“Pa’son Donnard never see sech ez that, sure enough; he air sorter
moon-eyed, ef the truth war knowed. An’ ez the boys war a-dancin’ an’
a-cavortin’, he jes’ _’lowed_ he see it.”
“Pa’son Donnard wouldn’t be the fust, ef he _did_ see the devil,” argued
Teck Jepson. “Plenty o’ them the Bible tells about seen him.”
The blacksmith’s eyes had no merry twinkle in them now. He looked off
loweringly at the scene, so familiar to him in its multitudinous phases,
as he spoke.
“Waal, I don’t b’lieve pa’son see nuthin’. Satan don’t lope round in
Broomsaidge none ginerally; never war seen afore. Takes pa’son ter view
him. An’ I ain’t dead,” he added, with a live insistence. “An’ yit he
seen me dead.”
“Ye will be some day,” said Jepson bluntly.
Sanders looked down, darkly frowning.
“Whyn’t he take somebody else ter go lookin’ inter a winder at thar dead
se’fs, stiddier me?” he complained. “I ain’t the only mortial man in the
Cove! I jes’ didn’t know fur awhile what I war goin’ ter do ’bout’n it.
An’ at las’ I went up ter pa’son’s house, an’ I called his son Jube out.
An’ I say ter Jube, ‘Jube, ye an’ me hev been powerful frien’ly since
we useter play ’longside o’ one another in the wood-pile, ’fore we could
walk. An’ I hope I won’t break none o’ yer bones ez ye can’t spare or git
the doctor ter set agin right handy, kase I’m useter hammerin’ tougher
stuff’n ye be. But I’m a-goin’ ter take yer dad’s visions out on ye,
bein’ ez I can’t thrash a old man an’ a preacher. Ye’ll see mo’ sights ’n
ever he done.’”
“What did Jube do?” asked Jepson.
A dreary sense of futility was expressed in the strong man’s face.
“Flung his arm around my neck, an’ begged an’ begged,” he said,
baffled. “He ’lowed his dad wanted ter break up them meetin’s at the
forge,—gredges we-uns our fun. He never war young hisself, ye know.” He
attempted to point the weak sarcasm with a sneer. “But Jube sneaks off,
an’ kems ter the forge every chance he gits. He war thar the night o’ the
vision. Old man war so bent on seein’ Satan, an’ dead folks ez air live
an’ hearty, he didn’t see his own son Jube ’mongst the sinners. An’ Jube
war a-walkin’ round on his hands, like a plumb catamount, with his heels
six feet high up in the air, a-wavin’ round.”
“Mebbe that war why he didn’t see Jube, his head bein’ so nigh the
groun’,” suggested Jepson. “Jube don’t ginerally kerry his heels a-top o’
him.”
The blacksmith listened, but made no response.
“I told Jube,” he resumed presently, “I’d let him off, ef his dad didn’t
put me in none o’ his preachin’.”
“Ev’ybody in Brumsaidge an’ the mountings round knows ’bout’n it,
ennyhow,” said Eli Strobe. “Ye needn’t be so powerful partic’lar.”
“Waal, ennyhows, ’twould in an’ about kill me ef he war ter go ter
blatin’ out in the church-house, ’fore all the congregation, ’bout the
devil a-laffin’ at me whilst playin’ kyerds, an’ me dead, lookin’ through
the winder at my live self. Shucks!”
This unique slander had sunk deep into Clem Sanders’s good-natured
heart. He looked so harried and hopeless that he might well have excited
sympathy, but the circumstance had certain grotesque phases which Eli
Strobe could not fail to relish.
“Ye hain’t done no work sence on that anvil, hev ye?” he demanded, with
his slow side-glance and his air of burly jocundity, which did not always
commend itself to his interlocutor.
The blacksmith shook his head.
“Waal, sir,” exclaimed Eli, bringing his tilted chair upon its forelegs
with an abrupt thump, and placing a hand on either knee, “ef ye an’ that
thar striker o’ yourn gits enny mo’ afeard o’ that thar anvil ’n ye hev
always been, all the critters in the Cove’ll be bar’foot ’fore long.”
“Clem’s jes’ a-purtendin’,” said Gideon Dake. “He war a-workin’ night
afore las’. What ails ye ter be sech a liar, Clem? Ye want us ter gin ye
the credit o’ bein’ convicted o’ sin an’ acceptin’ o’ warnin’s, whenst ye
air jes’ sodden in the ways o’ the worl’.”
“I warn’t at the forge, night afore las’,” said the blacksmith, flustered
and uncertain. “What would I be a-doin’ of, workin’ of a night? I ain’t
kep’ busy in the day, let alone bein’ obligated ter work of a night.”
“I dunno what ye war a-doin’ of,” said Dake, altogether unaware of the
significance of his disclosure. “I _know_ the forge fire war lighted, an’
the anvil a-ringin’, an’ the bellows a-blowin’, an’ the hand-hammer an’
sledge a-strikin’, fur I hearn ’em ’bout midnight, kase I war obligated
ter go arter the doctor fur granny, ez war tuk powerful bad, an’ looked
like ter die.”
Sanders gazed at the speaker in blank amazement for a moment. Then his
color began to change. He grew as pale as his swarthy tints might ever
blanch,—an ashen pallor,—like that white Thing, perhaps, which Parson
Donnard had beheld gazing into the window at its hale and full-pulsed
simulacrum. Was it this that repaired to the forge in the dead of the
night, and kindled the fires and beat out that metallic melody, as
familiar to him as the sound of his own voice?
“Who strikes fur me, then, I wonder?” he said to himself; he was
beginning to adopt this pallid, and joyless, and solemn identity. A
sudden recollection of the malevolent presence on the anvil, a suggestion
of an association with him as striker, and all at once Clem gave way.
“Move up thar on that log!” he cried, as he sank down by the other men,
outside of the forge where he had spent all his days since first he was
old and strong enough to strike for his father, succeeding at last from
the sledge to the hand-hammer, which the elder had laid down forever. He
had never thought to shrink from its very walls, to glance back over his
shoulder into its familiar dusky recesses, and wince in prophetic dread
of what he might chance to see. His heart beat so loud, with so erratic
and tumultuous a throb, that he wondered the other men did not hear, did
not notice his agitation. They had not appreciated the significance of
this testimony to him who had been asleep at home on that night and at
that hour, when the forge fire was kindled in the midnight, and the anvil
rang, and so strange an essence as that pallid identity of a live man so
strangely busied itself, and handled his tools, and aped his gestures,
and did his work. “Knows jes’ whar ter find things,—hammer, an’ nails,
an’ swage, an’ tongs, I reckon.” The others were talking of trivial
matters. How could they? he wondered. And then he was glad that they
could, and that they noted him not, had forgotten him.
An old dog had trotted over from Eli Strobe’s,—the dog which Teck Jepson
had recognized as the property of the “frequent visitor.” He came along
with the easy, confident manner appertaining to both dogs and people who
are more highly appreciated than they deserve; for he was not useful,
being too good-natured for a watch-dog, and having no particular nose for
game and no compensating energy or joy in its pursuit, and he was by no
means comely. His long tongue lolled out, his eyes looked hot. He showed
no signs of recognition of any of the men, but sat down gravely in front
of them.
“I b’lieve that thar old dog hain’t got no owner,” Jepson said
tentatively to Eli Strobe, with a craft of which he was ashamed. “Yer
darter tole me the t’other day ’twarn’t hern.”
Eli Strobe’s slow side-glance was directed toward the long-haired youth,
who lay at length on the grass, and who had not spoken. “Andy’s,” he said
curtly,—“Andy Longwood’s.”
Jepson felt the blood mount to his face. So _this_ was the “frequent
visitor,” whose name she would not speak; this was the riddle she had
left him to guess,—this long-haired, curly-pated creature. “I’d shear him
like a sheep,” he said contemptuously to himself.
The young man, at the sound of his name, turned upward a gentle, placid
face. “Talkin’ ter me?” he drawled slowly.
Eli Strobe gave him a sidelong glower, and shook his head.
“Sheep, fur true!” Jepson thought, scanning his mild countenance. “I’ll
be bound he kin say ‘Ba-a!’” He looked with an easy contempt after the
young fellow, as he rose and strolled away, the old dog at his heels.
“Ef ennybody war ter take a notion ter Marcelly Strobe, he needn’t mind
that thar leetle chuckle-headed Woolly.” Jepson watched Andy Longwood
take his way toward Eli Strobe’s cabin without one qualm of distrust or
displeasure. This the vaunted “frequent visitor”!
So strong a factor is jealousy in sentiment at this stage that, relieved
of his unacknowledged apprehensions, Jepson’s sudden assumption that he
had only a sort of paternal or fraternal interest in Marcella, equally
divided with the callow Isabel, was altogether sincere, and he was
unaware of those subtle mental processes by which he was self-deceived.
He produced much the same impression upon himself that he did on Eli
Strobe, when he said with a casual smile, “He’s a-danglin’ arter
Marcelly, ain’t he?”
Eli Strobe sullenly nodded. “He mought ez well dangle _off_, too.”
He cast an authoritative side-glance at Jepson, which intimated the
possibility of paternal interference in matters of the heart. “Marcelly
ain’t sech ez ter take a likin’ ter him, but somehows she can’t git rid
o’ the critter.”
“I hev hearn,” said Joe Bassett animatedly, “ez how Marcelly and
Clem”—the blacksmith had strolled off, his hands in his pockets, his hat
pulled far over his gloomy face—“hev been keepin’ comp’ny tergether.”
There was no cloud now upon the paternal brow. But Eli Strobe affected
doubt or ignorance. “No countin’ on gals; no way ter find ’em out. They
will ter-day, an’ they won’t ter-morrer, like the wind blows. Yes, sir.”
He rose ponderously from his chair. “Waal, Teck,” he continued, “I be
powerful sorry ye won’t bide along o’ we-uns ter-night. I never done ye
this-a-way, whenst I war on the mounting.”
For Jepson had declined his hospitality, and had expected to ride up
the mountain before dark. He hesitated now, and glanced toward the gray
little cabin, with its background of a roseate sky and an amethystine
mountain. A flutter among the vines,—a flitting blue dress, was it? How
the grudging distance denied him!
“Ax me agin!” he exclaimed, letting his hand fall heavily on his host’s
arm. And so they strolled toward the cabin together.
Clement Sanders, moodily loitering along the river bank, followed them
with anxious eyes.
“All them cussed critters a-waitin’ on Marcelly! She’ll take a notion
ter some o’ ’em, whilst I’m bein’ lured by Satan. I reckon I ain’t been
doin’ right; them kyerds hed a snare in ’em surely. I never won nuthin’
sca’cely, nohow, an’ it’ll go powerful hard with me ter lose Marcelly at
sech a game.”
Everything spoke of approaching night. The long, low nocturnal susurrus
of the woods was already on the air. A bat came noiselessly flitting
past. The color was fading out of the west. A whip-poor-will plained
in the dense foliage hard by. A wind, willful wanderer, had sprung up
somewhere, and was abroad in the slopes. The forge fire had not been
kindled that day, and the ashes were gray on the hearth. He went within,
despite some secret perturbation, and with the care characteristic of
a good workman saw that his tools were in place; he closed the doors,
fastened the shutters, and betook himself homeward. He paused when he
had nearly reached home and looked back. How lonely was the dark little
shanty, with the looming mountain beetling above,—how far from any other
building! Anything might happen there.
The late moon came stealing into the broad, uninclosed passage between
the two rooms of his mother’s house, before he had finished his supper.
He looked at it from the dusky red glow of the room, but half illumined
by the smouldering fire, as he sat at the table, and strove to answer his
mother’s chat, and to eat and drink with a normal appetite. The sheen was
melancholy and white, and the leaves of the vines that it limned on the
floor scarcely stirred. A bird—a wren, perhaps, some tiny, house-loving
thing—had built in their midst; a colorless simulacrum of the circular
nest, of the delicate shape within, the head and bill distinct, was on
the puncheons. But presently she put her head beneath her wing, and then
one might hardly have distinguished amidst the tracery of the shadows the
nest from a leaf of the gourd vines or from the globular fruit itself.
When he strode up the ladder, presently, to the roof-room, he found the
moon there, too, in the homely and solitary place. The glittering square
of the tiny window lay on the floor; a soft irradiation from it seemed to
enrich the narrow, tent-like space. He noted the glimmer on the white
bark of a gigantic poplar hard by, and the low hanging branches of the
beech. It was very still without: no dog barked, no foot stirred,—only
the insistent cry of the cicada, and the sylvan chant of the stream as it
hied down the mountain-side, in the lonely splendors of the night. “Seems
ef they war laffin’ an’ talkin’ at Strobe’s, I mought hear ’em hyar,” he
said. He longed to join them, and yet he doubted. He was in no mood for
company. “I be ez mum ez a dumb one,” he said. “I don’t want ter set thar
tongue-tied, an’ let them other fellers show off talkin’.” And still he
doubted. Mental perturbation wrought upon his resources as toil could
not. He sank down in a chair, and bent his head upon his hand, while he
cogitated.
Suddenly, he saw that the moon had changed in the sky. The trees without
caught the light from another quarter. He had slept for hours. He sprang
to his numb feet, and bent down to the tiny aperture to look out. The
next moment his heart seemed to stand still.
Far along the broad moonlit vista between the mountain and the cliffs
of the gorge, he saw the little forge, with the looming heights above;
and could it be that here and there lines of red light gleamed through
its ill-chinked walls? And did he hear, or did he fancy, vibrating in
the midnight, the clink-clank of the hammer and the sledge, the sound he
knew so well? For one instant the strongest feeling within him was the
instinct of an outraged proprietor. And in that instant he reached out of
the window, seized the shining beech boughs so close at hand, and swung
down to the ground, having paused only to slip into his long boot-leg a
“shootin’ iron” for the intimidation of the unknown trespasser. He was
on his feet and in the road before he remembered that other self, his
strange, white-faced double, that lurked about the forge and opened the
shutter to look in upon its hilarious image. Not the first time had It
kindled the fires and wielded the hammer, he recollected with a chilly
thrill. Had not the chance wayfarer noted the uncanny sounds of forging
in the night, while he, the smith, was lying far away in a deep sleep?
He was advancing mechanically along the road. Suddenly he paused. He
could not face It; he would not encounter Its gaze. What a frightful
thing to stand and meet It! He fell to trembling, and with his sleeve
wiped the cold drops from his brow. How dark the mountains gloomed! With
what a sense of silence was the moon endowed! Pacing the woods in stately
guise, like some fair maiden, lily-crowned,—who hath heard her step?
He still stood looking forward uncertainly, his courage faltering, his
intention vacillating. All at once he lifted his head to the sound of
the forge, the clinking and the clanking of the hammer and the sledge.
Regular, sonorous, unceasing, it was. “_He_ oughter understand the
biz’ness,” he thought. And he rolled up his sleeve, and wondered if the
pallid resemblance wielded an arm like that.
He had turned about to go home. And yet he paused in the way, looking
back over his shoulder. The idea exerted a morbid fascination upon
him. He hardly trusted his resolve; he knew that he was toying with a
temptation; he expected to flee even when he advanced, as he turned once
more and ran fleetly, deftly, down the road toward the place. What if
he should meet It running too! Would It seem so horrible to him but for
the thought of that solemn pallor, that stony stillness, on Its face?
More than once he paused and turned, only to change about again, and run
swiftly toward the forge. A new terror presently beset him as he neared
the building. He could no longer flee; he could not turn his back upon
the forge, for the ghastly fear of what might issue forth and pursue.
Perhaps the familiar sounds of the forging had unconsciously some bracing
effect upon his nerves. He was near enough now to hear the anvil ring and
ring. Once he fancied a word was spoken, and then only the crash of the
sledge following the imperative clink of the hand-hammer; his practiced
ear detected the difference in the vibrations when the smith smote the
face of the anvil instead of the metal in process of forging, as a signal
that the blows of the sledge should cease. “Jes’ like me!” he thought;
and like any other smith, he knew. The blows had quickened anew, and rang
out resonantly when he was close at hand. Now and again the heavy sighing
of the bellows burst forth, and the light of the fanned fire flared
through the chinking. He stole cautiously to the window,—the window,
he remembered, through which It had looked at him. His hand was upon
the shutter when he caught his foot in a vine of the dense undergrowth,
and came heavily to the ground, with a noisy thud and a commotion of
dislodged stone and gravel rolling beneath his feet.
Instantly the place was dark and silent. He drew himself up, bruised and
shaken, and ran limping around to the door. It was closed. He pulled it
open, and the pale moonlight fell through the broad aperture, revealing
the empty and dusky place. A few coals glowed slumberously beneath the
sooty hood. He could not at once remember whether he had left fire here.
He doubted his senses. Had he seen aught, heard aught? Stay! the anvil,
telltale, was still softly ringing, ringing,—fine and faint metallic
tones. He could hardly have said why this obedience to natural laws
should shake his superstition, but with the conviction that the intrusion
was of human agency, he ran out into the night, and roused the echoes
with his wild halloo. How they tossed the word to and fro! How they
hailed the further steeps, and how the savage heights replied! And when
he had listened until all had sunk to silence, a far and faint “Halloo!”
from the vague upper air startled him with a chill tremor. He suddenly
began to reflect that he had found both door and shutter closed, and
this place, sounding and alight one moment, dark and silent and empty
the next. As to the fire, he trembled to think where it might have been
kindled. And the anvil,—would it not ring if that pallid simulacrum of
a smith should smite it? With these thoughts he betook himself home,
leaving the forge silent and dark behind him, although he often sought
with a fearful fancy to think it alight once more, and to hear the
ringing of the anvil or the melancholy sighing of the bellows.