Euphemia’s interest did not relax. What strange perversity of fate was
it that this little clod of humanity, so humbly placed, upon the very
ground of existence, as it were, should have been instinct with that
high, keen, fine appreciation of learning for its own sake?--for she
knew naught of its more sordid rewards, and could not have dreamed that
the relative estimation of these values, even by those of happiest
opportunities, is often reversed, the reward making the worth of the
learning. She did not realize an aspiration. Her wings simply fluttered
because she felt the impulse to rise. Royce could not have conceived
of aught more densely ignorant. He had known no mind more naturally
intelligent. Its acquisitiveness hardly differentiated its objects;
it only grasped them. The Third Reader bade fair to become a burden.
He could scarcely put his foot on the sill of the passage before he
heard the flutter of its leaves, and the much-thumbed, dog-eared old
volume was offered to his hand with the restrained enthusiasm of the
remark, “Ye’ll hev time ter read a piece afore dinner,” or supper,
or bedtime, as the case might be. There was a certain embarrassment
in these symposia. Mrs. Sims, it is true, looked on smilingly, with
her vicarious affection shining in her eyes, but a chance question
developed the fact that she understood hardly one word out of ten, the
vocabulary of ignorance being of most constricting limitations; while
Tubal Sims openly and gruffly sneered down the performance, tossing his
shock head at every conclusion, and protesting that the young man read
so fast, an’ with so many ups an’ downs, an’ with such a clippin’ an’
bob-tailin’ of his words that it was plumb ridic’lous. For him, give
him good Scriptur’ readin’, slow an’ percise, like the l’arned men in
the pul-_pit_. Did Pa’son Tynes read in that flibberty-gibberty way?
He reckoned not. And he wagged his head as if he would fain take his
oath on that, the spirit of affirmation so possessed him. Moreover,
Royce did not consider this Third Reader a particularly meritorious
compilation; he often flung its pages back and forth in vain search of
a satisfactory selection, and doubtless would have declined to waste
the merits of his rendering on the least vapid had it not been for
the submissive, expectant face of Euphemia, as she sat waiting in her
chair, bolt upright, school-wise, with her hands clasped in her lap,
the subdued radiance of her eyes capable of making a much wiser man
do a more foolish thing. For his own sake--he did not dream of the
possibility of the development of her taste--he would fain have had a
wider choice that his delicate perceptions might suffer no despite, and
one day he bethought himself of the resources of memory. The young
people were both down at the mill. Some domestic errand had brought
Euphemia there, and he chanced to be on a ledge near at hand languidly
essaying to fish. He asked her a question touching the further course
of the stream and the locality of a notable fishing-ground further
down. As she replied, she paused and stood expectantly in the doorway,
dangling her green sunbonnet by the string.
The mill was silent, as was its wont; the afternoon sunlight glinted
through the dense laurel and the sparse spring foliage of the deciduous
trees; the great cliff on a ledge of which Royce was standing beetled
above the smooth flow of the stream. Many a fissure broke the massive
walls of stone; here herbage grew and vines swung, and the mould was
moist and fragrant; the perfume of the wild cherry tree in a niche
on the summit filled all the air. Close by, a great sycamore which
had fallen in a storm stretched from one bank to the other: its white
bark and bare branches were reflected in the clear water with wondrous
fidelity; even a redbird with his tufted crest, as he fluttered and
strutted up and down the white boughs, now and again uttering sharp
cries of alarm; and even a nest in a crotch, and his sober-hued little
brown-feathered mate with her head, devoid of any decoration in the way
of unnecessary and vainglorious tufts, stretched far out in anxiety and
trembling.
Euphemia pointed out these reflections in the water, and after another
long pause, “Ef we-uns hed the book now, ye could read,” she sighed
regretfully.
He played his line negligently; he cast his eyes to the far, far sky,
as if his memory dwelt on high. Then he began to recite. The wind
stirred in the trees; on the dark lustrous water a shimmer of sunshine
fluctuated like some ethereal golden mesh. Once, the joy of spring and
the bliss of love and the buoyancy of life overcame the fear in the
redbird’s heart, and he sang out suddenly, as if he too would have to
do with the poetry of thought and the melody of utterance, and the
little brown bird in the nest listened in admiring silence. All the
time Royce was conscious of Euphemia’s amazed eyes on his face; when
he had finished he could scarce trust himself to meet the mute rapture
of her gaze. He looked down at his futile line dragging on the water,
and among the sounds of the sibilantly lapsing currents and the leaves
wafted by the wind he heard her long-drawn sigh of the relaxing of the
tension of delight, and he turned and met her eyes with a laugh in his
own in which there was only a gentle mirth.
After this he had no peace. He was reminded of the importunacy of
juvenile consumers of stories, whose interest seems whetted by the
incapacity to read and thus purvey romance for their own delectation.
He found it conducive to his entertainment to relapse into prose, and
he rehearsed many a work of fiction from memory, failing seldom of the
details, but in such lapses as must needs come boldly supplying the
deficit by invention. It is true that in these recitals Euphemia was
debarred the graces of the style of the authors, but then the juggler
thought he had a very good style of his own. All this involved long
digressions, historical, geographical, astronomical, political, to
explain the status of the personnel or the _locus in quo_; and while he
talked her eyes never left his face. He had a habit of looking straight
at his interlocutor, whoever this might be, and it was thus, perhaps,
that he could with such distinctness conjure the image of those eyes
of hers upon the retina of his mind at moments of darkness or absence
or reverie, as he would. Much that he said she could not at first
comprehend, and again he was reminded of the inquisitors of the nursery
in the multitude and unsparingness of her questions; only, so searching
and keen and apt were these that sometimes there was an experience of
surprise and pleasure on his part.
“I tell you, Phemie,” he said one day, “you are most awfully clever to
have seen that.”
The blood rushed to her cheeks in the joy, the triumph, of his
commendation. Pride, the love of preëminence, the possession of worthy
endowment,--these sentiments were her soul, the ethereal essence of her
life. She had no definite ambition; she had no definite mental paths.
She had groped in the primeval wildernesses of mind, as if there had
been no splendid line of pioneers who had blazed out a road for all the
centuries to come.
In the midst of his utter idleness, in the turmoil of his troublous
thoughts, this review of the literature that had been dear to him was
at first a resource and a distraction, and later it became a luxury.
He began to be only less eager than she to resume the discourse where
it had left off. Thus it was that he joined her in sundry domestic
duties, so that while mechanically busy they might be mentally free, in
Scotland, or Norway, or Russia, or on the wild, wild seas. He was wont
to go with her to drive up the cows; and surely never in such company
did the old fancies tread this New World soil,--knights in armor and
ladies fair and all the glittering hordes of chivalry crowding the
narrow aisles of the wilderness, and following hard the fairies and
demons of many an antique legend. Once on the summit of a crag he
looked out upon the world beyond the Cove, for the first time since
his arrival here. Fair, oh, very fair it was, in the yellow haze of
the declining springtide sunshine, and far it stretched in promissory
lengths, like all the vague possibilities of the future. Parallel with
the massive green heights near at hand ran others growing amethystine
of hue, showing many a gray cliff and many a gleam of silver mountain
streams winding amongst the divergent spurs and ravines and coves.
Beyond lay the levels of a great valley, and here were brown stretches
of ploughed fields, and here gleamed the emerald of winter wheat, and
here swept the splendid free curves of the Tennessee River, flowing
the color of burnished copper, so did the sunlight idealize the
hue of the spring floods, between the keen high tints of the green
foliage fringing its banks where the rocks failed. To the north a
thousand minor ridges continued the parallelism which marks the great
mountain system, and these were azure of an indescribably exquisite and
languorous shade, rising into a silver haze that was itself like an
illumination. And where it seemed that the limits of vision must surely
be reached, the abrupt steeps of the eastern side of Walden’s Ridge,
stretching diagonally across the whole breadth of the State, shadowy
purple, reflecting naught of the sunset, rose against the west, and
there the sun, all alive with scarlet fire, was tending downward, with
only one vermilion flake of a cloud in all the blue and pearly-green
and amber crystal sky. He paused on the verge of the cliff and gazed
at it all, while she stood and looked expectantly at him. Perhaps with
her woman’s intuition she divined that this moment was in some sort a
crisis in his mind. She was inexplicably agitated, breathless. But as
he gazed his heart did not stir the faster. Here and there he marked
a brilliant slant of glitter where a steeple caught the sun, now to
the north and again to the southwest, beyond a space a hand might seem
to cover, but which he knew measured fifty or a hundred miles. These
indicated towns. There beat the full pulses of the life he had left;
and still at sight of them his heart did not plunge. He looked down at
her with an expression in his eyes all new to them and which she could
not interpret. Nevertheless it set her happy heart a-flutter. Nothing
was said of the view, and with one accord they sat down on the verge
of the cliff. His boots dangled over the sheer spaces a thousand feet
below, but he could not repress a shiver at her attitude as she leaned
over the brink of the precipice.
“I wish you would move farther back from the edge,” he said, with a
corrugated brow. “I am afraid you may slip over, you are so little,
and”--
“That would put an e-end to the readings mighty quick,” she said, as
she still leaned over to peer down at the tops of the trees in the
valley, and he turned sick and dizzy at her very gesture. He hardly
dared to speak lest an unconsidered word might flutter her nerves and
cause her to lose her hold. She had no intention of thus teasing his
vicarious fright, but drew back presently to a safe distance. “Wouldn’t
it?” she asked, recurring to her remark as she executed this manœuvre.
“You mean if you should slip over into this dreadful abyss? I should
never, never have the heart to read another word as long as I should
live!” he protested.
He caught the look of exultant joy in her surprised and widely opened
eyes for one moment, and then she turned them discreetly on the
splendid vastness of that great landscape in its happiest mood. He
realized that she had no difficulty in comprehending the obvious
inference. Her experience as a rural beauty and belle heretofore had
doubtless served to acquaint her with the hyperbole of a lover’s
language. There were Haines and Ormsby within his own knowledge, and
he could not guess how many suitors hitherto,--confound them all! he
muttered as he thought of them. He had not intended to win her heart.
In view of her feeling for Owen Haines he had not deemed it possible.
With the suspicion, which he would fain call realization, for it had
all the importunacy of hope, he experienced a rush of elation, of soft
delight, which amazed him, while it almost swept him off his feet. Had
not he too fallen in love during his “readings”?--for thus they both
called his recitals. He knew that he had only to look into her eyes to
make his heart flutter; but then it was a susceptible heart and easily
stirred. She had grown dear to him in many ways, and he had learned
this even when he did not dream of other result of their companionship
than the broadcast impression that he lingered here for her sake. He
began to strive to separate his ideal of womanhood from those merely
arbitrary values which fashion and artificial life bestow. Is it a
French man milliner only who establishes the criterion of beauty? He
had but to glance at the face and form beside him. She was beautiful;
she was good; she was of a singularly strong and individual character;
her natural mind was quick and retentive and discerning, and of a
remarkable aptness. She was so endowed with a keen perception of real
excellence that knowledge had but to open its doors to her, for she
possessed as a gift the capacity of worthy choice. She loved with
spontaneous affection those things which other people are trained to
love; she seized on the best of her own devout accord, unaware of aught
of significance save her own preference. She could easily acquire all
he could teach her. With her quick grasp and greed of learning there
would soon be little disparity. He began to meditate on the arbitrary
methods of appraisement in the world. How sadly do we richly rate,
not our own preference, but that which is valued by others: hence the
vyings, the heart-burnings, the ignoble strife, the false pride, of
many mundane miseries. He knew her real identity. Her nature would
befit any station. Her beauty,--even the reference to the immutable
standards of his own world could avail no detraction here,--it was
preëminent. Having lived his life in one sphere, why should he, being
dead to it forever, let its rigid conventionalities follow him into
his new world? As to the coming years and the monotony of rounding out
a long life in this narrow circuit, let the coming years take thought
for themselves. For a moment the words pressed to his lips. Then he
realized that this was no ordinary self-committal. To pledge himself
to marry a woman of her degree in life--an ignorant mountain girl of
an inexpressible rusticity and lack of sophistication, as far removed
from a comprehension of the conventions in which he had been reared and
the cultivated ideals still dear to him as if she were a denizen of a
different planet--was a serious step indeed; he winced, and was silent.
This day marked a change. When they reached home the sky was red, and a
white star was alight in the zenith. Spot stood lowing at the bars, and
Mrs. Sims’s dimples deeply indented her plumpness as she addressed the
young people in pretended reproof.
“I sent you-uns arter Spot. From now on I be a-goin’ ter sen’ Spot
arter you-uns.”
Summoned by the sound of her chuckle out came briskly Tubal Cain,
venomous with fault-finding and repining. “Hyar ye be, Euphemy Sims,”
he said, more harshly than he had ever before spoken to her, “a-foolin’
away yer time huntin’ fur a cow what war standin’ at the bars sence
long ’fore sundown, ez sensible ez grown folks, an’ Pa’son Tynes
a-settin’ an’ a-settin’ hyar waitin’ ter see ye.”
Euphemia answered with an affronted coolness: “Pa’son Tynes? An’ what
do I keer ter see Pa’son Tynes fur?”
“Pa’son Tynes keer ter see you-uns, Phemie: that’s what makes yer dad
hop roun’ like a pea on a hot shovel,” said Mrs. Sims.
Royce began to have an illuminating sense that “Daddy Sims” was
flattered to have so distinguished a guest as Pa’son Tynes, with his
widespread oratorical fame, awaiting by the hour Euphemia’s return,
and that he could hardly forgive his idol that these precious moments
had been wasted in the juggler’s society. Royce perceived the farcical
antithesis of the theory which he had been arguing all the afternoon,
and realized that there are arbitrary gradations in less sophisticated
society than that on which he had predicated the proposition. He felt
very small indeed, being thus called upon to look up to Pa’son Tynes.
“I dunno what he be wantin’ ter see _me_ fur,” said Euphemia, still
with the resentment of being esteemed dilatory, and evidently
apprehending a purpose in the call other than the enjoyment of her
conversation.
“Me nuther,” chuckled Mrs. Sims; “you-uns bein’ seen a outdacious ugly
gal ez all the menfolks be compelled ter shade thar eyes whenst ye kem
about.”
Mrs. Sims’s vicarious coquetry was unblushingly fickle. She did
not wait for Euphemia to be quit of the old love before she was on
with the new. Nay, in the very presence of the superseded swain she
prospectively and speculatively flirted with his problematic successor.
“A plague on all fat old women!” thought the juggler, ill at ease and
out of countenance.
“I hev got my religion,” said Euphemia stiffly, her pride revolting
at the idea that perchance Pa’son Tynes had presumed her to be still
unconverted, and that his call was pastoral. “I _dunno what_ he kin be
a-comin’ pesterin’ round about me fur.”
“Waal,” said her mother, still chuckling, “he be a-comin’ agin
ter-morrer ter see you-uns. He axed me special ter keep ye home ter
view him--no, that wasn’t the way; he knows thar’s better things ter
be viewed in this world ’n a lantern-jawed, tallow-faced preacher-man,
though from thar own account thar’ll be a power o’ nangels featured
like that in heaven--he axed me special ter keep ye home till he could
_view you-uns_!” And Mrs. Sims’s chuckle of enjoyment broke from its
habitual bounds and into the jolliest of obese laughter. It might have
been termed infectious had any one present been sufficiently in spirits
to be susceptible to its influence. The juggler was disconcerted and
strangely cast down; Euphemia, doubtful, antagonistic, prophetically
affronted; and old Tubal Cain’s interest still hinged on the topics of
the conversation during the several hours while he had borne the parson
somewhat weary company.
“He hev hed great grace in the pertracted meet-in’,” her father rattled
on, still flustered by the occurrence. “He hev converted fifteen
sinners; some hardened cases, too. An’ he hev preached wunst a day
reg’lar, an’ sometimes twict.”
“Let him go preach some mo’, then,” retorted Euphemia, vaguely
resentful.
She was silent during the serving of supper, carrying her head high,
with her cheeks flushed and her eyes alight. Royce’s glance forbore
to follow her. He ate little, and with a downcast, thoughtful mien he
found his pipe after supper and took it out upon the rocky slope that
led to the river. The moon was up; long, glamourous slants of light lay
athwart the Cove; the shadows of the pines were dense along the slope,
but through their fringed branches the light filtered like a shower of
molten silver. The river was here touched with a crystalline glitter,
and here a lustrous darkness told of its shaded depths. Looking across
the levels of the Cove, one had a sense of the dew in the glister and
sparkle of the humid leaves. Above all rose the encompassing mountains,
imposing, dark, and stern. The little log cabin with the swaying
hopvines and the window flaringly alight, and the glittering reflection
so far in the swift current below, had its idyllic suggestions in the
moonlight, but he was not alive to the interests of the picturesque in
humble environment, and had no fibre that responded to the enthusiasm
of the _genre_ painter. He looked toward the house not to mark how the
silver-gray hue of its weathered logs was heightened by the smooth
effect of the moonbeams. He did not even feign to care that one of the
clay-and-stick chimneys leaning from the wall was so awry against the
sky as to give a positive value of individuality in composing; what it
did in regard to the proper emission of smoke was of no consequence,
since it so served the airy designs of the possible painter. He
approved of the cant of the roof no more than if he had been an
architectural precisian. He looked with all his eyes for what he
presently saw,--a shadowy figure stole out and sat down on the step of
the passage and gazed disconsolately, as he fancied, up at the moon.
“Euphemia, come down here,” he called in a low voice.
She started, stared out into the mingled shadow and sheen with dilated
eyes; then, as he advanced she rose and went down toward him.
As they stood there together, the girl looked out from the shadow of
the tree above them at the blended dew and glimmer, and he looked
imperiously down at her.
“See here, Phemie, why is that man coming to see you to-morrow?”
“I dunno,” she responded vaguely.
“Ah, but you guess;” he caught both her hands. “Tell me why you think
he is coming.”
She lifted her eyes to his, which had a constraining quality for her.
“He be kemin’ ter see me--’bout--’bout Owen Haines--him--him ez prayed
fur the power--I reckon. They be mighty close friends.”
He gave a short laugh of ridicule.
She could not join in his mirth. Only so short a time ago its cause had
been the tragedy of the world to her. She could hardly bring herself to
admit even to herself that now, scarcely three weeks later, she cared
as little for it as if it had never been. But her world had changed.
How it had developed! There were new countries; strange peoples had
been discovered; a marvelous scope of emotion had been evolved. Romance
had unfolded its wondrous page. She had seen Poetry trim its pinions
and wing its flight. She had lived a new life; she was a changeling.
Where was her old self? Her fancied love for the young religionist,
her wounded pride for his sake, her scorching, fiery compassion for
her own--all had fled. She remembered herself in these emotions as if
she were another being. She could hardly pity Owen Haines. If he did
not care for the fleer of ridicule, why should she? For since--she had
lived an enchanted life.
“What will he want of you?” demanded Royce gravely.
She faltered. She feared Tynes and his powers of argument. She dreaded,
not being convinced, but the rigors of the contest. And if Owen Haines
should, as a sacrifice to love, agree to relinquish his “praying fur
the power,” she dreaded the renewal of their old status of “keepin’
comp’ny.”
“He will want me ter take Owen Haines back.”
“But you wouldn’t, Phemie, you wouldn’t?” urged Royce breathlessly.
“He mought gin up prayin’ fur the power. I turned him off fur that,”
she hesitated.
Royce’s scheme was complete. All the Cove and the mountain regarded him
as a dangler after Euphemia Sims. He could feign a hopeless jealousy.
He could hold aloof for a time, and the old status would doubtless
readjust itself with the ease and security imparted by habit. He had
gone as far as he had ever planned. Now he could leave the rest to
chance.
But if the life here had afforded so arid a prospect heretofore, how
could he contemplate it without Euphemia? His very speech no other
creature could understand. He felt that he would be as isolated as if
he were on a desert island, and he had a fiery impatience of time,--the
years that were coming seemed such long years. He had never been more
in earnest in his life, as he looked down into her beautiful illumined
face.
“But you will not, Euphemia,” he said, slipping his arm around her
waist. “You don’t love him.”
Beyond a start, half surprise and half coyness, she had not moved.
“Tell me--you care nothing for him?”
“Not now,” she faltered. And she felt anew a pang for her lack of
constancy.
He revolted at the partial admission with all a lover’s insistence on
preëminence. “Never--never! You _could_n’t care for such a fool. And
he doesn’t love you, or he would have given up that folly at once--or
anything you wished.”
Even now he hesitated. The breeze swayed the branches above them, and
all the draping pendent wild grapevines that clung about the tree
were suddenly astir. The circle of dark shadow in which they stood
was inlaid with silver glintings as the moonlight struck through the
foliage; the soft radiance fell full in her eyes.
“_I_ would give up all the world for you,” he cried impulsively,
“because I love you!”
She drew back a trifle, and looked over her shoulder into the
glittering idealization of the familiar scenes of her life in the
glamours of the moonlight and of love. She heard the low dryadic song
of the leaves; she heard the beating of her own heart.
“Tell me that you love me, Euphemia,” he pleaded. “Tell me that.”
Amidst all the joy in her face there was a flash of triumph. She was
withdrawing her hands from his, and the realization how like she was
to women of a higher sphere, despite her limitations, came to him
with a certain surprise. No sooner did she feel her power than she
had the will to wield it. The humble little rustic was expressed only
in her outer guise. No finished coquette could have given him a more
bewildering broadside of beautiful eyes as she said, joyously laughing,
“What makes you ask such impossible questions?”
The phrase was borrowed of him, in his frequent despair of elucidating
the whole scheme of civilization to her ignorance, in their readings.
He could not laugh when it was so dexterously turned on himself. “Tell
me,” he persisted earnestly, “tell me, Phemie--or I’ll--I’ll”--the
assertion had little humility, but he divined its effectiveness--“I’ll
go away, and never come back again.”
She was still laughing, but he marked that she no longer drew back.
“Do you have to be told _everything_?” she quoted anew from his
remonstrances because of her catechistic insistence. “Can’t you see
through anything without having it point-blank?” with his own impatient
intonation.
He allowed himself to be decoyed into a hasty smile. “And you’ll send
that fellow to the right-about to-morrow?” he urged gravely.
“Oh, I’ll be glad enough ter git rid of him!” she cried, in the
extremity of her relief.
He realized with a momentary qualm that the new situation must be
avowed openly to justify the position which Euphemia would sustain in
case Owen Haines should offer to relinquish, as a sacrifice to love,
the pernicious practice of “prayin’ fur the power” in public. He
recognized this step as a certain riveting of his chains; yet had he
not been eager but a moment ago to assume them? And even now, as he
looked down into her face, radiant with that joyous sense of supremacy
in his heart, and seeming to him the most beautiful he had ever seen,
the most tender, as it responsively looked up to his, he wondered that
his untoward fate had so relented as to bestow upon him, in his forlorn
exile, this creature, so delicately endowed, so choicely gifted, that
even his alien estimate of values wrought no discord in the simple
happiness that had come to him.
And it was he who revealed to Jane Ann Sims the altered state of
things when the two went presently back to the little cabin on the
slope. There she sat in bulky oblivion of the things of this world,
and especially the dish-pan. Her spectacles were awry on her nodding
head. The dish-towel was limp in her nerveless hand. The tallow dip
was guttering in the centre of the table, and about it the moths
circled in fond delusions, regardless of the winged cinders that lay,
now still, and now with a quiver of departing life, on the cloth.
She made a spasmodic offer to resign the dish-towel to Euphemia,
waving it mechanically at her with a fat, dimpled hand and a gesture
of renunciation; but the girl, all unallured, passed without a word
into the shed-room beyond, and the juggler sat down on the opposite
side of the table with one elbow on it as he looked steadily across
at Mrs. Sims’s face, which was all lined with the creases of fat that
were usually dimples. She had roused into that half-dazed condition
characteristic of the sudden and unwelcome termination of the sleep of
fatigue, and the tallow dip swayed reduplicated before her eyes like
a chandelier. Mentally she seemed no clearer of perception. Royce had
realized her maternal fondness for him, ungratefully requited, and he
could not altogether reconcile this with the agitated and alarmed mien
with which she received his disclosure.
“Marry Phemie!” she exclaimed in a sort of drowsy affright, as if her
mental capacities had not yet laid hold on something that had roused
her more alert apprehensions.
He was irritated for a moment. He knew in his secret soul that he
forswore much, overlooked much, bestowed much, in this mad resolution,
and this knowledge, quiescent under the immediate influence of the
girl’s beauty and charm and his loneliness, became tumultuously
assertive in the society of Mrs. Sims.
“Why not? I love her, and I want to marry her. Is there anything so
astonishing in that?”
“Laws-a-massy, no, honey!” Mrs. Sims sputtered, her eyelids faltering
before the myriad-flamed tallow dip. She apprehended his rising wrath,
and, somnambulistically waving her hand, seemed to seek to appease
it. “Mighty nigh every young fool ez ever seen her sets up the same
chune. ’Tain’t astonishin’--but--honey”--she looked at him with sleepy
admonition, still waving her hand--“don’t talk ’bout sech so brazen an’
loud.” Then sinking her voice to a husky whisper that could have been
heard in South America, “Shet that thar door ahint ye. Tubal Cain be
asleep in thar.” Her gesture, indicating the door, was accompanied by a
premonitory jerk of her body which usually preceded rising.
“Don’t disturb yourself, I beg,” said Royce, still nettled.
He leaned back in his chair, and catching the door by the latch brought
it to with a brisk bang. Mrs. Sims pursed up her mouth with a warning
hiss imposing silence to preserve the gentle slumbers of old Tubal
Cain, and neither noticed that the latch had failed to catch, and that
the door, although apparently closed, stood slightly ajar.
“Phemie says--at least she gives me to understand that my affection is
returned,” Royce went on, in better humor.
“I hope she ain’t tellin’ no lies ’bout’n it this time, ennyhow,” said
Mrs. Sims waggishly; and it seemed to Royce that he was capable of
singular temerity when he had risked the perils of seriously falling
in love by simulating the tender passion in any instance in which Mrs.
Sims was to be considered, however remotely. To be good-natured in
ridicule by no means implies good nature in being ridiculed.
“You have a right to say anything you like, I suppose, about your own
daughter,” he rejoined angrily. “She doesn’t look like a liar. For my
part, I believe her.”
“Shucks! Shucks!” Mrs. Sims shook a mildly admonitory head at him.
“I’m jes’ funnin’. An’ yit I kin ’member tellin’ Tubal Cain things
cornsider’ble short o’ the truth whenst I war a young gal like Euphemy,
an’ he war a-sparkin’ round.”
The young man looked uneasily out of the window. Could time really work
such metamorphoses as these? Had she ever been young and lissome and
soft-eyed and fair, and was Euphemia to grow old thus?
Perhaps it was well for the broken snatch of Love’s young dream that
there against the darkness he suddenly saw the bending boughs of an
elder bush all whitely abloom, and among them, the fairest blossom of
all, Euphemia’s face, half touched with the moonlight, yet distinct in
the radiance that came from the candle within, smiling upon him as she
played the eavesdropper, her dimpled elbows on the window-sill and her
fair hair blown back in the wind.
“Nothing was said about it till this evening,” he went on, his
satisfaction restored in an instant, “and I thought it was only the
fair thing to let you and Mr. Sims know; you have both been so kind
since I have been here.”
Mrs. Sims’s preliminary apprehension, which she seemed to have
forgotten, was once more aghast upon her face. She raised a warning
forefinger, and she spoke in her husky penetrating whisper: “Don’t
you-uns say nare word ter Tubal Cain Sims. Leave him ter _me_. I’ll
settle him.”
“Why not?” asked the young man, alert to any menace, however remote.
Mrs. Sims knitted her brows in embarrassment. “Waal,” she said,
composing herself to divulge the truth so far as she knew it, since
no polite subterfuge was handy, “he air cantankerous, an’ quar’lsome,
an’ hard-headed, an’ powerful perverse. An’ he ’pears ter be sot agin
ye, kase, I reckon, I like ye,--me an’ Phemie, though Phemie never tuk
no notice o’ ye in this worl’ till ’bout three weeks ago whenst ye
ondertook ter set up ter her so constant. Ye hev witched that gal; ye
jes’ _made_ her fall in love with ye, whether or no.”
The juggler laughed at this, casting a bright glance at the dusky
aperture of the window where the white blossoms all stirred by the
wind seemed to be leaning on the sill and eavesdropping too. They
might not have all been so happily at ease had they known that, close
by the door, still slightly ajar, and awakened by the bang which the
juggler had dealt it, lay old Tubal Cain Sims, grimly listening to this
conversation.
“I can’t agree to that,” said Royce, after a moment’s reflection. He
was certainly nothing of a prig, but he had his own views of honor,
and they controlled him. “This is Mr. Sims’s house; and I was received
into it first as a guest, and it is as a privilege that I have been
allowed to remain. I can’t make love to any man’s daughter, under these
circumstances, on the sly.”
“But s’pose he won’t agree--an’ the critter is ez _con_trary
ez--ez”--Comparisons failed Mrs. Sims, and she could only shake her
head warningly.
“Oh well, everything having been aboveboard, I’d take the girl and
elope!” cried the juggler, his eyes alight at the mere prospective
fanning of the breeze of adventure. “Being an educated man, Mrs. Sims,
I could make a living for myself and my wife in a dozen different ways,
in any of these little towns about here. Why--what”--
Mrs. Sims, bulkily rising, had almost overturned the table and the
crockery upon him. Her fat face was pallid and flabby, and it shook as
she gazed, speechless and wild-eyed, at him. Her puffy hand besought
him in mute entreaty before she could find words to blurt out, “Good
Gawd A’mighty, John Leonard, don’t lay yer tongue ter sech ez that!
Don’t s’picion the word ez ye’d steal my darter away from me. It
would kill me--an’ I hev stood yer frien’ from the fust, even whenst
they all made out ez ye war in league with Satan an’ gin over ter
witchments. It would kill me, bodaciously! Don’t ye steal my one leetle
lamb--thar’s plenty o’ gals in the worl’, ready an’ willin’--steal
them--steal them! I want my darter ter live hyar with me, married an’
single,--ter live hyar with me. We ain’t got but the one lone, lorn
leetle chile. Don’t--don’t”--The tears stood in all her dimples and she
was speechless.
“Well, upon my word!” exclaimed Royce indignantly, but pausing, with
that care which he bestowed upon all manner of possessions representing
property, however meagre, to right the table and restore the imperiled
crockery. “What sort of a frenzy is this, Mrs. Sims? Am I going to
run away with your daughter? Have I shown any symptoms of decamping?
Strikes me I have come to stay. I make a point of telling you--because
I know that I am not here under your roof for any small profit to you,
but as a matter of kindness and courtesy--of telling you all about it
within the hour that I know it myself, and this is my reward!”
Poor Mrs. Sims, having sunk back in her chair, and the young man still
remaining standing, could only look up at him with piteous contrition
and anxious appeal.
“I hope Mr. Sims won’t give me any reason to contemplate elopement.
Wasn’t he willing for his daughter to marry Owen Haines, they having
been ‘keepin’ comp’ny,’ as I understand?”
She silently nodded.
“My Lord! what have I come to!” Royce cried, lifting his hands, then
letting them fall to his sides, as if calling on heaven and earth to
witness the absurdity of the situation. “I think I might be considered
at least as desirable a _parti_ as that pious monkey praying for the
power!” He gave that short laugh of his which so expressed ridicule,
turned, secured the end of tallow candle placed for him on the shelf,
and, lighting it, ascended the rickety stairs to the roof-room.
The suggestion of an elopement was not altogether unacceptable to
him. If there should be any objection urged against him,--and he
could hardly restrain his mirth at the idea,--an elopement into some
other retired cove in these regions of nowhere would result not
infelicitously, affording still further disguise and an adequate reason
for both him and his wife to be strangers in a strange land. “A runaway
match would account for everything: so bring on your veto and welcome!”
he said to himself.
Next morning, however, he found his disclosure to Tubal Cain Sims
postponed. His host had left the house before dawn, and although
he did not return for any of the three meals Mrs. Sims felt no
uneasiness, it being a practice of Tubal Cain Sims’s, in order to
assert his independence of petticoat government, to deal much in small
mysteries about his affairs. All day--her equanimity restored by the
half-jocular, half-affectionate raillery of Royce, who had roused
himself to the realization that it was well to continue friends with
her--she canvassed her husband’s errand, and guessed at the time of his
probable return, and speculated upon his reasons for secrecy. Night
did not bring him, and Royce, who had been now laughing at Mrs. Sims’s
various theories, and now wearying of their futile inconsistencies,
began to share her curiosity.
It was the merest curiosity. He did not dream that he was the chief
factor in his host’s schemes and absence.