The boy had come home for Sunday and must go back now to the Mission
school. He picked up his battered hat and there was no good-by.
"I reckon I better be goin'," he said, and out he walked. The mother
barely raised her eyes, but after he was gone she rose and from the low
doorway looked after his sturdy figure trudging up the road. His whistle,
as clear as the call of a quail, filled her ears for a while and then
was buried beyond the hill. A smaller lad clutched her black skirt,
whimpering:
"Wisht I c'd go to the Mission school."
"Thar hain't room," she said shortly.
"The teacher says thar hain't room. I wish to God thar was."
Still whistling, the boy trudged on. Now and then he would lift his
shrill voice and the snatch of an old hymn or a folk-song would float
through the forest and echo among the crags above him. It was a good
three hours' walk whither he was bound, but in less than an hour he
stopped where a brook tumbled noisily from a steep ravine and across
the road--stopped and looked up the thick shadows whence it came.
Hesitant, he stood on one foot and then on the other, with a wary
look down the road and up the ravine.
"I said I'd _try_ to git back," he said aloud. "I said I'd _try_."
And with this self-excusing sophistry he darted up the brook. The banks
were steep and thickly meshed with rhododendron, from which hemlock shot
like black arrows upward, but the boy threaded through them like a snake.
His breast was hardly heaving when he reached a small plateau hundreds of
feet above the road, where two branches of the stream met from narrower
ravines right and left. To the right he climbed, not up the bed of the
stream, but to the top of a little spur, along which he went slowly and
noiselessly, stooping low. A little farther on he dropped on his knees
and crawled to the edge of a cliff, where he lay flat on his belly and
peeked over. Below him one Jeb Mullins, a stooping, gray old man, was
stirring something in a great brass kettle. A tin cup was going the
round of three men squatting near. On a log two men were playing with
greasy cards, and near them another lay in drunken sleep. The boy
grinned, slid down through the bushes, and, deepening his voice all
he could, shouted:
"Throw up yo' hands!"
The old man flattened behind the big kettle with his pistol out. One
of the four men leaped for a tree--the others shot up their hands. The
card-players rolled over the bank near them, with no thought of where
they would land, and the drunken man slept on. The boy laughed loudly.
"Don't shoot!" he cried, and he came through the bushes jeering. The men
at the still dropped their hands and looked sheepish and then angry, as
did the card-players, whose faces reappeared over the edge of the bank.
But the old man and the young one behind the tree, who alone had got
ready to fight, joined in with the boy, and the others had to look
sheepish again.
"Come on, Chris!" said the old moonshiner, dipping the cup into the
white liquor and handing it forth full, "Hit's on me."
Christmas is "new Christmas" in Happy Valley. The women give scant heed
to it, and to the men it means "a jug of liquor, a pistol in each hand,
and a galloping nag." There had been target-shooting at Uncle Jerry's
mill to see who should drink old Jeb Mullins's moonshine and who should
smell, and so good was the marksmanship that nobody went without his
dram. The carousing, dancing, and fighting were about all over, and now,
twelve days later, it was the dawn of "old Christmas," and St. Hilda sat
on the porch of her Mission school alone. The old folks of Happy Valley
pay puritan heed to "old Christmas." They eat cold food and preserve a
solemn demeanor on that day, and they have the pretty legend that at
midnight the elders bloom and the beasts of the field and the cattle
in the barn kneel, lowing and moaning. The sun was just rising and the
day was mild, for a curious warm spell, not uncommon in the hills, had
come to Happy Valley. Already singing little workers were "toting rocks"
from St. Hilda's garden, corn-field, and vineyard, for it was Monday,
and every Monday they gathered--boys and girls--from creek and hillside,
to help her as volunteers. Far up the road she heard among them taunting
laughter and jeers, and she rose quickly. A loud oath shocked the air,
and she saw a boy chasing one of the workers up the vineyard hill. She
saw the pursuer raise his hand and fall, just as he was about to hurl a
stone. Then there were more laughter and jeers, and the fallen boy picked
himself up heavily and started down the road toward her--staggering. On
he came staggering, and when he stood swaying before her there was no
shocked horror in her face--only pity and sorrow.
"Oh, Chris, Chris!" she said sadly. The boy neither spoke nor lifted
his eyes, and she led him up-stairs and put him to bed. All day he
slept in a stupor, and it was near sunset when he came down, pale,
shamed, and silent. There were several children in the porch.
"Come, Chris!" St. Hilda said, and he followed her down to the edge of
the creek, where she sat down on a log and he stood with hanging head
before her.
"Chris," she said, "we'll have a plain talk now. This is the fourth
time you've been"--the word came with difficulty--"drunk."
"Yes'm."
"I've sent you away three times, and three times I've let you come
back. I let you come back after new Christmas, only twelve days ago."
"Yes'm."
"You can't keep your word."
"No'm."
"I don't know what to do now, so I'm going to ask you."
She paused and Chris was silent, but he was thinking, and she waited.
Presently he looked straight into her eyes, still silent.
"What do _you_ think I'd better do?" she insisted.
"I reckon you got to whoop me, Miss Hildy."
"But you know I can't whip you, Chris. I never whip anybody."
Several times a child had offered to whip himself, had done so, and
she wondered whether the boy would propose that, but he repeated,
obstinately and hopelessly:
"You got to whoop me."
"I won't--I can't." Then an idea came. "Your mother will have to whip you."
Chris shook his head and was silent. He was not on good terms with his
mother. It was a current belief that she had "put pizen in his daddy's
liquer." She had then married a man younger than she was, and to the
boy's mind the absence of dignity in one case matched the crime in
the other.
"All right," he said at last; "but I reckon you better send somebody
else atter her. You can't trust me to git by that still"--he stopped
with a half-uttered oath of surprise:
"Look thar!"
A woman was coming up the road. She wore a black cotton dress and a
black sunbonnet--mourning relics for the dead husband which the living
one had never had the means to supplant--and rough shoes. She pushed
back the bonnet with one nervous, bony hand, saw the two figures on
the edge of the creek, and without any gesture or call came toward
them. And only the woman's quickness in St. Hilda saw the tense
anxiety of the mother's face relax. The boy saw nothing; he was
only amazed.
"Why, mammy, whut the--whut are you doin' up hyeh?"
The mother did not answer, and St. Hilda saw that she did not want
to answer. St. Hilda rose with a warm smile of welcome.
"So this is Chris's mother?"
The woman shook hands limply.
"Hit's whut I passes fer," she said, and she meant neither smartness
nor humor. The boy was looking wonderingly, almost suspiciously at her,
and she saw she must give him some explanation.
"I been wantin' to see the school hyeh an' Miss Hildy. I had to come up
to see Aunt Sue Morrow, who's might' nigh gone, so I jes kep' a-walkin'
on up hyeh."
"Miss Hildy hyeh," said the boy, "was jes about to send fer ye."
"To sen' fer _me_?"
"I been drunk agin."
The mother showed no surprise or displeasure.
"Hit's the fourth time since sorghum time," the boy went on relentlessly.
"I axed Miss Hildy hyeh to whoop me, but she says she don't nuver whoop
nobody, so she was jes a-goin' to send fer you to come an' whoop me when
you come a-walkin' up the road."
This was all, and the lad pulled out an old Barlow knife and went to a
hickory sapling. The two women watched him silently as he cut off a stout
switch and calmly began to trim it. At last the woman turned to the teacher
and her voice trembled.
"I don't see Chris thar more'n once or twice a year, an' seems kind o'
hard that I got to whoop him."
The boy turned sharply, and helplessly she took the switch.
"And hit hain't his fault nohow. His stepdaddy got him drunk. He tol' me
so when he come home. I went by the still to find Chris an' cuss out ole
Jeb Mullins an' the men thar. An' I come on hyeh."
"Set down a minute, mammy," said Chris, dropping on the log on one side
of St. Hilda, and obediently the mother sat down on the other side.
[Illustration]
"Mammy," he said abruptly, "I'll stop drinkin' if you will."
St. Hilda almost gasped. The woman lifted her eyes to the mountainside
and dropped her gaze presently to her hands, which were twisting the
switch in her lap.
"I'll stop if you will," he repeated.
"I'll try, Chris," she said, but she did not look up.
"Gimme yo' hand."
Across St. Hilda's lap she stretched one shaking hand, which the
boy clasped.
"Put yo' hand on thar, too, Miss Hildy," he said, and when he felt
the pressure of her big, strong, white hand for a moment he got up
quickly and turned his face.
"All right, mammy."
St. Hilda rose, too, and started for the house--her eyes so blurred
that she could hardly see the path. Midway she wheeled.
"Don't!" she cried.
The mother was already on her way home, breaking the switch to pieces
and hiding her face within the black sunbonnet. The boy was staring
after her.