A NEW CREED
THE young man who had been dismissed from his father’s house walked
unmindful of the rain still falling in the evening gloom, nor looked
back to the door now closed behind him. His face, strong and deeply
lined, now had settled into a sternness which belied the half-humorous
expression it but now had borne. He was wide of chest, broad of
shoulder, straight of limb as he walked now, hands in pockets,
straightforward, not slouching down, his back flat. There was little of
apathy or weakness about him, one would have said. Well-clad, such a
man as he would attract many a backward gaze from men—or women—on any
city street.
He stepped straight down the little bank beyond the fence marking the
delimitations of the scant yard and the little cornfield of Preacher
Joslin’s cabin, and at once was in the road, or all the road that
ever had been known there. It was no better than the rocky bed of
the shallow creek which flowed directly in front of the cabin. Here,
in the logging days, iron-shod wheels had worn deep grooves into the
sand rock. The longer erosion of the years also had cut sharp the
faces of some of the clay banks. It might have been seen in a stronger
light than this of twilight, that these banks had great seams of black
running parallel through them—croppings of the heavy coal seams known
throughout the region.
From time to time the young man sprang from rock to rock as he made
his way down the bed of the little branch now running full from the
heavy rain, but he walked on carelessly, for the road was well known to
him by day or night. It had been the path of himself, his family, his
ancestors, for well nigh a hundred years.
As he advanced, David Joslin cast an eye now and again upon the
mountain sides. They were beautiful, even in the dull of evening, clad
in gorgeous autumnal glories of chlorophyll afire under the combined
alchemies of the rain, the frost, and the sun. There were reds more
brilliant than may be seen even among the maples of the far north when
the frost comes, yellows for which a new color name must be invented,
browns of unspeakable velvety softness, a thousand ocherous and saffron
hues such as no palette carries. They lay now softened and dulled, but
very beautiful.
Young Joslin knew every hill, every ravine, every mountain cove which
lay about him here,—all the country for fifty miles. Presently he
reached the end of this little side trail down from the mountains, and
emerged into a wider valley where passed the considerable volume of a
fork of the Kentucky River, itself now running yellow from the rains.
Had he cared he might have noted, now passing on the flood, scattered
logs and parts of rafts, flotsam and jetsam of the old wasteful
occupants of the land, who cut and dragged priceless timber to the
grudging stream, and lost the more the more they labored.
He turned to the right, followed down the muddy river bank, and within
a quarter of a mile turned yet again to the right at a decrepit gate
serving in part to stop the way as adjutant of a broken rail fence
which marked a scanty field.
Before him now lay a cleared space of some twenty acres or more,
occupied at one corner by spare, gnarled apple trees, no man might say
how old, appurtenances of acres which David Joslin had “heired” from
the husband of the same grandam, whom but now he had left. Behind the
apple trees rose a low roof, the broken cover of a scant gallery, a
chimney, ragged-topped, at each end of the cabin. Here and there stood
a China tree, yonder grew a vine, softening somewhat and beautifying
even in the beauty of decay those rude surroundings. Back of the house
were other small log buildings, cribs scantily filled with corn. In
the barnyard stood two tall poles, behind which, running up into the
darkness of the mountain side, stretched the long rusted wires which
in the harvesting of the autumn sometimes carried down from the side
of the mountains, too steep for the use of horse or mule, the sacks of
corn perilously gathered above and sent down in the easiest way to the
farmyard.
Apparently the harvest that fall had been but scant. The place had
an air of poverty, or meagerness—rather perhaps should one use the
latter than the former word. It was not the home of a drunkard, or
a ne’er-do-well, or a poverty-smitten man, which David Joslin now
approached—his own home, one like to many others all about him in
these hills. It was an old, old, out-worn land, a decrepit land, which
lay all about him. He was like his neighbors, his home like theirs.
David Joslin walked past the China tree and up to his own door. He
stood for a moment scraping the mud from his feet at the end of the
broken board on the little gallery before he pushed open the door. A
woman rose to meet him.
She was a woman yet young, but seemed no longer young. Perhaps she was
twenty-two, perhaps twenty-five years of age. She was tall and strong,
after the fashion of the mountain woman, angular, spare. The thin dark
hair, swept smoothly back from her bony forehead, seemed to come from
a scalp tight-grown upon the skull. She appeared to carry about her
the look of a certain raw, rugged strength, though there was little of
the soft and feminine about her figure, about her attitude, about her
voice as she now spoke to him.
“Why didn’t ye come home long ago?” she demanded with no preliminary.
Joslin made no answer, but sat down sullenly in a chair which he pushed
up to the fireplace. The flames were dying down into a mass of coals
which likewise seemed sullen. He reached out to the scant pile of
firewood at the corner of the hearth, and cast on a stick or so.
“Ye’re always away,” she went on grumbling. “Folks’ll think ye don’t
care nothin’ fer yore own fam’ly. Every whip-stitch ye’re off up into
the hills, visitin’ somewhars or other, I don’t know whar. What’s it
comin’ to?”
Still he made no answer, and she went on upbraiding.
“We been married four years, an’ ye act as free as if we’d nuvver been
married at all. Don’t yore fam’ly need nothin’ now an’ agin? Is this
all a womern’s got to live fer, I want to know? Look what kind of place
we got.”
“Hit’s all ye come from,” he said at length. “Hit’s all yore people
ever knowed, er mine. Why should ary of us expect more?”
An even, dull, accepted despair was in his tone. As for her, she cared
not so much for philosophy as for the heckling she had held in reserve
for him.
“Hit’s a lot to offer ary womern, hain’t it?” said she.
“Had ye much to offer in exchange?” said he, quietly and bitterly. “We
traded fair, the best we knowed, the same sort of trade that’s common.
We got married—thar was our children. What more is thar fer ye er em
er ary of us in these hills, I’d like to know! Such as I’ve had, ye’ve
had.”
There was something so stern, so bitter, in his sudden unkind remark
that she took another tack.
“Hain’t ye tired?” she began, wheedling. She stooped over and pulled
back the coverlet, a gaudy, patchwork quilt upon the single bed of the
apartment. “Don’t ye want to lay down an’ rest a while?”
“No. I’m a-thinkin’.”
“What was ye thinkin’ about—me?”
“No, I was thinkin’ about the new doctor, an’ what he said to me last
week.”
She was silent now. The name of the new doctor seemed to be something
she had heard before.
“Ye talk too much with that new doctor. He puts too many fool ideas
in yore haid. We’re married, an’ we got to live like that. How do ye
figger any different, I’d like to know? Ye brung me here yore own
self—ye knowed what ye wanted when ye come up thar courtin’ me at my
daddy’s at the haid of Bull Skin. I come right down here to yore house
when I was married. I stood right on this floor here, an’ yore daddy,
he married us. Ye know that.”
“Yes, I do.” The young man’s face was extremely grave and gray as he
spoke.
“—An’ yore daddy was a regular ordained preacher.”
“What’s the matter with ye, anyways?” she went on querulously. “Ye been
a-quarlin’ with yore own people well as me?”
“My own daddy jest now ordered me outen his house. I’m nuvver goin’
thar no more.”
“Huh! I reckon yore own free-thinkin’ ways druv it on ye.”
“He burned my fiddle!” said David Joslin, with sudden resentment.
“Ye mought have expected it—goin’ up thar to play a fiddle in a
preacher’s house!”
“I jest had her strung up for the fust time,” rejoined her husband. “I
was a-playin’ ‘Barbara Allen.’ My daddy accused me of bein’ sinful.
We’ve got it hard enough livin’ in these hills without being damned
when we die.”
“Hush, Dave! Be keerful of what ye say.”
“I’m a-bein’ keerful. I’m castin’ up accounts this very day. I been
castin’ up accounts fer some time. I’m thinkin’ of what that new doctor
said to me. _That_ was preachin’ sich as I nuvver heern tell of afore
in these hills. I wish’t he’d come here an’ stay right along.”
She made no answer now, but pulled out the rude board table at the side
of the fire, and placed upon it a yellowed plate or so, holding a piece
of cold cornpone, a handful of parched corn.
“Eat,” said she. “Hit’s all we got. I borrowed some meal from the
Taggarts. They’ve got no more to lend.”
“Don’t ask nothin’ of no one, womern. I’ll not be beholden to ary man.
I tell ye, I’m castin’ up accounts.”
“What do ye mean—what ye talkin’ about, Dave?” She was half-frightened
now.
“I hardly know. I kain’t see very much light jest yit.”
“Hain’t ye goin’ to eat?” she said. “Hain’t ye goin’ to sleep? Hain’t
ye goin’ to lay down on the bed?”
“No!” said he. “No! Our children laid thar onct—them two. They died.
It was best they died. They’re our last ones.”
“What do ye mean, Dave?” she again demanded, wide-eyed. “What do ye
mean—ye hain’t a-goin’ to sleep here with me agin—nuvver?”
“No, I told ye. I said I was a-castin’ up accounts. Meliss’, I’ve got
to go away.”
“Ye hain’t a-goin’ to quit me?”
“I don’t like that word. I nuvver quit nobody nor nothin’ that I owed
a duty to. But I’ve got to go away. Hit hain’t right fer ye an’ me to
live together no more. Children—why, my God!”
“Dave! Air ye crazy? Hain’t I been a good and faithful womern to ye?
Tell me!”
He did not answer her.
“Tell me, Dave—have ye——”
“No! I’ve been as faithful as ye. We made our mistake when we was
married—we mustn’t make it no more an’ no wuss.”
“The new doctor!” She blazed out now with scorn, contempt, indignation,
all in her voice.
“Yes!” he replied suddenly. “The new doctor—ary doctor—ary man with
sense could have told us what he told me. I know now a heap of things I
nuvver knowed—what my pap an’ mammy nuvver knowed.”
“Ye’re a-goin’ to quit me like a coward!”
“I quit nobody like a coward. I hain’t a coward, Meliss’, an’ you know
it. I’m a-goin’ to quit ye because I’m a brave man. I’ve got to be as
brave as ary man ever was in the Cumberlands to do what I’ve got to do.
Do ye think it’s easy fer me? Don’t ye think I hear my own children
cryin’ still—mine as much as yours? An’ this was all I have to give
them. Thank God they died! They’d nuvver orter of been borned.”
His wife sank into a chair, her hands dropped limp in her lap. His own
hands were trembling as, after a long time, he turned toward her; his
voice trembled also.
“Look around us in these hills,” said he, his lips quivering.
“Think of what’s in them coves back fer fifty mile yan way, and
yan, and yan, up the Bull Skin, up the Redbird, up Hell-fer-Sartin
an’ Newfound an’ the Rattlesnake an’ the Buffalo—houses like
ours—whisky—killin’—cousins.”
“Cousins?” Her voice was hoarse. “Why not?”
“Whisky—killin’—cousins!” he repeated. “I don’t know which is the
wust, but I reckon the cousin part is. _We was cousins!_ Thar’s
_cousins_ back in our family, both sides, as far as we know. Those
children—thank God! Thar’ll be no more.”
Now indeed a long, long silence fell between them. The woman was pale
as death as she turned to him at last, to hear his self-accusing
monotone.
“God knows what I’m a-goin’ to do. But one thing shore, if I’ve sinned
I’ve got to pay. I reckon it’s a-goin’ to be a right big price I’ve
got to pay. Thar’s a wall around us—hit’s around these mountings—hit
shets us all out from all the world. Do ye reckon, Meliss’, if I was
able to make a way through—do ye reckon they’d say I’d paid?”
“Ye talk like a fool, man!” said she with sudden anger, “like a
fool! Ye let a limpy, glass-eyed doctor stir ye all up and fill yer
haid with fool idees. Ye say ye’re a-goin’ to quit me, that had our
babies—because of what? Yore duty’s to me—to me—me! Ye married me.
I want live children—hit’s a disgrace when a womern don’t have none.
Hit’s yore business to take care of me, an’ now ye say ye’re a-goin’ to
quit me. Ye’re a coward, that’s what ye air, the wustest coward ever
was in these mountings. I don’t want furrin ways myself—I don’t want
to go Outside—I don’t want ary of them new doctors comin’ in here,
fetched on from Outside. This is our country, an’ it’s good enough.
Ye talk about leavin’ me. Thar’s some other womern somewhars—that’s
what’s the matter with ye, Dave Joslin, an’ I know it!”
He rose now, gray, pallid, half-tottering as he stood under her tirade.
“That’s not true,” said he at last “I don’t reckon ye understand me,
er what I mean, er what I think. The only question is, what’s right.
We hain’t livin’ the way folks orter do to-day. The new doctor tolt
me what’s Outside. Why, womern, that’s the world—that’s life! More’n
that—a heap more’n that—that’s duty! If I stay here an’ make a little
corn an’ raise a couple of hogs a year, livin’ with ye an’ raisin’
a couple more of childern, I hain’t livin’ the way I’d orter. If we
wasn’t cousins—if I didn’t know now it’s a sin to live on this way—I
wouldn’t quit ye—I’d die first. I hain’t _a-goin’_ to quit ye now. As
long as I got a dollar in the world it’s yores. I’ll hep ye more by
goin’ out. An’ I’m a-goin’ out—I’m a-goin’ Outside.
“I’m sorry fer ye, Meliss’,” said he presently, as she sat stone-cold.
“I’m sorry fer all of the wimern like ye in these mountings, sorry fer
us all. God knows I don’t want to make it harder fer ye—only easier.
Hit’s just a question o’ what’s the right thing to do.”
There was a vast softness, a great pity in his voice as he spoke now.
He stood irresolute, and his eyes, in spite of himself, turned sideways
to where once had lain two small bundles at the foot of the unkempt bed.
“Ye coward!” she cast at him, bitter and intense. “Ye low-borned
coward! Ye’re a-goin’ to quit me, mother of yore dead childern. Well,
go on along. I won’t ax ye to stay. Git along.”
“My granny she’s a-goin’ to take keer o’ ye,” said David Joslin.
“She’ll be kind to ye, an’ ye’ll have no babies to bother over nuvver.
Don’t—don’t talk to me no more. I reckon I kain’t stand no more.”
He stepped to the mantel, took from it the old faded book that lay
there—no more and nothing else of all in the house that had been his.
Then he turned toward his own door.
She heard his slow footsteps stumbling through the sodden grass. There
closed behind him for the second time that evening a door opening upon
what he had once called home.