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 gateway 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 blurred, 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 lighting candles to grope his way to pallet of straw, when he might have the blue vault of heaven arching over him, and all God's stars for lamps, and for a bed a horse blanket stretched over an elastic 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 aromatic 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 harassed 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 ripened summer after summer, and the gaunt pine-trees had gone on for many years weaving poor Tom's mattress, 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 bent, and his fingers trembled as he wove the willow strands in and out, and over and under.
There was little work to do, moreover, for the village had altogether retired 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 kindly, 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 joints 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 waned. In the moist places the gentian uncurled its blue fringes; purple asters and gay Joe Pye waved their colors by the roadside; tall primroses put their yellow bonnets on, and peeped over the brooks 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 maples red and the elms yellow, for the early days of September brought a frost.
Some one remarked at the village store that old Blueb'ry Tom must not be suffered to stay on the plains another winter, now that he was getting so feeble,--not if the "_se_leckmen" had to root him out and take him to the poor-farm. He would surely starve or freeze, and his death would be laid at their door.
Tom was interviewed. Persuasion, logic, sharp words, all failed to move him one jot or tittle. He stood in his castle door, with the ladder behind him, smiling, always smiling (none but the fool smiles always, nor always weeps), and saying to all visitors, "Tom ain't ter hum; Tom's gone to Bonny Eagle;
Tom don' want to go to the poor-farm."
November came in surly.
The cheerful stir and bustle of the harvest were over, the corn was shocked, the apples and pumpkins were gathered into barns.
The problem of Tom's future was finally laid before the selectmen; and since the poor fellow's mild obstinancy had defeated all attempts to conquer it, the sheriff took the matter in hand.
The blueberry plains looked bleak and bare enough now. It had rained incessantly for days, growing ever colder and colder as it rained.
The sun came out at last, but it shone in a wintry sort of way,-- like a duty smile,--as if light, not heat, were its object.
A keen wind blew the dead leaves hither and thither in a wild dance that had no merriment in it. A blackbird flew under an old barrel by the wayside, and, ruffling himself into a ball, remarked despondently that feathers were no sort of protection in this kind of climate.
A snowbird, flying by, glanced in at the barrel, and observed that anybody who minded a little breeze like that had better join the woodcocks, who were leaving for the South by the night express.
