the road to this far-away began in the summer vacation of the year when he was supposed to be twelve. it was the year when he first went to work, though the work was meant to last for no more than a few weeks.
mr. quidmore, a market gardener at bere, in connecticut, some seven or eight miles eastward toward the sound, had come over to ask mr. tollivant for a few hours' work in straightening out his accounts. straightening out accounts for men who were but amateurs at bookkeeping was a means by which mr. tollivant eked out his none-too-generous salary.
it was a sunday afternoon in june. they were in the yard, looking at the plymouth rocks behind their defenses of chicken-wire. that is, mr. quidmore was looking at the plymouth rocks, but tom was looking at mr. quidmore. mr. and mrs. tollivant were giving their guest information as to how they raised their hens and marketed their eggs.
it was a family affair. mrs. tollivant prepared the food; cecilia fed the birds; art hunted for the eggs; bertie and tom packed them. mr. quidmore was moved to say:
"i wish i had a fine boy like your art to help me with the berrypicking. good money in it. three a week and his keep for as long as the strawberries hold out."
[pg 81]
tom saw mrs. tollivant shake her head at her husband behind mr. quidmore's back. this meant disapproval. disapproval could not be disapproval of the work, but of mr. quidmore. art already gave his holiday services to a dairy for a dollar less than mr. quidmore's offer, and no keep. it was the employer, then, and not the employment that mrs. tollivant distrusted.
and yet mr. quidmore fascinated tom. he had never before seen anyone whose joints had the looseness of one of those toys which you worked with a string. he was so slim, too, that you got little or no impression of a body beneath his flapping clothes. nervously restless, he walked with a shuffle of which the object seemed the keeping of his shoes from falling off. when he talked or laughed one side of his long thin face was screwed up as if by some early injury or paralysis. the right portion of his lips could smile, while the left trembled into a rictus. this made his speech slower and more drawling than tom was accustomed to hear; but his voice was naturally soft, with a quality in it like cream. it was the voice that tom liked especially.
in reply to the suggestion about art, mr. tollivant replied, as one who sees only a well-meant business proposal,
"we'd like nothing better, brother quidmore; but the fact is art has about as much as he can do for the rest of his vacation." he waved his hand toward tom. "what do you say to this boy?"
at the glorious suggestion tom's heart began to fail for fear. he was not a fine boy like arthur
[pg 82]
tollivant. the possibility of earning three dollars a week, to say nothing of his board, was too much like the opening up of an aladdin's palace for the hope to be more than deceptive. it was part of his daily humiliation never to have had any money of his own. the paternity of the state paid for his food, shelter, and education; but it never supplied him with cash, or with any cash that he ever saw. to have three dollars a week jingling in his pocket would not only lift him out of his impotent dependence, but would make him a man. while mr. quidmore walked round him, inspecting him as if he were a dog or pig or other small animal for sale, he held himself with straightness, dignity, and strength. if he was for sale he would do his best to be worthy of his price.
mr. quidmore nodded toward mr. tollivant. "state ward, ain't he?"
mr. tollivant admitted that he was.
"youngster whose moth—"
mrs. tollivant interrupted kindly. "you needn't be afraid of that. he's been with us for five years. i think i may say that all traces of the past have been outlived. we can really give him a good character."
tom was grateful. mr. quidmore examined him again. at last he shuffled up to him, throwing his arm across his shoulder, and drawing him close to himself.
"what about it, young fellow? want to come?"
entirely won by this display of kindliness, the boy smiled up into the twisted face. "yes, sir."
"then that's settled. put your duds together, and
[pg 83]
we'll go along. i guess," he added to mr. tollivant, "that you can stretch a point to let him come, and get your permit from the guardians to-morrow."
mr. tollivant agreeing that after five years' care he could venture as much as this, they drove over to bere in mr. quidmore's dilapidated motor car. mrs. quidmore met them at the door. her husband called to her:
"hello, there! got a new hand to help you with the strawberries."
she answered, dejectedly. "if he's as good as some of the other new hands you've picked up lately—"
"oh, rats! give us a rest! if i brought the angel gabriel to pick the berries you'd see something to find fault with."
that there was a rift within the lute of this couple's happiness was clear to tom before he had climbed out of the machine.
"where's he to sleep?" mrs. quidmore asked in her tone of discontent.
"i suppose he can sleep in the barn, can't he?"
"i wouldn't put a dog to sleep in that barn, nasty, smelly, rotten place."
"well, put him to sleep where you like. he'll get three a week and his keep while he's here, and that's all i'm responsible for." mrs. quidmore turned and went into the house. her husband winked at tom as man to man. "can you beat it? always like that. god! i don't know how i stand it. get in."
tom got in, finding an interior as slack as mrs. quidmore herself. the tollivant house, with four
[pg 84]
children in it, was often belittered, but with a little tidying it became spick and span. here the housekeeping wore an air of hopelessness. whoever did it did it without heart.
"god! i hate to come into this place," its master confided to tom, as they stood in the hall, of which the rug lay askew, while a mirror hung crooked on the wall. "you and me could keep the shack looking dandier than this if she wasn't here at all. i wish to the lord...."
but before the week was out the boy had won over mrs. quidmore, and begun to make her fond of him. because he was eager to be useful, he helped her in the house, showing solicitude, too, on her personal account. a low-keyed, sad-eyed woman who did nothing to make herself attractive, she blamed her husband for perceiving the loss of her attractiveness.
"he's bound to me," she would complain, tearfully, to the boy, as he dried the dishes she had washed. "it's his duty to be fond of me. but he ain't. there's fifty women he likes better than he does me."
this note of married infelicity was new to tom, especially as it reached him from both parties to the contract.
"god, how she gets my goat! sometimes i think how much i'd enjoy seeing her stretched out with a bullet through her head. i tell you that the fellow who'd do that for me wouldn't be sorry in the end...."
to the boy these words were meaningless. the creamy drawl with which they were uttered robbed them of the vicious or ferocious, making them mere
[pg 85]
humorous explosions. he could laugh at them, and yet he laughed with a feeling of discomfort.
the discomfort was the greater because in kindness to him lay the one point as to which the couple were agreed. making no attempt to reconcile elements so discordant, all he could do was to soften the conditions which each found distasteful. he kept the house tidier for the man; he did for the woman a few of the things her husband overlooked.
"it's him that ought to do that," she would point out, in dull rebellion. "he's doing it for some other woman i'll be bound. who is that woman that he meets?"
conjugal betrayal was also new to tom, and not easily comprehensible. that a man with a wife should also be "going with a girl" was a possibility that had never come within his experience while living with the tollivants. he had heard a good many things from art, as also from some other boys, but this event seemed to have escaped even their wide observation. it would have escaped his own had not mrs. quidmore harped on it.
"i do believe he'd like to see me in my grave. i'm in their way, and they'd like to get me out of it. oh, you needn't tell me! couldn't you keep an eye on him, and tell me what she's like?"
for mrs. quidmore's sake he watched mr. quidmore, but as he didn't know what he was watching him for the results were not helpful. and he liked them both. he might have said that he loved them both, since loving came to him so easily. mrs. quidmore washed and mended his clothes, and whenever
[pg 86]
she went to harfrey or some other town she added to his wardrobe. mr. quidmore was forever dropping into his ear some gentle, honeyed confidence of which mrs. quidmore was the butt. neither of them ever scolded him, or overworked him. he was in the house almost as a son. and then one day he learned that he was to be there altogether as a son.
