that set-line myself when I came through yesterday. We fish there for
catfish all the time—they run in that deep water out there. He must
have got fouled in the line somewhere when he got in. My God!—I feel
as though I had killed him myself.”
CHAPTER XX
THE COMING OF JAMES HADDON
THE sun was gone, and the shadows were black in the defile. The ancient
river went on with its mocking of them, now low and hoarse, now
cynically shrieking, as the voice of flowing water will come, altered
by the currents of the air.
The two thus alone in the wilderness spoke not at all for some time,
and then Joslin could only go on in his own self-reproach.
“It was where we built the fires, Ma’am,” he said vaguely, still
endeavoring to explain what could not be explained save in the books of
the gods. “I’ve sat there myself more than one night—I studied there,
Ma’am, read my lessons, getting ready to teach. I read while I waited
for the fish to bite. I set that line my own self. I never knew—oh! it
seems as though I had done this with my own hand.”
“Don’t,” she said, gentle and just even now. “I was afraid you both
were gone. Please don’t talk. I’m afraid—oh, I’m afraid!—and I’m so
cold—I’m so very cold.”
She was shivering now, Joslin as well. He hurried to his flung coat
and found matches this time, came with bits of drift wood, pieces of
dry brandies. He built a little fire. “You must get warm,” said he.
“What shall we do? Oh, what shall we do? This awful place—oh, this
awful place!”
“Wait just a little,” said David Joslin. “You must get warm.”
They cowered at the fire, two small human objects here in the grip of
the wilderness, in the hands of fate indeed. It was some time before
Joslin raised his head.
“There’s someone coming—I hear a wagon on the rocks, Ma’am,” said he,
starting up. “You stay here—I’ll go see—it must be someone on the
trail above.”
He hurried to the edge of the undergrowth and disappeared. The sound
of wheels became apparent to her ears. Soon after they stopped she
saw Joslin come again, accompanied by a tall gaunt man his equal in
stature, a man who came and stood near by her, looking down in pity.
“Ma’am,” said he, “this is mighty bad—mighty bad.”
“Help me, Absalom,” said David Joslin. “Mrs. Haddon, you go over there.
We’re going to take him to the wagon.”
Marcia Haddon turned away, her face buried in her hands. She did not
see David Joslin and Absalom Gannt as they bent and lifted between them
the dead body of the man who but now might have boasted that he held
these and the land of these in the hollow of his hand. They held him
now, neck and heels, in the hollows of their hands, such being the will
of fate. They carried him up the hillside, and they laid him on the top
of the rough load of lumber which was to make his resting place for a
time. Then they came back after the woman.
“I was down to the mill fer a load,” said Absalom to Joslin as they
walked. “Hit’s a lucky thing. That’s his wife? Oh, my Lordy, hain’t
that hard! Ye say he’s the Company man? He was rich——”
“Very rich,” said Joslin. “She’s a good woman, his wife. We’ll have to
help her, Absalom. She’ll have to stay with us for a while. We’ll have
to bury him in here, I reckon—he couldn’t ever be got out.”
“Tell me, how come him to get in thar, anyways?”
“Fell into the boat—and on over—he was trying to get something out of
the boat,” replied Joslin. “The current carried him down under. You saw
his hand—that was where I cut the fish hook out. He was swinging on
the set-line when I saw him. I was on the other side then.”
“Ye’ve had a hard time savin’ of him, Davy, that’s shore enough,”
rejoined Absalom soberly. “I know what that water is. Well, the Narrers
has got one more man. Damn ‘em, anyways!”
They spoke no more when they had come to Marcia Haddon. She felt the
hand of each of these tall men, one at each elbow, aiding her to rise,
aiding her up the steep slope of the mountain, aiding her to climb up
on the load of lumber where lay the long shrouded figure, covered with
coats now—all that was left of what had been, or ought to have been,
all in the world to her.
Absalom Gannt took up the reins and sat at the front of the load of
lumber, his back toward them. Joslin sat at one side of the load,
reaching out a hand now and then to steady Marcia Haddon, who sat
opposite, swaying weakly against the rude jolting of the vehicle on the
rough mountain roads. His hand was light, gentle, quickly withdrawn.
The wagon wheels, creaking and groaning, sent their protest now up
against the mountain side as they jolted onward. The wagon, tilting
and rocking, carried on. Now and again the long shrouded object rolled
horribly from one side to the other. On one side it met a hand firm and
strong—this sodden body of James Haddon, now gone to his accounting.
Upon the other side it met a hand which steadied it gently—the hand of
a woman who, all her unhappy life, had never been otherwise than gentle
with him.
BOOK IV
CHAPTER XXI
THE FURRIN WOMAN
THE new doctor from the new town on the new railroad came not only
once, but many times to call upon Marcia Haddon, seriously ill at
Granny Williams’ home. A high fever held her by the time she had
arrived in the night after that terrible day upon the river. By the
next day delirium had its will of her. The kindly inhabitants called it
“chills and fever.” It was a chilled heart, a fevered mind.
Granny Williams was wholly contemptuous of the new doctor, or of any
doctor. It was Joslin who insisted that the old-woman remedies should
not be trusted, who sent for the only modern physician thus far known
in that portion of the world. The presence of the latter was accepted
only grudgingly by Granny Williams, who insisted that camomile and
boneset was all the “furrin woman” needed. But the new doctor, himself
a voice in the wilderness, was a young man who understood many things.
When after many days his patient had worn out the fever and showed
certain signs of convalescence, she lay a long time with mind
apparently a blank, inquiring nothing as to her surroundings, and
equally incurious in regard to herself.
“Where is he?” she asked at length, upon one day when Joslin had come
to find how she was progressing. She had come, weakly, to look forward
to these daily visits, although often she did not speak to him at all.
“We cared for him,” answered he. “When you are well enough we’ll show
you. We sent out a man with a telegram. We have word for you.”
She shook her head slowly from side to side. “Poor boy,” she said,
“poor boy! Well, it’s over for him. I wish it were for me.” For the
time she did not speak further.
But slowly, under inexorable nature’s rule, the duty of living came
forward to her consciousness, insistent, imperative. Marcia Haddon,
little by little, undertook once more to knit the raveled sleeve. The
strangeness of her new surroundings proved of itself a benefit. The
faces that she saw about her, kindly as they were, were faces as of
another world. Those who attended her spoke a language which at first
she scarcely understood. For days she lay and looked at them with not
even a smile upon her face to thank them, passive, incurious, but after
a time observing and questioning.
“She’s powerful weak,” said old Granny Williams to a neighbor, shaking
her head now and then. “Them furrin women kain’t stand nothin’. To look
at her ye’d think she was the one that got drownded in the Narrers, not
him.
“They say he was moughty rich,” she continued. “They say he owned all
the land acrosst the river from here, an’ him an’ his Company owns
half of Hell-fer-Sartin, an’ most on Newfound. Well, I reckon it won’t
do him no sight of good right now—nor her neither, onlessen she gets
pearter right soon. If she hain’t better in a week or so, we’d e’en
about as well measure her.”
But they did not measure Marcia Haddon for her grave clothes. She
began again to take up the affairs of life. She found the sympathy
of all these people of a very gentle sort. The secretiveness and the
apathy of the Cumberlands, taking life as it came, were extended to the
stranger as well. But all her life it had been Marcia Haddon’s trait to
observe rather than to talk; and for a long time she only observed—and
pondered what she saw.
These strange people—how poor they were, How very poor! Their
furniture was mostly made by hand—these chairs, their legs stubbed
by an age of wear on the puncheon floors, went back a generation or
more. She rested in a corded bed, made of walnut in rude mountain
workmanship. The table upon which she saw daily meals served was hewn
out by a local carpenter. The spinning wheel whose whirring she heard
in another room was, as Granny Williams assured her, made by her own
father in an earlier time. “An’ she’s a good wheel,” added the old
woman. “I kin run her all day an’ she’ll never onct throw her band.”
The little flax wheel with its more strident hum also was an heirloom
carefully preserved.
And all these people were so busy, so under the constant necessity of
individual, personal labor. The skeining and the hanking of yarns, the
winding of bobbins for the looms, the repair of the loom sleighs by the
ancient who made a specialty in such matters—all these things spoke
of a day entirely foreign to all the experience of Marcia Haddon, who,
born into easy circumstances, in another country, never had known real
labor.
There was no cook-stove in Granny Williams’ house—the old pot-hooks
at the fireside, the crane and its pendent hooks, the heavy cast-iron
oven, the brass kettles, an infrequent copper vessel of this sort or
that—all these went back to another day. The “furrin woman” for the
first time in her life saw what was the responsibility of a home, saw
first the beauty of personal industry.
Time was coming on now for the hoeing of the corn planted on these
steep hillsides. From her window Marcia Haddon could see women working
along with the men, children as well. And then Granny Williams would
tell her of her own young wifehood, when with her husband she had
started in to clear their farm, and had helped in digging out the
stumps and in logging up the felled trees for the burning. She spoke
with pride of granddaughters of her own able to do as good a day at the
hoe as “ary man.”
“I’ve got a hundred and twenty-two children an’ grandchildren,”
said Granny Williams with much pride, “or else it’s two hundred and
twenty-six—I don’t remember which. I could have tolt it all right a
while back, but someone made off with my fam’ly stick—I had it all
notched on a stick. Ever’ time a grandbaby was borned I cut a notch on
that stick, an’ I lef’ it out at the woodshed. I reckon somebody taken
it fer a poker. How many children have ye got, Ma’am?”
“None,” said Marcia Haddon.
Granny Williams looked at her with pity, but made no comment, for this
thing, to her so deplorable and indeed so disgraceful, was not to be
mentioned in reproach.
Humoring the sick woman, she contented herself with showing the many
articles about the house which she herself had made with her own
hands—counterpanes and quilts, cloth woven on her own hand-loom.
There were a few things which she declared must have come “acrosst
the mountings”; that is to say, they must have been brought in by
her ancestors in the first migration over the Appalachians. A book
or two—strangely enough, an old Latin grammar—remained of these
belongings.
“I kain’t read in none of ‘em,” admitted Granny Williams. “Some of my
folks mought have been able to onct, but none of us kin read or write.
“Do ye reckon, Ma’am,” she added, “that when the railroad comes we’ll
be able to buy calico an’ jeans in the stores? Hit’s powerful slow
weavin’ cloth, though I will say it wears longer’n anything what ye kin
buy.... How old was ye when ye first begun to spin, Ma’am?”
“I never did,” said Marcia Haddon. “I can’t even knit.”
“Well, ‘pears like ye must be powerful triflin’,” said Granny Williams
candidly, plying her own needles with renewed zeal at the moment.
Marcia Haddon looked at her suddenly. “I believe you’re right, Granny!”
said she.
“That new railroad,” resumed the old lady, presently, “hit’s a-goin’
to change a power of things in these valleys. I always said that if it
actual come in here, I was a-goin’ to take one ride on it if it kilt
me. Plenty of our folks is a-skeered to go on the railroad keers. Now,
thar was Preacher Bonnell—he went Outside, an’ he taken a ride on them
railroad keers, an’ it liken to been the eend on him. He tolt us all
about it when he come back.
“Preacher Bonnell was a-ridin’ along in the keers with his haid outen
the winder, an’ he seen a place bigger’n a house, a regular black hole
in the side of the hill, an’ the engyne an’ all them keers a-headin’
right straight fer it. He knowed in a minute the Devil had a holt of
the engyne, an’ that this here was the Bottomless Pit whar he was
a-goin’ to take all them people. Preacher Bonnell, he up an’ give one
whoop, an’ off he jumped. He rolled down on the bank more’n fifty feet,
an’ when he come to be looked up, an’ thar wasn’t nary sign of the
engyne or them keers! They had went right inter the Pit, like he had
knowed they would. Preacher Bonnell, he said it war a leadin’ to him
nuvver to go on no more railroad keers. He says something about that
every sermon he preaches nowadays. He warns us all agin them keers. I
don’t see how ye ever had the heart, Ma’am, to ride on them things,
weak an’ triflin’ as ye seem mostly. Fact is, what made ye come in here
anyways, Ma’am?”
“It was my husband—you know he was one of the officers of the Company
that owns so much land around here. I had met Mr. Joslin before. He
went to New York with us two years ago.”
“Well, ye’ll see a moughty big building up on yon hill, Ma’am,” said
Granny Williams with pride. “Davy, he’s a-buildin’ it. Hit sartin is
bigger’n arything ye ever seen in New York. Hit’s bigger’n ary church
house ever was knowed in these mountings. I reckon it was part of the
boarding they had in that load of lumber they brung yore man in on.
“But Davy,” she went on, “he’s changed a heap, these last two years.
Used to be as natteral fer him to swear as to take a drink—an’ in
buildin’ a house swearin’ comes natteral to ary man. But thar hain’t
nary man heerd Davy Joslin say one cuss word sence he come back from
the North. All the trouble he’s had with his wife, too—— Ye know
about his wife?”
“I knew he was married.”
“He was, an’ he hain’t,” said Granny Williams. “Well, Meliss’, she tuk
an’ up an’ went over to the railroad an’ seen the new lawyer that’s
come in thar, an’ last term of co’te she got her a divorce—that’s what
she done. That was a few weeks ago, while ye was sick.”
“Divorce? He didn’t tell me——”
“That must of been a right inter_est_in’ term of co’te, Ma’am. Thar
was only two men kilt, an’ this here one _di_vorce—but it’s the fust
_di_vorce ever knowed in this country. They say he didn’t make no
furse at all about her leavin’ of him. Somebody was a-tellin’ me that
that leaves her free to marry agin if she wants to, or him either.
Nuvver was such a thing knowed in these mountings afore, fur as I can
tell—there shorely wasn’t nuvver such a thing knowed among my people,
nor my dad’s people, nor my mammy’s neither.
“Of course, they didn’t have no children—er only leastways two puny
ones, that died. An’ ye said ye never had no children at all, Ma’am?”
“No,” said Marcia Haddon, her face flushed.
“Well, ye look to me right triflin’,” said Granny Williams with calm
candor. “Ye kain’t knit, ye kain’t spin, an’ I reckon ye couldn’t hoe
corn noways. Maybe the Lord knows His business—what could a womern
like ye do with children if she had ‘em?
“I was merried when I was sixteen year an’ eight month old,” she ran
on. “I had eighteen children that lived, an’ three that died. Like
I said, I could of tolt ye how many grandchildren I had in all, ef
someone hadn’t been so keerless with that air countin’ stick of mine.
“Air ye goin’ to merry agin arter a while maybe?” she added. “Some
does.” She spoke in a wholly matter-of-fact way.
“You mustn’t talk to me about such things, Granny,” said Marcia Haddon,
a faint flush still on her cheek.
“How comes I mustn’t?” rejoined Granny. “Hain’t yore man dead?”
“I know you mean it well”—Marcia Haddon reached out a hand to the
gnarled hand of the old woman who sat close by. “All my life—it’s been
so different, that’s all.”
“Davy tolt us something about them things,” said the old woman
gravely. “I’m content to live right here the way we always
done—leastways, I will be if I ever git to take jest one ride on them
railroad keers.”
“Yes, they’ll come through here before long,” said Marcia Haddon. “I’m
not sure I’m glad—usually when a railroad comes into a new country it
changes it so much.”
“Hit’s had changes a-plenty already, seems to me,” said Granny. “Thar
hain’t been a killin’ in here fer two year; sence the big meetin’ down
at the mill house nobody’s been ridin’ fer nobody else, an’ nobody
layin’ out—the old fam’ly diffikilties seemed to jest come to stop
right suddent. An’ as fer liquor—why, of course ye know here, Ma’am,
everybody makes his own liquor, as much as he wants. An’ now ye kain’t
hardly git a bottle of liquor in lessen four er five hours, an’ I
declar’, ye have to look around a heap to find that! How come that?
Well, it was Davy Joslin done that—him an’ his school. Like ye, I
dunno if I’m glad er not.”
“He’s a good man,” said her listener vaguely.
“Yes, an’ odd as Adam’s off ox. Kain’t nobody explain Davy noways.
While ago, couple of year back, he was called to be a preacher. Then
he goes Outside fer a couple of year, an’ comes back, an’—ye never
seen sech a change in no human man in all yer borned life, Ma’am—his
clothes is different, he walks different, an’ he talks different.
Kain’t hardly nobody understand him no more. But he hain’t done
preached onct! But everybody knows that if Davy says he’s a-goin’ to
run that school, it’ll _run_, some time.
“Ye see,” she went on, “accordin’ to Davy’s count, it’s the Lord that
does things.”
“Maybe he’s right,” said Marcia Haddon slowly. “Which one of us shall
say?”
“Well,” said Granny Williams after a while, thrusting her needles
through her ball of yarn, “Ef I was ye, I wouldn’t bother much about
nothin’ fer a time yit. Ye got plenty of money anyways—yore man was
plumb rich, accordin’ to all I hear. Like enough he done lef ye a
thousand dollar, Ma’am? Davy’s tolt me about how ye an’ him lived.
But ontel ye git ready to go home, Ma’am, ye’re welcome here, jest as
welcome as the flowers, an’ as long as ye like.
“When ye kin begin to walk around a bit,” she concluded, “we’ll take ye
an’ show ye whar we buried yore man. Hit’s up in the old buryin’ ground
on the hill—my folks is buried thar, an’ my daddy’s folks, years an’
years back, an’ plenty of others—fifty or maybe a hundred year, fer’s
I kin tell. Hit’s right qu’ite an’ purty up thar.”
CHAPTER XXII
WHEN GHOSTS ARISE
MARCIA HADDON’S lawyers wrote with greater and greater insistence from
New York, asking her return to care for the matters of the estate of
James Haddon, but she still shrank from the thought of going back
to the old associations. A strange apathy encompassed her, a leaden
indifference to life, as though all were ended for her as well as for
the unfortunate lying yonder on the hill. She found nothing in life to
interest her, to offer her any hope, to excite in her any ambition.
“I’m useless, useless!” said she to herself more than once. She held
her own life in review now, day after day, feeling herself unworthy and
forsaken, herself too merciless a critic of herself.
Joslin she saw frequently. His visits were quiet, unobtrusive, almost
apologetic. He was very sad, and always taciturn, but she often looked
forward to his coming with something to ask him, something to discuss.
“I feel so worthless here!” she broke out, suddenly, to him one
evening, as she sat in her chair, looking out across the blue hills
of the valley below them. “It’s time for me to be going home, I
suppose—— But I don’t think there ever was a woman so worthless in
all the world, nor one so much alone. I don’t want to go back. Granny
Williams——”
He sat silent, looking across the forests as they lay in the twilight.
“Some day,” he said slowly, after a time, “will you ride out with me,
Mrs. Haddon, into these hills, with one of our women here? I’ll show
you things, Ma’am, you never thought could exist in all the world.
“Do you know what I’ve been doing, Ma’am?” he went on. “I mean since I
came back here? At night, when I have time, I’m teaching school—I’ve
begun already.”
He smiled at her with his wide, pleasant smile. “My first scholar,
Ma’am, is old Absalom Gannt. He’s the man that killed my father—or
made him kill himself. He’s the leader of the Gannt faction. There’s
been war between the Gannts and Joslins long as anybody can remember in
these mountains. Well, Absalom was my first scholar!”
She only looked at him quietly. “What made him come?” said she at
length.
“You measure your own ignorance of these people by that question,” said
he. “I’ve got a night class of twenty people, every one of them over
forty-five—men and women both—some women with babies in their arms.
They don’t know how to read or write. They’re learning their letters,
Ma’am—like little children! What’s the difference whether we’re happy
or not? It’s no consequence if we’ve got something to do. Don’t you
think there’s much to be done, here?”
“Children?” said Marcia Haddon vaguely—“Old Granny Williams said——”
“I had two children. I was glad they died. But I’m trying to make ways
for other children to grow up fit to live.”
She sat for a long time, her hands idly in her lap, her pale face
turned steadily out toward the enigma of these hills.
“Spartan!” she exclaimed. “All Spartans! And I had so much! They tell
me my husband’s estate will be about two million dollars.”
David Joslin smiled. “It must be fine,” said he, “to know where your
next meal’s going to come from. I’ve hardly ever known that.”
“Granny Williams said—— You see, I have no children of my own. And
here—why, here are hundreds waiting.”
He was looking far over the hills.
“Do you suppose,” she went on after a time; as he remained silent, “do
you suppose if I built another building up on the hill, with a part of
this money he made out of this very country—if I built one building
for girls, dormitories, you know, or class rooms—big enough for two
or three hundred children—would there be that many?”
He smiled. “Many thousands,” he replied. “They’d come from fifty miles
around, a hundred miles—everyone begging, like these old people in my
night classes, to learn how to read and write. They want _knowledge_,
Ma’am! They want up—they want _out_! If you could help in that—I
don’t think you’d feel ‘worthless,’ ever again! Whether you ever did
that or not, you mustn’t ever say that word again. At least, you’ve
given one man, once hopeless, his hope and his chance—and his dreams,
we’ll say. I’ve had quite some dreams, you see.”
“Fifteen or twenty thousand dollars would go quite a way toward making
a building of that sort?”
He smiled.
“There’s not been fifty dollars put into our building, I suppose,
Ma’am,” said he. “Twenty thousand dollars—that’s more money than there
is in all this county. But there’s twenty thousand millions in sight of
where we sit.”
She turned to him contritely—“It’s plain enough what my husband and
his Company wanted to do with these people—they wanted to steal away
their very birthright, before they were wise enough to know its value.
It wouldn’t be charity for me—it wouldn’t be even a gift. It wouldn’t
be a fraction of what you have owing to you from me and mine.
“And it might be done too,” she went on shrewdly. “With the Johnston
and Bulkley and Oddingham holdings, my husband’s estate would pretty
nearly control the Land Company’s affairs—they would vote with me,
I’m sure. So maybe, you see”—smiling for almost the first time in all
these weeks—“it was in my destiny to come here?”
“It may have been,” said David Joslin simply.
She ran on eagerly now. “We’ll have a church up there too, some time.
Couldn’t you be the preacher some time, Mr. Joslin? And of course
you’ll be president of the college. Listen at me talking! I’m just like
a child.
“But you don’t answer,” she said, looking at him keenly. He was staring
out steadily. Gaunt, with sunken eyes and prominent cheekbones,
worn and drawn by the long hours of labor bodily and mental, David
Joslin was not a handsome man, nor did even physical well-being seem
vouchsafed to him now. He was sad, very sad. It seemed to her she had
never seen a face so sad as his.
“Of course,” she reiterated, “you’ll be the president. You’ll have to
preach—no one else could.”
He turned to her and half raised a hand. “You mustn’t,” said he.
“That’s my school—yes. But I can’t be its president.”
“Why? What do you mean, Mr. Joslin?”
“You don’t understand. No, I reckon not.”
“No.” She shook her head. “You start a thing and don’t finish it—is
that the plan? And this the very thing in all your life which
outweighed everything else? And you’ve got me to thinking it was a
wonderful thing that you had planned. You’d drop it now?”
She was resting her chin on her hands, now white and thin, supported on
Granny Williams’ cane. Now she lifted her head and half turned away. He
caught the significance of the act, and it made his gaunt face paler.
“Well,” replied he quietly, “now perhaps you can see why I’m not happy.”
She looked at him so deeply regretful that he pulled together with a
resolve obviously painful.
“You don’t know much about me. That’s of no importance. But if you are
interested in my school and my people, then I do become important in
one way. Shall I have to tell you about myself?”
“Go on,” said she, nodding. “Yes.”
So then, simply, baldly, unsparing of himself, he did go on and tell
her about himself and his life—the hopelessness of it, the narrowness,
the meagerness, the despair of it all, the tenfold shackles of misery
and ignorance which had held him and all his so long. Then he told her
of his own marriage; and of the end of it.
“I don’t wonder you are unhappy,” said she slowly at last. “But still
I don’t know why you should not go on with your school as you planned.”
“I reckon I’ll have to tell you all the rest,” said David Joslin
desperately after a time. “I didn’t think I ever could.”
“Why not?” she asked simply.
“You want to know what is my stumbling block? I’ll tell you—it was a
woman.”
“You mean your wife? But I don’t think I ought to discuss that.” She
half rose.
But she could not stop him now as he went on stumblingly, unalterably.
“Oh, no! Not that woman—my wife,” said he. “Another.”
“You needn’t tell me anything more, I think,” said she. “Are you going
to tell me just some common story about yourself and some woman?”
“That’s just precisely what I’m going to do!” said he. “I’m going to
kill all the respect for me you’ve ever had. Then you’ll know why I
can’t be president of my own college. I’ll have to go through fire
before I can. I’m not good enough. Now then you can see.”
“Who was she? When——?”
“You ought to know, certainly. It was your husband——”
She sat up suddenly, her eyes flashing. “_That_ woman——!”
“So then you knew her?”
“Why should I not?” rejoined Marcia Haddon, now all aflame. “Did she
not ruin my married life, as much of it as there was to ruin? Didn’t
all the town know about her, and him—and me? Of all the women in the
world I ought to hate, that’s the one!”
“And of all the men in the world you will hate, I’m the one,” said
David Joslin. “But I can’t lie to you now. My conscience made me a
coward for a while, but it’s my way to go on through.”
“How could you have known that woman? When did you meet?”
“Twice,” said David Joslin. “Once was at the dinner of the Company; the
next in the morning at her own rooms. That was twice, in New York.”
She looked at him, utter scorn upon her face. Her cheeks at last had
color.
“Don’t be too harsh if you can help it,” he began once more, half
raising his hand. “Don’t suspect too much in some ways. In others you
can’t suspect enough. You don’t understand—— Well, I was a fool. I
was tempted. The Evil One followed me right along all the time from
the day I left these mountains. He was right at my side every minute,
though I didn’t know it. I reckon it was _you_ that kept him away from
me, Ma’am. For me, you have been the power of light. If I had stayed
right close to you I’d never had such temptation. The Evil One had his
own devices with me—it was—it was the temptation of St. Anthony,
Ma’am. I can’t well talk. Can you understand?”
“It’s not necessary for me to understand!” said Marcia Haddon in white
scorn. “I understand enough already. That woman was my husband’s
mistress—everyone knew it except you—or did you know it?”
He turned upon her a face now suddenly so horrified in its suffering
that even she relented.
“I’ve—I’ve been very ignorant, Ma’am,” said he. “I’ve known very
little. I—didn’t know that. I thought she was very beautiful and good.
Oh, not so beautiful as you, not so good—but what could I know about
such things? I’ve never met but three women in my life, you might say.
Well, you know the three, and you’re one of the three. You see, I
didn’t know much about women, that’s all. Well, what she told me was
true.”
“But surely you must have known——”
“How could I know? How much experience had I? How far had my education
gone? I’ve met three women in all my life, I said. I’ve had two years
of school. Well, that’s all. That’s my life. It isn’t much. I never
knew much of—what you say.”
“Often?” asked Marcia Haddon—“How could it have been often that you
met her?”
“Twice, Ma’am,” said David Joslin. “The last time to say good-by.
That was up at Strattonville, not so very long ago. If it hadn’t been
for that, I reckon I’d have gone on and finished my college course.
I reckon maybe if I hadn’t met her then I could have been a preacher
some time—I could have been president of this school—I could have had
my life’s ambition and my hope. You say she ruined your life. Didn’t
it come to the same thing with me? But I can’t call her bad—surely
it wasn’t her fault in the least. I reckon it was the fault of life.
But that was why I came back so soon. And that was why I met you when
you came in. And you—you are a woman too.... But of another sort, I
suppose. Better——”
“Did you know,” she said to him after a time, “that the Polly Pendleton
Company was backed by my husband’s money all along? He was out on the
road for weeks at a time—he practically abandoned me. Well, that was
my husband!”
“And I’ve lost every honest dream of all my life because of that same
woman,” he spoke after a time. “She herself tried to tell me, and I
wouldn’t believe her. Well, you’ve made it easier.
“Not that it wasn’t over anyhow,” he added, with not the slightest
trace of self-pride in his words. “Ma’am, let me tell you something—do
you see that college house of ours up on the hill? Well, under the
cornerstone of that building there are two things, and I put them both
there myself. One is my copy of old John Calvin’s Institutes, and the
other is a picture of Polly Pendleton. That’s a right odd combination,
isn’t it, to go under the cornerstone of a college? Well, they’re both
there.
“So now you know. As for me, I’ve got to finish my education before I’m
big enough and good enough to teach or preach up there. It was you—not
that woman—made me feel that. It was _you_ that taught me how big and
grand and sweet the world is, how much there is to learn, how much
there is to do. It was _you_ who have shown me how far I have to go.
I reckon it’ll be over hot plowshares, Ma’am. I’ve got my ordeal yet
ahead. May justice and not mercy be mine in my ordeal.
“You’ve made it easier,” he added after a time, “a heap easier. It’s
only what the girl herself was trying to tell me—but I couldn’t
believe it. Another man’s? No—I don’t share a woman with any other
man on earth. What’s mine is mine. What’s his may be his. Let him rest
up there on the hill. She’s dead, too, I reckon, now. But you see, I
didn’t know. I’m glad you told me, Ma’am.”
“_Don’t_ call me ‘_Ma’am_’!” exclaimed Marcia Haddon suddenly. “I hate
that word!” Without any explanation, she rose and left him. She had
seen the unveiling of a stark human life, and had begun to measure back
her own life, her husband’s, with this whose story she now had heard.
Hot plowshares? Why, yes, if need be. But that was his ordeal, and one
that he had earned. Were men indeed all alike?
CHAPTER XXIII
GRANNY WILLIAM’S NARRATIONS
DAVID JOSLIN did not come to renew his invitation to Marcia Haddon to
ride into the mountains. She saw him no more. Nor did she herself even
yet keep her oft-renewed promise to depart at once for the North. Moody
and silent, aloof and unhappy, this passed from one resolve to another
until one day Granny Williams, by chance, offered a means for carrying
out her own self-formed plan of a visit deeper into the hills.
“I sartinly would enj’y it, child, fer to go back in thar a ways with
ye,” said Granny. “Three or four of my boys lives up in Redbird, an’ I
hain’t been in thar fer a long time. We could ride up in one day an’
stay a month, fer as that, if we wanted.”
“Aren’t you afraid to go?” asked Marcia Haddon, hesitating, knowing
that the old lady would never see her eightieth birthday again.
“Afeerd? Why should I be afeerd, womern? I reckon I’ll never see the
day when I’ll be afeerd to ride a mewel that fer an’ back, if I want
ter.” And, indeed, when on the following day they embarked for their
journey, the old dame herself sat carelessly, with one skinny knee
across the horn of her man’s saddle, thrust almost up into her face as
she perched, a bag on one arm and a basket on the other, and smoked her
pipe in perfect contentment as she rode.
“Ye like enough don’t know much about mewels,” said she, “bein’ a
furrin womern. Mewels is best fer the mountings. They’ll just walk
along if ye leave ‘em be. All ye got to do is to foller right behind
me, an’ keep yore beast a-walkin’ right peart.”
The full foliage of the vernal season now covered all the mountains.
The stream, idling and loitering, broke into rapids over rock ledges,
or swum out into wide, still pools under the far-flung fringes of the
elms and beaches. As they rode, Granny Williams told the story of this
place or that.
“Over in yander house,” she said, nodding her sunbonnet in the
direction indicated, “is a woman lives that’s got six sons, ary one
of ‘em over six foot two inch tall. An’ not one of ‘em nuvver had a
father. Old times, folks that lived fer back in couldn’t always git a
preacher noways. Shouldn’t wonder if they got merried some day even
yit, now the railroad’s come. But sakes! me a-talkin’ that way! I
reckon I’d better wet my finger an’ touch the top of my left air. Ye
see, Ma’am, if ye wet yore finger an’ rub the top of yore left air,
that makes folks bite their tongue when they talk about ye. Didn’t ye
know that? Ye furrin wimmern certainly is plumb ignorant, hain’t ye?”
“Go on,” said Marcia Haddon, chuckling to herself. “Tell me some more,
Granny.”
“Not much to tell about these mountings, Ma’am—nothin’ ever did happen
here much. Hit’s a settled sort of country. Now, over thar ye see that
pile of logs, like? That’s whar Old Man Stallings used to hev a barn.
He never did git no roof on the barn, nohow, though fer thirty year he
was a-plannin’ about it. He used to set right thar on that log jest
below the ridge, an’ look at that barn, an’ wish thar was a roof on it.
He done that fer thirty year, an’ then he died. So that’s how come the
barn to rot down that way.
“Now, over yander on the creek is whar Preacher Bonnell’s pa used
to live. He was about the fightin’est preacher we ever did have in
here—always used to ride with a Bible an’ a pistol an’ a bottle of
liquor in his saddlebags when he was out a-preachin’. One day he rid
twenty mile over the mountings to Newfound jest to shoot a man. The
co’te finded him fifty dollars. That’s too much to fine a preacher. We
all allowed twenty dollars’d been plenty.
“Preacher Bonnell, he used to have a nigger man a-workin’ fer
him—onliest nigger ever was in these hills, I reckon. We used to have
‘em here along atter the war, but one time, come ‘lection, when they
was a-sellin’ their votes fer two dollars each, the folks paid ‘em off
in counterfeit money. That riled the niggers, an’ they done left.
“Speakin’ of old Preacher Bonnell, Ma’am,” she went on reminiscently,
“he was a odd sort of man. Onct in a while he’d sort of take spells,
like. He didn’t speak to his wife fer nigh about five year, one time.
He used to shoot at a mark, and drink liquor like all the other men
folks. One time he bet eighty-four twists of tobacco, agin a new wagon,
that he could beat Tomp Frame shootin’ at a mark. Tomp, when Preacher
Bonnell wasn’t lookin’, he cut his bullet in two so he couldn’t hit
nothin’. That’s how come him to kill Tomp later, and git finded fifty
dollars. Hit made him so mad he couldn’t talk—he jest played deef an’
dumb fer a long time. One day he set in a game of keerds, an’ luck came
his way, an’ he said right out, afore he thought, ‘High, low, Jack an’
game, by God!’ Ye see, he wasn’t always a preacher. He wasn’t called
ontel he was nigh about fifty year old, I reckon.”
Her auditor turned away her face, so that her own amusement might not
be seen, and the old lady rambled on, chewing at her pipe stem as she
rode.
“Nothin’ nuvver happens in these hills, ye see, Ma’am,” said she. “I
hear tell, Outside, of picturs that moves jest like they was alive. O’
course, that’s a lie. But hain’t it funny how many things folks thinks
up? Now, we nuvver had no sich things as that when I was young. Fact
is, I kain’t say as I ever had but jest two kinds of amuse_ment_. One
was to hear the preacher tell about hell fire—he painted it up like
a lake of red, with yellow around the aidge. Other was a picture a
temper’nce preacher had all done in colors, showin’ how a drunkard’s
stomach looked. Hit was red, too, like hell. I kin recollect even now
about them things—hell fire an’ the drunkard’s stomach. We never
had no other amuse_ments_ but jest them. When Old Man Bonnell got to
a-_de_pictin’ hell fire, and shakin’ folks out over that, time them
folks come forewerge!
“Over yander is whar Old Mammy Pierce lives——“ pointing to a small
cabin by the wayside. “She’s a granny womern—we call ‘em granny
wimmern that he’ps folks when childrens comes, ye know. Her husband
was a sort of doctor, too. He didn’t give nothin’ but _nux vomic_ very
much. He says _nux vomic_ would fotch arything every time. He done
killed ummage of the stomach with _nux vomic_, an’ even tonsils.
“Now, jest beyant whar Mammy Pierce lives is whar used to be Bill
Coates’ house—ye kin see whar it burned down. Me an’ my man was
a-ridin’ right along here when the house was a-burnin’, an’, well, sir!
Bill Coates was a-settin’ thar watchin’ it burn. ‘Sakes alive, man!’
says I to him, ‘why don’t ye put it out?’ ‘Well,’ says he, ‘I sont my
gal hafe a mile up the creek to git a pail of water, an’ she hain’t
come back yit. That was more’n hafe a hour ago,’ ‘Pears like the gal
stopped to talk with some of the neighbors up thar about how the house
was a-burnin’ down, an’ time she got back it was too late.
“I wish’t we had time to ride up to Big Creek, Ma’am. Thar’s a fine
store up thar—travelin’ men comes in thar from the other side, an’
sells all sorts of goods thar. They carry their sample things in the
saddlebags same as Old Preacher Bonnell used to.
“But ye see, we kain’t read an’ write in these mountings. The
storekeeper, he always has kep’ his books with marks, like, on the
boards of his cabin. He makes a short mark, like, fer two bits, an’ a
long one fer four bits, an’ he’ll have some sort of picture fer each
man that he’s a-trustin’ out goods to. Sometimes he has to make signs
fer to show what he’s done sold. A few month ago Arch Morrison come in,
and they liken to have a diffikilty over his account. The storekeeper
said he’d sold Archie a cheese, an’ Archie he done denied of it.
‘Thar’s a pictur of it,’ says the storekeeper, an’ sure enough, thar
was a big, round thing like a cheese. ‘Oh,’ says Archie, ‘that hain’t
no cheese I bought. That’s a grindstone.’ ‘Shore enough, Archie,’ says
the storekeeper, ‘shore enough. I done fergot to put the hole in it.’
“No, times is right qui’te in here, an’ always has been, Ma’am! as ye
kin see easy. In the fam’ly fightin’s that’s a good many killings,
but we hain’t had what ye might call a real murder, not in sixty year.
Ye see that house acrosst the creek thar?—well, over thar, sixty year
ago, a fam’ly named Baker murdered a feller named Pruitt fer some
land an’ money he had. That Baker woman sartinly was servigerous. Her
man hit Pruitt in the haid with a hammer, an’ they left him out in
the yard, but he come to. The old womern says, ‘Well, I’ll kill ye so
ye’ll stay killed,’ So she taken up a ax an’ cut off his haid. That
was a long while ago. Things like that don’t happen often. That was
murderin’, not killin’.
“Fact is, times is gittin’ qui’ter even at ‘lection and co’te settin’s
nowadays. Thar wasn’t nobody shot over in Leslie County co’te settin’s
last term, excusin’ Mose Post. The depity sher’f, Wilson, went out to
‘rest Mose. He was about the fightin’est man in them parts. Mose was
a-leanin’ aginst the fence when the depity come up, an’ his gun got
hung in the palin’ when he pulled it, so the depity shot him a couple
times. Hit hain’t much like old time co’te settin’s when I was young,
Ma’am.
“No, I reckon it’s the new railroad that’s a-changin’ everything
nowadays. We’re within twenty mile of whar it’s a-goin’ acrosst the
haid of Hell-fer-Sartin. Folks says that farms is a-goin’ up right
along nowadays, an’ timber, too. Land didn’t useter have no value
here when I was a gal as old as ye air now. Folks jest moved out an’
set down on a piece of land, an’ cl’ared it up like—that’s the way
me an’ my man done. I’ve seed a good farm sold fer a fiddle an’ a
hog rifle—an’ now here’s that farm wuth they say maybe twenty-five
thousand dollars, ‘cause they found a little ile on it. How much is
twenty-five thousand dollars, anyway, Ma’am?
“Times sartinly is changin’! Now, in my time I’ve seed the hull upper
part of Tejus Creek—they allowed over two hundred thousand acres—sold
fer a rifle an’ a bell-crowned hat. What ye reckon that land’s wuth
now, Ma’am?
“The Joslins had land over in thar, too, someone tolt me. Fer matter of
that, Davy like enough owns or will heir from his granny a heap of land
over on Hell-fer-Sartin, besides the farm he give to Meliss’ over thar
on Coal Creek, whar he used to live. He nuvver would sell his land,
an’ he nuvver would let his granny do it neither. The blacksmith an’
the postmaster tolt me that like enough when the railroad comes Davy
sartinly will be rich. I’ve knowed coal rights to go fer five cents
a acre, an’ old-time poplar an’ oak timber fer a dollar an’ a hafe a
acre. Yit folks tells me that one log outen them trees would be wuth
ten or twelve dollar down at Windsor, maybe. Ye reckon that’s so, Ma’am?
“Oh, shucks, I expect I’m a-makin’ ye tired, a-talkin’ this way. I’m
just a-narratin’ along, ‘cause ye said ye wanted to larn somethin’
about our mountings. I wish’t we had time to git up to Big Creek.
Thar’s a fam’ly of twelve people up thar, Ma’am, an’ every one of ‘em
plays some kind of a musercal instru_ment_. When all twelve of them
people begins to play ye’d think hell was a-poppin’, Ma’am. Didn’t ye
nuvver hear ary one of our old fiddle tunes?”
Marcia shook her head. “I’m afraid not,” she said.
“No? Why, Davy useter be a powerful fiddler in his time, afore he got
religion so hard. I reckon he could play most all the old-time tunes.
Didn’t ye nuvver hear ‘Barbara Allen,’ or ‘Lord Lovell,’ Ma’am? I’ve
seen men set an’ cry over ‘Lord Lovell.’ Then thar was ‘Polly Allen,’
another ballet. Thar was some folks always that could make words fer
ballets, an’ they’d sort of sing ‘em.
“As fer fiddlin’ tunes, thar’s so many I kain’t hardly recollect. Thar
was ‘The Flowers of Edingburg’—I don’t know whar that come from, but
they says it’s old, an’ like enough come over the mountings. An’ thar
was ‘The Deer Walk’—I don’t know whar that come from neither. Then
thar was ‘The Hog-Eyed Man,’ an’ ‘Jawbone,’ an’ ‘The Puncheon Floor,’
an’ ‘Jones’s Still House,’ an’ ‘Sugar in the Bowl,’ an’ ‘Suds Over the
Fence,’ an’ ‘Turkey in the Straw’—didn’t ye never hear _none_ of them
tunes, Ma’am?”
“I’m not sure, Granny,” rejoined Marcia Haddon. “As you say, I’m
powerful ignorant, and I’m afraid my education isn’t very wide in
these matters. Go on and tell me some more.”
“Well, thar was ‘Round the Sugar Tree’—that’s another tune the boys
played at dancin’s—and ‘Notchy on the Hill.’ That tune come from
the raftsmen. They tolt us thar was a river called the Mississip’
somewhars, an’ a good many tunes come up from down the Mississip’.
“Then thar was ‘Sally Ann,’ an’ ‘Ida Red,’ an’ ‘Shreveport’—like
enough ‘Shreveport’ come from the raftin’ times, too. Then thar was
‘Dan Hogan’s,’ an’ ‘Old Ned,’ an’ ‘Gall of the Yare’ (Guadalquivir?).
‘Polk an’ Dallas’ was a ‘lection tune. Then thar’s ‘The Campbells Air
Comin’,’—why, law! Ma’am, I could go on a-tellin’ names of fiddlin’
tunes fer a hour yit.
“But hain’t this a purty country, Ma’am, we’re a-goin’ through? I think
it’s right purty, an’ I always done so, from the time I was a gal, old
as ye air. Davy says he hain’t seen no purtier country’n this, an’ he’s
been Outside. I wonder how much land he’ll heir from his granny—mother
of Preacher Joslin? She’s ninety-five year old, if she’s a day.
Wouldn’t it be strange if the new railroad would make some of us pore
folks rich atter all? Ye don’t know much about Davy?”
Marcia Haddon had turned away her face from the scrutiny of the old
woman’s keen eyes, but the latter went on:
“I always did wonder what Davy done when he went Outside. Do ye
know? He sartinly come back powerful changed. He useter be a right
servigerous kind of a man, like I said, the fightin’est of all the
fightin’ Joslins. But, shucks! he’s so different now ye wouldn’t know
the boy. He’s as mild as skim melk He always was good to Meliss’, too.
Her gittin’ a _di_vorce from him when he was away—an’ all he was
a-tryin’ to do was to git a education so’s to he’p pore folks like
me! ‘Pears to me like Meliss’ Joslin got entirely too much attention
paid to herself along of that divorce. She nuvver was so much noways.
She couldn’t neither spin nor weave wuth shucks, an’ besides, her two
babies both died on her. She wasn’t so much.
“Law, I could tell ye a heap more things if ye liked narratin’. Fer
instant, here’s whar the men in my grandad’s time chased the last two
Injuns outen this country, an’ kilt ‘em up on Redbird. This creek was
named atter one. Thar’s a hole up the river called Jack’s Hole, whar
the other was shot. One Injun was named Red Bird, an’ the other they
called Jack. They cotched ‘em up above, but they used to live in a cave
round here, not far from whar we air now.
“Wasn’t Davy a-tellin’ ye about the cave whar the two wanderin’ wimmern
lives? Well, that’s the very place whar them two Injuns useter live
years ago. Hain’t he never tolt ye about ‘em?”
“I don’t think so,” said Marcia Haddon, content with the one-sided
conversation. “What about them, Granny?”
“Well, I’ll show ye the very place right soon. Hit’s jest beyant the
two rocks that leans together, whar Davy says some time he’s a-goin’
to start another school. Hain’t he nuvver tolt ye about that neither?
Seems to me ye an’ him hain’t talked much noways.
“Well, now, them two wimmern is jest pore wild folks, ye mought say.
This cave is the onliest home they’ve had fer years. The young woman is
named Min, an’ her little gal is named Min, too. She hain’t got no pap,
but she’s purty as a pictur, that little gal.”
“The poor child!” said Marcia Haddon. “Granny, I almost wish I hadn’t
heard so much.”
“Well, Ma’am, suppose ye was throwed down in these mountings, with
nothin’ to do with—what do ye reckon ye’d do? About the best ye could,
huh? I reckon that’s what all of us folks has had to do—yes, it’s jest
what all of us folks has had to do. It’s what everybody has got to do,
come to that.
“Say, child, was ye ever merried more’n onct?” Granny demanded
suddenly. “I reckon ye was young when ye was merried—ye hain’t larned
much yit.”
“Yes, I was young,” said Marcia Haddon. “And once—only once.”
“Uh huh! Man jest come along an’ got foolish over yore purty face, like
enough, an’ talked fine to ye, an’ so ye was merried! It goes that
way. Well, I reckon in a year or two ye’ll like enough merry again.
Ye’re gittin’ purtier every day. Some folks merries in lessen a year,
but hit hain’t ordinary helt decent to be in too big a hurry.”
She went on, ruminatingly. “Me an’ my old man has lived together a long
while—I nuvver was merried more’n only onct, neither. He’s so damn
tough nothin’ couldn’t kill him, ‘pears like. He got a tree fall on
him, while ago, when he was turned fifty, an’ he hain’t been much of a
fightin’ man sence then, but still he’s lived along sever’l year sence
then, too.
“Well, now, what I was a-goin’ to say was, Ma’am, supposin’ if he’d
of died when I was, say, young as ye air. Do ye suppose I’d of stayed
single all of my life? I don’t say if I would or I wouldn’t, but I’ve
knowed wimmern to merry four or five times, like enough—I mought of
merried sever’l times, come need fer’t. But thank God I didn’t haveter.
“Didn’t ye never have no sweethearts afore ye was merried, Ma’am?” she
went on in her own fashion, her inquisitiveness now growing under the
reticence of the other.
“Don’t all girls?” said Marcia Haddon soberly.
“Most has,” said the old dame, “mostly, yes. All, ye mought say, that’s
as purty as ye was. An’ as I was sayin’, ye’re a-gittin’ purtier right
along. Ye’ll be a right peart-lookin’ widder afore long. Well, like I
was sayin’, ye mought of merried ary one of ‘em if ye hadn’t of merried
the man ye did.”
“It never came up for discussion in my mind, Granny,” said Marcia
Haddon with dignity.
“Huh! Thar’s most always two or three men in ary womern’s life,”
responded Granny Williams calmly. “Thar was two or three in mine. Like
enough I’d of merried one of ‘em if I hadn’t of merried Henry like I
done. I been too busy to think about sich matters sence. But, just so
long as a woman is foot-loose like, chances air she mought merry two or
three men, or even sever’l, like I said.”
Marcia Haddon made no response to this matter-of-fact reasoning, but
her ancient companion continued in her monologue.
“Yes,” she chuckled, “that’s so. An’ yit, if ever a man admits to his
wife that he has ever saw more’n one womern in all his borned life,
she’ll raise hell with him! Now, Davy——”
Marcia Haddon suddenly pulled up her mule an’ hastened on, but
relentlessly the old woman resumed when she had come alongside.
“I was sayin’ about Davy—he were merried onlucky. It jest happened
that way. An’ now she’s got her a divorce from him. That’s a awful
thing.”
“We’ll talk of something else, Granny,” said Marcia Haddon. The old
dame looked at her keenly, curiosity in her unseen glance.
“An’ why not talk of Davy?” she insisted after a time.
“I don’t wish to do so, Granny. It’s nothing to me how he has married
or what he does.”
“I reckon that’s so,” sighed Granny Williams. “He’s only a mounting boy
at that, though powerful smart. Some said he hadn’t orter of ever left
the mountings, because he war the leader of his fam’ly—Chan Bullock,
he’s too young. Well, maybe they’re right, an’ maybe they hain’t.
They say the old quarls is about all fixed up in here now—the whole
country’s changed come these last two year, now the railroad’s comin’.”
“An’ Davy’s changed, too,” she went on. “He’s sadder’n what he
used to be. I don’t know as I ever seed a man any sadder’n he is,
especial right now. In the old times he used to be the fightin’est,
whisky-drinkin’est young man in this here hull valley, an’ now he’s
got to be the workin’est man in all these parts. I reckon it’s the
_di_vorce that shames him. Not that I suppose he’s a-seekin’ around
anywhars for any more merryin’—he like enough had his satisfy of
gettin’ merried.”
Marcia Haddon did her best to change the conversation. “You were
telling me about a place where they used to teach school long
ago—right out of doors, in the open,” said she.
“That’s furtherer on up the creek, beyant the old ford whar the
bufferlo come down to the salt lick in my granddad’s time. That’s a
purty place, right in the bank of the creek. I’ll show it to ye some
day.
“But now,” she resumed, as, turning the bend of the road, they
saw before them the blackened roof of a deep cavern in the
sidehill—“thar’s whar them wanderin’ wimmern lives I was tellin’ ye
about, Ma’am. Looks like thar wasn’t no one to home.”
But presently what appeared to be a little bundle of rags far off at
a back corner stirred, moved, and developed itself into a very ragged
little girl with very tangled hair. She was perhaps seven or eight
years of age—a child with wide, dark eyes and white, even teeth, as
now they might see, for she smiled shyly as they paused at the opening
of the cave.
“Come here, Min,” said old Granny Williams. “Come on out here an’ talk
to the lady, won’t ye?”
The child came out, very slowly, shy as some wild creature. She was
clad now in a single-piece nondescript garment, was barefooted, and her
hair apparently had never known comb or covering.
“Whar’s yore mammy at, Min?” demanded the old lady.
The child made no answer; only stood twisting a toe into the gravel
of the roadway, painfully embarrassed by the presence of this strange
creature whose like she never had seen in all her life.
“It’s only a furrin lady with fotched-on clothes,” said old Granny
Williams. “She won’t hurt ye. Kain’t ye come an’ shake hands?”
“Yes, little girl, come,” said Marcia Haddon suddenly, holding out her
hand, and leaning forward with so bright a smile that slowly the child
came to her, shyly extending her hand.
Marcia Haddon took the child’s hand in her own. As she did so a
strange emotion suddenly came upon her—a primal glow at this touch
of a child’s warm hand in her own. Sudden tears came into her own
eyes—tears not unhappy, either; for now, in some way unexplainable to
herself, a whole, new, wide world seemed to open all around her. In her
own world of ease, apart, she never yet had known or dreamed the great,
throbbing, vital things of life itself. But these simple folk, poor,
forgotten—they knew them all. They were so far richer than herself.
Their world had been so much wider than her own.
The child stood looking shyly at her, like any wild creature, her dark
eyes wide and wistful, across them passing alternate waves of light and
shadow, as left by a passing cloud upon the sky. But, moved though she
was to speak to the strange lady, she did not do so. Only she stood
looking up wistfully, and the woman who sat above her looked down
wistfully in turn.
“Have ye had yore breakfast, Min?” asked Granny Williams brusquely.
The child shook her head, her finger in her mouth now, her toe still
twisting at the earth.
“Well, well, hain’t that a shame! I reckon yore mammy’s at the
corn-hoein’ up to the big house in the bottoms, hain’t she?”
The child nodded her head.
“Well, well, ye shall have somethin’ to eat.” The old lady opened the
top of the small basket which hung on her arm, a basket which it was
always her custom to take to church with her for the sake of certain
children and grandchildren of her own. She drew out a round cookie with
a hole in the center, which she extended to the child of the wandering
women—the first sweetmeat the little one had ever known in all her
life.
“I’ll tell yore mammy to bring ye down somethin’ to eat,” added Granny
Williams. And so she clucked to her mule.
The solitary occupant of the cave stood now in the road, looking after
them wonderingly, even the beloved cookie arrested halfway between hand
and mouth.
“Granny, what will become of a child like that left here in these
hills?” demanded Marcia Haddon after a while. There was a half sob in
her voice, though still that strange, new, warm feeling in her heart.
“Why, she’ll go to hell, that’s what’ll become of her,” said Granny
promptly. “Excusin’ of that school of Davy’s up thar on the hill, an’
what it kin do fer these childern, why, they’re all goin’ plumb to
hell, accordin’ to ary sort of preachin’ I ever did hear.”
“Yes,” she went on reflectively, “thar’s a heap of the onredeemed in
these mountings, I reckon. Maybe the railroad’ll make all the valleys
alike—I hope so. It may not come in my time. Davy says it’s a-comin’
right soon. I don’t know about them things.”
Marcia Haddon made no answer. She looked across the tree-clad slopes of
these rounded hills, trying to visualize the point of view of that man,
her husband, who once had felt his own right to so much of this country
and its contents. Ownership of these hills, this great world that lay
about her undiscovered! Did, then, the rights of sovereignty impose no
duties in return?
“Granny,” said she suddenly, after they had traveled for a time in
silence.
“What is it, child?” asked the old dame gently.
“Do you suppose the mother of that child would let her go away to
school?”
“Do I suppose so?” ejaculated Granny Williams fiercely. “Don’t I know
she would? We been waitin’, here in the Cumberlands. Jest waitin’. Lord
ha’ massy on us.
“Look what Davy done,” she went on. “He war only out a couple of year,
an’ yit he changed complete, ye mought say. I kain’t hardly understand
him talk no more, he talks so furrin, same’s ye. If Davy has went
furrin, ‘pears like we all mought as well chirk up some an’ git more
furrin, too. The new railroad’ll sartinly change a heap of things.
“Well, here we air at the gate of my cousin, right on beyant. We’ll
light down an’ stop here overnight,” concluded Granny Williams at last,
knocking the ashes out of her pipe and thrusting it into her pocket.
“Was ye ever to school much in yore life, Ma’am?” she demanded as she
stood, her lean arm across her mule’s neck.
“Yes, Granny,” replied the “furrin woman” gently. “But I’ve learned
more to-day, I think, than in all my life before.”
CHAPTER XXIV
THE DRUMS
WHEN, on the afternoon of a later day, Marcia Haddon and her ancient
chaperone re-entered the long and straggling street at the forks of
the river, they noted certain signs of excitement. A group of men was
standing; others were hurrying to the open space in front of the big
store.
A striking sound came to their ears—a sound not known in the
Cumberlands for a generation—the throbbing of a drum, the shrilling of
a fife.
Upon a staff, upheld by the hand of one of a little group of four men
in uniform, was something which focussed the eyes of all. It was the
Flag—the Flag for which the Cumberlands once had fought.
“Why, look-a-thar!” exclaimed Granny Williams, hurrying up her mule.
“I know them boys, all four of ‘em! It’s Jimmy an’ Willy Sanders, Tom
Carswell, an’ Grief Talley—all four of ‘em went out an’ ‘listed more’n
eight year ago, an’ been in the Army ever sense. I’d like to know what
fer they come in here now.”
Marcia Haddon could see posted up in the window a flaming poster whose
letters of red spoke loudly enough to all who could understand them:
“_Your country needs you!_”
Their country! Their country! It had forgotten them all these
years—these men who once had saved the principle of freedom for a
world—a world now gone mad once more with blood and crying aloud now
again for aid in the salvation of that same principle.
“What is it, Ma’am?” demanded Granny Williams, as they hurried on down
the street. “What’s the paper say?”
“It’s the war! They must be a recruiting party from the Army,” said
Marcia Haddon. “The paper in the window says, ‘_Your country needs
you!_’”
“It ‘pears to me I heerd some talk about thar bein’ fightin’ goin’ on
Outside somewhar’s,” said Granny Williams. “But what’s that got to do
with us down here? Ye don’t reckon the Govern_ment_ needs us, do ye?”
That was the message of this flaring placard hung up for these, so few
of whom could read; that was the import of archaic drum and fife, and
modern flag and uniform—here in the far-off and forgotten Cumberlands.
“_Your country needs you!_”
Men came from all parts of the little settlement, attracted by the
sound of the music. They gazed dumbly and vaguely at the sheet in the
window, whose meaning they knew from what these soldier boys told
them—a recruiting sergeant, a corporal, and two privates, sent in
from the district recruiting station on the railroad, far away.
“Whar’s Davy?” asked old Absalom Gannt. “Someone go git Davy. We got to
look into this thing.”
Before David Joslin could be found, the two women had turned in at
Granny Williams’ home. Huddling like fowls, all the women had taken to
cover at the alarm. The street was empty save for men and boys.
“What’s all this about, Davy?” asked old Absalom, when presently Joslin
joined them in the street. “Is our Govern_ment_ in this here?”
“Yes,” said David Joslin. “It’s war! Our country’s in it. That’s what
it says.”
Someone handed him a newspaper, and he read its headlines hurriedly,
interpreting for them as he did so. These men well enough knew what war
was, or had been—the traditions of their fathers told them. The faces
about him were serious now; no light remark was ventured by any. Their
eyes shifted from the gaunt, lean face of David Joslin, as he read, to
this little fluttering emblem which stood driven in the mountain airs.
“They’ve fired on our _Flag_!” said David Joslin to them at last. “Our
women and our children have been killed by these—the enemy.”
A low murmur, amounting to a growl in sum, rose from the group of men.
Silently they gathered more closely about him.
“Shot at our _flag_?” said old Absalom Gannt—“an’ wimmern and
children—that kain’t be! That hain’t _right_.”
“But it’s true,” said David Joslin. “We’ll have to fight.”
“Ye’re damn right we’ll have to fight!” said Absalom. “Our Govern_ment_
kain’t stand _that_.”
“The sergeant here will tell you,” went on David Joslin, after a time.
“The Government wants volunteers, up to forty—that’ll let me in. It
may be some of you boys will want to go along. Maybe it’s our time come
at last!”
And now, all at once, swiftly, exultantly, gloriously unrestrained,
the full gift of tongues fell upon David Joslin, as he stood there in
the open street of a mountain village in a forgotten land! Suddenly
the clouds cleared in front of him. He saw, and was content now with
what he saw. Now he knew his life had not been in vain; that yet it
might be of worth; that on ahead, if he should be spared to win it,
lay the great, wide education of life and citizenship, and a share in
the building and the keeping of a world! He spoke in such fashion that
all his own longings, his own yearnings for his country and his people
became apparent to them now, so that they listened in trust and awe
and reverence; as well as in somber anger when he swung to the great
summons. Had there been David Joslins throughout the land, the American
Army had been a matter of a week, a day, and we had not been laggard
in Freedom’s great day of peril.
“There’s goin’ to be a draft, a conscription,” said the sergeant in
explanation after a time.
“Draft be damned!” said Absalom Gannt, and spoke the mind of all. “Thar
kain’t nobody draft us, not even the Govern_ment_. We’ll go ahead of
ary draft.”
“They won’t let you go, Absalom. You’re too old,” said Sergeant Talley
to him, smiling.
“Too old! Who—me? I’d like to see ary man tells me I’m too old to
fight,” rejoined that stark citizen.
“Twenty-one to thirty-one,” smiled Sergeant Talley. “Up to forty, if
you volunteer.”
“Well, that lets me in, anyway,” said Chan Bullock, and there were
nods through the little crowd. Only the older men turned face to face,
shaking their heads.
“It hain’t no ways reas’ner’ble to let the boys go alone,” said old
Absalom Gannt. “It hain’t no ways right, an’ it wouldn’t do—we’ll all
go out together, that’s what we’ll do! Davy Joslin, ye’ll have to go,
too—I reckon ye’ll have to lead us—Outside.”
“Well, we could make up a band of men,” said Sergeant Talley,
hesitating, “and go over to the examining officers at the station. A
day’s march, maybe.”
“That’s the talk!” said Absalom. “We’ll all go out together. Davy, tell
me,” and he turned to him suddenly, “who is it we’re a-fightin’ with?”
And David told him as well as he might, suiting what he said to the
understanding of these who heard.
“Give us a day, Sergeant, to fix things up at home,” suggested Joslin
now. “We’ll not keep you long.”
“Look at them _old_ guys,” grumbled the smart sergeant to his corporal,
aside. “We don’t want them along, but it don’t look like we could head
them off.”
The color-bearer picked up his flag once more. The drummer pulled
around his slings, and the fifer handled his instrument. The throb
of the drum, the high note of the fife, passed down the street to
yet another stand. And behind them, ragged, gaunt, unkempt, somewhat
uncouth, fell in the band of the lost children, the men of the
Cumberlands, now following the Flag, which had so long forgotten them.
CHAPTER XXV
STRANGERS WITHIN THE GATES
THE civic center of the village at the river forks might have been
called the long building, in which were located the post-office and
the blacksmith shop. It was here that, on the morning following, old
Granny Joslin stood in the door, pipe in mouth, looking up the long
street, which rambled down from the hills. Her gaze was fixed upon the
approaching vehicle commonly known as the mail stage. It seemed to
carry passengers this morning, an unusual thing, and the passengers
themselves were such as to attract special attention of Granny Joslin
and others.
That they were “furriners” Granny Joslin would have pronounced long
ago. There were two women, both young, and their apparel, had it been
worn by any of these parts, would distinctly have been recognized as
“fotched on.”
The two young women climbed down, unassisted, from the vehicle,
and stood, perhaps as extraordinary a pair as ever had been seen
thereabouts, in the dust of the street, looking about them curiously.
The younger of the two, with hands in pockets and feet just a trifle
wide apart—a trim young woman and noticeable anywhere—was clad in
well-cut traveling garb and tailored hat. She caught now in her gaze
the old woman, who leaned against the side of the post-office door,
silent and motionless, regarding these newcomers.
“Good-morning, Grandma,” said she, not pertly, but with a certain easy
assurance, which seemed to go naturally with her.
“Howdy, Ma’am,” replied Granny Joslin, still with her pipe in her mouth.
“Is this the town,” continued the young woman, “and if it isn’t, where
is it?”
“I reckon’s as much as ary other place,” admitted Granny.
“And where’s the hotel?—the driver said there wasn’t any.” The latter,
shaking his head, mystified, had stepped within, carrying his meager
mailsacks.
“Hotel? Tavern, you mean? Well, now, he’s done tolt ye the truth,
Ma’am. There hain’t no tavern here, none at all.”
“What! And we’ve ridden twenty miles from the railroad because we
couldn’t find anything fit to eat there.”
“It’s tougher the furtherer in ye git,” said Granny Joslin. “Ye orter
see Hell-fer-Sartin, Ma’am. Ye’re from the North, I reckon?”
The young woman nodded.
“Well, I reckon Granny Williams will take ye in, like enough. She’s got
another furrin womern in thar now.”
“Oh, all right—that will be fine. Do you know what her rates are?”
“Rates, Ma’am?”
“How much she charges by the day, or maybe longer.”
The old lady looked at her silently for some time, but at length
answered with a certain calm dignity of her own.
“I don’t reckon nobody would charge ye nothin’ fer what ye et while ye
was in here, Ma’am,” said she. “Ye’d be welcome.”
“What do you think of that, Nina?” chuckled the spokesman of the two
new arrivals.
She turned again to the old woman. “Well,” said she politely, “we
want to do what’s right. I just thought I’d ask you, you know. We’re
strangers here, all right enough. We wouldn’t plan to stay long—maybe
not more than a day or two.”
“Who air ye?” demanded Granny Joslin succinctly. “Have ye heerd
anything about the war outside? I heerd tell thar was some sort of
diffikilty we-all was havin’ with some other folks somewhars. I come
down to see.”
“War! Have we heard of the war! I should say we hadn’t heard of
anything else!” rejoined the young woman. “It’s put a crimp in
business, all right—especially our business.”
“What is yore business, Ma’am?” queried the old dame.
“We’re players—actors—don’t you see?—theatrical people—you know.
And we’ve lost a perfectly good angel. That’s why we’re here.”
This statement likewise seemed to Granny Joslin a most extraordinary
one. She made no comment, as the speaker went on, feeling a trifle
angered in the suspicion that these others were making sport of her.
“Well, it was the war that did that,” said the young woman. “And here
we are.”
“Tell me, Madam,” began the older of the two newcomers, seeing the
perplexity of the old lady, “do you know of any one in here lately by
the name of Haddon?”
Granny Joslin bent the calm gaze of her deep-set hazel eyes upon her.
“The furrin womern over to Granny Williams’ house is name Haddon,” said
she after a time, “but her man, he hain’t here no more now.”
“Isn’t here! Has he been here? When did he leave?” It was the younger
woman who spoke again.
“He lef’ a while back.”
“Where did he go? Do you know?”
“No, I don’t. The Lord only knows whar he went, but he’s daid all
right. Up yander on the hill is whar he’s buried at. His womern has
been stayin’ on here fer a little while yit, over to Granny Williams’,
like I done tolt ye.”
Her close scrutiny saw consternation upon the faces of both the
newcomers.
“But—you don’t mean Mr. Haddon—you don’t mean that Mr. James
Haddon—_he_ isn’t dead, is he?”
“He sartinly is,” replied Granny Joslin. “He was drownded down to the
Narrers while he was a-comin’ in here. They had a boat an’ they come
up from Windsor. Davy—that’s my grandson—saved the corp, and he had
a moughty hard time doin’ it, too, let me tell ye. He liken to have
drownded hisself. But Davy, he fotched the corp, anyways.”
The two strangers looked at one another, horrified.
“We heard he came in that way,” began the younger woman. “You see,
we knew him very well. We wired to New York—don’t you see, he
was our partner, the backer of our company, as they say—we had a
theatrical company on the road. Well, they told us he had started in
for this place here. Then we didn’t get any more word from his office.
We weren’t so far away from here by rail, so we started over—of
course, if we’d come in the same way he did we would have heard of
it—but we didn’t. You see, Mr. Haddon was in business with us.
Dead?—why—why—what’ll we _do_?”
The old lady still regarded them both fixedly, her pipe still between
her lips.
“What’s yore name, Ma’am?” said she after a time. “Ye’re mighty purty,
‘pears like to me.”
“They call me Polly Pendleton, Grandma,” said the young woman. “I don’t
know your name—we don’t know anything at all. What you say to us is
terrible—it’s awful.”
“Yes, it’s right hard,” admitted Granny Joslin. “Say, Ma’am, tell
me, did ye ever meet a young man from these parts? An’ tell me,
furthermore, air ye French and Irish mixed?”
Polly Pendleton suddenly flushed to her eyes. “What makes you ask
that?” she demanded.
“I reckoned ye was,” replied the old dame quietly. “Ye jest about come
under a tall man’s arm, too, don’t ye? Ye’re purty as a pictur. I don’t
know as I ever seed a purtier gal than ye, lessen it’s the furrin woman
over thar at Granny Williams’ house right now. I’m French and Irish
myself, too, Ma’am.”
“How odd! I say, Grandma, what’s your name—since we’re getting
acquainted now?”
“My name’s Joslin, Ma’am. That thar young man I meant was Davy, my
grandson, the same thet built the school buildin’ up yander on the
hill—biggest building ever was in these mountings. Now, I’ve heerd
Davy talk of ye afore now, Ma’am. But I reckon ye’ve come in here fer
another sort of man than Davy.”
“Rather!” said Polly, a smile suddenly coming upon her troubled face in
spite of all. “But Joslin—David Joslin—why, of course—I’ve seen him,
yes. You’re right—we didn’t come in here after him.”
The look of genuine perturbation upon the faces of the two young women
proved to the ancient dame that the news they had heard was serious
enough for them, whatever cause there might be. Polly Pendleton’s dark
eyes were a trifle dimmed as she turned once more.
“We’re sorry—we’re as sorry as we can be, Grandma,” said she. “We
hadn’t any idea he was even sick. I don’t know what to do. But I think
we’ll have to go back as soon as we can.”
“Ye kain’t git back afore to-morrer,” said Granny. “But the fustest
thing to do is to come in an’ git something to eat. We’ll go over to
Granny Williams’. Ye must be tired, the both of ye. The roads is awful.”
The shrug of Polly’s shoulder was endorsement enough for this general
statement, and Nina, usually the more silent, employed likewise now an
eloquent exclamation.
“I don’t believe the furrin womern has come back from up in the hills
yit,” said Granny Joslin.
She did not note the sudden relief which came upon the face of at least
one of her auditors. “But that don’t make no difference,” she resumed.
“Thar’ll be plenty of room fer ye. If ye was up in my country now,
I’d have ye come home with me, but it’s ten mile up the creek. I jest
walked down this mornin’ along of my mewel takin’ sick a few days back.”
“You walked—ten miles!”
“I sartinly did. But like I said, ye kain’t walk that fer, bein’
furriners. Why, chile, frail-like as ye air, ye’d be plumb beat out by
that time, an’ so would yore sister here—ye said yore sister, didn’t
ye?”
“She’s more than that,” said Polly Pendleton. “She’s the only friend
I’ve got now. We’re both awfully obliged to you, Mrs. Joslin. We
certainly are. We’d do as much for you.”
“I believe ye would, myself,” said Granny Joslin simply. “Ye’ll be
welcome here, so fer as what we got to give ye. We’re all alike.”
Polly Pendleton was pausing for a moment’s thought. “We hadn’t the
slightest idea in the world, of course, or we’d never have come here.
We—I don’t think we want to bother Mrs. Haddon, you know. She’d rather
be alone, I’m sure.” She held back, hesitating.
“She’s a fine womern, Ma’am, accordin’ to Davy,” rejoined the old
woman. “He says she’s the finest he ever seed, and he’s been Outside
and seed a power of things in his time, Davy has.”
“Well,” broke in Polly Pendleton, now with a certain asperity, “one
thing, she can’t be any hungrier than I am right now.”
“So long as ye kin eat ye’re a-goin’ to survive your sorrer, Ma’am, I
always heerd,” rejoined Granny Joslin grimly. “Well, come along. We all
got to die some time, come to that.”
She placed her pipe in her pocket now, after knocking out the ashes,
and started out forthwith in the lead, her bent and bony body, shrunken
and battered under the weight of years and infirmity, scarce as tall as
Polly Pendleton by half a head. Her course was across the street along
which, further down, lay the house of Granny Williams.
“Well, Nina, old dear,” commented Polly, _sotto voce_, as they
followed, “things couldn’t be much worse, could they? Poor chap—isn’t
it a horrible thing? And we never knew a word!”
Her uncommunicative comrade only nodded, her face drawn into lines none
too happy now, for she it was, of the firm of Pendleton and Stanton,
who usually was the more concerned with the business affairs.
“And here’s his wife in here, too—that makes it a lot harder,” she
said at length. “I’ve a picture of how much she loves you, Polly!
There’s plenty of places I’d rather be in than right here now, my dear!”
“Well, I’m hungry,” resumed Polly once more, trying to shake off care,
as always. “Is this the place, Grandma?” she added, hurrying up now and
giving a hand to the old dame’s elbow, as she turned in at the steep
walk behind the gate.
“It’s the place, Ma’am,” said Granny Joslin. “Come on in. Whether
Granny Williams is home or not ye’ll be welcome in her house. It hain’t
never locked.”
CHAPTER XXVI
THE UNCERTIFIED
GRANNY JOSLIN was accurate in one statement regarding her neighbor’s
household, but was not so accurate in other details. Had Polly
Pendleton known surely that Marcia Haddon was in the house she now
approached, she certainly must have turned and gone the other way. And
had Marcia herself suspected the presence in town of these two visitors
of all in the world, it is most likely that she would have prolonged
her visit in the hills indefinitely, and not have returned earlier in
the day, as had been the case.
In her room, Marcia Haddon heard voices—voices of the two old women,
voices of two younger women—one voice which caused her to stop and
listen—all her faculties arrested.
It was Granny Williams who after a time knocked at her door and called
her out to meet the newcomers. Marcia, with sudden prescience of what
was to come, summoned all her fortitude for what seemed to her the
unkindest blow she ever had known of fate. This woman—here—following
her to the edge of the world—to her husband’s very grave-side—it was
a thing unspeakable in its unfitness! Her very soul rebelled against it.
Her color was high as she stepped out into the room, facing what she
felt must be an encounter. “You asked for me?” said she, looking
directly into the face of Polly Pendleton. “I think there must be some
mistake.” Her eyes now passed calmly from one to the other, her face
cold.
Polly, quick of wit, did what she could. “Mrs. Haddon,” said she
impulsively, “we didn’t know you were here when we came in. We didn’t
know you were in town. It’s all a mistake—everything’s a mistake. We
wanted to go away right now—but they wouldn’t let us—there’s no other
place for us. Won’t you let me talk to you now? May we——”
Her gesture indicated the room from which Marcia had but now emerged,
which seemed to offer privacy for what Polly Pendleton as well as
herself knew was to be a scene.
“As you like,” said Marcia Haddon icily, and held open the door,
closing it as the other entered.
“It’s all a mistake, Mrs. Haddon,” began Polly once more as she found
herself alone with the other.
“So it would seem,” replied Marcia, still coldly. “Not one of my own
making.”
“We didn’t know a thing about it, Mrs. Haddon. I’m sorry, awfully
sorry—sorry as I can be.”
“You would seem to have cause for regret, perhaps? I suppose you refer
to my husband’s death?”
Polly nodded rapidly, her upper lip trembling a little bit. The
situation was not in the least easy for her.
“I can fancy it would mean something to you.”
“A lot,” said Polly frankly, “an awful lot. But what’s the use! He was
backing us, of course, you know that—had been for a long while. We
wanted help—we’re on our uppers now. We heard he was in here, and we
came in ourselves to have a little talk with him over things. We were
over on the railroad, don’t you see? We’ve had bad business all along
for weeks. The war knocked us out. Oh, I tell you, we knew nothing
about _this_—we hadn’t heard of any accident. And Jimmy was such a
good chap!”
“I presume you refer to my husband when you say Jimmy? Yes?” Marcia’s
voice was not only icy, but worse.
“Well,” resumed Polly uneasily, “I’ve known him for a long time, you
see.”
“I know all about the length—and the nature—of your acquaintance with
my husband, Miss Pendleton.”
“My real name is Amanda Brown,” said Polly, calmly.
“Yes, Miss Brown? I don’t know whether or not my husband has made any
provision for you in his will. I haven’t been made fully acquainted
with the nature of his will. My lawyers have asked me to come back at
once, but I have been stopping on here. It was hard—I was not quite
ready to go away from him. He needed some one to watch him, don’t you
think?
“Now,” she went on, “I have been obliged to meet you——”
“Well,” said Polly, with a shrug, “we wouldn’t have been so apt to meet
back in the city.”
“Hardly, I fear.”
Polly reddened a little at this. “You don’t like me, Mrs. Haddon, do
you?” said she directly.
“Why should I?”
“That’s right—why should you, when it comes to that? I’m not sure that
I should if it were the other way about But one thing is sure——”
“Need we discuss these matters at all? I don’t see why. This whole
situation is not in the least of my making, or my liking.”
“Oh, now, listen, Mrs. Haddon! I know a lot of things. I’m not what
you are—I never had your chance. I’ve done the best I could with what
I had, the same as you, maybe. If I had married him you’d never have
taken him away from me!”
“Indeed?” Her auditor did not even smile.
“Women like you,” broke out Polly, waxing somewhat tremulous
herself—“women like you don’t know anything about women like me. I
didn’t run after Jimmy Haddon—he ran after me. Why did he? What made
him? Didn’t you have every chance in the world to keep him? Who’s to
blame—me or you or him—or all of us? I wasn’t running after him
so much even now. Of course I didn’t know anything about what has
happened, or I wouldn’t have come.”
Marcia’s hands were intertwining nervously now. “Do you think I ought
to talk to you at all now—coming here as you do—following him
absolutely into his grave?”
“I wish you wouldn’t,” said Polly, coloring hotly now. “Maybe I’m not
as bad as you think—or anyway, different. If men drift to my sort,
how can my sort help it? I’m only a rag and a bone and a hank my own
self, I suppose. If it hadn’t been him it would have been someone else,
maybe. If it hadn’t been me, maybe it would have been someone else for
him too—that’s the way it goes.”
Marcia Haddon was looking at the young woman before her with a new and
strange feeling of curiosity, trying after her own ancient creed to be
fair, to be just. She was trying now to understand, to find as much
good as possible in the careless self-accusation of the young person
who spoke thus artlessly and directly. But that young person went on
now somewhat bitterly.
“We’re a good ways apart, Mrs. Haddon, I expect I hadn’t a thing
to start with but my laugh and my looks—they would have left me
comfortable if I’d never met your husband. If he’s gone now, all the
better for me now, like enough, and all the better for him—and maybe
for you too. You don’t know about my sort. Well, I don’t ask that of
you. There’s milk, and fresh milk, and bottled milk, and certified
bottled milk. You’re strictly respectable—you’re certified—you’re the
sort that’s been taken care of all their lives. Me—I’m uncertified,
I guess. It doesn’t make much difference to anybody now, does it? I
told—him—another man—I was going over with the Red Cross.”
Still striving to be just in spite of all, Marcia Haddon held her
speech, looking gravely at the other, who now went on, unsparing alike
of herself and her hearer.
“It’s late to give you a tip about how to handle a husband—but I could
have——”
“I’m afraid not,” said Marcia Haddon. “I’m afraid there’s nothing you
can do for me. I’m afraid—well, I suppose I ought to try to be fair,
even now.” She could not refer directly in speech to the relations
between the dead yonder and the living here.
“That never gets anybody very much,” said Polly Pendleton. “You remind
me of that chap that came into my place in New York—Joslin, his name
was—he’s the grandson of this old lady that brought us in here!”
Now for the first time the slow red of anger rose to Marcia Haddon’s
face.
“I think you’ve said quite sufficient about that and many other
matters,” said she. “You certainly can’t discuss Mr. Joslin with
me—I’ll not have it. In fact, I’m not sure that you can discuss
anything with me any longer.”
“I’ve asked no odds of you,” she flared out, at last. “If you took my
husband from me, you took my leavings—there was nothing about him
that I cared for any more. Anything worth trying for—anything worth
fighting for—why, yes—I don’t know that I’d need fear you so much.
You came into my life not by my invitation, but I’m not so sure you
need ask me so much for forgiveness. What have I to forgive—or you?
He’s dead now—he’s gone from both of us. You’re welcome to what you
had.”
Her gaze unconsciously passed beyond the window, up to the hillside
where lay a little mound, a rude stone at the head.
“We’ll not say anything evil about him now—more than we have. He’s
found the way out, even if we haven’t as yet for ourselves. Our ways
must part, of course. But you can’t advise me and you can’t glory over
me. You’ve had my leavings. Is that quite plain?
“And now the way is plain for all of us—at last.” Her voice was
trembling.
It was like Marcia Haddon to stand erect, her features controlled,
though tears dropped from her eyes. And it was like Polly Pendleton to
grasp both her hands and kiss her, when, sobbing, she fumbled for her
small belongings as she turned to go.
CHAPTER XXVII
THE SEEKING
THE unusual sounds of the street still came to the ears of all in the
little village, but Marcia Haddon, agitated, held to her own room and
tried to rest, to forget. She was aroused by the sudden advent of
Granny Williams herself.
“Come on out here, Ma’am,” said that worthy. “I want ye to meet Davy’s
granny—old Granny Joslin. She’s come down to talk things over to-day.
Them two young wimmern has went away. They said they couldn’t stay, so
I sont ‘em over to the blacksmith’s to stop. So set down an’ talk to
Davy’s granny, Ma’am.”
Marcia was not prepared for the vision that met her gaze. Old Granny
Joslin was old, very much older even than Granny Williams, more bent,
less active, more afflicted by the blows of life and fate. Indeed, of
late, Granny Joslin had seemed to all scarce so savage as of old, a
trifle more bent than she had been in all her life before. Her eye was
less fierce, as now she took the young woman’s hand in her own skinny,
horny palm and looked into her eyes as straight as a hawk might.
“So ye air the furrin womern that Davy tolt me about,” said she. “Well,
ye’re right purty, that’s shore.”
“Hain’t she, though!” affirmed Granny Williams. “Hain’t she,
though!—an’ gittin’ purtier right along. If only she’d taken a few
doses of camomile an’ sage, I’d ‘a’ had her ready by now so’s she could
do a day’s work. She’s powerful triflin’, Granny.” Even old women
called Granny Joslin “Granny,” for she was older than the oldest of
them.
But Granny Joslin for some reason seemed softened quite beyond her
wont. “I’m glad to see ye, Ma’am,” said she. “I’m sorry ye lost yore
man down at the Narrers. Hit’s a powerful mean place fer a man to git
in—thar’s a heap of graves around thar—men lost from the rafts at the
Narrers. Davy’s tolt me, many’s the time.”
Marcia Haddon did not make any response.
“Davy tolt me all about ye, too,” continued the old woman. “I know ye
must be moughty lonesome in here. When air ye goin’ back, Ma’am?”
“I don’t know,” said Marcia Haddon. “I’ve been here longer than I had
planned—I ought to go any time—I must go now.”
“Did ye hear the playin’ in the street right now?” asked the old woman
suddenly. “Has the war came up North as well as here?”
“Yes, Mrs. Joslin. It’s an awful, awful thing.”
“Well, I don’t know,” rejoined that worthy dame. “Men jest has to do a
sartin amount of fightin’ aryways, an’ now they kin git plenty. They’d
orter. Davy was the head man of our fam’ly ontel he went away, an’ then
Chan Bullock, he taken it on—an’ now not even Chan seems to hev ary
bit of sand left. Ma’am, he’s been livin’ right along here, they tell
me, sleepin’ right alongside of old Absalom Gannt, an’ he nuvver got
him yit!
“I jest sort of wandered in town to-day to see what I could do my own
self. An’ now what do I see? Why, old Absalom Gannt an’ David Joslin
an’ Chan Bullock a-marchin’ down the street arm in arm, ye mought say,
follerin’ the music! What kin I do? I say, the war it’s a massy—jest
so old Absalom gits killed somewhar, I don’t keer how it happens!”
“They’re brave men,” said Marcia Haddon, her eyes suddenly kindling.
“Why, look what he did—your grandson—down there at the Narrows.”
“Well, he anyways saved the corp,” assented Granny Joslin, nodding.
“Like enough couldn’t no man of done much more’n that.”
“Davy’s a-goin ‘out, I reckon,” said Granny Williams now, reaching for
a coal for her pipe, and offering it in turn to the other old dame,
still held between the tips of her horny fingers.
“Of course he’ll go,” grumbled his granddam. “Joslins kain’t stay out’n
ary war. I reckon that’ll put a stop to his colledge up on the hill,
huh? We got to wait now till we lick them Dutch a-plenty—they tell me
it’s the Dutch we’re a-goin’ to fight.”
“If thar ever was any talk that Davy was a-skeered,” commented Granny
Williams presently, “I reckon it’ll be stopped now.”
“Nobody but a fool would ever say a Joslin was a-skeered of arything!”
broke out the other old dame fiercely. “If he was a-skeered, would he
of done called them people together down at the mill house a purpose
to taken a shot at him if they wanted ter? If he was a-skeered, would
he of went up to the door of the stillhouse, come two year back, an’
called old Absalom out? Only pity is he didn’t kill Absalom then—well,
as I said, jest so Absalom gits killed some way, I hain’t no wise
pertic’lar.”
“That’s right, Granny,” nodded Granny Williams with approval, shifting
her cob pipe to her hand. “That’s the proper sperrit of a Christian.
An’ I like to hear ye say it thataway.”
“Well,” she went on, sighing, “our own fam’ly hain’t got skercely a
quarl left no more, sence my son Andy kilt the last Purrin over on
Newfound a few year back. If I was sitiwated like ye air, Granny, I’d
feel jest the same as ye do. I kin forgive all them Purrins now jest as
easy as not—sence they’re all daid. Forgiveness is what they preach in
the church house.
“But now, Granny”—as the older woman sat staring moodily into the
fire—“how come hit that yore Davy hain’t nuvver had no speakin’ yit
down to the church house at the Creek? We’re jest perishin’ in here fer
some right good preachin’. Onct in a while Preacher Bonnell he opens
a meetin’ fer three or four days, an’ sometimes Old Man Parkins from
up Redbird, he comes round here in his circuit. An’ thar’s a young man
over in Leslie that they say is right promisin’, an’ he mought come
over afore long. But thar hain’t been to say no religious _awakenin’_
in here, so to speak, fer a long time. An’ Davy—ye know he started
out fer to be a preacher, him with his education an’ all. Why don’t he
_preach_?”
“Yes, why don’t he?” demanded Granny Joslin savagely. “I taken that all
up with Davy, an’ I kain’t do a damn thing with him. He says—well,
what do you-all think he says to me?”
“I kain’t guess,” said Granny Williams. “He’s always been odd.”
“He says he ain’t _good_ enough to preach!” exclaimed the fierce old
woman who turned towards her. “He says, ‘I hain’t got my edication
yit,’ says he to me.”
“Men is natural cantankerous,” said Granny Williams, nodding her head
sagely. “Why the Lord made ‘em that way, the Lord only knows.”
“Davy won’t have no chance to preach anyhow if he goes to the war,”
resumed Granny Joslin. “I reckon the school’ll all go to hell now. Has
he said ary thing to ye about the school, Ma’am?” She turned suddenly
now to Marcia Haddon.
“No,” rejoined that individual, somewhat startled; “nothing at all.
I’ve not seen him for several days.”
“He tolt me ye was the wife of the man that owned the Company—an’
the Company owns all this land in here. Well, like I said, I reckon
that school’ll have to go to hell now—an’ yit we certainly did need
it—that school. Hit was—_our_ school, the fustest in the Cumberlands.”
Marcia Haddon vouchsafed no comment, and presently old Granny Joslin
rose.
“Well, I got to be gittin’ on, Sarah Alice,” said she to her friend. “I
want to find Davy somewhar—I’ve brung him down some caraway cookies.
He always liked ‘em. An’ I brung him a clean handkerchief—he’s got to
have a heap of things if he’s a-goin’ off ter the war. I don’t know who
them Dutch air—fer’s I know thar hain’t no Dutch in these mountings
noways—but if we’ve got to lick ‘em, I reckon we’d just as well be
about it. Damn ‘em anyways, whoever they air!” With which candid
comment she hobbled on out the door, and never gave a parting glance as
she faced up the street and started for her cabin home.
Granny Williams looked through the window after her departing guest.
“Ho hum!” said she. “Thar goes the last of the Joslins—of the real
Joslins. She was the fightin’est one of ‘em all, but she allus was a
good Christian womern.”
“Why hain’t Davy come down here no more lately, Ma’am?” she asked
suddenly of her silent guest.
“I don’t know in the least,” replied Marcia Haddon. “Does it matter?”
Then, relenting: “I wish he would come! I ought to see him before he
goes away, or before I go.”
“Why?” asked Granny Williams directly.
“I’ve got to be going. I’m a widow, you see, now, Granny—I’m alone!
I’ve been thinking a good deal.”
“What ye been thinkin’, child?”
Marcia Haddon, with a strange humility, laid one of her soft white
hands upon the wrinkled one reposing in the old dame’s lap. “I’ll tell
you—I’ve been thinking about that little child we met up there in the
cave.”
The old woman nodded.
“What will that child and all the others do if the school stops?”
“Oh, Davy’ll come back,” said Granny Williams—“he’s got to come back.”
“If we had buildings, and teachers, and everything,” mused her guest,
“we could take care of any number.”
“Hit’d be a powerful fine thing for everybody,” said Granny Williams
after a time of silence. “Now, Davy—he’s so _odd_, Ma’am. I’ve
seen Davy Joslin set like he was in a dream. If only men wasn’t so
cantankerous!”
CHAPTER XXVIII
THE EDUCATION OF DAVID JOSLIN
THE hours dragged leaden for the women, cooped up, silent, as in the
old block-house days, but for the men the great adventure of going out
to war, born in their ancient Highland blood, sped the time rapidly
enough. It cost a certain resolution on the part of David Joslin to
call upon the “furrin woman,” but now he must say good-by. Therefore in
time he knocked at the door of Granny Williams’ log house.
Marcia Haddon herself met him, as though she had sent for him. “Come,”
said she. But she led him not into the house itself.
He walked at her side, silent, as she directed her footsteps toward the
little steps cut into the foot of the hill. They sat here, both looking
out now across the valley to the hills beyond.
The woman’s gray eyes were wistful and sad. The eyes of the man,
resting everywhere but upon her face, were also sad. He did not turn to
look at her at all—apparently did not note the increasing goodliness
of her figure and her rounder contours, the browner coloring of her
cheek. She was a very comely woman, Marcia Haddon, young, but wiser
than she once had been—more impulsive also, less cold, less reserved.
It was as though she entered a new stage of womanhood, as yet denied
her in her chill years of self-repression. Never until now had she
really known the awakening of woman. Virginal, warming, fluttering, she
was not married woman or widow now; she was a girl, a girl at the brink
of life. Oh! how vast and sweet the revealing Plan seemed now to her.
“Well, you’re going out,” said she at last, the first to break the
silence.
“Yes, I’m going out.” His voice was low and deep. It seemed to her that
she now for the first time realized its even vibrancy.
At last: “What will become of the work here?” she began.
“I can’t tell as to that, Mrs. Haddon,” said he. “It must wait.” She
made no reply, and he went on:
“You see, all my life has been pretty much the same thing. I’ve always
had to look ahead and did not dare look at things between. Once this
school up here on the hill was all I looked at—and there wasn’t
anything between. There’s other work afoot that’s even bigger, now.
Maybe after that I’ll be fit for this.”
“You’ve done wonderfully well. It’s scarce less than a miracle—how
you’ve got on.”
“At least I’ve told you all about myself,” said he after a time. “I’ve
nothing more to say—now or at any other time.”
“You need say nothing,” she rejoined. “Life goes hard for all of us
sometimes.” She was conscious of her banality, but found herself, as so
often, dumb in her largest emotions.
“It was a hard enough start,” he assented. “It’s hard enough for all of
us in here. I’m not so old.”
“No. You only seem old to me. I suppose that’s because you have had
to do so much in so short a time. But I’m older, too. It’s a sad
country—did you ever stop to think how few people smile, down here in
these mountains?”
“Yes, I know; and you know, now. Well, I suppose you’ll go away and
forget us. We’ve been forgotten, more than a hundred years. That’s
hard—to be forgotten.”
“Do you think that of me?” she said, still staring straight down the
valley.
“I hardly know what to think of you,” said he, deliberately. “You are
not like any woman I ever knew.” He flushed, suddenly remembering he
had told her he never had known but three women in his life.
“Well, be fair, at least. Be sure you know my point of view. This work
ought not to stop.” She was trying to look at him from the corner of
her eye.
“The Lord has built that building up on the hill, Mrs. Haddon,”
answered David Joslin. “I suppose the Lord will continue it or destroy
it. Blessed be the name of the Lord.”
She half turned her face toward him now as she replied.
“I’ve told you I’ve been a useless woman all my life. Well, just the
other day I saw a child—a little child, out in the hills—it lived
wild, in a cave. I held, its hand right in mine, this way—don’t you
see? And then, I thought, there were hundreds of them—hundreds, all
through these hills.” She was flushing.
“Yes,” said he; “many hundreds.”
“Then I thought of the money that’s mine that maybe oughtn’t all to be
mine. You see, I’ve counsel—lawyers—that sort of thing—men who would
help me in anything I asked. Suppose we had some more buildings, and
plenty of teachers after a time?”
He did not make any answer at all, and she was obliged to go on unaided.
“In this awful time of the world, Mr. Joslin,” said she, “everyone
ought to be useful. We’ll need more good citizens in America. All of us
women ought to work in some way. The country must go on, until we’ve
won. Where could I be more useful than here? Don’t you think I could
keep the work going some way until—until you came back, David Joslin?”
Still he did not answer, and still she went on, struggling somewhat
desperately with his native reticence and her own.
“Why, they say this is a war for democracy, don’t you know? And where
could we fight better for democracy? Wasn’t that your ambition—wasn’t
that your dream?”
“Yes!” suddenly he exclaimed, hoarsely. “That was my dream! You know
how it ended—you know why. I killed my own school, you know how.”
“Yes—you’ve spoken very freely. It’s just as well. These are days when
there’s no time to be lost. And I’d like you to know, at least how much
I’ve marveled at what you’ve done.”
“Marveled!” said he. “It’s I who have marveled. But what you say—if
you could keep the school going—why, _that’s_ a miracle!”
“Well,” said Marcia Haddon quietly, “you’ve always spoken of miracles
as matter of course.”
“Maybe we’d better not talk much more,” said he after a time, long
silences seeming natural now. “I told you I wasn’t through. I’ve
sinned, and I’ll repent. I’m ignorant—but I’m going out now to get
the rest of my education. If I am spared ... some time ... I’ve told
you about the other woman up there,” he finished, anguished. “As you
know—she’s dead.”
“Is she dead forever, David Joslin?” asked Marcia Haddon quietly. The
color in her own cheek was warm.
“Yes, forever. And I’ll not speak any ill of her memory.”
“Nor I of the memory of the man that’s dead,” said she slowly. “It’s
life, I suppose.”
“Yes, that’s life! And I want it—_all_, every bit of it, all that any
man ever coveted or had—_all_ of a man’s dues in life. Yes, I want
it—_all_!”
He spoke now with a sudden fierceness, his gray eyes aflame in a way
she had not seen, that indomitableness of the inner man now showing
through as never yet she had seen him, so that she felt a thrill,
a shock, as of some vast, measureless dynamo of power suddenly
awaking. “All life is the same thing. It’s _all_ an education, _all_
a growing—God! Give me my chance to grow! Let me get ready, so I can
deserve. I’ve been _hungry_ all my life—hungry for the world—hungry
for my education—hungry for all a man’s life—love, happiness,
content, power, usefulness. I’m hungry for this war, even, because I
know it will teach me something or leave me at last at peace. I’ve not
known peace. I’ve lived in torment—I’m in torment now. But I’ll come
back bigger and better if I ever come back at all. Life—why, life——”
He halted, his drawn brows turned away.
“That little child that came up to me,” began Marcia Haddon hastily, as
though irrelevantly—“if I could do something in the meantime—while
you were out there—why, I’d be the happiest woman in all the world.
Yes, I! And I’d said good-by to happiness, the same as you.” Her eyes
were soft now.
“If I thought that could be,” he answered slowly, “I’d know the end
even of this war—I’d know the end of my own fight—I’d know that
justice and good _do_ triumph over all and through all. Oh, what a
dream! And for my people—the forgotten, the mocked, the helpless ones.
If I—if _you_ and I——”
“I’m going now,” he concluded, long later. “These are things in which
I can’t give you counsel. You’re the one real woman I ever knew in all
my narrow life—the one real woman. I reckon I’ve seen them all now. I
wanted to tell you that, before I went away—I _had_ to tell you! If
only I had lived so that you wouldn’t think so ill of me. Oh, my God!
Always I do the evil thing when I would do the right I’m so impatient.
It’s so hard for me to be patient now.”
He rose and stood facing straight ahead. The twilight now was falling
softly upon the hills. Sounds came from the street below—sounds
unwelcome.
“Good-by,” said he, suddenly. “I’ll love you all my life!”
“Going?” Her voice seemed not yet to accept it after all. She half
raised a hand. The blood of her cheek surged back.
“Yes—to finish my education!”
He stalked away, never looking back.
She sat alone now, still gazing out across the hills, at a new and
wider world than any she had ever known.
The sounds on the street below became more audible, wafted by a change
in the evening air. She knew that there was forming yonder a procession
of men who presently would pass out around the shoulder of the hill
at the end of the street. And then at last she heard fully the throb
of the drum, the keening of the fife. The men of the Cumberlands were
marching out into the world. He was at their head—going out for his
ordeal, going out to grow, to get ready—to deserve, as he had said.
What a man he would be—what a man he was!
Marcia Haddon suddenly reached out her arms, her gesture following the
marching men, as though something of her own had gone out with them.
She sat, until she knew not whether she heard the throb of a passing
drum or felt the pulse of a new heart, beating high and strong. Her
Work lay at hand—out there, on the hills where the gaunt buildings
grew. And on ahead—was it Life, as sweet as it was earnest and
compelling, that rested yonder—on the heights ahead?
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE:
—Obvious print and punctuation errors were corrected.