THE SPIRIT THAT PLAYED WITH HER.
"This looks like the scenery in a theatre," said Tom, as slowly they
walked up the gulch. She asked him what he meant and he explained as
best he could the nature of a play-house, where to sweet music and amid
flowers the hero told the heroine that he would die for her. She replied
that it must be pretty, but that a book which she had read told her that
it was wrong to go to such a place. In this book there was a girl, and
one night she went with a young man to a theatre and when she came back
her mother was dead. Tom suggested that possibly the old lady might have
died anyway, but Lou shook her wavy hair till all sorts of witcheries
fell out of it.
"No, she died because the girl went, and I have thought I'd be afraid to
go as long as my mother was alive."
He helped her across the rivulet, though it was not more than a foot
wide at this place, and a little further on, helped her across again
when there was no necessity for it. "It didn't seem to have any
influence on the old man, did it?" he remarked.
"The girl goin' to the theatre? Oh, no; it takes more than that to kill
a man. Cousin Jim says when he went down to Memphis while the yeller
fever was there, he saw the theatre house. He went inside, and the seats
were red and soft--softer than the seats in a church, but there wasn't
anybody there for all the people that went there were dead with the
fever. But I have often wondered if there was so much music and so many
flowers how it could be so bad. They say that the angels have harps and
that in heaven there is music, but I haven't heard that there is any
music at the other place. Oh, did you see that bird almost light on me?"
"Thought you were a flower," Tom replied, helping her across the rivulet
again.
"Oh, it didn't. What makes you wanter talk that way for? Look, here is
where I used to make my play-house, and here are pieces of the broken
dishes yet, and that broken bottle was my bureau. Wait a minute and let
me think. There was a little boy played with me and his name was
Bud--not a sure enough little boy, but one that I pretended like; and I
could hear him talk and he'd say the prettiest things. He lived up there
under that big rock and would always come when I called him, but one
time a woman come along and she heard me talkin' to him and she couldn't
see him with her sort of eyes; and she went down to the house and told
mother that I must be crazy, and after this Bud wouldn't come when I
called him. That was a long time ago--a year and a half befo' year befo'
last. We will go on now."
When they came to the log hut, Tom cried out: "Oh, here is another
play-house. Is it yours?"
"No, this is where they grind corn."
He looked in at the low door and marveled at the strangeness of the
place, and after a long silence she asked him what he was thinking about
and he replied:
"About that little boy. He must have been happy."
"Yes, till that hateful woman came along and killed him. Wasn't she
mean? I wonder if hundreds of spirits haven't been killed that way. How
beautiful everything is sometimes when we shut our eyes. It is then that
we see spirits, but I was sick once and the spirits all got to be old
and wrinkled and they'd come up and grin at me; and after that for a
long time I was afraid to see things with my eyes shut. Isn't it nice to
be as brave as you are?"
He looked at her and his eyes were aglow with softened fire, and his
hand was near her own, resting on the log door-way, but he was not brave
now for he trembled and when he spoke his voice wavered. "Don't mock me
by calling me brave. There never was a bigger coward."
"Why, you are trembling now. Is it because I told you of the spirits?
But you ain't a coward. My father says you are brave and he knows, for
you wan't afraid of that mad dog, and there's nothin' as bad as that.
Oh, down yonder where the branch is bigger there is a water fall; and
after a rain it roars and I used to go there with little Bud and we
called it a scolding giant. Shall we go down there?"
"Yes, but you mustn't--mustn't think of that boy Bud so much."
"Oh, he was only a spirit."
"Yes, but so is everything that is anything. Take the spirit away and
we'd all be cattle. And I know exactly what species of cattle I'd
be--I'd be a calf--just a red calf with horns about an inch long, and in
nosing around I'd get a basket on my head, be frightened and make myself
ridiculous. I never knew it before, but I know now that I'd be a calf."
"Oh, no you wouldn't, no such of a thing. What makes you talk about
yourself that way? Come on, now."
Over a bluff of rock fifty feet high the rivulet poured and in the spray
they saw a rainbow. Down below where they stood ferns were rank and the
rocks were soft with moss. Here they sat and chatted of nothing but
themselves, he discovering faults in himself and she denying them,
calling him prettily to task for his slander, and thrilled him from one
indecision to another. The sun, emblazoning for a moment a distant
mountain top, purpled the lower world and then all was in shade. For a
long time they had been silent and when she spoke he started out of his
revery and rubbed his eyes as if he had been asleep; but he had not, for
as a spirit, a little boy Bud, he had played with her in the gulch,
coming out from beneath the rock when she called him.
"Let us go back to the house," she said. "They will wonder what has
become of us."
Jim and Mrs. Mayfield were coming down the hill. The preacher, too, had
for the most part been silent, though not in reverie, but in a constant
struggle. Once he said to her: "Ma'm, I can't get it out of my head that
you are makin' fun of me."
"I make fun of you, Mr. Reverend? I admit that in the past my heart was
gayer than wise, but there never was a time when I could have made fun
of you."
Slowly they walked down the hill and he pondered over what she had said,
but a simple heart is often a suspicious heart; rustic faith is afraid
of itself, and he did not believe her. He was not wise enough to see
that in her eye he was a moral Hercules. He did not know that in his
great strength, in his very awkwardness, there was a fascination for
this woman who had drunk wine from a golden goblet and found it bitter.
On every creed there are dark spots, and in his devotion to his calling
he was afraid that she had come to him as a temptation, to lead him
away from the work of saving souls. Sometimes he caught himself
foolishly wishing that suddenly she might develop into a man, the evil
one himself, that he might defy him; and then the softness of her words
would bring shame upon him and he would mutter imprecations against
himself.
"The sun is no longer shining upon it, but in my mind that hill-top will
always glow," she said when they had reached the road. "It must ever
remain a gold-tipped promontory of the past."
"Ma'm, I don't know what you mean."