Late that night old Tubal Sims lingered on his hearthstone, brooding
over the embers of the failing fire. As he reviewed the incidents of
the evening, he chuckled with a sort of half-suppressed glee. His
capacities for enjoyment were not blunted by the event itself; the
very reminiscence afforded him a keen and acute pleasure. In all his
sixty years he had never known such a vigil as this. He could not
sleep for the crowding images with which his brain teemed. Each detail
as it was enacted returned to him now with a freshened delight. The
objections urged by the audience on the score of necromancy gave him
peculiar joy; for he and his wife were of a progressive tendency of
mind, and had that sly sense of mental superiority which is one of the
pleasantest secrets to share with one’s own consciousness. As he sat on
a broken-backed chair, his shoulders bent forward and his hands hanging
loosely over his knees, the hard palms rubbing themselves together from
time to time, for the air was growing chilly, the light of the embers
on his shock of grizzled hair, and wrinkled face with its long blunt
nose and projecting chin, and small deep-set eyes twinkling under their
overhanging brows, he now and again lifted his head to note any sudden
stir about the house. So foreign to his habit was this long-lingering
wakefulness that it told on his nerves in an added acuteness of all his
senses. He marked the gnawing of a mouse in the roof-room, the sound
of the rising wind far away, and the first stir of the elm-tree above
the clapboards. A cock crew from his roost hard by, and then with a
yawn Tubal Sims pulled off one of his shoes and sat with it in his
hand, looking at it absently, and laughing at the thought of old Parson
Greenought and his interference to discourage Satan. “I wisht I could
hev knowed what the boy would hev done nex’, if so be he hed been lef’
alone.” He made up his mind that he would ask the juggler the next day,
and if possible induce a private repetition of some of the wonders for
the appreciation of which, evidently, the public sentiment of Etowah
Cove was not yet ripe. For the juggler was his guest, having reached
his house a few evenings previous in the midst of a storm; and asking
for shelter for the night, the wayfarer had found a hearty welcome, and
was profiting by it. Sims could hear even now the bed-cords creak as he
tossed in uneasy slumber up in the roof-room, so still the house had
grown.
So still that when a deep groan and then an agonized gasping sigh came
from the sleeper, the sounds were so incongruous with the trend of old
Tubal Sims’s happy reflections that he experienced a sudden revulsion
of feeling that was like a shock. The rain began to fall on the roof;
it seemed to come in fine lines on a fluctuating gust, for it was as if
borne away on the wings of the wind, and the eaves vaguely dripped.
“But oh,” cried the sleeper, “the one who lives! what can I do!--for
whose life! his life! his life!” and spoke no more.
Yet the cabalistic words seemed to ring through the house in trumpet
tones; they sounded again and again in every blast of the wind.
The place had grown cold; the fire was dead on the hearth; it was
the unfamiliar midnight. Old Tubal Sims sat as motionless as if
petrified. He had never heard of the process of mind-reading, but he
would fain decipher these sleeping thoughts of his guest. He found
himself involved in tortuous and futile speculations. Who was “the
one who lives,” whose life this stranger grudged? And following the
antithesis,--not that Tubal Sims would have thus phrased it,--was there
then one who died? And why should the recollection return in the deep
slumbers of the night and speak out in this weird dreaming voice.
It occurred to Tubal Sims, for the first time, that there was something
inexplicable about this man. Apparently, he had no mission here save
for the exhibition of jugglery,--how suddenly it had lost its zest! He
knew naught of the people or the surrounding region; he had no baggage,
no sort of preparation for continued existence, not even a change of
clothes. Mrs. Sims, being subsidized to supply this deficiency, had
already constructed for him one blue homespun shirt, which evidently
astounded him when he first beheld it, so different it was from the one
he wore, but which he accepted meekly enough. Tubal Sims told himself
that he had been precipitate in housing this stranger beyond a shelter
during the storm.
To this it had come,--the happy dreaming over the fire, renewing
a pleasure so rare,--to these vague fears and self-reproaches and
suspicions and anxious speculations. He stumbled to bed at last in the
dark, yet still the words and the tone haunted him. It was long ere
he slept, and more than once he was roused from slumber to the dark
silence by the fancy that he heard anew the poignant iteration.
If the juggler had dreams, they may have weighed heavily upon him the
next day, for he came down the rickety stairs, pale and silent, with
heavy-lidded eyes and dark blue circles beneath them. Under Mrs. Sims’s
kindly ministrations he sought in vain to eat the heavy thick biscuit,
the underdone fried mush, and the fat greasy bacon; for Mrs. Sims was
not one of those culinary geniuses sometimes encountered at humble
boards; in good sooth, but for her cows and chickens, in these early
days of his stay in Etowah Cove, he would have fared ill indeed.
“Ye make a better out at swallerin’ needles ’n ye do swallerin’ fried
’taters,” she declared, with a reproachful glance, supplemented by her
good-humored chuckle.
He could make no sort of compact with the beverage she called
coffee, and after the merest feint of breakfast he took his host’s
angling-tackle and wended his way down to the river, observing that the
fish would bite well to-day, since it was so cloudy. Cloudy it was,
undoubtedly, sombre and drear. Now and then drizzling showers fell,
and when they ceased the mists that rose in the ravines and skulked
in every depression were hardly less dank and chill. The river, in
its deep channel between jagged rocky gray bluffs and shelving red
clay banks of the most brilliant terra-cotta tones, was of the color
of copper instead of the clear steel-gray or the silvered blue it
was wont to show, so much of the mud of its borders did it hold now
in solution, brought down by the rains of the night. Here and there
slender willows hung over it in lissome and graceful wont, with such
vivid vernal suggestions in the tender budding foliage as to cause the
faint green tint to shine with definite lustre, like the high lights
in some artificial landscape of a canvas, amidst the dark dripping
bronze-green pines of the Cove, which from this point the young man
could see stretching away in sad-hued verdure some three or four miles
to the opposite mountain’s base,--the breadth of the restricted little
basin. This was the only large outlook at his command; for behind the
house he had quitted, the slopes of the wooded mountain rose abruptly,
steep, rugged, soon lost among the clouds. He gazed absently at the
little cabin, the usual structure of two rooms with an open passage, as
he lay on the shelving rock high above the river, the fishing-pole held
by a heavy boulder fixed on it to secure it in its place, his hands
clasped under his head, his hat tilted somewhat over his eyes; for
despite the paucity of light in the atmosphere the mists had a certain
white glaring quality.
Meanwhile, he was the subject of a degree of disaffected scrutiny from
indoors.
“Jane Ann,” said Tubal Sims, suddenly interrupting the loud throaty
wheeze by which his help-meet beguiled the tedium of washing the
dishes, and which she construed as that act of devotion commonly known
as singing a hymn, “that thar man ain’t got no bait on his hook.”
Jane Ann set the plate in her hand down on the table, and turned her
broad creased face toward her husband as he sat smoking in the passage,
just outside the door.
“Then he ain’t goin’ ter ketch no feesh,” she replied logically,
and lifting both the plate and her droning wheeze she resumed her
occupation.
Tubal Sims, like other men, fluctuated in his estimation of his
wife’s abilities according as they seemed to him convertible to his
aid. Ordinarily, he was wont to commend Jane Ann Sims’s logical
common sense as “powerful smartness,” and had been known to lean on
her judgment even in the matter of “craps,” in which, if anywhere,
man is safe from the interference and even the ambition of woman.
He rejoiced in her freedom from the various notions which appertain
to her sex, and felt a certain pride that she too had withstood the
panic which had so preyed upon the pleasures of the “show.” But now,
when her lack of the subtler receptivities balked him of a possible
approach to the key of the mystery which he sought to solve, he was
irritated because of her density of perception, and disposed to
underrate her capacities to deduce aught from that cabalistic phrase
which he alone had heard uttered in the deep midnight and from such
slender premises to frame a just conclusion. And furthermore, with the
rebuff he realized anew that Jane Ann Sims was a woman, incompetent
of reason save in its most superficial processes, or she would have
perceived that the significance of the unbaited hook lay in the strange
mental perturbation which could involve the neglect of so essential a
particular, not in the obvious fruitlessness of the labor. Jane Ann
Sims was a woman. Let her wash the dishes.
“Naw,” he said aloud, half scornfully, “he’ll ketch no feesh.”
Mrs. Sims ceased to wheeze, and her fat face relapsed from the pious
distortions of her psalmody into its normal creases and dimples. “I be
plumb fit ter fly inter the face o’ Providence,” she said, as she moved
heavily about the table and slapped down a blue platter but half dried.
“What fur?” demanded the lord of the house, whose sense of humor
was too blunted by his speculations, and a haunting anxiety, and a
troublous eagerness to discuss the question of his discovery, to
perceive aught of the ludicrous in the lightsome metaphor with which
his weighty spouse had characterized her disaffection with the ordering
of events.
“Kase Euphemy ain’t hyar, o’ course. Ye ’pear ter be sorter
dunder-headed this mornin’!” Thus the weaker vessel!
She wheezed one more line of her matutinal hymn in a dolorous cadence
and with breathy interstices between the spondees; then suddenly and
finally discarding the exercise, she began to speak with animation: “I
hev always claimed an’ sot out ter be suthin’ of a prophet,--ye yerse’f
know ez I be more weatherwise ’n common. I be toler’ble skilled in cow
diseases, too; an’ I kin say ’forehand who be goin’ ter git ’lected
ter office,--ginerally, though, by knowin’ who hev got money an’ holds
his hand slack; an’ I kin tell what color hair a baby be goin’ ter hev
whenst he ain’t got so much ez a furze on the top o’ his bald pate; an’
whenst ye ’low ye air strict sober of a Christmastime or sech, I kin
tell ter a--a quart how much applejack hev gone down yer gullet; an’”--
He sacrificed his curiosity as to her other accomplishments as a seer,
and hastily inquired, “What on the yearth hev sot ye off ter braggin’
this-a-way, Jane Ann? I never hearn the beat!”
“I ain’t braggin’,” expounded Mrs. Sims. “I be just meditatin’ on
how forehanded I be in viewin’ facts in gineral; an’ yit,”--her voice
rose in pathetic exasperation,--“the very day o’ the evenin’ this hyar
stranger-man got hyar I let Euphemy go over ter Piomingo Cove ter visit
her granny’s folks; an’ the chile didn’t want ter go much,--war afeard
o’ rain, bein’ dressed out powerful starched; an’ I, so forehanded in
sight, told her ’twarn’t goin’ ter rain till evenin’.”
“Waal, no more did it. Phemie war under shelter six hours ’fore it
rained.”
“Lawd-a-massy!” cried Mrs. Sims, at the end of her patience. “What war
the use o’ creatin’ man with sech a slow onderstandin’? I reckon the
reason woman war made arterward war ter gin the critter somebody ter
explain things ter him! Can’t you-uns sense”--she directly addressed
her husband--“ez what I be a-tryin’ ter compass is why--why--I could
tell ter a minit when the storm war a-comin’, an’ yit couldn’t tell the
juggler war comin’ with it?”
Tubal Sims, staring up from under his shaggy eyebrows, his arms folded
on his knees, his cob pipe cocked between his teeth, could only
ejaculate, “I dunno.”
“Naw, you-uns dunno,” flouted Mrs. Sims, “an’ you-uns dunno a heap
besides that.”
He received this fling in humble silence. Then, after the manner of
the henpecked, unable to keep out of trouble, albeit before his eyes,
and flinching at the very moment from discipline, he must needs
inquire, “Why, Jane Ann, what you-uns want the pore child hyar fur?
Ye git on toler’ble well with the cookin’ ’thout her help. Let Phemie
git her visit out ter her granny in Piomingo Cove,” he concluded
expostulatingly.
There was not a dimple in Mrs. Sims’s face. It was all solid, set,
stern, fat. She sunk down into a chair and folded her arms as she
gazed at him. “Tubal Cain Sims,” she admonished him solemnly, “ef I
hed no mo’ head-stuffin’ ’n you-uns, I’d git folks ter chain me up
like that thar tame b’ar at Sayre’s Mill, so ez ’twould be knowed I
warn’t ’sponsible. Ye hev yer motions like him, an’ ye kin scratch yer
head like him, too; but he can’t talk sense, an’ ye can’t nuther.” She
paused for a moment; then she condescended to explain: “I want that
child Euphemy hyar kase she oughter hed a chance ter view that show
las’ night.”
His countenance changed. He too valued the “show” as a special
privilege. He was woe for Euphemia’s sake, away down yonder in the
backwoods of Piomingo Cove.
“Mebbe he mought gin another show over yander ter the Settlemint,” he
hazarded. “The folks over thar will be plumb sharp-set fur sech doin’s
whenst they hear ’bout’n it.”
The sophistications of polite society are not recognized by the medical
faculty as amongst the epidemics which spread among mankind, but no
contagious principle has so dispersive a quality in every feature
of the malady. Given one show in Etowah Cove, and Tubal Cain Sims
developed the acumen of a keen _impresario_. He saw the opportunity,
counted the chances, evolved as an original idea--for the existence of
such a scheme had never reached his ears--a successful starring tour
around the coves and mountain settlements of the Great Smoky range.
The melancholy expressed in the slow shaking of Mrs. Sims’s head
aroused him from this project.
“Naw,” she said; “the fool way that the folks tuk on ’bout
Satan--they’d better hev the high-strikes ’count o’ thar sins--an’
thar theatenings an’ sech will purvent him. He won’t show agin. An’ I
be plumb afeard,” she cried out in renewed vexation, “the man will get
away from hyar ’thout viewin’ Euphemy. I’ll be bound he hev never seen
the like of her!” with a joyous note of maternal pride.
The pipe turned around in Tubal Sims’s mouth, and the charge of fire
and ashes and tobacco fell unheeded on the floor. Like a voice in
his ears the echo of that strange cry of the sleeper came to him out
of the deep darkness of the stormy midnight, with the problem of its
occult significance, with the terror of its possible meaning, and every
other consideration slipped from his consciousness. The perception
of the mental trouble expressed in the man’s face, its confirmation
even in the trifle of the unbaited hook, returned to Sims, with the
determination that he must know more of him or get him out of the Cove
before Euphemia’s return. “The man’s dad-burned good-lookin’,” he
said to himself, perceiving the fact for the first time, since it had
a personal application. “An’ Phemie be powerful book-l’arned, an’ be
always scornin’ the generality o’ the young cusses round about, kase
she knows more ’n they do. Mebbe he knows more ’n she do.” He pondered
for a moment on the improbability that daughter Euphemia’s knowledge,
acquired at the little schoolhouse where the “show” had been held,
was exceeded by the fund of information stored in the brain-pan of
any single individual since the world began. At all events, anxiety,
complications, familiar association in the sanctions of the fireside,
impended. This was a man with a secret, and, innocent or guilty, a
stranger to his host. He must be quick, for Mrs. Sims--transparent
Mrs. Sims!--was even now evolving methods by which Euphemia might be
summoned peremptorily from Piomingo Cove, and canvassing means of
transportation. She chuckled even amidst her anxieties. The juggler,
in all his experience,--and his conversation now and again gave
intimations that he was a man of cities and had seen much folk in his
time,--had never viewed aught like Euphemia, and if scheming might
avail, he should not leave Etowah Cove till this crowning mercy was
vouchsafed him.
Whether Tubal Sims vaunted his wife’s mental qualities or derided
them,--and his estimate swung like a pendulum from one side to the
other, as her views coincided with his or differed from them,--he knew
that on this topic she was immovable. To pierce the juggler’s heart by
a dart still more mystic and subtle than aught his skill could wield
was her motive. Help must come, if at all, from without the domestic
circle. He waited, doubtful, until after dinner, and as he looked about
for his hat, his resolution taken after much brooding thought, he noted
a change in the weather-signs. The wind was blowing crisply through
the open passage. The mists had lifted. The river, dully gurgling in
the dreary early morning, had begun anew its lapsing sibilant song
that seemed a concomitant of the sunshine; for the slanting afternoon
glitter was on the water here and there, and high on the mountain side
all the various green possible to spring foliage was elicited by the
broad expanse of the golden sheen that came down from the west. He
noted, as he took his way along the road, that the recumbent figure
once again on the ledge below was not asleep, for the juggler lifted
his hand as the rocks above began to reflect the beams on the water in
a tremulous shimmer, and drew his hat further over his eyes. “Ye mought
hev better comp’ny ’n yer thoughts, Mr. Showman, I’m a-thinkin’,” Tubal
Sims muttered, and he mended his pace.
His path, much trodden, wended along about the base of the range, and
finally, by a series of zigzag curves, began to ascend the slope. The
clouds, white, tenuous, were flying high now. The sun had grown hot.
Already the moisture was dried from the wayside foliage of laurel as
he came upon the projecting spur of the range where the lime-burners
worked. The logs, protected from the rain by a ledge of the cliff,
had been piled anew with layers of limestone, and the primitive
process of calcination had begun once more. Here and there were great
heaps of fragments of rock placed close at hand, and numerous trees
had been felled for fuel and lay at length on the ground, yet so
dense was the forest that the loss was not appreciable to the eye.
The stumps and boles of these trees furnished seats for a number of
lounging mountaineers, in every attitude that might express a listless
sloth. Those who had come to work felt that they had earned a respite
from labor, and those who had come to talk hastened to utilize the
opportunity. Their conversation was something more brisk than usual,
accelerated by interest in a new and uncommon topic. As Sims had
foreseen, the events of the previous evening occupied every thought,
and several of the group experienced a freshened joy in detailing them
anew to Peter Knowles, who alone of all the neighborhood for a circuit
of twenty miles had been absent. He had heard every incident repeatedly
rehearsed without showing a sign of flagging interest. Now and then
he bent his brows and looked down at the quicklime scattered on the
ground, and silently meditated on its capacity to destroy flesh and
bone and on the juggler’s unhallowed curiosity.
“A body dunno how ter git his own cornsent ter b’lieve his own
eyesight,” one of the men reflectively averred. The interval since
witnessing the astounding feats of the prestidigitator had afforded
space for rumination, and but served to deepen the impression of
possibilities set at naught and miracles enacted.
“That thar man air in league with Satan,” declared another, “Surely,
surely he air.” He accentuated his words with his long lean forefinger
shaken impressively at the group.
“Ye mark my words,” said Peter Knowles suddenly, still eying the refuse
of quicklime on the ground, “no good hev kem inter the Cove with that
thar man.”
“Whar’d he kem from, ennyhows?” demanded the first speaker.
“Whar’d he kem from?” repeated Knowles, peering over the great kiln.
“From hell, my frien’,--straight from hell.”
He had the combined drone and whine which he esteemed appropriate to
the clerical office; for although he had never experienced a “call,”
he deemed himself singularly fitted for that vocation by virtue of a
disposition to hold forth at great length to any one who would listen
to his views on religious themes,--and in this region, where time is
plenty and industry scanty, he seldom lacked listeners,--a conscience
ever sensitive to the sins of other people, and great freedom in the
use of such Scriptural terms as are debarred to persons not naturally
profane or suffering under the stress of extreme rage.
“Waal, sir!” exclaimed old man Cobbs, sitting on a stump and gently
nursing his knee. He spoke with a voice of deep reprehension, and as
simple an acceptance of the possibility of hailing from the place in
question as if it were geographically extant.
Ormsby, who had been standing leaning on an axe, silently listening,
laughed slightly at this,--an incredulous laugh. “Folks ez git ter that
kentry don’t git back in a hurry,” he drawled negligently, but with
a manifest satisfaction in the circumstance, as if he knew of sundry
departed wights whom he esteemed well placed.
“How d’ye know they don’t?” demanded Peter Knowles. “Ain’t ye never
read the Scriptures enough ter sense them lines, ‘Satan was a-walkin’
up and down through the yearth,’ ye blunderin’ buzzard, an’ _he_ fell
from heaven?”
The young fellow’s robust figure was clearly defined against the
western sky. He swung his axe nonchalantly now, for to be an adept
in reading and remembering the Scriptures was not the height of his
ambition. Nevertheless, the idea of the possibility of being in the
orbit, as it were, of an earthly stroll of the Prince of Darkness
roused him to argument and insistence on a less terrifying solution of
the mystery.
“He telled it ter me ez he kem from Happy Valley,” he volunteered.
The elders of the party stared at one another. The fire roared suddenly
as a log broke, burned in twain; the limestone fragments, still crude,
went rattling down into the crevices its fall had made. Peter Knowles’s
arm, with the free ministerial gesticulation which he was wont to copy,
fixed the absurdity upon Ormsby even before he spoke.
“Don’t ye know that thar Philistine ain’t got sech speech ez them ez
lives in Happy Valley, nor thar clothes, nor thar raisin’, nor thar
manners, nor thar ways, nor thar--nuthin’? Don’t you-uns sense that?”
“I ’lowed ez much ter him,” replied Ormsby, a trifle browbeaten by the
seniority of his interlocutor and the difficulty of the subject. “I
up-ed an’ said, ‘Ye ain’t nowise like folks ez live in Happy Valley.
Ter look at ye, I’d set it down fur true ez ye hed never been in the
shadder o’ Chilhowee all yer days.’”
“An’ what did he say, bub?” demanded old man Cobbs gently, after a
moment of waiting.
“Great Gosh, yes!” exclaimed Peter Knowles explosively. “We-uns ain’t
a-waitin’ hyar ter hear you-uns tell yer talk; ennybody could hev said
that an’ mo’. What did the man say?”
Ormsby turned doubtfully toward the descending sun and the reddening
sky. “We-uns war a-huntin’, me an’ that juggler. I seen him yestiddy
mornin’. I went down thar ter Mis’ Sims’ an’ happened ter view him. An’
I loant him my brother’s gun. An’ whenst I said that ’bout his looks
an’ sech, we war a-huntin’, an’ he ’peared not ter know thar war enny
Happy Valley ’way over yander by Chilhowee. An’ I tuk him up high on
the mounting whar he could look over fur off an’ see the Rich Woods an’
Happy Valley, an’--an’”--He paused.
“An’ what did he say?” inquired Knowles eagerly.
Ormsby looked embarrassed. “He jes’ say,” he went on suddenly, as
if with an effort, “he jes’ say, ‘Oh, Dr. Johnson!’ an’ bust out
a-laffin’. I dunno what the critter meant.”
Once more Ormsby turned, swinging his axe in his strong right hand, and
glanced absently over the landscape.
The sun was gone. The mountains, darkly glooming, rose high above the
Cove on every side, seeming to touch the translucent amber sky that,
despite the sunken sun, conserved an effect of illumination heightened
by contrast with the fringes of hemlock and pine, that had assumed a
sombre purple hue, waving against its crystalline concave. In this
suffusion of reflected color, rather than in the medium of daylight,
he beheld the scanty fields below in the funnel-like basin; for this
projecting spur near the base of the range gave an outlook over the
lower levels at hand. Some cows, he could discern, were still wending
homeward along an undulating red clay road, which rose and fell till
the woods intervened. The woods were black. Night was afoot there
amongst the shadowy boughs, for all the golden glow of the feigning
sky. The evening mists were adrift along the ravines. Ever and anon
the flames flickered out, red and yellow, from the heap of logs. Not a
sound stirred the group as they pondered on this strange reply, till
Ormsby said reflectively, “The juggler be toler’ble good comp’ny,
though,--nuthin’ like the devil an’ sech; leastwise, so much ez I know
’bout Satan,”--he seemed to defer to the superior acquaintanceship of
Knowles. “This hyar valley-man talks powerful pleasant; an’ he kin
sing,--jes’ set up an’ sing like a plumb red-headed mock-in’bird,
that’s what! You-uns hearn him sing at the show,”--he turned from
Knowles to appeal to the rest of the group.
“Did he ’pear ter you-uns, whilst huntin’, ter try enny charms an’
spells on the wild critters?” asked Knowles.
“They didn’t work ef he did!” exclaimed Jack Ormsby, with a great gush
of laughter that startled the echoes into weird unmirthful response.
“He shot one yallerhammer arter travelin’ nigh ten mile ter git him.”
After a pause, “I gin him the best chance at a deer I ever hed. I never
see a feller hev the ‘buck ager’ so bad. He never witched that deer. He
shot plumb two feet too high. She jes’ went a-bouncin’ by him down the
mounting,--bouncin’ yit, I reckon! But he kin shoot toler’ble fair at
a mark.” The ready laughter again lighted his face. “He ’lows he likes
a mark ter shoot at kase it stands still. He’s plumb pleasant comp’ny
sure.”
“Waal, he ain’t been sech powerful pleasant comp’ny down ter my house,”
protested Tubal Sims. “Ain’t got a word ter say, an’ ’pears like he
ain’t got the heart ter eat a mouthful o’ vittles. Yander he hev been
a-lyin’ flat on them wet rocks all ter-day, with no mo’ keer o’ the
rheumatics ’n ef he war a bullfrog,--a-feeshin’ in the ruver with a
hook ’thout no bait on it.”
“What’d he ketch?” demanded one of the men, with a quick glance of
alarm. Miracles for the purpose of exhibition and cutting a dash they
esteemed far less repellent to the moral sense than the use of uncommon
powers to serve the ordinary purposes of daily life.
“Pleurisy, ef he got his deserts,” observed the disaffected host. “He
caught nuthin’ with ez much sense ez a stickle-back. ’Pears ter me he
ain’t well, nohow. He groaned a power in his sleep las’ night, arter
the show. An’”--he felt he ventured on dangerous ground--“he talked,
too.”
There was a significant silence. “That thar man hev got suthin’ on his
mind,” muttered Peter Knowles.
“I be powerful troubled myself,” returned the level-headed Sims weakly.
“I oughtn’t ter hev tuk him in,--him a stranger, though”--he remembered
the hospitable text in time for a flimsy self-justification. “But ’twar
a-stormin’ powerful, and he ’peared plumb beat out. I ’lowed that night
he war goin’ inter some sort’n fever or dee-lerium. I put him inter
the roof-room, an’ he went ter bed ez soon ez he could git thar. But
the nex’ day he war ez fraish an’ gay ez a jaybird.”
“What’s he talk ’bout whenst sleepin’?” asked Peter Knowles, his covert
glance once more reverting to the refuse of quicklime at his feet.
“Suthin’ he never lays his tongue ter whenst wakin’, I’ll be bound,”
replied Tubal Sims precipitately. Then he hesitated. This disclosure
was, he felt, a flagrant breach of hospitality. What right had he to
listen to the disjointed exclamations of his guest in his helplessness
as he slept, place his own interpretation upon them, and retail them to
others for their still more inimical speculation? Jane Ann Sims,--how
he would have respected her judgment had she been a man!--he was sure,
would not have given the words a second thought. But then her habit of
mind was incredulous. Parson Greenought often told her that he feared
her faith was not sufficient to take her to heaven. “I be dependin’ on
suthin’ better’n that, pa’son,” she would smilingly rejoin. “I ain’t
lookin’ ter my own pore mind an’ my own wicked heart fur holp. An’ ye
mark my words, I’ll be the fust nangel ye shake han’s with when ye git
inside the golden door.” And the parson, impaled on his own weapons,
could only suggest that they should sing a hymn together, which they
did,--Jane Ann Sims much the louder of the two.
Admirable woman! she had but a single weakness, and this Tubal Cain
Sims was aware that he shared. With the returning thought of their
household idol, Euphemia, every consideration imposing reticence
vanished.
“Last night,” he began suddenly, “I war so conflusticated with the
goin’s-on ez I couldn’t sleep fur a while. An’ ez I sot downsteers
afore the fire, I could but take notice o’ how oneasy this man ’peared
in his sleep up in the roof-room. He sighed an’ groaned like suthin’
in agony. An’ then he says, so painful, ‘But the one who lives--oh,
what can I do--the one who lives! fur his life!--his life!--his life!’”
He paused abruptly to mark the petrified astonishment on the group of
faces growing white in the closing dusk.
An owl began to hoot in the bosky recesses far up the slope. At the
sound, carrying far in the twilight stillness, a hound bayed from the
door of the little cabin in the Cove, by the river. A light, stellular
in the gloom that hung about the lower levels, suddenly sprung up in
the window. A tremulous elongated reflection shimmered in the shallows
close under the bank where the juggler had been lying. Was he there
yet? Sims wondered, quivering with the excitement of the moment.
His anxiety was not quelled, but a great relief came upon him when
Peter Knowles echoed his own thought, which seemed thus the natural
sequence of the event, and not some far-fetched fantasy.
“That thar man hev killed somebody, ez sure ez ye live!” exclaimed
Peter Knowles. “‘But the one who lives!’ An’ who is the one who died?”
“Jes’ so, jes’ so,” interpolated Sims, reassured to see his own mental
process so definitely duplicated in the thoughts of a man held to be of
experienced and just judgment, and much regarded in the community.
“He be a-runnin’ from jestice,” resumed Knowles. “He ain’t no juggler,
ez he calls hisself.”
There was a general protest.
“Shucks, Pete, ye oughter seen him swaller a bay’net.”
“An’ Mis’ Sims tole him she’d resk her shears on it, she jes’ felt so
reckless an’ plumb kerried away. An’ he swallered them, too, an’ then
tuk ’em out’n his throat, sharp ez ever.”
“An’ he swallered a paper o’ needles an’ a spool o’ thread, an’ brung
’em out’n his mouth all threaded.”
There was a delighted laugh rippling round the circle.
“Look-a-hyar, my frien’s,” remonstrated Peter Knowles in a solemn,
sepulchral voice, “I never viewed none o’ these doin’s, but ye air all
’bleeged ter know ez they air on-possible, the devices o’ the devil.
An’ hyar ye be, perfessin’ Christians, a-laffin’ at them wiles ez air
laid ter delude the onwary.”
There was a general effort to recover a sobriety of demeanor, and
one of the men then observed gravely that on the occasion when these
wonders were exhibited Parson Benias Greenought taxed the performer
with this supposition.
“Waal,” remarked Ormsby, “ye air ’bleeged ter hev tuk notice, ef ye war
thar las’ night, ez old Benias never moved toe or toe-nail till arter
all the jinks war most over. He seen nigh all thar war ter see ’fore he
’lowed how the sinners war enj’yin’ tharse’fs, an’ called up the devil
ter len’ a han’.”
“What the man say?” demanded Peter Knowles.
“He ’peared cornsider’ble set back a-fust, an’ then he tried ter laff
it off,” replied Gideon Beck. “He ’lowed he could l’arn sech things ter
folks ez he had l’arnt ’em, too.”
“Now tell me one thing,” argued Peter Knowles; “how’s a man goin’ ter
l’arn a pusson ter put a persimmon seed in a pail o’ yearth, an’ lay a
cloth over it, an’ sing some foolishness, an’ take off’n the cloth, an’
thar’s a persimmon shoot with a root ez long ez my han’ a-growin’ in
that yearth?”
There were sundry gravely shaken heads.
“Mis’ Jernigan jes’ went plumb inter the high-strikes, she got so
skeered, an’ they hed ter take her home in the wagon,” said Beck.
“Old man Jernigan hed none; the las’ time I viewed him he war a-tryin’
ter swaller old Mis’ Jernigan’s big shears hisse’f,” retorted Ormbsy.
“Mis’ Jernigan ain’t never got the rights o’ herself yit, an’ her cow
hev done gone dry, too,” observed Beck.
“Tell me, my brethren, what’s them words mean,--‘the one who lives’?”
insisted Peter Knowles significantly. “Sure’s ye air born, thar’s
another verse an’ chapter ter that sayin’. Who war the one who died?”
Once more awe settled down upon the little group. The wind had sprung
up. Now and again pennons of flame flaunted out from the great heap of
logs and stones, and threw livid bars of light athwart the landscape,
which pulsated visibly as the blaze rose and fell,--now seeming
strangely distinct and near at hand, now receding into the darkness
and distance. Mystery affiliated with the time and place, and there
was scant responsiveness to Ormsby’s protest as he once more sought to
befriend the absent juggler.
“I can’t git my cornsent ter b’lieve ez thar be enny dead one. I reckon
the feller war talkin’ ’bout his kemin’ powerful nigh dyin’ hisself.
He ’lowed ter me ez he hed a mighty great shock jes’ afore he kem
hyar,--what made him so diff’ent a-fust.”
“Shocked by lightning?” demanded Peter Knowles dubiously.
“I reckon so; never hearn on no other kind.”
“Waal, now,” said Tubal Sims, who had sought during this discussion to
urge his views on the coterie, “I ’low that the Cove ought not ter take
up with sech jubious doin’s ez these.”
“Lawsy massy!” exclaimed Beck, with the uplifted eyebrows of derision,
“las’ night you-uns an’ Mis’ Sims too ’peared plumb kerried away, jes’
bodaciously dee-lighted, with the juggler an’ all his pay-formances!”
There is naught in all our moral economy which can suffer a change
without discredit and disparagement, barring what is known as a change
of heart. It is a clumsy and awkward mental evolution at best, as the
turncoat in politics, the apologist for discarded friendships, the
fickle-minded in religious doctrines, know to their cost. The process
of veering is attended invariably with a poignant mortification, as
if one had warranted one’s opinions infallible, and to endure till
time shall be no more. Tubal Cain Sims experienced all the ignominious
sensations known as “eatin’ crow,” as he sought to qualify his
satisfaction of the previous evening, and reconcile it to his complete
change of sentiment now, without giving his true reason. It would
involve scant courtesy to the absent Euphemia to intimate his fears
lest she admire too much the juggler, and it might excite ridicule to
suggest his certainty that the juggler would admire her far too much.
Sometimes, indeed, he doubted if other people--that is, above the age
of twenty-five--entertained the rapturous estimate of Euphemia, which
was a subject on which he and Jane Ann Sims never differed.
“I did,--I did,” he sputtered. “Me an’ Jane Ann nare one never seen no
harm in the pay-formance. An’ Jane Ann don’t know nuthin’ contrarious
yit, kase I ain’t tole her,--she bein’ a ’oman, an’ liable ter talk
free an’ let her tongue git a-goin’; she dunno whar ter stop. A man
oughtn’t ter tell his wife sech ez he aims ter go no furder,” he added
discursively.
“’Thout he wants all the Cove ter be a-gabblin’ over it nex’ day,”
assented a husband of three experiments. “I know wimmin. Lawsy massy!
I know ’em now.” He shook his head lugubriously, as if his education
in feminine quirks and wiles had gone hard with him, and he could
willingly have dispensed with a surplusage of learning.
“But arter I hearn them strange words,” resumed Tubal Cain Sims,--“them
strange words, so painful an’ pitiful-spoken,--I drawed the same idee
ez Peter Knowles thar. I ’lowed the juggler war some sort’n evil-doer
agin the law,--though he didn’t look like it ter me.”
“He did ter me; he featured it from the fust,” Knowles protested, with
a stern drawing down of his forbidding face.
There was a momentary pause while they all seemed to meditate on the
evidence afforded by the personal appearance of the juggler.
“I be afeard,” continued Sims, glancing at Knowles, “like Pete say,
he hev c’mmitted murder an’ be fleein’ from the law. An’ I be a
law-abidin’ citizen--an’--an’--he can’t stay at my house.”
There was silence. No one was interested in the impeccability of Tubal
Cain Sims’s house. It was his castle. He was free to say who should
come and who should go. His own responsibility was its guarantee.
It is a pathetic circumstance in human affairs that the fact of how
little one’s personal difficulties and anxieties and turmoils of mind
count to one’s friends can only be definitely ascertained by the
experiment made in the thick of these troubles.
With a sudden return of his wonted perspicacity, Sims said, “That thar
man oughter be gin notice ter leave. I call on ye all--ye all live
round ’bout the Cove--ter git him out’n it.”
There was a half-articulate grumble of protest and surprise.
“It’s yer business ter make him go, ef yer don’t want him in yer
house,” said Peter Knowles, looking loweringly at Sims.
“I ain’t got nuthin’ agin him,” declared Sims excitedly, holding both
empty palms upward. “I can’t say, ‘Git out; ye talk in yer sleep, an’
ye don’t talk ter suit me!’ _But_,” fixing the logic upon them with
weighty emphasis and a significant pause, “you-uns all b’lieve ez he
air in league with Satan, an’ his jinks air deviltries an’ sech. An’ so
be, ye _ought_ ter make him take hisself an’ his conjurin’s off from
hyar ’fore he witches the craps, or spirits away the lime, or tricks
the mill, or--He ought ter be gin hours ter cl’ar out.”
Peter Knowles roused himself to argument. He had developed a vivid
curiosity concerning the juggler. The suggestion of the devil’s
agency was a far cry to his fears,--be it remembered he had not seen
the bayonet swallowed!--and he had phenomenal talents for contrariety,
and graced the opposition with great persistence and powers of
contradiction.
“Bein’ ez ye hev reason ter suspect that man o’ murder or sech, we-uns
ain’t got the _right_ ter give him hours ter leave. Ye ain’t got the
_right_ ter turn him out’n yer house ter escape from the off’cers o’
the law.”
The crowd, always on the alert for a sensation, pricked up their
willing ears. “Naw, ye ain’t,” more than one asseverated.
“’Twould jes’ be holpin’ him on his run from jestice,” declared Beck.
“Further he gits, further the sher’ff’ll hev ter foller, an’ mo’ chance
o’ losin’ him.”
“They be on his track now, I reckon,” said old Josiah Cobbs dolorously.
“It’s the jewty o’ we-uns in the Cove,” resumed Peter Knowles, “ter
keep a stric’ watch on him an’ see ter it he don’t git away ’fore the
sher’ff tracks him hyar.”
Tubal Sims’s blood ran cold. A man sitting daily at his table under
the espionage of all the Cove as a murderer! A man sleeping in his
best feather-bed--and the way he floundered in its unaccustomed depths
nothing but a porpoise could emulate--till the sheriff of the county
should come to hale him out to the ignominious quarters of the common
jail! Jane Ann Sims--how his heart sank as he thought that had he first
taken counsel of her he would not now be in a position to receive
his orders from Peter Knowles!--to be in daily friendly association
with this strange guest, to be sitting at home now calmly stitching
cuffs for a man who might be wearing handcuffs before daylight!
Euphemia--when he thought of Euphemia he rose precipitately from the
rock on which he was seated. In twenty-four hours Euphemia should
be in Buncombe County, North Carolina, where his sister lived. The
juggler should never see her; for who knew what lengths Jane Ann Sims’s
vicarious love of admiration would carry her? If the man were but on
his knees, what cared she what the Cove thought of him? And Euphemia
should never see the juggler! Tubal Sims hurried down the darkening
way, hearing without heeding the voices of his late comrades, all
dispersing homeward by devious paths,--now loud in the still twilight,
now veiled and indistinct in the distance. The chirring of the myriad
nocturnal insects was rising from every bush, louder, more confident,
refreshed by the recent rain, and the frogs chanted by the riverside.
He had reached the lower levels at last. He glanced up and saw the
first timid palpitant star spring forth with a glitter into the
midst of the neutral-tinted ether, and then, as if affrighted at the
vast voids of the untenanted skies, disappear so elusively that the
eye might not mark the spot where that white crystalline flake had
trembled. It was early yet. He strode up to his own house, whence the
yellow light glowed from the window. He stopped suddenly, his heart
sinking like lead. There on the step of the passage sat Euphemia, her
elbow on her knee, her chin in her hand, her eyes pensively fixed on
the uncertain kindling of that pioneer star once more blazing out the
road in the evening sky.