THE ADDED BURDEN
It was mid-winter. The twilight sky--cold and pale, more green than
blue--brought the thought of new-made ice. Stripped long since of their
verdure, the wooded Cumberlands lay, like naked, shivering giants,
across whose mighty recumbent torsos the biting winds swept
relentlessly.
In contrast with the desolation without, inside Big Jerry's cabin all
was as bright, warm and homelike as a merry fire, the soft glow of the
evening lamp and the presence of the heart of the spot--the girl
herself--could make it.
Thankful for the blessings of the cheery home and her grandfather's
presence in it still, and softly humming an old ballad which he loved,
Rose was busily engaged in preparing an early supper, when she was
interrupted by the sound of a low, uncertain knock on the door.
She opened it, wonderingly, and the firelight leaped out into the night
and disclosed the unshaven face and gaunt form of Judd.
Save on rare occasions, and then at a distance, she had not seen him
since that fateful day on the mountain's summit, when his passionate
love and hate, intermingled, had driven him to commit the great offence
against the unwritten laws of the feudal clan, by attacking one upon
whom the sacred mantle of hospitality had been placed, by which act he
had incurred Jerry's enmity, and made himself love's outlaw.
The months had dealt harshly with him. Not only was his clothing frayed
and soiled; but his face was so unnaturally pale that the deep-set eyes
beneath their lowering black brows seemed to burn like embers, and there
were many new lines on his countenance not graven there by wind and
weather.
Shocked at the change in him, and suddenly filled with womanly
compassion which sounded the knell of anger, Rose called, gently, "Judd!
Why, Judd! Come in."
He shook his head. "I reckon I haint welcome in this hyar cabin, Smiles,
an' taint on my own ercount thet I comes ter ye."
"Why, what is the trouble?" was her startled inquiry.
"Hit ... hit air leetle Lou. I erlows she's sick er somethin'."
"Lou? Tell me quick, Judd. What is the matter with her?"
"I don't rightly know." The answer was made with obvious distress. "She
haint been her sunshiny self fer quite some time, an' ter-night ...
wall, she air actin' so sorter ... queer, thet I got skeered."
"I'll go over home with you at once," said Rose, as she hastily caught
up and drew a shawl about her head and shoulders. "Grandpap," she called
softly through the door to the old man's bedroom, "I'm ergoin' out fer
er leetle time. One of ther neighbors air sick. Don't fret, fer I'll be
back right soon, dear."
There was a brief, rumbled reply; and, closing the door behind her on
the warm comfort within, the girl joined the mountaineer in the crispy
evening, now almost dark. She shivered a little, and he marked the
involuntary act, and drew back a step.
In silence they walked rapidly up the narrow path, slippery from a
recent fall of light snow. Once Rose slipped, and instantly Judd's
sinewy arm was about her waist, steadying her. Then, as she regained her
balance and started forward, it tightened and drew her suddenly to him
in a passionate, crushing embrace. She made no effort to struggle free,
or voice her heart's protest against this outrage, but stood with her
body rigid and unyielding within the circle of his arm until he slowly
released her, mumbling, "I reckon I air plumb ershamed of myself,
Smiles. I didn't go fer ter do hit, an' I knows thet I haint deservin'
ter tetch so much es ther hem of yo'r skirt."
She did not answer, and neither spoke again until his cabin was reached.
When the door was opened, Smiles caught sight of the child sitting
motionless on a stool near the fireplace. Her lips were parted and in
her eyes was an odd look of semi-vacuity.
"Lou!" cried Rose, pausing in alarmed astonishment.
A light of recognition sprang into the child's eyes, she stood up a
trifle unsteadily, and said, with a low throaty laugh of delight, "Hit
air my Smiles. I awful glad ter see...." She started toward her friend;
but her course suddenly veered to the left, waveringly, and her
wandering gaze fell upon the now sadly battered doll lying in one
corner. "To see ye, Mike," was the ending of her sentence, as she
trotted to Donald's gift and began to cuddle it.
"Yo' haint erbeen ter see Lou fer er long, long ..." The piping voice
trailed off into silence.
"Why, Lou, sweetheart. What is the matter? Don't you know your own
Smiles?" pleaded the deeply distressed girl, as she gathered the child
to her breast.
The baby's hands dropped the doll unceremoniously and sought her
friend's cheeks. Looking up with big eyes into the face drawn close to
her own, she replied in a strangely slow, hesitant manner. "In course I
remembers ye, Smiles. Yo' air the nurse what lives with ... with thet
thar doctor man ... in the big city, whar air monkeys thet ... clumb
sticks an' ... an' doll babies what close thar eyes ... an' say ... an'
say ... My head hurts me, Smiles, hit do."
She lay still in the loving arms for an instant, and then wriggled free
and, sliding to the floor, picked up and began to rock the doll again,
the while crooning a wordless lullaby.
With anxiety growing akin to terror, Smiles felt the irregular pulse, as
Donald had taught her how to do, and pressed her hand to the pale cheek
and forehead.
"She _is_ sick, Judd, and I'm kind of frightened, too. You can't take
care of her here, and I mean to take her home with me, right now. I
reckon you had better go down to the village and get Dr. Johnston,
quick."
The man had started, with words of protest trembling on his lips; but,
as his look turned on his little sister, as she now leaned drowsily
against the girl's knees, he stifled them unspoken, while a spasm of
pain crossed his worn face. With a dull nod of acquiescence he held out
his arms to receive the child, whom Rose had lifted and wrapped in a
blanket from her little bed that had been brought in near the fire.
The return journey was quickly and silently made, and, delivering the
slight bundle to Smiles when her cabin was reached, Judd set off into
the night, concern lending wings to his feet.
"Grandpap, hit's Smiles back ergin'," called the girl softly. "An' I've
brought leetle Lou Amos. She haint feelin' right well, an' I allows I
hev got ter take keer of her here."
The old man uttered a low growl of protest, which caused Rose to run to
him and tenderly lay her hand on his lips, with the words, "Hush,
grandpap. The baby haint in nowise ter blame fer ... fer what Judd
done. In course we hev got ter keer fer her."
Big Jerry nodded an abashed assent, and said no more.
Smiles undressed her new charge, who struck uncertain terror to her
heart by drowsily talking on and on, in snatches of unrelated sentences
running the gamut of her limited experiences and with the childish words
often failing, half formed. She put the baby in her own bed, and, after
the belated supper had been eaten and cleared away, and the old man made
as comfortable as possible for the night, Smiles lay down beside the
baby, whose silence and more regular breathing indicated that she was at
last asleep.
The morrow's sun was well above the valley horizon before Judd returned
with the country doctor, and again the former refused to enter the
cabin. While the physician remained, he paced back and forth, back and
forth, with weary, nervous strides; but even in his stress of mind he
unconsciously kept out of view from the window in Big Jerry's room.
At last Rose and Dr. Johnston reappeared, and, breathing hard, Judd
hastened to join them.
"It's brain fever, the doctor says, Judd," said Smiles at once. "He's
left some medicine for me to give her, and you know that I'll nurse her
for you like she was my own baby."
"Air hit ... air hit _bad_, doctor?" asked the mountaineer, with a catch
in his voice.
"Well, of course it ain't an ... er ... exactly easy thing to cure, but
I reckon she'll get well of it. By the way, Amos, how long has she been
a-goin' on like that?"
"I kaint rightly say, doctor. She hes acted kind er strange-like fer
quite er spell, now thet I comes ter think on hit; but I didn't pay no
pertickler attention to hit ontil er day er two back," answered the man
contritely.
"Hmmm," said the doctor. "Oh, I guess we can pull her through all right,
and I will get up here as often as I can. Well, I reckon I'll be
stepping along back."
* * * * *
But little Lou did not fulfil the country practitioner's optimistic
prophecy. The change in her condition, as day after day crept by,
growing longer and colder, was almost imperceptible; but it was steadily
for the worse. The mountain winter closed in with unusual rigors, and
Smiles' cabin continued to be a hospital where she passed her hours
ministering equally to the keen-minded, but bodily tortured old
man--whose heart pained constantly and with growing severity, and whose
breathing became daily more labored--and the child whose mind steadily
became more clouded and her physical functions more weak.
Like a gaunt, miserable dog which had been driven from his home, Judd
haunted the cabin. When she stole out one morning, to speak with him
about Lou, Smiles cried, "Oh, if Doctor Mac were only here now! _He_
would know what to do, I'm sure."
Judd's hands, blue with cold, clenched so violently that the knuckles
grew a bloodless white, and the look of pain, lying deep down in his
eyes, changed to a flash of burning hate.
"Don't never speak thet man's name ter me, gal."
The words were spoken in a harsh voice and he strode abruptly away.
At more and more infrequent intervals, the village doctor made his
toilsome way up the slippery mountain side, sat regarding the little
patient with a hopelessly puzzled look, and finally departed, shaking
his head; but he never failed to leave behind him another bottle of
obnoxious medicine on the chance that if one did not produce an
improvement, another might. Even to the girl it was all too apparent,
however, that he was aiming blindly into the dark.
There came a time when the child spoke scarcely at all, save to moan
piteously something about the pain in her head; her emaciated legs
barely carried her on her uncertain course; her vague, sweet eyes turned
inward more and more; and it was with the greatest difficulty, and only
by the exercise of infinite patience that Smiles could feed her. The
little mountain blossom was wilting and fading slowly away.
On the afternoon of the first day of January Dr. Johnston spent a long
time at the cabin, striving against the impossible to solve the problem
which confronted him like an appalling mystery, far too deep to be
pierced by the feeble ray of science at his command.
At last he arose with a gesture of finality, and announced to the
anxiously waiting girl, "I reckon I'm done. I won't go so fur as to say
that a city specialist might not be able to help her; but hanged if _I_
can. The trouble is too much for me, and I guess Lou is just a-goin' to
die."
Sudden tears welled into Smiles' luminous eyes, and ran unheeded down
her cheeks, now unnaturally thin and wan.
"Hit haint so," she cried in a choked voice. "Lou haint ergoin' ter die,
Dr. Johnston!"
Suddenly she stopped, as her thoughts flew backward on the wings of
memory. Her eyes grew larger, a strange light came into them. Then,
speaking slowly, almost as though the words were impelled by a will
other than her own, she added with a tone of absolute certainty:
"Yo' allows _yo'_ don't know what the trouble air, but _I_ does."
The doctor was startled and looked as though he thought that he was
about to have another patient on his hands.
"Hit air a brain tumor thet she hes got, I knows it, an' I knows one of
the few doctor men in this hyar country what kin cure hit. He air
_ergoin'_ ter cure hit fer me, an' leetle Lou haint _ergoin'_ ter die."
Uncertain what to make of this outburst, the doctor departed rather
hastily. Smiles caught up her shawl and ran immediately to Judd's
lonely, cheerless abode, which she entered without a thought of
knocking. She found the man sitting dejectedly before a feeble fire.
He sprang up, voiceless terror apparent in the look which he turned upon
her white face, but, without pausing for any preliminaries, Rose said,
"The doctor, he's been ter see our little Lou again, Judd. He allows
thet he can't do anything more for her, and thet she has got ter die."
The man--whose whole world was now centred in the child to whom he had,
for a year, been father and mother as well as brother--sank down on his
chair and buried his face in his hands.
"I knowed hit," he muttered in a dead voice.
"Hit haint so," cried the girl, who had by this time wholly relapsed
into the mountain speech, as she frequently did still, when laboring
under the stress of emotion. "Hit haint so, Judd. We kin save her. We
hev _got_ ter save her."
"Thar haint no way." The words were tuned to despair.
"Thar _air_ a way. Thar's one man who kin save Lou's life fer ye, an' we
must get him ter do hit.".
She had mentioned no name, but Judd sprang swiftly erect, fists clenched
and shaking above his head. "Do yo' think thet I'd be beholden ter
_thet_ man, after what I done ter him? Do yo' think thet I'd accept
even my sister's life et his hands? I hates him like I does the devil
what, I reckon, air ergoin' ter git my soul!"
"Judd!" cried the girl, "yo' don't know what yo'r ersayin'. Hit's
blasphemy. Ef Doctor Mac kin save Lou's life--an' he _kin_--yo'd be a
murderer,--yes, a murderer uv yo'r own flesh an' blood, ter forbid him."
Spent by the force of his previous passionate outburst, the man sank
tremblingly back into the chair again.
"I kaint do hit, Smiles," he answered piteously. "I kaint do hit, an'
hit's a foolish thought anyway. He wouldn't come hyar. Hit takes money
fer ter git city doctors, an' I haint got none."
"He will come ef I asks him, an' I hev money, Judd," she said with a
pleading voice.
"No, no, no. Ef Lou dies, I reckon I'll kill myself, too; but I forbids
ye ter call the man I wronged, an' hates."
Slowly the girl turned away, with a compassionate glance at the bent,
soul-tortured youth, went out of the cabin, and softly closed the door.