The storm wrought great havoc in the aspect of the outer world. The dull
light of the autumn days that ensued served to show how the red and gold
of the leaves had faded, and what resources of brown and a sere tawny
gray the ultimate stages of decay held in store. They were thickly massed
on the ground now, and most of the boughs were bare and wintry, and
swayed, black with moisture, against the clouds, that in their silent
shifting illustrated an infinite gradation of neutral tints between pearl
and purple. Yet they seemed still, these clouds, so imperceptibly did
each evolution develop from the previous presentments of vapor.
Far away the gray mountains appeared akin to the dun cloud-masses they
touched, as if range and peak were piled one above the other almost to
the zenith. Certain fascinating outlines of the distance, familiars of
the fair weather, were withdrawn beneath this lowering sky, and strangely
enough the landscape seemed still complete and real without them, as
if they had been merely some fine illusions of hope, some figment of a
poetic mood, painted in tender tints upon an inconstant horizon. Close at
hand the heights loomed grim and darkly definite. In dropping the mask of
foliage they showed fierce features hitherto concealed,—gaunt crags and
chasms, and awful beetling steeps; ravines, deeply cleft in the heart of
the range; torrents, flung headlong down the precipices to be lost in the
river; many sterile, bare rocky slopes.
To Marcella a new glow of interest was shed upon the sombre scene; often
she looked up at those more open expanses, wondering where, in the vast
bewilderment of the fastnesses, the stranger and his mountain guide
had made their temporary home. Far away as they were, he seemed near in
the definiteness of her new knowledge of him. And this she supplemented
by knowledge not so definite. With this basis for speculation, her
imagination constructed, with all the ease of that airy workmanship, a
status for his previous life, endowed him with a series of predilections
and prejudices, and many noble ideal qualities with which Rathburn might
have found himself somewhat embarrassed, having had but scant experience
with such fine æsthetic gear. There were circumstances connected with his
recent danger which gave her an intense satisfaction,—she had requited
the good deed he had done that night when he had come to her father’s
aid through the storm. She had repaid the debt fourfold. She remembered,
with a certain soft elation, how he had recognized the risk she had
encountered, how he had esteemed it of no slight magnitude. It might have
been vanity, it might have been some tenderer thrill astir, but it was
sweet to her to hear again—as so easily she might, when she would—the
quiver in his voice when he had declared that an angel of mercy, an angel
had rescued him! Often she paused at her simple tasks to recall anew
those fervent words, those earnest, swift glances, which said so much
that the subtlest words might fail to convey. His gratitude held all the
finest essences of the incense of flattery, and she recognized a unique
delight in the fact that the words and the glances were so cleverly
calculated for her alone. Always her lips curved, with that rarest relish
of laughter, when it is for joy alone, unmarred by any element of scorn
or ridicule, when she remembered her grandmother’s satiric flouts at his
“n’angel” and subsequent speculation as to which of the mountain girls
he fancied, in his sentimental folly, had any resemblance to a celestial
being. These thoughts were undulled by repetition. But one afternoon,
on a bleak hillside, into their midst a certain shadow fell—a shadow as
gray, as chill, as prophetic, as if it were akin to the gray, chill,
prophetic shadows of the day that stood, dejected, on every slope,
and waited as for a doom. She had gone out to salt the sheep, and she
carried a gourd of salt in her hand. Her bonnet—it was of a gay yellow
calico—hung on her shoulders, the strings knotted about her neck, and
her heavy, waving brown tresses falling over it almost hid its assertive
color beneath their curling luxuriance. Her dress was of a more sombre
tone; it had encountered disasters in its dyes, and had not withstood
the test of soap and water. It was difficult to say whether the result
were a darkly brownish green or a darkly greenish brown. It was not
incongruous with the dulling tints of the landscape; as she stood, it
served to define her light, lithe figure distinctly against the tawny
stretches of broomsedge behind her, that rose gradually to the summit of
the hill. There seemed the full development of its tentative shade in the
dark green of the pines clustering along the background of the mountain.
Gray rocks cropped out of the red clay gullies that scarred the descent
at her feet. In all the monotony of the scene, the flaring yellow about
her throat seemed a triumphant climax of color, so luminous and intense
it was. Her eyes were fixed on the gray sky opposite, for she looked far
over the sere valleys, where it bent its great concave to a low level.
Her hand hesitated as it was thrust into the brown gourd that she held.
The sullen elements had no power to dim the fair, rich tints of her face,
and grave though it was, it bore the happy trace of recent smiles. The
sheep pressed close about her, the black sheep of the flock, all unaware
of his unenviable metaphorical notoriety among men, preferring his claim
for salt with calm assurance. She was motionless for a moment, then, as
if the thought had come to her for the first time, “Why hev he never,
never kem agin?” she said.
Her mind went back slowly, to count the days. It was difficult to
differentiate them, they were all so alike. As she reviewed the trivial
incidents that might serve to individualize them, keeping a tally with
her fingers on the gourd, she began to realize what she had not noticed
before,—that lately there had been many visitors at the house, not her
own, nor her grandmother’s; men, chiefly, wanting to see Eli Strobe. The
doctor’s orders had precluded their entrance, being rigorously obeyed
since they subserved the pride of the women, who had sought to shield
Strobe’s infirmity from general observation in Broomsedge Cove.
“We-uns don’t want ’em ’round hyar a-crowin’ over Eli in the pride o’
sech brains ez they hev got, till he hev hed a fair chance ter git well,”
Mrs. Strobe had said to her granddaughter. “Folks knowed ez he war out’n
his head with fever an’ his mind wandered some whenst he war fust knocked
down, but nobody suspicions ez he hev plumb gone deranged ’bout killin’
Teck Jepson ’ceptin’ them two doctor men an’ Andy Longwood, an’ I know
they ain’t goin’ ter tell.”
Many, then, had been to the door of late, but the yellow-haired young
stranger had come no more, and Marcella wondered, with a dull presage of
gloom, would he ever come again.
When next the chords of memory vibrated with his declaration that an
angel had saved him, it had a jarring clangor of doubt, of ridicule,
that made its wonted dulcet iteration a discord. Human nature is not
generally so recognizant of celestial condescension and kindness that
much is necessarily implied in the protestation of equivalent gratitude
and indebtedness to an earthly benefactor. Marcella did not realize this.
Was it thus, she asked herself, that he would have passed her by if he
had felt in his heart the word upon his lips?
Now and again the gourd in her hand was nudged by the soft nozzle of a
sheep, and she would once more bethink herself to cast a handful of salt
down upon the rock as the flock pressed about her. There was no other
stir in all the broad spaces she overlooked save the vibrations of the
wind in the bare boughs that clashed together with a dull rattling
sound, and the rustling shiver through the tawny tufts of broomsedge.
She gave a great start when her eyes were abruptly concentrated upon an
object in the midst of its tall growth half-way down the hill, beginning
slowly to move, to rise. It seemed to her suddenly recalled attention,
still dazed by the transition from the world of thought to the more
exigent material sphere, as if it were some gigantic mushroom toiling up
the ascent, having just come in sight above a projecting knoll of earth.
Beneath the broad bent hat she presently discerned a chubby dark-eyed
face, and the rest of the person of a fat young fellow-creature of the
age of four, perhaps, arrayed in a short, stout homespun skirt and a
straight waist tightly encircling a singularly round body, was revealed
to view.
So unexpected was this apparition, despite its simplicity, that as she
gazed she was not aware that a man had ascended the hill farther to the
right, and stood leaning on a long rifle silently contemplating her. Not
until he spoke did she turn.
“Ain’t ye goin’ ter gin me nare word, Marcelly?” said Teck Jepson.
She flushed deeply. Surprised and taken thus at a disadvantage, she
forgot for a moment her anger toward him.
“I never seen ye—howdy,” she said meekly.
Her flush was instantly reflected on his face as the red glow of a sunset
irradiates the alien eastern sky. There was a new light in his eyes. She
detected in his voice something of the impetus of the false hope that
lured him, although he only said casually, as if seeking to formally
acquit her of any discourtesy,—
“I seen ye war noticin’ Bob, thar,—he air a mighty s’prisin’ sight down
in the Cove, I know.”
Even so slight a pleasantry seemed odd from him, so exacting a gravity
he bore in his daily walk and conversation. She subtly understood it as
the outgushing happiness of the mistake under which he had fallen; so
trifling a hope, so slight a relenting counted for much in the depths of
despair into which he had sunk. She would have been glad to undeceive
him, but she was still agitated and confused by the sudden severance of
her troubled and absorbed train of thought, and the abrupt surprise of
his presence here. She merely said, “Air that leetle Bob Bowles, yer
nevy?”
He nodded, his face relaxing into its infrequent smile as he looked down
at the plodding plumpness approaching through the broomsedge.
“He air visitin’ ye, then, I reckon.”
“Not edzac’ly; he hev runned away from home.”
The fat Bob sat down upon one of the outcropping ledges of the rock
near where the sheep crowded about Marcella, at whom he looked with
apprehensive eyes. Mrs. Bowles was the only woman in his very restricted
social circle with whom he was acquainted, and his experience with her
did not tend to foster confidence in the sex.
“He looks at me ez ef he ’lowed I’d hurt him,” cried Marcella, flushing
and suddenly affronted. “I never knowed I war so turr’ble ez all that.”
“Bob—Bob, ye look the other way!” Jepson admonished him.
But Bob, with scant regard, evidently, for Jepson’s mandates, continued
to gaze wincingly up at the fair face of the girl, meeting her indignant
and grieved eyes. Detecting at last a protest in her expression,
he lifted his chubby arm and crooked it over his head, a forlornly
inadequate guard against the blow he expected.
“He thinks I’d hurt him!” she cried in a wounded manner. “Why, don’t ye
know I wouldn’t fur nuthin’,—fur nuthin’?”
She sat down by him on the rock and took his little sunburned hand in her
soft clasp. His eyes were alight and alert with fear. With a wonderful
show of elasticity he edged bouncingly along the ledge to evade her
overtures; but a sheep had lain down across the rock, and although he
pressed close into the wool of the creature, it did not rise, and he
was at the mercy of his captor. She still held the gourd of salt, and
the flock crowded about with insistent, rummaging nozzles. One of the
sheep, standing on the higher ground behind her, looked pensively over
her shoulder at the broad mountain landscape, the delicate, slender head
of the animal almost touching the bright hair so heavily curling on her
yellow sun-bonnet, still hanging loosely about her neck.
The graceless Bob! Jepson could only lean his six feet of helplessness
upon his long rifle, and earnestly breathe that sinking hope against hope
known only to those who have callow relatives placed in a conspicuous and
exacting position, with every opportunity for lamentable infringement
of etiquette. Did ever so doubtful, suspicious, and terrified a look,
as Bob cast upward, meet such suave, sweet, smiling eyes? Was ever a
round, dodging, bullet head so evasively shifted from beneath so light
a caress as the touch of those falling curling tresses? How wasted, how
inopportunely wasted on Bob her soft words,—
“I love ye—an’ I want ye ter love me!”
But Bob, who evidently harbored a distrust in amazing disproportion to
his small size and his tender years, was proof against even so enchanting
a siren. He merely knitted his limited eyebrows in perplexity because
of the unexpected nature of the attack, for that unhappy and striking
developments were to ensue he did not permit himself to disbelieve for an
instant. He left his hand in hers, for his theory that least resistance
resulted in the minimum smart had been proved often enough to commend it.
A short little puff of breath—in an adult it might have been called a
sigh—escaped from his half-parted lips, and betokened suspense.
“How ye all mus’ hev treated him up on the mounting!” Marcella
exclaimed, flashing her angry eyes upward at Teck Jepson. “He’s
’feard—an’ jes’ see the leetle size of him! He’s ’feard; he wouldn’t
dodge that-a-way ef he hedn’t been hit a heap o’ times fur nuthin’. Who
treats him so mean?”
Jepson hesitated. Certainly he owed naught to Mrs. Bowles, but they had
been of the same household, and he had a reluctance to expose her to
scorn and contumely, however richly merited.
Marcella noted his hesitation and broke forth impulsively, “I don’t
wonder ye look ’shamed of it.”
He shifted his position suddenly, and as he gazed at her, still leaning
on the rifle, his eyes widely open, his lips parted, his breath coming
quick, it might have seemed that he had need of his weapon to uphold
him,—he was shaken as if by a blow.
“Marcelly!” he exclaimed,—and the voice hardly seemed his, so unlike was
the husky quaver to his wonted full, mellow tones,—“kin ye think that o’
me,—ez ’twar me ez hev persecuted that thar leetle bit of a critter?”
He paused and looked about him with an air of finality. His nerves were
still distraught; his lip quivered. She sat, a little pale and shaken by
the sight of his agitation, gazing up at him from under her eyebrows, and
hardly lifting her head, expectant, waiting, but making no sign of denial.
“Waal,” he said, drawing himself to his full height, “this finishes it. I
hev b’lieved, I hev lived in hope ez some day ye mought kem ter keer fur
me, ’spite o’ all that hev kem an’ gone. But now ez I hev fund out how
awful mean ye think I be, ez ye kin b’lieve fur one minnit ez I hed enny
hand in tormentin’ a leetle trembly soul like that, I’ll gin hope up.
I’ll trouble ye with my feelin’s no mo’. An’ I’ll never furgive ye whilst
I live!”
Marcella sat quite still and with downcast eyes during this outburst.
There was something very like a sob in his throat as he spoke the last
words, but when she glanced up again his face was so calm, his gaze so
loftily discursive as he cast his eyes over the landscape, his attitude
so impressive and striking, that she interpreted this serenity of pride
as triumph, and she suddenly felt a goad in his last avowal.
“Waal, strange ez it may seem,” she said, tossing her hair backward,
and the breeze, catching the locks, flung them gayly about, “I kin live
without it. An’ I hev hearn ye talk ’bout yer feelin’s an’ sech till
thar’s mighty leetle entertainment lef’ in ’em. An’ treatin’ this hyar
leetle chile mean, till he looks ter be beat ef a body glances thar eye
at him, ’pears ter me mightily of a piece with bein’ the captain o’ a
gang o’ lynchers an’ sech evil doin’s.”
There was a momentary silence. Her eyes, restless, unseeing, wandered
vaguely over the broad brown expanse of valley and mountain. Once more
she bethought herself of the sheep, and poured the salt out of the
gourd on the ground. The excitement of the moment pulsed heavily in her
temples; she felt a gnawing pain at her heart, and she was unhappy.
The cause of all this trouble hardly comported himself in a congruous
manner. Bob was relieved when her attention was diverted from him, and
gave a fat little sigh of content. He sat for a moment quite still,
looking very rotund in build, contemplating the resources of the scene
for juvenile enjoyment. Then leaning forward, he placed his broad white
wool hat on the unsuspecting head of a sheep near at hand, and it was
difficult to say whether the smothered “baa” that proceeded from the
eclipsed beast, or its groping as it rose to its feet, or its unique
aspect as it stood, with the hat on its head, uncertain what might
ensue, was the chief factor in eliciting a low, jovial chuckle from the
distended gleeful lips.
But neither of his elders noticed the wiles of the callow martyr, for
Jepson’s attention was fixed upon the revelation contained in Marcella’s
last words, and she, realizing now their full significance, was
nervously biting her lips in futile regret that they had thence escaped.
“I hev no call ter gin account o’ sech ez I do ter you-uns,” he said,
with that serene arrogance which she had always felt was intolerable, and
which she had in vain sought to reduce. “I’d hev been mighty pleased ef
ye hed thunk well o’ my deeds an’ could hev put enny dependence in me,
but ef ye don’t, it don’t make me think no ill o’ myself nor my aims. I
ain’t got two faces, ter turn this one, an’ ef ye don’t like its looks,
turn that one. I be led by sech light ez the Sperit hev revealed ter me,
an’ I don’t ax ye nor enny other human ter show me the way an’ guide my
feet.” He paused, looking reflectively at the broomsedge waving about
his high boots; then he recommenced suddenly. “Bein’ ez ye hev got a
interus’ in the man ez tole ye I war a captain o’ a gang o’ lynchers, ye
hed better warn him not ter let his jaw wag too slack,—not about _me_; I
ain’t keerin’ what he say ’bout _me_, but them t’ other men mought hear
o’ his talkin’ too free, an’ I ain’t round about the Settle_mint_ much,
an’ couldn’t hender ’em ef they war ter set out ter do him a damage. Tell
him that. They air powerful outdone with me ennyhow, kase I wouldn’t gin
my cornsent ter sech ez they wanted that night he kem ter the forge.”
Marcella hardly breathed, so strong upon her was the terror of
jeopardizing the safety of Rathburn.
“How do ye know who tole me?” she demanded, gazing up at him with a
feint of defiance in her contracted eyebrows and curling lip. “Ye may be
talkin’ ’bout one man, an’ me ’bout another.”
He looked straight into the clear depths of her eyes. They faltered
suddenly, and the long lashes fell as he said,—
“Naw, we be both talkin’ ’bout’n that Doctor Rathburn, ez he calls
hisse’f,—that be who we air talkin’ ’bout.”
She leaned back silently against a rugged bowlder amongst the
outcropping ledges, the gourd, empty now, the neck of it still in
her listless hand, lying beside her on the trampled broomsedge. Her
greenish-brown dress was much like the mosses in the fissures of the
gray rock, against the cold monotone of which her fair young face seemed
so delicately and finely tinted. The flock had scattered, feeding
amongst the brambles and on tufts of grass that seemed, beneath the
fallen leaves, to have escaped the frost. The sheep that had worn the
hat rid himself of it at last, and looked on stupidly when the little
mountaineer, with an agile elasticity of gait incongruous with his
infantile rotundity, ran out and triumphantly crowned another, slipping
back to his seat beside Marcella, and attracting no notice save from the
placid flock, pausing to gaze in mild-eyed wonder.
“I ain’t lookin’ ter see that man agin,” said Marcella, her eyes fixed on
the summits across the broad valley. “I can’t tell him.”
She paused, in the hope that he might ask if she had not seen him lately,
but Jepson could be betrayed into no unseemly show of curiosity, and she
was presently fain to continue.
“I ain’t seen him sence he war at our house that night. I dunno what’s
kem o’ him.”
He stood impassive, silent, leaning upon his rifle, which he held with
one hand, while the other was thrust in his leather belt. When she spoke
he looked down at her, and his eyes met hers, but when she was silent he
glanced with grave preoccupation at the leaden sky or the sombre ranges.
“I ’lowed mebbe he hed gone home,” she said, after one of these
intervals. It was so recently that she had become definitely aware how
long it had been since he was at the house, how fully the recollection of
his words had sufficed in the certain expectation of his return, that she
was for the first time canvassing the probabilities.
“Mebbe so,” he replied non-committally.
She gave a sudden quick gasp, and turned pale.
“Them men—them men, mebbe, hev tuk him at las’. They waylaid him
agin,—hev they?—hev they?”
“Not ez I hev hearn on,” he replied.
His evident lack of excitement in regard to the possibility roused her
anger anew. Her nerves were all a-quiver under the unexpected strain.
She hardly sought to control her words; they were a relief to her tense,
overwrought anxiety.
“How kin ye stand thar an’ ’low, ‘Not ez I hev hearn on,’ ez keerless
ez ef I war a-talkin’ ’bout a fox ketched in a trap? Ye _don’t_ keer,
Teck Jepson, ye _don’t_ keer! Ye’d jes’ ez soon he would be kilt by them
mis’able Brumsaidge rangers ez not. Ye air a cruel, bloodthirsty man. Ye
_don’t_ keer ef the innercent stranger war kilt.”
Despite his protestations of independence of spirit, he was roused to
defend himself against this imputation.
“Ef I hedn’t keered,” he said, his lip curling with a scornful half
laugh, and his eyes far away, “I would’t hev gone with them fellers at
the barn. I ’lowed I could hender ’em from doin’ ennything onjust, or
hasty, or misch_iee_vious, though ef the stranger hed been at enny wicked
device, I dunno ez I would hev pertected him an’ sot him free like I
done.”
Marcella’s heart was throbbing with contending emotions, the dominant
feeling a resentment that Teck Jepson should thus credit himself with the
rescue of Rathburn, the merits of which that young gentleman’s rhetoric
had greatly exalted in her estimation, for she had thought it a simple,
natural, matter-of-course action when she had first been moved to do
aught in his behalf. She had logic enough to realize, however, that her
timely warning and Rathburn’s clever boldness would have availed little
had not Jepson’s mood been judicial, and the sway which he exerted over
his comrades perfect and complete. Nevertheless her claim was not to be
easily belittled. Her ingenuity renewed its hold.
“Then,” she said, “ye let him off, I’ll be bound, not kase ye knowed
’twar right an’ jestice but jes’ kase ye fund out ez ’twar me ez hed
warned the man, an’ ye ’lowed ’twould put me in a good humor with you-uns
ef ye war ter holp me out an’ save his life. Ye done it ter please me.”
He was not quite sure he understood her at first. He seemed dumfounded;
then, as the light of comprehension dawned in his eyes, he looked down
into her face and laughed.
“Kem, Bob,” he said, turning away, “it’s time we-uns war a-travelin’.”
But Bob had met a young friend of somewhat his own tastes and
disposition. A lamb had strayed near where he was sitting, and the two
had spent some profitable moments in gazing silently at one another with
that irresistible curiosity and manifest fellow-feeling which infancy
has for infancy. What they thought each of the other no one can ever
say. That the scrutiny was not mutually derogatory in its results may be
inferred from the fact that the lamb leaped suddenly to one side on its
slender, knobby little legs, with a sort of aquiline alacrity, and kicked
up some very frolicsome heels. Whereupon Bob mitigated the intensity of
his stare, and began to run about nimbly with his short skirts flying,
his round body very straight, his agility seeming necessarily somewhat
knock-kneed in order to give free play to such redundant calves. He
showed a very merry pair of heels, that served him as well as the lamb’s
two pairs, and neither of the blithe young things took the smallest
notice of Jepson’s summons.
Marcella gave them no heed. She had never been so deeply wounded as by
Jepson’s evident surprise, his laugh, disclaiming the motive to please
her. Always he had seemed to her secretly subservient to her power,
however he might seek to assert his own independence. She was humiliated
that she should have suggested her influence and received a renunciation
rather than a protestation. It was as if he had told her that he did not
love her so much as she thought—not so blindly, so idolatrously. She had
over-flattered herself; her vanity had palpably convicted her. Strangely
enough she was not angry. Every emotion was absorbed in the idea that he
did not love her as she had thought he did—he had laughed at the supreme
power which she assumed to wield over him.
She glanced up at him aslant under her long lashes. He was not looking
at her. He had shouldered his rifle and was advancing upon the swiftly
revolving Bob and his nimble four-footed acquaintance.
“Kem on, bubby. Kem on, Bob. We-uns mus’ go home now.”
But the gleeful Bob, with distended ruddy cheeks, and two rows of
snaggled white teeth, and gleaming eyes almost eclipsed in rolls of fat,
continued his blithe circuit, finding a new joy in flapping his arms, in
which he had an advantage over the lamb, who had no arms to flap, and who
often paused with meditative lowered head to gaze at these gyrations.
“Kem on, Bob—or I’ll make ye! Ye’ll repent it, sir! Kem on!”
And once more Jepson approached the elusively whisking Bob. “Kem on! Like
a good boy.” He resorted to entreaty.
But Bob evidently disbelieved in retribution from this source, and was
hard-hearted enough to disregard softer suasion.
“He be a powerful obejient chile!” Marcella remarked, with a little
satiric laugh.
“He’s young yit,” returned Jepson, flustered and mortified. “Whenst he
gits a leetle older he’ll do better. Bob, I’ll let ye tote my shot-pouch,
like ye love ter do.”
But Bob, with a soul above bribes, circled as before. Marcella, with an
arch sidelong glance, turned from him to Jepson. “How mean ye must treat
him! How ’feard o’ you-uns he do be!” she exclaimed with laughing irony.
A flush rose suddenly to his brow, and she saw anew how deeply wounded he
had been by the ignoble and odious accusation. Little wonder, since he
felt it so, that he had declared he would never forgive her.
“I furgot he hed a stepmother,” she faltered by way of excuse.
“I never said nuthin’ agin his stepmother,” he rejoined sternly, darkly
frowning.
Bob was beginning to show signs of exhaustion. As Jepson turned toward
him again Marcella gave a sudden start. She felt she had done him a
grievous injustice and she repented it. With some vague apologetic
intention she sought to detain him on some pretext,—on any pretext,—and
she spoke upon the impulse of the moment.
“Mus’ I tell the folks at home ez ye never wunst thunk ter inquire arter
them?” Her eyes were dewy and bright; a faint flush was in her cheek;
the tender curves of her red lips wore a half-smiling sweetness; as she
lifted her head upward to look at him, the hair curling on her shoulders
fell still farther down over the dangling yellow sun-bonnet.
He turned a changed face. “I war ’feard ter ax, Marcelly,” he said, in
his low melancholy drawl. “I know ye feel so hard ter me ’bout’n Eli—an’
I never kin forgive myself, though I never went ter do no harm. I hear
’bout Eli constant—’thout hevin’ ter harry yer feelin’s by axin’ ye arter
him.”
The girl felt a certain reassurance, a satisfaction that in this at least
he had not changed. Since he had wrought so grievous an injury to Eli
Strobe, remorse was the meet sequence. But her alert intuition presently
apprehended a tone not altogether applicable to the past.
“He air thrivin’ toler’ble, now,” she observed.
He glanced at her with the keen suspense of an unexpected hope shining in
his eyes. “Then what they say at the Settlemint ain’t true!”
She felt a sudden fear clutch at her heart. Her face paled—her eyes
dilated.
“What air they sayin’ agin him at the Settlemint?” she asked, trembling,
yet roused into instant defiance.
“’Tain’t faultin’ Eli noways,” he explained anxiously. “They ’low,
though, ez his ailment hev streck his brain, an’ he hev gone deranged.”
Her short, sudden scream rang out shrilly in the dull silence of the
gray afternoon. She sprang to her feet. “Who hev tole that—who hev tole
that on him? I’ll be bound them sly foxes at the Settlemint air plottin’
su’thin agin him. They won’t gin him time ter git well, an’ they don’t
want ter let him be constable, what he hev done been ’lected ter be. Who
hev tole it? Who hev tole it?” Her eyes flashed an insistent inquiry at
him and he could only reply doubtfully,—
“I dunno, Marcelly. I jes’ hearn a whole pack of ’em at the store”—she
winced visibly at the idea of this wide dissemination of the
rumor—“a-talkin’ bout’n it. But I dunno who set it a-goin’ fust.”
“I do!” she exclaimed frantically. “That stranger—he ’peared tickled ter
death whenst he fust noticed it. Never seen a man so streck by nuthin’
in yer life. Tuk an’ felt his pulse, sir, an’ ’peared like he’d ruther
hear sech foolishness talked ’n the sober wisdom o’ Sol’mon! I war mad
then—but what though bein’ called a n’angel”—She broke off suddenly.
“’Twar him—’twar him—kase nobody else knowed it. Dad hain’t seen nobody
else ’ceptin’ him an’ Andy Longwood one day,—but Andy hain’t got larnin’
enough ter feel folkses pulses an’ sense thar shortcomin’s an’ sech.
’Twar him! ’Twar him! Oh, ye air all alike. I never see nobody ez I take
a notion air mighty good an’ fine, an’ I go round like a fool studyin’
’bout ’em all day, but what—ef I know ’em long enough—I find out they air
jes’ plain common men-folks sech ez hev been sence the worl’ began,—jes’
like Adam, rather guzzle a apple ’n bide in Paradise.” She smiled
reflectively, a scornful retrospection, as if the thought of some past
folly were both bitter and ludicrous.
“Waal,” she resumed, turning upon him, “what war they ’lowin’ at the
store they war goin’ ter do ’bout’n it?”
He shifted his weight to the other foot, then leaned heavily on his gun.
“I hate ter tell ye, Marcelly,” he said with a low-spirited cadence. “I
hoped ’twarn’t true.”
“I mus’ know,” she asserted insistently.
“Waal,” he reluctantly began, “they ’lowed ez some o’ them ‘smart Alecks’
of politicians an’ sech hed gin information ez thar war a crazy in the
county ez oughter be restrained o’ his liberty.” A short exclamation,
little less than a scream, came from her with an accent as if it were
wrung forth by physical pain. “Ef the county court app’ints the sher’ff
ter summons a jury fur a inquisition o’ lunacy, an’ they see Eli an’ ’low
he air insane, they think they kin git up perceedin’s ez will take away
his office.”
She listened silently as she stood holding the empty gourd in her hand.
He felt as if he were pronouncing a sentence of some terrible doom, in
thus destroying her pride. She esteemed the humble office so high and
noble an estate, its shattered incumbent the chief of men!
“Marcelly,” he said, “look here. No matter what ye want ter do ’bout’n
it, ef ye kin do ennything, I stand ready ter help. Promise me ye’ll let
me know. Promise me ye’ll let me help.”
She looked up at him. Her lips were compressed. Her eyes were dry and
steady. “Help!” she echoed bitterly. “It’s you-uns ez hev brung all this
torment on dad. An’ now ye talk about ‘help.’ It’s too late—too late ter
help.” Then she turned away.
He stood watching her as she went; her dull greenish-brown dress was long
visible against the tawny tints of the broomsedge; her head was bare, the
yellow sun-bonnet still hanging upon her shoulders. A leaden cloud was
coming down the opposite mountain side, rapidly advancing across the
valley; she seemed to be going to meet the storm, and suddenly it was as
if she had been caught up in it. The sombre vapors enfolded her; there
was a swift, transient, ocherous gleam, then she was seen no more, and
the dreary sound of the invisible rain, falling, falling in the beclouded
valley, filled all the air.