The house was known as Rackenshack throughout the neighborhood for miles
around. It was a frame structure, originally of sorry workmanship, at
least thirty years old, and upon which not a cent's worth of repairing
had been done since first erected, wherefore the name was peculiarly
appropriate. It was not only old, rickety, paintless, half rotten and
sadly sunken at one end, but the fencing around the place was broken,
grown over with weeds, and slanted in as many ways as there were panels.
The lawn or yard in front of the house had some old cherry trees,
gnarled and decaying, growing in what had once been straight rows, but
storms and more insidious vicissitudes had twisted and curled them about
till they looked as though they had been thrown end foremost at the
ground hap-hazard. Under and all round these trees young sprouts, from
the scattered cherry seeds of many years of fruiting, had grown so thick
that one could with difficulty get through them. A narrow, well-beaten
path led from the gate, which lazily lolled on one hinge, up to the
decayed and sunken porch, in front of which was the well, with its
lop-eared windlass and dilapidated curb and shed.
A country thoroughfare, one of the old State roads leading westward to a
ferry on the Wabash river near the village of Attica and eastward to
either Crawfordsville, Indianapolis or Lafayette. This road was in the
direct line of emigration, and in the proper seasons long lines of
covered wagons rolled past, the drivers, a jolly set, hallooing to each
other and bandying sharp wit and rude sarcasm at the expense of
Rackenshack. Poor old house, it leered at the passers, with its windows
askew, and clattered its loose boards and battered shutters in utter and
complacent defiance of all their jeers!
Rackenshack belonged to Luke Plunkett and Betsy, his sister; the latter
an old maid beyond all cavil, the former a bachelor of about thirty. The
lands of the estate were pretty broad, comprising some two thousand
acres of rich prairie and "river bottom" land, which had been kept in a
much better state of improvement than the house had. In fact, Luke was
considered a careful, industrious, frugal farmer. He had large, well
regulated barns and stock sheds and stables--plenty of fine horses,
cattle, hogs, sheep and mules, all well fed and cared for, and it was
generally understood that he had a pretty round deposit in a bank.
Perhaps 'Squire Rube Fink, sometimes called "the Rev. Major Fink" and
sometimes "Talking Rube," gives the best description of Luke's
condition, habits and surroundings, that I can offer. It is truthful and
singularly graphic. He says:
"Luke Plunkett's no fool if he does live at Rack-a-me-shack and 'spect
the ole rotten tabernacle to fall down on him every time a rooster crows
close by. That feller's long-headed, he is. To be sure, sartinly, his
barn's a dern sight better 'n his house, but his head's level, for, d'ye
see, that's the way to make money. A house don't never make no money for
a feller--it's nothin' but dead capital to put money into a fine
dwellin'. Luke's pilin' his money in the bank. He's been doin' a sharp
thing in wheat and live stock at Cincinnati, and I guess he knows what
he's about. He don't keer about what sort o' house he lives in. But I
tell you that red haired sister o' his'n is lightning. She's what bosses
the job all round that ole shanty; but she can't red-hair it over Luke
in the farm matters. He has his own way. He's so quiet and peculiar; a
still, say nothin', bull-dog sort o' man he is."
Indeed, Luke was one of that quiet sort of men who, without ever once
loudly asserting a right or disputing any word you say, invariably go
ahead on their own judgment and carry their point in everything.
Nevertheless, he was a man of fine, generous nature at bottom, a good
brother and a worthy friend.
But it was with Luke just as it is, more or less, with us all. He
absorbed into his life the spirit of his surroundings. He grew somewhat
to resemble Rackenshack in outward appearance. He became slovenly in his
dress and let his hair and beard grow wild. His naturally handsome face
gradually took on a sort of good humored ugliness, and his heavy
shoulders slanted over like the uneven gables of his house. He became an
inveterate chewer and smoker of tobacco. What time a quid of the weed
was not in his mouth, the short thick stem of a dark, nicotine-coated
briar-root pipe took its place there.
Luke was an early riser; therefore it happens that our story properly
begins on a fine June morning, just before sunrise. The birds seemed to
suspect that a story was to date from that hour, for they were up
earlier than usual and made a great rustle of wings and a sweet Babel of
voices in the old cherry trees. There were the oriole, the cat bird, the
yellow throat, the brown thrush and the red bird, all putting forth at
once their charmingest efforts. The old cherry trees, knee deep in the
foliage of their under growing seedlings, gleamed dusky green in the
early light, as Luke, bareheaded, barefooted and in his "shirt sleeves,"
as the phrase goes, issued from the front door of Rackenshack, and
walked down the path across the yard to the gate at the road. Of late he
had been in the habit of "taking a smoke" the first thing after getting
up in the morning, and somehow the gate, though off one hinge and having
doubtful tenure of the other, was his favorite thing to lean upon while
watching the whiffs of blue smoke slowly float away.
On this particular morning he seemed a little agitated; and, indeed, he
was vexed more deeply than he had ever before been. Just the preceding
evening he had learned that a corps of civil engineers were rapidly
approaching his premises with a line of survey, and that the purpose was
to locate and build a railway right through the middle of his farm. To
Luke the very idea was outrageous. He felt that he could never stand
such an imposition. His land was his own, and when he wanted it dug up
and leveled down and a track laid across it he would do it himself. He
did not want his farm cut in two, his fields disarranged and his fences
moved, nor did he wish to see his live stock killed by locomotives. The
truth is he was bitterly opposed to railroads, any how. They were
innovations. They were enemies to liberty. They brought fashion, and
spendthrift ways, and speculation, and all that along with them. Other
folks might have railroads if they wanted them, but they must not bother
him with them. He could take care of his affairs without any railroads.
Besides, if he wanted one he could build it. He hung heavily upon the
gate, thinking the matter over, and would not have bestowed a second
glance at the carriage that came trundling past if he had not caught the
starry flash of a pair of blue eyes and a rosy, roguish girl's face
within. The beauty of that countenance struck the great rough fellow
like a blow. He stared in a dazed, bewildered way. He took his pipe from
his mouth and involuntarily tried to hide his great big bare feet behind
the gate post. He felt a queer, dreamy thrill steal all over him. It
was his first definite impression of feminine beauty. Instantly that
round, happy, mischievous face, with its dimples and indescribable
shining lines of half latent mirth, set itself in his heart forever.
The carriage trundled on in the direction of the ferry. Luke followed it
with his eyes till it disappeared round a turn in the road; then he put
the pipe to his mouth again and began puffing vigorously, wagging his
head in a way that indicated great confusion of mind. There are times
when a glimpse of a face, the sudden half-mastering of a new, grand
idea, a view of a rare landscape or even a cadence in some new tune,
will start afresh the long dried up wells of a heart. Something like
this had happened to Luke.
"Sich a gal! sich a gal!" he murmured from the corner of his mouth
opposite his pipe stem. "I don't guess I'm a dreamin' now, though I feel
a right smart like it. I _hev_ dreamed of that 'ere face though, many of
times. I've seed it in my sleep a thousand times, but I never s'posed
'at I'd see it shore enough when I'd be awake! Sweetest dreams I ever
had--sweetest face God ever made! I wonder who she is?" As if to
supplement Luke's soliloquy at this point, a cardinal red bird flung
out from the dusky depths of the oldest cherry tree an ecstatic carol,
and a swallow, swooping down from the clear purple heights, almost
touched the man's cheek with its shining wings, and the sun lifted its
flaming face in the east and flooded the fields with gold.
Luke turned slowly toward the old house. The breeze that came up with
the sun poured through the orchard with a broad, joyous surge, while
something like blowing of strange winds and streaming of soft sunlight
made strangely happy the inner world of the smitten Hoosier. His big
strong heart fluttered mysteriously. He actually took his pipe from his
lips and broke into a snatch of merry song, that startled Betsy, his
sister, from her morning nap.
For the time the hated railroad survey was forgotten. The landscape at
Rackenshack, as if by a turn of the great prisms of nature, suddenly
took on rainbow hues. The fields flashed with jewels, and the woods, a
wall of dusky emerald, were wrapped in a roseate mist, stirred into
dreamy motion by the breeze. A light, grateful fragrance seemed to
pervade all space, as if flung from the sun to soften and enhance the
charm of his gift of light and heat. Such a hold did all this take upon
Luke, and so utterly abstracted was he, that when breakfast was ready
Betsy was obliged to remind him of the fact that he had neglected to
wash his face and hands, and comb his hair and beard--things absolutely
prerequisite to eating at her table.
"Forgot it, sure's the world," said Luke; "don't know what ever
possessed me."
"Maybe you've forgot to turn the cows into the milk stalls, too?" said
Betsy.
"If I ha'n't I'm a gourd!" and Luke scratched his head distractedly.
"What'd I tell you, Luke Plunkett? It's come at last, O lordy! You're as
crazy as a June bug all along of smoking that old pipe! Rot the nasty,
stinking old thing! It's a perfect shame, Luke, for a man to just smoke
what little brains he's got clean out. You ought to be ashamed of
yourself, so you ought!"
While she was speaking Betsy got the big wooden washbowl for her
brother, whereupon he proceeded to make his ablutions in a most
energetic way, taking up great double handfuls of water and sousing his
face therein with loud puffings, that enveloped his head in a cloud of
spray.
When a clean tow linen towel had served its purpose, Luke remarked:
"Don't know but what I _am_ some'at crazy in good earnest, Betsy, since
I come to think it all over. I'm r'ally onto it a right smart. What'd
you think, Betsy, if I'd commence talkin' 'oman to ye?"
"Luke, Luke! are you crazy? Is your mind clean gone out of your poor
smoky head?"
"That's not much of a answer to my question."
"Well, what _do_ you mean, _anyhow_?"
"I mean business, that's what!"
"Luke!"
"Yes'm."
"Do try to act sensible now. What is it, Luke? What makes your eyes look
so strange and dance about so? What do you mean by all this queer talk?"
Luke finished combing, and, going to the table, sat down and was
proceeding to discuss the fried chicken and coffee without further
remark, but Betsy was not so easily balked. She, like most red haired
women, wished her questions to be fully and immediately answered,
wherefore some indications of a storm began to appear.
Luke smiled a quiet little smile that had hard work getting out through
his beard. Betsy trotted her foot under the table. Her hand trembled as
she poured the coffee--trembled so violently that she scalded her left
thumb. It was about time for Luke to speak or have trouble, so, in a
very gentle voice, he said:
"Well, I saw a gal--a gal an' her father, I reckon--go by this mornin'."
"Well, what of it? S'pose there's plenty of girls and their fathers,
ain't there?" snapped Betsy.
Luke drew a chicken leg through his mouth, laid down the bone, leered
comically at his sister from under his bushy eyebrows, and said:
"But the gal was purty, Betsy--purty as a pictur', sweet as a peach,
juicy an' temptin' as a ripe, red cored watermillion! You can't begin to
guess how sweet an' nice she did look. My heart just flolloped and
flopped about, an' it's at it yet!"
"Luke Plunkett, you _are_ crazy! You're just as distracted as a blind
dog in high rye. Drink a cup of hot coffee, Luke, and go lie down a bit,
you'll feel better." The spinster was horrified beyond measure. She
really thought her brother crazy.
The man finished his meal in silence, smiling the while more grimly
than before, after which he took his shot gun and a pan of salt and
trudged off to a distant field to salt some cattle. He always carried
his gun with him on such occasions, and not unfrequently brought back a
brace of partridges or some young squirrels. As he strode along,
thinking all the time of the girl in the carriage, he suddenly came upon
a corps of engineers with transit, level, rod and chain, staking out,
through the centre of a choice field, a line of survey for a railroad.
In an instant he was like a roaring lion. He glared for a second or so
at the intruders, then lowering his gun he charged them at a run,
storming out as he did so:
"What you doin' here, you onery cusses, you! Leave here! Get out!
Scratch! Sift! Dern yer onery skins, I'll shoot every dog of ye! Git out
'n here, I say--out, out!"
The corps stampeded at once. The surveyor seized his transit, the
leveller his level, the rod man his rod, the axe men and chain men their
respective implements, and away they went, "lick-to-split, like a passel
o' scart hogs," as Luke afterwards said, "as fast as they could ever
wiggle along!"
No wonder they ran, for Luke looked like a demon of destruction. It was
a wild race for the line fence, a full half mile away. The leveler,
being the hindmost man, rolled over this fence just as a heavy bowlder,
hurled by Luke, struck the top rail. It was a close shave, a miss of a
hair's breadth, a marvelous escape. Luke rushed up to the fence and
glared over at his intended victims. Here he knew he must stop, for he
doubted the legality of pursuing them beyond the confines of his own
premises. Somewhat out of breath he leaned on the fence and proceeded to
swear at the corps individually and collectively, shaking his fists at
them excitedly, till the appearance of a new man on the scene made him
start and stare as if looking at a ghost. He was a well dressed,
gentlemanly appearing person of about the age of forty-five, pale and
thoughtful--calm, gray eyed, commanding. Luke recognized him at once as
the man he had seen in the carriage, and, indeed, the vehicle itself
stood hard by, with a beautiful, laughing, roguish face looking out of
one of the windows. The lion in the stalwart farmer was quelled in an
instant. He felt his legs grow weak. He set his gun by the fence and
touched his hat to the little lady.
"Your name, I believe, is Luke Plunkett?" said the approaching
gentleman.
"Yes, sir," said Luke.
"You own two thousand acres of land here?"
"Yes, sir."
"Your residence is called Rackenshack?"
"Yes, sir." (Suppressed titter from the carriage.)
"So I thought. Pull back, men (addressing the corps), pull back to where
you dropped the line and bring it right along. Mr. Plunkett will not
harm you now."
The corps began to move. Luke fiercely seized his gun; but before he
could lift it or utter a word, a ten-inch Colt's repeater was thrust
into his face by the calm gentleman, and a steady hand held it there.
"Mr. Plunkett," said the man, "I am the chief engineer of the ----
Railroad. I am making a location. The laws of this State give me the
right to go upon your land with my corps and have the survey made. I am
not to be trifled with. If you offer to cock that gun I'll put six holes
through you. What do you say, now?"
The voice was that of a cold man of business. There was a coffin in
every word. The muzzle of the pistol steadily covered Luke's left eye.
The situation was rigid. Luke hesitated--his face ashy with anger and
fear, his eyes alternating their glances between the muzzle of the
pistol and that wonderful shining face at the carriage.
"Shoot him, papa, shoot him! Shoot him!" Sweet as a silver bell rang out
the girl's voice, more like a ripple of idle song than a murderous
request, and then a clear, happy laugh went echoing off through the
woods in which the carriage stood.
Slowly, steadily, Luke let fall the breech of his gun upon the ground
beside him. The engineer smiled grimly and lowered his pistol, while the
corps, headed by the surveyor, took up its line of march to the point
where work had been so suddenly left off.
The young lady clapped her tiny white hands for joy.
A big black woodpecker began to cackle in a tree hard by.
Luke felt like a man in a dream.
The whole adventure, so far, had been clothed in most unreal seeming.
It can hardly be told how, by rapid transitions from one thing to
another in his talk, the engineer drew Luke's mind away from the late
difficulty and gradually aroused in him a kindly feeling. In less than
ten minutes the two men were sitting side by side on a log, smoking
cigars from the engineer's pouch and chatting calmly, amicably.
Luke's eyes often rested steadily fixed in the direction of the
carriage. Through the thin veil of tobacco smoke the face of the young
girl seemed to the farmer angelic in its beauty. All around the sweets
of summer rose and fell, and drifted like scarcely visible shining
mists, fraught with the spice of leaf and perfume of blossom, agitated
by swells of tricksy wind, going on and on to the mysterious goal of the
season.
The two men talked on until the corps had pushed the line of survey far
past them into the cool, shady deeps of the woods, whence their voices
came back fainter and fainter every moment. At length the engineer
arose, and stretching out his hand to Luke, said:
"Mr. Plunkett, I'm sure I'll be able to serve you some time; let us be
friends. I shall be in this vicinity most of the time till the road is
built. No doubt I can show a way to profit by the construction of a
railroad across your land. If you are sharp it will make your fortune. I
like your independent way, sir, and hope to know you better. Here is my
card."
Luke took the bit of pasteboard without saying a word. They shook hands
and the engineer got into his carriage.
"Here's my card, too, Mr. Plunkett," cried the girl. She said something
more, but the horses were made to plunge rapidly away, and the words
were lost; but the flash of a white jewelled hand caught Luke's eye as a
delicately tinted card came fluttering towards him. He sprang and seized
it. If a bag of diamonds had been flung at his feet he could not have
been more excited. His hands trembled. All the incidents of the only
fairy tale he had ever read came at once into his mind. He stood with
his feet turned in, like some great awkward boy, a bashful, shame-faced
look lurking about his mouth and eyes. He filled his pipe and lighted it
from the stump of his cigar with nervous eagerness. A squirrel came down
to the lowest limbs of a beech tree hard by and barked at him, but he
did not notice it. He read the names on the cards:
"_Elliot Pearl, C. E._"
"_Hoiden Pearl._"
The first printed in small capitals, the second written in a delicate,
rather cramped feminine hand. He stood for a long time dreamily employed
in turning these bits of paper over and over. His thoughts were so vague
in outline and so dim in filling up that they cannot be reproduced. They
slipped away on the summer air, like little puffs of perfume, and were
lost, to be found by many and many a one in the ineffable places of
dreamland. Finally, shaking himself as if to break the charm that held
him in its meshes, he took up his gun and slowly made his way homeward.
All along his walk he kept smiling to himself and talking aloud, but his
words were such that it would be sacrilege to repeat them now. Let them
hover about in the sunlight of summer, where he uttered them, as things
too delicate to be pressed between the lids of a book.
Betsy had trouble with Luke for some days after this. He lay about the
house, saying little, eating little, giving little attention to the many
tenants who worked his estate. He was in good health, was not in trouble
(so he said to his sister), but he did not care to be bothered with
business. He was tired and would rest awhile. "He smoked pretty near all
the time," as Betsy declared. But not a hint fell from his lips as to
what might be running in his mind.
So the days slipped past till July hung golden mists on the horizon and
filled the woods with that rare stillness and dusky slumbrousness that
follows the maturing of the foliage and the coming on of fruit. The
cherry trees at Rackenshack had grown ragged and dull, and the birds,
excepting a few swallows wheeling about the old chimney tops, had all
flown away to the woods and fields. The wheat had been cut and stacked,
the corn had received its last ploughing. Still Luke hung about the
house annoying Betsy with his pipe and his utter carelessness. That he
was "distracted" Betsy did not for a moment doubt. She used every means
her small stock of wit could invent to urge him out of his singular
mood, but without avail. He took to the few old novels he could find
about the house, but sometimes he would gaze blankly at a single
paragraph for a whole hour.
One morning as he lay on the porch, his head resting upon the back of a
chair, reading, or pretending to read an odd volume of "The Scottish
Chiefs," a little boy, 'Squire Brown's son, came to bring home a
monkey-wrench his father had borrowed some time before. The boy was a
bright, rattle-box, say-everything, pop-eyed sort of child, and was not
long telling all the news of the neighborhood. Luke gave little
attention to what he was saying, till at length he let fall something
about a young lady--a fine, rich young lady, staying at Judge
Barnett's--a young lady who could outrun him, out jump him, beat him
playing marbles and ball, who could climb away up in the June apple
tree, who could ride a colt bareback, who could beat Jim Barnett
shooting at a mark, who could, in fact, do a half a hundred things to
perfection that strict persons would think a young lady should never do
at all, but which seemed to make a heroine of her in the narrator's
boyish view.
"What's the gal's name?" queried Luke in a slow, lazy way, but his eyes
shot a gleam of hope.
"Hoidy Pearl," replied the lad.
Hoiden Pearl! That name had been woven into every sound that had reached
Luke's ears for days and nights and nights together, and now, like a
sweet tune nearly mastered, it took a deeper, tenderer meaning as the
boy pronounced it in his childish way.
"Hoidy Pearl is her name," the lad continued. "She's come to stay at the
Judge's all summer till the new railroad's finished. Her father's the
boss of the road. She's jest the funniest girl, o-o-e! And she likes me,
too!"
Luke raised himself to a sitting posture and looked at the boy so
earnestly that he drew back a pace or two as if afraid.
"Boy, you're not lyin', are ye?" said the man in a low, earnest tone.
"No I'm not, neither," was the quick reply.
Luke got up, flung aside his book and strolled off into the woods.
Wandering there in the cool, silent places, he dreamed his dream. For
hours he sat by a little spring stream in the dense shadow of a big
cotton-wood tree. The birds congregated about him, and chirped and sang;
the squirrels came out chattering and frisking from branch to branch;
but he gave them no look of recognition--he saw them not, heard them
not. The birds might have lit upon his head and the squirrels might have
run in and out of his pockets with impunity. He smoked all the time,
refilling and relighting his pipe whenever it burned out. He did not
know how much he was smoking, nor that he was smoking at all. A bright
face set in a mass of yellow curls, a wee white hand all spangled with
jewels, a voice sweeter than any bird's, a name--Hoiden Pearl--these
rang, and danced, and echoed, and shone in the recesses of his brain and
heart to the exclusion of all else. He was trying to think, but he could
not. He wanted to mature a plan, but not even an outline could find room
in his head. It was full. Strange, indeed, it may seem, that a rough
farmer of Luke's age should thus fall into the ways of the imaginative,
sentimental stripling; but, after all, the fit must come on some time
in life. No doubt it goes harder with some constitutions than with
others. Luke may have been unwittingly strongly predisposed that way.
Neither the exterior of a man nor his surroundings will do to judge him
by. Nature is that mysterious in all her ways. Luke talked aloud,
sometimes gesticulating in a quiet way.
"I _must_ see the gal--I _will_ see the gal," he muttered at last. "It's
no use talkin', I jist will see her!"
Suddenly a light broke from his face. He smiled like one who has victory
in his grasp--like an editor who has an idea, like a reviewer who has
found some bad verse. He got up immediately, went back to the barn,
hitched a horse to a small road wagon and drove to town. There he spent
time and money with a merchant tailor and other vendors of clothing. He
was very fastidious in his selection. Nothing but the finest would do
him. A few days after this he brought home a trunk full of princely
raiment--broad cloth and fine linen. Betsy was struck dumb with
amazement when the trunk was opened. A dream of such costly things, such
reckless extravagance, would have driven her mad. Silent, open-eyed,
wondering, she came in and stood behind Luke while he was unpacking. He
looked up presently and saw her. His face flushed violently, and in a
half-whining, half-ashamed tone he muttered:
"Now, Betsy, you jest git out'n here faster'n ye come in, for I'm not
goin' to stan' no foolin' at all, now. These 'ere's my clothes and paid
for out'n my money, an' I'm the jedge of what I need. I ha'n't had any
good duds for a long time, and I'm tired o' lookin' like a scarecrow
made out'n a salt bag. I've been thinkin' for a long time I'd git these
'ere things, an' now I've got'm. You kin git you some if ye like, but I
don't want ye a standin' round here gawpin' at me on 'count o' my
clothes; so you go off an' mind yer own affairs. It's no great sight to
see some shirts, an' coats, and pants, an' collars, an' vests, an' sich
like, is it?"
Before this speech was finished Betsy had backed out of the room and
closed the door. As she did so she let go a sigh that came back to Luke
like a Parthian arrow; but it happened just then that he was holding up
in front of him a buff linen vest which kept the missile from his heart.
He dressed himself with great care, and an hour later he slipped out of
the house unseen, and took his way towards the rather pretentious
residence of Judge Barnett, the gables of which, a mile away, gleamed
between rows of Lombardy poplars. The Judge was one of those half
cultivated men who, in every country neighborhood, pass for prodigies of
learning and ability. He was the autocrat of the county in political and
social affairs--one of those men who really know a great deal, but who
arrogate more. He got his title from having been County Commissioner
when the court house was building. Some said he made money out of the
transaction, but our story is silent there.
It would have been an interesting study for a philosopher to have
watched Luke throughout the singular ramble he took that morning. It
would have been such a manifest revelation of the state of the fellow's
feelings. It would have minutely disclosed, and more eloquently than any
verbal confession, the rise and fall, the ebb and flow, the alternating
strength and weakness of his purpose, and the will behind it. Then, too,
it would have let fall delightful hints of the unselfishness of his new
and all-engrossing passion, and of the charming simplicity and sincerity
of his great rugged nature at its inner core. At first he struck out
boldly a direct line to Judge Barnett's residence, his face beaming
with the light of settled happiness, but as he neared the pleasant
grounds surrounding the house he began to discover some trepidation. His
gait wavered, the expression of his face shifted with each step, and
soon his course was indeterminate--a fitful sauntering from this place
to that--a tricksy, uneven flight, like that of a lazy butterfly, if one
may indulge the comparison--a meandering in and out among the trees of a
small walnut grove--a strolling here and there, now along the verge of a
well set old orchard, now down the low hedge behind the garden, and anon
leaning over the board fence that inclosed the Judge's ample barn and
stable lot; he gazed wistfully, half comically, in the direction of the
upper windows of the farm house. It was one of those peculiarly yellow
days of summer, when everything swims in a golden mist. The blue birds
floated aimlessly about from stake to stake of the fences; the wind,
felt only in jerky puffs, blew no particular way, and as idly and as
eccentrically as any blue bird, and in full accord with the fitful will
of the wind, Luke drifted through the sheen of summer all round Barnett
Place. He lazed about, humming a tune, and, for a wonder, not
smoking--half restless, half contented, looking for something, scarcely
expecting anything. When once a great rough man does get into a childish
way, he is a child of which ordinary children would be ashamed, and just
then Luke, the big bashful fellow, was an instance strikingly in point.
Occasionally he talked half aloud to himself. Once, while lounging on
the orchard fence, gazing down between the long rows of russet and
pippin trees, he said dreamily,
"I _must_ see her. I can't go back 'ithout seein' her." It so chanced
that just then a shower of blackbirds fell upon the orchard, covering
the trees and the ground, flying over and over each other, twittering
and whistling as only blackbirds can. Their wings smote together with a
tender rustling sound like that of a spring wind in young foliage, or of
a thousand lovers whispering together by moonlight. Luke watched them a
long while, a doleful shade gathering in his face. "The little things
loves each other," he muttered; "everything loves something; an' jest
dern my lights ef I don't love the gal, an' I'm boun' to see her!"
Seemingly nerved by sudden resolution, he climbed over the fence and
started at a slashing pace across the orchard towards the house, scaring
all the birds into an ecstasy of flight, so that they dashed themselves
against the foliage of the apple trees, making it rustle and sway as if
blown on by a strong wind. He did not keep on, however. His resolution
seemed to burn out about midway the orchard. He began to drift around
again, his pace becoming slower and slower. His shoulders drooped
forward as if burdened with a great load, his eyes turned restlessly
from side to aide.
"I jest can't do it!" he murmured--"I jest can't do it, an' I mought as
well go back!" There was a petulant ring to his voice--a nervous,
worried tone, that had despair in it.
Out of a June apple tree right over his head fell a sweet, silvery, half
child's, half woman's voice, that thrilled him through every fibre to
the marrow of his bones.
"What's the matter, Goosey? What have you lost! What are you hunting
for? Want a good apple?"
Luke looked up just in time to catch squarely on his nose a fine, ripe
June apple, and through a mist of juice and a sheeny curtain of leaves
he saw the lovely face he had come to look for. A thump on the nose from
an apple, no matter if it is ripe and soft, is a little embarrassing,
and it only makes it more so when the racy wine of the fruit flies into
one's eyes and all over one's new clothes. But there are moments of
supreme bliss when such a mishap passes unnoticed. Luke felt as if the
blow had been the touch of a magician conjuring up a scene that held him
rapt and speechless.
"O, my! I didn't go to hit you! Please excuse me, sir--do. I thought
you'd catch it in your hands."
She came lightly down from the tree, descending like a bird, easily,
gracefully, as if she had been born to climb. She murmured many
apologies, but the genius of fun danced in her saucy, almost impertinent
eyes, belying her regretful words. Luke looked down at her dazed and
speechless. She, however, was full of prattle--half childish, half
womanly, half serious, half bantering--her eyes upturned to his, her
voice a very bird's in melody. In the more innocent sense of the word
she looked like her name, Hoiden. Nothing unchaste or indelicate about
her appearance; just a sort of want of restraint; a freedom that
amounted to an utter lack of responsibility to the ordinary claims and
dictates of propriety. A close, trained, intelligent observer would have
seen at once that she was wilful, spoiled, unbridled, but not bad, not
in the least vicious; really innocent and full of good impulses. She was
beautiful, too--wonderfully beautiful--just on the hither side of
womanhood, plump, budding, bewitching. How she did it can never be
known, but she soon had Luke racing with her all over the orchard. They
climbed trees together, they scrambled for the same apple, they laughed,
and shouted, and played till the horn at the farmhouse called the field
hands to dinner. They parted then, as children part, promising to meet
again the next day. The girl's cheeks were rosy with exercise, so were
Luke's.
How strange! Day after day that great, bearded, almost middle-aged,
uncouth farmer went and played slave to that chit of a girl, doing
whatever ridiculous or childish thing she proposed, caring for nothing,
asking for nothing but to be with her, listen to her voice and feast his
eyes upon her beauty. He gladly bore everything she heaped upon him, and
to be called "Goosey" by her was to him inexpressibly charming.
Betsy's womanly nature was not to be deceived. She soon comprehended
all; but she dared not mention the subject to Luke. He was in no mood to
be opposed. So he went on--and Betsy sighed.
The summer softened into autumn. The maple leaves reddened. The long
grass turned brown and lolled over. A softness and tenderness lurked in
the deep blue sky, and the air had a sharp racy fragrance from ripe
fruit and grain. Meantime the railroad had been pushed with amazing
rapidity nearly to completion. Every day long construction trains went
crashing-across Luke's farm. Passenger coaches were to be put on in a
few days. Luke was the very picture of happiness. He seemed to grow
younger every day. His worldly prospects, too, were flattering. A
station had been located on his land, around which a town had already
begun to spring up. The vast value of Luke's timber, walnut and oak, was
just beginning to appear; indeed, immense wealth lay in his hands. But
his happiness was of a deeper and purer sort than that generated by
simple pecuniary prosperity. Hoiden Pearl was in the focus of all his
thoughts; her face lighted his dreams, her voice made the music that
charmed him into a wonderland of bliss. He said little about her, even
to Betsy, but it needed no sharpness of sight to discover from his face
what was going on in his heart. He had even forgotten his pipe. He had
not smoked since that first day in the orchard. He had straightened up
and looked a span taller.
The girl did not seem to dream of any tender attachment on Luke's part.
In fact he gave her no cause for it. He fed on his love inwardly and
never thought of telling it. To be with her was enough. It satisfied all
his wants. She was frank and free with him, but tyrannized over
him--ordered him about like a servant, scolded him, flattered him,
pouted at him, smiled on him, indeed kept him crazy with rapture all the
time. Once only she became confidentially communicative. It was one day,
sitting on an old mossy log in the Judge's woodland pasture, she told
him the story of her past life. How thrillingly beautiful her face
became as it sobered down with the history of early orphanage! Her
father had died first; then her mother, who left her four years old in
the care of Mr. Pearl, her paternal uncle, with whom she had ever since
been, going from place to place, as the calls of his nomadic profession
made it necessary, from survey to survey, from this State to that,
seeing all sorts of people, and receiving her education in small,
detached parcels. The story was a sad, unsatisfactory one, breathing
neglect, yet full of a certain kind of sprightliness, and touched here
and there with the fascination of true romance.
It is hard to say when Luke would have awakened from his tender trance
to the strong reality of love. He was too contented for
self-questioning, and no act or word of Hoiden's invited him to consider
what he was doing or whither he was drifting.
It was well for Luke and the girl, too, that it was a sparsely settled
neighborhood, for evil tongues might have made much of their constant
companionship and childish behavior.
As for the Judge, after it was all over he admitted that he felt some
qualms of conscience about allowing such unlimited intimacy to go on,
but he excused himself by saying that the girl, when confined to the
house, was such an unmitigated nuisance that he was glad for some one to
monopolize her company.
"Why," said he, in his peculiar way, "she set the whole house by the
ears. She made more clatter and racket than a four-horse Pennsylvania
wagon coming down a rocky hill. She would go from garret to cellar like
a whirlwind and twist things wrong side out as she went----she was a
tart!"
But at length, toward the middle of autumn the end came. Luke had
business with some hog-buyers in Cincinnati, whither he was gone
several days. Meantime the railroad was completed, and Mr. Pearl came to
the Judge's early one morning and called for Hoiden. His business with
his employers was ended, and he had just finished an arrangement that
had long been on foot to go to one of the South American States and take
charge of a vast engineering scheme there. The girl was delighted. Such
a prospect of travel and adventure was enough to set one of her
temperament wild with enthusiasm. She flew to packing her trunk, her
face radiant with joy.
Only an hour later Mr. Pearl and Hoiden stood at the new station on
Luke's land, waiting for the east-going train. Mr. Pearl happened to
think of a business message he wished to leave for Luke, so he went into
the depot building and wrote it. When Hoiden saw the letter was for Luke
she begged leave to put in a few words of postscript, and she had her
way.
The train came and the man and girl were whirled away to New York, and
thence they took ship for South America, never to return.
Next day Luke came back, bringing with him a beautifully carved mahogany
box mounted in silver. Betsy met him at the door, and, woman-like, told
the story of Hoiden's departure almost at the first breath.
"Gone all the way to South America," she added, after premising that she
would never return.
A peculiarly grim, grayish smile mantled the face of Luke. He swallowed
a time or two before he could speak.
"Come now, sis" (he always said "sis" when he felt somewhat at Betsy's
mercy), "come now, sis, don't try to fool me. I'm goin' right over to
see the gal now, an' I've got what'll tickle her awfully right here in
this 'ere box."
Out in the yard the blue jays and woodpeckers were quarrelling over the
late apples heaped up by the cider mill. The sky was clear, but the
sunlight, coming through a smoky atmosphere, was pale, like the smile of
a sick man. The wind of autumn ran steadily through the shrubby weedy
lawn with a sigh that had in it the very essence of sadness.
"I tell you, Luke, I'm not trying to fool you; they've gone clean to
South America to stay always," reiterated Betsy.
Luke gazed for a moment steadily into his sister's eyes, as if looking
for a sign. Slowly his stalwart body and muscular limbs relaxed and
collapsed. The box fell to the floor with a crash, where it burst,
letting roll out great hoops of gold and starry rings and pins--a gold
watch and chain, a beautiful gold pen and pencil case, and trinkets and
gew-gaw things almost innumerable. They must have cost the full profits
of his business trip.
Luke staggered into a chair. Betsy just then happened to think of the
letter that had been left for her brother. This she fetched and handed
to him. It was the note of business from Mr. Pearl. There was a
postscript in a different hand:
"_Good-bye, Goosey!_
_Hoidy Pearl._"
That was all. Luke is more morose and petulant than he used to be. He is
decaying about apace with Rackenshack, and he smokes constantly. He is
vastly wealthy and unmarried.
Betsy is quiet and kind. Up stairs in her chest is hidden the mahogany
coffer full of golden testimonials of her brother's days of happiness
and the one dark hour of his despair!