Grandma Sheldon held her breath while she looked him over. Was he a pickpocket? He didn’t appear like one, but you can never be sure of the people you meet on the train. Grandma remembered with a sigh of thankfulness that she had no money.
Besides, he seemed really very respectable and harmless. He was quietly dressed in a suit of dark-blue serge with a black overcoat. He wore his hat well down on his forehead and was clean shaven. His hair was very black, but his eyes were blue — nice eyes, Grandma thought. She always felt great confidence in a man who had bright, open, blue eyes. Grandpa Sheldon, who had died so long ago, four years after their marriage, had had bright blue eyes.
To be sure, he had fair hair, reflected Grandma. It’s real odd to see such black hair with such light blue eyes. Well, he’s real nice looking, and I don’t believe there’s a mite of harm in him.
The early autumn night had now fallen and Grandma could not amuse herself by watching the scenery. She bethought herself of the paper Cyrus had given her and took it out of her basket. It was an old weekly a fortnight back. On the first page was a long account of a murder case with scare heads, and into this Grandma plunged eagerly. Sweet old Grandma Sheldon, who would not have harmed a fly and hated to see even a mousetrap set, simply revelled in the newspaper accounts of murders. And the more shocking and cold-blooded they were, the more eagerly did Grandma read of them.
This murder story was particularly good from Grandma’s point of view; it was full of “thrills.” A man had been shot down, apparently in cold blood, and his supposed murderer was still at large and had eluded all the efforts of justice to capture him. His name was Mark Hartwell, and he was described as a tall, fair man, with full auburn beard and curly, light hair.
“What a shocking thing!” said Grandma aloud.
Her companion looked at her with a kindly, amused smile.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Why, this murder at Charlotteville,” answered Grandma, forgetting, in her excitement, that it was not safe to talk to people you meet on the train. “It just makes my blood run cold to read about it. And to think that the man who did it is still around the country somewhere — plotting other murders, I haven’t a doubt. What is the good of the police?”
“They’re dull fellows,” agreed the dark man.
“But I don’t envy that man his conscience,” said Grandma solemnly — and somewhat inconsistently, in view of her statement about the other murders that were being plotted. “What must a man feel like who has the blood of a fellow creature on his hands? Depend upon it, his punishment has begun already, caught or not.”
“That is true,” said the dark man quietly.
“Such a good-looking man too,” said Grandma, looking wistfully at the murderer’s picture. “It doesn’t seem possible that he can have killed anybody. But the paper says there isn’t a doubt.”
“He is probably guilty,” said the dark man, “but nothing is known of his provocation. The affair may not have been so cold-blooded as the accounts state. Those newspaper fellows never err on the side of undercolouring.”
“I really think,” said Grandma slowly, “that I would like to see a murderer — just one. Whenever I say anything like that, Adelaide — Adelaide is Samuel’s wife — looks at me as if she thought there was something wrong about me. And perhaps there is, but I do, all the same. When I was a little girl, there was a man in our settlement who was suspected of poisoning his wife. She died very suddenly. I used to look at him with such interest. But it wasn’t satisfactory, because you could never be sure whether he was really guilty or not. I never could believe that he was, because he was such a nice man in some ways and so good and kind to children. I don’t believe a man who was bad enough to poison his wife could have any good in him.”
“Perhaps not,” agreed the dark man. He had absent-mindedly folded up Grandma’s old copy of the Argus and put it in his pocket. Grandma did not like to ask him for it, although she would have liked to see if there were any more murder stories in it. Besides, just at that moment the conductor came around for tickets.
Grandma looked in the basket for her handkerchief. It was not there. She looked on the floor and on the seat and under the seat. It was not there. She stood up and shook herself — still no handkerchief.
“Dear, oh dear,” exclaimed Grandma wildly, “I’ve lost my ticket — I always knew I would — I told Cyrus I would! Oh, where can it be?”
The conductor scowled unsympathetically. The dark man got up and helped Grandma search, but no ticket was to be found.
“You’ll have to pay the money then, and something extra,” said the conductor gruffly.
“I can’t — I haven’t a cent of money,” wailed Grandma. “I gave it all to Cyrus because I was afraid my pocket would be picked. Oh, what shall I do?”
“Don’t worry. I’ll make it all right,” said the dark man. He took out his pocketbook and handed the conductor a bill. That functionary grumblingly made the change and marched onward, while Grandma, pale with excitement and relief, sank back into her seat.
“I can’t tell you how much I am obliged to you, sir,” she said tremulously. “I don’t know what I should have done. Would he have put me off right here in the snow?”
“I hardly think he would have gone to such lengths,” said the dark man with a smile. “But he’s a cranky, disobliging fellow enough — I know him of old. And you must not feel overly grateful to me. I am glad of the opportunity to help you. I had an old grandmother myself once,” he added with a sigh.
“You must give me your name and address, of course,” said Grandma, “and my son — Samuel Sheldon of Midverne — will see that the money is returned to you. Well, this is a lesson to me! I’ll never trust myself on a train again, and all I wish is that I was safely off this one. This fuss has worked my nerves all up again.”
“Don’t worry, Grandma. I’ll see you safely off the train when we get to Green Village.”
“Will you, though? Will you, now?” said Grandma eagerly. “I’ll be real easy in my mind, then,” she added with a returning smile. “I feel as if I could trust you for anything — and I’m a real suspicious person too.”
They had a long talk after that — or, rather, Grandma talked and the dark man listened and smiled. She told him all about William George and Delia and their baby and about Samuel and Adelaide and Cyrus and Louise and the three cats and the parrot. He seemed to enjoy her accounts of them too.
When they reached Green Village station he gathered up Grandma’s parcels and helped her tenderly off the train.
“Anybody here to meet Mrs. Sheldon?” he asked of the station master.
The latter shook his head. “Don’t think so. Haven’t seen anybody here to meet anybody tonight.”
“Dear, oh dear,” said poor Grandma. “This is just what I expected. They’ve never got Cyrus’s telegram. Well, I might have known it. What shall I do?”
“How far is it to your son’s?” asked the dark man.
“Only half a mile — just over the hill there. But I’ll never get there alone this dark night.”
“Of course not. But I’ll go with you. The road is good — we’ll do finely.”
“But that train won’t wait for you,” gasped Grandma, half in protest.
“It doesn’t matter. The Starmont freight passes here in half an hour and I’ll go on her. Come along, Grandma.”
“Oh, but you’re good,” said Grandma. “Some woman is proud to have you for a son.”
The man did not answer. He had not answered any of the personal remarks Grandma had made to him in her conversation.
They were not long in reaching William George Sheldon’s house, for the village road was good and Grandma was smart on her feet. She was welcomed with eagerness and surprise.
“To think that there was no one to meet you!” exclaimed William George. “But I never dreamed of your coming by train, knowing how you were set against it. Telegram? No, I got no telegram. S’pose Cyrus fo
rgot to send it. I’m most heartily obliged to you, sir, for looking after my mother so kindly.”
“It was a pleasure,” said the dark man courteously. He had taken off his hat, and they saw a curious scar, shaped like a large, red butterfly, high up on his forehead under his hair. “I am delighted to have been of any assistance to her.”
He would not wait for supper — the next train would be in and he must not miss it.
“There are people looking for me,” he said with his curious smile. “They will be much disappointed if they do not find me.”
He had gone, and the whistle of the Starmont freight had blown before Grandma remembered that he had not given her his name and address.
“Dear, oh dear, how are we ever going to send that money to him?” she exclaimed. “And he so nice and goodhearted!”
Grandma worried over this for a week in the intervals of looking after Delia. One day William George came in with a large city daily in his hands. He looked curiously at Grandma and then showed her the front-page picture of a man, clean-shaven, with an oddly shaped scar high up on his forehead.
“Did you ever see that man, Mother?” he asked.
“Of course I did,” said Grandma excitedly. “Why, it’s the man I met on the train. Who is he? What is his name? Now, we’ll know where to send—”
“That is Mark Hartwell, who shot Amos Gray at Charlotteville three weeks ago,” said William George quietly.
Grandma looked at him blankly for a moment.
“It couldn’t be,” she gasped at last. “That man a murderer! I’ll never believe it!”
“It’s true enough, Mother. The whole story is here. He had shaved his beard and dyed his hair and came near getting clear out of the country. They were on his trail the day he came down in the train with you and lost it because of his getting off to bring you here. His disguise was so perfect that there was little fear of his being recognized so long as he hid that scar. But it was seen in Montreal and he was run to earth there. He has made a full confession.”
“I don’t care,” cried Grandma valiantly. “I’ll never believe he was all bad — a man who would do what he did for a poor old woman like me, when he was flying for his life too. No, no, there was good in him even if he did kill that man. And I’m sure he must feel terrible over it.”
In this view Grandma persisted. She never would say or listen to a word against Mark Hartwell, and she had only pity for him whom everyone else condemned. With her own trembling hands she wrote him a letter to accompany the money Samuel sent before Hartwell was taken to the penitentiary for life. She thanked him again for his kindness to her and assured him that she knew he was sorry for what he had done and that she would pray for him every night of her life. Mark Hartwell had been hard and defiant enough, but the prison officials told that he cried like a child over Grandma Sheldon’s little letter.
“There’s nobody all bad,” says Grandma when she relates the story. “I used to believe a murderer must be, but I know better now. I think of that poor man often and often. He was so kind and gentle to me — he must have been a good boy once. I write him a letter every Christmas and I send him tracts and papers. He’s my own little charity. But I’ve never been on the cars since and I never will be again. You never can tell what will happen to you or what sort of people you’ll meet if you trust yourself on a train.”
The Romance of Jedediah
Jedediah was not a name that savoured of romance. His last name was Crane, which is little better. And it would be no use to call this story “Mattie Adams’s Romance” because Mattie Adams is not a romantic name either. But names have really nothing to do with romance. The most exciting and tragic affair I ever knew was between a man named Silas Putdammer and a woman named Kezia Cullen — which has nothing to do with the present story.
Jedediah, to all outward seeming, did not appear to be any more romantic than his name. He looked distinctly commonplace as he rode comfortably along the winding country road that was dreaming in the haze and sunshine of a midsummer afternoon. He was perched on the seat of a bright red pedlar’s wagon, above and behind a dusty, ambling, red pony of that peculiar gait and appearance pertaining to the ponies of country pedlars — a certain placid, unhasting leanness, as of a nag that has encountered troubles of his own and has lived them down by sheer patience and staying power. From the bright red wagon proceeded a certain metallic rumbling and clinking as it bowled along, and two or three nests of tin pans on its flat rope-encircled top flashed back the light so dazzlingly that Jedediah seemed the beaming sun of a little planetary system all his own. A new broom sticking up aggressively at each of the four corners gave the wagon a resemblance to a triumphal chariot.
Jedediah himself had not been in the tin-peddling business long enough to acquire the apologetic, out-at-elbows appearance which distinguishes a tin pedlar from other kinds of pedlars. In fact, this was his maiden venture in this line; hence he still looked plump and self-respecting. He had a round red face under his plug hat, twinkling blue eyes, and a little pursed-up mouth, the shape of which was partly due to nature and partly to much whistling. Jedediah’s pudgy body was clothed in a suit of large, light checks, and he wore a bright pink necktie and an amethyst pin. Will I still be believed when I assert that, in spite of all this, Jedediah was full of, and bubbling over with, romance?
Romance cares not for appearances and apparently delights in contradictions. The homely shambling man you pass unnoticed on the street may have, tucked away in his past, a story more exciting and thrilling than anything you have ever read in fiction. So it was, in a measure, with Jedediah; poor, unknown to fame, afflicted with a double chin and bald spot, reduced to driving a tin-wagon for a living, he yet had his romance and he was still romantic.
As Jedediah rode through Amberley he looked about him with interest. He knew it well, although it was fifteen years since he had seen it. He had been born and brought up in Amberley; he had left it at the age of twenty-five to make his fortune. But Amberley was Amberley still. Jedediah found it hard to believe that it or himself was fifteen years older.
“There’s the Stanton place,” he said. “Charlie has painted the house yellow — it used to be white; and Bob Hollman has cut the trees down behind the blacksmith forge. Bob never had any poetry in his soul — no romance, as you might say. He was what you might call a plodder — you might call him that. Get up, my nag, get up. There’s the old Harkness place — seems to be spruced up considerable. Folks used to say if ye wanted to see how the world looked the morning after the flood just go into George Harkness’s barn-yard on a rainy day. The pond and the old hills ain’t changed any. Get up, my nag, get up. There’s the Adams homestead. Do I really behold it again?”
Jedediah thought the moment deliciously romantic. He revelled in it and, to match his exhilarated mood, he touched the pony with his whip and went clinking and glittering down the hill under the poplars at a dashing rate. He had not intended to offer his wares in Amberley that day. He meant to break the ice in Occidental, the village beyond. But he could not pass the Adams place. When he came to the open gate he turned in under the willows and drove down the wide, shady lane, girt on both sides with a trim white paling smothered in lavish sweetbriar bushes that were gay with bloom. Jedediah’s heart was beating furiously under his checks.
“What a fool you are, Jed Crane,” he told himself. “You used to be a young fool, and now you’re an old one. Sad, that! Get up, my nag, get up. It’s a poor lookout for a man of your years, Jed. Don’t get excited. It ain’t the least likely that Mattie Adams is here yet. She’s married and gone years ago, no doubt. It’s probable there’s no Adamses here at all now. But it’s romantic, yes, it’s romantic. It’s splendid. Get up, my nag, get up.”
The Adams place itself was not unromantic. The house was a large, old-fashioned white one, with green shutters and a front porch with Grecian columns. These were thought very elegant in Amberley. Mrs. Carmody said they gave a house such a classical air. In th
is instance the classical effect was somewhat smothered in honeysuckle, which rioted over the whole porch and hung in pale yellow, fragrant festoons over the rows of potted scarlet geraniums that flanked the green steps. Beyond the house a low-boughed orchard covered the slope between it and the main road, and behind it there was a revel of colour betokening a flower garden.
Jedediah climbed down from his lofty seat and walked dubiously to a side door that looked more friendly, despite its prim screen, than the classical front porch. As he drew near he saw a woman sitting behind the screen — a woman who rose as he approached and opened the door. Jedediah’s heart had been beating a wild tattoo as he crossed the yard. It now stopped altogether — at least he declared in later years it did.
The woman was Mattie Adams — Mattie Adams fifteen years older than when he had seen her last, plumper, rosier, somewhat broader-faced, but still unmistakably Mattie Adams. Jedediah felt that the situation was delicious.
“Mattie,” he said, holding out his hand.
“Why, Jed, how are you?” said Mattie, as if they had parted the week before. It had always taken a great deal to disturb Mattie. Whatever happened she was calm. Even an old lover, and the only one she had ever possessed at that, dropping, so to speak, from the skies, after fifteen years’ disappearance, did not ruffle her placidity.
“I didn’t suppose you’d know me, Mattie,” said Jedediah, still holding her hand foolishly.
“I knew you the minute I set eyes on you,” returned Mattie. “You’re some fatter and older — like myself — but you’re Jed still. Where have you been all these years?”
“Pretty near everywhere, Mattie — pretty near everywhere. And ye see what it’s come to — here I be driving a tin-wagon for Boone Brothers. Business is business — don’t you want to buy some new tinware?”
To himself, Jed thought it was romantic, asking a woman whom he had loved all his life to buy tins on the occasion of their first meeting after fifteen years’ separation.
The Complete Works of L M Montgomery Page 736