Philip did his best, somewhat hampered by the fact that the girl
regarded his enforced chaperonage as a joke, and flirted with Channing
quite brazenly and openly under his very eye. Even the Apostle shortly
became aware of how matters stood, and remarked to Philip benignly, at
an early stage of their journey, "I like to see young folks
sweet-heartin'. It's a nateral thing, like the Lord intended."
Philip could not agree with any heartiness; but presently the high
spirits of the other two infected him, and he entered into the adventure
with a growing zest. The clean September air was like wine, and they
chattered and laughed like children starting off on a picnic.
Channing had spent the night before at Storm, to be in time for a
sunrise start, and he appeared at breakfast in a costume which he and
Farwell had evolved as suitable for mountaineering; an affair of
riding-boots, pale corduroy breeches, flannel shirt, and a silk
handkerchief knotted becomingly about the throat. He was disconcerted to
discover that the suit-case of other appropriate garments he had brought
with him must be left behind, his luggage being finally reduced to a
package of handkerchiefs and a toothbrush.
"But we are to be gone at least a week!" he pleaded unhappily. "Surely a
change of linen--"
"There'll be a creek handy," said Jacqueline, "and I'm taking a cake of
soap in my bundle. We can't be bothered with luggage."
When he saw the mules that were to convey them from the mountain town at
which the railroad left them, up to their final destination, he realized
the undesirability of luggage. He also envied the other two their
horsemanship.
But the mule proved easier riding than he had expected. They traveled at
a slow, steady lope that ate up the miles imperceptibly, through wild
and beautiful country, always climbing; passing at first occasional
groups of unpainted pine houses which gave way, as they penetrated
farther into the hills, to rough log cabins, growing fewer and farther
apart. These had a bare, singularly unkempt look; and although many of
them were so old as to be tumbledown, they did not fit, somehow, into
their surroundings. It was as if nature had never yet accepted man and
his works, still tolerated him under protest, a blot upon her
loveliness.
Channing commented upon this. "Why are there no vines and flowers about,
nothing to make these pitiful places look as if people lived in them?"
"Folks is too busy wrestin' a livin' out of the bare yearth to pretty-up
much," explained the Apostle.
"But why stay here at all? Why not go down into the valleys, where land
is more fertile?"
The other answered quietly, "Folks that have lived on the mounting-top
ain't never content to be cooped up in the valleys, son."
"If you think the outsides are pitiful," exclaimed Philip, "wait till
you see the insides! I was only a child when we lived up here, but I
have never forgotten. I ought to have come back long ago. Frankly, I
have shirked it."
"When _you_ lived up here? Why, Philip! When did you ever live in the
mountains?" cried Jacqueline.
"Father and I brought my mother up here to get well. It was before you
appeared on the scene, dear."
"I'd forgotten. And she didn't get well," said the girl, pityingly,
reaching over to touch his hand. "Poor little boy Philip!"
Jacqueline could think of nothing more dreadful than a world without a
mother in it. The pathos of that lonely little fellow who was so soon to
lose his father, too, came over her in a wave.
"I _wish_ I had been alive then to comfort you!" she said, quite
passionately.
This new thing that had come to her lately had made her heart almost too
big and tender. Since she had learned to love Channing, that always
sensitive heart of hers ached and swelled with every grief or joy that
passed, as a wind-harp thrills to the touch of passing airs.
She looked back at her lover suddenly, to remind herself of the blissful
fact that he was there, and that presently, somehow, they would manage
to be alone together.
The two had come to the stage where the world seems crowded with
onlookers, and the silent solitude of the heights beyond lured them on
as to a haven of refuge. Philip could not always be with them during the
week ahead, nor Brother Bates. Meanwhile, the most assiduous of
chaperons was powerless to deflect the precious current of consciousness
that flowed between them, striking out sparks at every contact of touch
or glance....
At noon they rested beside a little clear leaping stream, and
investigated with satisfaction the lunch-basket Big Liza had packed for
them at Storm. Afterwards, Jacqueline curled herself up in the leaves
and went to sleep like a contented young kitten, while the three men
smoked in silence, careful not to disturb her. Once, glancing at
Channing, Philip surprised in his face, as he watched her, such a look
of tenderness that his heart smote him.
"What a fool I am with my suspicions!" he thought. "Of course he wants
her. Dear little thing! How could he help it?"
After that he was a more merciful chaperon, and rode ahead up the trail
quite obliviously, engaging Brother Bates in conversation.
It was sunset before they came to their destination, their high spirits
fallen into rather weary silence, all of them glad of the sight of the
cabin where the peddler had arranged for them to spend the night. He had
sent word ahead to friends of his, and they were evidently expected. A
man watching in the doorway called over his shoulder, "Here they be,
Mehitabel," and came forward with the grave mountain greeting, "Howdy,
strangers."
They were led in at once to supper, an appalling meal of soggy cornbread
and molasses, with hog-meat swimming in grease. Their host and his two
sons ate with them, waited on by his wife and daughter, all five staring
at Jacqueline in unwinking silence, regarding her friendly efforts to
draw them into conversation as frivolity beneath their notice.
The author glanced around him with a rather alarmed interest. It was
evident that the room in which they were served not only as kitchen and
living-room, but as bed-chamber also. It was the only room the cabin
boasted, with the exception of a small lean-to, devoted, if he could
trust his nostrils, to the family pig. Each end of the room was filled
by a long bunk, and he came to the correct conclusion that one was for
the women of the household, the other for the men. There were no
windows, no means of ventilation whatever except the two doors opposite
each other, and the rough chimney at which the woman Mehitabel performed
her extremely primitive feats of cooking.
Channing began to wish that he had been less avid for local color; but
at that moment he caught Jacqueline's eye regarding him demurely, and
was of a sudden reconciled to his surroundings.
While they ate, through the open door they saw a scattering stream of
people pass along the trail below, all going in the same direction; on
foot, on horseback, and mule-back, and ox-back. Many animals carried
more than one rider. One old plow-horse came along, led by a sturdy
patriarch, crowded from mane to crupper with children of assorted sizes.
"Why, how queer, when we never passed a single soul all day!" said
Jacqueline. "Where do they all come from, Brother Bates, and where are
they going?"
"To the meetin'-house down the trail a ways," he explained. "I sont word
ahead that a preacher was comin', and all the folks is turnin' out."
Philip gave a faint groan. "What, to-night?" He had hoped for a few
hours' rest after the day's journey.
"Why, in co'se! Hit's moonlight to-night, an' the teacher's done let out
school a-purpose. I done sont word," said the Apostle. "'T ain't no time
to waste. 'Watch and wait lest the Bridegroom cometh and find thee
sleepin'.'"
"So there's a school even in these wilds? A lonely job for a
school-ma'am, I should think. Is she pretty?" asked Channing, hopefully,
with a thought of the accepted mountain school-teacher of current
fiction.
"'T ain't no her. It's a him," remarked the host; his one contribution
to the conversation.
"Reckon a her'd have right smart trouble keepin' school on Misty,
wouldn't she, Anse?" chuckled Brother Bates.
"'Low she would," grunted the other, and relapsed into silence.
Afterwards, on their way to the meeting-house, Jacqueline inquired into
his meaning. "Why would a woman have trouble teaching school here? Are
the children so very bad?"
The Apostle explained, "'T ain't so much the chillun as the grown folks,
specially the men folks. You see Teacher makes 'em all come on moonlight
nights; the paws and maws, and the gran'paws and gran'maws, too. He's
got a whole lot of new-fangled notions, Teacher has. They don't allus
take to 'em kindly--you know how old folks are about new-fangled ways.
But he makes 'em come ef they wants to or not, and he larns 'em,
too--not only spellin' and sums and such-like, but how to take keer of
the babies, and the sick folks, and how to git the hens to lay, and how
to cook, and all!"
"To cook! That is indeed a noble work," murmured Channing, devoutly,
having recourse to his flask of soda-mints. "Would that our hostess
might take advantage of the opportunity!"
"She have," said Brother Bates, proudly. "She done nussed the whole
fambly through a fever-sickness a little while ago, doin' like Teacher
told her, and nary one of 'em died. But she ain't got so fur as cookin'
yet."
"I'd like to meet this teacher," said Philip, heartily. "Will he be at
the meeting to-night?"
The Apostle sighed. "Reck'n he won't. Ain't it queer how a smart man
like that don't take no stock in the Word of God? 'Lows he's scrambled
along without it all his life, and allus will. But I dunno. I dunno. I
expect the Lord's got a surprise up his sleeve for Teacher."
The door-yard of the rough cabin that was dignified by the name of
meeting-house was quite crowded with men when they arrived. Philip went
among them pleasantly, saying, "Good evening, my friends," shaking hands
where he could find a hand to shake, greeted here and there by a gruff,
"Howdy, Preacher," but for the most part welcomed in solemn, almost
hostile silence.
"They're just kind o' bashful," murmured the peddler, in apology for his
people.
"I know," smiled Philip, himself feeling a little shy, and like an
intruder.
They filed in silently behind him, each depositing a gun in a rack
beside the meeting-house door.
"I breathe more easily," murmured Channing in Jacqueline's ear. "For
small mercies, let us be duly thankful. Lord, what a crew!"
The two followed Philip to the bare, uncarpeted platform that was to
serve as altar. The girl saw to her dismay that there was no piano, not
even a harmonium to assist her singing. Brother Bates acted as master of
ceremonies. The peddler was evidently a man of great importance in the
community, its one traveler, acquainted with the ways of cities.
"Let marryin' couples set on the right-hand, front benches. Preacher
will attend to 'em after meetin'," he announced.
Four or five couples obeyed these instructions with subdued tittering,
the fact that several of the brides-to-be carried young infants in their
arms not adding appreciably to their embarrassment.
"Have they licenses?" murmured Philip.
"I dunno," replied the Apostle, serenely. "Ef they ain't, they kin git
'em afterwards. The Lord knows how fur they be from law-places."
The little community of Misty Ridge was at that time one of the poorest
and most uncivilized in the Cumberland Mountains; many hours' ride, over
trails that were at times impassable, from the nearest railroad;
entirely unknown to the world below save when one of its sons was sent,
for good and sufficient reason, down to the penitentiary. It is a
literary fashion of the day to laud the Kentucky mountaineer as an
uncouth hero, a sort of nobleman in disguise, guarding intact in his
wilderness an inheritance of great racial traits for the strengthening
of future generations. Unfortunately, with his good old Saxon name and
his good old Saxon customs, he also inherits occasionally something of
the moral nature which caused his Saxon ancestor to be deported
overseas. The mountains of Kentucky, and of Tennessee, were settled to
some extent by convicts who had served their time in the English penal
colonies along the sea-coast.
Such an origin, doubtless, might have been claimed by the sparse
settlement on Misty, and time had done nothing to mitigate any curse of
inheritance. The beautiful, barren hills, their hidden riches as yet
undiscovered, yielding so meager a livelihood in return for such bitter
labor, served as ramparts between their people and the world beyond.
Little help at that time reached them from without. Solitude, ignorance,
direst poverty, form a soil in which bodies flourish better than souls,
and even bodies do not flourish exceedingly.
Channing, gazing about at the faces below him, one and all with eyes
fixed upon the fresh loveliness of Jacqueline, had a moment of acute
uneasiness. What right had Benoix, who knew the mountains, to bring the
girl into contact with such bestiality? The odor of packed humanity that
came to his fastidious nostrils was as sickening as the odor of a
bear-pit. He recalled tales of their untamable fierceness. He remembered
the row of guns even now resting in a rack outside the door. His eye,
going inadvertently to the sturdy figure of the clergyman, noticed a
suspicious bulge in the hip-pocket of his riding-breeches. He started.
"Does Benoix carry a pistol?" he whispered to Jacqueline.
"Of course! I've got one, too," she answered cheerfully. "Where's
yours?"
The author felt that he had lost his taste for mountaineering. He looked
in vain for one of the beauteous mountain maids so satisfyingly frequent
in the pages of current fiction. The women were all sallow, stolid,
sullen, old beyond their years. Even the babies were sallow and stolid
and old. Many of the men were muscular and well-grown, but with a lanky,
stooping height that did not suggest health. Inflamed eyes were common
in that congregation, hollow cheeks flushed with the sign there is no
mistaking, faces vacuous and dull-eyed and foolishly a-grin.
"Ugh! Think of the germs," he said unhappily, under his breath. "Your
friend the peddler is making signs at you."
Jacqueline, obedient to the signal, stopped to the edge of the platform
and began to sing the first hymn that came to her mind. She found that
she was singing alone. Channing did not know the air. She glanced
imploringly at Philip, but he did not see her. He was studying his
congregation. They sat in solemn silence, staring at Jacqueline.
At first her voice shook a little with self-consciousness, but she threw
her head up gallantly, and went on, verse after verse. At the end she
was singing as confidently as if Jemima and the little organ and the
faithful choir of Storm church were behind her. Her voice died away in
the final "Amen," and she went to her seat, still amid dead silence.
"Why didn't you help me out?" she whispered reproachfully to Philip.
"It wasn't necessary. Look at them!"
Then she saw that the stupidity, the grimness of all those watching
faces was gone as if by magic. They had become bright, eager, almost
tremulous with pleasure. The girl was touched. She understood why the
peddler had so insisted upon Philip's ability to start a hymn. Music,
such crude and simple music as came their way, meant to these starved
natures all that they knew of beauty, of higher things, perhaps of
religion.
In the hush that followed, Philip began: "The Lord is in His holy
temple. Let all the earth keep silence before Him."
It was a strange setting for the stately Episcopal service, simplified
as Philip made it for the occasion; a bare, log-walled room, lit by
smelling kerosene lamps, without altar, candles or cross, without
religious symbol of any sort. Only Jacqueline followed the service,
kneeling where the congregation should have knelt, making the responses
in her clear young voice, joining him in the prayers. But Philip was
aware of no incongruity. He gave them what he had to give, and felt none
the less a priest because of his flannel shirt and his shabby
riding-trousers. Cathedral or log-cabin, it was all one to him. He knew
that with Jacqueline's singing, the Lord had indeed entered into His
holy temple.
Presently he spoke to them as he would have spoken to his Sunday-school
classes at home, earnestly and very simply, with none of the
condescending blandness of the elder. Some of their homely phrases,
their very accent, had crept unconsciously into his speech, a remnant of
the impressionable days when he had lived for a while among mountain
folk. Jacqueline realized that this unconscious adaptability was the
secret of his hold on people, of their confiding trust in him. Whatever
they might be, he was for the moment one of them, looking at their
temptations, their failures, never from the outside but from their own
point of view.
Brother Bates, a little worried at first by the mildness of his
protégé's voice and manner, realized after a few moments the
people were listening to him as they had never listened to the
hell-fire-and-damnation preachers of their previous experience. Not a
man in that room, including Percival Channing, escaped the somewhat
uncomfortable feeling that the text, "Do unto others as ye would be done
by," had been chosen particularly for his benefit--which is perhaps the
secret of great preaching.
Jacqueline, gazing about with great pride in her friend, saw that not
only was the room crowded with listeners, but that others were standing
outside in the porch. One profile, outlined for a few moments against a
window, attracted her attention by contrast with those about it; an
elderly face, worn by evident illness or suffering, sensitive and
intelligent and refined, despite the gray stubble of beard on his cheeks
and the rough flannel collar about his throat. Jacqueline watched him
curiously, until her gaze drew his and he suddenly disappeared.
"He looked almost like a gentleman," she thought. "I wonder why he did
not come inside?"
Her mind reverted to this man more than once.
When they were on their way back up the moonlit trail, she and Channing
lingering behind the others, an explanation suddenly struck her.
"The non-believing school teacher, of course!" she exclaimed. "Ashamed
to be caught listening to 'the Word of God.' Well, he may not be
interested in the Word of God," she added musingly, "but he certainly
was interested in the word of Philip. Never took his eye off Phil's
face!"
Channing had taken her hand, which turned and clung to his with its
usual nestling gesture. Now he put his arm around her, drawing her to
him in the shadow of some trees. But close as they stood, he had an odd
feeling that for the moment, the girl was far away from him.
"What are you thinking of? Tired, sweetheart?"
She leaned back against him, nodding. "Awfully. What a day! But wasn't
it worth it, just to see those people listening to Philip? Do you know,"
she said, "I believe old Reverend Flip is going to be a bishop one of
these days."
"Really?" he murmured, kissing her. It seemed an unlikely moment for the
discussion of the clergyman, admirable as the fellow was.
But Jacqueline had no sense of the fitness of things. She said between
one kiss and another, "Philip's so awfully _good_, you know."
Channing released her, "I daresay," he remarked with some dryness.
"Being good is his profession, of course."