John-a-Dreams

by Harriet Prescott Spofford

John-a-Dreams

BY HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD

"YOU wouldn't wish for a pleasanter person round the house," Mrs. Somers was replying to her gossip. "I never heerd him say so much as 'Why do you so?' to the cat. And she's a very masterly cat

"He ain't spoke to Si Martin this twenty year."

"Si Martin's be'n out West. He couldn't very well. Si done him an ill turn oncet an' he ain't forgot it. That's one o' his dreams."

"Wal—fer a perfesser—"

"Now stop right there, Phœbe Ann. John's allers said his religion warn't nothin' ter speak on, an' he ain't made no blow about it."

"He don't seem much like a deacon. Young for one, anyways."

"Mebbe. But they jes 'p'inted him 'count o' his gift fer prayer an' his singin' o' hymns. I guess likely he's forgot w'at the diff'runce 'ith Si was about; but he ain't forgot there was a diff'runce. And as he don' git mad in a year o' Sundays, reason was on his side mos' prob'bly. We was down to the foot o' the garding lookin' fer a brown-thrasher's nest in the brush-heap, him an' me; and I says, 'Si Martin's gone out West,' says I. And he says, 'Glory go with him,' says he. 'I don't ever wanter hear his name agin,' says he. And I ain't ever heerd him speak that name since. Here's Si Martin back agin to the ol' place, you're a-tellin' me. Lost his wife? Only a gel left ter keep house fer him? I'm pleased that it's a mile or more away acrost the hills. But John 'll have to pass the bread and wine to him, ef he comes ter meetin', and I do'no' how he'll do it! An' that's a fac'!"

"P'r'aps they'll go to chapel over there," said the resourceful Phœbe Ann.

"Hope to goodness!" said Mrs. Somers, clapping the flour off her hands. "There! You stay to supper, Phœbe Ann, an' see ef this rule ain't as good as yourn."

"Not ter-night; I'm obleeged t' ye," said Phœbe Ann, whose mind's eye saw further openings for her views in other places. It was Mrs. Somers's proud but silent boast that her kitchen floor was as white as the tops of her tables, and its yellow walls unspotted. Perhaps it was the cheerfulness of all that whiteness and brightness and of her own large, fair personality that made Deacon Somers naturally reflect it. But, as his wife had said, he was a pleasant person about the house, and it was greatly to her surprise that her husband took his seat at the supper table without a word that night, and helped himself to the creamed, codfish and baked potatoes without waiting on either his wife or the boys.

"W'y, father," said Mrs. Somers, "where's your manners!" and at that he helped the others mechanically, wasting no words; and for a brief time a visible cloud settled over the table.

The silence was broken by the irrepressible Bud, who exclaimed, between mouthfuls, "They say Mr. Si Martin's come back to the old place."

"I'm willin'," said his father, without looking up.

"It don't reely sound as though you was," said his wife.

The man could have given her a glance that would have finished her happiness for this life. But he didn't. For how could you tell your wife that you hated another man because he won away from you the girl you meant to marry! Especially when your wife was as precious to you as your heart's blood. The girl had died, and so had her children, all but the last, and it did not signify now a tear's worth to him; but all the same he never wanted to see or hear of Si Martin again.

The soft June night with its star-shine and shadows and flower scents cast its soothing spell over him and his irate mood of recollection, and when his wife came and sat beside him on the door-stone he slipped his arm over her shoulder. "I don' want no better wife 'n you be, Elviry," he said.

"My gracious, John, I sh'd think you'd be'n a-questionin' of it!"

"Somehow the smell o' them syringys fetched back the nights w'en I went courtin', an' your aunt Lizy slyed along behind the bushes."

"Poor Aunt Lizy!"

" 'Twarn't no sign you was goin' to be throwed over 'cause Uncle Jed throwed her. She suspicioned the hull fambly. She hindered us consider'ble. But she didn't hinder the summer evenin's, an' the smell o' the grass that was down, an' the little bird a-stirrin' in the nest an' sort o' complainin' on us. She didn't hinder that wind that come blowin' out o' the dark, full o' sweetness, an' blowed away into nowhere, an' made us feel as though it come from the land o' pure delight in the hymn—su'thin' about that dark nowhere that was what you may call a sweet trouble—made you feel sort o' glad, an' sorry too."

Mrs. Somers sighed. " 'Twas pleasant," she said. "Seems as ef sech times had orter last. They go so quick we don't half sense 'em. But there—we're pretty happy as we be."

"Be'n happier ef Bud hadn't been a boy."

"Bud's the best boy—" cried the indignant mother.

"She might have be'n the best gel. And, anyways, I'd 'a' liked a gel about. Sort o' bright an' tender like the sweetbriers growin' beside the rocks in the pastur' 'ith their little sweet blows. Yes, I'd a-liked a darter. W'y, it's awful, Elviry, to grow old an' not have a darter ter close your eyes."

"How you dream, John! S'pose a tree fell on ye in the woods. Ef you hed ten darters they wouldn't be there to close your eyes."

"I ain't ast fer ten darters."

"There'll be darters-in-law bime-by, mos' prob'bly."

"In law!" he replied, with scorn. "Wat's that beside your own? That owes breath an' life to ye. That looks the way you'd think angels 'd look."

"I do'no's I ever thinked how they looked."

"That looks the way you useter w'en you was a gel, Elviry."

"W'en Rufe an' Bud fetches their wives home, we'll be pleased, father."

"That's a long wait. Rufe ain't half grown yet."

"He's five feet twelve inches, John!"

"Sho! Ye don't say! Taller 'n Bildad, ain't he? Where's my eyes be'n? 'Fly fast around, ye wheels o' time,' " he sang. "There's them consarned whippo'wills beginnin'! One whippo'will in the dark is heart-breakin', 's you may say—sweetheart breakin'. But a swarm on 'em's wuss 'n hornets. Le's go in." And he threw up his arms and stretched his great muscles for slumber as if he were some one else than a dreamer in the dusk.

The many mows were heavy with their fragrant hay—for their owner's idle fancies did not hinder his working like a giant in working-hours, and he was a forehanded man. The thunder-storms came and went; the summer mornings were clear skies full of heaven, or green and gray and silver mists and rain; the world was fair, and life went well with Deacon Somers, and he was happy, except for that slight mist of melancholy which seems to be the complement of joy.

"Kind o' undertow," he said of it, "as the years go on, pullin' ye to the grave."

"I won't hear any sech talk!" said Mrs. Somers. "Undertow, and graves, an' you in the prime o' life, 'ith your barns bustin', an' Bud 'ith the prize to the 'cademy, an' Rufe a-clerkin' an' layin' by an' likely to git the store to the village—"

"Oh, stop, stop!" her husband cried. "You're makin' out sech a heap o' blessin's, I'll hev ter pull down my barns an' build bigger!"

"Sech talk's jes like lightnin'-rods to call the lightnin' down on your head. It's a-temptin' Proverdence."

"What to? You think Proverdence 's that sort? Ain't you 'shamed?"

But now, out on the quaking heath where the accumulation of centuries of drift and leaf and moss had made a floor above the lake, through which here and there spurted a slight crystal fountain, the blueberries were ripe with pale-blue bloom over their purple lusciousness; and half the village were making their summer holiday there, raking the bountiful harvest into bag and basket, lads and lassies, old and young.

"Now, father," said Mrs. Somers to her husband, who was gathering the berries, as he did everything else, without staying to breathe, with a notion that the ordaining powers had something else and unknown for him to do, "the world ain't goin' ter come to an eend ter-night, and I've got all I can put up for winter. So you go lay down on the bank, and I'll visit 'ith Phœbe Ann some o' the folks I ain't seen sence last berryin'."

"There's them I ain't seen sence Bates was hung," he replied, "an' don' wanter till he's hung agin!"

"That ain't like you, father. Wy, 'tain't Christian!"

"You don't b'lieve in ghosts, do you, Elviry? Wal, I seen a ghost."

"The sun's be'n reel hot on your head, father. You go lay down."

It was always the pleasantest part of the great neighborhood gathering to Deacon Somers when, duty done, he lay beneath a high-branching tree, and looked up through the interlacing boughs and felt himself a part of the shining life there, of the glints of blue and sun and darting wings; and his vague dreams were pleasant.

But to-day he did not dream. He had seen a ghost. He had seen Si Martin, pale, thin, downcast; although a wreck, yet the wreck of a certain beauty; plainly a man who had come home to die, and to die soon. Somehow it was painful to John Somers that he hated that man. He slept at last, however; and it was between sleeping and waking, and more like pleasant dreaming, that he was conscious of some one like a blessed spirit, he would have said, or perhaps a young girl, perhaps that which might have been one's daughter, fading out of sight then; possibly, indeed, some one he had seen during the day recurring to memory in that border-land between sleeping and waking. It almost offset the disagreeable feeling with which he had fallen asleep. That night at home he could almost have wished some one would speak of Si Martin. But no one did.

John Somers had his rowen in from the fields where he had not turned in his cattle to browse; his apples lay in red and juicy mounds; and the smell of the cider-mill was abroad in the land.

"You ain't gotter go back to the store ter-night, be ye, Rufy?" said Mrs. Somers to her son, who had been at home to help in the apple-picking.

"Not to the store—"

"Oh, Rufy! Where then?"

"Mother!" the young man burst out, impetuously. "She's as sweet as the wild roses—"

"That all?" And Mrs. Somers made a very unnecessary rattling of the nest of milk-pans.

"She's as good as—as—" he paused, thinking what there might be with which to compare his Lois.

"Well?"

"As you, mother! I don't know, though, if anybody ever was as good as you," he said then, a loyal pride taking the place of his shamefacedness.

"My gracious, if she ain't no better 'n I be!"

Mrs. Somers put away the milk-pans, and came and sat beside her boy on the half of the millstone that made the step of the back door. There was a pang in the mother's heart. This was giving up her boy, her first-born. But there was a thrill of joy, too, over her boy's happiness, of unrecognized pride that some other woman found him all that she did. But still she knew that the husband follows the wife into her family, and it cannot be helped, and the tears sprang quickly to her eyes unused to tears.

"She's a lonesome little thing," he said. "No mother, no sisters."

"That's good!" suddenly cried a great wave of relief in the mother's heart. She might keep her boy, after all. "The poor little thin'!" she said aloud, with just as warm a wave. "She shall be my own child."

"Oh, I was cert'in you'd feel jes so, mother! But—but—mother!"—and he hid his face on his knees—"she's Si Martin's Lois!"

"Oh, Rufy! Oh!"—she waited a moment to recover from the blow—"Rufy! It can't never be!"

"It's goin' ter be!"

"It 'll break his heart! Your father's—"

"He's allers bemoanin' that Bud ain't a darter. Here's a darter for him. An' Bud ain't seen the day he—"

" 'Tain't helpin' Lois, ter run down Bud. Bud's a good boy," said his mother. "He's reel tender of his mother, an' he thinks the sun couldn't rise 'ithout his father."

"Bud 'd like her first-rate. So 'd you, mother."

"I ain't a doubt of it. So 'd your father, mos' prob'bly, ef he didn't know. I declare I'm reel distressed."

"Mother! Ain't it too bad! An' she's—she's jes—she's jes— Oh, you'd say so! She ain't a bit like him. He sez she's her mother all over."

"Humph!" said Mrs. Somers. "She was a pretty creetur," she added. "But, there, she hadn't no faculty. Slack!"

"Lois ain't. You'd orter see."

"Oh, Rufy, this is trouble. You sure you can't git over it?"

"Git over it! Never till the last breath I draw. Nor then, neither. You don' know me, mother. You don' know her."

"Wal, I s'pose I shall."

Mrs. Somers carried a heavy heart to bed that night. Her handsome, steadfast boy! Her husband with his one bitterness! The girl who was to rob her of her boy—child of that other woman, too! She turned her pillow again and again. "I never could sleep with the moon in the room," she said, as she saw the beams glancing on the bare sprays at the window, dancing like witches in the wind. And then the soft glow filling the room and working some magic with John Somers's sleep, he opened his mouth and began to sing—to sing as a sleepy child sings to itself—hardly more than a tuneful murmur, a measured breath—an old hymn they had learned at singing-school together. "Land o' Dreams!" sighed Mrs. Somers. "He's in it, awake or asleep. The reel thin's can't hurt him much. It's me that senses 'em. To have him carin' fer that gel for her mother's sake—that's w'at 'twill come to. An' me to see it an' feel it. Or else it's to make my poor Rufy miser'ble all his endurin' life. Oh, there ain't no ch'ice about it!" And when at last she dropped asleep it was only to be haunted by a face she could not quite make out, a disappearing, phantom face, perhaps that of Si Martin's wife whom she had never seen, perhaps that of this unknown girl, dim and uncertain; and even in her sleep she was conscious of saying: "Lord o' Light I'm gittin' notional as father."

But her rye-cakes in the morning were as peculiarly well baked as her potatoes were, her ham was rich and tender, her pancakes were as golden brown as the maple syrup poured over them, and there was no molasses and milk boiled in her coffee, but the clear stream ran upon cream that became liquid amber. For, as a mother indulges her defective child, she felt she must give this man of dreams and fancies every comfort she could devise; and the fact that she often enjoyed his dreams and fancies, and that he had been able in spite of them to make good provision for his family, so that she never had to boil the coffee over, did not change her feeling that his temperament was a weakness.

The summer, with all its moons riding low above the woods, had flown away before Mrs. Somers, in her divided mind and heart, could bring herself to act. She might not have been able to do so at all but for a sentence of the Elder's that kept ringing in her ears like a bell. "Evil is to overcome. The soul grows through struggle." Certainly her feeling about the girl Si Martin married was evil—she to be jealous of a dead woman!

But one day, after many private interviews in the dairy, in the pantry, returning from evening meeting, or when her son came for her at Phœbe Ann Ruggles's, Mrs. Somers took heart of grace. "I'll do it!" she said. "I'll do it, Rufy, ter-morrer."

"Father," her voice trembling, while on the next morning, with a towel about his neck and a sheet spread on the floor, she was cutting Deacon Somers's hair—"father, did you know that Rufus was thinkin' o' gittin' married?" she said.

"What!" cried her husband. "What say? Rufus? What you talkin' about!"

"Rufus. And the girl he is engaged to marry."

Rufus's father wheeled about, to the imminent danger of his eyes and the points of the open scissors. "What in the name of common sense— Why, Elviry, what you mean?"

"I mean w'at I say, father."

"Rufus? Why, you can't! It's—it's redic'lous. He ain't growed up. He's—he's—"

"Now, father, 'tain't no use to sputter this way. You set still! How can I cut 'ith you dancin' round like a teetotum? Rufus is a man—"

"A man! He ain't never hed a freedom suit."

"That's because you ain't giv' it to him. He can look out fer himself and a wife too. They think everythin' of him to the store, an' they'll take him in pardner soon 's he's got his fust thousand in hand."

"Why don't he tell me sech thin's?"

"He's scairt to."

"Wal—he'd better be savin' 'stid o' marryin'."

"He's got a very well-to-do father."

"Now, Elviry— "

"I know, John," she said, snipping a little carefully lest she snipped his ear—and served him right, as her impatient thought ran. "Course you don't wanter spile the boy—"

"Boy! You said he was a man."

"But when boy or man is all right you wanter help—"

"I do'no's I do."

"I know you do. You'll git cut ef you don't set still, father!"

"Our Rufe with a gel! Why, it's only the other day he was in tiers. I can see him now—the pretty scamp! You'd cut his hair, and he thought he was a man then—"

"An' mos' killed me, too—them curls!"

"His face was all ros'b'ry juice, an' he took a berry he was jes puttin' 'tween his lips an' giv' it to me."

"An' you didn't take it, I'll be boun'."

"Wal, no, I didn't."

"I did. Sweet little lips. Anyways, now, I can't seem to take it in. I don't b'lieve I b'lieve it."

"Wal, seein's b'lievin'," said Mrs. Somers, finishing her clipping. "An' he's goin' to fetch her here to supper to-night. So you'll see her. I'm goin' ter lay a fire in the keepin'-room."

Deacon Somers had never seen nor heard of a nuptial mass; but a fire in the keeping-room seemed to invest Rufe's love-affair with a kindred solemnity. "I snum!" he said. And he stared at his wife as if he had alighted on another planet and was surprised to find her there. "Look here," he said, presently. "You seen her? No? Who is she? And how'd you know we're goin' ter be pleased with her? S'pose we shouldn't think she was jes the one? We gotter pertend it's all right? This havin' strange folks come inter the fam'bly— W'y, mother, it's upset all my cal'halations!"

"Didn't you ever dream the boys was goin' ter marry?"

"When we was old, maybe. But— The boys? You don't mean that Bud—"

"No, no," she said, laughing now. "I don't mean Bud."

"I declare I'm all nervoused up."

All that day—it was a gray day, with snow on the ground and storm in the air: a boding day, he called it—while he was doing his chores in the barn and the wood-house, the masterly cat purring about his feet, the thought of the change hung round him like a pestering honeybee; sweet, but with a sting. More than once he made an errand into the kitchen. "Mother," he said, "you sure it's so?" And by the early dusk, when he had finished his tasks, he was half bewildered. "My mind's all caty-cornered," he said to himself. "Here I've giv' shorts to Bose, and I've sold the milch-cow w'en I meant ter sell the farrer. 'Twas as good a bargain, though, as ever I druv. So it's all right. I do'no's I'll mention it to mother—right off. She sort o' sot by Brindle." It had seemed to him that afternoon as if night would never come.

"No, father, you ain't goin' to dress up one speck. She's gotter take us jes 's we be," said Mrs. Somers, when he suggested his Sunday coat.

"I'm goin' ter hev a clean shirt and a dickey, an' my black stock, mother, ef I die nex' minute!" he replied. "An' you'd look better 'ith your best gown on. W'en you wear your alpacca, and your velvet bunnit 'ith the feather, there ain't a more personable woman this side—"

"I'd look pretty, dishin' up supper in a velvet bunnit an' feather."

"You look pretty any ways, mother. To me you do."

"There, there, there, do go an' fix up an' git it over!"

"Mother," he said, reappearing presently in the kitchen, an arrangement for his throat in either hand, "would you wear this stock or that cravat?"

"Oh, my goodness, John!" she said, with a laugh.

"Why, mother, I thought you'd like to say."

"I should think 'twas you instid o' Rufe."

" 'Tis me! It's me in my place."

"So it is, so it is," she said. "I'd wear the cravat. The blue allers sets off your eyes."

"I thought you'd think so," he said, triumphantly. "Blue that's the color of heaven must give a pleasant idee," and he returned to the bedroom.

"Dear, dear!" said his wife. "And it's on'y sech a little time ago 'twas him an' me. An' now—oh, I s'pose it's wicked, I do'no'—but I ain't so much acquainted 'ith the other place, and I wisht we stayed here mos' forever—an' was young." And then there came a jangle of bells, and she picked up the wick of the lamp and hurried to open the door, and the expected guest sprang from the pung to the door-stone—the sweeping of which had been forgotten—and fell into Mrs. Somers's arms.

"Oh, I didn't mean to!" cried a voice of silver. "I missed my step. Now I've got your floor all over snow!"

"Never mind, never mind! That's clean dirt."

"Oh, I'll sweep it out soon 's I git this knot untied. Oh, you're Rufe's mother!" and her voice seemed to Mrs. Somers a music she had always been listening for.

"An' you are goin' to be his wife."

"An' we'll have to love each other very much, 'count o' him." And the next instant the girl's cold face was pressed against Mrs. Somers's burning cheek.

And with that the bedroom door opened for Deacon Somers, and the girl withdrew and stood up before him like a young birch tree, straight and fair, and shining with her blond hair, her blue eyes, her glittering teeth, and the rose of the storm and wind not yet faded from her cheek, and he stood transfixed.

But he stood so only for a moment. He did not know quite what it was, what new emotion, what old memory, swept over him; but it was pleasant. Pleasant? It was delightful. "You pretty creetur!" he exclaimed.

She took a step toward him, holding out her beseeching hands.

"Mother!" he cried. "Mother, I've found her. I've found my little darter!"

Perhaps Mrs. Somers's heart burned; but if it did she did not betray it. "She is mine, too!" she said.

"Oh, how kind you are!" cried Lois. "I knew Rufe's father an' mother would be jes like this!"

And then Rufus came bustling in, ruddy, proud, happy but for the shadow of constraint; and presently the table-cloth was to be shaken out, and Lois sprang to help.

"It's my own weave," remarked Mrs. Somers.

"Oh, how beautiful!" exclaimed Lois, brushing back her pretty, disordered curls. "I allers thought 'twould be wonderful to weave."

" 'Twas simple enough," Mrs. Somers replied, deprecatingly. "I'll show ye some day. The old loom's up-garret. I wove the first gownd Rufus ever had on it. We don't do it now. It's so cheap to buy—but my! there's no life in 'em. They don't wear."

Supper was ready presently.

"Here, Lois," said Mrs. Somers. "Here's your place; by me."

"No, no," said her husband, bringing his hand down on the table. "My darter's place is here. She'll set 'tween me and Rufe."

Bud looked at her appealingly.

"I'll set here, I guess," she said, delicately.

"Wal, that's nex' me, 'tother side." And the blessing asked, in its unusual fervor, was more like a thanksgiving.

"You had your peach preserves a-purpose, I s'pose, mother," he said, following his wife into the pantry, when they rose from the table. "Peaches to peaches. An' Rufus got his'n. W'y, I ain't seen nothin' like her sence I went courtin' you. She's a piece o' blue sky an' sunshine. W'en she smiles you feel 's ef the world was jes made. Rufe's showed reel good taste, ain't he, mother?"

"Splendid!"

"They've gone inter the keepin'-room. Fire good there? I s'pose 'twon't do to go there, too?"

"John Somers, ain't you no sense nor rekerlection?"

"Wal, it's kind o' dreary a-settin' here an' jes hearin' the wind blow. It's a dretfle homesick sound."

"What you homesick for, father?"

But he began to sing "Jerusalem, my Happy Home," in a voice that had not yet lost its sweet sonority; and very soon Lois came out, Rufe following.

"I do love to sing," she said.

"That finishes it!" John Somers cried, as Lois joined in and took the air. "A live flute in the house!"

Rufus went out to harness and bring the horse to the door. The girl had her red hood on, and was tying her big cloak when he came in. "Father," he said, taking Lois's hand. "P'r'aps you don't know that this is Mr. Si Martin's daughter."

If in the next moment of dreadful silence John Somers turned white, his wife was whiter yet; and even Bud's breath hung suspended. Then all at once a great smile broke over his face; he never told his wife why, if he fairly knew himself; and he took the girl in his arms.

It required, in Deacon Somers's opinion, both Rufe and his father to get the girl home in the storm, and it was mid-night when they returned.

"Mother," said Deacon Somers, as he toasted his feet, with a sense of well-being in the warmth, in the spiced sangaree his wife mixed for him, in the ruddy shadows of the fire dancing about the room, "I like to hear a storm roarin' on outside, w'en I'm all housed an' happy. Poor Si Martin! I wouldn't like to die an' go out on sech a gale. He ain't long to live. I told him to-night—you ain't got no grudge agin' him, have you, mother? It's wrong to keep a grudge; it is, cert'in. I hope you ain't. I told Rufe ter bring Si over here ter die comfor'ble—-an' the gel—Lois. D'ye s'pose any o' the angels was ever called Lois? You don't mind? It 'll be more work—some—but she'll help out. I feel to be thankful. I got my youth back. I got the very fulness o' my dreams. I got my little darter an' my wife; and I'm glad Bud's a boy!" And while the storm swept its swift snowflakes past the window, like sparks of fire, Deacon Somers was on his knees, with his wife beside him.