Benefits Forgot Part 1

Benefits Forgot.

by Honore Willsie.

I

THE DONATION PARTY

Brother Meaker rose from his pew and looked at Jason appraisingly.

"I don't know, brethren," he said. "Of course, he's a growing boy. Just turned twelve, didn't you say, ma'am?" Jason's mother nodded faintly without looking up, and Brother Meaker went on. "As I said, he's a growing boy, but he's dark and wiry. And I've always noted, the dark wiry kind eat smaller than any other kind. I should take at least twelve pounds of sugar off the allowance for the year and four gallon less of mola.s.ses than you was calculatin' on."

He sat down and Sister Cantwell rose. She was a fat woman, famous in the southern Ohio country for the lavish table she set.

"Short sweetening," she said in a thin high voice, "is dreadful high. I said to Hiram yesterday that the last sugar loaf I bought was worth its weight in silver. I should say, cut down on short sweetening. Long sweetening is all right except for holidays."

Jason whispered to his mother, "What's long sweetening, mother?"

"They must mean mola.s.ses," she whispered in return, with a glance at Jason's father, who sat at the far end of the pew reading his Bible as he always did at this annual ordeal.

Jason looked from his mother's quiet, sensitive face, like yet so unlike his own, to the bare pulpit of the little country church, then back at Brother Ames, who was conducting the meeting. This annual conference and the annual donation party were the black spots in Jason's year. His mother, he suspected, suffered as he did: her face told him that. Her tender lips, usually so wistful and eager, were at these times thin and compressed. Her brown eyes, that except at times of death or illness always held a remote twinkle, were inscrutable.

Jason's face was so like, yet already so unlike his mother's! The same brown eyes, with the same twinkle, but tonight instead of being inscrutable, boyishly hard. The same tender mouth, with tonight an unboyish sardonic twist. What Jason's father's face might have said one could not know, for it was hidden under a close-cropped brown beard. He turned the leaves of his Bible composedly, looking up only as the meeting reached a final triumphant conclusion with Brother Ames'

announcement:

"So, Brother Wilkins, there you are, a liberal allowance if I must say it. Two hundred and fifty dollars for the year, with the usual donation party to take place in the fall of the year."

Brother Wilkins, who was Jason's father, rose, bowed and said: "I thank you, brethren. Let us pray!"

The fifty or sixty souls in the church knelt, and Jason's father, his eyes closed, lifted his great ba.s.s voice in prayer:

"O G.o.d, You have led our feeble and trusting steps to this town of High Hill, Ohio. You have put into the hearts and minds of these people, O G.o.d, the purpose of feeding and clothing us. Whether they do it well or ill, concerns them and You, O G.o.d, and not us. We are but Your humble servants, doing Your divine bidding. Yet this is perhaps the proper occasion, Our Heavenly Father, to thank You that You have sent us but one child and that unlike Solomon, Your servant has but one wife. And now, O G.o.d, bless these people in their giving. And make me, in my solitary circuit riding in the hills and valleys a proper mouthpiece of Your will. For Lord Jesus' sake, Amen."

There was a short pause after the rich voice stopped, then a few weak "Amens" came from different corners of the church and Brother Ames, jumping to his feet, exclaimed:

"Let us close the meeting by singing

'How tedious and tasteless the hours When Jesus no longer I see--'"

This ended Jason's first day at High Hill. The salary was small, even for a Methodist circuit rider, in the decade before the Civil War. It was smaller by fifty dollars than what they had been allowed the year before. Yet, High Hill, as Mrs. Wilkins pointed out to Jason the next day, was much more attractive than any town they had been in for years.

There was a good school, and the Ohio river-packet stopped twice a week, and a Mr. Inchpin in the town was reported to be the owner of a number of books. Jason's mother was an Eastern woman and sometimes the loneliness and hards.h.i.+p of her life made her find solace in what seemed to Jason inconsequential things. Still, he was glad of the school, for he was a first-cla.s.s student and already had decided to take his father's and mother's advice that he study medicine. And the packet, warping in twice a week, was, after all, something to which one might look forward and Mr. Inchpin's books would be wonderful.

Jason was sure that the Ohio valley in which he had spent the whole of his short life was the most beautiful spot in the world. The lovely green heights rolling back into the Kentucky sky line, were, he thought, great enough for David, whose cattle fed upon a thousand hills. The fine headlands on the Ohio side, wooded, mysterious, were, he was sure, clad in verdure like the utmost bound of the everlasting hills of Jacob. And High Hill with its fifteen hundred souls was "a city, builded on a hill that could not be laid."

For Jason was brought up on the Bible. His father believed that it ought to be, outside of his school text books, his only literature. His mother, with her Eastern traditions, thought otherwise. A Methodist circuit rider before the Civil War moved every year, and every year Mrs.

Wilkins combed each new community for books. It was wonderful how she and Jason scented them out.

They had been in High Hill about a week when Jason came panting into the house late one afternoon. His father was writing a sermon in the sitting room. Jason tip-toed into the kitchen, where his mother was preparing supper.

"The packet's in, mother, and I carried a man's carpet bag up to the hotel and look--what he gave me!"

His slender boyish brown hands fairly trembled as he held a torn and soiled magazine toward his mother. She dropped the biscuit she was molding and seized it.

"_Harper's Monthly!_ O Jason dear, how wonderful! You shall read it aloud to me after supper."

"It's prayer meeting night," said Jason in a sick voice.

His mother flushed a little. "So it is! My goodness, Jason! Print makes a heathen of me and you're most as bad. You haven't fed the horse or milked."

"So I won't get a look at it till tomorrow," cried Jason, bitterly.

Mrs. Wilkins glanced toward the closed door that led into the sitting room. Then she looked at Jason's wide brown eyes, at the round-about she had cut over from his father's old sermon coat, at the darned stockings and the trousers that had belonged to the rich boy of the town they had lived in the year before.

"Jason," she said, "you ought to get plenty of sleep because you're a growing boy. But a thing like this won't happen for years again--and--well, I've saved up several candle ends, hoping to get some sewing done nights when your father was using the lamp. When you go up to bed tonight, take those and read your magazine."

"But you ought to keep them," protested Jason.

"Not at all," exclaimed his mother, vigorously, "it's all for your education. Run along now and milk."

So Jason reveled in his _Harper's Monthly_, and the next day as he wiped the dishes for his mother, he produced his great idea.

"If I can earn the money, this summer, mother, can I subscribe to _Harper's Monthly_ for a year?"

"My goodness, Jason, it's five dollars and this is the first of August!

School begins in a month."

"I know all that," replied Jason impatiently, "but if I earn the money can I have it for _Harpers Monthly_?"

"Of course you can. It's all for your education, my dear. I never forget that."

A money paying job for a boy of twelve was a hard thing to find in High Hill and Jason was late for supper that night. But his brown eyes were s.h.i.+ning with triumph when he slid into his seat and held out his bowl for his evening meal of mush and milk.

"I've got a job," he said.

"A job?" queried his father. He smiled a little at Jason's mother.

"Yes, sir. Mr. Inchpin is having a new barn built on the hill back of his house. The brook runs at the foot of it and I'm going to haul gravel and sand and water up to the building site. It'll take about a month. He provides the horse and wagon."

"And how much will he pay you?" asked Mrs. Wilkins.

"He says he can't tell till he's through. But I'm going to ask him for five dollars."

Jason's father looked amused and a little troubled. "Jason, I hope you're not too interested in Mammon. But I must say I'm glad to see you have your mother's energy."

"Or your father's," said Mrs. Wilkins, smiling into the blue eyes opposite hers. "n.o.body can say that a circuit rider lacks energy."

And so during the hot August days, Jason toiled on Mr. Inchpin's new barn, never once visiting the swimming hole in the brook, never once heeding the long-drawn invitation of the cicada to loll under the trees with one of Mr. Inchpin's books, never once breaking away when the toot of the packet reverberated among the hills.