While hardly a tuft of the broomsedge stirred on the red clay slopes of
the hill, the fitful gusts were rioting in the valley, and Teck Jepson,
standing in the midst of the tawny growth, absently watched the cloud
approaching in the air, and the dead leaves all set a-whirling in devious
routes along the brown ground. He heard in the voice of the wind the
first bated threatenings of the storm, though but a murmur, full of
latent strength, and with a steadily increasing volume that bespoke the
prescient elation of the liberated element, free to come and to go as it
listed. There were occasionally black boughs—dead, doubtless, brittle,
and easily wrenched from the tree, for the wind had not yet stretched its
muscle—to be seen thrashing along clumsily for a little way, then falling
to the earth, harried up again presently by the boisterous blast, and set
a-going anew in their simulated flight.
Suddenly the broomsedge bowed down to the ground; he heard the forest
quake; the clouds were closing in, and, with an abrupt realization that
the storm was upon him, he caught the small Bob up on his shoulder and
ran for home. It was a swift, short dash over the broken ground against
the buffeting wind, so uncertain of mood, now rollicking, now fierce.
The little mountaineer’s gay laughter and shrieks of exhilaration from
his lofty perch mingled with its sound, as he clutched Jepson’s collar
and looked back at the wild rout behind them; the clouds seeming to roll
on the ground, and tossed by the turbulent wind; the erratic flight of
leaves and sticks; the disheveled woods, all their boughs turning from
the blast as if holding out deprecating, quivering arms in plea for
mercy. Even after they had reached the haven of the porch, they heard
once and again a wild aerial hilarity echoing along the deep chasm, in
which the river was locked as in the isolation of a lake, and anon a low,
menacing roar. But the storm was definitely angry when it fairly burst,
and they were housed none to soon. The thunder’s peal was augmented to
even alien ferocity by the reverberations in the rocky abysses, above
the deeply sunken channel of the river; the lightning flashed, tracing
sinister characters across the black clouds, fading out before one might
read this terrible script; the slopes below and the crags above had
disappeared in the multiplicity of the interposing lines of rain; the
garden, sere and faded, save for a forlorn prince’s feather here and
there clinging to the stalk, was gradually effaced from the world, and
presently the mists were in the porch, and beginning to sift in at the
open door. Jepson rose from before the fire which he had kindled, and
shut them out, to stand shivering there, or to press pallid and white
against the door, like some forlorn spectral outcasts, forbidden to haunt
the place which that human love, which even death cannot kill, makes them
fain to tread once more.
The white flames of the pine knots leaped with glad elastic bounds up
the chimney; the shadows in the dark corners shifted continuously with
the glancing shafts of light. The little house had many tokens of its
previous occupants: a spinning-wheel, where now only the spiders drew
out long, shining threads, stood in the corner; sundry gowns, all of
rich, gay colors, despite their homely material, garnet, or orange, or
dark blue, hung on the wall, as if Jepson’s mother had just placed them
there. Her yarn, in dusty hanks, swung from the rafters, and the quilts
she had “pieced,” folded somewhat eccentrically, were piled high on the
“corner-shelf” which they had burdened of yore. Against the jamb of the
chimney, on a slight out-jutting of the clay and sticks, serving as
shelf, was a great brown gourd, half filled with bright-tinted scraps,
and buttons, and the bulbs of plants that would never bloom now, but
should lie idle and fall to dust, with all the further possibilities of
life unfulfilled. In a splint basket at one side of the fire lay a rough
coat, worn and torn: her needle had rusted in the patch; the coarse waxed
thread would never be drawn through and her last stitch completed.
It was for these vagaries, the preservation of the tokens of the old
home-life, that Mrs. Bowles esteemed Teck Jepson somewhat “teched in the
head.” Could she have beheld the dust which plentifully covered them
all, the sentiment which she contemned would have impressed her as but
a distraught trifle in comparison with the rank madness which she would
have deemed his system of housekeeping. Bob, however, gazed about with
undisturbed serenity, as he stood sturdily on his fat legs in the middle
of the floor. Only when he turned about in search of a seat did his
countenance fall.
“This air the bes’ ez I kin do fur ye, bubby,” Jepson remarked, tendering
him a full-grown chair. “I hev got no leetle cheers hyar.”
But when Bob’s plump bulk had scaled the heights of the chair, the
soles of his feet reaching but little beyond its verge, and his aspect
presenting a singular study of foreshortening as he sat and gazed at the
fire, content descended upon him as before, and occasionally he glanced
at Jepson with a lively little grin, all his snaggled teeth on parade,
confident of sympathy in his satisfaction and unaffrighted freedom. But
Jepson could not unreservedly share this placidity. As he sat opposite,
smoking his pipe, his reflective face lighted by the fire, he observed:
“Ye’re cornsider’ble of a puzzle, Bob. I dunno what I oughter do with ye.
I reckon, ef the truth war knowed, I oughter take ye up the mounting ter
yer mam. Likely ez not they air sarchin’ fur ye now.”
“No-o,” returned Bob, with a resolute rising inflection. “I be a-goin’
ter live in de Cove! Right hyar!” And he looked about him with a
pleased, adoptive gaze. He had heard Mrs. Bowles bemoan her sad fate in
being wrested away from the Cove, but the naturally high opinion of the
locality which this fostered was hardly adequate to the reality, in his
estimation, as for the first time in his memory he was within its charmed
limits, resting in the security of Jepson’s coveted companionship.
The big man would not argue so unpleasing a subject with the little
man; he still meditatively smoked, heedless of the discursive, juvenile
babble, and answering only at random when a direct appeal was made to
him. Presently these queries grew fewer; intervals of absolute silence
ensued; a drowsy mutter, and Bob succumbed finally to the influences of
warmth and quiet, and the fatigue of his long jaunt down the mountain
before he had met Jepson in the road. He sat, or rather lay, in the
armchair, his flushed round face with its happiness still upon it, as if
the sweetness of security, of kindness, of the sense of being held of
value, had pervaded his dreams. It would have been long, long, before
the faces of Sim and A’minty could have learned those serene curves. But
Bob’s adaptability had stood him in good stead hitherto, and one need
hardly have wished him more retentively sensitive that his little life
might have been still more dismal than it was.
The rain fell with dull monotony; only at long intervals a sudden
acceleration betokened a down-pour in sheets, and the increased volume
of the torrents washed with a heavy splashing from the eaves. The sound
was melancholy, full of intimations of the waning year, of the killing
frosts to come. Even the thunder, ceasing to roll, left an unwelcome
void, having been as an incident to vary the dreary sameness of sounds
and suggestions. The lightnings were quenched. The world was given over
to the sobbing wind and the sad-voiced rain. Jepson had no cheerful
thoughts to beguile the idle hour. His heart was heavy, and the further
perspectives of the days gloomed full of shadows. He did not upbraid
himself; he was spared that keenest edge of regret, so complete was his
proud sense of rectitude, his unswerving faith in himself and his own
motives. Nor did he resent Marcella’s anger. He admitted with a deep
sigh its justification. He accepted it as a retribution, in some sort,
not for his own sins, but for his unintentional contributive share, as
he construed it, in the untoward circumstances that had resulted in Eli
Strobe’s injuries. He rebelled, however, against his fate, this shipwreck
of his love, more, indeed, than he was definitely conscious of doing, for
he often boasted to himself, in the illusions of his piety that he meekly
submitted to the Lord’s will, according to the example of the saints;
then he would walk the floor all night in mental anguish, or wander forth
in the dark, autumnal woods till dawn, in all the throes of despair. Of
late, there had often come into his mind a bitterness with the thought
of her which it had seldom before known. The image of the young stranger
at the forge was continually associated with hers. His jealous eyes
had been quick to note the changing expressions on her face, full of
fear for Rathburn’s sake, when his strange absence had been mentioned.
Oddly enough, Jepson was sensible of the glow of anger that the man
she loved, if indeed she loved him, should fail in aught of homage; he
took no satisfaction in the thought that it was a possibility—nay, a
probability—that Rathburn did not love her. He deprecated the pangs she
might feel, and still he sighed for his own.
So absorbed was he in these sombre meditations, as he sat, his elbow on
the arm of the chair, his chin in his hand, his contemplative eyes upon
the fire, that he took no heed of a step on the porch without, although
he might have heard it, even through the long-drawn sighing of the wind
and the fresh outburst of the tumultuous rain, for no caution restrained
its demonstrations. The heavy stamping was obviously designed to free
first one boot and then the other from the persistent clinging of the
red clay mire. Only when the door was unceremoniously flung open from
without did Jepson rouse himself with a start, and lift his head, seeing
at first merely the white mist with the lines of rain all aslant across
it, and imposed upon it the figure of a man at the threshold, the wind
tossing the loose ends of his garments, and the water streaming from his
bent old hat. For a moment his face was invisible, for the dull gray
light of the beclouded landscape was behind him; but the draught from the
opening door rekindled the coals of the dying fire, and sent the ashes
scattering about the hearth, and as the flames flared up they revealed
the familiar features of Jake Baintree. Jepson, rising slowly from his
chair, experienced the odd doubting sensation that sometimes besets
one in a dream, when its vagaries so transcend the probabilities as to
rouse a skeptical application of verisimilitude to these airy fantasies.
The next moment a definite appreciation of the reality of his visitor
asserted itself. Jake Baintree had evidently been drinking heavily. But
for that, what he said in response to Jepson’s query might have seemed
stranger than it did.
“What did ye kem hyar fur?” sternly demanded the master of the house.
His manner evidently affected Baintree, who did not bear himself with the
swaggering freedom with which he had flung open the door. He had looked
threatening. He was cowed in an instant,—cowed, but very crafty.
“A-beggin’,” he said, with a sudden light in his eyes. “I want a hunk o’
bread.”
Jepson stood uncertain, reluctant, a frown knitting his brow, fairly
coerced for once in his life. It was the only plea that could have
restrained him from taking the intruder by the shoulders and turning him
out of the door,—the only plea, and Baintree knew it. He could not accord
his hospitality as ungraciously, perhaps, as he might have desired, and
thus he was forced into more of a suave insincerity than had ever before
been able to adjust itself to his face and manner. He turned toward a
pine table, pushed aside in one corner, and indicated certain dishes
beneath an inverted wooden bowl.
“Thar’s all in the house. He’p yerse’f, he’p yerse’f.” For his life
he could not have hindered the heartiness of the intonation, or the
unreserve of the invitation. The habits of a lifetime, the traditions
of kith and kin and all the country-side, constrained him. He did not
credit for an instant the sincerity of Baintree’s demand, but none could
ask bread or shelter of him in vain. It was the first time that the
unruly and absolute temper had been thus helplessly in the control of
circumstances, and he was irked by a sense of feigning, as he turned
about and threw a pile of pine knots on the fire,—for had he care for his
guest’s cheer or warmth?
Baintree had possessed himself of a corn-dodger, and as he sat down
before the fire, the rain still trickling from his garments, Jepson read
in his thin, clear-cut face, the elation because of the success of his
clever ruse. He had not come with the intention to ask for bread,—his
manner at first had betokened a far more formidable errand; and as he sat
there munching, with a mimetic show of hunger, Jepson was moved to marvel
anew what had brought him into the house of a man whom he held his enemy,
and who certainly was no friend.
“The fodder gins out wunst in a while up on the mounting,” Baintree
observed presently, the whiskey that he had drunk imparting to him,
despite his reticent habit, its characteristic loquacious glow. He cast
a glance of thinly veiled antagonism upon his entertainer. Then he said,
with a low chuckle of derision, in which he would hardly have ventured to
indulge at a calmer moment, “I s’pose things never git ter sech a pass ez
that in this house. Ye mus’ hev a bar’l o’ meal constant ez never gits
empty, no matter how high ye feed, an’ a can o’ coal-ile ez hain’t got
no bottom ez ye kin reach. Surely the Lord faviors a man ez views sech
visions o’ yourn ez much ez he done ’Lijah.” He hesitated for a moment,
staring with bloodshot eyes into the fire, then snapped his fingers.
“’Twarn’t ’Lijah!” he exclaimed, with an air of discovery,—“’twarn’t
’Lijah! ’Twar the widder woman ez hed that mighty desirable brand o’ meal
an’ ile. Now, Teck,” with mock persuasiveness, “ye ain’t goin’ ter tell
me that, survigrous ez ye be, plumb captain o’ all Brumsaidge Cove, ye
hev let that thar widder woman git ahead o’ ye? Whar’s yer everlastin’
meal an yer eternal coal-ile?”
He turned about, and affected to anxiously survey the culinary stores,
scanty enough, arrayed on a hanging shelf suspended from the rafters,
and, thus isolated, protected from the rats and the mice.
He enjoyed the immunity from retort or retaliation which men accord
to the drunken, and which is incomprehensible to the more intolerant
temperament of women. Jepson steadfastly regarded him in silence, and as
Baintree turned again to the fire he seemed, in shifting his position, to
have forgotten his jeer and the prospective joy with which he had thought
to pursue it. A realization of the situation came upon him anew, and he
made haste to gnaw at his corn-dodger with an affectation of great hunger.
“I’m mighty glad ter git it,” he mumbled.
Jepson had resumed his seat, and, with the white glow of the blazing pine
knots irradiating his serious face, he demanded, “Whar’s the man ez war
bidin’ with ye? That corn-dodger ez ye air eatin’ ain’t goin’ ter holp
him.”
“He’ll make out. He ain’t one o’ the lackin’ kind,” Baintree responded
cavalierly.
The heat of the fire perhaps aided the heady effect of his potations,
for he was presently more definitely intoxicated than before. Few people
had ever seen him thus affected; for though he drank deeply at times,
the quantity that would set another man reeling hardly disturbed his
equilibrium. The fiery courage distilled from the corn was in his veins
now, and showed with a sturdy bravado.
“I’m leavin’ the kentry, Teck,” he exclaimed suddenly. “I’m leavin’ this
hyar twisted an’ turmoiled e-end o’ the world ye call the mountings. I
hope never ter see a mound o’ groun’ agin higher ’n this hat. I fund out
what pore shakes the mountings air jes’ through goin ter—ter”—his voice
faltered; his eyes were fixed intently on the empty space before them, as
if he beheld something there invisible to others; he made a détour around
the word “jail,” and went on with an air of triumphant inspiration in
this obvious device—“through _visitin’_ a sure-enough town. An’ I never
want ter see a mound o’ groun’ more ’n two inches high agin—’thout it air
yer grave.”
He paused abruptly, turning his bloodshot eyes instantly upon Jepson to
observe the effect of his words.
The acrid tone, the bitter hatred in his face, made a strong impression
upon the man who had inspired them, now that he was constrained to
be still and observe the demonstrations, which, for sheer humanity’s
sake, he could not resent. He looked down meditatively into the fire.
It was odd to him to think of his grave,—some scant measure of earth
surely waiting for him somewhere, on which the weeds had grown apace
this summer, and even now the autumn rains beat unrelenting, as the
herbage would thrive and the torrents fall when he should lie unheeding
below,—strange to think of these things, with the robust pulses a-throb
in his blood.
“When ye see it,” he said, with the steady courage and calm strength
which seemed to him, half consciously measuring their power, an
expression of piety and spiritual grace and Christian resignation, “ef
ever ye do, remember the man it kivers war mighty willin’ ter lie down
thar whenst summoned.”
Baintree winced. Even when intoxicated he had not the faith in himself
to vie with this hardihood. He resorted to recrimination, for still the
whiskey made him bold.
“Ye ain’t goin’ ter be so powerful comfortable thar. Ye ain’t goin’ ter
rest so easy in yer grave. The devil ain’t goin’ ter let ye alone. Ye’ll
hev ter answer in the nex’ worl’ fur all ye hev done ter me in this.
Ye’ll answer,—ye mark my words.”
Tears of maudlin grief stood in his eyes. Despite their source, Jepson
melted to them in some sort.
“I’m willin’. I hain’t shirked none in this worl’. I reckon I ain’t goin’
ter ketch the complaint of shirkin’ in the nex’. I’ll answer. What ye
want me ter answer fur?”
“Fur my soul,” said Baintree solemnly. “I’d hev saved my soul alive
ef—ef ye hedn’t kem a-interferin’ ’twixt me an’ pa’son, and kep’ me from
washin’ my sins away.”
Jepson seemed to take meditative account of the charge.
“I done accordin’ ter my conscience, ez the voice o’ the Lord ’peared ter
lead. Ye hed no right in the fold, an’ arter I fund Sam’l Keale’s hat an’
coat I could not hold my peace. Jestice hed overlooked ye, but I spoke
the word; not in malice, ef I know myse’f,—not in malice. But ef I hev
done wrong,” he went on, knitting his brows and gazing into the fire, his
arms folded across his breast, “I pray the Lord will visit it on me. I
pray he’ll do sech unto me, an’ mo’.”
Baintree was stricken mute for a moment, vaguely impressed by his
companion’s look and manner. Then his attention was concentrated anew
upon his own grievance.
“That ain’t goin’ ter do _me_ no good”—he began.
“An’ no harm,” said Jepson. “Nuthin’ kin hurt ye ’ceptin’ what ye do
yerse’f.”
Baintree looked with dark suspicion over his shoulder.
“What ails ye ter say that?” he demanded surlily.
Jepson did not reply directly.
“Ef a man air persecuted, an’ air innercent o’ crime, his persecutors air
jes’ harryin’ tharselves ter hell. An’ that’s the long an’ the short o’
it. Ef ye hev done no crime, sech steps ez I tuk agin ye hev hurt me, not
you-uns, an’ I’ll hev ter take ’em back’ards in hell.”
There was no arguing with a faith so very complete, so strongly grounded,
as this.
Baintree said nothing for a time. Then he suddenly broke out as if the
words were wrenched from him by some physical anguish which he could not
resist:—
“I never hed no han’ in Keale’s takin’-off, but I mought ez well,—oh, my
Lord, I mought ez well!”
He clasped his hands and wrung them hard, the poor subterfuge of the
corn-dodger falling unheeded on the floor.
The shrill tones did not rouse the plump Bob, still asleep in the chair
at one side of the fire, but he was vaguely conscious of them, and
stirred uneasily, and again relapsed into motionless slumber.
“Look hyar!” exclaimed Jepson, agitated and excited. “Don’t kem hyar an’
tell me yer crimes over my own h’a’th-stone an’ a-eatin’ of my bread, fur
I’ll use ’em agin ye. I’ll turn the sword on ye. I ain’t yer frien’, man.
I never war.”
“Ye war the t’other night at the forge.” Baintree had hastily recovered
himself. He spoke in his natural voice, a trifle more unctuous, perhaps,
with its coaxing intonation. He even stooped down and picked up the bit
of bread, carefully dusting the ashes from it as he turned it from side
to side. “Ye war the t’other night, whenst—whenst my partner seen ye at
the forge. Ye kep’ them men off’n us.”
“An’ ye ’low I done sech ez that fur you-uns, or him either, ye fool?”
Jepson had risen. He had thrust his hand into his leather belt and
was looking down upon Baintree with scornful irritation. “I done it
fur right an’ jestice! I see no harm in yer sarchin’ fur silver; an’
though ’twarn’t right ter work on the sly in the forge, it air a leetle
matter, not wuth harmin’ a man for. ’Twar kase I fund no harm—no harm,
’cordin’ ter my light—in them actions. These Brumsaidge critters”—he
broke off abruptly, addressing himself instead of Baintree, and speaking
of Broomsedge as if he had a wide experience of men and life elsewhere,
when he knew scarcely any creature beyond its limits—“these Brumsaidge
critters can’t sense right an’ jestice, nor nuthin’ done fur jestice’s
sake. That’s jes’ what them men at the barn ’lowed,—_frien’s ter the
two, the stranger an’ Baintree_! But I tell ye,”—he turned suddenly upon
the man sitting by the hearth,—“I ain’t yer frien’, nor,” he added, with
stronger emphasis, “_his_ frien’, nuther.”
Baintree’s face had lightened; his eyes glittered. It was a forlorn thing
that a man should have cause to rejoice at his enemy’s misfortune in
being suspected of becoming his friend.
Jepson had not resumed his chair. He still stood on the hearth, one hand
in his leather belt, which supported his hunting-knife, of which he had
not yet divested himself, the other on the high mantel-piece. He looked
down with scowling impatience at Baintree, evidently eager to be rid of
him, and presently he addressed himself to accomplish this end without
too flagrant a breach of the hospitality which he held dear.
He had offered him something else to eat, and when this had been declined
he demanded suddenly, “What ailed ye, ter kem hyar this evenin’? Ye know
ye warn’t in no wise hongry.”
“I war drunk. That air the only reason I know,” said Baintree gloomily.
He was becoming in some sort sober now, and was strangely quiet, with a
deep despondency of manner.
“Air ye leavin’ the kentry fur true?” queried Jepson.
Baintree looked up craftily.
“Naw!” he exclaimed contemptuously, as if the suggestion had been
broached by another than himself. “Whar would I go—an’ who would I go
to—an’ what would I do thar? Naw! I’m goin’ ter stay hyar ter be treated
like a dog, ez I always war. I hed a man ter kem nigh chokin’ me, not
long ago”—he bared his throat to show his bruises—“look-a-hyar,—an’ he’d
hev ’lowed ez I war crazy ef _I_ hed lifted a hand agin _him_.”
Jepson was silent, still meditating the feasibility of ridding himself of
his unwelcome guest without violence to the canons of hospitality.
He had hardly noticed when the rain ceased its tumultuous beat on the
roof; a fresh relay of winds was speeding down and down the valley; he
heard, but absently, the snorting and champing of these aerial chargers
as they swept by at a tremendous pace; the clouds were fain to race
with them, for presently he saw upon the wet floor of the room, where
the rain had splashed in under the door, the reflection of the yellow
glare of the unveiled sky throwing its light upon the brown walls, and,
albeit faintly, even to the dusky rafters. Jepson strode to the door and
flung it open. As he stood with his back toward Baintree, he had one of
those sudden premonitions, so conclusive, yet so illogical, that fall
upon us sometimes with the cogent force of truth and an unaccountable
extension of merely human mental vision. He turned abruptly and saw
its confirmation in the lowering look of hatred that Baintree had bent
upon him. As if in some sort conscious of self-betrayal, Baintree rose
with a casual air and an incidental, empty glance, and followed to
the door, where he lounged upon the porch, his hands in his pockets,
aimlessly surveying the landscape. Yet Jepson knew now, as well as if
Baintree had confessed it, that he had come there, with the courage of
the “corn-juice” inflaming his blood, with some wild drunken scheme
of violence and vengeance, which the presence or the words of his
intended victim had somehow cowed and crushed. They were silent as they
contemplated the great flaring west, all a splendid burnished golden
glow, above the darkly purple mountain opposite, its summit imposed with
a definite detail, in which every tufted, plumy pine top was distinct,
upon the vivid yellow emblazonment. About the slopes white mists were
slowly creeping, and down in the chasm the waters of the river, with all
the graces of reflection, ran in molten golden currents. Clouds were
yet in the sky, but now and again the colors of the iris flashed out,
with a swift elasticity as of a bow that is bent, and hovered above the
valleys. The drops still fell slowly from the eaves of the house, and
the flooring of the porch was sodden and sleek with the rain; in the
hollow of a warped plank the water stood still as in a bowl, reflecting
the clapboards above, and an empty nest in a niche between the roof and
the post of the porch. All the colors of wood and hill were clarified and
heightened; the sere grasses, beaten down though they were, wore their
brown and straw and amber tints more jauntily; the boles of the trees
were black, and somehow the distances seemed clear and brought near.
Jepson had not thought he could have seen so definitely, so far away, the
figure of a man slowly strolling along the red clay road,—of a richer and
deeper color it was, sodden with the rain. The presence of the figure
intimated that the storm had subsided less recently than he had thought;
the weight of the down-pour had beaten the ground hard, and had added but
little to the mud here and there in deep, tough masses in the centre of
the road.
He made no move to turn back into the house, yet Baintree lingered, as
if his mission were but half accomplished. It is difficult to conceive
of a more indelible expression of gloom than had fixed upon his face.
It indicated a misery and hopelessness past all human help, past all
human endurance. Jepson spoke suddenly upon an impulse which he hardly
understood.
“Enny time ye feel ez ef the devil war arter ye, Jake, ef ye’ll kem hyar
ter me, I’ll holp stave him off,” he said. He hesitated for a moment, for
Baintree’s bright, rat-like, furtive eye was glancing up at him, informed
by a spirit so alien to that which animated his words that it almost
silenced them. “I hev been agin ye,” he went on presently; “ye know I
hev. I always b’lieved mos’ faithful ez ye killed Sam’l Keale. But the
jury say ye didn’t, an’ the kentry hev abided by the verdic’. An’ ef ye
order yer walk aright an’ do no mo’ harm, I’ll stan’ by ye an’ won’t see
ye persecuted,—though I ain’t yer frien’, an’ I never will be.”
Baintree’s expression had shifted more than once during this speech: it
had softened, had become wistful, pathetic, but it hardened suddenly, as
the last words fell on the air.
“An’ who air ter be the jedge o’ what’s harm, an’ what ain’t?” he asked
with a sneer.
“I am,” said Jepson, with his unswerving faith in his own methods. “I
dunno no way ter jedge o’ right an’ wrong ’cept by the light ez kems from
within.”
“An’ ye air the only one it’s shed on, eh?” demanded Baintree, still
bitterly sneering.
“Ye hev got good reason ter think so. The light lately shed on other
folks, ’bout’n you-uns an’ yer pardner, would be a mighty scorchin’
light, sartain,” Jepson retorted significantly.
Baintree understood him to allude to the wrangling differences with the
vigilantes in the barn. A prudential after-thought roused his suavity.
“Waal,” he observed, after a pause, “I never ’lowed ye war my frien’.
I’ll say one thing fur ye,—thar ain’t no room fur mistakes ez ter whar ye
stand. But I be toler’ble glad ez ye hev a mind ter keep them painters
an’ wild wolves off’n my track. Will ye gimme yer han’ on it?”
He held out his own, bent on confirming the promise, as far as he might.
Once more a pang of pity stirred Jepson’s heart, albeit he looked down
with a certain repulsion upon the long, trembling fingers awaiting his
own. “’Cordin’ ter the conditions,—ef ye do no mo’ harm in my jedgmint.”
And his strong, warm clasp closed upon Baintree’s cold, nerveless hand
for an instant, in sanction of the promise.
The touch of that cold, nerveless hand remained strangely within Jepson’s
palm after the two had separated, for Baintree’s perverse reluctance to
be off had evaporated, somehow, in the open air, and he slouched out of
the inclosure, taking his way, strangely enough, Jepson thought, down to
the banks of the river, instead of up the mountain to his lair there,
which he could hardly hope to reach, as it was, before the night should
enfold him. Jepson stood aimlessly watching him, feeling the touch of
his hand still cold and clammy within his own. Even after the rock and
the laurel of the steep slope had interposed, and he saw him no more, he
still motionlessly gazed at the spot where he had disappeared, a sense
of discontent with himself to which he was a stranger, an irritated,
angry regret for he hardly knew what in the interview, pervading all his
consciousness.
“I lack the sperit,” he said suddenly. “I need ter be made strong. I gits
sorry fur that wuthless trash, ez be held tergether ter look like a man,
a-purpose, I reckon, for the devil ter beguile me. I gits ter feelin’
sorry an’ pitiful ter him. An’ I knowed that man would hev stabbed me ef
he could ’thout harmin’ hisse’f,—I knowed it whenst I turned my back,—an’
stidder speakin’ out what war revealed ter me, an’ taxin him with the
crime he would hev done, I gin him bread, an’ promised ter purtec’ him,
an’ shuk han’s on it, ef he would walk right afore the law hyar-after.
What ails _me_ ter keer? I need strengthening,—strengthenin’ from above.”
Despite his absorption he was moved to note, presently, with a pervasive
sense of pleasure, how fresh, how soft, the air was. As he looked about,
he noticed again the man whom he had observed some time ago walking
along the red clay road. A slow pedestrian, certainly; it was almost
inconceivable that he had been walking at all, since his progress had
carried him so short a distance. Jepson gazed at him with curiosity.
He might have recognized him, the light was so clear, had not the man
at that moment drawn his broad hat far down over his brow, and then he
turned about and began to retrace his way.
Before he was out of sight the incident had passed from Jepson’s mind.
The freshness of the air was alluring, revivifying. He hesitated as he
glanced over his shoulder at the recumbent Bob, asleep in the chair
before the smouldering fire; then, without his hat, he strolled down the
path, leaving the door open behind him.
He paused in the weed-tangled garden, with its bent and beaten growths
forlorn for the desertion of the summer, the sport of the ruder season,
and, standing with his elbow on the topmost rail of the fence, looked
meditatively at the golden glamours of the rock-bound river. He had not
intended to go farther, and presently he turned; he came to a sudden
halt, and gazed with keen, narrowing eyes up the slope of the hill.
The man whom he had seen walking along the red clay road was long ago
gone,—a tall man and slight, as he remembered the figure, all unlike the
one whom he now saw threading his way slowly among the bowlders on the
steep incline above the cabin. As the pedestrian emerged presently upon
a comparatively open space, Jepson noted a certain burly dignity in his
carriage, which even at the distance served to identify him.
Jepson started forward; then paused. He had not spoken to Eli Strobe
since the day of the election, when they had conferred together in the
interests of the constable’s candidacy, and his heart had beat with an
intense partisan anxiety for Marcella’s sake. He began to appreciate
definitely how much he had felt since then of love, and hope, and
despair; how hard they had all gone with him. He was ill-suited to
relinquishment. His domineering, intolerant spirit had been scantily
acquainted with denial. “I’m goin’ ter die powerful hard,” he said in
gloomy forecast. It seemed to him that he had felt already prescient
pangs. As his eyes followed Strobe’s progress, he protested inwardly
against a sort of humiliation to realize that he scarcely cared to accost
him, and hear from him the reproaches so cruel on his daughter’s lips.
Jepson had not a keen self-discernment, but he knew his imperious entity
too well to believe himself capable of receiving these bitter words from
others with a like patience and acquiescence. That the injury to Eli
Strobe was an accident, through no fault of his, was instantly formulated
in his consciousness with the vividness of a retort, as he forecast
the constable’s upbraidings. Still he hesitated. Suddenly, with a new
thought, he started up the slope. He had hardly credited hitherto the
report of Eli Strobe’s insanity, and he knew nothing of the character of
his delusion. Could it be that some fantastic vagary was luring him on
amidst the bowlders, and the crags, and the mists of the dusk? Jepson had
it in his mind to do a service. He suspected that Strobe had escaped from
the careful guards of the fireside circle. As he approached, climbing
among the crags, he wondered that he had not yet been observed, yet he
forbore to hail his old friend. With the knowledge of the failure of his
mental faculties was the vague, unreasoning impression of the impairment
of the senses. He felt as if Eli Strobe might not hear his ringing halloo.
Thus it was that, as the earth grew darker and yet more shadowy, though
still the sky flared above, albeit dulling from its burning golden hue
to a deep copper tint with horizontal bars of red, while the river ran
blood, Eli Strobe, turning a curve in the road about the base of a
cliff, came abruptly upon Jepson standing in an open space, motionless,
expectant, silent, bareheaded. The lurid flare of the skies flung its
unnatural light upon Jepson’s face. He winced as he had never thought to
do, for the doughty constable turned suddenly half round, and held up a
quivering arm before his eyes, as if to shut out the sight or to ward off
a blow.