, it was to find the inhospitable host standing40 in the opening of the second-story window, a quaint41 figure framed in green branches, the ladder behind him, and on his face a kind of impenetrable dignity, as he shook his head and said, “Tom ain't ter hum; Tom's gone to Bonny Eagle.”
There was something impressive about his way of repelling42 callers; it was as effectual as a door slammed in the face, and yet there was a sort of mendacious43 courtesy about it. No one ever cared to go further; and indeed there was no mystery to tempt44 the curious, and no spoil to attract the mischievous45 or the malicious46. Any one could see, without entering, the straw bed in the far corner, the beams piled deep with red and white oak acorns47, the strings48 of dried apples and bunches of everlastings49 hanging from the rafters, and the half-finished baskets filled with blown bird's-eggs, pine cones, and pebbles50.
No home in the village was better loved than Tom's retreat in the blueberry plains. Whenever he approached it, after a long day's tramp, when he caught the first sight of the white birches that marked the gateway51 to his estate and showed him where to turn off the public road into his own private grounds, he smiled a broader smile than usual, and broke into his well-known song:
“I'd much d'ruth-er walk in the bloom-in' gy-ar-ding,
An' hear the whis-sle of the jol-ly
—swain.”
Poor Tom could never catch the last note. He had sung the song for more than forty years, but the memory of this tone was so blurred52, and his cherished ideal of it so high (or so low, rather), that he never managed to reach it.
Oh, if only summer were eternal! Who could wish a better supper than ripe berries and molasses? Nor was there need of sleeping under roof nor of lighting53 candles to grope his way to pallet of straw, when he might have the blue vault54 of heaven arching over him, and all God's stars for lamps, and for a bed a horse blanket stretched over an elastic55 couch of pine needles. There were two gaunt pines that had been dropping their polished spills for centuries, perhaps silently adding, year by year, another layer of aromatic56 springiness to poor Tom's bed. Flinging his tired body on this grateful couch, burying his head in the crushed sweet fern of his pillow with one deep-drawn sigh of pleasure,—there, haunted by no past and harassed57 by no future, slept God's fool as sweetly as a child.
Yes, if only summer were eternal, and youth as well!
But when the blueberries had ripened58 summer after summer, and the gaunt pine-trees had gone on for many years weaving poor Tom's mattress59, there came a change in the aspect of things. He still made his way to the village, seeking chairs to mend; but he was even more unkempt than of old, his tall figure was bent60, and his fingers trembled as he wove the willow strands61 in and out, and over and under.
There was little work to do, moreover, for the village had altogether retired62 from business, and was no longer in competition with its neighbors: the dam was torn away, the sawmills were pulled down; husbands and fathers were laid in the churchyard, sons and brothers and lovers had gone West, and mothers and widows and spinsters stayed on, each in her quiet house alone. “'T ain't no hardship when you get used to it,” said the Widow Buzzell. “Land sakes! a lantern 's 's good 's a man any time, if you only think so, 'n' 't ain't half so much trouble to keep it filled up!”
But Tom still sold a basket occasionally, and the children always gathered about him for the sake of hearing him repeat his well-worn formula,—“Tom allers puts two handles on baskets: one to take 'em up by, one to set 'em down by.” This was said with a beaming smile and a wise shake of the head, as if he were announcing a great discovery to an expectant world. And then he would lay down his burden of basket stuff, and, sitting under an apple-tree in somebody's side yard, begin his task of willow-bottoming an old chair. It was a pretty sight enough, if one could keep back the tears,—the kindly63, simple fellow with the circle of children about his knees. Never a village fool without a troop of babies at his heels. They love him, too, till we teach them to mock.
When he was younger, he would sing,
“Rock-a-by, baby, on the treetop,”
and dance the while, swinging his unfinished basket to and fro for a cradle. He was too stiff in the joints64 for dancing nowadays, but he still sang the “bloomin' gy-ar-ding” when ever they asked him, particularly if some apple-cheeked little maid would say, “Please, Tom!” He always laughed then, and, patting the child's hand, said, “Pooty gal,—got eyes!” The youngsters dance with glee at this meaningless phrase, just as their mothers had danced years before when it was said to them.
Summer waned65. In the moist places the gentian uncurled its blue fringes; purple asters and gay Joe Pye waved their colors by the roadside; tall primroses66 put their yellow bonnets67 on, and peeped over the brooks68 to see themselves; and the dusty pods of the milkweed were bursting with their silky fluffs, the spinning of the long summer. Autumn began to paint the
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