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The Underdog

F >> F. Hopkinson Smith >> The Underdog




"It was fixed up in a glass case like one Abe Condit used to have in his
place in the Bowery," he said once in describing a prize trout some city
fisherman had stuffed and framed. But when I asked him, with some
surprise, if he knew the Bowery, he looked at me quickly, with the
slightest trace of offended dignity in his eyes, as if I had meant to
overstep the line between us, and answered quickly:

"I knowed Abe Condit," and immediately changed the conversation.

And yet I must admit that there was nothing in the way he answered this
and all my other questions that weakened my confidence in his sincerity.
If there were any blackened pages in his past record that he did not
want to lay bare even to me, they were discolored, I felt sure, more by
privations and suffering than by any stains he was ashamed of.


II

One morning at daybreak I was awakened by Jim swinging back my door. He
had on his heavy overcoat and carried a lantern. His slouch hat was
flattened on the back of his head; the rim flared out, framing his face,
which was wreathed in smiles. He seemed to be under some peculiar
excitement, for his breath came thick and fast.

"Sorry to wake ye, but I'm goin' to Plymouth," and he lowered his head
and stepped inside my room. "Ruby's comin'. Feller brought me a letter
she'd sent on by the stage. The driver left it at the sawmill. I'd 'a'
told ye las' night, but ye'd turned in."

"When will you be back?" I called out from between the bedclothes. We
had planned a trip to the Knob the next day, and were to camp out for
the night. He evidently saw my disappointment in my face, for he
answered quickly, as he bent over me:

"Oh, to-night, sure; and maybe Ruby'll go along. There ain't nothin' ye
kin teach her 'bout campin', and she'll go anywheres I'll take
her--leastways, she allus has." This last was said with some hesitation,
as if he had suddenly thought that my presence might make some
difference to her. "Leave yer brushes where I kin git 'em," he
continued, anxious to make up for my disappointment. "I'll wash 'em when
I git back," and he clattered down the steep stairs and slammed the door
behind him.

I jumped from my bed, threw up the narrow, unpainted sash and watched
his tall, awkward figure swinging the lantern as he hurried away toward
the shed where the gray mare lived in solitude. Then I crept back to bed
again to plan my day anew.

When I joined Marvin at breakfast I found him in one of his ugliest
moods, with all his bristles out; not turned toward me, nor even toward
his wife, but toward the world in general. Strange to say, he made no
allusion to his daughter's return nor to Jim's absence.

Suddenly his wife blurted out, as if she could restrain her joy no
longer:

"You ain't never seen Ruby. She's comin' tonight. Jim's gone for her.
The head teacher's sick and some o' the girls has got a holiday."

"Yes," I answered, quietly; "Jim told me."

"Oh, he did!" And she put down her cup and leaned across the table.
"Well, I'm awful glad she's comin', just so ye kin see her. Ye won't
never forgit her when ye do. She's got six months more, then she's
comin' home for a spell until she goes teachin'," and a look of exultant
pride and joy of which I had never believed her capable came into
her eyes.

Marvin turned his head and in a half-angry way said:

"It's 'bout time. Little good ye've had o' her for the last four years
with yer fool notions 'bout eddication." And he put on his hat and
went out.

"How old is your daughter?" I asked, more to soften the effect of
Marvin's brutal remark than anything else.

"She's seventeen, I guess, but she's big for her age."

The announcement came as a surprise. I had supposed from the way Jim had
always spoken of her that she was a child of twelve. The possibilities
of her camping out became all the more remote.

"And has she been away from you long this time?"

"'Bout four months. I didn't 'spect her to come till Christmas, till she
wrote Jim to come for her. He allus fetches her. They'll be 'long
'bout dark."

I instantly determined to extend the heartiest of welcomes to this
little daughter, not alone because of the mother and Jim, but because
the home-coming of a young girl had always appealed to me as one of the
most satisfying of all family events. My memory instinctively went back
to the return of my own little bird, and of the many marvellous
preparations begun weeks before in honor of the event. I saw again in my
mind the wondrous curtains, stiff and starched, hung at the windows and
about the high posts of the quaint bedstead that had sheltered her from
childhood; I remembered the special bakings and brewings and the
innumerable bundles, big and little, that were tucked away under
secretive sofas and the thousand other surprises that hung upon her
coming. This little wood-pigeon should have my best attention, however
simple and plain might be her plumage.

Moreover, I was more than curious to see what particular kind of a
fledgling could be born to these two parent birds--one so hard and
unsympathetic and the other so kind and simple. Jim, I remembered, had
always spoken enthusiastically of Ruby, but then Jim always spilled over
the edges whenever he spoke of the things he loved, whether they were
dogs, trees, flowers, or brilliant young maidens.

At nine o'clock that night my ear caught the sound of wheels; then came
Jim's "Whoa! Bess," and the mother threw wide the door and caught her
daughter in her arms.

"Oh, mother!" the girl cried, "wasn't it good I could come?" and she
kissed her again. Then she turned to me--I had followed out in the
starlight--"Uncle Jim sent me word you were here, and I was so glad.
I've always wanted to see somebody paint, and Uncle Jim says he's sure
you will let me go sketching with you. I wasn't coming home with the
other girls until I got his letter and knew that you were here."

She said this frankly and simply, without the slightest embarrassment,
and without a trace of any dialect in her speech. Jim evidently had not
exaggerated her attainments. She had, too, unconsciously to herself,
solved one of the mysteries that surrounded me. If Jim was her uncle it
must be on her mother's side; it certainly could not be on Marvin's.

"And I'm glad, too," I replied. "Of course you shall go, and Jim tells
me also that you are as good a woodsman as he is. And so Jim's your
uncle, is he? He never told me that."

"Oh, no," she answered quickly, with a little deprecatory air. "He isn't
my _real_ uncle. He's just Jim, but I've always called him Uncle Jim
ever since I was a little girl. And I love him dearly; don't I, Uncle
Jim?" and she turned toward him as he entered the door carrying her
bundle, followed by her father with the kerosene lamp, Marvin having
brought it out to help Jim unload the buck-board.

"That's what ye allus says, baby-girl," answered Jim, "so I got to
believe it. And if I didn't, there wouldn't be no use o' livin'--not a
mite." There was a vibrating tenderness in the man's voice, and an
indescribable pathos in its tone, as he spoke, that caused me
instinctively to turn my head and look into his face.

The light shone full upon it--so full and direct that there were no
shadows anywhere. Whether it was because of the lamp's direct rays or
because of his long ride in the crisp November air, I could not decide,
but certain it was that Jim's face was without a wrinkle, and that he
looked twenty years younger. Even the hard, drawn lines about his mouth
and nose had disappeared.

With the light of the lamp came another revelation. While the girl's
cheap woollen dress and jacket, of a pattern sold in the country stores,
showed her to be the product of Marvin's home and the recipient of his
scanty bounty, her trim, well-rounded figure, soft, glossy hair--now
that her hat was off--and small hands and feet, classed her as one of
far gentler birth. There was, too, as she passed in and out of the room
helping her mother with the supper-table, a certain grace and dignity,
especially in the way in which she bent her head on one side to listen,
a gesture often seen in a drawing-room, but never, in my experience, in
a cabin. What astonished me most, however, were her hands--her
exquisitely modelled hands, still ruddy from the fresh night air, but so
wonderfully curved and dimpled. And then, too, the perfect graciousness
and simplicity of her manner and its absolute freedom from coquetry or
self-consciousness. Her mother was right--I would not soon forget her.
And yet, by what freak of Nature, I found myself continually repeating,
had this flower been made to bloom on this soil? Through what ancestor's
veins had this blood trickled, and through what channels had it reached
these humble occupants of a forest home?

But if her mother was the happier for her coming, Jim, radiant with joy,
seemed to walk on air. His head was up, his arms were swinging free, and
there was a lightness and spring in his movements that made me forget
the grotesqueness of his gait. Nor, as the days went by, did this
buoyant happiness ever fail him. He and Ruby were inseparable from the
time she opened the rude door of her bedroom in the morning until she
bade us all good-night and carried with her all the light and charm and
joyousness of the day. The camping-out, I may as well state, had been
given up as soon as I had mentioned it, she saying to me with a little
start, as if frightened at the proposition, that she thought she'd
better stay home and help her mother. Then, seeing Jim's face fall, she
added, "But we can be off all day, can't we?"

And Jim answered that it was all right, just as Ruby said--that we would
go fishing instead, and that he had spotted an old trout that lived in a
hole down the East Branch that he'd been saving for her, and that he had
tied the day before the "very fly that will fix him"--all of which was
true, for Ruby landed him the next day with all the skill of a
professional, besides a dozen smaller ones whose haunts Jim knew.

And so the weeks flew by, Ruby tramping the forest daily between us or
sitting beside me as I painted, noting every stroke of my brush and
asking me innumerable questions as to the choice of colors and the
mixing of the tints. At other times she would ply me with questions,
making me tell her of the things I had seen abroad and of the cities and
peoples she had read of; or she would talk of the books she had studied,
and of others she wanted to read. Jim would listen eagerly, with a
certain pride in his eyes that she knew so much and could talk so well,
and when we were alone he would comment on it:

"Nearly catched ye, didn't she? I see once or twice ye were stumped
clean out o' yer boots on them questions she fired. How her little head
holds it all is what bothers me. But I always knowed how it would be; I
told the old man so ten year ago. Ain't one o' 'em 'raound here kin
touch her."

At night, under the kerosene lamp in the cabin, she would ask me to read
aloud, she looking up into my face and drinking in every word, the
others listening, Jim watching every expression that crossed her face.

Dear old Jim! I still see your tender, shrinking eyes peering at her
from under your bushy eyebrows and still hear the low ripple of your
merry laugh over her volleys of questions. You were so proud of her and
so happy in those days! So tender in touch, so gentle of voice, so
constant in care!

One morning I had some letters to write, and Ruby and Jim took the rods
and went up the brook without me. They both begged me to go, Ruby being
particularly urgent, I thought, but I had already delayed the mail too
long and so refused point-blank--too abruptly, perhaps, as I thought
afterward, when I remembered the keen look of disappointment in her
face. When she re-entered the cabin alone an hour later she passed me
hurriedly, and calling out to her father that Jim was wanted at the
sawmill to fix the wheel and would not be back until morning, shut
herself into her room before I could offer myself in Jim's place--which
I would gladly have done, now that her morning's pleasure had
been spoiled.

When she joined us at supper--she had kept her room all day--I saw that
her eyes were red, as if she had been crying. I knew then that I had
offended her.

"Ruby, I really couldn't go," I said. "You don't feel cross about it, do
you?"

"Oh, no," she answered, with some earnestness. "And I knew you were
busy."

"And about Jim--what's the matter with the wheel?" I asked, greatly
relieved at the discovery that whatever troubled her, my staying at home
had not caused it.

"One of the buckets is broken--Uncle Jim always fixes it," and she
turned her head away to hide her tears.

"Is Jim a carpenter, too?" I asked, with a smile.

"Why, yes," she replied. "Didn't you know that? They often send for him
to fix the mill. There's no one else about here who can." And she
changed the conversation and began talking of the beauty of that part of
the brook where they had been to fish, and of the rich brown tint of the
water in the pools, and how lovely the red sumachs were reflected in
their depths.

The next morning, and without any previous warning, Ruby appeared in her
cloth dress and jacket and announced her intention of taking the stage
back to Plymouth, adding that as Jim had not returned, Marvin must drive
her over to the cross-roads. I offered my services, but she declined
them graciously but firmly, bidding me good-by and saying with one of
her earnest looks, as she held my hand in hers, that she should never
forget my kindness to Jim, and that she would always remember me for
what I had done for him, and then she added with peculiar tenderness:

"And dear Uncle Jim won't forget you, either."

And so she had gone, and with her had faded all the light and joyousness
of the place.

When Jim returned the next day I was at work in the pasture painting a
group of white birches. I hallooed to him as he shambled along within a
hundred yards of me, swinging his arms, but he did not answer except to
turn his head.

That night at table he replied to my questions in monosyllables,
explaining his not stopping when I had called in the morning by saying
that he didn't want to "'sturb me," and when I laughed and told
him--using his own words--that Ruby "wouldn't pass a fellow and give him
the dead, cold shake," he pushed back his chair with a sudden impatient
gesture, said he had forgotten something, and left the table without a
word or look in reply.

I knew then that I had hurt him in some way.

"What's the matter with Jim, Mr. Marvin? He seems put out about
something. Did he say anything to you?" I asked, astonished at Jim's
behavior, and anxious for some clew by which to solve its mystery.

"Got one o' his spells on. Gits that way sometimes, and when he does ye
can't git no good out o' him. I want them turnips dug, and he's got to
do it or git out. I ain't hired him to loaf 'round all day with Ruby and
to sulk when she's gone. I'm a-payin' him wages right along, ain't I?"
he added with some fierceness as he stopped at the door. "What he gits
for fixin' the mill ain't nothin' to me--I don't git a cent on it."

III

When the morning came and Jim had not returned I started for the mill. I
found him alone, sitting idly on a bench near the water-wheel. I had
heard the hum of the saw before I reached the dam and knew that he had
finished his work.

"Jim," I said, walking up to him and extending my hand, "if I have done
anything to hurt your feelings, I'm sorry. If I had known you would have
been put out by my not going with Ruby I would have let the mail wait."

He took my hand mechanically, but he did not raise his eyes. The old
look had returned to his face, as if he were afraid of some sudden blow.
"I did all I could to make Ruby's visit a happy one--don't you know I
did?" I continued.

He leaned forward, his elbows resting on his knees, his eyes still on
the ground. There was something infinitely pathetic in the attitude.
"Ye ain't done nothin' to me," he answered, slowly, "and ye ain't done
nothin' to Ruby. I cottoned to ye fust time I see ye, and so did Ruby,
and we still do. It ain't that."

"Well, what is it, then? Why have you kept away from me?"

He arose wearily until his whole length was erect, hooked his long arms
behind his back, and began walking up and down the platform. He was no
longer my comrade of the woods. The spring and buoyancy of his step had
gone out of him. He seemed shrivelled and bent, as if some sudden
weakness had overcome him. His face was white and drawn, and the eyelids
drooped, as if he had not slept.

At the second turn he stopped, gazed abstractedly at the boards under
his feet, as a man sometimes does when his mind is on other things.
Mechanically he stooped to pick up a small iron nut that had slipped
from one of the bolts used in repairing the wheel, and in the same
abstracted way, still ignoring me, raised it to his eye, looked through
the hole for a moment, and then tossed it into the dam. The splash of
the iron striking the water frightened a bird, which arose in the air,
sang a clear, sweet note, and disappeared in the bushes on the opposite
bank. Jim started, turned his head quickly, following the flight of the
bird, and sank slowly back upon the bench, his face in his hands.

"There it is again," he cried out. "Every way I turn it's the same
thing. I can't even chuck nothin' overboard but I hear it."

"Hear what?" The keen anguish expressed in his voice had alarmed me.

"That song-sparrow--did ye hear it? I tell ye this thing'll drive me
crazy. I tell ye I can't stand it--I can't stand it." And he turned his
head and covered his face with his sleeve.

The outburst and gesture only intensified my anxiety. Was Jim's mind
giving away? I arose from my seat and bent over him, my hand on his arm.

"Why, that's only a bird, Jim--I saw it--it's gone into the bushes."

"Yes, I know it; I seen it; that's what hurts me; that's what's allus
goin' to hurt me. And 'tain't only goin' to be the birds. It's goin' to
be the trees and the gray-backs and the trout we catched, and everywhere
I look and every place I go to it's goin' to be the same thing. And it
ain't never goin' to be no better--never--never--long as I live. She
said so. Them was her very words I ain't never goin' to forgit 'em." And
he leaned his head in a baffled, tired way against the planking of
the mill.

"Who said so, Jim?" I asked.

Jim raised his head, looked me straight in the face and, with the tears
starting in his eyes, answered in a low voice:

"Ruby. She loves 'em--loves every one o' 'em. Oh, what's goin' to
become o' me now, anyhow?"

"Well, but I don't--" The revelation came to me before I could complete
the sentence. Jim's face had told the story of his heart!

"Jim," I said, laying my hand on his shoulder, "do you love Ruby?"

"Sit down here," he said, in a hopeless, despondent voice, "and mebbe
I'll git grit enough to tell ye. I ain't never told none o' the folks
that comes up here o' how things was, but I'm goin' to tell you. And I'm
goin' to tell it to ye plumb from the beginnin'. too." And a sigh like
the moan of one in pain escaped him.

"Twelve years ago I come here from New York. I'd been cleaned out o'
everything I had by a man I trusted, and I was flat broke. I didn't care
where I went, so's I got away from the city and from people. I wanted to
git somewheres out into the country, and so I got aboard the train and
kep' on till I'd struck Plymouth. There my money gin out and I started
up the road into the mountains. I thought I'd hire out to some choppers
for the winter. When night come I see a light and knocked at the door
and Jed opened it. He warn't goin' to keep me, but he was a-buildin' the
shed where the old mare is now, and he found out I was handy with the
tools and didn't want no wages, only my board, so he let me stay. The
next spring he hired me regular and give me wages every month. I kep'
along, choppin' in the winter and helpin' 'round the place, and in
summer goin' out with the parties that come up from the city, helpin.'
'em fish and hunt. I liked that, for I loved the woods ever since I was
a boy, when I used to go off by myself and stay days and nights with
nothin' but a tin can o' grub and a blanket. That's why I come here when
I went broke.

"One summer there come a feller from Boston to fish. He brought his wife
along, and T used to go out with both o' 'em. The man's wife was puttin'
up for some o' them children's homes, and she used to talk to Marm
Marvin about takin' one o' the children and what a comfort it would be
to the child to git out into the fresh air, and one mornin' 'fore she
left she took Jed down in the woods and talked to him, and the week
after she left for home Marm Marvin sent me over to the station--same
place I fetched ye--and out she got with a tag sewed on her jacket and
her name on it, and a bundle o' clothes no bigger'n your head. She was
'bout seven or eight years old, and the cunnin'est young un ye ever see.
Jus' the same eyes she's got now, only they looked bigger, 'cause her
cheeks was caved in."

"Not Ruby, Jim!" I cried, in astonishment.

"Yes, Ruby. That's what was on the tag."

"And she isn't Marvin's child?"

"No more'n she's yourn, nor mine. She ain't nobody's child that anybody
knows about. She's jus' Ruby, and that's all there is to her.

"Well, by the time I'd got her out to the farm and had heared her talk
and seen her clap her hands at the chippies, and laugh at the birds, and
go half wild over every little thing she'd see, I knowed I'd got hold o'
something that filled up every crack o' my heart. And she didn't come a
day too soon, for Jed had got so ugly there warn't no livin' with him,
and I'd made up my mind to quit, and I would if he hadn't took a streak
ag'in Ruby at the start. Then I knowed where my trail led. And arter
that I never let her out o' my sight. Marm Marvin was different. She
never had no child o' her own, and she warmed up to Ruby more'n more
every day, and she loves her now much as she kin love anything.

"That fust winter we had a good deal o' snow and I made a pair o'
leggins for her out o' a deer's skin I'd killed, and rigged up a sled,
and I'd haul her after me wherever I went, and when school opened down
to the cross-roads I'd haul her down and bring her back if the snow
warn't too deep, and when summer come she'd go 'long jus' the same. I
taught her to fish and shoot, and often she'd stay out in camp with me
all night when I was tendin' the sugar-maples--she sleepin' on the
balsams with my coat throwed over her.

"Things went on this way till 'bout three years ago, when I see she
warn't gittin' ahead fast as she could, and I went for the old man to
send her to school down to Plymouth. Marm Marvin was willin', but Jed
held out, and at last he give in after my talkin' to him. So I hooked up
the buck-board and drove her down to Plymouth and left her, with her
arms 'round my neck and the tears streamin' down her face. But she was
game all the same, only she hated to have me leave her.

"Every July and Christmas I'd go for her, and she'd allus be waitin' for
me at the head o' the stairs or would come runnin' down with her arms
wide open, and she'd kiss me and hug me and call me dear Uncle Jim, and
tell me how she loved me, and how there warn't nothin' in the world she
loved so much; and then when she'd git home we'd tramp the woods
together every chance we got."

Jim stopped and bent forward, his face in his hands, his elbows on his
knees. For a time he was silent; then he went on:

"This last time when I went for her she pretty nigh took my breath away.
She seemed just as glad to see me, but she didn't git into my arms as
she ueeter, and she looked different, too. She had growed every way
bigger, and wider, and older. I kep' a-lookin' at her, tryin' to find
the little girl I'd left some months afore, but she warn't there. She
acted different, too--more quiet like and still, so that I was feared to
touch her like I useter, and took it out in talkin' to her and listenin'
to all she told me o' what she was larnin' and how this winter she was
goin' to git through and git her certificate, and then she was goin' to
teach and help her mother--she allus called Marm Marvin mother. Then she
told me o' how one o' the teachers--a young fellow from a college--was
goin' to set up a school o' his own and goin' to git some o' the
graduates to help teach when he got started, and how he had asked her to
be one o' 'em, and how she was goin' with him.

"Since you been here and us three been together and I begun to see how
happy she was a-talkin' to you and askin' you questions, I got worse'n
ever over her. I begun to see that I warn't what I had been to her. When
we was trampin' and fishin' it was all right and she'd talk to me 'bout
the ways o' the birds and what flowers come up fust and all that, but
when it got to geography and history I warn't in it with her, and you
was. That sickened me more'n ever. Pretty soon I began to feel as if
everything I had in life war slippin' away from me. I didn't want her to
shut me out from anything she had. I wanted to have half, same's we
allus had--half for me and half for her. Why, lately, when I lay awake
nights a-thinkin' it over, I've wished sometimes that she hadn't growed
up at all, and that she'd allus be my baby-girl and I her Uncle Jim.

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