shudder, as they went down the spur; "whatever Fult does, let him
alone. I couldn't have stood it last night if I had thought you were
there."
He flushed. "If I ever did give up the war entirely," he said in a low
voice, "hit would be for your sake--because you wanted me to live."
"I do, I do," she replied. "You _must_ live--for me!"
"You are sure of yourself now?"
"Yes, I found out last night, when I was so frightened for fear you
might be down there. Remember, you have me to think of now," she said.
All that day the women, with the exception of Annette, were profoundly
depressed. Though it was only the first week in August, and they had
planned to stay until September, they felt that it would be just as
well to pack up and leave at once. They almost wished they had not
come; for their affections were now entwined and rooted in a community
for which they could do nothing.
A larger crowd than usual climbed the hill to the vesper service that
evening, many of the older people, as well as the young. Uncle Ephraim
was one.
"I allowed you would be out of heart, atter last night," he said,
"and limped up along to holp up your sperrits. Hit hain't right ever
to expect too much of human natur', which is a pore, puny, failable
contraption at best. Them boys has sp'ilt the summer for us; but I
allow by now they feel as bad as anybody about hit. And ricollect, the
worst hain't happened--the war hain't started again. I was afeared
you might take a notion to leave; but I feel to counsel you to have
patience, and stay on with us, and trust in the Lord."
The vesper service was a sad affair--nobody could put much spirit into
the singing, or reading, or prayers. Then, suddenly, Uncle Ephraim, in
his quavering old voice, raised the words of the ancient hymn, "How
firm a foundation," to the quaint but impressive mountain tune; and
then depression seemed to flee away, courage and faith to return; real
fervor was poured into the song.
As the words of the last verse rolled out over the hills, all unseen to
the worshipers a small group of men came down the spur from the ridge
top, and stood in the thick shade until the people had all started down
the slope. The women, gathered at Pulpit Rock, were about to follow,
when the group advanced in a body and stood before them, and they saw
with amazement Fult and his friends.
"Women," he said, and in the dusk his eyes looked very large and dark
against the pallor of his face, "I allow the sight of us won't be a
welcome one to you no more; but anyhow we come, soon as we was fully at
ourselves, and knowed what had happened, to tell you how we feel over
last night.
"When you found us working at the still, we was doing just like I told
you, getting out timber of a day, but also, of a night, stilling us
some liquor to take to Virginny and sell there; not one of us hadn't
broke our word to you about drinking and disturbing the peace, nor
never aimed to. But though you had no cause, women, you said a hard
word to me as you was leaving, when, not liking to see lone women
wander by theirselves of a night, I axed if one of us couldn't see you
home. You said no, you felt safer alone.
"Women, that word pierced my heart like a pizened arrow, and rankled
till hit put me plumb beyond myself, and in a pure franzy. Long as you
trusted me, I couldn't disapp'int you; but when you didn't, nothing
never mattered--I never cared no more what I done. When I got down off
the rock, I drank me a pint of strong liquor; and t'other boys, seeing
me, and hearing what you had said, done the same. Before long, we was
crazy as lunatics, and I don't ricollect nothing more; but I heared
from Billy Lee, when he brung our dinner down to us, that we had rid
in and shot up the town again.
"I was mighty sorry to hear hit, women,--all of us was,--and mighty
glad to hear nobody wasn't killed but Polly Ainslee's old sow.
"So we come in to-night to tell you how we feel about hit, and to ax
you not to let hit put you in the notion to leave. If you allow you'd
ruther not stay here with us boys around,--which I wouldn't blame you
much atter what we done last night,--I come to tell you we'll all light
out immediate for Virginny, with our liquor, and not come back till
you've gone. Or, if you feel to put your trust in us one more time, and
give us a chance to right ourselves, we'll pour out every bit and grain
of that whiskey, and not make nor drink nary 'nother drap long as you
stay here.
"And to show you we mean what we say, women, I have brung along with
me, and, if you say so, am now aiming to turn over to you to keep while
you stay, something we can't make no liquor without, something we set a
sight of store by; for"--lifting from the ground at his feet a shining
coil of copper pipe, and passing caressing hands over it--"hit's the
finest worm in Knott County, and the onliest one I got."
There was not the slightest hesitation on the part of the women. Amy
put out her arms for the worm. Virginia spoke eagerly: "Certainly
we'll trust you again; and for my part I deeply regret the words I
spoke to you last night, and apologize for them. Forgive me, and I'll
never fail to trust your word again. And we'll take the best care of
the worm, and I'll tell the people how things are, and everything will
be all right."
* * * * *
So things began to flow peacefully again on Troublesome, and the women
entered upon the last three weeks of their stay. Every day Amy and
Virginia walked or rode up different creeks or branches, visiting
the homes, visiting also the district schools, few and far between,
within which, too often, teacher and boys spat tobacco juice over the
filthy floors, and the pupils, with their only textbook--a blue-back
speller--in hand, wandered from one rude bench to another, talking or
studying aloud, or even fighting, at will.
Every day, too, the nurse brought hope and healing to the sick,
especially to the typhoid cases that had recently started in the
village. And every day Isabel, Annette, and the kindergartner, after
their regular duties were over, worked busily upon plans for the
closing entertainment on the hill, to which the county should be
invited. Besides songs, Isabel had in mind various tableaux from old
ballads and folk-tales, which should fill hungry eyes with pretty
colors and sights, and bring before the actual vision scenes long
familiar to the imagination. She had already written home for pieces
of velvet and silk and cheesecloth of many colors, and also for a very
beautiful dress she had recently worn as bridesmaid, and which was now
designed for special use in connection with Lethie.
After his reinstatement in the good graces of the women, Fult seemed
somewhat chastened, walked softly, obeyed their slightest wish, and
made himself unobtrusively useful. To Lethie, when she was on the hill,
he was kind, though abstracted; to Isabel his conduct was in every way
so perfect that she almost forgot the day of the funeral occasion.
But for the fact that a slight veil of melancholy appeared always to
envelop him, he would have seemed the same as before.
So laid at rest were her fears, so full of other things the busy days,
that when, one afternoon, not ten days before they were leaving, he
came up the hill soon after dinner, banjo in hand, saying he had a new
ballad to teach her if she wished to learn it, she went unhesitatingly
to the spur-top with him, and sat on a bench beneath a spreading beech.
He took his seat on the ground before her and began the plaintive
ballad. It was a long-drawn-out, doleful, but beautiful one about
misplaced love, with the oft-recurring refrain:--
If I had known, before I courted,
That love was such a sorrowful thing,
I'd have locked my heart in a box of golden,
And pinned it down with a silver pin.
As he sang, he lifted dark, mournful eyes to hers; and toward the end,
she was amazed to see them brimmed with tears. Tears in Fult's eyes
seemed to her the strangest sight she had ever looked upon.
"You see hit hain't no use," he said, very gently, dashing away the
tears before they could overflow. "To pleasure you, I try not to show
what I feel; but hit hurts, hurts me, all the time."
Isabel said, as lightly as she could, "You just imagine it hurts;
you'll forget before I'm out of sight."
"I'll never forget," declared Fult, in a low voice; "hit wouldn't be
possible. Allus I'll keep you in my mind, and carry your picture in my
heart; long as I live hit'll be the same, even though I don't never see
you or hear of you ever again. You are going far away from me, where I
won't never hear your sweet voice no more, or look upon your face with
delight. But even if the old salt sea was to roll forever between us,
my feelings for you would still be the same; I couldn't never change."
This new mood of his, sad, earnest, gentle, undemanding, worked upon
Isabel's sympathies; the thought of being hopelessly loved by such a
beautiful being smote her romantic soul.
"I wish I had never come," she said, "if my coming meant even a little
suffering for you."
"Oh, no," he replied, with a martyr's look, "I'd rather suffer torments
as not to have loved you; the pain of hit is better than any other
pleasure. And as long as you stay where I can get a look at you now
and then, I can stand hit all right; but now you are fixing to go away
where I won't never, never see you no more, hit appears to be more than
I can face."
Then, suddenly, as a distressed child might have done, he bowed his
head on his hands, and his body shook with sobs.
It was a beautiful head, of noble shape, with glossy, blue-black hair.
Isabel's heart was torn as she gazed upon his grief. For an instant she
forgot everything but his suffering.
"Don't take it this way," she begged, and there were tears now in her
own eyes. "I never dreamed you cared really, and it distresses me to
death."
Fult made no reply save to give her a long look; then he sat, head
bowed in hands, body shaken with slow sobs, for some minutes. At last,
lifting mournful eyes to hers, he asked, gently, hopelessly:--
"If you and me had met away off somewheres in some far and distant
land, where there wasn't no Lethie or nothing to come between us, do
you allow then you could maybe have loved me the same as I love you?"
Isabel replied, in a voice she tried to make calm: "Almost any girl
would find it an easy thing to fall in love with you."
"Not 'almost any girl,' but you," he persisted, gently.
"I--I don't know about it," answered Isabel; "I never thought that
far along. You see, there _were_ things between us,--Lethie and other
things besides,--and that was enough for me, as I told you the day of
the funeral meeting. And it's not any use to discuss the matter now. We
must be going back down the hill."
"Must be going back down the hill," Fult repeated, sadly. He rose to
his feet.
"Good-bye," he said in a low voice, still gazing with deep sadness into
her eyes.
"Good-bye," she said, with a catch in her voice, putting forth her
hand; "I hope we shall always be friends."
Taking her hand, he raised it to his lips and kissed it, slowly,
reverently, as one might kiss the hands of the beloved dead. No knight
of old--not Sir Philip Sidney himself--could have done the thing more
perfectly. Isabel was much moved. Two large tears rolled down from her
eyes and splashed on his wrist.
Then, as she turned away, he suddenly seized her hand again with both
of his own, and covered it with kisses, but this time they were wild,
hungry, passionate.
Isabel broke from him and ran down the hill; but in the instant of
her flight he saw in her face the things he had hoped and planned to
see--not only pity and pain, but also very real fear of herself.
* * * * *
After this the days flew; with rehearsals for the entertainment, work
on costumes and the like, every waking moment of Isabel's time was
occupied; and, though Fult was on hand most of the time, helping in
every possible way, he did not again make the least effort to see her
alone, or refer in any way to their conversation on the hill.
It was the custom of Isabel, Annette, and the kindergarten teacher,
every night after the rehearsals, to go down to the kitchen tent and
get something to eat before retiring. Thursday night of the last week
Isabel, coming out of the door as the three were about to leave after
eating, had an impression of a head vanishing round the tent corner.
The shadows of the trees were too dark, however, for her to be at all
certain, and, putting it down to weariness and nerves, she dismissed
the matter from her mind.
Then came the last busy Saturday; the entertainment was to be on the
following Monday, and the women were to start out of the mountains on
Tuesday. Amy and Virginia had ridden nearly thirty miles that day,
visiting homes on a distant creek, and, coming in about dark, had gone
immediately to their tent and to bed. Isabel shared this tent with
them, but it was much later before she could get to bed: rehearsals,
all sorts of last things, were to be attended to. At last it was over,
and she, Annette, and the kindergartner, as was their custom, went down
after the departing guests to the kitchen tent. They set the lantern on
the kitchen table, and ate by its light. Then Isabel, being unusually
tired, dropped down on the bench just outside the door to rest, while
the other two put away the food and dishes.
She had hardly sat down when she felt something thrown and tightened
over her mouth, and, attempting to cry out, realized that she was
gagged and unable to utter a sound. The next instant she was lifted
by a pair of strong arms and borne swiftly away. The next, Fult's
voice spoke low in her ear: "Hit is me--don't take no fear." Then, as
she fought and struggled desperately: "I wouldn't fight if I was you;
hit will only mean I'll have to tie your hands and feet." When she
struggled and fought all the more violently, he set her down, swiftly
knotted a leather strap about her wrists, and, as she made a wild pass
to run, stooped and fastened another around her ankles. "Hit's too
bad," he said, calmly, "to have to tie you up this way; I hate to do
it, but hit's the only way. I allowed you'd fight, and was ready for
hit. Soon as them women go up the hill, we'll mount the nag and start
for Hazard."
The whole thing had happened with great swiftness and in complete
silence. The two other women were now going up the hill with the
lantern; not thirty feet from them, Isabel heard Annette say, "She was
so tired, she has gone on up ahead of us to bed," and was unable to
move or make a sound.
Fult waited until they were safely inside their tent. Then he said,
exultantly, to Isabel: "Did you actually think for one minute I'd ever
let you go away and not marry me? That I wasn't no more of a man than
to fold my hands and give you up? You never knowed me, if you did--I
don't allow nothing to stand between me and my desire. All the time I
aimed to have you; all the time, knowing you'd never go of your free
will, on account of Lethie, I planned to take you same as the Elf
Knight took Lady Isabel, or Earl Brand, or them other men of old, took
their true loves; and ever sence that day on the hill, when I made you
show you liked me a little, I've been just watching my chance. Three
nights I've laid wait here by the kitchen tent. And now I've got you,
we'll ride to Hazard and get our license, and be married by sun-up."
Again Isabel struggled and fought with desperation, bound as she was.
Fult held her in a grip of iron. "Fight on till you tire," he laughed.
"I'm able to stand hit. Hit may scare you and hurt your feelings a
little grain to be took off like this, but hit's the onliest way for
your happiness and mine, and some day you'll thank me."
When she was exhausted, he picked her up again, saying, "I've got to
carry you down now a piece to where the nag is," and strode swiftly
down to where, by the light of a moon almost hidden by clouds, they
could see his mare tied to a bush.
Leaping into the saddle, and sitting far back himself, he pulled Isabel
up, gagged and bound, placing her before him as one would hold a child.
"I hain't taking no chances on letting you set behind," he said; "you
might throw yourself off and get bad hurt."
The mare picked her way slowly at first down the steep hollow, till
they came out behind the courthouse. Then Fult put spur to her, and
she sprang ahead like a flash, past the courthouse, across the street,
down the dark lane between Madison Lee's store and the schoolhouse, and
into the creek. The only light they saw in the village was a dim one in
Lethie's window.
Along the creek they went plunging, past the back yards of the village
on one side, and Uncle Ephraim's steep slopes on the other. When they
came to the end of the town, Fult turned the mare into the road again
alongside the creek, and slowed the pace. "We got the night before us
to make the twenty mile," he said; "we'll get there long before the
county clerk is up, anyhow; no use to kill the mare."
And Isabel? First there had been in her mind fear--hideous, panic,
choking fear; and when that was somewhat abated, she was held for a
long time as in a nightmare, every faculty paralyzed by the shock of
the situation in which she found herself. The thing that was being
done was unthinkable, impossible; yet it was happening, and she was
powerless as a baby to prevent it.
Then she began making desperate efforts to gather her wits together, to
grasp the situation and in some way deal with it.
She saw that Fult must have taken her emotion that day on the hill for
a sign she loved him; and indeed, for a moment, sympathy and pity had
led her pretty near the danger-line. Always her romantic temperament
had drawn her into difficulties; but none that could be compared with
this. Never before had she come across a man who dared to deal with
matters in Fult's masterful and high-handed fashion. And she could not
blame him--what he was doing he believed to be for her happiness quite
as much as his own, and he was merely carrying it out in the simple
and time-honored fashion of the old ballads he was always singing. Had
the consequences not been so dreadful all round, his daring might have
appealed to her.
But with Lethie broken in heart and life by the treachery of the two
she loved and trusted; with her parents stricken and horrified when
this bolt from out the blue should fall upon them; with the community
hating her forever as the destroyer of Lethie's happiness; with the
reproach that would be brought upon the whole summer's work of the
women through this mad act--for of course no one would ever believe
that she had been taken against her will; with the misery that was sure
to result for Fult as well as for herself, since she did not love him
and was not at all fitted for the life he could give her; the whole
affair was fraught with terrible danger and calamity, and something
must be done at once,--before it was forever too late,--to prevent its
further carrying out.
But what to do? How, bound mouth, hands and feet as she was, to make
her feeling known to Fult, to turn him from his wild purpose, and
persuade him to take her back before the night was yet over, and
the news of their going had become known? He would never give over
his purpose if she was unable to speak until they reached the next
county-seat and the clerk's office in the morning, and the escapade had
become public property. His pride would not permit that. Whatever was
to be done must be done at once, for they were traveling at a swift
pace, and the time must be past midnight.
Desperately she cast about in her mind for a plan; still more
desperately she realized that she had none--was all at sea. She was not
used to getting herself out of her difficulties--it was Thomas Vance
who always did that. She had always, since babyhood, taken her troubles
to him; and always he knew a way out for her. She felt confident that,
if he were only at hand, he could help her out of this. She even had a
feeling that, if she could call to him, he would hear her, two hundred
miles away, and save her.
Suddenly she had a perfectly overwhelming longing for Thomas, he was
such an old stand-by--the one thing she knew she could always count
upon, though, of course, he laughed at her a good deal; ever since
she grew up he had been content to play the part of elder brother, to
hear all about her love-affairs and problems, and give her advice and
counsel: pretty magnanimous of him if he really cared for her himself
as he professed to do. Of course she had never thought of being in love
with him; she had known him too long and well. Love, she had believed,
would be something strange, unimagined, unknown, and its object some
hero, all fire, romance, and beauty, who would one day drop from the
skies and claim her. Well, here was the unimagined, the unknown, the
romantic, with a vengeance,--a perfect cyclone of it,--and in the
very midst of it, swept on by its relentless power, she was sighing,
longing, desperately praying for just one moment of the accustomed,
the ordinary, the known and tried--in short, for Thomas. She would have
given her life for just one reassuring tone of his voice, one touch of
his hand on her arm, one glance from his humorous, dependable brown
eyes, even if they were laughing at her.
Suddenly the need of him became so poignant, so desperate, that she
began to call upon him, to cry out for him, just as if her voice could
really carry through those two hundred miles of space; the want became
a delirium, a frenzy, the muffled cries more wild and sharp; violently,
without restraint, she shook and sobbed in Fult's arms.
Her storm of distress finally brought Fult to a halt.
"I allow the straps are hurting you," he said; "or maybe you are
cramped. I reckon there's time for us to walk a piece; I'll take the
strap off your feet and we'll walk a while, if you say so."
She nodded vehement acquiescence.
He dropped her gently from the mare's back, got off himself, and
unfastened the strap from her ankles. Together they walked along the
road, he leading the mare with one hand and steadying Isabel with the
other. The moon, though not bright, gave light enough for them to see
by, except in some denser shadows of the trees.
The relief of having her feet free was immense. Struggling with a
mighty effort for self-control, she ceased sobbing, and after a while
motioned for him to take off the gag.
At first he seemed unwilling, then said: "Hit couldn't hurt none,
though; there hain't a human being in two or three mile to hear you if
you was to holler. And I reckon I'm able to stand what you have to say
to me about Lethie. Of course, I know you'll have a plenty."
With difficulty he untied the gag, and Isabel drew great, gasping
breaths of air into her lungs.
"I allow your wrists had better stay tied," he said. "They don't hurt
you much, do they?"
"No," replied Isabel.
She walked on beside him, submitting meekly to his guiding hand
on her arm, and not uttering one word of reproach. Her silence
continued--became so prolonged and unnatural that Fult began to be
troubled. He would rather have heard upbraidings.
"Hain't you got a word to say to me?" he asked at last. "Not a word
for the man that loves you better than life, and has broke through
everything to get you?"
She did not answer at once. Then she said, faintly: "Yes, I have things
to say, but my mind doesn't seem to work very well; I seem to need
time."
Fult laughed low. "Take all you want," he said. "I aim to give you
everything you ever call for, and never to cross you noway."
For quite a distance they walked on, through dim patches of shadow and
brighter spots of moonlight. Finally, as with a great effort, she spoke.
"You--you believed I was in love with you that day on the hill when we
had our last talk, and I ran away from you?"
Fult laughed a low, joyous laugh. "Hit looked that way--like you were
afeared you might be."
"I _was_ afraid--for a moment," she said. "I was all wrought up and
troubled about you, and not quite myself."
"I knowed you never meant to show hit, never would unless you was
compelled to some way; that was why I laid my plans to _make_ you show
hit--I felt like I ought to, before I took you off."
"You laid your plans to make me show it? How so?" she asked, in
astonishment. "I fear I don't understand."
He laughed easily. "Oh, nothing; just by working on your feelings a
little grain."
"Working on my feelings? When?"
"That last day on the hill."
"When you sang to me, and showed such sorrow at giving me up?"
"Yes," he said.
"Do you mean to say you were not really sad or suffering that day--that
you put it all on, just to see the effect on me?"