upon the youthful mind a comprehension and appreciation of the eternal
verities of nature, its site could hardly have been better chosen. All
along the eastern horizon deployed the endless files of the Great Smoky
Mountains--blue and sunlit, with now and again the apparition of an
unfamiliar peak, hovering like a straggler in the far-distant rear, and
made visible for the nonce by some exceptional clarification of the
atmosphere; or lowering, gray, stern; or with ranks of clouds hanging on
their flanks, while all the artillery of heaven whirled about them, and
the whole world quaked beneath the flash and roar of its volleys. The
seasons successively painted the great landscape--spring, with its
timorous touch, its illumined haze, its tender, tentative green and gray
and yellow; summer, with its flush of completion, its deep, luscious,
definite verdure, and the golden richness of fruition; autumn, with a
full brush and all chromatic splendors; winter, in melancholy sepia
tones, black and brown and many sad variations of the pallors of white.
So high was the little structure on the side of a transverse ridge that
it commanded a vast field of sky above the wooded ranges; and in the
immediate foreground, down between the slopes which were cleft to the
heart, was the river, resplendent with the reflected moods of the
heavens. In this deep gorge the winds and the pines chanted like a Greek
chorus; the waves continuously murmured an intricate rune, as if conning
it by frequent repetition; a bird would call out from the upper air some
joyous apothegm in a language which no creature of the earth has learned
enough of happiness to translate.
But the precepts which prevailed in the little school-house were to the
effect that rivers, except as they flowed as they listed to confusing
points of the compass, rising among names difficult to remember, and
emptying into the least anticipated body of water, were chiefly to be
avoided for their proclivity to drown small boys intent on swimming or
angling. Mountains, aside from the desirability of their recognition as
forming one of the divisions of land somewhat easily distinguishable by
the more erudite youth from plains, valleys, and capes, were full of
crags and chasms, rattlesnakes and vegetable poisons, and a further
familiarity with them was liable to result in the total loss of the
adventurous--to see friends, family, and home no more.
These dicta, promulgated from the professorial chair, served to keep the
small body of callow humanity, with whose instruction Abner Sage was
intrusted by the State, well within call and out of harm's way during
the short recesses, while under his guidance they toddled along the
rough road that leads up the steeps to knowledge. But one there was who
either bore a charmed life or possessed an unequalled craft in
successfully defying danger; who fished and swam with impunity; who was
ragged and torn from much climbing of crags; whose freckled face bore
frequent red tokens of an indiscriminate sampling of berries. It is too
much to say that Abner Sage would have been glad to have his warnings
made terrible by some bodily disaster to the juvenile dare-devil of the
school, but Leander Yerby's disobedient incredulity as to the terrors
that menaced him, and his triumphant immunity, fostered a certain grudge
against him. Covert though it was, unrecognized even by Sage himself, it
was very definitely apparent to Tyler Sudley when sometimes, often,
indeed, on his way home from hunting, he would pause at the school-house
window, pulling open the shutter from the outside, and gravely watch his
protege, who stood spelling at the head of the class.
For Leander Yerby's exploits were not altogether those of a physical
prowess. He was a mighty wrestler with the multiplication table. He had
met and overthrown the nine line in single-handed combat. He had
attained unto some interesting knowledge of the earth on which he lived,
and could fluently bound countries with neatness and precision, and was
on terms of intimacy with sundry seas, volcanoes, islands, and other
sizable objects. The glib certainty of his contemptuous familiarity
with the alphabet and its untoward combinations, as he flung off words
in four syllables in his impudent chirping treble, seemed something
uncanny, almost appalling, to Tyler Sudley, who could not have done the
like to save his stalwart life. He would stare dumfounded at the erudite
personage at the head of the class; Leander's bare feet were always
carefully adjusted to a crack between the puncheons of the floor,
literally "toeing the mark"; his broad trousers, frayed out liberally at
the hem, revealed his skinny and scarred little ankles, for his out-door
adventures were not without a record upon the more impressionable
portions of his anatomy; his waistband was drawn high up under his
shoulder-blades and his ribs, and girt over the shoulders of his
unbleached cotton shirt by braces, which all his learning did not
prevent him from calling "galluses"; his cut, scratched, calloused hands
were held stiffly down at the side seams in his nether garments in
strict accordance with the regulations. But rules could not control the
twinkle in his big blue eyes, the mingled effrontery and affection on
his freckled face as he perceived the on-looking visitor, nor hinder the
wink, the swiftly thrust-out tongue, as swiftly withdrawn, the egregious
display of two rows of dishevelled jagged squirrel teeth, when once
more, with an offhand toss of his tangled brown hair, he nimbly spelled
a long twisted-tailed word, and leered capably at the grave intent face
framed in the window.
"Why, Abner!" Tyler Sudley would break out, addressing the teacher, all
unmindful of scholastic etiquette, a flush of pleasure rising to his
swarthy cheek as he thrust back his wide black hat on his long dark
hair and turned his candid gray eyes, all aglow, upon the cadaverous,
ascetic preceptor, "ain't Lee-yander a-gittin' on powerful, _powerful_
fas' with his book?"
"Not in enny ways so special," Sage would reply in cavalier
discouragement, his disaffected gaze resting upon the champion scholar,
who stood elated, confident, needing no commendation to assure him of
his pre-eminence; "but he air disobejient, an' turr'ble, turr'ble bad."
The nonchalance with which Leander Yerby hearkened to this criticism
intimated a persuasion that there were many obedient people in this
world, but few who could so disport themselves in the intricacies of the
English language; and Sudley, as he plodded homeward with his rifle on
his shoulder, his dog running on in advance, and Leander pattering along
behind, was often moved to add the weight of his admonition to the
teacher's reproof.
"Lee-yander," he would gently drawl, "ye mustn't be so bad, honey; ye
_mustn't_ be so turr'ble bad."
"Naw, ma'am, I won't," Leander would cheerily pipe out, and so the
procession would wend its way along.
For he still confused the gender in titles of respect, and from force of
habit he continued to do so in addressing Tyler Sudley for many a year
after he had learned better.
These lapses were pathetic rather than ridiculous in the hunter's ears.
It was he who had taught Leander every observance of verbal humility
toward his wife, in the forlorn hope of propitiating her in the
interest of the child, who, however, with his quick understanding that
the words sought to do honor and express respect, had of his own accord
transferred them to his one true friend in the household. The only
friend he had in the world, Sudley often felt, with a sigh over the
happy child's forlorn estate. And, with the morbid sensitiveness
peculiar to a tender conscience, he winced under the knowledge that it
was he who, through wrongheadedness or wrongheartedness, had contrived
to make all the world besides the boy's enemy. Both wrongheaded and
wronghearted he was, he sometimes told himself. For even now it still
seemed to him that he had not judged amiss, that only the perversity of
fate had thwarted him. Was it so fantastically improbable, so hopeless a
solace that he had planned, that he should have thought his wife might
take comfort for the death of their own child in making for its sake a
home for another, orphaned, forlorn, a burden, and a glad riddance to
those into whose grudging charge it had been thrown? This bounty of hope
and affection and comfort had seemed to him a free gift from the dead
baby's hands, who had no need of it since coming into its infinite
heritage of immortality, to the living waif, to whom it was like life
itself, since it held all the essential values of existence. The idea
smote him like an inspiration. He had ridden twenty miles in a snowy
night to beg the unwelcome mite from the custody of its father's
half-brothers, who were on the eve of moving to a neighboring county
with all their kin and belongings.
Tyler Sudley was a slow man, and tenacious of impressions. He could
remember every detail of the events as they had happened--the palpable
surprise, the moment of hesitation, the feint of denial which
successively ensued on his arrival. It mattered not what the season or
the hour--he could behold at will the wintry dawn, the deserted cabin,
the glow of embers dying on the hearth within; the white-covered wagon
slowly a-creak along the frozen road beneath the gaunt, bare,
overhanging trees, the pots and pans as they swung at the rear, the
bucket for water swaying beneath, the mounted men beside it, the few
head of swine and cattle driven before them. Years had passed, but he
could feel anew the vague stir of the living bundle which he held on the
pommel of his saddle, the sudden twist it gave to bring its inquiring,
apprehensive eyes, so large in its thin, lank-jawed, piteous little
countenance, to bear on his face, as if it understood its transfer of
custody, and trembled lest a worse thing befall it. One of the women
stopped the wagon and ran back to pin about its neck an additional
wrapping, an old red-flannel petticoat, lest it should suffer in its
long, cold ride. His heart glowed with vicarious gratitude for her
forethought, and he shook her hand warmly and wished her well, and hoped
that she might prosper in her new home, and stood still to watch the
white wagon out of sight in the avenue of the snow-laden trees, above
which the moon was visible, a-journeying too, swinging down the western
sky.
Laurelia Sudley sat in stunned amazement when, half-frozen, but
triumphant and flushed and full of his story, he burst into the warm
home atmosphere, and put the animated bundle down upon the hearth-stone
in front of the glowing fire. For one moment she met its forlorn gaze
out of its peaked and pinched little face with a vague hesitation in her
own worn, tremulous, sorrow-stricken eyes. Then she burst into a tumult
of tears, upbraiding her husband that he could think that another child
could take the place of her dead child--all the dearer because it was
dead; that she could play the traitor to its memory and forget her
sacred grief; that she could do aught as long as she should live but sit
her down to bewail her loss, every tear a tribute, every pang its
inalienable right, her whole smitten existence a testimony to her love.
It was in vain that he expostulated. The idea of substitution had never
entered his mind. But he was ignorant, and clumsy of speech, and
unaccustomed to analyze his motives. He could not put into words his
feeling that to do for the welfare of this orphaned and unwelcome little
creature all that they would have done for their own was in some sort a
memorial to him, and brought them nearer to him--that she might find in
it a satisfaction, an occupation--that it might serve to fill her empty
life, her empty arms.
But no! She thought, and the neighbors thought, and after a time Tyler
Sudley came to think also, that he had failed in the essential duty to
the dead--that of affectionate remembrance; that he was recreant,
strangely callous. They all said that he had seemed to esteem one baby
as good as another, and that he was surprised that his wife was not
consoled for the loss of her own child because he took it into his head
to go and toll off the Yerby baby from his father's half-brothers "ez
war movin' away an' war glad enough ter get rid o' one head o' human
stock ter kerry, though, _bein' human_, they oughter been ashamed ter
gin him away like a puppy-dog, or an extry cat, all hands consarned."
From the standpoint she had taken Laurelia had never wavered. It was an
added and a continual reproach to her husband that all the labor and
care of the ill-advised acquisition fell to her share. She it was who
must feed and clothe and tend the gaunt little usurper; he needs must be
accorded all the infantile prerogatives, and he exacted much time and
attention. Despite the grudging spirit in which her care was given she
failed in no essential, and presently the interloper was no longer gaunt
or pallid or apprehensive, but grew pink and cherubic of build, and
arrogant of mind. He had no sensitive sub-current of suspicion as to his
welcome; he filled the house with his gay babbling, and if no maternal
chirpings encouraged the development of his ideas and his powers of
speech, his cheerful spirits seemed strong enough to thrive on their own
stalwart endowments. His hair began to curl, and a neighbor, remarking
on it to Laurelia, and forgetting for the moment his parentage, said, in
admiring glee, twining the soft tendrils over her finger, that Mrs.
Sudley had never before had a child so well-favored as this one. From
this time forth was infused a certain rancor into his foster-mother's
spirit toward him. Her sense of martyrdom was complete when another
infant was born and died, leaving her bereaved once more to watch this
stranger grow up in her house, strong and hearty, and handsomer than any
child of hers had been.
The mountain gossips had their own estimate of her attitude.
"I ain't denyin' but what she hed nat'ral feelin' fur her own chil'ren,
bein' dead," said the dame who had made the unfortunate remark about the
curling hair, "but Laurelia Sudley war always a contrary-minded,
lackadaisical kind o' gal afore she war married, sorter set in
opposition, an' now ez she ain't purty like she useter was, through
cryin' her eyes out, an' gittin' sallow-complected an' bony, I kin
notice her contrariousness more. Ef Tyler hedn't brung that chile home,
like ez not she'd hev sot her heart on borryin' one herself from
somebody. Lee-yander ain't in nowise abused, ez I kin see--ain't
acquainted with the rod, like the Bible say he oughter be, an' ennybody
kin see ez Laurelia don't like the name he gin her, yit she puts up with
it. She larnt him ter call Ty 'Cap'n,' bein' she's sorter proud of it,
'kase Ty war a cap'n of a critter company in the war: 'twarn't sech a
mighty matter nohow; he jes got ter be cap'n through the other off'cers
bein' killed off. An' the leetle boy got it twisted somehows, an' calls
_her_ 'Cap'n' an' Ty 'Neighbor,' from hearin' old man Jeemes, ez comes
in constant, givin' him that old-fashioned name. 'Cap'n' 'bout fits
Laurelia, though, an' that's a fac'."
Laurelia's melancholy ascendency in the household was very complete. It
was characterized by no turbulence, no rages, no long-drawn argument or
objurgation; it expressed itself only in a settled spirit of
disaffection, a pervasive suggestion of martyrdom, silence or sighs, or
sometimes a depressing singing of hymn tunes. For her husband had long
ago ceased to remonstrate, or to seek to justify himself. It was with a
spirit of making amends that he hastened to concede every point of
question, to defer to her preference in all matters, and Laurelia's sway
grew more and more absolute as the years wore on. Leander Yerby could
remember no other surroundings than the ascetic atmosphere of his home.
It had done naught apparently to quell the innate cheerfulness of his
spirit. He evidently took note, however, of the different standpoint of
the "Captain" and his "Neighbor," for although he was instant in the
little manifestations of respect toward her which he had been taught,
his childish craft could not conceal their spuriousness.
"That thar boy treats me ez ef I war a plumb idjit," Laurelia said one
day, moved to her infrequent anger. "Tells me, 'Yes, ma'am, cap'n,' an'
'Naw, ma'am, cap'n,' jes ter quiet me--like folks useter do ter old
Ed'ard Green, ez war in his dotage--an' then goes along an' does the
very thing I tell him not ter do."
Sudley looked up as he sat smoking his pipe by the fire, a shade of
constraint in his manner, and a contraction of anxiety in his slow, dark
eyes, never quite absent when she spoke to him aside of Leander.
She paused, setting her gaunt arms akimbo, and wearing the manner of one
whose kindly patience is beyond limit abused. "Kems in hyar, he do,
a-totin' a fiddle. An' I says, 'Lee-yander Yerby, don't ye know that
thar thing's the devil's snare?' 'Naw, ma'am, cap'n,' he says, grinnin'
like a imp; 'it's _my_ snare, fur I hev bought it from Peter Teazely fur
two rabbits what I cotch in my trap, an' my big red rooster, an' a bag
o' seed pop-corn, an' the only hat I hev got in the worl'.' An' with
that the consarn gin sech a yawp, it plumb went through my haid. An'
then the critter jes tuk ter a-bowin' it back an' forth, a-playin' 'The
Chicken in the Bread-trough' like demented, a-dancin' off on fust one
foot an' then on t'other till the puncheons shuck. An' I druv him out
the house. I won't stan' none o' Satan's devices hyar! I tole him he
couldn't fetch that fiddle hyar whenst he kems home ter-night, an' I be
a-goin' ter make him a sun-bonnet or a nightcap ter wear stiddier his
hat that he traded off."
She paused.
Her husband had risen, the glow of his pipe fading in his unheeding
hand, his excited eyes fixed upon her. "Laurely," he exclaimed, "ye
ain't meanin' ez that thar leetle critter could play a chune fust off on
a fiddle 'thout no larnin'!"
She nodded her head in reluctant admission.
He opened his mouth once or twice, emitting no sound. She saw how his
elation, his spirit of commendation, his pride, set at naught her
displeasure, albeit in self-defence, perchance, he dared not say a word.
With an eye alight and an absorbed face, he laid his pipe on the
mantel-piece, and silently took his way out of the house in search of
the youthful musician.
Easily found! The racked and tortured echoes were all aquake within half
a mile of the spot where, bareheaded, heedless of the threatened
ignominy alike of sun-bonnet or nightcap, Leander sat in the flickering
sunshine and shadow upon a rock beside the spring, and blissfully
experimented with all the capacities of catgut to produce sound.
"Listen, Neighbor!" he cried out, descrying Tyler Sudley, who, indeed,
could do naught else--"_listen_! Ye won't hear much better fiddlin' this
side o' kingdom come!" And with glad assurance he capered up and down,
the bow elongating the sound to a cadence of frenzied glee, as his arms
sought to accommodate the nimbler motions of his legs.
Thus it was the mountaineers later said that Leander fell into bad
company. For, the fiddle being forbidden in the sober Laurelia's house,
he must needs go elsewhere to show his gift and his growing skill, and
he found a welcome fast enough. Before he had advanced beyond his
stripling youth, his untutored facility had gained a rude mastery over
the instrument; he played with a sort of fascination and spontaneity
that endeared his art to his uncritical audiences, and his endowment was
held as something wonderful. And now it was that Laurelia, hearing him,
far away in the open air, play once a plaintive, melodic strain,
fugue-like with the elfin echoes, felt a strange soothing in the sound,
found tears in her eyes, not all of pain but of sad pleasure, and
assumed thenceforth something of the port of a connoisseur. She said she
"couldn't abide a fiddle jes sawed helter-skelter by them ez hedn't
larned, but ter play saaft an' slow an' solemn, and no dancin' chune,
no frolic song--she warn't set agin that at all." And she desired of
Leander a repetition of this sunset motive that evening when he had come
home late, and she discovered him hiding the obnoxious instrument under
the porch. But in vain. He did not remember it. It was some vague
impulse, as unconsciously voiced as the dreaming bird's song in the
sudden half-awake intervals of the night. Over and again, as he stood by
the porch, the violin in his arms, he touched the strings tentatively,
as if, perchance, being so alive, they might of their own motion recall
the strain that had so lately thrilled along them.
He had grown tall and slender. He wore boots to his knees now, and
pridefully carried a "shootin'-iron" in one of the long legs--to his
great discomfort. The freckles of his early days were merged into the
warm uniform tint of his tanned complexion. His brown hair still curled;
his shirt-collar fell away from his throat, round and full and
white--the singer's throat--as he threw his head backward and cast his
large roving eyes searchingly along the sky, as if the missing strain
had wings.
The inspiration returned no more, and Laurelia experienced a sense of
loss. "Some time, Lee-yander, ef ye war ter kem acrost that chune agin,
try ter set it in yer remembrance, an' play it whenst ye kem home," she
said, wistfully, at last, as if this errant melody were afloat somewhere
in the vague realms of sound, where one native to those haunts might
hope to encounter it anew.
"Yes, ma'am, cap'n, I will," he said, with his facile assent. But his
tone expressed slight intention, and his indifference bespoke a too
great wealth of "chunes"; he could feel no lack in some unremembered
combination, sport of the moment, when another strain would come at
will, as sweet perchance, and new.
She winced as from undeserved reproach when presently Leander's
proclivities for the society of the gay young blades about the
countryside, sometimes reputed "evil men," were attributed to this exile
of the violin from the hearth-stone. She roused herself to disputation,
to indignant repudiation.
"They talk ez ef it war _me_ ez led the drinkin', an' the gamin', an'
the dancin', and sech, ez goes on in the Cove, 'kase whenst Lee-yander
war about fryin' size I wouldn't abide ter hev him a-sawin' away on the
fiddle in the house enough ter make me deef fur life. At fust the racket
of it even skeered Towse so he wouldn't come out from under the house
fur two days an' better; he jes sot under thar an' growled, an'
shivered, an' showed his teeth ef ennybody spoke ter him. Nobody don't
like Lee-yander's performin' better'n I do whenst he plays them saaft,
slippin'-away, slow medjures, ez sound plumb religious--ef 'twarn't a
sin ter say so. Naw, sir, ef ennybody hev sot Lee-yander on ter evil
ways 'twarn't me. My conscience be clear."
Nevertheless she was grievously ill at ease when one day there rode up
to the fence a tall, gaunt, ill-favored man, whose long, lean, sallow
countenance, of a Pharisaic cast, was vaguely familiar to her, as one
recognizes real lineaments in the contortions of a caricature or the
bewilderments of a dream. She felt as if in some long-previous existence
she had seen this man as he dismounted at the gate and came up the path
with his saddle-bags over his arm. But it was not until he mustered an
unready, unwilling smile, that had of good-will and geniality so slight
an intimation that it was like a spasmodic grimace, did she perceive how
time had deepened tendencies to traits, how the inmost thought and the
secret sentiment had been chiselled into the face in the betrayals of
the sculpture of fifteen years.
"Nehemiah Yerby!" she exclaimed. "I would hev knowed ye in the happy
land o' Canaan."
"Let's pray we may all meet thar, Sister Sudley," he responded. "Let's
pray that the good time may find none of us unprofitable servants."
Mrs. Sudley experienced a sudden recoil. Not that she did not echo his
wish, but somehow his manner savored of an exclusive arrogation of piety
and a suggestion of reproach.
"That's my prayer," she retorted, aggressively. "Day an' night, that's
my prayer."
"Yes'm, fur us an' our households, Sister Sudley--we mus' think o' them
c'mitted ter our charge."
She strove to fling off the sense of guilt that oppressed her, the
mental attitude of arraignment. He was a young man when he journeyed
away in that snowy dawn. She did not know what changes had come in his
experience. Perchance his effervescent piety was only a habit of speech,
and had no significance as far as she was concerned. The suspicion,
however, tamed her in some sort. She attempted no retort. With a
mechanical, reluctant smile, ill adjusted to her sorrow-lined face, she
made an effort to assume that the greeting had been but the conventional
phrasings of the day.
"Kem in, kem in, Nehemiah; Tyler will be glad ter see ye, an' I reckon
ye will be powerful interested ter view how Lee-yander hev growed an'
prospered."
She felt as if she were in some terrible dream as she beheld him slowly
wag his head from side to side. He had followed her into the large main
room of the cabin, and had laid his saddle-bags down by the side of the
chair in which he had seated himself, his elbows on his knees, his hands
held out to the flickering blaze in the deep chimney-place, his eyes
significantly narrowing as he gazed upon it.