The men at work had breakfast at Hall's in great beauty of weather.
Afterward Curtin went with them along the proposed line of road. It
proved a cheerful group, doing basic work well. The wine of the air and
the lift of the earth and the beams of the sun helped amain. Axes rang,
pick and shovel sounded. There was a center of work and there were
outlying explorations. One hallooed to another. Morris was a master
whistler, and you heard him like a redbird. Dave Hall had an
interminable mountain ballad which he chanted as he worked. The buzz of
the whole might be caught a long way over the mountain slope. Where they
worked would be a great driveway for holiday folk. Young and old would
pass that way, drinking the great views and the mountain air, pierced by
beauty and largeness. Young and old, man and woman, a many and a many,
through years heaped like sand!
"I like public work!" said Randall.
Drew answered: "I like it, too! If a scholar wants to help all and a
teacher wants to help all, then going to school and teaching are public
works. But I'm coming back to help hold the forests for themselves and
the people."
The morning went by quickly. At noon they had dinner by Indian Creek,
that rushed and leaped. Three young Halls brought their food in baskets.
It was spread under hemlocks, and they ate as it were in Arden. Dinner
over, for half an hour they smoked and rested, stretched out beneath the
trees.
"Tell us a story, Cooper!"
"I haven't one. Call Dave Hall over."
Dave came, tall and lank and brown as ale. "Sit under that tree, Dave,
and tell us a story."
"I kin sing you about John Horn and Betsy at the dance."
"No. Tell us a story. Tell us about the mountain woman you began about
the other day when the storm came up."
"Miss Ellice?"
"Yes, Miss Ellice."
Dave settled himself, with his back to the wine-red trunk of a hemlock.
He was lean and tanned, wide-eyed, with a rich, drawling voice. "She was
a see-er, that woman! This-a-time that I was telling about the mountain
barked like a dawg at her, and showed its teeth and tried to
bite--because she said an awful thing! She said that a time would come
when every man and woman could do the things that Jesus did. She said
Christ was an abstract description of the state of being folks would
come to some day, and Jesus was a great laborer who got there earlier
than 'most anybody else. Said he was an example, sure enough, and a
shower of the way, and who could help loving and wondering? But,
'cording to her, the best way to love Jesus was to _learn_. Stop jest
do-less wondering, and grow! Said that Bethlehem and Nazareth and
Galilee and Jerusalem and the New Jerusalem were where any man or woman
was! Brother Carraway preached against her, and the mountain decided she
wasn't healthy for it. She was living all alone, but the mountain
decided that her cabin had better be emptier yet. She was a tall woman,
about the age of my mother, and when you looked at her you'd think at
first she wasn't strong....
"Brother Carraway, after he had preached, went on home, but James Curdy
always took what he found in the Word and tried to do it. What he found
was usually right harsh. James had black eyes pushed 'way in, and long
hair that always seemed to me to be blowing in a wind. He was awful fond
of the word 'punish.' 'Now you're Punished!' 'God will Punish you!' He
used to stride around and do his best to see that God didn't forget it.
He was one to see that God did his duty, was James! He couldn't always
make the mountain look at things same as he did, but after Brother
Carraway's sermon, and the lightning striking Barber's house and killing
old Mrs. Barber, he got two-thirds of it worked right up to his
feelings! That was Tuesday after Sunday, the lightning having struck on
Saturday, and Mrs. Barber buried on Monday. He got about thirty men and
boys together at John Williams, and a lot of them had had whisky--I
don't know that this air interestin'? I could sing to you about John
Horn and Betsy."
"No, go on! They were going to drive Miss Ellice off the mountain?"
"That was the intention. But this very Indian Creek about a mile from
here makes a pool that's called Dumb Child Pool, because little Johnny
Nelson that was dumb was drowned there. He fell in while the children
were gathering nuts and he couldn't make them hear. Well, those that had
had something stronger than water, they were all for seeing if Miss
Ellice wasn't a witch! You know how folk used to prove a witch? That was
about twenty of the eager ones, mostly young men. This wasn't very
recent. I wasn't living on this mountain, but on Stormy Mountain over
thar. I came here when Lucinda Nelson and me married. But I've heard all
about it."
He spat vigorously. "Now, this is where her seeing with other eyes than
like yourn and mine comes in! And how I come to know about some things
that others don't was that that very Lucinda Nelson that I married
happened to be at Miss Ellice's that day. Nelsons ain't afraid of
anything, and Miss Ellice had done them neighborly turns, sitting up
with the sick and sharing coffee, and such as that. Anyhow, Lucinda was
there, and Miss Ellice was braiding a rug and seemed extraordinarily
cheerful and sunny. 'Long about two of the clock, as it were, she broke
off her talk and finished her row, as it might be, without looking at
it. Then she says to Lucinda--and Lucinda says she was that still and
sunny, like a day that comes sometimes, that she was 'most afraid of
her, just as you're 'most afraid sometimes of that kind of day, and yet
you want to stay by it and it to stay by you--she says, says she, 'I'd
like you to stay longer, Lucinda, but I find that I've got something to
do! You go along, honey, and if I don't see you again I want you to
remember that I like you and think you're on the right road!' And with
that she got up and kissed Lucinda and stood in the door to watch her
down the path. Lucinda went along home. Well, in about two hours, here
they come, James Curdy and Mat Waters and Jonathan Morgan, and the
others, drunk with whisky and with what they thought was the Word of
God. They had a rope, and they meant the Dumb Child Pool."
He spat again. "'Twas Jonathan Morgan that told me, and Lucinda the rest
of it. He was young and wild in those days. Jonathan says he hadn't been
drinking, and for all that now and then he shouted with the rest he had
never seen a day so sunny and still, and just the minute after he'd
shouted he'd see the whole as in a picture--his crowd and the Dumb
Child's Pool, and Miss Ellice's cabin. Kind of saw it out of himself as
it were, as though he was sitting on the bough of a tree looking, seeing
thar as well as here. But the rest of them, I reckon, didn't see nothing
but a witch and something exciting to do--unless it was James Curdy--and
what he saw and felt Lord knows! Something like a nightmare, I reckon!
"Miss Ellice's cabin was high on the mountain. They stopped shouting
when they got nearly up thar. They thought that if before that Miss
Ellice heard them she'd just think it was some jamboree going on
alongside of mountain. James Curdy had such a rule that he could bring
even the drunken ones quiet for a bit. So they stole up the path, and
Jonathan said that the cabin above them looked like a goldy leaf hanging
still, or like an empty nest. So they went up in a string till they got
to where the trees stopped and there was just some bushes and grass. And
then they spread out, and went on in a bunch, and James Curdy cried in a
loud voice, 'Woman, come forth!' But the shut door didn't open. Then he
cried it again, and then he opened that tight mouth of his the third
time. He had more learning than most of the mountain and he used big
words. 'Blaspheming atheist, come forth!' But the others wouldn't stay
quiet any longer, and they shouted, 'Witch! Witch!'
"The door stayed shut, and Jonathan said that the cabin hung like a
goldy leaf or a nest high up on a bright, still winter day. Jonathan
says there was something so still and sunny there that it stilled the
shouting. Then they opened the door, for it wasn't bolted, and those
that could get in went in--James Curdy at the head. Those outside spread
around so's they could catch her if she run out. But Miss Ellice wasn't
at home. She was gone.
"Thar was her half-braided rug and her chair and a little fire on the
hearth. But she wasn't there. It turned out that she had taken a bag and
a basket with her clothes, and a little money she had. And then Mat
Waters found the letter on the table, and Jonathan Morgan read it,
because James Curdy had left his spectacles at home. And if you'll
believe me it was directed to 'James Curdy and Matthew Waters and
Jonathan Morgan and their Company.' Inside it said just this: 'I've
loved this cabin and this mountain. But now I remove myself from among
you. Yet I love this place where I have been, and am, and shall be. Now
abideth Faith, Hope, and Charity, but the greatest of these is Charity.'
And then there was the name, Ann Ellice.
"Jonathan said half of them were still drunk and outrageous because they
couldn't have their fun at Dumb Child's Pool. A lot didn't even listen
to the letter, seeing with their own eyes that Miss Ellice was gone.
James Curdy listened, and his face got white and his eyes red coals.
'She's brazen!' says he. 'The devil talks Scripture to his own
damnation!' He went out of door and looked about him. But most of the
rest didn't see anything but that they'd lost something exciting to do.
They began to break up the furniture. Then some one raked the coals and
brands out over the floor and they set the straw bed on fire. But
Jonathan took the letter and a book or two she had--Lucinda's got the
books now. But James Curdy stood outside and looked down mountain.
'That's Harris's cabin a mile over thar. It's likely she's thar.' And he
began to go down over mountain side. Mat Waters and Jonathan Morgan
followed him, and so did about half of the others. The rest stayed to
burn the cabin. The witch had gone off on a broomstick for them!
"The Harrises were a kind of lonely folk that didn't go much to church
or nowhar. They mightn't even have heard of Brother Carraway's sermon.
She might be thar, as James Curdy thought. But she wasn't. She had been
thar, they said, jest a minute. She'd looked in on old Aunt Viny Harris
and said she was going away. Said she was going to foot of mountain to
Norwood, whar you get the train. Aunt Viny asked when she was coming
back, and Miss Ellice smiled and said she didn't think she was coming
back. 'Whar was she going to live?' She said she didn't exactly know,
but she had kinsmen who would take care of her. 'Aye,' said Aunt Viny,
'you're a master weaver and worker, and any folk ought to be glad to
have such a handy woman around!' Which shows that the Harrises hadn't
heard anything. And so Aunt Viny said Miss Ellice said good-by very
friendly, and went on down mountain. James Curdy wanted to set a hound
of Harris's on her track, and the drunk ones shouted at that, and one
staggered out to get the dawg. But Jonathan, he represented that Miss
Ellice would be 'most down mountain now and out on big road where the
tracks would be all mixed up and covered, and anyhow the folk down there
wouldn't understand and let it be done. By that time the cabin was
burning up on mountain above them. They could see the smoke and light.
James Curdy had to let it be, though doubtless he had some hard thoughts
of the Almighty. Well, that is the end of it! She didn't ever come back.
It ain't much of a story. I don't know why I told it to you."
"You don't know where she went?"
"No. Mountain folk ain't curious in them ways. You'd better have let me
sing to you about John Horn. Lucinda says she took her body away, but
not her spirit. Says she can feel her any still and sunny day. I reckon
Jonathan Morgan feels the same way. I don't know. It's been a long time
ago! Brother Carraway's dead and Jonathan Morgan is Brother Morgan now
and preaches in the old church. Things air sure changing in this world!
Last summer I heard him say myself that Christ was inside us and not
outside--might never have been outside us, so much in the world being
parable! James Curdy's so old now he couldn't do anything but look mad
as an old beast in winter and get right up and go out of church, looking
like a snow cloud and talking to himself.... Lucinda says people keep on
acting and persuading if we see them or if we don't see them!"
He lifted himself, long, lank, and brown, and moved from the hemlock.
"You air welcome--Mr. Smith, you'd better speak to Jim Harris about them
logs."