THEY lived together in a part of the country which
was not so prosperous as it had once been, about three miles from
one of those small towns that, instead of increasing in population,
is steadily decreasing. The territory was not very thickly settled;
perhaps a house every other mile or so, with large areas of corn-
and wheat-land and fallow fields that at odd seasons had been
sown to timothy and clover. Their particular house was part log
and part frame, the log portion being the old original home of
Henry's grandfather. The new portion, of now rain- beaten, time-worn
slabs, through which the win squeaked in the chinks at times,
and which several overshadowing elms and a butternut-tree made
picturesque and reminiscently pathetic, but a little damp, was
erected by Henry when he was twenty-one and just married.
That was fortv-eight years before. The furniture inside, like
the house outside, was old and mildewy and reminiscent of an earlier
day. You have seen the what-not of cherry wood, perhaps, with
spiral legs and fluted top. It was there. The old-fashioned four
poster bed, with its ball-like protuberances and deep curving
incisions, was there also, a sadly alienated descendant of an
early Jacobean ancestor. The bureau of cherry was also high and
wide and solidly built, but faded-looking, and with a musty odor.
The rag carpet that underlay all these sturdy examples of enduring
furniture was a weak, faded, lead-and-pink-colored affair woven
by Phoebe Ann's own hands, when she was fifteen years younger
than she was when she died. The creaky wooden loom on which it
had been done now stood like a dusty, bony skeleton, along a broken
rocking-chair, a worm-eaten clothes-press—Heaven knows how
old—a lime-stained bench that had once been used to keep
flowers on outside the door, and other decrepit factors of household
utility, in an east room that was a lean-to against this so-called
main portion. All sorts of other broken-down furniture were about
this place; an antiquated clothes-horse, cracked in two of its
ribs; a broken mirror in an old cherry frame, which had fallen
from a nail and cracked itself three days before their youngest
son, Jerry, died; an extension hat-rack, which once had had porceline
knobs on the ends of its pegs; and a sewing-machine, long since
outdone in its clumsy mechanism by rivals of a newer generation.
The orchard to the east of the house was full of gnarled old
apple-trees, worm-eaten as to trunks and branches, and fully ornamented
with green and white lichens, so that it had a sad, greenish-white,
silvery effect in moonlight. The low outhouses, which had once
housed chickens, a horse or two, a cow, and several pigs, were
coveted with patches of moss as their roof, and the sides had
been free of paint for so long that they, were blackish gray as
to color, and a little spongy. The picket-fence in front, with
its gate squeaky and askew, and the side fences of the stake-and-rider
type were in an equally run-down condition. As a matter of fact,
they had aged synchronously with the persons who lived here, old
Henry Reifsneider and his wife Phocbe Ann.
They had lived here, these two, ever since their marriage, forty-eight
years before, and Henry had lived here before that from his childhood
up. His father and mother, well along in years when he was a boy,
had invited him to bring his wife here when he had first fallen
in love and decided to marry; and he had done so. His father and
mother were the companions of himself and his wife for ten years
after they were married, when both died; and then Henry and Phoebe
were left with their five children growing lustily aspace. But
all sorts of things had happened since then. Of the seven children,
all told, that had been born to them, three had died; one girl
had gone to Kansas; one boy had gone to Sioux Falls, never even
to be heard of after; another boy had gone to Washington; and
the last girl lived five counties away in the same State, but
was so burdened with cares of her own that she rarely gave them
a thought. Time and a commonplace home life that had never been
attractive had weaned them thoroughly, so that, wherever they
were, they gave little thought as to how it might be with their
father and mother.
Old Henry Reifsneider and his wife Phoebe were a loving couple.
You perhaps know how it is with simple natures that fasten themselves
like lichens on the stones of circumstance and weather their days
to a crumbling conclusion. The great world sounds widely, but
it has no call for them. They have no soaring intellect. The orchard,
the meadow, the cornfield, the pig-pen, and the chicken-lot measure
the range of their human activities. When the wheat is headed
it is reaped and threshed; when the corn is, browned and frosted
it is cut and shocked; when the timothy is in full head it is
cut, and the hay-cock erected. After that comes winter, with the
hauling of grain to market, the sawing and splitting of wood,
the simple chores of fire-building, meal-getting, occasional repairing,
and visiting. Beyond these and the changes of weather—the
snows, the rains, and the fair days—there are no immediate,
significant things. All the rest of life is a far-off, clamorous
phantasmagoria flickering like Northern lights in the night, and
sounding as faintly as cow-bells tinkling in the distance.
Old Henry and his wife Phoebe were as fond of each other as it
is possible for two old people to be who have nothing else in
this life to be fond of. He was a thin old man, seventy when she
died, a queer, crotchety person with coarse gray-black hair and
beard, quite straggly and unkempt. He looked at you out of dull,
fishy, watery eyes that had deep-brown crow's-feet at the sides.
His clothes, like the clothes of many farmers, were aged and angular
and baggy, standing out at the pockets, not fitting about the
neck, protuberant and worn at elbow and knee. Phoebe Ann was thin
and shapeless, a very umbrella of a woman, clad in shabby black,
and with a black bonnet for her best wear. As time had passed,
and they had only themselves to look after, their movements had
come slower and slower, their activities fewer and fewer. The
annual keep of pigs had been reduced from five to one grunting
porker, and the single horse which Henry now retained was a sleepy
animal, not over-nourished and not very clean. The chickens, of
which formerly there was a large flock, had almost disappeared,
owing to ferrets, foxes, and the lack of proper care, which produces
disease. The former healthy garden was now a straggling memory
of itself, and the vines and flower-beds that formerly ornamented
the windows and dooryard had now become choking thickets. A will
had been made which divided the small tax-eaten property equally
among the remaining four, so that it was really of no interest
to any of them. Yet these two lived together in peace and sympathy,
only that now and then old Henry would become unduly cranky, complaining
almost invariably that something had been neglected or mislaid
which was of no importance at all.
"Phoebe, where's my.corn-knife? You ain't never minded to
let my things alone no more."
"Now you hush, Henry," his wife would caution him in
a cracked and squeaky voice. "If you don't, I'll leave yuh.
I'll git up and walk out of here some day, and then where would
y' be? Y' ain't got anybody but me to look after yuh, so yuh just
behave yourself. Your corn knife's on the mantel where it's allus
been unless you've gone an' put it summers else."
Old Henry, who knew his wife would never leave him in any circumstances,
used to speculate at times as to what he would do if she were
to die. That was the one leaving that he really feared. As he
climbed on the chair at night to wind the old, long-pendulumed,
double-weighted clock, or went finally to the front and the back
door to see that they were safely shut in, it was a comfort to
know that Phoebe was there, properly ensconced on her side of
the bed, and that if he stirred restlessly in the night, she would
be there to ask what he wanted.
"Now, Henry, do lie still! You're as restless as a chicken."
"Well, I can't sleep, Phcebe."
"Well, yuh needn't roll so, anyhow. Yuh kin let me sleep."
This usually reduced him to a state of somnolent ease. If she
wanted a pail of water, it was a grumbling pleasure for him to
get it; and if she did rise first to build the fires, he saw that
the wood was cut and placed within easy reach. They divided this
simple world nicely between them.
As the years had gone on, however, fewer and fewer people had
called. They were well-known for a distance of as much as ten
square miles as old Mr. and Mrs. Reifsneider, honest, moderately
Christian, but too old to be really interesting any longer. The
writing of letters had become an almost impossible burden too
difficult to continue or even negotiate via others, although an
occasional letter still did arrive from the daughter in Pemberton
County. Now and then some old friend stopped with a pie or cake
or a roasted chicken or duck, or merely to see that they were
well; but even these kindly reminded visits were no longer frequent.
One day in the early spring of her sixty-fourth year Mrs. Reifsneider
took sick, and from a low fever passed into some indefinable ailment
which, because of her age, was no longer curable. Old Henry drove
to Swinnerton, the neighboring town, and procured a doctor. Some
friends called, and the immediate care of her was taken off his
hands. Then one chill spring night she died, and old Henry, in
a fog of sorrow and uncertainty, followed her body to the nearest
graveyard, an unattractive space with a few pines growing in it..
Although he gone to the daughter in Pemberton or sent for her,
it was really too much trouble and he was too weary and fixed.
It was suggested to him at once by one friend and that he come
to stay with them awhile, but he did not see fit. He was so old
and so fixed in his notions and so accustomed to the exact surroundings
he had known all his days, that he could not think of leaving.
He wanted to remain near where they had put his Phoebe; and the
fact that he would have to live alone did not trouble him in the
least. The living children were notified and the care of him offered
if he would leave, but he would not.
"I kin make a shift for myself," he continually announced
to old Dr. Morrow, who had attended his wife in this case. "I
kin cook a little, and, besides, it don't take much more'n coffee
and bread in the mornin's to satisfy me. I'll get along now well
enough. Yuh just let me be." And after many pleadings and
proffers of advice, with supplies of coffee and bacon and baked
bread duly offered and accepted, he was left to himself. For a
while he sat idly outside his door brooding in the spring sun.
He tried to revive his interest in farming, and to keep himself
busy and free from thought by looking after the fields, which
of late had been much neglected. It was a gloomy thing to come
in of an evening, however, or in the afternoon and find no shadow
of Phoebe where everything suggested her. By degrees he put a
few of her things away. At night he sat beside his lamp and read
in the papers that were left him occasionally or in a Bible that
he had neglected for years, but he could get little solace from
these things.' Mostly he held his hand over his mouth and looked
at the floor as he sat and growing in it. Although he might have
thought of what had become of her, and how soon he himself would
die. He made a great business of making his coffee in the morning
and frying himself another a little bacon at night; but his appetite
was gone. The shell in which he had been housed so long seemed
vacant, and its shadows were suggestive of immedicable griefs.
So he lived quite dolefully for five long months, and then a change
began.
It was one night, after he had looked after the front and the
back door, wound the clock, blown out the light, and gone through
all the selfsame, notions that he had indulged in for years, that
he went to bed not so much to sleep as to think. It was a moonlight
night. The green-lichen-covered orchard just outside and to be
seen from his bed where he now lay was a silvery affair, sweetly
spectral. The moon shone through the east windows, throwing the
pattern of the panes on the wooden floor, and making the old furniture,
to which he was accustomed, stand out dimly in the room. As usual
he had been thinking of Phoebe and the years when they had been
young together, and of the children who had gone, and the poor
shift he was making of his present days. The house was coming
to be in a very bad state indeed. The bedclothes were in disorder
and not clean, for he made a wretched shift of washing. It was
a terror to him. The roof leaked, causing things, some of them,
to remain damp for weeks at a time, but he was getting into that
brooding state where he would accept anything rather than exert
himself. He preferred to pace slowly to and fro or to sit and
think.
By twelve o'clock of this particular night he was asleep, however,
and by two had waked again. The moon by this time had shifted
to a position on the western side of the house, and it now shone
in through the windows of the living-room and those of the while
his kitchen beyond. A certain combination of furniture-a chair
near a table, with his coat on it, the half-open kitchen door
casting a shadow, and the position of a lamp near a paper-gave
him an exact representation of Phoebe leaning over the table as
he had often seen her do in life. It gave him a great start. Could
it be she-or her ghost? He had scarcely ever believed in spirits;
and still-- He looked at her fixedly in the feeble half-light,
his old hair tingling odd at the roots, and then sat up. The figure
did not move. He put his thin legs out of the bed and sat looking
at her, wondering if this could really be Phoebe. They had talked
of ghosts often in their lifetime, of apparitions and omens; but
they had never agreed that such things could be. It had never
been a part of his wife's creed that she could have a spirit that
could return to walk the earth. Her after-world was quite a different
affair, a vague heaven, no less, from which the righteous did
not trouble to return. Yet here she was now, bending over the
table in her black skirt and gray shawl, her pale profile outlined
against the moonlight.
"Phoebe," he called, thrilling from head to toe and
putting out one bony hand, "have yuh come back?"
The figure did not stir, and he arose and walked uncertainly
to the door, looking at it fixedly the while. As he drew near,
however, the apparition resolved itself into its primal content-his
old coat over the backed chair, the lamp by the paper, the half-open
door.
"Well," he said to himself, his mouth open, "I
thought shore I saw her." And he ran his hand strangely and
vaguely through his hair, the nervous tension relaxed. Vanished
as it had, it gave him the idea that she might return.
Another night, because of this first illusion, and because his
mind was now constantly on her and he was old, he looked out of
the window that was nearest his bed and commanded a hen-coop and
pig-pen and a part of the wagon-shed, and there, a faint mist
exuding from the damp of the ground, he thought he saw her again.
It was one of those little was of mist, one of those faint exhalations
of the earth that rise in a cool night after a warm day, and flicker
like small white cypresses of fog before they disappear. In life
it had been a custom of hers to cross this lot from her kitchen
door to the pig-pen to throw in any scrap that was left from her
cooking, and here she was again. He sat up and watched it strangely,
doubtfully, because of his previous experience, but inclined,
because of the nervous titillation that passed over his body,
to believe that spirits really were, and that Phoebe, who would
be concerned because of his lonely state, must be thinking about
him, and hence returning. What other way would she have? How otherwise
could she express herself? It would be within the province of
her charity so to do, and like her loving interest in him. He
quivered and watched it eagerly; but, a faint breath of air stirring,
it wound away toward the fence and disappeared.
A third night, as he was actually dreaming, some ten days later,
she came to his bedside and put her hand on his head.
"Poor Henry!" she said. "It's too bad."
He roused out of his sleep, actually to see her, he thought,
moving from his bed-room into the one living-room, her figure
a shadowy mass of black. The weak straining of his eyes caused
little points of light to flicker about the outlines of her form.
He arose greatly astonished, walked the floor in the cool room,
convinced that Phoebe was coming back to him. If he only thought
sufficiently, if he made it perfectly clear by his feeling that
he needed her greatly, she would come back, this kindly wife,
and tell him what to do. She would perhaps be with him much of
the time, in the night, anyhow; and that would make him less lonely,
this state more endurable.
In age and with the feeble it is not such a far cry from the
subtleties of illusion to actual hallucination, and in due time
this transition was made for Henry. Night after night he waited,
expecting her return. Once in his weird mood -he thought he saw
a pale light moving about the room, and another time he thought
he saw her walking in the orchard after dark. It was virtually
unendurable that he woke with the thought that she was not dead.
How he had arrived at this conclusion it is hard to say. His mind
had gone. In
its place was a fixed illusion. He and Phoebe had had a senseless
quarrel. He had reproached her for not leaving his pipe where
he was accustomed to find it, and she had left. It was an aberrated
fulfillment of her old jesting threat that if he did not behave
himself she would leave him.
"I guess I could find yuh ag'in," he had always said.
But her cackling threat had
always been:
"Yuh'Il not find me if I ever leave yuh. I guess I kin git
some place where yuh can't find me."
This morning when he arose he did not think to build the fire
in the customary way or to grind his coffee and cut his bread,
as was his wont, but solely meditate as to where he should search
for her and should induce her to come back. Recently the one horse
had been dispensed with because he found it cumbersome and beyond
his needs. He took down his soft crush hat after he had dressed
himself, a new glint of interest and determination in his eye,
and taking his black crook cane from behind the door, where he
had always placed it, started out briskly to look for her among
the nearest neighbors. His old shoes clumped soundly in the dust
as he walked, and his gray-black locks, now grown rather long,
straggled out in a dramatic fringe or halo from under his hat.
His short coat stirred busily as he walked, and his hands and
face were peaked and pale.
"Why, hello, Henry! Where're yuh goin' this mornin'?"
inquired Farmer Dodge, who, hauling a load of wheat to market,
encountered him on the public road. He had not seen the aged farmer
in months, not since his wife's death, and he wondered now, seeing
him looking so spry.
"Yuh ain't seen Phoebe, have yuh?" inquired the old
man, looking up quizzically.
"Phoebe who?" inquired Farmer Dodge, not for the moment
connecting the name with Henry's dead wife.
"Why, my wife Phoebe, o' course. Who do yuh s'pose I mean?"
He stared up with a pathetic sharpness of glance from under his
shaggy, gray eyebrows.
"Wall, I'll swan, Henry, yuh ain't jokin', are yuh?”
said the solid Dodge, a pursy man, with a smooth, hard, red face.
"It can't be your-wife yuh're talkin' about. She's dead."
"Dead! Shucks!" retorted the demented Reifsneider.
"She left me early this mornin', while I was sleepin'. She
allus got up to build the fire, but she's gone now. We had a little
spat last night, an' I guess that's the reason. But I guess I
kin find her. She's gone over to Matilda Race's; that's where
she's gone."
He started briskly up the road, leaving the amazed Dodge to stare
in wonder after him.
"Well, I'll be switched!" he said aloud to himself,
"He's clean out'n his head. That poor old feller's been livin'
down there till he's gone outen his mind. I'll have to notify
the authorities." And he flicked his whip With great enthusiasm.
"Geddapi" he said, and was off.
Reifsneider met no one else in this poorly populated region until
he reached the whitewashed fence of Matilda Race and her husband
three miles away. He had passed several other houses en route,
but these not being within the range of his illusion were not
considered. His wife, who had known Matilda well, must be here.
He opened the picket-gate which guarded the walk, and stamped
briskly up to the door.
"Why, Mr. Reifsneider," exclaimed old Matilda herself,
a stout woman, looking out of the door in answer to his knock,
"what brings yuh here this mornin'?"
"Is Phoebe here?" he demanded eagerly.
"Phoebe who? What Phoebe?" replied Mrs. Race, curious
as to this sudden development of energy on his part.
"Why, my Phoebe, o' course. My wife Phoebe. Who do yuh s'pose?
Ain't she here now?"
"Lawsy me!' exclaimed Mrs. Race, opening her mouth. "Yuh
pore man! So you're clean out'n your mind now. Yuh come right
in and sit down. I'll git yuh a cup o' coffee. O' course your
wife ain't here; but yuh come in an' sit down. I'll find her fer
yuh after a while. I know where she is."
The old farmer's eyes softened, and he entered. He was so thin
and pale a specimen,
pantalooned and patriarchal, that he aroused Mrs. Race's extremest
sympathy as he took off his hat and laid it on his knees quite
softly and mildly.
"We had a quarrel last night, an' she left me," he
volunteered.
"Laws! laws!" sighed Mrs. Race, there being no one
present with whom to share her astonishment as she went to her
kitchen. "The pore man! Now somebody's just got to look after
him. He can't be allowed to run around the country this way lookin'
for his dead wife. It's turrible."
She boiled him a pot of coffee and brought in some of her new-baked
bread and fresh butter. She set out some of her best jam and put
a couple of eggs to boil, lying wholeheartedly the while.
"Now yuh stay right there, Uncle Henry, till Jake comes
in, an' I'll send him to look for Phoebe. I think it's more'n
likely she's over to Swinnerton with some of her friends. Anyhow,
we'll find out. Now yuh just drink this coffee an' eat this bread.
Yuh must be tired. Yuh've had a long walk this mornin'."
Her idea was to take counsel with Jake, "her man," and
perhaps have him notify the authorities.
She bustled about, meditating on the uncertainties of life, while
old Reifsneider thrummed on the rim of his hat with his pale fingers
and later ate abstractedly of what she offered. His mind was on
his wife, however, and since she was not here, or did not appear,
it wandered vaguely away to a family by the name of Murray, miles
away in another direction. He decided after a time that he would
not wait for Jake Race to hunt his wife but would seek her for
himself. He must be on, and urge her to come back.
"Well, I'll be goin'," he said, getting up and looking
strangely about him. "I guess she didn't come here after
all. She went over to the Murrays', I guess. I'll not wait any
longer, Mis' Race. There's a lot to do over to the house to-day."
And out he marched in the face of her protests taking to the dusty
road again in the warm spring sun, his cane striking the earth
as he went.
It was two hours later that this pale figure of a man appeared
in the Murrays' doorway, dusty, perspiring, eager. He had tramped
all of five miles, and it was noon. An amazed husband and wife
of sixty heard his strange query, and realized also that he was
mad. They begged him to stay to dinner, intending to notify the
authorities later and see what could be done; but though he stayed
to partake of a little something, he did not stay long, and was
off again to another distant farmhouse, his idea of many things
to do and his need of Phmbe impelling him. So it went for that
day and the next and the next, the circle of his inquiry ever
widening.
The process by which a character assumes the significance of
being peculiar, his antics weird, yet harmless, in such a community
is often involute and pathetic. This day, as has been said, saw
Reifsneider at other doors, eagerly asking his unnatural question,
and leaving a trail of amazement, sympathy, and pity in his wake.
Although the authorities were informed-the county sheriff, no
less-it was not deemed advisable to take him into custody; for
when those who knew old Henry, and hadnfpr so long, reflected
on the condition of the county insane asylum, a place which, because
of the poverty of the district, was of staggering aberration and
sickening environment, it was decided to let him remain at large;
for, strange to relate, it was found on investigation that at
night he returned peaceably enough to his lonesome domicile there
to discover whether his wife had returned, and to brood in loneliness
until the morning. Who would lock up a thin, eager, seeking old
man with iron-gray hair and an attitude of kindly, innocent inquiry,
particularly when he was well known for a past of only kindly
servitude and reliability? Those who had known him best rather
agreed that he should be allowed to roain at large. He could do
no harm. There were many who were willing to help him as to food,
old clothes, the odds and ends of his daily life-at least at first.
His figure after a time became not so much a common-place as an
accepted curiosity, and the replies, "Why, no, Henry; I ain't
see her," or "No, Henry; she ain't been here to-day,"
more customary.
For several years thereafter then he was an odd figure in the
sun and rain, on dusty roads and muddy ones, encountered occasionally
in strange and unexpected places, pursuing his endless search.
Undernourishment, after a time, although the neighbors and those
who knew his history gladly contributed from their store, affected
his body; for he walked much and ate little. The longer he roamed
the public highway in this manner, the deeper became his strange
hallucination; and finding it harder and harder to return from
his more and more distant pilgrimages he finally began taking
a few utensils with him from his home, making a small package
of them, in order that he might not be compelled to return, in
an old tin coffee-pot of large size he placed a small tin cup,
a knife, fork, and spoon, some salt and pepper and to the outside
of it, by a string forced through a pierced hole, he fastened
a plate, which could be released, and which was his woodland table.
It was no trouble for him to secure the little food that he needed
and with a strange, almost religious dignity, he had hesitation
in asking for that much. By degrees his hair became longer and
longer, his once black hat became an earthen brown, and his clothes
threadbare and dusty.
For all of three years he walked, and none knew how wide were
his perambulations, nor how he survived the storms and cold. They
could not see him, with homely rural understanding and forethought,
sheltering himself in hay-cocks, or by the sides of cattle, whose
warm bodies protected him from the cold, and whose dull understandings
were not opposed to his harmless presence. Overhanging rocks and
trees kept him at times from the rain, and a friendly hay-loft
or corn-crib was not above his humble consideration.
The involute progression of hallucination is strange. From asking
at doors and being constantly rebuffed or denied, he finally came
to the conclusion that although his Phoebe might not be in any
of the houses at the doors of which he inquired, she might nevertheless
be thin the sound of his voice. And so, from patient inquiry,
he began to call sad, occasional cries, that ever and anon waked
the quiet landscapes and ragged hill regions, and set to echoing
his thin "O-o-o Phoebe! O-o-o Phoebe!" It had a pathetic,
albeit insane, ring, and many a farmer or plowboy came to know
it even from afar and say, "There goes old Reifsneider."
Another thing that puzzled him greatly after a time and after
many hundreds of inquiries was, when he no longer had any particular
dooryard in view and no special inquiry to make, which way to
go. These cross-roads, which occasionally led in four or even
six directions, came after a time to puzzle him. But to solve
this knotty problem, which became more and more of a puzzle, there
came to his aid another hallucination. Phoebe's spirit or some
power of the air or wind or nature would tell him. If he stood
at the center of the parting of the ways, closed his eyes, turned
thrice about, and called "O-o-o Phoebe!" twice, and
then threw his cane straight before him, that would surely indicate
which way to go for Phoebe, or one of these mystic powers would
surely govern its direction and fall! In whichever direction it
went, even though, as was not infrequently the case, it took him
back along the path he had already come, or across fields, he
was not so far gone in his mind but that he gave himself ample
time to search before he called
again. Also the hallucination seemed to persist that at some time
he would surely find her. There were hours when his feet were
sore, and his limbs weary, when he would stop in the heat to wipe
his seamed brow, or in the cold to beat his arms. Sometimes, after
throwing away his cane, and finding it indicating the direction
from which he had just come, he would shake his head wearily and
philosophically, as if contemplating the unbelievable or an untoward
fate, and then start briskly off. His strange figure came finally
to be known in the farthest reaches of three or four counties.
Old Reifsneider was a pathetic character. His fame was wide.
Near a little town called Watersville, in Green County, perhaps
fo'ur miles from that minor center of human activity, there was
a place or precipice locally known as the Red Cliff, a sheer wall
of red sandstone, perhaps a hundred feet high, which raised its
sharp face for half a mile or more above the fruitful cornfields
and orchards that lay beneath, and which was surmounted by a thick
grove of trees. The slope that slowly led up to it from the opposite
side was covered by a rank growth of beech, hickory, and ash,
through which threaded a number of wagon-tracks crossing various
angles. In fair weather it had become old Reifsneider's habit,
so inured was he by now to the open, to make his bed in some such
patch of trees as this to fry his bacon or boil his eggs at the
foot of some tree before laying himself down for the night. Occasionally,
so light and inconsequential was his sleep, he would walk at night.
More often, the moonlight or some sudden wind stirring in the
trees or a reconroitering animal arousing him, he would sit up
and think, or pursue his quest in the moonlight or the dark, a
strange, unnatural, half wild, half savage-looking but utterly
harmless creature, calling at lonely road crossings, staring at
dark and shuttered houses, and wondering where, where Phoebe could
really be.
That particular full that comes in the systole-diastole of this
earthly ball at two o'clock in the morning invariably aroused
him, and though he might not go any farther he would sit up and
contemplate the darkness or the stars, wondering. Sometimes in
the strange processes of his mind he would fancy that he saw moving
among the trees the figure of his lost wife, and then he would
get up to follow, taking his utensils, always on a string, and
his cane. If she seemed to evade him too easily he would run,
or plead, or, suddenly losing track of the fancied figure, stand
awed or disappointed, grieving for the moment over the almost
insurmountable difficulties of his search.
It was in the seventh year of these hopeless pereginations, in
the dawn of a similar springtime to that in which his wife had
died, that he came at last one night to the vicinity of this self-same
patch that crowned the rise to the Red Cliff. His far-flung cane,
used as a divining-rod at the last cross-roads, had brought him
hither. He had walked many, many miles. It was after ten o'clock
at night, and he was very weary. Long wandering and little eating
had left him but a shadow of his former self. It was a question
now not so much of physical strength but of spiritual endurance
which kept him up. He had scarcely eaten this day, and now exhausted
he set himself down in the dark to rest and possibly to sleep.
Curiously on this occasion a strange suggestion of the presence
of his wife surrounded him. It would not be long now, he counseled
with himself, although the long months had brought him nothing,
until he should see her, talk to her. He fell asleep after a time,
his head on his knees. At midnight the moon began to rise, and
at two in the morning, his wakeful hour, was a large silver disk
shining through the trees to the east. He opened his eyes when
the radiance came strong, making a silver pattern at his feet
and
lighting the woods with strange lusters and silvery, shadowy forms.
As usual, his old notion that his wife must be near occurred to
him on this occasion and he looked about him with a speculative,
anticipatory eye. What was it that moved in the distant shadows
along the path by which he had entered-a pale, flickering will-o'-the-wisp
that bobbed gracefully among the trees and riveted his expectant
gaze? Moonlight and shadows combined to give it a strange form
and a stranger reality, this fluttering of bog-fire or dancing
of wandering fire-flies. Was it truly his lost Phoebe? By a circuitous
route it passed about him, and in his fevered state he fancied
that he could see the very eyes of her, not as she was when he
last saw her in the black dress and shawl but now a strangely
younger Phoebe, gayer, sweeter, the one whom he had known years
before as a girl. Old Reifsneider got up. He had been expecting
and dreaming of this hour all these years, and now as he saw the
feeble, light dancing lightly before him he peered at it questioningly,
one thin hand in his gray hair.
Of a sudden there came to him now for the first time in many
years the full charm of her girlish figure as he had known it
in boyhood, the pleasing, sympathetic smile, the brown hair, the
blue sash she had once worn about her waist at a picnic, her gay,
graceful movements. He walked around the base of the tree, straining
with his eyes, forgetting for once his cane and utensils, and
following eagerly after. On she moved before him, a will-o'-the-wisp
of the spring, a little flame above her head, and it seemed as
though among the small saplings of ash and beech and the thick
trunks of hickory and elm that she signaled with a young, a lightsome
hand.
"O Phoebe! Phoebe!" he called. "Have yuh really
come? Have yuh really answered me?" And hurrying faster,
he fell once, scrambling lamely to his feet, only to see the light
in the distance dancing illusively on. On and on he hurried until
he was fairly running, brushing his ragged arms against the trees,
striking his hands and face against impeding twigs. His hat was
gone, his lungs were breathless, his reason quite astray, when
coming to the edge of the cliff he saw her below among a silvery
bed of apple-trees now blooming in the spring.
"O Phoebe!" he called. "O Phoebe! Oh, no, don't
leave me!" And feeling the lure of a world where love was
young and Phoebe as this vision presented her, a delightful epitome
of their quondam youth, he gave a gay cry of "Oh, wait, Phoebe!"
and leaped.
Some farmer-boys, reconnoitering this region of bounty and prospect
some few days afterward, found first the tin utensils tied together
under the tree where he had left them, and then later at the foot
of the cliff, pale, broken, but elate, a molded smile of peace
and delight upon his lips, his body. His old hat was discovered
lying under some low-growing saplings the twigs of which had held
it back. No one of all the simple population knew how eagerly
and joyously he had found his lost mate.